Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors

rid of
her: you’re still his father, he’s not prepared to defy you absolutely,
he won’t leave home, he has no money, he isn’t ready. All you need
is stubborn insistence, stamina. He’ll complain, or stay silent, or
stomp about the house or something, but he really wants you to get
rid of her. Her? It. It. Concentrate, please! That look on his face
when he stopped laughing: he wasn’t just worried about your reaction, he was torn up inside, he wants to get out of the mess he’s in, but he can’t do it himself, he needs you to say no for him.
Danny thought about Tom’s mother, recalled her face as best he
could. She’d very rarely smiled, and when she had it was a pretty
sickening sight. Everything she’d said to him had been a sarcastic
put-down of one kind or another, or so it seemed. Selfish bitch. He
wanted her to be sitting beside him in the dark room, more than
anything else in the world. Simply sitting there in the dark, not
touching him, not speaking a word, invisible. He w-anted that very
badly. He felt sure that her silent, intangible, invisible presence
would have made everything immediately all right, calm and solid.
Tom stood in the doorway.
‘Dad. I’ve switched her off.’
‘For eood?’
‘No.’
‘Come in here. I want to talk to you.’
‘I promise not to bring her here again. It’s your house.’
‘Okay. Come in here and sit down for a second.’
‘I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ve got to get up for school.’
‘You can miss school for one day. Just come in for a second.
Please.’
‘Goodnight.’
Danny fell asleep, and dream t that someone sat beside him, but
The way she smiles, the things she says
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he couldn’t figure out if it was Tom or Tom’s mother. When the sun
rose and he woke to the sound of birdsong, he remembered waking
that way as a child.
M r Lockwood’s narrative
©
YVONNE ROUSSEAU
At this point of the housekeeper’s story, she chanced to glance
towards the timepiece over the chimney; and was in amazement on
seeing the minute-hand measure half-past one. She would not hear
of staying a second longer; in truth, I felt rather disposed to defer
the sequel of her narrative myself.
Mr Lockwood, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
1801 — The hearth gave out so grateful a warmth that I did not trouble with yawning and nodding in my chair; it seems I fell straight into sleep, as into a well of molten lava. How else explain the abrupt dream
I had? of sudden release, as if from one of the dampening snowdrifts
of Thrushcross park that I had blundered into so freely yesterday
morning — except that this drift was hot, and myself emerging u n scalded, like a salamander! In the same instant, I was dizzied with beholding an impossible multitude of images from my life, seemingly simultaneous — in babyhood, in boyhood, in manhood; purposing
this, performing that; at the seaside, in St James’s Street, as an infant
on my dear mother’s knee. A revelation, surely! It blazed forth — it
sank and was gone. I now knew myself to be asleep, and my memories
lay quiet, too, all in their proper order, but my sleep grew dark and
disagreeable. I thought that I lay helpless while somebody inserted me
into all the garments which I somehow lacked, even the most intimate
ones. Then I thought there was a trundling sound beneath me, as if
I were wheeled along on a truckle-bed. The sound stopped after a
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M r Lockwood’s narrative
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weary while; I felt myself being tumbled into a chair; the trundling
sound resumed, and steadily retreated into silence. I dreamed on, but
drearily, as if sleep were an allotted task or a judge’s sentence, to be endured with no diversion of incident or colour, without a m oment’s remission. No end in prospect; yet suddenly, in the most arbitrary
fashion, I seemed to wake.
I found myself alone, not in the study but in an unfamiliar chair,
and in a room dimly lit, not by any hearth but by an entire wall of windows. My instinctive survey revealed, through the glass, a brighter apartment whose own window was open, not upon the darkness of
Yorkshire’s snowy moor, but on what seemed a summer garden, where
golden butterflies sported about a bush spread with vivid purple blossoms. Five chairs and a sofa were all the furniture; five young women were the occupants.
At the centre stood a veritable goddess, instantly enchaining my
susceptible heart! She alone was modishly dressed, her gown being a
polonaise, the overskirt very elegantly bunched behind, and opening
at the front upon the most ornamental of petticoats. H er face and
form were of the most smiting beauty, only heightened by the
awakened sensibility which parted her coral lips and deepened the exquisite blue of her eyes — for she seemed to feel a wonder at her situation, equal to that under which I was