The Shape of Clouds Read online

  ‌1

  On thin and watery days the road to Port Juliet dissolves into the land. It fades and only the sky remains, and the sea as it breaks over the offshore stacks. The air lightens, clouds rise, the road forgets. Sheep forget to graze, and a single cow stares at the weather, the rocks and the grass.

  But if the weather changes, if clouds lower from the west and rain curtains across the fields, then the road stands out like a ribbon blown across a woman’s face, or a curl of grey hair, and its bends wave to the ruins and my house. It fails and dies at the shore. It does itself no favours.

  Bordered by broken stone walls, old trees bent eastward by the wind, rutted and potholed in patches that have spread like disease, the road has no signpost standing. Crows gather in the trees and watch the rocky fields that patch the land, and the ruts run with water. Thin land, salty air, winds like shears. Blanket rain and clouds that hang like granite in a cut sky. The road to Port Juliet is an old road but forgotten; it’s the line from a film I fell in love with but haven’t seen for thirty-five years.

  Once Port Juliet supported a farmer, a pair of weavers, mussel-growers and an artist who came to paint the clouds as they rolled in from the ocean. Postmaster Mr Boundy of Zennack told me everything. He waited until the shop was empty, then took off his glasses and joined me in his intrusive way on the customer side of the counter. It was very important that I knew, that I was told and made to understand. He wagged his finger and licked his lips in anticipation of my response. These are foreign parts and strangers must be educated and warned. Nothing escapes. Everything is noticed, and the portents are read. I am alone and old. I am a gift for Mr Boundy and the locals, with no Post Office savings book or any letters arriving at all. I can be anyone they want, some perfect nightmare washed up on their shore, living in a ruin at the edge of nowhere with a dog that is half horse, whose bark can knock rocks off the cliffs.

  The artist painted Port Juliet for a month then left, beaten back to London by a wind that tore the roof from his house, and rain that filled his bed. He managed to complete half a dozen pictures. One of these used to hang in the National Gallery. Port Juliet after the Tempest is an atmospheric watercolour, painted in the hours after the village had been shaken by the wildest gales for years. Mr Boundy’s seen it. A curl of cloud is all that can be discerned of the storm; this hangs like a scar in the lightening sky. The sea is calming and birds can be made out over the offshore stacks. Used to hang… The painting was removed to the gallery’s basement in 1983, and has not been shown since. Mr Boundy did not stop talking — he told me that he had wanted to buy the picture to hang over the counter of the Zennack post office by the premium bonds advertisement, but no, don’t be ridiculous. As the painting, as the artist, so the place. Shot and gutted and hung out to dry at the edge of England, the port that never was a port. Twitching, one eye half open, a gobby mouth and bad teeth.

  These ruins — a few houses and barns — stand at the neck of a point of land that drops into the ocean five miles west of Zennack. West as feet can follow, the sea a pool of all the tears that were shed over the place. My house stands beyond the ruins, and faces the mile of sand that curves to the cliff path and the point.

  The last farmer who lived in Port Juliet went insane, and his sheep went insane with him. With their fleeces like rubbish and their flesh like wood, and their heads filled with vague dreams of other fields; when the last farmer took them to market he was laughed away. He was told to give up but he could not, and wept as he collected the pittance he was owed. See the grown man cry… Mr Boundy had been a boy but remembered the incident well. The farmer recognised himself in his animal’s looks, and he saw all his despair swarming behind their eyes. He walked away from Zennack and never returned to Port Juliet. He caught a bus to Penzance and no one heard about him again. ‘I’ll never forget his tears,’ Mr Boundy told me, ‘or his look. Not if I live to be a hundred.’

  Two of the farmhouse walls remain, and a fireplace. I can see them from my kitchen window. The outline of the stables can be seen in the dirt, and the steel frame of the screwed barn, but the sheets of corrugated iron that made its walls have been scattered by the wind, left to flip into the sea or the marshy ground behind the house. Here too are the old bones of sheep who strayed and sank on a summer night under a full moon, says Mr Boundy.

  So tears and insanity drove the farmer away, and his wife and all their children moved east to her family’s home. The weavers followed, looking for warmer houses and finer fleeces, and then there were only the mussel-growers, and they abandoned the place after storms ripped their poles from the seabed and tossed their pieces into the race beyond the point, apparently.

  Once, the weavers worked at their windows with views of the beach and the ocean, but now the windows are gone, jemmied out and taken to allotments in Zennack where they were given a coat of non-toxic paint and turned into cold-frames for lettuce and other vegetable seedlings. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ And the doors are gone, and the floorboards, and the galvanised tubs that used to sit out the back to collect rainwater. And the chicken arks, and the sheds where fleeces were stored. Only the walls of the houses remain, and some pieces of broken glass. Not even ghosts wander through the places that were once crowded with people, and hummed with the sound of shuttling looms. Ghosts need reasons, and there are none at Port Juliet, only the flakes of old dreams, and old memories.

  At night, if the moon has waned and the sea is still, there is no road to Port Juliet, and the ruins cannot be seen. The only light comes from my house, a glow from the kitchen window. It tries to hide behind a sheet of plastic I have tacked over the frame, but cannot. The room is a mess. I wish it wasn’t, the chaos goes against my nature, but it’s only temporary. Sacks of cement are stacked against one wall, and a pile of rubble, wood shavings and dust is piled in the corner behind the stove. Lengths of wood are propped up behind the larder door. Soon I am going to fix glass in the frame, plaster the walls and lay tiles on the floor, but for now, for now there is little sound, no movement, no one can be heard talking. No one moves across the beach, the ocean fails, the sky is deeper than silence, and deeper than love.

  A month ago there were the most terrific calm days. The sea settled like a shroud, and early spring mists covered the fields. The clouds grew slow and light, and drifted like gentle swells on an ocean. I was lazy for a week, and spent my time in lonely contemplation. I didn’t work; I ignored the timetable I had drawn up for the vegetable garden. I sat on the stones outside the front door and talked to the dog about places I have been and reasons I have given for walking away from friends I have made. Now the weather has changed. The days are lengthening, the sun is warmer, and I spent all morning digging and hoeing, raking and seeding. On any day I can be watched, and I am. Men and their children come from Zennack and stand on the cliffs to see what I am doing. They never approach, they never wave, the children have been warned, and keep their distance. Some dare their friends, but I am greater than their bravado. They know I can stare a cat to death and that I eat raw meat. My stare can fade colour, and my nose drips acid. I can speak a foreign language backwards, and sweep dirt without a broom. I am the strolling revenant who will never tell the truth, the man who sucks the blood from cows’ backs and leaves them to die on moonless nights.

  Who am I? Where have I come from? I have told Mr Boundy the truth, and he has told me what people say, and he’ll nod and stare and believe that I am lying, whatever I say. Yes, it is true, and everyone knows it: I have killed a man, maybe two. Or I am the son of the weeping farmer, returned to finish what my father began. Or I am deaf. Or a famous man, a composer or writer. I am not a man at all, but a large woman with coarse hair. I am Spanish. I am a disgraced bishop with a b
ox of photographs. I was a spy, and lost my mind in a Bulgarian prison. I was betrayed by people I thought I could trust, I ran for years and now I am hiding. Or I am none of these things, but something far worse. I am a curse, the man Port Juliet has waited for. My breath can blow holes in rain, and suck the marshes dry. I am planting spores in every county of England, and will release them on New Year’s Day. I am the shadow of an invisible spectre that always walks two steps ahead of me. People have noticed how cold the air is around me, and how normal dogs shy away from me. I am every dread, every hate, every whisper in the night; the words you will carry to your grave. I steal body parts from living animals, and am using them to build a beast. I am someone who can drink swamps dry. I bleed without pain. I have two tongues; one is yellow and I keep it rolled up in the back of my mouth.

  But… but I am none of these things. What I am is a slow worker. Thorough. When I am not rebuilding my house I am growing vegetables, and keeping to myself. My reticence is my threat and my silence breeds mistrust. I don’t care that I am watched. People can stare but they cannot touch me. I am beyond them, beyond petty rages, petty ambition, beyond mediocrity. They want to know what I do: all they have to do is look. All they have to do is release themselves. I have never grown vegetables before, but my carrots are showing, and a row of radishes. I am going to repair a cow shed and later in the year I will fill the worst of the potholes in the road with rocks and shingle from the beach. I am sixty-eight. I have waited all my life for a Port Juliet, a house and my place at the edge of the country, and I have waited for love. I have waited for love like a doubting priest waits for God, always walking with my head bowed, never seeing the obvious. I am old enough to know better, old enough not to care. How many times did I run from the obvious? I don’t know. How many women have seen me coming? I can’t remember. What’s the point in remembering? No point at all but it passes the time. Regret? Forget it. I regret nothing, not now. You have changed me.

  ‌2

  Why does trouble follow a man who lives to avoid it? Because trouble is its own reason, and gives itself a present every day. Like a malignant child with an adult mind, trouble has the power to charm before it strikes. It has a way of smiling that tells you: ‘I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re okay, aren’t we?’

  I remember: I had been living in Port Juliet for two months. It was autumn. I visited Zennack to shop. I was in the post office buying tinned goods, staring hard at Mrs Boundy. Suddenly she paled, gripped the counter, mumbled something and went to the back room. I heard her ask Mr Boundy to do the serving while she had a lie-down. He laughed and said my name. ‘Michael?’

  ‘I can’t have him looking at me like that. It’s those eyes.’

  Mr Boundy laughed again, and came to serve me.

  I said, ‘Have you got rice pudding?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll have two tins.’

  Mr Boundy fetched them.

  ‘What about dried apricots?’

  ‘No. We don’t keep them. There’s not much call for them. I could ask when I see the rep, but then we’d have to buy a whole box, and if there’s no demand I’m stuck with them.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  Mr Boundy’s eyes narrowed. I could see questions queueing behind his pupils, knocking to be let out. Some were big and some were small. I could hear the stronger ones chattering, willing themselves the words they needed. ‘Though maybe, I don’t know. Dried apricots. I suppose you could make jam with them…’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said.

  The questions backed off.

  I had a tractor parked outside, with a link-box attached. Mud on the wheels, mud on the pedals, a square of foam on the seat. Gloria stood guard beside it, grinning at passers-by.

  I bought Gloria from a gypsy who lived on the top road. Some old man with a cart, a pony and a woman who hid under blankets and branches. He carved figures from driftwood, and sold them on street corners. No, I cannot remember his name. He had a past but I didn’t want to know about it. All he said was, ‘Promise to look after her.’ I promised. ‘She’s a better dog than any promise.’ I agreed with that. She hesitated when I called her but the gypsy said, ‘Get on with you,’ and she followed me.

  ‘Dog food,’ I said.

  ‘Yes…’ Mr Boundy left the counter, fetched a ladder, set it against the shelves and climbed. He was up among the tins and said, ‘How many?’

  ‘A dozen.’

  He brought them down, and a sack of bone-shaped biscuits.

  ‘I don’t want biscuits. She doesn’t eat them. They hurt her teeth.’

  ‘There must be something wrong with her.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Okay.’ Mr Boundy scratched his face and put them back. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  He began to total the amount. I turned and looked out of the window.

  The sun shone on the tractor and the post office of Zennack, and Gloria lay down in the road. A couple of men left the pub, shook hands and walked away from each other. The local taxi drove by, and the driver waved. Mrs Bell came from the only guest house in town, and watered her window boxes. She looked towards the post office. I knew she knew I was there, but I didn’t want to see her. Her eyes betray her desire and I think that desire is a handyman, a pair of boots on the kitchen mat, someone to change plugs, Mr Boundy said. ‘Ten fifty-five.’ I fished for the money and put it on the counter.

  A bus stopped outside the church, and a gang of schoolchildren got off. One of them threw a football into the air and chased it down the pavement, into the road and around the cars parked in the square. Three girls broke away and crossed to the post office. As they opened the door I came out with my shopping, Gloria stood up and they were caught between us. The first looked up at me, her face paled and she screamed. I had said nothing. The other two stared at my teeth and my eyes, and my hair, and they froze. They’d heard about me, and it was true. My dog could eat your mother. I was the man in the cupboard at night at the top of the stairs, around the corner before the landing, and my hands were huge and cut from the tools I use. One stared at my mouth while the other looked down and saw a knife hanging from my belt. Gloria took one step forward. The girls let out gasps of air. I could smell them, like grass clippings. Gloria took another step. The girls reached for each other, then turned and ran to their friend who was waiting around the corner with some boys she’d called.

  I heard them cry, ‘He’s horrible!’

  ‘It’s true! There was blood on his knife!’

  ‘Real blood. It was dripping…’

  ‘Down his leg…’

  ‘I know!’

  ‘Into his boots!’

  ‘And I could see his other tongue! It was yellow!’

  ‘And his dog! His dog’s mad!’

  I loaded my shopping into the link-box and whistled to Gloria. I saw Mrs Bell start to walk towards me. I raised my hand and waved to her, but before she was close enough to call without drawing attention to herself, I had turned the tractor around and headed out of the square, left at the chapel and on to the top road.

  As I drove and watched the shadows of clouds drip across the fields and into the sea, I thought that the purpose of dreams is to disappoint. Once I had dreamt of having children, but now all I did was scare them. Once I dreamt of a constant life, a house in a row of houses, a job on land, flowers in a garden. Once I thought I was going to get married, and I was ready to. Her name was Isabel and she was a tall woman, as tall as me. She wore cotton dresses and worked for her father, cleaning the house I stayed in: I was going to marry her in Barcelona and buy a café behind the waterfront, but that had been a dream, a sailor’s mistake, and the years ambushed me. They stalked me and caught me when I was not expecting it; was the ambush in the South China Sea or Aden or in Buenos Aires? I don’t remember, and I don’t care any more. Regret wastes time, it drains the head. Only work makes sense.

  In the gap between then and whatever happens next,
I will not stop rebuilding my house. I have a cement mixer in a shed. The roof’s finished and the chimney works. I have laid new pipes from the spring; the water comes slowly from the taps, but is fresh and pure. It is safe to cook on the stove, and the wall behind the fireplace is plastered.

  There is a bed upstairs, and a sink in a cupboard on the landing. Gloria has a basket, and there is a painting of a sailing ship on the hall wall. It hangs beside the door, next to a row of hooks. My cap and coat hang here, and a shopping bag.

  ‌3

  I do not remember my father. My mother never said his name to me. I know he was a curse, a low note in a bad song no one sings any more. I was told by a drunk uncle that his name was Ralph. There could be some saint, a perfect man called Ralph, but I couldn’t stay in the same room as him. He could be smiling and carrying flowers but I’d feel some rage building in me, the rage I know very well indeed. It has saved my life, and threatened it. I don’t blame my father for anything; weak people mean nothing to me. He left before my birth, before the midwife shook her head over me and told my mother that I would be the luckiest child in town. Luckier than Robert and Diane Grey, next door’s children, and they were very lucky children indeed.

  Robert and Diane had been riding down the West Ferry Road in their father’s delivery van. He had swerved suddenly to avoid a road-sweeper, the back doors had opened and the children had been thrown out, into the path of a bus. They went under the bus.

  The driver braked and fainted. Passengers flew from their seats; the conductor’s pouch sprayed loose change. People on the top deck screamed, and a woman in a hat began to gibber. One pedestrian went to a telephone, and another yelled for a doctor. Mr Grey leapt from his van and ran to the bus. He yelled madly, and as he did, the children crawled out and stood up. They were untouched. Their elbows weren’t even grazed. A devout husband and wife came from a grocer’s shop and went down on their knees. Lucky Robert and Diane were talked about for years, and pointed out to strangers. Once, a sick man was brought to them to be touched, to be healed, but Mrs Grey drew the line at that. ‘Who do you think we are?’