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.
