Obscure Book Blog

I dream of him now, sometimes. Not often, and mostly as he was on that last day, treading water in the limeroom and calling out for help; sometimes, though, I see him as he looked that summer's afternoon, taller and broader and darker than he really was, an immensity, a demigod. I bestow upon this dream creature, this counterfeit, a gravity he never had in life, and then I wake up to moonlight over the firth, or to the dawn birds, and I am glad to be alive; and I am glad that he is dead. That gladness is also immense, bigger than anything else I have ever experienced. It is as if the world had been waiting years to happen, waiting patiently through terror and grief and the weight of myself.

The summer of the bog child was over. Mel's living, laughing face, as drawn by Cora, now framed and in his rucksack, would go with him wherever he went. But the old Fergus of that time would never return. Cells would die and be born. New places and faces would jostle with the old. Letters would go back and forth bringing news and conversation. The Fergus who'd return at Christmas would already be different. He'd years of the changing to come. The studying, the books, exams, arguments, theories. The jokes and pints, laughter, kisses and songs. Life was was like running, ninety per cent sweat and toil, ten per cent joy.

It may be that another generation, accommodating itself more adequately to the stress of life, will look for inspiration not in a flight from reality, but in an eager acceptance of it.