Chapter 14 #3
Couple of minutes. Fridge clicks. The car on the wet road again, somebody driving circles for the parking maybe. Couldn’t be the same car. I want it to be the same car.
Celyn picks up the notebook. The pen.
The pen scratches. Three or four scratches, stops. The ink didn’t catch, or the word didn’t come, or the word came and Celyn didn’t want it. The pen lifts. The page gets crossed through. Once, twice harder, the leather bends from the pressure.
The notebook drops onto the duvet, pages open. Pen on top.
Celyn turns into the wall. The hoodie up over the ear. The breath starts to do the thing it does when somebody’s trying not to do the thing it does.
I don’t get up. I don’t reach.
The thing I want to do is fix it. Same way I want to breathe. The hands have a job and the job is to fix things and the hands don’t know where to go.
I keep the hands where they are.
My head says ask. My head says reach. My head says do something. My head’s been wrong about most things for twenty-seven years.
I put the mug on the floor.
Lie down on top of the duvet. Six inches between us, not touching. My back to Celyn’s back, the t-shirt soft, the joggers I don’t take off, just lie there, the lamp still on, the notebook between us with the page open.
The duvet’s the thick one Celyn brought from the old flat. Heavy, you can feel it pressing down even through the t-shirt. I don’t pull it over me. Lie on top, the way I’d lie on a mat between sets at the gym, like I’m not staying.
I look at the open page. Don’t read it. Look at the shape of the word Celyn was trying. Starts with a c. Three letters before the cross-through. Not English: the letters are too close together, the way Celyn writes the Welsh, the consonants you don’t have to soften.
I don’t read it. Eyes on the ceiling instead. Crack in the plaster, same crack.
After a while Celyn shifts. Half-turns. The back’s still turned but the hand comes back, finds the duvet, finds my hand on top of the duvet. Cold. The fingers cold and shaking still.
I don’t grip. Just leave the hand there.
The fingers grip mine.
We lie like that. The lamp on. The notebook open with the crossed-out word. The fridge clicks.
Eleven o’clock. I get up to wee, come back. The lamp’s still on. Celyn hasn’t moved. The grip released when I got up. Ready when I get back, the hand on the duvet, palm up.
I put my hand back. Lie down.
Three a.m.
I wake to the scratch of the pen. The lamp’s still on, the small one. Celyn’s sat up against the wall. Notebook in the lap. Pen moving. Slow. Word, line. Word, line.
I don’t sit up. Don’t speak.
Celyn knows I’m awake. The breathing’s different, that’s how. I haven’t perfected the awake-but-pretending-asleep Celyn has.
The pen stops. Celyn looks at me. The face still has no makeup. The hair flat against the side of the head from the pillow. The eyes red.
‘I write definitions.’ The Welsh, quiet. ‘Sometimes for words that are mine. Sometimes for words I haven’t found.’
‘Yeah.’ And I get it, a bit. Celyn’s been making their own words since long before me: a shelf of these notebooks at the flat, every one a record of someone building the language nobody handed them. It’s not a sad thing. It’s a trade, same as mine.
‘Tonight I tried to write one. Couldn’t.’
I don’t say which one. The asking’s the thing Celyn taught me not to do.
Celyn looks at me. Looks at the page. Looks at me again. The mouth opens. Closes. The pen sits balanced between two fingers.
‘I’m not asking you to read it.’
‘I know.’
Celyn turns the notebook. Holds it open for me to see. The crossed-out word at the top. Below it, three more attempts, all crossed out. Below those, blank.
I look. Crossed-out shapes. Don’t try to read them.
‘You don’t have to show me.’
‘I know.’
The notebook closes. Goes back on the nightstand. Pen on top, no cap, the way it always is.
Celyn slides down. Under the duvet this time. Hoodie up. Eyes on me.
‘Stay where you are.’
‘I’m not moving.’
The lamp goes off. The flat’s dark. Outside the orange streetlight, the rain’s stopped, the road’s wet, the wet shines.
The hand finds mine again under the duvet. Fingers cold.
Celyn falls asleep before I do. The breath evens. The grip loosens, doesn’t let go.
I stay awake.
Above the bed the crack in the plaster’s a different shape in the orange, not the line I know, a wider thing, soft at the edges. The flat’s a shape I don’t recognise from the dark, and I’m a shape I don’t recognise from the inside, and Celyn’s hand is in mine. That’s the only thing the same.
I haven’t fixed anything. I haven’t said anything. I lay down. The hand’s there.
Tightness under the ribs I haven’t named. Right size to carry but I didn’t know it was mine. I carry it. The breath goes in. The breath goes out. The hand’s there.
In the morning I’ll go to work: the drill, the level, the east wall.
Celyn’ll write the definition or won’t.
Either way the notebook’s on the nightstand and the cap’s still off the pen.
The orange shifts on the ceiling. The hand in mine is still cold. Mine’s not.