This is a small opening section from my short novel, Tired Waves, Vainly Breaking. The title comes from a line in Arthur Hugh Clough's poem, 'Say not the struggle nought availeth'. It is about one woman's retreat from the busy world to the solitude of the Western Fjords in Iceland. The boxes with the descriptions are what I hope will be line drawings as I feel the market is embracing more and more graphic novels and this takes just a bit of that and makes it, hopefully, feel more laden with emotion, poignancy. It is also influenced by the spare prose styles and stories of a few of my favourite novels, like The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding, Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan, and Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, yet their reclusive characters are all men, whilst mine is a woman, one who remains throughout without a name. Let me know what you think by emailing belwebb@hotmail.com
The only sounds were three – my breath, the efficient swish of my well-padded clothes, and the familiar tight cotton wool crunch of snow underneath my boots. Sights were not much more. White, everywhere around – save for mounds of red and grey in the far distance, and a blanket of blue, above. And a kilometre away, a compact log cabin that had a window on either side of the door, and a steady chug of steam from its chimney.
| LOG CABIN WITH SMOKING CHIMNEY |
Home.
*
I stamp the white off my boots. The cabin is warm when I enter. I kick off my boots and put the new batch of firewood onto the kitchen counter. Fresh food supplies will arrive tomorrow. Per the farmer who, at seven miles away, is also my nearest neighbour, drives them up for me once every two weeks. I unzip myself out of my insulation. I pour myself a coffee from the still warm pot then take a seat. I have earned this sit down. I feel as though I am sinking through the cushion. I put my feet up on the coffee table. A few books are in a pile – books whose worlds I am looking forward to travelling through. But not this instant. I rest my head back against the cushion and close my eyes, my hands wrapped around the mug, warming.
| Woman seated, legs up on table, eyes closed, hands wrapped around steaming mug. |
What price, peace?
Yet I am hit by the familiar old hurt. Hurts. We all have them, yes, I know. This is another thing. Being by myself I can just about manage my life. Mine. But back there…
No time to stop and stare.
No time to weep when it was necessary.
The tears flowed freely this morning whilst I was chopping firewood. Chop. Cry.
| Woman chopping wood whilst crying. Monty chases a bird. |
Chop. Cry.
Wail.
Stop.
Chop. Cry.
Wail.
Cry.
Cry.
Cry.
Stomp home.
Where could I do that whilst staring at my computer screen, trying to look busier than what I actually was?
‘Enough. Enough. I open my eyes, take a long sip of tepid coffee, put my cup down and pick up my notebook. That is, after all, one of the reasons why I came out here. I had eventually broken through, you see, back there, had had my first novel published, a few good reviews, a few mixed – still, the publisher just about made his money back, and I just about earned my nominal advance. The persistence of years of trying to get that first novel published had been, with hindsight, like climbing Everest, but then when I thought I had climbed it, realised I had only just got to a little ledge a few feet up. People found out at work. Assumed I would be able to just give in my notice and leave it all behind. Just like that.
Ha!
I had needed my job more than ever. Then it hit me that nothing was ever going to get me out of that race.
| Woman with face like ‘The Scream’, pulling her hair, amidst a large group of commuters crossing |
Out of bad faith. Out of it.
Out of it.
I had tried all that too. Out of it on drugs, drink, whatever. Men.
| Woman staggering, with drink in hand, in front of line of leering men. |
When I think too far ahead about letting all this out, telling you, whoever you are, I become overwhelmed. Even out here. But that’s ok. I operate at a different pace out here.
I am nearly forty. Life begins at… I am supposed to be in turmoil at the sound of my biological clock.
Tick. Tock.
| Woman staring, wide-eyed, at clock, her hair has sharp strands of grey. |
Held prisoner by bottles of hair dye, botox and a yogalates guru much in demand by the Notting Hell/Hrimrose Pill Set. Yet instead of dreading solitude I embraced it. I had always wanted to. The Brontes would have embraced greater solitude had they lived long enough… of that I am sure. Austen though, she would never have embraced it, she would have been the old woman in the corner, still scribbling her supposedly canny observations of social goings on.
| Jane Austen in corner of society ball, scribbling away with her quill. |
Emily. Anne.
| Bronte sisters stomping through snow with axes and shovels and books. Bramwell perched against a tree, digging the vein. |
But his sisters would have been there for him, no matter what. Just like I had tried to be for mine. I have brothers. Four. And sisters. Two. When I was a child, just to get five minutes peace I would lock myself in the empty shed and smoke a cigarette I had stolen from my mother’s packet. In the dark, the key to the shed cold in one hand, the cigarette in the other, thinking. How to get out of this place. This life. Come on, think, you need the plan sorted out in your head. Now. Hurry. I was twelve years old. Thirteen, perhaps. It took years to realise that I just had to do it. The simplest things can be the hardest to grasp – to execute. I get up and boil some water. There is something beautiful in having to fill the big pan from the cold water tap and waiting for the water to boil. Time to stop and stare. It’s an act of meditation. I watch as the water warms, then slowly the bubbles become more and more until it’s steaming my face open and my eyelashes become sticky.
| Woman staring into pan of bubbling water – steam. |
I lift the pan off the stove and pour the water into a washing up bowl then add a drizzle of detergent. I throw in an old cloth and add some cold until it’s just about bearable to my rapidly reddening hands. I love feeling the hot soapy bubbles. I’ve never been one for rubber gloves. Marigolds! I bring the bowl to the side of the front door, crouch down, and start on the skirting boards. Stained oak. It runs round the room that holds both the kitchen and small sitting area. I wring out the cloth and begin to rub it across the first section of skirting. I like the sound of cloth against wood. I like watching the steam rising off the cloth and my own hand, then rising chiffon like against the wall above the skirting before disappearing forever. I would never have done this back there. There was no point. Here it is cultural. The cleaning is cultural. Questions hover above my head now, such as how I’m going to tell you this story.
| Woman on hands and knees, cleaning, with question marks hovering above her head. |
Story. Such an odd word. Implies falsehoods. Yet those I want to share with you are anything but. I continue around the skirting, taking longer than is efficient. I don’t want to be efficient. I am not a robot. It took a long time to stop living like one. Stop feeling like one.
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