TRASH CAT LIT

Bronwen Griffiths

The Walk From Tenterden

It was a hot day in August, the sky blue as an eye, when we set off down the path. But we lost the signs and the way. We circled fields and copses, we undulated through woods and crept past gardens, we saw a wren and an adder and did not know where we were.

We were lost on the walk from Tenterden, circling fields and copses, giddy with the heat of the day, passing first the empty pond and the man mowing the grass, and then returning.

On the walk from Tenterden we did not speak of our lust for ice cream and cold water though our feet were hot and heavy like the ploughed clay soil where the path stopped and still the map told us nothing. 

It is difficult to write the story of the walk from Tenterden, how we got lost and saw an adder. We were like two flies caught in the spoke of a stationery wheel, spinning round and round in one place until suddenly released and spit into the air. We were lost and then not at all. 

Pembrokeshire

The telegraph pole follows the road which follows the hedge which skirts the hill which falls to the tree which follows the long smoky line of clouds

The tent is a little pointed hat in a field bordered by gorse bushes and a large enigmatic grey stone that has stood here for thousands of years. The tent has stood but one day.

The dog is sleeping, my husband is sleeping, the children sleep, the flies also, but the wind does not sleep and the moon opens its eyes and blinks.

The child is crying from the bottom of the field where the grass is long. Her voice is thin while the wind’s voice is fierce and soon the child’s voice is taken by the wind and is gone. 

A beetle is caught in my hair, how it likes to cling. When I try to retrieve it, the beetle crawls further into the tangled salt thatch that is my hair and now, when I reach out, I feel its strange clacking feet on my fingers like a small robot.

The rock pools are a battle of limpets, barnacles, anemones, fish and shrimps. Who knows what goes on in such places, what life is like there when the sea comes in?

The seal lies on the rocks, her paws against her chest, a beached seal white against the grey pebbles, the stain of blood dark, her head cut open. She is no longer of this world but looks as if she were staring up from the pages of a newspaper that speaks of war.

I follow the telegraph pole, to the grey stone, to find the tent and sleeping.

Bronwen Griffiths writes both long form and short form fiction. She recently published a novel, Longshore Drift, based in Dungeness. Her short fictions have been widely published.

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