A Season For Everything, Matthew Fairman [the best books to read TXT] 📗

could only catch a passing image or thought. Sometimes his dreams were difficult to decipher or would not translate themselves into words. Coming to him as feelings rather than images. He once dreamt that he had written a poem, of which he could clearly see each word, burning on the page in front of him as plain as day. When he awoke in the morning he couldn’t remember a single word or line.

 

From the diary of Beaton Arnold Earnest.

 

From a low barred window I could see down into the courtyard below. A grey, space surrounded on all sides by severe victorian redbrick buildings. Buildings that carried with them a sombre sense of industry and oppression. The courtyard was steeped in shadow, save for the thin golden slice of the evenings dying light which passed briefly there once every day. I couldn’t remember why I had been locked away inside this high tower, nor for how long I had passed in that place. I had given up carving the days into the crumbling lime plaster a long time ago. Every evening a young girl would come and sweep the leaves that blew over the rooftops and settled in piles on the mosaics floor that had been laid by prisoners, long since forgotten. The girl had long chestnut curls, tied back beneath a faded red bandanna, and across her shoulder she wore an old green woollen shall. She was pale and thin, her delicate arms moving the broom across the ground in a slow steady methodical motion. She would collect the leaves into a pile and carry them away in a large wicker basket which she took upon her back with thin leather straps. It was my only pleasure, to watch her working beneath my window. I had long since given up calling out to her, she pretended not to hear him. There came a time when I fell ill with a fever, I was taken into the infirmary, where I stole from the good doctor a scrap of paper and a pencil nub which I concealed within my shoe. I composed a most beautiful note, of which I had spent several days composing. It told of how beautiful she was, how I dreamed of escaping and carrying her away with me to a better place far, far away. The note tumbled down from between my barred window and landed on the floor like so many other leaves. I watched as the girl swept it away into the basket, giving no hint or sign that she had seen it at all. I felt my heart sink. The very next evening I waited as usual at his post. She did not appear. Nor did I see her the next day, or the day after that. I was certain that somebody had discovered the note and had punished the poor girl. My selfish act had hurt the only thing left in my life that had brought me any joy. A great many days must have past by and I had long since given up looking down from my window. The leaves had begun to pile into great drifts across the cold hard ground. Now the coming of the evenings golden light only served to cause me pain where I once found joy, so I would steal away from the window and choose instead to sleep. One evening as I lay half sleeping, I heard the dry twigs of a broom scratching at the ground, far below my cell. I was scared to look, in case I should find instead, another had taken her place. After some time I crept to the window and on seeing the same chestnut curls and the pale delicate skin I wept for joy. Then came a day when I was called to meet with the warden. He was a severe looking man with a wry smile in a stiff grey suit. The warden asked me if I felt sorry for the crimes that I had committed and if I made time to pray for Gods forgiveness. I felt unsure what my crimes have been but I must have assured the warden that I was sorry as he seemed pleased with my answer. I know I must of lied for I care nothing of God’s forgiveness. Before returning to my cell I asked the Warden if he might permit me a privilege in light of my good behaviour. ‘There is a space in the corner of the yard below my window which unlike the rest of the courtyard has not been filled with a mosaic. It would be my humble wish to create a mosaic as a humble gesture of gratitude for my rehabilitation.’ The wardens suspicious eye rested on the me. I could see the wardens thoughts playing across his mind. ‘He has proven himself to be a well behaved prisoner and he seems an honest enough fellow.’ After some moments thought he assured me as an honourable man that if I was sincere in my intentions then he would do his best to make it so. The warden seemed to me a vain man and fond of my flattery and along came the day when I was escorted in chains to a workshop. I was watched by a guard as I worked at my bench, chipping away at the tiny squares of stone, day after day returning in the evening in time to hear the sound of the girl sweeping in the courtyard below. It took me a long time to complete and I saw the season come and go. My hands were calloused and worn from my tireless work. The dust that I breathed when grinding down the stones had clogged my lungs and laboured my breath. When Autumn came I was struck down with the pleurisy and against the doctors advice I continued to work in the cold damp air of the workshop. I was so near to finishing that I refused to stop. I saw myself die. It was the end of winter, my ashes were scattered in the cemetery grounds at the base of a bare brick wall. Nobody cried, nobody came, no cross to mark the spot. The warden personally oversaw the laying down of the mosaic in the corner of the courtyard. It was a most astonishing and detailed piece of work far greater than anything my hand do could achieve. Winged cherubs, aloft on swirling white clouds above rolling verdant pastures. Deer drinking from crystal clear waters that flowed through tumbling ravines into great wide lakes that reflected the sky. In the centre of this idyllic scene standing on the banks of the lake stood Adam with Eve at his side in Gods great garden. Cascading across her lily-white shoulders, great curls of chestnut hair. The warden was very proud of the work and would show it off on the rare occasions that visitors would come to observe the prison. He would tell the story of the murderer who, with Gods will and the help of the wardens strict rules, had found peace and forgiveness within the prisons walls. On such occasions he would ask the girl to clean and scrub the tiles until they were spotless. The girl, bent over the two figures set in stone, imagining that she was far away with a man she had never met. She would trace the figures with her fingers and wonder who or what could have inspired such a work of beauty. The dream had an almost perfect narrative that I find unusual. Normally my dreams move seamlessly between places and people that appear to have no apparent connection or meaning. Maybe now that I have time to sleep and think for days on end I will have more of these types of dream. Dreams that are linear and clear with a beginning a middle and an end. I have thought long and hard about what it must mean and I have come to the conclusion that It need not have any meaning at all. Only that it is a sad tale. I have omitted a scene where in my cell there appeared a victorian pram. In the pram was a baby and a plastic bag. The bag was wrapped around the decomposing head of a spotted dalmatian dog. The rest of the animal was missing. I felt that the dream was better, more complete without this minor detail. It is strange, I once was frightened by my dreams and would sooner have slept a night devoid of anything that my mind might concoct. Now I see them as something of a comfort and I feel sad when I wake with barely a single image or a feeling.

 

When asked to describe Beaton, the guards would say that he was a model inmate. He appeared to go about his daily life as would an automaton. Happily performing the same daily tasks over and over again. It was his willingness to accept his situation that meant he must surely be happy there. Why wouldn't he be, he lived comfortably and had good health, a library full of books to read, time enough to think, He never wanted for anything. So the days rolled in and out like the waves on a shore and the weeks, like the tides, rose and fell away from the calendar without anything truly interesting happening. But at night his world came alive and his dreams, as real as anything that could be touched and held. The images blew away the prison walls and pulled him deep beneath the earth. Lying on his cot he would imagined that he was still in that pitch black tunnel like a corpse in an ossuary lying in its niche. His bones in tidy rows. So again he began to think of all the things he had done and he felt something peaceful growing inside and understood that everything happened for a reason. It was during these moments that he felt like he had at last found God, for why would God abandon such a man as him. It was not he who guided the dagger. He was only the hand that held it. Had not Abraham shown his devotion in equal measures. He felt a sense of peace inside and he heard again the sound of angels weeping but it was only the sound of one of the new inmates crying himself to sleep. He touched the hot tears that coursed down his cheeks and guttered around his nose. With the tips of his finger he tasted the warm salt water.

The snow had at last begun to melt. A golden light pushed through the tree tops and cast long blue shadows across the snowy ground. The azure firmament was perfectly clear save for a few wisps of cloud, which like some ghostly armada, scudded silently across the sky. A strong wind whipped up the tiny frozen crystals of ice that had settled on the treetops and in the cracks and ledges of the quarry face. Whirling and scattering them before the sun like dust falling across the beam of a projector. The light reflecting from them causing bursts of bright fairy dust to dance upon the air and drift all about. Every so often clumps of white would slide from a branch. The birds, hopping from tree to tree, chattered and whistled as they watched the world around them melt. The rivers and ponds where swollen with the gathering meltwater. The drab brown farmlands dressed with the white straws of dead grass and scattered with brown leaf confetti. Humped piles black snow withered by the side of the road into hard black lumps of dirty ice. The silence of the snow was replaced by the steady drip, drip of the melt water. Innumerable crystal orbs capturing the scene as if each itself were a camera. Hung, suspended by their surface tension alone until, unable to cling no more, they let go. And crashing