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- Herausgeber: Fledgling Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Meet Death, as you have never met her before. Even the Birds Grow Silent is a collection of narrative fragments told by Death herself. Death feels she gets a very bad press nowadays, and is keen to tell her side of the story. From singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, to writer Virginia Woolf, to the tragic life of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days' Queen, Death has walked in their shadows and now, for the first time, shares her insights on them. She was there at the dawn of time, when the first cave paintings were created, and she will be with us until the end. However, she does have one final surprise up her sleeve...
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Even the BirdsGrow Silent
Alex Nye
Even the Birds Grow Silent
© Alex Nye 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of the work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Fledgling Press Ltd.
Cover illustration: Graeme Clarke
Published by:
Fledgling Press Ltd.
1 Milton Rd West
Edinburgh
EH15 1LA
www.fledglingpress.co.uk
Print ISBN 9781912280445
eBook ISBN 9781912280452
For my husband, Joe, and my children,Micah and Martha. Much love.
Author’s Note
I completed the first draft of Even the Birds Grow Silent in January 2018. It did the rounds of literary agents with no success, as they felt that the idea of having death as a compassionate female protagonist being interviewed by the editor of a top lifestyle magazine was too bizarre. Luckily for me, Clare Cain at Fledgling Press is braver than most, and has given me the confidence to release it into the wild. Originally it comprised quite a few more chapters and stories, but I decided to cut it down to the few I thought worked best, under the ‘less is more’ policy. I hope you enjoy the variety and the tongue-in-cheek spirit in which they are meant.
Oh Death!‘My name is death, and none can excelI’ll open the gates to heaven or hell.’‘I’ll lock their jaws so they can’t talkI’ll fix their legs so they can’t walkClose their eyes so they can’t seeThis very hour you’ll come with me.’
American Folk Song
Short Disclaimer
Many of the stories contained in this manuscript are part of an interview between Death, the Grim Reaper, or however you want to describe her, and Marcia Helen Sinclair, Chief Editor of A Class ActMagazine. During the course of this interview – unique in its conception – the Grim Reaper is at pains to reveal insights into the last moments of the lives of famous historical figures, artists, writers, singer-songwriters mainly, and ordinary individuals whose stories struck her as poignant or memorable in one way or another.
It is understood that Death has agreed to this interview in hopes of having the opportunity to put her side of the story, at last. She feels she gets a very bad press nowadays, and wants to make a clean breast of it.
She wishes to make it clear that she does mean well, although that may be a little hard for you to credit. Having always struggled with her role as the Grim Reaper, she is keen to set the record straight. She does not wish to be grim, but has worn the label now for so long, that it has, unfortunately, stuck.
The stories and anecdotes shared here are in no particular order of importance, and Death herself offers a disclaimer that she wishes in no way to offend any person, either living or dead.
Remember that these are only some of the dark tales she has chosen to relate. She asks that you read these carefully, and offers the hope that we shall avoid one another for a good while yet, but, until such time as we may meet again…
Yours truly
etcetera…
Vincent and a Wheatfield
‘Well? What was he actually like? In the end, I mean?’
I look at her, Marcia Helen Sinclair, Chief Editor of A Class ActMagazine, keen for another story. We have chosen to meet in the rooms of a top end five star hotel in Edinburgh, where a young waiter serves us afternoon tea.
‘I didn’t know him personally, of course. Not until…’ I hesitate.
‘Until?’
I’m thinking, of course, of a wheatfield in Auvers, a murder of crows darkening the sky.
When I came across him he was already wounded, I tell Marcia. He was lying there, blood seeping from a bullet hole in his stomach, but there was no pistol by his side.
The plush hotel with its lavish setting recedes, and a quietness falls as I cast my spell. Marcia listens.
But I first came across him long before this, I tell her. Whenever his mood darkened I was forced to walk beside him.
I loved to watch him paint. I’d never seen anything quite like it. The pure frenzy. He dashed oils out of those tubes as if there was a never-ending supply of the stuff, and then cast down the empty container, twisted into contorted shapes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, the way he worked.
Strange paintings. The people of Auvers thought he was mad. Some of them were quite fond of him, but no one rated his paintings very highly.
He was a gentle man: strange, tormented by the thought of his returning illness when he’d have another attack, and be found with blue paint bleeding from his lips and chin. He couldn’t face another episode. Yet between the attacks, he was capable of such joy. Capturing the beautiful colours and textures he saw filled him with euphoria. It was his reason for living, as vital as the air he breathed. Without art, he was nothing. That’s what he believed.
‘What was he like to work with?’ Marcia asks. ‘Was he difficult at all? Talkative? Fiery? What did he talk about?’
I smile to myself. ‘I wouldn’t exactly say I worked with him. At least, I don’t think he would have seen it that way.’
I never knew if he could really see me. His gaze would sweep over me.
I had begun to walk with him many times before this, when he carried his easel and satchel through the fields, or during those long dark days when he was incarcerated in the asylum.
They didn’t incarcerate him there against his will, I tell Marcia, just for the record. He asked to be committed. He couldn’t trust himself, and knew when he needed help.
But Saint-Rémy drove him madder than ever, watching the other inmates, their arms wrapped about themselves, rocking back and forth, tortured by God knows what demons inside their heads. He wanted only to be quiet and to paint. Sometimes they let him set up his easel in the gardens, where he’d capture the trees and the bushes with reckless brushstrokes, the sad-looking patients on the paths, their shoulders sagging with their unimaginable burden, the colour leached from their clothes and faces. He painted them as blank aspects, the walking wounded. They made him feel sad. He needed help, he knew that, but he didn’t want to become like them.
The hospital sat among olives and cypress trees. The walls were bleached white by the sun, and the faded blue paint of the shutters flaked onto the patients below, so that they looked up, wondering. Was it snowing? Blue snow?
There were baked clay tiles on the roof. Cypresses twisted like dark spires, casting shade. Clouds of pink blossom peeped beyond the high walls, which Vincent would paint, of course.
Vincent was one of those whose lives are lived on the edge. He couldn’t have painted like that otherwise. As he painted away in the Yellow House, or in the open air, where he would set up his easel like a tripod, I would peer over his shoulder and marvel. I couldn’t believe others were blind to it, his talent. No one else had ever painted like that before, and I suppose when that’s the case, it takes people by surprise and even longer to believe in its worth.
It was his brother, Theo, of course, who saw in him what others could not – and Theo’s wife, Jo. Without his brother’s small handouts to pay for oil and paint, we wouldn’t have his paintings now. You can’t paint with thin air. You need materials. And if you buy materials, you don’t eat – if you’re poor, that is.
So, two days before he died I was nearby, of course. He’d had suicidal musings in the hospital in Saint- Rémy, and couldn’t face another episode.
Nowadays, there might have been a pill to help him deal with the condition, but not then.
He needed peace and quiet, not too much excitement, no alcohol, his brother had urged that, but Vincent liked a drink with his friends. He had a good sense of humour, a sense of mischief, they liked him in the bars. He had drinking companions he’d meet up with, and they’d share a glass or two in the evening. I know what attracted them, these types. They’d exonerate and confirm one another, their need to find some peace of mind in the bottom of an empty glass, under the red and green faded lantern light of the public rooms, the gaseous acidy kick of the absinthe being their goddess and their queen. Couldn’t resist it. But it wasn’t that which killed him in the end. He needed a quiet, healthy existence. But he was always tempted back to the bars eventually. Nothing wrong with that. Every man likes a quiet drink.
In Auvers he rented a small room above an inn. The family took to him, a quiet, gentle soul they thought him. His room was filled with canvases, propped up against the walls, crowding out the tiny space. All he had was a bed and a chair. He ate downstairs, went out after breakfast to produce another unacknowledged masterpiece. I was watching him by this point. I knew the time was near, and it fair broke my heart to follow him. He was young still, in his prime. I liked him.
He fell into drinking with two young lads who teased him when he was in a bad way. He was tolerant with them. He knew he cut a bizarre figure, moving about the streets and fields in his scruffy peasant’s gown, wearing an old pair of boots when he wore any, his sunburned skin creased with paint residue that somehow found its way into his flesh, and never found its way out again. The paint was in his soul, alright. He even tried to eat it once, did you know that? In one of his terrible episodes.
But now he appeared fairly lucid, calm. He was in love with life and art. If anything, he lived life too intensely. He was utterly driven, compelled to translate everything he saw into art. As far as Vincent was concerned, this world sang and pulsed with energy, and he wanted to capture every bit of it, convey that energy, share it.
Of course, the downside of being so attuned to the miraculous is that you also know the reverse – the darkness. Vincent knew the sickness would return. The acid-green sickness, the pulsating dull red of despair, the exhausting yellow sting of pain, too bright to be borne. He couldn’t bear the thought of enduring it again. But he would have borne it, if he could.
I saw him standing there, the easel in front of him, and crept close through the rustling wheat stalks. The crop stirred and rippled in a faint breeze, but for me it did not move. I passed through it soundlessly. Like a wind.
Vincent was staring at the view before him, but there was something odd about his manner. He wasn’t painting, for a start. His arms hung limp by his sides. He gazed, without moving.
I was always curious to see what Vincent would paint next, so I stood behind him to examine his canvas.
‘And what did you see?’ Marcia asks.
Nothing. Blank as milk. Not a single mark on it. That alarmed me.
Then he turned his head sideways, almost as if he saw me. He picked up the easel, and with a violent gesture flung it sideways. It crashed to the ground against a haystack, and there it remained.
At the same time a murder of crows lifted up from the wheatfield before us and wheeled in the sky, like harbingers of doom. They hung there, inkspots against the sky, disturbed by the clatter of his broken easel.
The ability to paint left him just as suddenly as it had arrived.
It was maybe an hour later, perhaps two, that two boys arrived on the scene. It is difficult to tell. Time concertinas so. It implodes or stretches.
They came upon him sitting all alone among the wheat, his head in his hands, and shouted out his name.
‘Eh? Vincent?’
One of them brandished a pistol.
Vincent did not respond.
‘We’ve come to scare the crows,’ the boy hollered, ‘but it looks like you scared them first.’
‘Yes,’ the other cried. ‘Vincent the scarecrow!’ and they both began to laugh.
He half-laughed with them, tolerant, mild as ever. Vincent was the resident clown in Auvers. The madman, the fool, the stranger without a permanent address who dresses like a tramp and has few friends, although everyone knows him.
They were laughing, teasing, having fun at his expense when the pistol discharged accidentally.
One of them cursed.
‘Idiot!’ he cried, while the other paled in horror at what he’d done, staring at the pistol as if it was a poisonous snake with a life of its own.
Vincent crumpled.
I looked into the anguished eyes of the one with the weapon, and he looked back at me briefly. He dropped the pistol and knelt towards the body of the painter. But the other one pulled him away.
‘Come on,’ he hissed. ‘We have to go.’
Vincent looked at the boy, and waved him away.
But the boy wouldn’t leave at first.
Vincent grabbed him by the shirt, one of those young fellows he’d been drinking with in the bar only the night before, and pulled him down beside him.
He whispered something in his ear.
‘I wanted to die anyway.’
Then he released the boy, who scurried away after his friend, the wheat stalks parting for them. The air seemed to shiver with their fear. I watched them running, the wheatfield rippling with their progress.
They were white with terror, repentant already. I saw the horror in their eyes at what they had done.
So did Vincent.
I crouched beside him, and watched as his eyes slowly glazed over.
I sat there until the sun dipped towards the horizon.
It was my duty to release him, to ease him on his way.
But I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t watch him leave this world.
No one knew him. He would die unrecognized, his paintings forgotten.
The evening light faded, and the ground began to cool.
Vincent stirred.
He groaned.
He opened his eyes.
I watched him sit upright, and struggle to stand.
Holding a hand to his stomach, he had sufficient strength to stumble away through the wheatfield, leaving that scene behind him. His easel lay against the haystack where he had flung it, half-broken, in his rage. The rooks were silent now.
He dragged himself back to his lodgings in the village.
The family were out looking for him. They were worried when he did not return for his supper.
Adeline ran to him as he entered the inn.
‘Monsieur,’ she cried. ‘You do not look well.’
She was only a child. I glanced at her and was glad to note that she could not see me. I knew I would have no dealings with this healthy thirteen-year-old daughter of the innkeeper, Ravoux. She would die in her bed at a ripe old age, the sun and dust of Auvers in her eyes.
Monsieur Ravoux stared after Vincent, frowning.
‘Is there a problem, Monsieur?’
Vincent did not look back at them, but used the wooden handrail to pull himself up the staircase.
‘No, but I have…’
Unable to finish his sentence, he waved his hand, and continued on his way.
I stood with the innkeeper and his daughter in the downstairs room as they listened to the door of Vincent’s humble little room closing behind him.
Neither of them saw me.
Vincent lay down on the narrow bunk, surrounded by his canvases, and held his stomach where the red stain bloomed on his shirt.
He groaned intermittently and began to develop a fever.
I waited with him through the long dark night, and I was there when Monsieur Ravoux rushed into his room, having heard the noise from below.
Adeline ran to fetch the doctor, and sent off a telegram to Theo.
I stood like a ghost in a corner of the room, unobserved by the others. A pale witness.
Vincent, I knew, was thinking of the two teenagers who’d fired the shot. He was anxious they should not be blamed. He knew what would happen to them if they were accused. It would be the long drop for them, the noose around their young necks.
His doctor, Gachet, arrived and dressed the wound.
‘What were you doing to yourself, eh, Vincent?’
‘I tried to kill myself,’ he murmured, making a huge effort to speak with clarity.
The doctor looked at him with that air of disappointment and pessimism he always wore, and which Vincent captured so accurately in his portrait of the man.
‘I have failed even in that,’ Vincent said.
Doctor Gachet glanced around at the canvases turned against the walls. Those facing outwards were bright and bountiful with colour, with thick texture. The doctor looked at them then shook his head.
Adeline and her father were nearby.
‘There is nothing I can do for him,’ Gachet murmured sadly.
Then he glanced back at the poor painter lying in his bed, the thin sheets tumbled about his legs.
‘I have done everything I can,’ he sighed. ‘I have failed too.’
Theo arrived, and sat with his brother until he slipped into a coma.
‘Do not accuse anyone,’ he whispered, as Theo held his hand. ‘I wanted to die. It was me.’
‘No one blames you,’ Theo murmured, trying to keep his voice steady. ‘You have suffered too much. We will make sure you get better.’
Vincent looked at him and sighed.
‘This sadness will never get better. It will last forever.’
He never spoke again. Hours passed, and Vincent became unconscious before he finally slipped away.
When I last looked, Theo was weeping over the empty body, but Vincent wasn’t there anymore. He had moved to join me in the corner, looking back at the dishevelled and desolate little room, with its plethora of canvases which the great painter was now forced to leave behind.
I wondered at first how he would cope with that. Leaving his paintings.
‘And how did he cope?’ asks Marcia, who has been listening all this while.
I shrug.
He had to let go. They meant nothing to him anymore. They were just the remains. You see, what I cannot fail to notice in my years in this profession is that every person leaves behind traces of themselves: hair, dust, paper, trash, shoes, paintings, teeth. Graveyards are stacked with your broken bones. Cemeteries are landfill sites, overflowing with layer upon layer of forgotten decay, refuse, cast-off stuff no longer useful or wanted, because it no longer functions properly or serves a purpose. The valves no longer open and shut, the organs no longer pump and throb. The machine is abandoned. What is left is furniture, bricks, unpaid bills, bric-a-brac to be auctioned off, a mattress to be fumigated and washed free of stains. Memories which may or may not be passed down through the generations. If not, then they curl away like mist, evaporate on sea-filled air, disappear into the fog of life.
A tumble of unwanted possessions that no one knows what to do with anymore. That is all Vincent’s paintings had become. Flotsam, left behind on the tide of life. They were pushed away in attics, chicken coops, mouldering basements, except for those his brother Theo managed to rescue… but it wasn’t long before I had to escort Theo to the other side too. He had a troubling cough. He was a consumptive. He survived his brother by less than a year, then poor Jo, his widow, was left to shoulder the burden of what would happen to Vincent’s art, which she did, admirably. He sold one painting in his lifetime, but she ensured Vincent’s paintings were not forgotten.
Marcia has fallen silent.
She hasn’t touched her tea, cooling in its cup.
‘You’ve made me feel very sad, all of a sudden,’ she admits, glancing down at the little screen of her phone which is patiently recording us.
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that, but I suppose it is a sad subject.’
She concedes that it is.
Death Visits a Perthshire Wood
1953. Catriona and her brother Robbie.
They lived on an estate in Perthshire, where their father was gamekeeper.
Very close. Went about together everywhere.
Catriona was the youngest and idolized her big brother. Adored him.
They were both in high school at this stage. They caught the bus together, and when Catriona was bullied by the older kids, Robbie protected her. Got himself into a fight because of it, but he didn’t care because he loved his little sister, would not suffer anyone to hurt her.
It wasn’t a particularly happy marriage between the parents, as far as I can recall. A bit of an atmosphere, although I never really got to the bottom of what that was all about. I so rarely do, you see.
They lived in an old house with crow-stepped gable windows, and a view onto fields and woodland, a soft purple haze on the horizon. I remember it so well, because it was my favourite season, autumn. There was a faint smell of woodsmoke on the air, and a grey mist uncurling from the treetops.
All day I’d been enjoying the woodland, listening to the murmur of the nearby burn, gazing into its copper-bottomed water, wondering what to expect. The earth was a tangle of twisted roots and moss-clogged runnels. I pushed my way through the ferns, burrs sticking to my clothes. Everywhere was the smell of mint and thyme, ragwort and nettles. I breathed deeply and took in the smell of rich minerals, moss and decay. Oh, how I love that smell of decay. Rich fungi creeping underground where no one sees it, until it pushes its way to the surface or explodes from the hollow of a rotting tree-trunk. Stunning to look at, with its frilled edges, soft gills all bone white and murderous.
I had no idea who I was there for. I’d been called to attend the gamekeeper’s house. There were four of them in all, and two of them weren’t at home: the children.
Just the parents, then.
There was an ominous atmosphere between the adults, but at the same time the woodland was peaceful. Why would this rural idyll be targeted today of all days, when the sun climbed the dip in the valley, and shone its misty benevolence on all the land beneath?
I had no idea.
As I said before, I don’t always know who I’m coming for when I arrive on the scene.
Like a war photographer in a conflict zone, I simply have a job to do, a task to perform. I am called upon to be professional, and this is what I strive to be, at all times. Imagine if Death gave a sloppy performance? That would not do at all.
In the kitchen the parents were arguing. Not so much violently, but with a quiet, passive aggression. She slammed the kettle onto the stove with a deliberate clatter, as if to make a point. A show of rebellion, perhaps.
He merely looked at her, and went out.
With his gun.
I followed him down to the paddock, dogged his footsteps, wondering now and again if he would glimpse me out of the corner of his eye.
I saw him lift his head to the trees where I stood. I held my breath, but his gaze left me and he turned away.
I looked up into the canopy, layer upon layer of beech and larch, chestnut and oak, crimson and gold.
A pheasant exploded from the undergrowth with a wild clatter, and others followed, flying low across the slope of the hillside, within his aim.
He lifted his rifle, held it there against his shoulder, following the movement of their flight.
They were clear within his sights, but he lowered his gun, and they squawked on into the far woods, to live another day.
It wasn’t his job to shoot them. He was there to harvest them for the season, so that Mr Kendrick who owned the land could invite his guests for some sport.
I felt his anger as he stood there in the lower paddock, leaning against the gate. All this land and none of it his, yet it existed in his blood. It belonged to him. No one else could claim that connection with the forests and woodland, the sloping hills and valleys, the wildlife. He knew it inside out, since he was a boy.
I admired that, and I connected with it.
I have always been a great lover of Nature, you might be surprised to know. I’m an outdoors kind of girl, and this peaceful Perthshire wood was pure delight. Wispy grey smoke, lilac mist, soft mellow shadings of trees in the distance. Like a fifteenth century tapestry, blurred gold by distance.
It was hard to credit there was dissonance here, instead of harmony. Human beings bring their own stories to bear on the quiet landscapes around them.
It made a welcome change to be here.
I breathed in the scent of fungus and mould, minerals and moss which crept their way over the rocks, through the soil, and beneath the little stone bridge at the bottom of the lane.
I stood in the trees watching him, until he abandoned his post by the gate.
Then he trudged his way back up to the house, left his rifle in the front porch, and found his wife in the kitchen.
He took her in his arms, and kissed her.
That completely threw me.
In all their years of marriage, I think that must have been a first.
I left them there, and drifted off down the lane, where I could hear the children returning home from school.
Robbie, and his little sister, Catriona. Cat, for short, he always called her.
I could hear them coming, calling to each other, playing. He ran on ahead and she followed.
They slammed the glass door, but no one answered.
It seemed like there was no one at home.
Their father’s gun was still propped in the porch where he’d left it.
They were used to rifles lying about the place. The one essential rule was that you broke the barrel, emptied it of bullets, and stored the ammunition separately. Their father never left a rifle loaded.
Robbie – who had a flair for dramatics – picked up the rifle.
I held my breath.
He rehearsed a perfect death scene, arms akimbo, body jerking with the impact of the bullets raining down on him, as he fell backwards onto the couch.
‘I got me an Injun,’ he shrieked, leaping up again, resurrected.
‘Come on, Cat.’
He handed her the rifle.
‘Blow me away!’
And she did.
There was silence afterwards.
A terrible silence.
It followed Cat all the rest of her days.
I went back there a month or two later, but the family had moved away to Canada by then. The house stood empty. It was one of those incidents which haunted me, left an itch, so I had to keep going back.
That beautiful soft undulating countryside, with smoky hillsides and the purple haze of woodland.
Cat hadn’t realised she was such a good aim, and neither of them, of course, had realised the rifle was loaded. It was never loaded. Their father always kept the ammunition separate. He was strict about that.
Yes, that was a difficult case.
I came upon Cat many years later, when she was an old woman. She had children of her own by then, a grown-up family. But in her final moments, as the last breath left her body, it was her brother’s name I heard on her lips.
Robbie.
Margery and Rita Hayworth
I visit households where no one is expecting me.
I knock on the door.
No one opens, but I enter anyway, slip into the air you breathe. The soft feminine breath of me enters your lungs, slides into your bloodstream, slowly begins to blossom like an invisible flower.
It was 1954. Margery was eleven years old. She sat in front of a mirror, practising her Rita Hayworth pout, her chestnut hair twisted back from her face in a maturely-crafted design. She had tossed her old doll aside, abandoning it in favour of more worldly accoutrements.
A tortoiseshell brush and comb, heavy-backed and solid, that once belonged to her grandmother – now deceased; a bright red lipstick rolling on the floor in the dust at her bare feet, uncapped. In her lap was a magazine which lay open at a picture of Rita herself, smouldering for the camera with her eyes ablaze.
Margery looked at the photo, and then looked at herself, and tried to copy that moody gaze.
