Newford Stories Read Online Free PDF

alane
    I heard twa corbies makin’ mane…
    —from “Twa Corbies,” Scots traditional
     
    Gerda couldn’t sleep again. She stood by the
upright piano, wedding picture in hand, marvelling at how
impossibly young she and Jan had been. Why, they were little more
than children. Imagine making so serious a commitment at such an
age, raising a family and all.
    Her insomnia had become a regular visitor
over the past few years—often her only one. The older she got, the
less sleep she seemed to need. She went to bed late, got up early,
and the only weariness she carried through her waking hours was in
her heart. A loneliness that was stronger some nights than others.
But on those nights, the old four-poster double bed felt too big
for her. All that extra room spread over the map of the quilt like
unknown territories, encroaching on her ability to relax, even with
the cats lolling across the hills and vales of the bed’s
expanse.
    It hadn’t always been that way. When Jan was
still alive—before the children were born, and after they’d moved
out to accept the responsibility of their own lives—she and Jan
could spend the whole day in bed, passing the time with long
conversations and silly little jokes, sharing tea and biscuits
while they read the paper, making slow and sweet love…
    She sighed. But Jan was long gone and she
was an old woman with only her cats and piano to keep her company
now. This late at night, the piano could offer her no comfort—it
wouldn’t be fair to her neighbours. The building was like her, old
and worn. The sound of the piano would carry no matter how softly
she played. But the cats…
    One of them was twining in and out against
her legs now—Swarte Meg, the youngest of the three. She was just a
year old, black as the night sky, as gangly and unruly as a pumpkin
vine. Unlike the other two, she still craved regular attention and
loved to be carried around in Gerda’s arms. It made even the
simplest of tasks difficult to attend to, but there was nothing in
Gerda’s life that required haste anymore.
    Replacing the wedding picture on the top of
the piano, she picked Swarte Meg up and moved over to the window
that provided her with a view of the small, cobblestoned square
outside.
    By day there was always someone to watch.
Mothers and nannies with their children, sitting on the bench and
chatting with each other while their charges slept in prams. Old
men smoking cigarettes, pouring coffee for each other out of a
thermos, playing checkers and dominoes. Neighbourhood gossips
standing by the river wall, exaggerating their news to give it the
desired impact. Tourists wandering into the square and looking
confused, having wandered too far from the more commercial
streets.
    By this time of night, all that changed. Now
the small square was left to fend for itself. It seemed diminished,
shadows pooling deep against the buildings, held back only by the
solitary street lamp that rose up behind the wrought iron bench at
its base.
    Except…
    Gerda leaned closer to the windowpane.
    What was this…?
     
    - 2 -
     
    Sophie’s always telling me to pace myself.
The trouble is, when I get absorbed in a piece, I can spend whole
days in front of the canvas, barely stopping to eat or rest until
the day’s work is done. My best times, though, are early in the
morning and late at night—morning for the light, the late hours for
the silence. The phone doesn’t ring, no one knocks on your door. I
usually seem to finish a piece at night. I know I have to see it
again in the morning light, so to stop myself from fiddling with
it, I go out walking—anywhere, really.
    When the work’s gone well, I can feel a deep
thrumming build up inside me and I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I
wanted to, doesn’t matter how tired I might be. What I need then is
for the quiet streets of the city and the swell of the dark night
above them to pull me out of myself and my painting. To render calm
to my quickened pulse. Walking puts