MORNING SERIAL
HE stands up. And he puts a hand to the back of my neck and he pulls my face into him, and then his lips are cold, and hard and like a boy’s.
He stops. He sits down in the chair again. I’m standing above him, looking down. And then Pigeon’s shoulders are going up and down, up and down like he can’t breathe, and like it hurts when he does, and it’s like his whole body is full of something bad, and then I understand: this is what happens to Pigeon when he cries. He cries more, more than I am, more than I ever have. It’s like a nightmare his crying, dirty and angry and not belonging in things that I know, and not making any sense.
“Pigeon, stop! It wasn’t us Pigeon. It was something else. It was something else.”
But he can’t hear me. Even I can’t really hear.
“Pigeon!” I say, shaking him, trying to stop him crying “Pigeon!” But Pigeon’s curled up now on the armchair, curled up so tight on one side that I can’t undo him, can’t get him to look or talk, and the room’s full of static from the radio again, all the cheering gone.
I need to go. I need to go home. I leave him there. And all I can hear while I leave the house is the sound of the cheering on the radio, and above it Pigeon’s mam, still singing that lullaby ghost song. si hei lwli lwli lws si hei lwli lwli lws
After the crying there was a long empty time where Pigeon didn’t think and was still, still, still in the dark room.
Slowly, he uncurled from the knot of the foetal position he’d been lying in on the chair. He sat up, propped his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands until the thoughts returned.
He didn’t know why he’d said it. Why’d he even thought it then, when he was with Iola. Why’d he accused her of it? He didn’t know.
He didn’t know, wasn’t conscious of it, of what had happened in the house all those years ago. It was blocked out. But when she came round, he suddenly felt it all, because she was there, in his house, like she’d been before. It was because she’d come to the door, and knocked, and come in.
> Pigeon is the winner of the Wales Book of the Year and the Rhys Davies Fiction Prize. Published by Parthian
CONTINUES TOMORROW