He smiled back, in a way that suggested no words were going to follow, but it didn’t seem rude. I wasn’t offended by his silence. Quite the opposite. He shuffled his shoes, which were brown and highly polished. He looked very smart.
‘Can I get you anything?’ I peeled off the rubber gloves I was wearing and walked over to the fridge. ‘We’ve got … well … it’s only casserole,’ I shrugged, suddenly wondering why I hadn’t cooked a four course meal. ‘We’ve got some left over … James wasn’t very hungry tonight.’ I could hear myself babbling away until I forced myself to stop. It’s like that, silence; you want to fill it up because it’s a frightening nothing that swallows everything around it. Like a black hole.
The man smiled again and then started walking around the room. He stopped in front of the dresser and picked up a blue vase.
‘Oh, that was my mother’s,’ I said, spooning the casserole into a bowl and shoving it into the microwave. ‘She used to collect that kind of old rubbish from car boot sales, but I can’t seem to bring myself to throw it away. Stupid, really, don’t you think?’
No response.
I tried once more, eyeing his uniform:
‘Are you going to go … out there, to, well …?’ I trailed off. Everyone knew where ‘out there’ was. That morning’s newspaper was on the table, headline pointing to the sky.
He put the vase down, and raised his arms up on either side, straight out, like a cross. I blinked. Then understanding dawned.
‘Oh. A plane,’ I nodded, and relief flooded through me; now I knew something. A plane. He flew a plane. Somewhere, for someone, for something. His uniform camouflaged with the sky. ‘I love planes,’ I heard myself say, stupidly. ‘Well. No, actually, that’s not true. I’m really not a fan of flying at all. Sorry.’
The microwave pinged. I jumped.
‘Here.’ I put the bowl and a fork on the kitchen table between us. ‘Please do have some. You know, to keep your strength up for flying,’ and I found myself spreading out my own arms in imitation before I could stop myself. Like an embarrassing English tourist who speaks loudly on holiday, as though that’s going to make the rest of the world understand. Somewhere, my mother rolled her eyes.
Nevertheless, he appeared to laugh, and picked up the bowl and the fork. He eyed them in an interested sort of way and began to eat. He shoved the food into his mouth hurriedly but, again, it wasn’t rude. There was even something charming about it, as though he simply hadn’t eaten for a long time. I felt pride that he was enjoying my food so much; I’d never really considered myself a good cook before.
He didn’t sit down, but continued to stand, glancing up at the light bulbs. This pilot in my kitchen.
‘Where are you from?’ I chanced, pulling out a chair, and sitting down right on the edge of it.
He looked at me curiously and continued to eat.
‘My son is asleep upstairs,’ I said to him, changing the subject in case it made him feel uncomfortable. ‘Do you have children?’
I pressed on, unable to stay quiet. ‘Are you from France?’ I tried to remember my GCSE French. I admit I was relieved when he looked puzzled because I couldn’t remember much. ‘Germany? Holland? Russia?’ I started naming countries in Europe, then Asia, South America … I remembered James’s geography project and wondered if I should fetch his map of the world. Something like pinning the tail on the donkey, but that seemed crude. The pilot scraped the bowl with his fork and winced as though he could hear what I was thinking.
He set the bowl down firmly and nodded. I think it was more of a thank you nod than anything else. He brushed a crumb from his jacket and made towards the door.
‘Are you going?’ I asked, standing up.
For one wild moment I wondered if perhaps he wasn’t a pilot at all but a burglar who was checking out the area in an elaborate ruse, only to come back later and rob me when I’d fallen asleep. It didn’t seem likely – but, at that point, what did?
‘You can’t just walk out and not tell me anything,’ I laughed, even though it wasn’t the least bit funny. ‘I mean, what is this?’
Why my house? I remember thinking, and not saying it. And why me? I’m just a normal person. Just a normal, everyday person.
He paused at the back door, and I remember thinking, then, that perhaps he did understand what I was saying. Perhaps he knew a lot more than he was letting on and didn’t want to say it. Just dropped by to see what it was like, this other existence, this thing he wasn’t really part of. Like a changeling, before slipping away into the night. I shivered. In that moment, he reminded me of a man I’d seen walking along the high street with a sign around his neck that says ‘The End is Nigh’. This man stamps and cries loudly about the end of the world and all the people hurry by, pretending they can’t see him. Pretending they can’t hear.
There was something in the pilot’s eyes, right then, though I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain it properly, to anyone who happened to ask. And, because of that, I knew that I probably wouldn’t tell anyone he’d visited. Knew I wouldn’t say anything at all. I have a feeling that, in that moment, the pilot knew that, too. And because of that, there was something linking us there, for that small second before he stepped outside of my house and disappeared. Something sad hovering on the air between us, unsaid in the dark.
Margaret and Mary and the End of the World
Once upon a time, there were four horsemen of the apocalypse.
God breathed them into the world with his fisted right hand.
‘I have a bow,’ said the white horse. ‘I represent Evil.’
‘I am War,’ said the red horse. ‘Mark my sword.’
‘I am Famine,’ said the black horse. ‘And all that comes with it.’
‘I am Death,’ said the pale horse, who was carrying Hades. ‘And this is the end of the whole wide world.’
Sometimes, there is also a beginning.
Mostly. Almost always.
A beginning is wired.
You can trace it with your finger – snake it around your wrist, follow it to the socket, pull it off the wall and peer into the darkness beyond. If you track it further into the murky depths, it will eventually go back to the bottom of the sea. To animals and plants that are stuck between rocks. Between everything and anything and nothing at all.
Your beginning is somewhere in there, crushed together along with everyone else’s. The imprint of a dead animal.
You will never find it.
But, sometimes, the beginning is also near your fourteenth birthday. That’s where most of my wires go – right into the birthday cake with my mother holding the detonator.
‘What are you going to wish for?’
Boom.
That was then.
This is now.
Now I am twenty-eight. I am doubled. My wires spread far and wide, interlinked like the underground and buried just as deep.
I catch the bus, then walk down towards the river. Blackbirds clutter on the corner there. My mother used to sing a song about putting them in a pie. Twenty-four of them with charring feathers. My stomach grumbles. I look at my watch. The gallery closes at ten to six, and they shut her room first because she is one of the oldest.