The Still Point. Amy Sackville

      

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       PART I

       Dawn

       Eggs and pheasant

       The garden

       Glass

       China

       The archivist

       PART II

       Fog and freeze

       Nightfall

       Gifts and a thimble

       Unsent letters

       A cigarette

       PART III

       To the city

       A kiss

       Butterflies and bearskins

       Flag

       PART IV

       Papers

       Tent

       Ice

       Seals and sailing

       Land

       The end

       PART V

       A visitor

       The likeness

       The mirror

       Whisky, ale and wine

       Telephone

       Emily’s room

       PART VI

       Clean sheets

       Piano

       Midnight

       Acknowledgements

       Copyright Page

       To Alistair

      At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

      Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

      But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

      Where past and future are gathered.

      T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’

       PART I

      Wait:

      …

      There. A little ellipsis, the smallest pause, opening for him to slide into. Then withdrawal and a full stop.

      Then they are unsticking from each other and, unstuck, are two separate bodies again in a too-hot room together. The bed creaks as he sits heavily on the side and gets up to wrench at the window, swollen in an old frame, letting in night noises without relieving the heat. A car passes unseen and she imagines the face within, pale in the dashboard glow, driving late and alone through the quiet town. Turning onto her back (creak), she lets a hand rest on the bone between her breasts; her skin is slick, still sticky, clamming to the sheet. Turning again to rest her head upon him, feeling the new but not fresh air across her thighs, this is the memory that her mind spirals into as she slips under:

       When I was a girl, we cut holes in the world. My sister took a pair of scissors and cut two lines in the air in parallel, horizontal, and then cut down between them to make invisible curtains which she took carefully between finger and thumb and, drawing them back, invited me to put my hand through the gap. The air beyond was a different air, we’d have sworn it. Cleaner, I called it. Cool, unused. I’d wriggle my fingers, circle my wrist and then pull it out again. In time, my sister forgot the game but I tried that little magic again, alone, again and again, even after I was caught and scolded for playing with scissors. But I never cut a hole that was large enough to step through, for fear of being stranded in that other air.

       I think now that perhaps I slipped through one of those holes without noticing, after all.

       Dawn

      Some hours pass without event. They shift a little. The nascent day will soon begin; have patience. We are watching them in the time most often lost to us, well into the night, but before the threat of dawn — that space in time when, if we wake, we are unsure if there are hours