The Light Ages Read Online Free PDF

the aether drippings of her ruined brushes as the light faded into evening, my mother would have shone out.
    So my parents met, they courted, they married at Midsummer, and the shifterms and the years flew by. At the time I first remember them both, they still looked far too young to be who they already were, and partly, in the stoop of their backs and the greying of my mother’s hair, much too old. Bracebridge and the huge downward pressure of England’s great human pyramid had wearied them both. My father was an inconstant man, prone to anger and enthusiasms, to interests and projects started and then abandoned in favour of something else. Once he found his ambition thwarted within the tight, secret structures of the Lesser Toolmakers’ Guild, he wore out the energy and intelligence which had probably first attracted my mother to him. More days than not he would call in at the Bacton Arms on his way home from Mawdingly & Clawtson for a swift half which easily became several long pints, and on Tenshift and Halfshiftday and feastdays he would roll up the street, crashing into the house and swaying up the stairs, laughingly circling my mother as she lay in bed and did her best to ignore him, making jokes about what some friend for the evening had done or said before he flared into spite and finally retreated to spend the night before the stove, staring into the firegrate’s glow as the alcohol seeped out of him. On ordinary nights, though, they would talk to each other as they prepared for bed in croaks and cries and calls like two keelies calling across the marshes; all those sentences married couples never finish. My father would hook his trousers by their braces across the back of his chair; then yawn and stretch and scratch himself through his vest before climbing between the sheets.
    I can see them now. The oil lantern on the dresser which my father’s brought up from downstairs is still glowing, its flame clawing the air. My mother is slower to get to bed, wandering about barefoot, pulling and tugging at her hair with her big silver brush, then catching her outline in the faded looking glass and staring frozen for a moment as if surprised to find herself here. My father slaps his pillow, turns over, hugs himself, muttering. My mother puts down the brush and lifts her night-gown from its hook to shrug it over herself in grey waves before wriggling from her underthings, dragging them out from beneath the hem. Finally, she hoods the lantern and climbs into bed.
    There they lie, two figures half buried in the dark of their blankets and the weight of their days, people who had once held hands, taken springtime walks, sheltered laughing under bandstands from the rain. It all seems quiet now; the families are strung weary and complete along Brickyard Row, safe in their beds as the stars shine down on the roofs and a new moon rises over the backs of the houses. No dogs are barking. The yards are empty. The last train has long gone by. A dense, fizzing silence falls in snowy waves. Then, as my father grunts and sniffs and begins to snore, a deeper sound becomes apparent. And my mother lies there, flat and still, her eyes glittering from her pillow as she stares at the ceiling, the finger of her left hand rubbing the scar on the palm of the other to that endless, inescapable rhythm.
    SHOOM BOOM SHOOM BOOM.

III
    I SUPPOSE I WAS ALWAYS a little different—or I told myself that I was. I cherished these inexpressible dreams. I was always looking over the rooftops, counting the stars, flying with the clouds.
    So look at me now, little Robert Borrows, wandering Rainharrow with my mother on one of those rare shiftdays when we have nothing more pressing to do. I climb drifts of mining scree to squat on the topmost rise, and shred leaves and make owl calls whilst she goes in search of wild flowers. Sitting with my back propped against one of the circle of sarsens which were once placed on this hallowed spot by people like and unlike