Thunder outside and George was looking for bruises.

Behind each eye he felt pressure. Something was eating his head. A bursting of some mental dam bent on sweeping him away to a country as far away as happiness. For today he was not happy. In fact he was very unhappy.   I am not happy he called to Musk the Mongrel dog who had wandered into this house  years before he was born  and had never left as no one  was sufficiently interested to  banish the creature or welcome him in. Musk flipped an ear over and sat down staring at George.  

And just because he wanted a bruise, his Aunt, out of the infinite kindness of her heart and because she could, painted  a rich dark purple stain on his arm. His left forearm it had to be and through she was very new to all this spirit messaging, she jabbed through the iillusory sponginess that separated this world from death's space and drew the bruise as a small elegant island, surrounded by an archipelago of freckles.

The face in the wall watched all that went on and did not approve. The disapproval was expressed subtly at first, a mere flicker of admonition through a slight smudging of outlines as the face hardened about the forehead spreading downwards to that mouth.

Then as they carried on without care, without conscience, the face released the hardness and let one colour run  into another, darkening the red, deepening the black, spreading a stain that George noticed because he was so alone these days. All days in fact,  now that his Aunt was gone. Indeed if George hadn't had the face to look at now , he doubted very much if anyone would have noticed him at all. Looking at some one else was a skill, it really was. It took time and care, and all these things  seemed of the past nowadays, for with his Aunt's death, the world's eyes had fallen away. In this  sightless place , he wandered through her house each day, listening to the faint, hoarse whispering of dark suited men with snapping brief cases, and the click clack of women with narrow eyes devouring papers which promised so much they believed, yet so far had delivered so very, very  little.

George's father stood at the front door of his late sister's house, carelessly smoking as he had always done, watching them all, smiling at their hopes which grew like grey tentacles about the house, choking at the heart of George's Aunt who now stood in turn powerless, watching them back, praying the face in the wall could heal that which her soul could not.

George smelt the scent of greed along the corridors of his Aunt's old home. Each carpet held a pattern which seemed to tell him more about these figures which lay littering the tables in the kitchen pored over by eyes which would never return a look. Greed had a humming sound, a chorus insinuated itself upwards to the attics, to this gallery where George would sit reading, where he felt comfortable enough to remember his Aunt, a memory he knew, beyond doubt, this face in the wall knew as well as he.

George's favourite memory was of soap. She had loved yellow tar soap and they had washed her last dog together under the yard tap whilst she told him about Carmen and the colours around his head, and why he must never ever forget Demeter. Cluedo had shook herself all over him, splashing the tar all over his bare arms and then just when they had been talking about her, Demeter had arrived back from somewhere and had pulled his hair and he knew he was alive.

It was as if she was at least two people, each with their entirely separate habits.  There was this woman  now with the mottled grey face who had forgotten how to talk to anyone and who spoke as if there were quarried rocks in her mouth and then there was this space in her head where someone else lived on water. Someone who could drift. Someone who was lazy and curious. And if she tipped her head even slightly sideways then she was aware of a river and heat and the smell of carefree skin.

It was as if his Aunt had been preserved in honey. Her voice sounded nearly as he wanted her to sound and she looked almost like the face at the front of his head, but there was something else now, death had tinted her, fractured her so she was clear and cloudy at the same moment. She threw off light and darkness  washed up so he felt, at his feet.

George hadn't seen his Aunt for three years. He had asked her to return in so many different ways, that now all he had left of her was this autumn picture he now imagined was  lodged  permanently under his fringe,  so that when he frowned deeply, he could feel her fingers scratching lightly at his scalp. When they told him quietly that she was dead,he had wanted to hiss at them and hurtled to their favourite bench laying  face down on the wood, grinding his head savagely into the slats. Wood soothed him. He had tried to inhale something of what they had talked about that summer. He wanted to smell again the sandalwood of her hands. Everything  that ever happened he believed, was held somewhere, waiting, and that somewhere could be regained.  'Things will always linger- even when you are I are gone, 'she had told him calmly, in that low, dark voice, which sounded cavernous with an echo he never quiet mamaged to catch.  The wood had held him tightly because he was desperate and he had watched his tears fall through the long planks onto the clay beneath, each one,  another  slow memory of her.

Of course she hadn't been his real aunt after all people told him and it was very sad,  but perfectly ok to be sad , naturally,  and then they went on scattering words like cheap sawdust and he wanted to choke them. Or was it just himself gasping for any reason to breathe,  even  more time,  when she had climbed out of her bed and gone.

She wanted to taste blood. There was a certainty about her mortality which consoled; no lie; no obfuscation; no false hopes. Just the simplicity of blood. And the strange thing about her certainty was the relief that she felt when she had known that this was all she needed to know:

'Tell me something you know to be true. '

Henry James' cousin had asked for some proof of tangibility and katherine wanted the relief of unlayered, untextured reality where nothing hid beneath whatever passed( and she was not sure it passed) for something that could endure. Give me that above all else she said and she felt fierce. Suddenly, lovingly, fierce.

And then she knew that this must be love. It had arrived without the comfort of shadows or structured cleverness.....and didn't she abhor all these things? She did. But her secret and she was sure this stranger had smelt it on her the first time they had met was that she needed blood; blood tenderness and bloodied connection.

Life and death and conjuring images. For the woman was a conjurer and the trick was less sleight of hand than knowledge that everything could be.Everything could be held. Here.And without this, there was no there or here.

She wanted blood. Bloodied connection. Intimacy without convention. Pulse deep. Lupine fierce. Rest. The length of an arm about her head. Her hair. The fold of skin. Elbow and knee. Dissolving me and you.

Just an us.

 There.

Here.

There...

The plants looked grey today and even the old crow seemed preoccupied. She had dressed carefully and wrapped a scarf about her throat and head. When she looked to the right, her head started to ache and she regretted neglecting breakfast. The oat breakast had reminded her of some dark sty and she craved coffee, a last residue of intimacy. She had told the young stranger that she had little taste left for stories, and that her  exhaustion was eroding away every simple detail of her first life. For this did feel new and yet so ancient that her bones told her they were ready to settle her deep down below the dry earth, touching the hands of hundred year old souls, who could still glimpse their former homes from here, should they hanker after their  responsibilities still. The dull stone windows remained hollow eyed, removed.

 How Russian I must be now, Katharine said to no one and her mouth shaped around a name that she knew she would never write out: Igor. Prince Igor. Let me write a line about Igor and a firm jawed woman in a long dress with the smell of mint about her and toes she could worship because her faith was restored.Let me know  the sound of quick steps across a small courtyard and the laughter of dark eyes. She had awaited tenderness all her life and now it had arrived she was dying of weariness amongst the smell of sheep. And what gentle sheep they were all demure with their regulated chewing and contentment. They occasionally eyed her as she stood trying to breathe in the new way, her chest fermenting against her attempt to control its strange echoing sounds.

She wanted to spit.

The dog with golden eyes  watched the woman with the stick picking her way across the church yard. Somehow she needed him to watch her find this place and he was not moving from this spot at all. Each time the woman stopped at another grave, she nodded at  the stone, reading the words, trying to find a story behind the chiselled summaries of finished lives. Her head bent lower as she read.

Now there was another woman on the path, a woman who could walk quickly, carrying a flowered crimson bag, stuffed full with bread sticks and wine. If the dog had been a Christian he would have raised an eyebrow at this autumn picnic amongst the gravestones, but he believed in nature instead and so saw the second figure encircle her left arm around the waist of the older woman guiding her on, through St Thomas's long dead to a bench built for the third daughter of the village doctor.

Cheese for madame. Not a question at all and so  the dog watched on, waiting for nature to take her course. For nature would, she needed these human beings to risk a day again.

In the reflection of the dog with the golden eyes, Katherine's soft mouth took in the white pieces of cheese. Crumbs fell onto her coat and were brushed lightly away like snow. Red wine to her lips and more cheese, and a piece of apple fed slowly by a mittened hand who seemed to have all the time in the world.

Is it dawn yet?  Should we stay here for a while?