Out of time

Robin puts his dirty plate in the bath. The kitchen sink and surfaces are already mountainous with crockery. His carelessness — Ginny hates it.

Why worry? he’d say. The A-bomb’s going to drop soon.

The personal is political, she’d say.

But he couldn’t seem to make time for such petty things.

He eats oats from the last clean mug, leaning in the doorway, watching Tabby slope thin-shouldered towards the trees. He imagines the garden grey with ash, the trees and cat obliterated; the cottage a charred carcass, himself, too.

He wakes in the night, the bedroom alien with moonlight. His stomach burns with scouring pain. He misses the warmth of Ginny’s arm flung over his chest. He fishes for her watch at the bedside, but of course it isn’t there. He refuses to wear a watch himself, to be shackled to the seconds.

He rises and retrieves the mug from the bath, whistling softly as he goes, to defy the vacant darkness of the rooms. The cupboards are empty apart from the oats. He’ll need to visit town when morning comes.

He walks across the fields to the shops, luxuriating in the cool grass on his bare feet. It’s a Saturday. He puffs a joint as he goes, the sky glowing with transcendent light. He’ll do as he likes. He’s left the shoes Ginny gave him in the wardrobe. Their rigid tongues and toecaps make him nauseous. Ginny had laughed at this.

Babe, you don’t have to rebel any more. He’s dead.

Knife-like excitement passes through him; boundaries fall away between himself and everything, between existing and not. To be in the moment. That’s all he wants. No future, no past.

At the oak where they often sit, he shelters from rain that falls soft and steady as a dream. Last night, his father’s staccato laugh and brick-red hands had haunted his sleep. Hiss of bristles on leather; smell of polish; high-shine — in each shoe a ghost of his own skinny face imprisoned. “On your feet, layabout!” The old command had struck him awake.

He detours to John and Bunny’s house. He hasn’t seen them in months. They’ve got a baby now, named Flo.

John opens the door, scans swiftly about, looking for Ginny. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, John.” Robin studies him: a paunch coming; hair cropped close for his new job. “How’s things?”

“Good. Very good.” John nods swiftly, smiling. “Not getting much kip.” He glances down. “Where’s your shoes, man?”

“Going to ask me in?”

Their living room is repainted terracotta; a Peruvian throw covers the scorch marks on the sofa. Nights of excess, the liminal come-down days, eating cheese on toast, smoking till the ashtrays overflowed. Robin feels a stab of nostalgia, of loss.

“Cuppa?”

“Scotch, if you’ve got it.”

John disappears into the kitchen.

Robin lights up, fingers shaking. His stomach is agony. With a surge of fright, he thinks how right it would seem if he was dying.

“Not inside, man.” John hands him his drink. “Sorry.”

Bunny’s hug is limp and sleepy when she arrives downstairs; her perfumed hair across Robin’s face makes him feel unexpectedly weak.

“Where’s Ginny?” she asks.

Flo is propped, wobbling, on her hip — huge cheeks; a roly-poly cherub on a church ceiling.

“She’s gone. But she’ll be back, like always.”

“So casual.” Bunny feigns admiration. She blows a raspberry on Flo’s neck. Flo squeals, gums gleaming. “I don’t know how you two live like that.”

Robin takes a mouthful of Scotch. Abruptly, he knows he’s going to be sick.

He breathes the familiar odours of their toilet: cold porcelain, detergent, stale urine. How many times has he knelt here doing exactly this? Ginny’s firm hand on his forehead; her confident voice telling him he’s fine. He executes a well-timed flush to conceal his retches.

He cracks a joke about the caviar being out of date. Blank looks.

“I said, that caviar I ate must’ve been past its best.”

Obliging smiles.

His thoughts are shadowy, like memories. He grins at Flo and wriggles his fingers at her. She flinches and hides in Bunny’s cardigan.

“Got the time?” he asks.

Ginny’s wry voice reaches him: Babe, you ask me that every hour.

He’d received a wristwatch from his father each birthday, with a note: Lost time is never found again.

He wanders the aisles, clutching a tube of biscuits. At the dairy section, he contemplates the brick wall of butter, chooses one. He’s forgetting something but can’t think what. The shopkeeper serves him with a disgusted expression. The muddy footprints he’s tracked across the grey-tiled floor follow him like a dog.

He lights another joint walking home. The lane is pot-holed, sharp-stoned. She’s been gone for how many days? He recalls her furious hiss: You’re not as free as you think, Robin!

Passing the oak, the canopy hushes in the wind like waves on a shore. You’re out of time, she’d said.

He thinks, She’s cast me loose.

The fires are dead when he gets home. He arranges paper, tinder, logs in the grate. The flagstones are achingly cold, gritty with soot. He puts the butter and biscuits in the cupboard.

Bread, he thinks.

How long has he been out? He calls for Tabby but she doesn’t come.

He fetches the shoes from the wardrobe and puts them on, begins to wash the plates. Outside, the sun sinks and the garden fades to grey. He waits.

Holly Müller is a writer and musician. My Own Dear Brother is her first novel and will be published in India by Bloomsbury this year.

COMMENT NOW