Woof The Lightning Tree

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-25539-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

This is a story of two young people who fall in love - and then life gets in the way. Ursula is part dreamer, part radical in the making. Raised in a matriarchal household by a CND-loving activist, she is impatient to begin a life of adventure. But this is Newcastle in the mid-80s where girls are getting permed and their dreams go no further than copping off down the Bigg Market. Then Ursula meets Jerry, a class warrior from the wrong side of town, intellectually hungry, erudite and ambitious. It is a meeting of bodies, souls, minds and ideals. Keen to pursue the road less travelled, Ursula heads to India while Jerry goes to Oxford and the promise of politics and power. But Ursula's family is clouded with secrets, and the past threatens to repeat itself. As Ursula searches for answers, she is soon drifting - and Jerry loses touch. What happens to young love when it is tested by real life? In this second novel from the acclaimed author of The Whole Wide Beauty, Emily Woof interweaves across generations asking us to question the nature of love in all its forms.

Born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, Emily Woof has written for stage, film and radio. Her plays include Sex III for the Royal Court, Revolver and Going Going for the South Bank Centre, and, for BBC Radio 4, Pianoman, Baby Love and Home to the Black Sea. She wrote and directed Meeting Helen for FilmFour, and directed the prize-winning short film Between The Wars. She has also worked as a trapeze artist and actor; her screen credits include Oliver Twist, The Full Monty, Pandaemonium, This Year's Love and Velvet Goldmine. Her first novel The Whole Wide Beauty was published to great acclaim in 2010. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Woof, Emily

Leseproben

Let us start right here, with a man and a woman in bed by the sea. The woman is Ursula. She and the man are gazing into each other’s eyes, astonished by the love they feel, and as they move together, without speaking, everything around them dissolves; the thin yellow curtains of the bed and breakfast, the polyester sheets, the two white teacups and tiny kettle all fly away to nothing. Ursula sees only this man. She is grateful it is him after all this time, and as they crash on to the shore of each other they touch the earth, the moon and stars.

It is not possible for you to feel this. All this astonished gazing, sea gushing and planetary union is too much, too intimate, too soon! – but I long to communicate love to you. These pages are so dry, the flat of your reading device so cold! If I could I’d jump out, strike you with the full weight of my arm, make your heart pound, tickle you, caress you, do anything in my power to make you feel it. I want to reveal love in all its forms, in a girl skipping, a boy reading; in a time before Ursula, with a laundry worker singing at her tub, or a woman alone on a hill, where a tree rears up, its roots alive, its branches stripped bare like a claw raking the sky, and in a single moment, she is hollowed to nothing by a blast so bright the world will ever after seem dark to her. I want to show you all this, and more, even the great failure of love, so this is a ‘poor do’ as Mary would say, and we must begin again, not with lovers by the sea, but at the root of the thing, in another time, or perhaps the same one, when Ursula is at the very beginning of herself, under the ash tree in the garden of 35 Eslington Road, Newcastle. She is only six months old, but already she has done much to be here; existing for billions of years in secret codes, imprinting herself on her infinite family, generation to generation, mud-crawler to bushbaby, hominid warrior all the way to Hubert Tate of Tate’s Laundry, Padiham, waiting until her own double helix clicks into place making all her pasts present. Then the inevitable begins, cells slipping, splitting, silently dividing in the warm darkness, heart pulsing within membrane, the sudden bloom of liver, kidneys, lungs, soft sponges of blood, the astonishing hardening of bone, the skin clouding round, the wild free-fall into senses, briny sweetness, murmurs, muted fireworks, and pushing through unyielding skeleton to the shocking air, into the feel of skin, the smell of milk, and Ursula is suddenly material.

She inherits her pram, a wondrous vessel, in which she now lies, oblivious to all that’s gone before, gazing up at branches veining the sky like spilt ink. Her blankets are wrapped tightly around her. She strains against the wool, her torso rolling this way and that until, with a surge of force, she reaches out for the black lines of the branches with their black buds swelling from their twigs. She knows them, reaches out to guide them inside her, but the wind blows them away. She gurgles, a light easy splash. They are playing with her! She’ll get them next time. She reaches out again but cannot touch them. Sadness mists her and is gone as quickly as it came. She gurgles happily as the branches thin into whiteness, and she senses distance for the first time, the deep wonder of it, the space between things.

Her mother is apart from Ursula, in the basement kitchen, putting an elastic band around a stack of CND leaflets, Save Our Future: Stop The Madness! This is Joyce. Her mind is always busy with the future. She intends to save the world from nuclear attack, singlehandedly if she has to, but she is also thinking about the children’s supper, Peter’s meeting, and the best six arguments for non-proliferation. Bethany (seven) and Jonathan (four) are at her feet playing with dolls and saucepans, busy at their tasks, as Joyce tips peelings, plum stones and burnt toast on to newspaper and folds it into a parcel. She opens the back door and puts it outside. There’s an old veg box there already with another parcel in, ready to take down to the bins. She looks over at the pram beneath the ash tree, as big as a boat in a bay. She puts baby Ursula out in the garden every day. The fresh air helps her sleep, and if she’s inside Jonathan can’t be trusted not to reach in and hit her. It’s best to keep the children separate; Bethany with her dolls, Jonathan by the radiator with his pans, Ursula outside under the tree.

Inside, she starts a list at the table: Osborne Road, Tankerville, Holland Road, Oak Lane, the route she will take with the leaflets. The children can help put them through the doors, and on the way back they might stop at the park for half an hour. If it wasn’t for the baby, she could take them further afield, Heaton, Byker, Wallsend perhaps. Joyce is anxious to raise people’s consciousness. Raise them up! Everyone in the city must know about the CND. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Seee Unnnn Deee. Even baby Ursula knows this sound. Joyce talks of little else; the Aldermaston March, Maralinga 1956, Monte Bello Island, Christmas Island where the servicemen were told they could simply wash the radiation off with soap.

In her pram in the garden Ursula follows the black lines of the tree. They are nothing more than herself, broadening and hardening, stretching outwards. She hears the sweet shushing sibilance of the wind. She is creating it all, blowing through her lips, making the wind blow, the clouds scud, the branches sway. The ash tree loves her and she loves it. She hears the click-shush of the back door. Her lips start to open and close, making plosives, suckings, kisses, coaxing the kitchen faces closer. She senses life, pans, intentions, voices, and her mother soft in woollen green with brown moons and milky skin. She wants her to come. No one comes. Great howls rise from inside her. She has heard them before. They come from deep within. She is a wonderful siren. She cannot stop the cries. They leap out of her, twisting her body, contorting it, searching for certainty. She reaches her arms high towards the branches. They are widening cracks in the sky. Something is changing. The branches are spreading. The branches fatten and flap, cawing and shrieking.

Mummy! Look! shouts Bethany, looking up from her dolls.

Jonathan pulls at Joyce’s skirt at the window, Birsss! Birsss!

Joyce looks out into the garden. The hood of Ursula’s pram is blown out of shape, jagged like a broken umbrella. Shreds of black stick out, jostling. A crow is on the baby. Joyce’s body moves before her mind, up the steps and down the path. The crow is pecking, flapping, positioning itself. She runs, arms waving, her screams as primitive as the bird’s.

Aaaaaaaaagh. God …! Shoooooooo!

The bird lifts into the air, pumping oily wings. Others wheel down from the branches, and they fly off screeching across the Town Moor. Joyce clutches the baby to her, half expecting the woollen bundle to burst with blood. The bird has killed her. Joyce’s heart pounds as she runs back to the house. Jonathan stumbles to meet her, watching, frightened by her mask of horror. She looks like the women on the statue on the walk home from Fenwick’s, he thinks, frozen in black bronze, wailing for their dead. He starts to cry.

It’s alright, my darling … It’s alright.

She pushes past him down the steps. Under the orange lamp, she uncurls her arms. Ursula stares up at her, her mouth shut tight, a short straight line.

There there … they’ve gone now, Joyce rocks her.

Is she dead? says Bethany.

She will make a bottle and comfort her. Thank God. No harm done. She’ll put the pram nearer the back door next time.

Bethany leans in close.

Caw caw! she croons.

Ursula is stiff as a corn dolly.

There there … says Joyce, and starts to sing, Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady upon a white horse, rings on her fingers and …

As she holds Ursula close, her voice is high and soft. She puts milk into a pan. Strands of hair fall on to her face and she pushes them away. She lays Ursula gently on the draining board, and cuts thick slices of bread. She gets butter, breaks two eggs into a saucepan, puts a match to the grill, lowers the hissing blue jets.

It won’t be long, not long, she sings, sliding the slices under the grill. This is the way we make the toast, make the toast …

She pours warm milk into Ursula’s bottle, turns on the radio, serves the eggs to Jonathan and Bethany, sits in the armchair, and in one arm Ursula nestles, her little fingers gripping the bottle as she sucks. Listen with Mother begins. Ursula’s eyes start to close. The wildness of the crows dims in her and she sleeps.

The attack by the crows is Ursula’s first experience of the world as utterly separate. You might think it will stay with her, haunt her as she grows up; that some irreparable damage has been done to her that will influence her life and how she lives it, but the truth is she will remember nothing of it. She will grow up in what you might call a reasonably ordinary way. Far bigger birds will come for her in time; one greater than the rest, it will carry her clean away, and strip her of everything. This bird will be far harder to survive, but for now Ursula is sleeping, and the telephone is ringing in Eslington Road, and Joyce is answering it, Ursula still held in her arms …

Joyce …? Oh Joyce! Oh … the voice is desperate.

Mum, what is it?

They’re here again … They’re in again. I daren’t go downstairs. Oh Joyce.

Call the police, Mum!

Oh God …! I can’t … I …

I’ll call them.

Joyce...