multiplying panes of glass. I permitted myself some vicarious sparkling. In the
semi-legal jerry-rigged industrial spaces that were my homes, I strung up fairy lights
and held parties to which my few slow-won friends came, bringing with them smiling
strangers.
Corwin came home to see in the new
millennium with us. That Christmas, I unwrapped from a paper printed with robins andsnowmen a malignant fist-clenched figure. It was about two feet high
and was pierced all about with spikes of different shapes and metals. I placed it on the
coffee table, where it bristled aggressively.
‘Goodness!’ said Matthew.
‘Powerful, isn’t he?’ said
Corwin, smiling affectionately. ‘These,’ he said, gently fingering the end
of a metal shard, ‘are petitions. They’re driven into the statue to bring
down curses. It’s a bit like the principle of a wax doll, except that he
doesn’t represent the victim. He’s the spirit who has the power to exercise
the curse.’
I put the curse spirit on my bedroom table
and contemplated him. I thought of Corwin’s weightlessness: how little he carried
with him; how I was his proxy consumer of interesting ethnic artefacts, so that he might
drift through the world alleging passion but committing to nothing. I thought about
Thornton and how firmly it sat in the combe, how weighted it was with a heavy ballast of
furniture and books, and I set to devising a counter-punishment. I knew how to slow
Corwin down. I would send him books. And he would not be able to give them away because
I would bind them myself and make them personal to him, and over time his bags would
fill with books and they would all be about Here, and he would have to take Here with
him, wherever he went.
I raided Matthew’s collection of
forgotten local histories, excavated from the dustiest corners of failing second-hand
bookshops, and started with
Cove and Combe: Secrets of the Devon Coast
, a
gentleman’s vanity publication, as so many of them were. It had been nicely
produced, with engravings of looming cliffs and fishing vessels tossed on unlikely
waves, but the cover was coming apart, which was the only reason that Matthew allowed me
to wrest it from his collection. I gave it an inappropriate periwinkle-blue cover and
overdid the endpapers with extravagant marbling – the books must be conspicuous and the
materials too expensive to discard. I wanted the periwinkle blue to mass, book by book,so that Corwin might take measure of the extent of his abandonment
of me. At the base of the spine I tooled a device: it was Matthew’s farting
Devil.
Later, as Matthew receded, I stopped asking
permission to remove books from the shelf. I sent Corwin
West Country Myth and
Mystery
and
Tales of the Moors
and
Fairies, Pixies and
Knockers.
I plumped up earnest limp-bound parish histories. They were as you
would expect: a lot of health-giving striding of the coast punctuated with amusing
bursts of buzzing Devon dialect.
Every time I went down to Thornton and
lifted another book to weigh down Corwin, my curse spirit seemed to grin at me a little
more obscenely, as though I had tasked him with another metal spike to his head. I would
grin back, and think, as I drifted to sleep: I curse you, Corwin Venton. I curse you to
Here.
11.
I didn’t see Corwin again for five
years. Perhaps (although I was still sending him books) I had almost learned to do
without him. The weather had already turned cold, and I sensed another eviction coming,
if you could call it an eviction when you didn’t have a tenancy agreement. I was
beginning to wonder if, at thirty-three, I wasn’t getting too old for this. My
homes had become precarious – every last garage in the East End was being bought up by
developers and turned into a construction of sheets of glass set in a material that
looked like the grey plastic from which Corwin used to build model aircraft.
semi-legal jerry-rigged industrial spaces that were my homes, I strung up fairy lights
and held parties to which my few slow-won friends came, bringing with them smiling
strangers.
Corwin came home to see in the new
millennium with us. That Christmas, I unwrapped from a paper printed with robins andsnowmen a malignant fist-clenched figure. It was about two feet high
and was pierced all about with spikes of different shapes and metals. I placed it on the
coffee table, where it bristled aggressively.
‘Goodness!’ said Matthew.
‘Powerful, isn’t he?’ said
Corwin, smiling affectionately. ‘These,’ he said, gently fingering the end
of a metal shard, ‘are petitions. They’re driven into the statue to bring
down curses. It’s a bit like the principle of a wax doll, except that he
doesn’t represent the victim. He’s the spirit who has the power to exercise
the curse.’
I put the curse spirit on my bedroom table
and contemplated him. I thought of Corwin’s weightlessness: how little he carried
with him; how I was his proxy consumer of interesting ethnic artefacts, so that he might
drift through the world alleging passion but committing to nothing. I thought about
Thornton and how firmly it sat in the combe, how weighted it was with a heavy ballast of
furniture and books, and I set to devising a counter-punishment. I knew how to slow
Corwin down. I would send him books. And he would not be able to give them away because
I would bind them myself and make them personal to him, and over time his bags would
fill with books and they would all be about Here, and he would have to take Here with
him, wherever he went.
I raided Matthew’s collection of
forgotten local histories, excavated from the dustiest corners of failing second-hand
bookshops, and started with
Cove and Combe: Secrets of the Devon Coast
, a
gentleman’s vanity publication, as so many of them were. It had been nicely
produced, with engravings of looming cliffs and fishing vessels tossed on unlikely
waves, but the cover was coming apart, which was the only reason that Matthew allowed me
to wrest it from his collection. I gave it an inappropriate periwinkle-blue cover and
overdid the endpapers with extravagant marbling – the books must be conspicuous and the
materials too expensive to discard. I wanted the periwinkle blue to mass, book by book,so that Corwin might take measure of the extent of his abandonment
of me. At the base of the spine I tooled a device: it was Matthew’s farting
Devil.
Later, as Matthew receded, I stopped asking
permission to remove books from the shelf. I sent Corwin
West Country Myth and
Mystery
and
Tales of the Moors
and
Fairies, Pixies and
Knockers.
I plumped up earnest limp-bound parish histories. They were as you
would expect: a lot of health-giving striding of the coast punctuated with amusing
bursts of buzzing Devon dialect.
Every time I went down to Thornton and
lifted another book to weigh down Corwin, my curse spirit seemed to grin at me a little
more obscenely, as though I had tasked him with another metal spike to his head. I would
grin back, and think, as I drifted to sleep: I curse you, Corwin Venton. I curse you to
Here.
11.
I didn’t see Corwin again for five
years. Perhaps (although I was still sending him books) I had almost learned to do
without him. The weather had already turned cold, and I sensed another eviction coming,
if you could call it an eviction when you didn’t have a tenancy agreement. I was
beginning to wonder if, at thirty-three, I wasn’t getting too old for this. My
homes had become precarious – every last garage in the East End was being bought up by
developers and turned into a construction of sheets of glass set in a material that
looked like the grey plastic from which Corwin used to build model aircraft.
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