ghosts
It’s not that cold, but we bundle them up in layers of wool and fleece, wrapping long knitted scarves around their heads and pulling sheepskin mittens over their hands. I take Granddad’s arm and my husband holds on to Grandma, and we shuffle them to the door. Each tiny incremental step outside takes a bewildering age: by the time we get to the pavement they don’t know what they are doing there, and we have to explain again in our clear, kind voices. We’re going to the seaside, granny. You like the seaside.
When my grandfather speaks, his voice seems to come from a place very far away and the words come out shaking. He says, oh that’s lovely, and smiles. On a distant planet perhaps there is more to say: they spent their honeymoon here.
They sleep in the car, a quiet faded kind of sleep. I know what my husband is thinking: we won’t take them again. They are poor, tiny little things. My grandmother is like a bird, a frail little thrush with brittle bird bones. On the promenade, we worry that the breeze will knock her over, send her tripping in an unravelling woollen ball across the pebbles. I hold her firmly. Granddad links his arm through hers. Put leg in bed, she used to say. It has been a long marriage. They have their secrets, their impossible past.
If they fall now, on the concrete, against the metal railings, on the wooden bench, I imagine they will break apart like old paper, shattering into dust.
My husband smiles at me. We’re still young, aren’t we? It’s not possible that we will ever be shuffling along the prom, our spirits loosening themselves from the weak flesh, peeling off us. But you look just like her, they tell me, gazing at photographs.
We don’t make it as far as the pier. Granddad stumbles and pitches forward headlong; my husband catches him and lifts him out of the air, putting him gently back on his feet. We sit them on a bench, tuck blankets around them, and take a photograph.
I put my arm around my husband’s shoulders. It’s a long day. This trip has tired him. I can see the darkness starting to pool under his eyes, the crinkling smile. He kisses me and I think his lips feel a little papery.
When we turn back to the bench, something has passed between my grandparents. I don’t know what it is. The air around them has stopped moving.
Time to go.
Back at the home, we unwrap the grandparents layer by layer. We unwind the scarves and pull off the mittens, unbuttoning them, tugging their sleeves. Around us a pile of clothes grows bigger, as we take off more and more layers, until finally, the grandparents are undone entirely. Their clothes are empty. There is nothing there.
hands
It was a slow, stubborn summer. The garden didn’t grow much. Still I trudged around with my watering can in the evening, and I pulled up bitter shrivelled roots for my soups, and tore at the ravaging weeds.
One evening like this I saw a finger pushing out of the hard earth. It was the colour of an old potato, slim and hard. I touched it gently. It was warm and it curled at my touch.
The next day the whole fist had come through, filthy and blue-veined. It spread its fingers out to the sun, unfolding its palm with deep etched lines. I sprinkled water on it and it held it like a shallow bowl.
Another grew, then another, and by the next week there was a whole patch of hands growing in the corner of the garden. They waved to me, to the bleak sun. They made bowls of their palms for water. When I passed by them they pulled at me, touching my ankles and calves with their dirty fingers.
They were hungering for something. Some of the hands grew clammy and limp. I gave them more water, I gave them compost, but it didn’t do any good. I didn’t know what they would like. What do hands desire?
At night I lay awake thinking about the sick garden.
I wished I could avoid them, but guilt stalked me. It seemed important that I should feel their need, their hunger, almost as if it was my own. Anything less was a betrayal, or so it seemed.
But I became tired. The hands pinched me when I walked by, grabbing my legs and nipping and twisting. I kicked at them, shouting in fear. But they were desperate, and one night I was felled by a punch to the back of my knees.
I fell down into the patch of hands and they caught me. Hungry fingers stroked me. Palms pushed on me. They rolled me from hand to hand, twisting my hair, pulling at my clothes. At first I struggled, panicked and fearful, but the hands soothed me, and I gave over to the gentle slapping, rubbing, exploring fingers, until finally they finished feeding and rolled me back onto the path, dazzled.
I woke the next day with tender bruises the size and shape of fingertips, everywhere on my body.
wild things in suits
When Max grew up he became a Financial Consultant, a rather astute and clever one, and he made a lot of money and bought a bloody nice house.
Now, when he shut his bedroom door and the forest grew, and he sailed through a day and through a night, and in and out of weeks, to the place… to that place, he found it all a little bit infra dig. He was King of the Wild Things, and a King can rule, so Max said: “All of you! Be quiet! I have a headache.”
And the Wild Things tiptoed clumsily around him, and grunted quietly, and all the while Max thought Kingly thoughts until finally he said: “There is to be no more Wild Rumpus! You Wild Things must Grow Up and Get a Job!”
Because Max was the King of the Wild Things, and they loved him, they all sat down on the deck of Max’s white yacht, and sailed in and out of weeks to Max’s bedroom.
When they got there, Max had his Savile Row Tailor come over and set up the Wild Things with nice suits. The Wild Things complained and said the suits were itchy, and the Savile Row Tailor complained and said the Wild Things were bitey, but eventually the job was done and the Wild Things looked a lot less rude. Haircuts and manicures followed, and by the end of the day, Max felt satisfied and gave all the Wild Things a job. Mostly they worked as salesthings for Max’s Financial Consultancy.
It should have been a good life, but the Wild Things weren’t happy. They missed the Wild Rumpus. They missed their juicy jungle home. One night they got drunk and totalled Max’s BMW, and left childish messages on his girlfriend’s answering machine.
Max punished the Wild Things with a strong telling off, but things only got worse. Now when potential customers turned them away from their doorsteps, the Wild Things wrenched their front doors off the hinges and smashed up their houses. They roared instead of whispered, let their hair and their claws grow, chased dogs and ate whole raw chickens in the supermarket aisles.
Max’s life was totally ruined.
Even the Wild Things said he was no longer fit to be King. And the next time Max sailed, through a day and a night, and in and out of weeks, to the place where the Wild Things were, they showed him their terrible claws and rolled their terrible eyes and gnashed their terrible teeth, and Max felt scared and could not look them in the eyes.
