Tag: clouds

The Cloud. Episode 26

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

Janet sat on the rim of the bath in the dark, running a finger up and down the edge of the shower screen. She hadn’t had a shower since Cyril had arrived. Hadn’t wanted to encroach into his space. Or risk the fragile filigree substance of him with hot steam. She’d adapted quickly. Standing naked on a towel each morning with the sink half full of tepid water. Wetting and soaping her face, then her neck, then her underarms and finally across, between and under her breasts. She used a facecloth someone must have given her for Christmas. She’d never bought a face cloth in her life. Then she’d pat herself dry with a hand towel.

After that, and a cursory glance in the mirror to look for further sagging, for further gravitational pulls on bits that used to point out and now lunge downwards, she’d move on to her lower half. Same process with a piece of towel she’d cut up especially for the task. She must have learned that from a grandmother. Or an old aunt. Making things go further, not buying things that could be made out of other things.

There was something about separating the top bits from the bottom bits that seemed important. Essential almost. Janet wasn’t obsessive about hygiene. She was tidy, and she kept things clean. But she didn’t fixate on germs. Didn’t scrub at her hands. Didn’t bleach or sterilise. Didn’t use anything with the word antibacterial on the label. She’d seen products in the chemist that implied she might be getting this wrong. That there was a thing called feminine wash and wipes now. Bottles of pale peach Femfresh Intimate Hygiene. Or handbag-sized Femfresh Instant Skincare Pocket Wipes. What did women do with these things? When did they use the wipes? At their offices? At the gym? After traveling on public transport? After riding a bike or a horse? Even if she knew how to phrase the question, she had no one to ask.

Perhaps she should take a shower now that she had the chance? But it was all wrong. Like gambolling on Cyril’s grave. How could she lie back in the amniotic water, all warm and bubbled, and look up at the Cyril-shaped hole above the shower head? She had taken the occasional bath when Cyril had been in the kitchen. He’d be pressed up against the window pane watching a great flank of weather froth up the Forth. He’d spend at least an hour there, leaving her to soak and overheat with Middlemarch or Ulysses. She’d liked to think that he was scrutinising his feral cousins, discerning cumulus from nimbostratus, or counting the shredded clots of the cirrocumulus.

She got up from the bath, walked through to the kitchen, and rested her cheek on the cold glass of the window. It was only an hour since she’d said goodbye to Katherine outside the café. Only five hours since Cyril had been kidnapped. But already the slight, cold, breathy feel of his presence had disappeared from her flat. And her scalp itched from prickly heat without the brief cling of his crystals to her hair when he was alarmed or out of sorts. What was it Katherine had said? Something about a bigger boat? She’d had a brief flash of the great ship’s white hull. Of her mother staring out to sea for so long, hours turning into days, that for months afterwards she hadn’t been able to focus on anything close in. She couldn’t even read.

What was that? Something scratching, scrabbling at her front door. It couldn’t be, surely? He’d found his way back! Got into the tenement stair all on his own! She padded quickly through the dark hallway and peered through the peep hole. There was no one on the landing. One of the lights was out and the stair was dim and thick with gloom. The scrabbling started again. It was down near the bottom of the door. She took the chain off the lock and opened the door, just wide enough to let a chink of light fall through onto her stocking feet.

To be continued.

Tags clouds, serial

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 25

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

The on-board search for Philip started immediately the alarm was raised by Janet’s hysterical parents. Every crew member available examined every nook, every cranny, slowly, methodically, going from bow to stern. All of them calling his name. Philip! Philip! Everything combed through. Every passenger shaken out of sleep. Every cabin checked. Philip! Philip! Every lifeboat investigated. Every pile of sheets and towels lifted and shaken. Philip! Philip! Every lifebuoy counted. Every lifebelt storage cupboard emptied and repacked. The engine room checked, pipe by valve by piston. Philip! Philip! The swimming pool dragged. The bar shelves scoured. The map cupboards in the bridge rifled and scanned. The galley’s fridges and freezers all examined. Philip! Philip!

And, as dawn troughed up the sea and powdered up the sky, two small boats were launched to search the ocean. Six men went out and six came bouncing back half a day later. Their lips were as tight as the heft in their brows and they shook their heads, silent, on return. Janet was interviewed twice, maybe three times, by a man in uniform who was blind in his right eye and over-compensated with the penetration of his left. She muddled through her words, weeping and shaking, her mother on one side, her father on the other.

Yes, she’d seen him leave the dining area last night. Yes she’d followed him out onto the dim deck. There’d been two people, maybe smoking, at the far end. But maybe not. She couldn’t be sure whether one of them was him. Was it him? The man’s left eye probed and pierced.

How far away were you? You must have recognised your own brother?

She wasn’t sure, she replied. She’d approached the two, maybe two, then turned, changed her mind. She’d had a headache. She’d sat somewhere, in the lee of the wind.

Where did you sit? How long did you sit for?

She couldn’t be sure. The men at dinner. So tedious. She’d had such a headache.

You may have been the last person to see him alive. Try harder to remember.

She was trying. She was doing her best, she said. Over and over. Leave me alone, I can’t bear it. Her father put her arm around her. Her mother said something about leave her, leave her be. We’ll try again later.

In the end, the Captain admitted defeat. He was sorry, he said to Janet’s still hysterical parents, but they’d need to continue on. They were too far from land for any coastguard vessel to be of use. But he’d made the calls. Followed protocols. He offered his sincere condolences. Whatever they needed, he said, with a small bow, they only had to ask. There’d be a ceremony for Philip the following day. Of remembrance. The Chief Mate would organise it with the Chief Steward.

Janet’s father just stood, silent, looking out of the porthole, his fingers picking and picking at the hem of his jacket. Janet’s mother slumped in the chair in the Captain’s cabin. Her head was down on her knees, her hands over her ears. Janet put her hand on her mother’s back, felt the wretched heaving of her spine as it surged forward and back, forward and back. There were two Janets now. The inside one and the outside one. The outside one had just become a liar. A comforter. A sister who mourned her brother. The inside one, the one that knew the truth, the one that could tell the truth, was clawing and cleaving to get out. Or stay in. Janet couldn’t really tell.

To be continued.

Tags clouds, drowning, ships

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 24

2019, Portobello, Edinburgh

Janet followed Katherine to a table at the back of the cafe. It was early evening, and most of the other customers were older couples, leaning into each other with earnest expressions, cutting their pitta breads into neat strips, ordering tea in pots, not mugs. Janet wasn’t hungry. Couldn’t imagine ever eating again. The menu shook between her fingers. The small black letters hopped and skipped before her eyes. The prices melded into thousands. Millions. She put the menu down on the table, held it flat with one hand, and traced each line of the options with a finger.

‘What are you having, Janet?’ Katherine’s voice was kind, matter of fact. No indication of a crisis. Of wrong-doing. ‘I’m going for the soup. And a cheese toastie.’ She smiled. ‘You should probably have something to keep you going.’ Janet stared down at the menu. Stabbed a finger at a random line.

‘I’ll have that,’ she said. Katherine took the menu from her. ‘Greek salad. Good choice. I’ll go and order then.’ Janet rested her chin on her balled fists. Closed her eyes. How could she have let them in? Trusted them. What had happened to her? When had she become a foolish old woman? Letting vanity get in the way of good sense? All these years of being so careful. Being private, self-sufficient. The daily anxiety of wondering whether someone somewhere would turn up and put a hand on her shoulder. We know what you did, Janet. Lead her away and lock her up.

It had taken its toll. Such loneliness. So many secrets. Secrets such dangerous things. Turning fact into fiction. Turning fiction into fact. Everything misted up. Twisted into wrong shapes and muted colours. Like getting posted someone else’s holiday snaps. You’re several photos in before you realise it’s the wrong people. You don’t know these people, or that place, at all. It was almost you. But not quite. Maybe she was wasn’t there? Didn’t actually see it. A whole life based on something misremembered. A tragedy. Not a murder. And now she’d been weak. Let her guard down. Put herself at risk. And Cyril. Cyril was gone, maybe even dead. His vapor dissipated into the milky haze of the city. She heaved back a sob.

‘Penny for them,’ Katherine said, as she sat back down at the table. She leant over and took Janet’s hand. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘You need to tell me what happened. Every detail. And we’ll take it from there.’ Between sobs, and a gap for the waiter to set down their cutlery, and then for their food, Janet explained what had happened. How she’d met Amy in the fishmongers. How she’d gone along to the pub to meet the group. How they’d turned up and tricked her. How bereft she was. How frightened. Katherine sat silently, listening, until Janet had finished. ‘Have you phoned the police yet?’ she asked.

‘No, we can’t. I’m not going to the police.’ Her voice was too loud. Too strident. The couple at the next table turned to stare at them. Janet scraped her chair on the floor, pushing the couple out of view.

‘Why not,’ Katherine asked.

‘We can’t waste their time. Not with something like this. They wouldn’t understand. Please.’

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ Katherine replied. She picked up her phone. Interrogated Janet. For descriptions. Names. Phone numbers. Typed everything into her phone. Scrolled and swiped and scrolled again.

‘OK,’ Katherine said. ‘I need to eat before it gets cold. But we’ve got enough to go on.’ She took a mouthful of soup. ‘Seems like they’re well known in the animal rights world.’ She took enough spoonful, then a bite of the toastie. ‘They’ve got form. They’re clever, duplicitous. They’ve tricked their way into corporations. Factory farms. That sort of thing.’ Janet picked an olive out of her salad and chewed at it for longer than necessary.

‘Are they dangerous?’ she asked.

‘Not sure,’ Katherine replied. ‘There’s no reports of violence. But they’ve never been charged with anything. Seems they’ve been too clever for the police.’ Janet interrupted her.

‘So we’ve got no chance then.’ The olive stone fell out of her mouth into the salad bowl. She put a hand to her face, wiped her lips. Hoped Katherine hadn’t seen.

‘If we’re going to get him back,’ Katherine said, ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat.’

To be continued.

Tags clouds, serial

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 23

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

Janet would never remember the detail of what she did in the hours after Philip went over the railings into the Indian Ocean. Or perhaps she did remember, and her actions had been so ruthless, so conniving, so venal, that she’d buried them away too deep to be excavated, even by herself. Had she screamed? Had she prayed? Had she shouted for help? Had she tried to launch the lifeboat? It was clear that she hadn’t raised the alarm. Hadn’t run into the ship’s dining room and screamed at the Captain to stop the ship. Hadn’t pressed the emergency button that they’d had so many drills on. Hadn’t done anything at all that might have saved her brother’s life. What sort of sister leaves her brother to drown? Janet didn’t have the vocabulary, or the courage, to come up with a cogent answer.

She was in a foundry or a workshop or some sort of factory. The building was large, dark, and searing hot. In each corner was an open fire, surrounded by soot-laden men. The men were wielding vast anvils, hammering hot metals, welding great pipes of lead that flashed and sparked and exploded and broke into thousands of pieces. The men seemed to have nothing to protect themselves but leather aprons that writhed around their waists, and small swimming-type goggles that they wiped for each other when they paused for breath.

Sweat beaded out down Janet’s groin, around her breasts, seeped out of the crack of her buttocks. The beading became a trickle. The trickle became salty rivulets. The rivulets became a flood. A briny pool formed around her bare feet and spread out towards the filthy men and their thrusting fires. She’d forgotten her shoes. How had she forgotten her shoes? A man by the nearest fire called out to her. Loz! Big Loz. You sleeping on the job? She leant back against the hot metal wall. She felt faint, nauseous. We’ll have the usual. Tuna for me. Sardines for them. She looked down at the tray of sandwiches that hung from her neck on a thick red canvas belt. The pool of water was creeping up around her ankles, inching up the bare skin of her calves. She’d drown in her own sweat. She couldn’t read the labels on the sandwiches. Big Loz! Our dinner pal! The men came towards her. Banging their anvils in regimental time. A line of drummers. A beating throbbing mob. She’d forgotten the sardines. Her shoes. The pool of sweat up at her waist. And still the men kept coming.

‘Janet. Janet!’ Janet rolled onto her back, opened her eyes. She was in bed. Safe in her bunk. Steeped in a slick of sweat. Someone was knocking on her door. Loud and insistent. She flicked her light on, checked the time on her watch. Four thirty in the morning. She wiped the damp of her face with her sheet. ‘Janet, it’s Ed. We can’t find Philip. You need to get up!’

To be continued.

Tags clouds, serial

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 22

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

Janet stood on the beach, watching the woman in the yellow woolly hat. The woman was standing in the sea, waist deep. She reminded Janet of the Gormley statues along the Water of Leith. Stuck in time. Extraneous. Brooding. Preoccupied. The woman had her back to the shore, and was trailing her fingers in the water. Janet couldn’t see well enough to know whether the woman was wearing gloves. Most of them had gloves, or at least the ones she watched from her kitchen window on weekday mornings. The woman had a pensive, meditative look about her, as if she was contemplating something much larger, more universal, than Janet could understand. She didn’t seem to notice the mocking cold of the wind, or the taunting raw of the sea.

Janet sat down a couple of feet from a pile of things that she thought must belong to the woman. She watched and waited. The sun was sliding down the sky in the west, throwing the flat water into a rich purple hue. A few people were dotted about, taking photos of the sunset with their phones. There was only the woman to break the thin hazy contour of the horizon. Further down the shoreline, and out deeper than the woman, two terns were hunting fish, gliding and spinning and soaring, until they would suddenly plummet down, arrow-sharp, and swoop back up with a flash of silver, or, Janet imagined, a flicker of disappointment.

‘Hi.’ Janet rocked backwards in fright. She hadn’t noticed the woman come out of the water. She stood up and took a few steps back, trying to give the woman some space. ‘You a wild swimmer?’ the woman said to Janet as she wiped sand off her legs and climbed into a lilac garment that seemed half towel, half dressing gown.

‘No,’ Janet replied. ‘Too cold for me.’ She rubbed her hands together and pulled her hat further down over her ears. The woman zipped herself into the garment, took a small towel out of a canvas bag, rubbed at her hair, then pulled the hood of the garment up over her head. ‘I watch, though,’ Janet said, ‘most days.’ She waved an arm towards the red tenement behind the rowing club. ‘ Makes me shiver just looking at you all.’

The woman laughed. ‘It takes a bit of getting used to,’ she said, smiling. ‘You have to start off small. Just a few minutes. And build it up over time.’ She looked at Janet and frowned. She seemed quizzical, expectant. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I need to get going, can’t stand around here all night.’

Janet took a deep breath. Dropped her hands to her sides and released her fingers slowly, one by one. Her heart thrashed at her chest wall. Her throat felt tight, dry. ‘Before you go,’ she said, ‘do you like clouds?’ The woman looked at her in surprise, and turned her head to examine the sky. ‘Of course,’ she replied, ‘it’s one of the reasons I swim. Sea and sky. And the clouds, well, they help with working out when to go in.’ She pushed each foot into a blue croc and started to walk towards the promenade. Janet followed her, a couple of paces behind.

‘The thing is,’ she said, calling out to the woman, ‘someone’s stolen Cyril.’ Janet took another deep breath. ‘I mean my cloud. Someone’s kidnapped my cloud.’ The woman stopped, turned and stared at Janet. ‘Your cloud?’ she said. ‘Are you the woman with the cloud?’ Janet nodded. She looked at the ground. The two were silent for a few moments. Janet shuffled her feet in the sand.

‘I’ve heard of you,’ the woman said. ‘Someone in the wild swimmers said that there was a pet cloud in Porty. I must say I didn’t really believe them.’ Janet nodded too vigorously. She kept her eyes on the sand. ‘Sorry,’ the woman said, holding her hand out to Janet. ‘I should have introduced myself. My name’s Katherine.’ Janet put her hand out and let Katherine take her hand. ‘Janet,’ said. ‘I’m Janet.’ She struggled to hold back her tears. The woman’s grip was cold, damp and firm. But it was also safe. Convincing. A hand that knew what to do. A hand that wouldn’t tremble or shudder or disappear up a sleeve.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Janet said, looking at Katherine. ‘I need to get him back. Before something happens.’ She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes hard with a clenched fist. ‘There’s nothing in the manual. In the instructions.’ She wiped her glasses on the hem of her coat. ‘I was wondering,’ she said, pausing, ‘whether you could help me.’

‘Me?’ Katherine said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about clouds.’ Janet put her glasses back on, blinked, and looked into Katherine’s eyes.

‘Please,’ Janet said. ‘I don’t know who else to ask.’ Katherine looked up and down the beach. Up at the sky again. Rubbed her chin with her hand. Then she reached out and put her hand on Janet’s arm.

‘I need to get changed,’ Katherine said, ‘at the pool. And then, if you want, we can have a cup of tea and figure out what to do.’

To be continued

Tags clouds, swimming

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 21

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

Dinner with the Captain was not going well. Tucked in tightly by his uniform, the Captain was too garrulous, too flashy, and too quick to pick out the prettiest of the young women in the group with a suggestive wink or a firm squeeze on an elbow. Janet was not picked out despite her mother pushing her towards him at every opportunity. Janet’s father stayed in the background but even he, Janet knew as she hid behind her hair, would have liked her to be more prominent, more alluring, a woman that people attended to in a crowd.

After the pre-dinner drinks, the Captain put an arm around each of the seventeen year old twins from Birmingham and sat them down on either side of him at the dining table like elegant bookends. They adjusted their short baby-blue summer dresses in unison, crossed their long shapely legs just so, and focused their full attention on the Captain’s pug-like lips. Janet, sitting at the other end of the long table, tutted, sighed and looked away. It couldn’t be true, that Angus was seeing someone else. She’d know. She’d know the way he touched her. The way he looked at her. She would have sensed something wrong, she was sure of it. Philip must have been lying. Attention seeking. Destroying the best thing that had ever happened to her.

The Captain raised a toast before the food was served and the passengers, now at least two drinks in, shouted cheers, and clashed their glasses together across the table. The bevy of tinkles reminded Janet of Christmas sleigh bells. There’d be no reindeer in Australia. Maybe there wouldn’t even be a Christmas? Where would Angus be at Christmas? Did the ships run then? Or did the crew go home to their families? Angus had barely mentioned his family. Always wanted to talk about her. Sweet whispers about what he could do to her, how she would like it, how unusual she was, how innocent. She didn’t even know where his family lived.

Janet was seated between a structural engineer from Hull and his nephew, Vince. Vince, who was around her own age, spoke on and on about writhing coils of snakes. On and on about armies of boot-stomping ants. On and on about the red venomous sacs on the backs of small spiders that would scuttle around their feet as soon as they made land in Sydney. Vince sketched out the dangerous creatures for her on the linen tablecloth with her bread knife. She couldn’t lean away from him without leaning in to the engineer. The engineer had a faint vinegary smell about him which reminded Janet of the fish shop in Pop George’s village. She’d always wait outside the shop for Pop George. Even in the rain. There’d been something not right about the fish shop. And there was something not right about the engineer.

Every so often, the engineer interrupted Vince to tell Janet about the bridges he would design, the roads projects he would oversee, the snorkeling he’d do, how rich they’d all be in just a few years. Janet nodded and smiled and counted the waiters in and out of the swing doors that led into the kitchen. She knew that Angus wasn’t on the serving team, but despite that, or perhaps because of it, she was sure he would emerge with a tray of drinks, or a stack of plates of beef, and give her a sly glance or a conspiratorial nod.

She was playing with her dessert, pushing velvety red peach slices around in custard to make neat swirls of pink and cream, when she caught sight of Philip. He was heading towards a door that led out onto the deck. Her brothers hadn’t been invited to the dinner that night. They were supposed to be eating with the older children, then being entertained by a magician or a musician, Janet couldn’t remember which.

There was something odd about the way Philip was walking around the edge of the room. As if he didn’t want to be noticed. As if he was up to something. He glanced in the direction of their parents. They were both animated, talking to the couple on the other side of the table. Her mother was laughing too loudly, something she often did after a second glass of wine. Her father had his hand on her mother’s arm, looking on proudly.

Janet put her spoon down and stood up. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to the engineer and his nephew, ‘I’m not feeling so well. I need to lie down.’ The engineer got up and nodded to Vince to do the same. They stood, awkward, their serviettes clutched in their hands, while Janet squeezed out from between them. Neither of them touched her, or asked to see her again.

Janet followed Philip out into the night. The deck lights were on, giving the ship a theatre-like feel, as if the black of the sea held the audience, and she Janet, was about to take the stage. She stood still for a moment, listening. She was used to the ship’s engines now, barely heard them, or the sea. She had to concentrate to bring the sounds forward in her mind, remind herself where she was, where she wasn’t.

And now, above the thrum of the ship pushing through the Indian Ocean, she heard voices, male, further down the deck. There was muffled laughter, then silence. It was Philip’s laugh, she was sure. She padded quietly towards the sounds. Two red glows danced above the railing in an unlit area beside a lifeboat. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. A bird swept suddenly over her head and she jumped. ‘Idiot,’ she said to herself. There was something about Philip’s laugh that concentrated her anger. Squeezed her stomach into a tight, heavy ball. Pushed her diaphragm upwards until she was breathless.

She was a couple of yards from them when they saw her. They were sitting on the railings, their feet on the deck-side, their backs to the sea. Philip was taking a long pull on the cigarette. His companion, perhaps a couple of years older than her brother, dropped his cigarette into the sea and jumped down. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I’m off.’ He squeezed past the lifeboat and disappeared. Philip stayed on the railing.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Janet said to him.

‘Smoking,’

‘You’re not allowed to.’

‘What’s it got to do with you?’ Philip took another puff of the cigarette and blew the smoke towards Janet.

‘Everything,’ Janet said. ‘Everything. You’re trying to spoil everything.’

‘Why can’t you loosen up, Wee Jan. Have some fun for once.’

‘Don’t call me that, I’ve told you not to call me that.’

‘OK, OK.’ He hooked his feet under the lower railing and leant back. The breeze picked at his hair. He looked younger in the soft light. ‘Anyway, you should be grateful.’

‘Grateful?’ Janet’s stomach surged again. Heat pumped up through her chest, out into her face. ‘You spoiled everything. You always do. You always have.’ Something had happened to the colour and shape of her words. They were raw red. Jagged. Phosphorescent.

‘That’s not fair,’ Philip said, his left hand tightening on the railing. He sounded alarmed. ‘We didn’t want him to hurt you, Wee Jan. That’s all. He’s a skuzz bucket.’

Janet lunged at him. Tried to grab him around the waist. Pull him forward onto the deck. She was tangled in his arms. The cigarette flew into the air. His knees punched into her breasts. She staggered, dropping onto her haunches. His feet were above her. The soles of his shoes. She grabbed at them. Grabbed into thin air. Grabbed at the space of him. The scream was bird-like. High pitched. And floating. A floating scream that drifted, dissipated and disappeared into the night.

To be continued.

Tags clouds

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 20

2019, Portobello. Edinburgh

You don’t call the police for the kidnapping of a cloud. Or the RSPCA. Or the RSPB. Especially not the RSPCC. Janet perched on the tall stool in her small kitchen and stared out at the clouds high above the sea. They were marble white, piled on top of each other, scudding east, pushed along by the westerly that blew in from the Atlantic. He couldn’t possibly be up there. Not yet. Cyril had been gone for two hours. And she hadn’t even be able to get herself together to go out into the streets to look for him.

They’d be long gone those fit young things. Those kidnappers. Perhaps they’d let him go straight away, watching him drift upwards like one of those horrid Chinese lanterns that kill dolphins and cows and even horses. Or perhaps they’d shaken him out of his box up Carlton Hill and fanned him up towards the sky with their second-hand corduroy jackets. They didn’t understand that he wouldn’t survive. That he’d been bred, well made, in captivity. How would he withstand the high winds of the troposphere? What would he make of his feral cousins, the mare’s tails? Janet couldn’t bear to think of it. She dropped her gaze to the beach.

The stormy weather hadn’t stopped the sea swimmers. A tall woman was walking back and forward along the edge of the water, speaking on her mobile phone. She looked animated, excited even. Janet lifted her binoculars from the window sill and had a closer look. The woman was wearing a black two-piece swimsuit, a yellow woolly hat with a large pompom, and black swimming boots. She had a look of authority about her, the power to give barking instructions even when she was half-naked and pink-skinned with cold. Janet followed the woman with her binoculars until she disappeared out of sight. She would have liked to have been that woman. Maybe she was once. She put the binoculars down and felt around the sagging skin of her upper arms. Pinched the folds through her thin soft woollen cardigan. The woman on the beach wouldn’t have arms like hers. And if she did, she probably wouldn’t care. She’d flaunt them to the whole world.

Janet wanted to know the woman’s name. Ask her the secret of her self-assurance. Ask her how to get a kidnapped cloud back. She got up from the stool and went through to the bathroom. Looked at the Cyril shaped space above the shower head. Put her hand down to touch the few drops of water still beading across the wooden floor. Cyril’s fighting tears. She would do it. She would ask that woman. She pulled on her coat, pushed her red hand-knitted hat over her thin hair, took her keys, and went down the stairs. The woman must still be on the beach. And if she was in the sea, Janet would just wait. They never swam for long. And there was only an hour or so of daylight left.

To be continued.

Tags clouds, kidnappers

fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 19

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

Janet leant over the railing on one of the lower decks seldom used by the other passengers and stared at the sea. Emerald waves whipped up against the sturdy white hull of the ship. Two black frigatebirds were hunting low over the water, keeping up with the ship’s bow waves. Their long forked tails and pointy wings reminded Janet of the origami figures her father used to make for them when they were small. He’d used thin red cardboard. Or sometimes orange. He’d stopped when Philip was around ten. Must have thought that they were all too grown up for paper toys by then. Angus called the frigatebirds Flying Ws. She’d laughed when he’d told her that, and she’d told Philip and Ed and they’d laughed too.

The wind picked up and thin grey clouds started to clamber over the horizon. Janet shivered. She was still in her bathing suit, just the towel tied around her waist. Her feet were bare. She must have left the new yellow flip flops by the pool. Had she forgotten them, or had she kicked them aside because they were from Angus, and now tainted? She wasn’t sure. It was two, maybe three hours since Philip had told her about Angus and the other girl. He’d spoiled everything, the little shit.

She hated having brothers. Poking around in other people’s business. Spying on Angus. Spying on her. God, the pair of them must have seen them kissing. Her and Angus. A surge of heat swept up her chest and into her neck and cheeks. She squeezed the metal barrier harder, leant further over it until her long hair tumbled across her face and down towards the ocean. How long would it take her to climb over the railing, to fall, to sink under, to disappear in a shimmering stream of bubbles, to be eaten by the fishes, swallowed by a whale? How long before anyone noticed that she’d vanished, vaporised, somewhere around the invisible marker of the equator?

She stayed bent over the railings with her hair kinking and tangling in the wind until the colour of the sea was dark olive and the sun had slipped down behind the horizon. Then, suddenly cold, she turned away from the ocean, pulled the towel up around her shoulders, and sat down on the deck, leaning up against the hard metal wall of the crew’s mess. She didn’t know what to do. Didn’t have anyone to ask. To confide in. Bessie, her best friend back in Scotland, would have told her to dump him. To stand square on, holding his eyes, and call him out for being a two-timer. But Bessie wasn’t with her. And without Bessie, Janet lacked courage. Self-respect. Bessie had once said Janet was a walk-over and Bessie was probably right.

Perhaps she could pretend that she didn’t know. Try harder to keep him loyal, committed. To not need other girls. Maybe it was her fault. She was too frigid, inexperienced, a daddy’s girl that winced when the probing hands went too low. Janet put a hand over her right breast. Touched the soft cotton of her swimsuit with tentative fingers. Moved the fingers to the other breast. It wouldn’t be so bad really. To let his fingers probe deeper. To bite down harder on the lemony sweetness of his tongue. To let him take her hand and push it down there between his legs. Other girls did that. Why shouldn’t she?

Janet shut her eyes and sighed. Bessie’s finger was wagging at her. Angus’s lips were firm on the back of her neck. She was caught between them. Two birds of paradise squabbling over a rotting fruit.

‘There you are, I’ve been looking all over.’ Janet started. ‘You must be freezing, darling. Come on in and get yourself dressed.’ Janet’s mother reached down, took her daughter’s hand and pulled her up. ‘Dinner’s at eight,’ she said, putting her arm around Janet. ‘It’s our turn at the Captain’s table so we mustn’t be late.’

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fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 18

2019. Portobello, Edinburgh

It had all happened so fast. Dan’s arms tight around her back. An antler horn button pushing a painful half-moon depression into her cheek. Her feet briefly lifting off the ground. The sucking of air out of her chest. Amy pushing past them into the hall shouting something at the man with no name. The man’s girlfriend getting up off the sofa and shoving past Janet’s enforced embrace.

Scraping sounds in the hall. Cries of pain and alarm from the bathroom. Shouts of I’ve got it, I’ve got it. A female voice replying. Be careful, be careful. The man cursing it’s spitting bloody ice and look out it nearly blinded me. Scuffling footsteps on the wooden floorboards of the hall. A sudden damp cool mist on the back of Janet’s neck. A whining protest from the Perspex box as the lid banged shut. The desperate hammering of hailstones in a confined space. More footsteps, one set with clumpy heels. Her front door slamming. Then quiet. A hellish interminable quiet. He’d gone. Cyril the cloud had gone, and she, Janet, his only source of protection, hadn’t been able to save him.

Janet let her legs slump beneath her. Dan’s biceps went stiff under her oxters, shaking, she imagined, from the effort of keeping her upright. She swung there for a moment, feeling the weight of her body, the scrawny carcass of her rib cage, the brittleness of her bones, the crumbling of her loss. Then he was part carrying, part dragging her over to the sofa and dropping her onto the seat that the young man with no name had sat on so innocuously just a few minutes before.

She flopped back on the sofa, her neck loose, her limbs askew. She was broken, pointless. A mannequin splayed out in a skip. A loose-stringed marionette slung into a box. An elderly single woman without her cloud. She shut her eyes. Wishing the man gone. When she opened her eyes again, he was. Her hands had a new tremble, her feet a new tap tap. She got up, stood still for a moment, took two deep slow breaths, and walked over to the bay window. The knot in her chest wound around itself. Outside in the guttering a clutch of starlings dipped and rinsed themselves in the shallow rain water. Sun turned their feathered iridescence from black to green to black. Tiny droplets of water sprayed up against the glass. She pressed her nose against the window. Felt the coolness of it on her flushed face.

‘Don’t worry, Cyril,’ she whispered to the starlings. ‘I’ll get you back.’ One of the starlings stopped bathing and turned to look up at Janet with its bright black eyes. ‘I might look like a doddery old lady,’ she said to it, ‘but, as that jumped-up prosecutor said, there’s a lot more to me than meets the eye.’

To be continued

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fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 17

2019 Portobello, Edinburgh

‘I didn’t expect it to be so…’ Amy paused, ‘so violent.’ She was sitting in Janet’s living room, sipping warm milk from a short stubby glass. ‘It really stung,’ she said, holding the glass against her cheek for a moment. ‘It was like being shot at.’ Her face was flushed and her fingers trembled. Water droplets hung in her hair. Her eyes looked moist. Dan, who’d stood up to give Amy his seat, had his hand on her shoulder. He was scowling. The couple on the sofa opposite were looking at Amy with entwined fingers and wide eyes. No one replied.

Janet was standing in the doorway, watching her visitors. She’d ushered Amy out of the bathroom, shut the door, and warmed up milk for her. She’d have given Amy a rusk if she’d had one. It had seemed the only sensible thing to do. But now she didn’t know what to say. She’d been surprised by Cyril’s icy outburst. But somehow glad. He’d never done that to her. The cloud must trust her. Must think he’s safe. He’d defended them both. Prevented a catastrophe. She smiled. She felt a pleasant fuzziness around her chest. He must like her. Perhaps even love her. She wanted them all to get up now. To offer to leave. To leave them both alone.

‘I think I should have a look.’ Dan’s words interrupted her thoughts. The young man on the sofa, still without a name, let go of his girlfriend’s hand and stood up.

‘I’ll go with you,’ he said. Janet shook her head. She braced herself in the doorway. Pushed her feet firmly down on the wooden floorboards. The two young men moved towards her. They walked like dancers. Straight and lithe. Soft-footed. They were taller than her, and the skin of their hands was still smooth and unblemished. They stopped in front of her in the doorway.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Janet said. She felt the quiver of her words. They’d know she was afraid. She thrust her elbows into the door frame. Felt the pain of her shoulders immediately from the strain. ‘It’s not a circus, you know,’ she said, her eyes on the men’s slim legs. ‘We’re not freaks.’

‘Back off,’ Dan.’ Amy’s voice came from behind the men. Janet couldn’t see the young woman’s face.

‘We’re here now, Amy. And we agreed. We all did. She shouldn’t have it in captivity.’ The nameless man had swung his head around to speak to Amy but kept his position. Janet caught the smell of him. A woody smell. Cut grass or fresh figs. The patchouli scent must be from the girlfriend. An odd combination, those two smells. The ache in Janet’s shoulders intensified to a deep snarling throb. She couldn’t hold out much longer.

‘Come on, Janet,’ Dan said to her, speaking to her as if she was a child. ‘Just a quick look and we’ll be out of your hair. What harm can it do?’ Janet dropped her arms to her sides. Felt the pins and needles around her shoulders, her elbows. She looked up at Dan’s face.

‘Please don’t ask me again,’ she said. And as she rubbed her hands together to bring back the circulation, the young man without a name pushed past her, shoved her forward into Dan’s arms, and shut the door behind him. Janet, engulfed in an unexpected firm hug, heard a sharp squeak that could only mean one thing. The bathroom door had been opened. And that fresh-smelling man was going to take Cyril.

To be continued.

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