Figs, Figures and Figureheads

I TAP the change in my pocket loudly, brass ripples in a brown cotton puddle. Inside my head there is a dog tied to a post outside at night, waging its tail, waiting, abandoned with its tongue out. Thought is night. "The letter opener is mightier than the pen son," remember that.We sit in my father’s study as I look past the meniscus of the window to the darkening stencil of the trees, their varicose veins molesting the dimming clouds. The figs look back at me as eyes do from behind a lowered newspaper. Wallace composts. Mary speaks. Her long, dark wet hair drawn backwards over the collar of my mother’s white dressing gown – as sacred and as seldom as a dampening wedding dress. "Thanks so much for letting me stay." "I think it’s a good idea," I reply. A moth beats its dusty spinnakers into the fire – in love with light or petrified of dark. She glances at my father’s record player, its tinted box smattered with the parrots pure white deletions; it’s aluminum synapse dormant next to the rings of Saturn at a funeral. Her gaze rests upon my father’s bulging black journal that lies; a hunted whale beached on a sand of blue blotting paper. She turns its barred teeth into a flick book with the hard part of her thumb. "Was your father a writer?" "He was a character."He loved writing. He rained a swimmable pool of ecstatic ink. Plunging in with his billowing, squid like pen. But I just read his eyes – his eyes said it all. "My name’s Mary, by the way," she says casually as a leaf from my father’s journal mesmerizes her. "What’s your last name?""Flag. Look at this," she says holding a page out to me. My eyes digest the yellowing biscuit of history into energy. I see a list of trees my father had planted and the people he had dedicated them to. My wife Mary – All of the fig trees, 1971…My father – Mountain Ash, 1971, next to my mother… My mother – Eucalyptus, 1971, next to my father…My old friend from London Zadok Guthrie – Copper Beach, 1974…near the water mains…Mungo Milemould – Ceder, 1975, next to the ditches…My son – Beech, 1983, the highest point in the orchard…Gwyneth Woodbine – Twisted Hazel, 1986, next to the fig tree with the pregnant bulge…Ben Pigeon – Pink Horsechesnut, 1982, the barn owl nests in the branches…Jasper Waterhouse – Cherry, 1996 near the drains…Vincent Moon – Sycamore, 1997, in line with the new electric pylons…Maggie Demant – Japanese Mapel, 1997, the same direction as Japan, so that she knows that we miss her…Lucia Casterbeljac – Pussy Willow, 1998, behind the house.I had no idea. My father’s moon coral. His cast. "Inside each tree, son, there is one circle for every year and you know what they signify?" "What do they signify Dad?" "The end of the chapter. Like a book." "Like a book Dad?" "Daddy," he corrected. "What does "signify" mean Dad?"I sit amazed, my pupils dilating onto my face."Did you know he’d named all the trees?""No.""Sounds quirky and lovely."A détente.Mary speaks like a clattering quietness, "I have to go to the land of nod, they need me there…where am I sleeping?""Up the stairs and to the right, I’ll show you.""I’m sorry in advance if I wake you up, I walk and talk as much as I do when I am awake. I am a nightmare.""I could sleep through a boat load of grand pianos hitting the house!" I say as I close her door.I fall off the branch of my mind into my cold bed. The house creaks like the moon is resting on the roof. My lids submit for hours until I am jerked awake, my shop door left ringing. Mary is asleep on top of me. I know she is asleep because she is snoring…and talking. Our skins stick like cashmere on velvet, saliva on tongue. She lifts herself up so that her necklace tickles my nose. It glints in the blue sun of four AM. She moves like the metal splints that govern the wheels of old steam trains do and as softly as warm water moves over warm water. I feel something new. "Don’t ever wake people up when they are sleep walking son it’s dangerous." "What about sleep-sexing Dad?" She surged and slumped and I lay perplexed, terrified, submissive. She got up and lilted out of the room – her slender frame, a picture, moving from side to side as she shrank to the noise of two woolen socks on polished planks again. I sleep in shadows, but they are just the absence of shining.We sit in the kitchen as the sun’s spines puncture the corners of the room, the small crackling television showing pictures of bears fighting. The diodes wink with the blood of the smaller bear. I wonder if Wallace has turned into oil yet? My aching thighs remind me of my dream. Mary can’t remember hers, "I never can," she says, "Oh no! I didn’t wake you up did I, I woke my Mum up by singing once!" "I slept like the dead," I assure. Her teeth sink towards each other through the crumbs of fig-on-toast. She glances at the crossword, "Hmm…What’s the plural of vagina?" she says through a mouthful of my father’s dying wish. "You’ve got something in your teeth," I say.Figs, Figures and Figureheads continues next weekARCHIVE: 2nd week MT 2005