The Translation of the Bones Read Free

loudness. Thunder almost. Swans and wind. The winds were the same winds all through time, all through the world. Born when the world was made, trapped by it like wild birds in bell glass, their wings forlornly beating, forced to roam around it until the end of time.

In St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Mary-Margaret lay in bed, with stitches in her scalp. Every hour, on the hour, a night nurse woke her. What month is this? she asked. Do you know your postcode? Who is the Prime Minister? Mary-Margaret had been extremely lucky, the nurses and the doctor said. She had cut her head, apparently, on the sharp edge of the tiled step leading to the altar, but it was a flesh wound merely, nothing graver; no fracture or serious damage. Mild concussion. She would be none the worse for it. Her wrist was broken, though, where she had fallen on it, and she was badly bruised. Best to stay there for a day or two, rest and recover, then she’d be as right as rain. Meanwhile Mary-Margaret was still a bit confused. What had happened just before her fall? She could not quite remember but images came back to her: a bleeding head, clear eyes looking into hers. She tried to tell the nurses who floated in and out of her dreams, but mostly they just hushed her: rest now, dear, they said. After all, this patient was concussed. Only one of them, Kiti Mendoza, stopped to listen. She had heard that this fat woman had been brought to hospital from a church. He opened his eyes, the woman was saying. He looked at me. His head was bleeding but it wasn’t my fault. Really, it was not my fault.
    Stella Morrison also lay in bed, listening to her husband breathe. His snuffling joined the other noises of the night; an open sash window rattling in the wind, a motorcycle in the distance, the sighing branches of the silver birch outside. Often sleepless, Stella was in the habit of wandering around the house at night, moving in the darkness throughthe empty rooms. It was a habit born in the days when her children were still small and she, a light sleeper like all mothers, would wake at the slightest sound. Then, she would have gone into their bedrooms to kneel beside them, to listen to the rhythm of their dreams. She would know if the dreams were calm or hectic by their bedclothes, tangled round them or composed. Felix in particular spent heated nights; his hair was often wet with sweat, and she’d stroke it off his forehead, breathing in the sweet small-boy scent of him, her sleeping child.
    If the children had ever woken to find her there beside them, would they have felt she was intruding? She thought not: they would simply have accepted her presence in the night as they did during the day, unquestioned as the source of all they wanted, trivial or large. Besides, it is difficult to wake a sleeping child.
    At that time she would have welcomed the quiet of the night. The voices of children had filled every minute of the day; there was never time to think her own thoughts or repair the raveled threads of life. After she had tucked the kicked-off duvets back and kissed her children lightly, she would often go from room to room, straightening rugs and cushions, putting toys away, making neat piles of the books and papers Rufus always scattered. That way she could greet the next day with lightness in her mind. Imposing order brought repose. She was familiar with the night sounds then; the creakings and the rustlings, the intermittent humming of the fridge, the sudden twang the piano sometimes made as if a ghost inside its case had plucked a string, occasionally a hunting owl. There would be all the same sounds now in the furtherreaches of the house but tonight she did not care to meet them. These unpeopled spaces, which usually seemed quite kindly, tonight threatened to unsettle; there was too much emptiness in them. For no clear reason she found herself thinking of the palaces of extinct kings. Fortresses on the crowns of hills, as large as towns, like labyrinths or