Black Boxes
Julie Myerson meets Ian McEwan in this gripping novel of family breakdown.Ana Lewis is trapped by her own expectations. Her intense relationship with fellow student Alex begins to crack beyond repair when she falls pregnant, and his subsequent withdrawal, emotionally and sexually are hard for Ana to bear. Eventually, following the birth of Pip and then Davie, Alex leaves Ana to a life of question and blame. Locked in her room for much of the time she woefully neglects her children, preferring instead to replay scenes from her life over and over, fighting the urge to blink for fear it should dissipate the memories.Told within the context of two black boxes, one Ana’s and one Pip’s, the story reveals the key factors that have contributed to this catastrophic breakdown of life. In Black Box 01 we meet Ana as she begins to deconstruct her life. She rails against Alex and his inability to love her, or to put her ahead of his domineering mother.Black Box 02 is Pip’s diary which details in a schoolgirl terms the neglect that both Pip and Davie have suffered. Pip talks of her mother’s deterioration, lack of cleanliness and of her mother’s obsessions. Pip and Davie communicate through finger sign language, as their mother demands silence. Davie retreats into his own world, permanently soiled and communicating only by sign, while Pip, fat and desperate, sneaks out of the house at night to have sex with a boy who hates her. Pip and Davie exist in parallel, with only Ana's bedroom door separating her from them. She does not want to see them. They are the present and Ana chooses to live in a past, continually raking over the ashes of a relationship that was never really hers.Accomplished and affecting, Caroline Smailes weaves together a catastrophic tale of mismatched lives.
Читать Black Boxes онлайн беплатно
Black Boxes
Caroline Smailes
‘Aha!’ she cried mockingly, ‘you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.’
Rapunzel—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
‘The man had not known one happy hour since he had left the children in the forest; the woman, however, was dead. Gretel emptied her pinafore until pearls and precious stones ran about the room, and Hansel threw one handful after another out of his pocket to add to them. Then all anxiety was at an end, and they lived together in perfect happiness.’
Hansel and Gretel—Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
From The Project Gutenberg Etext Fairy Tales, by the Grimm Brothers, April, 2001 [Etext #2591]
A Promise.For my son. Jacob.For my son. Benjamin.For my daughter. Poppy Elisabeth.
Table of Contents
Other books written by Caroline Smailes
In Search of AdamDisraeli Avenue
Flight Recorder DO NOT OPEN
[55°01'01.54 N 1°27'28.83 W]
Bedroom. Ana's first floor flat in a Victorian house near the coast of Tynemouth. The room contains a wardrobe, a bed and a bedside table. The walls are red. The duvet cover is red. On the bedside table there is an empty glass and an open pair of scissors. Next to the empty glass there are two white rectangular boxes. One of them once contained sleeping tablets. The other once contained painkillers.
~Are you still there?~
You've ruined the end.
Now I know what's going to happen.
The plot has you coming back to kill me.
A twist in the narrative.
[five second silence]
I had cast you in the role of handsome prince.
How strange that you should turn out to be my killer.
But that's an end.
And now I need to find a beginning.
~Are you there?~
~Will you listen?~
~Do you remember?~
I am remembering when we were courting.
It was always cold.
I'm thinking back to when you wrapped your arm around me as we walked along Tynemouth beach.
I remember you folding me into you.
The image is practically cinematic.
~Do you remember?~
[five second silence]
We wore matching scarves.
I had knitted them and they had holes where I had dropped stitches.
You had laughed at my fumbling attempt.
[sound: a throaty laugh]
I had dropped many stitches.
But you said that you loved them.
~Didn't you?~
That they were perfectly us.
~Do you remember?~
The scarves wrapped around us.
They bound us together.
You could climb up your scarf to mine.
~Do you remember?~
And then you found that knobbly washed-up stick.
And you wrote our names in the sand in those huge perfectly straight lines.
And those lines stood together and made the flawlessly straight letters of our names.
ALEX+ANA.
You said that our names and our lives and everything that we would ever choose to do would be straight.
And I thought that you liked that.
[sound: sniff sniff]
I thought that the neatness and the organisation and the perfectly horizontalness.
Well I thought that you liked that.
[volume: high]
No kinks and no bends.
A perfectly straight route from here to there.
From there to here.
To nowhere else.
And on that day when you wrote our two names into the sand.
Well I didn't realise that one day.
When you wanted.
That you'd wash away the +ANA that was joined to the ALEX.
[sound: sobbing]
[silence]
But your name would never go away.
It grew fainter, but it is still there.
I still see it there.
I can still see ALEX+ANA.
[sound: throat clearing]
You started a new life.
ALEX+SUE.
But I can't write another name.
There are no other names that are perfectly straight and perfectly able to cover ALEX.
[silence]
But you went off.
And you found that new name.
And it had curves in it because you had decided that you preferred curves.
The lines no longer needed to be straight.
You adapted.
You accepted.
You left me here.
You left me.
Trapped.
[silence]
My room is a box.
A black box.
A sometimes ruby red box.
~Is that confusing?~
You trapped me in here.
[voiced: unrecognisable word]
[volume: low]
I have a front.
I have a back.
They are my window and my door.
My door takes me to my children.
My door keeps me from your Pip and my Davie.
Our two children.
~They are your children too.~
~But you know that they are your children too!~
~Am I trying to be too clever?~
The view from my window is ever changing.
I see the sand.
I see the sea.
And that image is my painting mounted in a chipped red window frame.
A sometimes black window frame.
A perfect square.
A perfect painting.
A painting that holds the memories of you and me.
We met as students.
~I know that you remember that.~
We lived in the same halls.
On the same corridor.
And we met in the first week.
You were so quiet.
All the girls wanted to know you.
To know what made you tick.
You were different.
You carried books around with you.
And you read those books.
You had a guitar.
And you could play your guitar.
Your friends were all girls.
You preferred female company.
And although girls flashed their breasts at you and although girls flicked their flowing hair and offered themselves to you.
