As Little As Nothing , livre ebook

Ecw Press - Pamela Mulloy

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161 pages

English

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' A buoyant and affecting portrait of four disparate souls striving to become their true selves on the cusp of major social change. Kathleen Winter, author of Undersong With intimacy, acuity, and grace, Pamela Mulloy captures the complex inner lives of her characters, who yearn to become themselves as England lurches into war. Jack Wang, author of We Two Alone It is 1938 and rumours of a coming war are everywhere. On a quiet morning in September outside a small town in England, a plane crashes and four people are brought together in the aftermath. Miriam, a young woman devastated by multiple miscarriages, rises from her bed and hurries to the scene. There she meets Frank and together they pull the wounded pilot, Peter, from the wreckage. Miriam soon meets Frank s aunt Audrey, the family rebel, who has refused to marry and travels the country as a reproductive-rights activist. It is Frank who teaches Miriam to fly. As Miriam

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	11 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781778520082
Langue	English

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As Little As Nothing A Novel
Pamela Mulloy

Contents Dedication Epigraphs 1 September 1938: Awakening 1 September 1938: Imbalance 1 September 1938: Languor 1 September 1938: Alive 1 September 1938: Roses 4 September 1938 5 September 1938: Frank’s Diary 8 September 1938: The River 9 September 1938: Miriam’s Diary 10 September 1938: Recuperation 14 September 1938: Flight 18 September 1938: Celebration 20 September 1938: Edmund’s Daily List 20 September 1938: Half Normal 22 September 1938: The Caravan 26 September 1938: Working to Scale 27 September 1938: The Meeting 28 September 1938: The Mechanics of Flight 1 October 1938: Miriam’s Diary 2 October 1938 3 October 1938: The Tour 20 October 1938: Stains 22 October 1938: Miriam Reads Her Body Like the Weather 25 October 1938: A Responsible Man 26 October 1938: Propaganda 31 October 1938: Counter Beats 3 November 1938: Secrets 7 November 1938: The Chain Home 20 November 1938: The Abortionist 26 November 1938: London Fog 28 November 1938: The Long Cold Night Into Winter 2 December 1938 4 December 1938: Small Tentative Gestures 13 January 1939: Sabotage 26 January 1939: Frank’s Feel for Mechanics 20 January 1939: All at Sea 11 February 1939: The Germans 26 February 1939: Danger 28 February 1939: Strength and Goodness 16 March 1939 17 March 1939: Fallen 25 March 1939: Perspectives 30 March 1939: Too Much to Ask 10 April 1939: Fly Fishing 16 April 1938: Love 19 April 1939: Edmund’s Daily List 22 April 1939: Reunited 24 April 1939: Gypsy Moths 26 April 1939: Frailties 30 April 1939: Bravery 1 May 1939: The Scent of Flowers 1 May 1939: Withholding 5 May 1939: Friendship 6 May 1939: The Pond 20 May 1939: A Higher Purpose 25 May 1939: Edmund Makes a Suggestion 2 June 1939: The Past That Is Always Present 5 June 1939: Edmund Considers His Neighbour 8 June 1939: Irrelevance 20 June 1939: The Practice Run 20 June 1939: Agitation 20 June 1939: An Encounter 21 June 1939: Observations 13 August 1939: A Celebration 1 September 1939: Edmund in His Garden 3 September 1939: Audrey in London 4 September 1939 8 September 1939: Frank Packs His Bag 1 November 1939: Miriam in the War 9 September 1941: Epilogue Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright

Dedication
For Darren and for Esme
In Memory of Terry Mulloy, a passionate gardener, a remarkable man

Epigraphs
Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing.
—Wislawa Szymborska, “The End and the Beginning”
Sometimes there are days, moments, that seem to fall out of the tight mesh of time and obligation, where we can live outside of our lives, slip the leash.
—Helen Humphreys, The Ghost Orchard

1 September 1938 Awakening
Miriam knew she needed to fly when she lost her fifth baby. Those luminous nights, the pearl moon casting shadows across the village as she took flight, her arms spread, her body soaring, undulating through the air currents as she went higher. Higher so that she could no longer see the village; the space in which she existed seemed at once foreign and yet her own. This was her nightly journey, the one that might save her. For seven nights she existed in this liminal space, anchored to her bed, anchored to the idea that there was another Miriam who had overtaken her, one who existed in the bed of clouds that blindfolded the moon.
It was on the eighth morning that she heard the airplane she knew to be in trouble. Roused from a morning nap, she was startled by the sound, despite living so close to Hackley Aerodrome and Flying School. They’d become accustomed to the planes, but this sputtering was new, and it pulled her, still weak from the blood loss, from her bed. She grasped the heavy curtains that kept her room as night and squinted at the intruding light. She opened the window, surprised at the soft, balmy air, and looked skyward for the airplane that now seemed elusive. There it was; a choking sound that told her it was still up there somewhere.
She reached for a dress from the wardrobe and was soon clothed, the first time in over a week. She thought to take a cardigan, leave a note for Edmund, put an apple and two digestive biscuits in her bag. She barely knew where she was going as she stumbled down the stairs and outside to her bicycle. Her cardigan pulled on the metal sign on their gate, Hawthorn Cottage , as she passed through and she reached back to release it. There had been much discussion on the naming of their house; how important it was to Edmund, what with their own hawthorn tree in the back garden, while she’d wondered if it were too showy.
She was sore, and stiff, and in a weakened state, but the sun was out and this surprised her so much that it was enough to keep her moving, and soon she was out on the road, right onto Wycombe Street, then left on Guildford Road that took her out of town in the direction of the airfield. Out in the open she scoured the sky for any sight of the plane and spotted it ahead, teetering eastward. She pedalled toward it, trying to calculate where it might come down. She had gone nearly a mile when her heart, like a small animal yearning to break free, forced her to slow down. She had barely moved for seven days, in a delirium brought on by grief, by the stillbirth that had left her catatonic, her days and nights blended. Edmund nursing her, his own bewildered sadness set aside.
Miriam coasted to a stop, made adjustments to her position. The air filled with the pungent smell from the nearby dairy farm, giving life to her senses, an awakening that reminded her she was alive. A flap of paper caught her eye. A flyer on the signpost. The Ministry of Agriculture. A meeting in September. She knew what this was about. A grand plan. Her midwife muttering “these times, these times,” and Miriam in her state, not knowing if she was referring to her or the events in Europe.
She peered at the flyer, which welcomed farmers and gardeners alike, anyone interested in the future of their country.
“It’s coming,” she’d told Edmund a month ago, when she was still able to take in the world around her. “What we hear is only a fraction of what they know.” The chatter in the village like constant static.
“It won’t come to that, love.” Edmund so sure, as if he had a direct line to those in power.
“You think they have nothing better to do than prepare for a war that isn’t coming.” They were jittery at the Women’s Voluntary Service meeting she’d attended, intense on the prospects of war.
Now this. The ministry telling them what to plant. It was hard to imagine Edmund giving up his dahlias in favour of potatoes. They were still flourishing, his dahlias, the arum lilies long gone, the hydrangeas muted, drying on the stems.
She stepped off the bicycle and walked until the beating in her chest slowed.
After five minutes, she spotted a stile where she sat after leaning her bicycle into the hedge. She rubbed her legs as if trying to keep awake the muscles she’d so abruptly activated. What would Edmund think of her, out roaming the countryside like this? A week of nursing her back to health only to lose her to a failing airplane.
She pulled the apple from her bag and ate it with her eyes closed, the world suddenly too much to take in. The deep crunch of each bite, the vexing wasp that had caught the scent of the sweet juice that dripped on her hand, a distant crow that seemed overly bothered about something, all sparks to remind her that life goes on. She concentrated on these sensations as she took long, slow breaths because she wasn’t sure she could trust herself to remain conscious, her inclination so clearly driven to another state these days.
The airplane.
The quiet meant the engine was no longer running.
She stood, her mind alert with no thought now to return to her bed. She freed the bicycle from the bushes, hooked her shoe on the pedal, and pushed herself along until she could get her balance, thankful for the downward slope. There were things to be thankful for, even these days, even if it was a downward slope in the road.

1 September 1938 Imbalance
The sky. The cerulean sky.
What sort of word was that—cerulean? How did it come to mind as he lay on the grass? Had he read it somewhere, this way of describing the sky? It was his aunt’s influence, he knew. She, who would consider him a writer. Her confidence in him pushed him to comb through his vocabulary this morning, plucking words that might please her. He would soon see her, and that alone made him think this way, dredging up words usually reserved for the poets.
Frank was thinking too much, eyeing the sky, his mind in the clouds. That’s what she would tell him, his mind always in the clouds. Anticipating the conversation he would have with her, knowing what she wanted of him. Happiness. Nothing more. He would finally tell her about his airplane that was in the shed, remind her that she was to join him at the air show in Croydon in two weeks. She would meet up with friends for lunch, she’d told him, they would have a lovely time.
Yes, the sky was quite stunning this morning. Cerulean.
He’d drifted off, allowing the sleep that had evaded him in the early morni