We all lead several lives at once; we all exist on several planes at once, across several moments. The world is not flat. Whoever said it was? The Ancients knew this. Music of the spheres, Aristotle. A sound is a very large thing, an echo.

I am writing a biography of extinction —- human extinction — beginning with small lives set in a small town close to the sea. Marine life reminds me of how much of what we think is living in the world is in fact submerged. Sea kelp. Kelp breeds forests and their forests are invisible. Seaweed is built around small strands. Life is like this too, moment to moment, one layer upon another. I learned this from watching old films and seeing how film grows out of theatre and how theatre grows out of small scenes — vignettes — that are turned large in the face of passion. Her face turned towards the audience underneath the light beseeching. Her hands raised, her father —- where is he? Cordelia begging to be heard, but the sound of silence rushes through her ears. Passion, a beating heart. Passion inflates everything; the bladderwrack stuck on the rock pops and pops and the sound fills her ears. Those inside orifices of ours are so large. They echo and they bang, and we are stunned, trying to listen. But we are not good at listening and the world is dying. In the meantime, we are killing one another off with our petty jealousies, our projections. All that time we spend online trying to be someone else. Feigning, pretending, accusing - this is not life —it is death and soon it will all be over.

***

And with such thoughts Edith began her third life, although no life is fully independent of another. Edith had learned this long ago: that barnacles cling to rocks and limpets too because of their strong foot muscle. Who would have thought it? Edith wouldn’t, only that Jonny had told her so. And when the strong tide comes in a limpet clamps down her shell to keep herself from being knocked off, brushed away. At low tide too she clamps down to protect her tiny pools of water, her liquid ooze, her spray. To keep away the birds who would whisk them away as prey. Tasty little molluscs, says Jonny, who knew a lot about sea creatures because he was born and bred in Whitby Bay, and he shared his creatures with Edith and Edith had become fond of them as she had been fond of Jonny. Kissed him on the cheek and clung to him that final night asking him to stay.  

‘Edie, don’t be biting so hard.’

 I’m not biting you. I’m kissing you Goodbye. I won’t get a chance tomorrow, will I? You in your uniform marching off without a second thought about me left behind. I’ll miss your cheeks, I’ll miss your bones, I’ll miss your forehead and the way your hair falls down. But it’s short now, isn’t it, you’ve gone and cut it short.

Of course, it’s short, Edie. I’m going to sea.

You need to see the horizon so you can wave back at me.

I’ll be too far gone for that, Edie –

Edith remembered the limpets. Their fan shaped umbrellas clinging to the bald rock. Their sharp tongue covered in tiny teeth for chewing upon algae and seaweed. A thin secretion oozing out of them when the panicked or when they planned. Limpet glue.

 She had spent long days alone walking the shore after Jonny left, climbing the rocks, slipping in between the cracks, twisting her ankle. She didn’t mind. Nothing seemed to matter then, and things healed quickly. Bones, muscles, nerves, shoes. Everything could be reset and repaired with a good night’s sleep; the glue that secretes from behind the eyes when you are sleeping --- she wondered how Mr. Jarvis slept and whether he would ever sleep again. Cruel what he had done, led her on. Those gloves on the counter, his hands sweating after he took them off, moist hands dabbing at the corner of her eyes. She wanted to strangle him, but she couldn’t do it alone. If Mr. Jarvis was to be put in the stocks she needed Mary, because we are all married to someone in life. Our whimpering and murmuring must go somewhere, into another heart. Our conscience, our fear, the shame that creeps around the wall sending us into sleepless nights, our tossing and turning. For several nights Edith had not been able to switch off her bedroom light.  

        ‘And are you quite sure, Edith, that what you say is correct?’

        ‘Quite correct. Mr. Jarvis is selling inappropriate material.’

        ‘What sort of materials, what are you saying Edith?’

        ‘Mr. Jarvis is selling things under the counter.’ She paused and took a small breath. ‘Magazines for men.’  She paused again and waited to see if Mary was ready.

 How to put it?

‘Of women scantily clad. You know, for pleasure.’ She had practised, but she wasn’t used to speaking like this. Who was? Apparently, some people did, often, all the time, and worse, far worse. They spent their lives speaking and thinking of body parts, how to grab them, how to get them, where to put them. And Edith saw a nude descending the stair. Mr. Jarvis at the back of the shop opening the door to girls coming and up and down the back stairs. Bare legs, stockinged legs, sheer legs, pink flesh, trotters. Mr. Jarvis liked bare legs; to fit hosiery --- up to the gusset, up and up and up he went, her mind boggled, but Edith had seen them, nudes descending. Waggling their legs, kicking back their heels, laughing. Girls with long gangly legs --- rumoured, disappeared, now returned, girls packed away on the back steps of Mr. Jarvis’s shop in the arcade.

‘Bring them around to the tradesmen’s entrance. I’ll meet you there.’ 

Then Edith spoke.

‘Mr. Jarvis is on the make; he’s doing a roaring trade.’

Words were coming, oh how they were coming, such delight at seeing . . . young girls filing up and down the stairs or girls who dressed young with a hand on the door, dark and shadowy, letting them in. His hand. Tapping each one gently on the shoulder. Tap, tippet-tap, tap, tap, tap, keeping tabs. Mr. Jarvis always kept good accounts – nice and tight --- a squeeze on the bottom. Edith could see it all.

Soon they would be nude and descending the staircase,

with Mr Jarvis following from behind,

glinting and gleaming,

ushering them

into ---

his small parlour. Young girls, or girls dressed young, still with a bit of a limp, a stutter, a fall. Awkward creatures stumbling about in the dark. They do wear ridiculous shoes these days, don’t they? Those heels, so high, I saw a girl in a café the other day and I swear she was wearing three-inch heels just to serve tables. Mary’s voice was intervening. A stumble, a trip, a fall, it’s to be expected dressed like that. Edith was feeling confident now she had let it all out -- her dark dreams -- Mr. Jarvis descending the stairs to fetch his girls, his neat outline against the sky. Sooty black and pink streaks following him behind. Cheeks daubed thickly. Lips smeared orange and red sticky on contact. Edith shuddered, such fantasies. Where do they come from?

        While Mary’s cheeks flushed pink blooms. Mary was not one for rouge, but here she was standing with her cup in her hand with the church hall dispersing, the important people draining away. Tables being folded, the last dregs of tea being tipped from the tureen -- Edith had timed it well – Mary huffing and puffing under her breath about to burst and dying to know. Mary considering. Break a principle and trade secrets, why not? Take the church accounts, not all quite as it should be, and for a moment she thought it might be worth it -- think of what it might bring --- and Mary pulled herself up tall as the burning pillar, tall as the church spire above her head.

Late Victorian and not very impressive. Lead sliding all over the place and the doves nesting and defecating all at once. If you looked closely at the back of the church, you would not think it a holy place. Plenty of silver and plenty of cleaning, enough to create a good shine. A sheen on the communion cup, the cross at the top of the nave, the smaller one in the chancery. No, that was the cathedral, this is a very modest church. If you passed through the centre of town and did not stop, you would not be disappointed. Better to carry on to the next town along; all the inhabitants knew this and none more than Mary — but a cipher — nothing but a mark upon the social records of this place. An interfering woman with a red face, her hands in every drawer pulling them open with such haste. Where are the accounts, where? Mary is dying to know. Pen in her hand, she will write him a letter, a very nasty letter. Two women conspiring can bring down a man. There are so many ways in this day and age to wage a war. Everyone is dying to eviscerate. How do you skin and bone a fish, your delicacy of a story? What knife do you pull from the drawer? The one with the silver handle.

        ‘Have you seen this first hand, Edith? Are you sure?’

        ‘I have.’ Edith’s tone wavered, but then she launched herself and carried on.

        ‘I most certainly have. Frilly knickers, a woman with her legs in the air, a man on top of her, screaming and writhing about like snakes in a pit. Disgusting.’

Edith was thinking of one those saucy postcards they sold in the kiosk off the front.  Cartoon-silly and exaggerated; pink and brown flesh and bottoms like saucers; plump men with their trousers down. She wondered who on earth bought them. Mr. Jarvis? She couldn’t quite see it, and for a moment Edith knew the whole thing was absurd. But already there was Mary red in the face, a paroquet with her beak bobbing greedily over the seeds.

‘We must proceed carefully, Edith. This will cause ructions. No one expects this sort of thing.’

Or perhaps they did. Perversion is so commonplace, and sex? Just another everyday matter. Sometimes it is lovely. Bodies churning in space, frothing up and spilling out. Seeds bursting across the ground sowing discontent. Jealousies, rivalries, looks and glances. A well-timed glance, a lance flying across the room, delicate and sharp. Catch it in your hands, it doesn’t burn, your hands and mine. Reaching across the counter, their fingers intertwining. Hers are cool, his warm, propinquity. They smile.

People turn a blind eye to passion. It is in the dark. Only one candle lit so they can see one another’s face. A candle on the windowpane; the curtains drawn; they do not scream and shout. Love is too frail to survive much noise. They must be quiet; then, after a while, go out into the sunlight. Only cowards skulk around in the dark. They go boating.

And he knows you do not get into a boat with her and hold her hand, the owl and the pussycat, unless you were willing never to speak her name. Love is a fantasy best kept to a diminutive boat and a diminutive boathouse. Small measures, small flames, do not rock the boat. The lovers had lit a stove and shared a cup of tea, the young doctor and the housewife, how terribly English. They had dried out together after their boating trip and he had announced love while she bowed low beneath him holding her cup in two hands blowing steam.

‘You know what has happened don’t you?’

And she replied ‘Yes,’ which was truthful, and the doctor suddenly beamed. He had announced love and she had said yes. His smile was as long as their rowing boat, ear to ear, but he was not a good sailor and they had come a-cropper under the low-lying bridge. They did not know the river, the currents, the tides. What river were they on? No, it was a lake. One of those old-fashioned lakes you find in municipal parks. There was a picnic, there must have been a picnic, and there had been the glance – several -- and she had known, and he had known, they had known together. That tug from the middle of your guts -- not your heart as they usually say --- but from the diaphragm, the lungs, a tight band girdling you. Without him you cannot breathe; the world is constricted, buckled up. Without him you are angry, alone. Hell hath no fury, Edith knew.

Oh, how she knew! It is easy to pull a man down once you have started. Just a small twist and turn in the right direction, a slight redesignation of facts. Lift the lid off the can of worms and let the worms spill out. Set the can down carefully and soon the birds will come and feed, peck his eyes out. Ructions, there will be ructions, but it depends on who is looking and what they wish to see. If you wish to see something nasty you will see it. A toad dropping down a well smashing his head on the bottom. Blood and guts and gore of the animal kind. Or a snake sliding down a ladder. A vicious viper sniping at your legs, her legs. A glamorous woman falling stone drunk to the floor her mouth hanging open like a trap door. Can’t you keep it shut, dear?

A pretty woman turning grotesque around the mouth as the alcohol hits her. If she’d had a hammer in her hand, she would have done him in. Violence is never far from the surface and in a small town there is always someone ready to hear – LIBEL --- it sounds like a bell. Ring, ring, until someone in a position of authority hears and is summoned. Edith always knew she was going to be called as witness, to explain exactly when it was the penny dropped. That moment when she realised it was all over between her and him because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Mr. Jarvis had said something unforgiveable. She had heard him, his ‘no’. The train hurtling through the darkness. Her body on the line.

She looked out. Nothing but her face pale and pinched her thin nose bumpy on the bridge, beaky. Not the wide cheekbones nor the large smooth forehead, the ivory gleam, the warm glow of her skin. A pert face looking for the next thing, but it was not beautiful. Eyes too small and narrow and not enough flesh. Edith’s was a thin face. Bones too petite, the architecture incomplete, too modest. Features eked out. Eyes watery and red when tired; an albino rabbit with pink eyes. Edith blinked too much and now his mouth was forming an ‘O’ she blinked more.

Why couldn’t people keep their mouth shut, just like that meddling woman on the train? Spoiled the whole thing by barging in like that, mouth moving nineteen to the dozen. It was a trap --- someone had sent her, this ghastly woman, and now everything was ruined. The magic, the moment, the tearing pain – it was quite delicious --- the sharp thorns, the holly and the ivy. Of all the trees in the wood the holly bears the crown. Her red berries are gall – too late - the train is pulling out, white smoke steaming, covering her face, black marks where the mascara has run. The woman on the platform looks through the darkness and sees only a blank – her life – and steps over.

From POND LIFE: A BIOGRAPHY OF EXTINCTION