George watched the dancing hands play with each moment, sending time forwards then backwards even side-ways …Could time move side-ways? George looked into the steadying blue eyes and realised he didn’t need to ask this question, for the eyes opened up a space behind his bruised heart and let him out to play again. He was aware of a dark shed at the end of this garden now and smelt the tired sunshine on the old wood. Something moved slowly inside and stepped towards the half open door, waiting for the boy and the woman to risk more faith than they knew they had, waiting for them to untangle their clumsy despair.
George murmured his Aunt’s name and felt his chest filling with a surge of orange light which made him feel invincible and dizzy – almost as if he were on deck of some valiant schooner enjoying the first glimpse of a fabulous new land. Shaking sorrow’s sediments from out of his head, he took his new friend’s arm and guided them both towards the shadow behind the door.
George found his mouth trying to say hibiscus. Hi-bis-cus. His saliva stolen away by the heat of the wood. Memory was warm after all. A hand trailed his as they climbed the step into the shed, and he felt fingers on his wrist counting at his pulse, fingers soft in his hair rubbing away at their mistrust. Hibiscus he whispered at the darkest corner of the shed. Hibiscus. His Aunt must hear. She had to come back to him, she had to, for he had faith in her favourite word.
Just a little sideways in time away from him, Freda wondered why being dead was so easy in the end. It collapsed all the problems she had had earlier about where she was and who she was and why she was. Now she was – wasn’t she? Definitely or probably it didn’t matter for she was making herself up as she went along, and here she was in her old shed with a rake in her hand, hearing her nephew forgive her for dying without telling him why.
