The Monday Story

Good morning.

This Thursday sees the launch party for Writers in the Rafters' third anthology, 'In Sight of Fallen Walls', a collection of work set in or around Kirkstall Abbey and Abbey House Museum in Leeds.  In recognition of this, today's story is my contribution from last year's anthology where we wrote about artwork on display locally.  The painting is Silver Estuary by Christopher Nevinson.

The Sanctuary at Silver Estuary

The sky was a pale, shining blue so bright it looked like polished metal. Where it fell to the sand dunes making hummocks on the horizon, a herd of clouds launched themselves into its dome. The sandscape was beige, dun, gold and peach and undulated softly and calmly around the serpentinian curves of the saltwater reaches of the tidal river. 

Now, at low tide, it spooled like loose blue ribbon in loops and hoops and broad curves at Mesri’s bare feet.

The sun was at her back and her shadow was attenuated with the loose, alien feel of early morning as she turned to look back towards the sanctuary. It stood guard on the promontory, looking safe and comfortable with its warm, red sandstone walls and dark slate roof. The wide windows were blank, dark spaces framed with white shutters and the gardens merely a smudge of green at this distance.

Mesri sighed and tried to hold on to the sense of peace that the house and its setting usually gave her, filling her eyes with its stalwart reassurance before turning her back to it to scan the sands for any signs of activity; he was out there somewhere, she knew; she just had to find him.

Gathering her hems – she wore a simple lavender shift that left her arms bare and fell to just below her knees – she stepped into the nearest stream. It was fresh and brightly cold and it rose over her ankles and up her shins as she waded carefully across and plunged up the bank to stand on the drier sand above and look to the south.

Several more tributaries lying like the silver tresses of a sea goddess sprawled across the sands and there, just climbing up from the crossing of one, the distant, upright shape of a man moving at some speed and she made her way towards him to hasten their meeting.

She felt a smile grow on her face as she took in the sight of him. He was running, his long limbs moving freely and smoothly as he paced the sand, no trace there now of the injuries which had brought him into her care, at least not where you could see. Outwardly, he was toned and lithe and whole again, golden in the sun, his dark hair bouncing as he ran.

Seeing her, he slowed his pace and waved a greeting.

‘Mesri! Another lovely morning – is the weather always so fair here?’ he asked as he came up to her.

‘Hardly,’ she said, falling into step beside him as they headed back towards the sanctuary.  ‘In the winter, we get very wild tides.  The storms are spectacular, but the downside is that we can get cut off for weeks at a time.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that,’ he said.  ‘Being stranded here. With you.’

‘Jared, there’s been word,’ she said abruptly, not at all how she’d intended to tell him.

‘What?’ He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders, making her face him.  ‘When? It doesn’t matter, I’m not going back, Mesri, I can’t. You’ve no idea what it was like, what they had me do…’

She looked up into his deep, dark eyes.

‘I’ll back you to the hilts, whatever you want,’ she said.

‘Why can’t they just leave me alone?’ he said sharply.

‘They will, after tomorrow.’

She lifted his hands off her shoulders, linked arms with him and started again towards the sanctuary.

‘Is that how long we have?’ he asked slowly.

‘They’ll come on the evening tide.’ She dropped his arm and held out a hand to him.  ‘Come on. We’ve been out in the sun long enough. Let’s go inside.’

The sanctuary was spacious and cool and built on one storey. It was roughly divided into three areas.  Mesri’s personal living quarters were at one end, while a self-contained apartment for visitors was at the other. In between, a large kitchen and communal area, a treatment room and an exercise room made up the central space and ensured some degree of privacy for both of them.

The truth was, though, that they had become used to spending most of the day together; Mesri was quiet, self-contained, allowing the conversation to largely be driven by what Jared felt like talking about. There were long periods of silence between them, but these silences never felt awkward, a space to be filled with mindless chatter; rather they were important pauses in the flow of the days, chances to reflect and be at peace.

Later, Mesri woke alone in the pre-dawn half-light.  A noise in the corridor alerted her to Jared’s whereabouts and she slipped into a cotton wrap before going in search of him.

As she’d feared, he’d found his way to the treatment room and was about to open the door. He jumped at the sight of her, looking guilty and fierce at the same time, making her smile sadly.

‘It’s not good for you, you know,’ she said. ‘To keep looking.’

‘I’ve got to,’ he said.

Inside the room, large and forbidding in the tawny-grey halflight and humming softly, mechanically, was a bed covered by a transparent dome. Jared shook his head as he looked down at the shape within.

‘I still can’t really believe that’s me,’ he said.

‘It’s just your flesh,’ Mesri said. ‘A bit like looking at your clothes, really.’

‘No, not really. ‘

‘The fleshercouch has finished now; your body’s healed. You can reintegrate whenever you’re ready.’

‘I’m not, though.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I don’t know how it happened, just that knife flashing and slicing and then blood and pain and I was shaking and shaking and…’

He broke off; he’d never spoken of it before and he was afraid to carry on in case he said too much and made her hate him.

‘Flesh and spirit have a natural pull towards each other,’ Mesri said. ‘It takes a lot to sunder them. Extreme physical and emotional distress is usually the cause.’

‘When they send us out,’ he went on. ‘We have these other memories planted in us; it’s so we can fit in better. And it makes you feel it’s not you doing these things, it’s like you’re sleepwalking.  And after, they deprogramme you and you forget it all. Except I haven’t forgotten. That’s why I can’t go back. What they wanted me to do.’

Mesri laid a gentle hand on his arm.

‘The fleshercouch can’t keep your body alive indefinitely,’ she said. ‘Unless you reintegrate, it will fail.’ She shrugged. ‘This is what not-going-back might look like.’

He swallowed.  Looking into the dome always made him feel he was looking at a corpse, like looking at his future.

‘He’s a fair man, my Director,’ he said, turning the subject. ‘When he gets the chance to be.’

‘Mine growls,’ Mesri said with a small smile.  ‘If anyone from outside tries to tell him what to do.  Even if they try to tell me, for that matter.  I actually sort of like him.’

‘What happens? When they get here?’

‘The Sanctuary Director will switch the fleshercouch off with your Director as a witness; your flesh will fail a few hours later, so I expect they’ll try to convince you to reintegrate. But they’ll only be able to interact with the physical part of you. They’re not like me, they’re so anchored to the physical world that they’ve lost touch with the metaphysical.’ She smiled at him. ‘And that’s why you don’t need to worry; they really can’t make you do anything.’

‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘To the others who were like this?’

‘Three reintegrated successfully. Two didn’t try.’

‘Did you mind? Did you care for them?’

‘I cared for all of them,’ she said carefully.  ‘That’s my job. But you’re the only one I’ve ever cared about.’

They squandered the hours walking on the pastel sands, through the bright streams, talking and being silent while the beauty of the day dripped from their fingers like water. Late afternoon, the streams swelling with new seas, the bowl of the estuary filled up with the tide and they went back to the sanctuary so as not to see sails growing larger on the horizon. Mesri changed her dress for a formal gown of dark green with long sleeves, high neck and modest hemline. She felt stifled, constrained.

‘It makes you look too serious,’ Jared told her.

She sighed. ‘This is serious,’ she said.

Mesri’s Director didn’t look serous. He seemed far too young to be in charge of anything, and was a huge, shambling figure of a man with hair that grew out from his head as if it was determined to escape him. He guided Jared’s Director ahead of him up the path from the jetty and winked at Mesri where she waited at the door to greet them.

‘Hullo, girl,’ he said, his usual form of address.  ‘Here’s Director Shae come to see our Jared.’

Mesri nodded a greeting, trying to maintain an air of grave calm.

‘This way, please, Directors,’ she said as she led them to the fleshercouch, but shook her head when invited to stay.

‘Jared says there’s nothing to be done, Director,’ she said calmly. ‘Please excuse me; I can’t bear this part of it.’

She went to sit on the doorstep, her shoulders hunched while she waited. Shae’s voice, raised in a last effort to talk Jared back into his body. Geraint’s gruff tones, rumbling and oddly soothing.

And even though she couldn’t possibly hear the noise of the fleshercouch, she was still convinced she heard it stop and she found tears running freely down her face.

‘Come on, girl,’ Geraint hunkered down beside her. ‘He’s not dead, you know that. He’s just… differently alive.  And he’s still got a few hours to change his mind. Well, then. I’ll be back in a day or so to take care of… things.’ Standing up, the man patted vaguely at her shoulder. ‘We’ll leave you to it. Shae! Come on, man! Well miss the tide if we linger!’

Mesri woke in the early hours of the morning; Jared had left her side and was quietly turning the door handle.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he said. ‘But something’s changed; it’s all right. I feel all right about things again.  I can reintegrate now.’

‘No, you really can’t,’ she said, and, taking his hand, led him through to the fleshercouch. The dome was retracted and Jared’s body looked more empty than ever and utterly still. ‘You feel better because you’re not tied to the flesh any longer; it’s failed, Jared; if you tried to integrate now you’d just get sucked in and die there.’

‘What’s next, then?’

‘You go on. There’s a place, a refuge for the sundered; there are people who can help you.’

‘How?’

‘It depends.’ She shrugged. ‘The others who didn’t integrate; they seem content.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything before? Do you know how scary it was, just letting go of my life, not knowing what would happen?’

‘There’s an… arrangement. The Directors are worried that if it was common knowledge, then no-one would want to try to reintegrate. They’d lose too many people. So I can only tell once the flesh has failed. It has to be a free choice.’

‘Can I come back?’

Her sad smile was the only answer she gave.

‘Next tide, there’ll be a boat,’ she said. ’You can board it, if you like.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘No; but you will.’

In the morning, Mesri turned her face resolutely from the sea until the estuary had filled up and emptied its waters again. The skies darkened outside and rain prickled against the windows. She threw the doors wide and looked out. The sands were brown and muddy, pocked and pitted with the imprint of the hissing rain, and the ribbons of the sea were sultry pewter coils and she stood and watched the clouds empty themselves until tide came back, bringing with it Geraint’s boat.

His hair temporarily subdued by the rain, he shook himself on the porch like an inconsiderate dog.

‘He’s gone, then?’

She nodded.

‘Well, then. Let’s get sorted.’

While Mesri was busy packing up the few belongings that had been sent with Jared, Geraint removed the body from the fleshercouch to take back for proper disposal.

‘You going to come back for a few days?’ Geraint asked as he took Jared’s effects from Mesri. ‘Worry about you, out here alone so much.’

‘It suits me.’ She shook her head. ‘You never give me time to be alone; you know you’ll be sending me someone else in a day or two.’

‘Well, yes. It’s a bad time just now. Lots of nasty things happening in the world. And nice lads like Jared getting asked to sort it out.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘Good thing there’s nice girls like you to help them through it. Better run, the tide won’t wait for me. I’ll send word.’

And she was alone again with the sky like milk and the sand fading back to cream and taupe and the water shining like moonlight ribbons in its meandering inevitability to the sea.