Deathspell
If you ask Tess what she remembers best
about her life before Gerard's death, she will tell you
about that dreamy summer's afternoon when she went walking
across the fields with her father and she made the bullocks
disappear. It is as though the whole of her childhood is
concentrated in that single day, like the rays of the sun
through a burning glass. And yet, even as she is recalling
them, the details shift in their kaleidoscope pattern and
the picture changes. Sometimes she sees a hot afternoon,
its blue sky stippled with white cloud, and the gnats swarming
in thick clouds along the path by the water, prickling her
bare arms as she passes through them. But when she looks
again, she and Gerard are wearing their Wellington boots
and macs and have scarves around their necks and hats pulled
down over their foreheads - and Gerard is wearing his green
woollen gloves. Sometimes the muddy earth clings to her
boots and pulls at her feet as she walks, and yet at others
she is running through long grass in her old sandals, her
legs powdered with gold from the buttercups. Did a skylark
rise from the ground at her feet, to sing out his desperate
and beautiful song? Did she and Gerard perhaps go to the
meadows together more than once? Or is it that her memory
deceives her?
