All the People Who Are Gone

 

He lost the end of the tape again, fumbled at it with blunt fingertips. He couldn’t catch the edge of the end; realised that he had a corner of tape stuck on his tongue, spat, wriggled his mouth around, spat dry again. A triangle of white flew and stuck to the glass. It had felt uncomfortable in behind his teeth, but it was tiny now that it was out.

Without warning, the roll suddenly yielded to his insistent scrabbling, but his gaze was held beyond the shaking square panes, by the bending trees and the boiling leaden sky, by the flight of a crow, an arrow fired on the remorseless west wind.

In his hand, drawn out by bunched fingers now, a length of tape waited. As if to remind him of his task, the wind that howled outside changed to a tuneless high pitched whistle, all the better to mock the back window and to chill the dark back hall. Tape applied, he pressed it home with his thumbs, his tongue sticking out as he concentrated. Thirty five lengths of tape bitten off and stuck, one to go, one more to stop the whistling.

The ragged end came up; he pulled, satisfied and then stared in disbelief, almost disgust. With a sickening change of sound the tape had come to an end leaving the length between his hands half sticky, half rough paper separated from the roll’s cardboard centre, enough to put his teeth on edge. He looked at the last remaining pane side, back to the tape and back to the pane, his hands falling in defeat at last.

‘Huw, Huw,’ came the call.

Huw let out a sigh halfway to a disappointed croak, he threw the remains of the roll to the floor; it lay there in the doorway of the darkest dampest cupboard in the house. He stamped off, answering as he always did, his mother’s call.

‘What is it, Mam?’ He pushed the door and went into the warmth of the main room. Straight away he saw that she’d moved, stood up and shunted her chair about. She had her back to him and was looking down. He guessed before she spoke.

‘I fell asleep and dropped my glasses, Love. Can’t find them at all.’

‘Oh, Mam.’ Huw had been crawling under that chair looking for his Mam’s glasses since he was small enough to fit right under it. ‘Why didn’t you have them on the thing?’

‘They were on the thing. Huw, Love. I don’t know what happened.’

Huw was already on his way over. He dropped to his knees with a grunt and started his search, his big hands reaching under the footstool and back  towards the wall behind the little side table. The carpet was worn smooth, its tight weave almost threadbare where his Mam’s feet rested and in the directions she most often shuffled.

‘It’s too dark to look properly,’ the old woman said. She was right, but it wasn’t like it made any difference to her, without her glasses on she could barely find her chair, let alone anything fallen to the floor, to the room’s corners, into nooks behind long undisturbed furniture, into the tenebrous depths lit only by the glow of the fire.

‘Why did you move the chair, Mam?’ The despair in Huw’s voice came unbidden the moment he found the glasses. They were broken in two at their bridge, snapped on either side of the square chair leg. He scooped them up and pushed on one knee to rise to his feet.

‘Have you found them?’

‘Yes, Mam. You’ve broken them.’ Despair gave way to annoyance. He swallowed then and sighed.

‘Oh dear, I’m sorry, Huw.’

‘Oh Mam.’ He took her shoulders gently in his rough hands and sat her back in her chair. She patted the back of his wrist and tutted quietly, repeating her apologies. ‘I shall have to go to see Mr Nelson now, Mam.’

‘Silly woman I am. You leave it until tomorrow, Huw, don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’

Huw knew though how being without her glasses scared his Mam. She felt helpless, even more helpless than usual. He couldn’t bear it and he couldn’t put off going to see Mr Nelson, there’d be no point.

Outside, the rain had stopped. That wouldn’t last long though. Huw stamped his boots on more firmly and pulled his Dad’s coat around his shoulders. It didn’t matter how long he’d been wearing it, it was still his Dad’s coat.

There was more rain on the wind. At this time of year he couldn’t smell the earth in the vegetable field; he tramped past battered rows of leeks and sniffed. Rain. Rain and leeks. He shoved his nose into his sleeve and thought of his Dad; tried to be brave as he stepped through the gap in the hedge. The wind bit his cheeks and he put his foot on the broken road, tufts of grey green running down its middle and the verges pushing in from the sides.

He counted his paces as he went. Two hundred to the rusted car, another way marker. He pushed down on his dread, stepped around the ruined thing and went on. There was a little bit of shelter here between the high hedges, but Huw didn’t like it. Boughs fell here every winter, it made for easy wooding. Now though, he was just afraid he’d hear a crack and end up squashed, all alone, dead and nobody would know. Nobody except his Mam, who would worry and then guess, and wouldn’t be able to come to find him.

Nothing fell though. Where the broken road turned downhill to the right, he patted his pocket, checking for his Mam’s glasses. He stepped through the trees to his left, over a hedge-bank and into the scrubby woodland beyond.

The ground was spongy beneath his feet, in places entirely waterlogged. There’d been fields here when he was very little, now twisted thorns and long saplings drawn up between them were twice his height and more. He could have gone on down to the crossroads to get to Mr Nelson’s by drier paths, but he might have met people that way, and he would have had to have walked past all those cold empty houses, staring at him blind-eyed and tearful in the rain.

He was relieved to see Mr Nelson’s house, to plant his feet firmly on the track that ran up the hill there. He’d slipped and sunk all the way from the broken road, could feel water between his toes. He didn’t want to think about it, but he’d need new boots from somewhere before long.

The thumping of his wet red fist on Mr Nelson’s front door brought Huw’s mind back to the job in hand and he felt around once again for the two halves of his Mam’s glasses.

‘Huw. You look cold. Come along in.’ Mr Nelson smiled and drew Huw into the narrow hallway; pushed the door closed against the weather behind him. ‘How’s it going then?’

Huw was looking at himself in Mr Nelson’s round mirror. His mother wouldn’t have them on her walls. His round wind-blown face surprised him; hair stuck down to his scalp and lines across his forehead. He was about to smile experimentally at himself when he remembered that Mr Nelson was right there next to him.

‘Go through, Huw, go through. There’s someone here with me, but I’ll be with you in a minute.’

Knowing that he was about to meet someone else, Huw peered through the kitchen door and took half a pace in. He looked down and glanced up, nervous. A tall thin man, long silvery hair tied back, raised a hand and his eyebrows; Huw nodded, chin down, eyes rolling. Mr Nelson came past him and immediately started speaking to the man in English. They spoke together so fast that Huw couldn’t follow it.

After a few seconds he glanced out of the back window and noticed how one of Mr Nelson’s apple trees had gone over in the winter storms. He let the babble of English drift off into the sound of the wind outside; watched the sky as the clouds ate up a fugitive patch of blue.

At last the two men seemed agreed. Me Nelson took a box full of pairs of glasses and the man hefted a full bag, slipped it inside his backpack and left. He spared a smile for Huw as he went, and Huw nodded and stepped sideways to let him out into the hallway.

‘Go on in, Huw,’ Mr Nelson said once he’d let the man out of the house. Huw had been in the kitchen doorway the whole time. ‘I’m sorry about that. All done now. What can I do for you? How’s your Mam? Would you like something to drink?’

Huw shook his head quickly. ‘Mam’s broken her glasses, Mr Nelson.’ He pulled his hand out of his pocket and presented the two pieces.

‘Oh dear. How did she do that? Well, they’re no good now, are they?’ He scratched his head; grey curly hair flopped around his ears. ‘Let’s see what we can find. I’ll have to take these lenses out mind you.’

Huw followed Mr Nelson through the other door and down a cool hallway along the walls of which hung strings of onions. Huw looked at them appreciatively, they’d kept well and were as good as his own. Then they went through into the room that Huw knew was Mr Nelson’s glasses room. It was also where he sometimes looked into people’s eyes.

There was a wall of drawers in there. Huw shifted his weight from foot to foot as Mr Nelson started searching through. After he’d opened a few drawers, the old man paused and decided that even as he searched he’d find homes for the glasses he’d just received from his visitor. In that way, Huw saw nearly all of the drawers opened and closed; every one of them was full of glasses.

‘How many are there?’ Huw asked.

‘Thousands, Huw boy, thousands. Your Mam will have to come for an eye test soon, Huw.’

Huw looked at the back of Mr Nelson’s head. He’d been fascinated by the man’s searching and didn’t know how to deal with this new challenge. He licked his lips. ‘Where do all the glasses come from, Mr Nelson?’ he asked.

Slowly the man set down the pair in his hand. He turned around and regarded Huw in a way that made him look sad. Huw thought that perhaps he’d upset him. He felt stupid for having spoken. Mr Nelson sniffed and rubbed his nose. ‘They come from all the people who are gone, Huw, all the people there used to be.’

‘All the people who are dead? Like Dad?’

‘Not like your Dad, Huw, not really. I mean all the people there used to be when there were a lot more, when people used to live in the towns and the cities, back before you were even a little baby.’

Huw nodded, trying to imagine that time as he had before, a time of brightly lit places with lots of people. ‘And you get their glasses?’ he said, ‘All the dead people’s glasses?’

Mr Nelson nodded and turned back to the drawers.

‘I don’t know how I’ll get Mam up here, Mr Nelson,’ Huw said. He was rarely moved to break a silence, but something about this one made him want to.

‘Here we are,’ Mr Nelson said with a little note of triumph, enough to cheer Huw up. He turned again, this time brandishing a pair of glasses that looked to Huw to be identical to his Mam’s broken ones. Straight away the old man set to swapping lenses; Huw peered over, enthralled at the tiny tools and Mr Nelson’s clever hands. ‘No, no, well, don’t you worry about that, Huw. I’ll come and see your Mam at your house once the spring comes.’

The case snapped shut on the pair of glasses and Mr Nelson pressed it into Huw’s hands. ‘I brought you some eggs,’ Huw said and carefully extracted a well wrapped bundle from the inside pocket of his Dad’s coat. ‘Mam said to ask you if I should bring anything else later.’

‘Now, Huw,’ Mr Nelson said, ‘you know that I was good friends with your Dad. You and your Mam are family to me. You tell your Mam thank you for the eggs and that I’ll come to see her soon.’

Huw took one last glance at himself in the mirror as Mr Nelson opened the front door and then out he went into the late afternoon. The wind wrapped itself around him and buffeted him down the hill, across the mud and back into the trees.

Toes thoroughly wet now, he pushed through and back to the broken road. He stood up there on the hedge-bank and saw his house. He rubbed his eyes and squinted but couldn’t quite bring home into focus; worried for a moment and then forgot all about it as the high trees swayed and creaked overhead, all the way past the rusted car to the hedge and the field beyond.