In a small, dim hospital room sits a man, his large frame awkward in the vinyl chair provided for visitors. In the bed is a woman. He watches her. His mother. Looks intently, searching for something that will make him believe this is really her. She is changed almost beyond recognition. Her body is shrunken. Sagging skin and bones. Rubble he thinks, just rubble, ready to be gathered up and disposed of. His body which is already big, feels huge. Feels like a monster, bursting out of its clothes. His knees point upwards, his elbows reach out beyond the arms of his chair. For the first time in many years his physicality seems obscene.

Hooked onto the metal bedstead is a sign. The words scrawled casually in black felt pen. Evelyn Macleod. If he is to believe these words, then this is his mother. Evelyn, he thinks, sounding the word out in his head. Even her name is strange. He has never called her that. Mum, or mother, probably even mummy, when he was small enough. But he’s big now, very big, and underneath the blanket his mother’s body is almost absent. Just a skeleton, He imagines coming out of that. Her screams as his head forces it’s way into the world. Merciless, the pain unremitting, breaking her apart. It had been like that when Lily arrived and he’d watched his wife become a stranger with the pain he couldn’t share.

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I’m watching the lights. . . red, yellow, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, red . . . tapping my feet, feeling the frustration rising up inside me, foul tasting like vomit. .  Thirty minutes. Thirty five minutes. . . redyellowgreenyellowredgreen. . . Forty minutes .. Tapping my feet. . . I’m going to scream. We edge forward, Maddy cheers in the backseat and I laugh, the frustration subsiding for a minute. But we’re still stuck, can’t go backwards or forwards, can’t turn around. I  imagine pressing a button and wings sprouting from the sides, we’d fly past everybody, straight into the supermarket.

            ‘How’d that be Maddy?’ I ask.

In the rearview mirror I see her smile, but she’s intent on something else and when I turn round she’s playing with the door locks, opening them.

            ‘Shut it’, I shout. Terrified someone will open her door and drag her away from me. That’s what happens here in the endless traffic jams, disaffected people opening doors, smashing windows, bashing drivers, stealing bags. . . maybe even children.

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The silent dark is broken by the padding of feet, drawing me slowly out of the depths of dreaming. The bedroom door opens a fraction, letting in a thin rectangle of light, then closes, drawing out the light once again. Something else has slipped in with the light. I strain my ears, listening for clues, but there’s only a sixth sense of another presence. Then comes a sigh, softer than the gentlest breeze, and a small sleepy body slips in beside me. Inside the covers, a cold foot presses on my belly.

On winter mornings the darkness lingers. I expect my children to wake with the light, later each morning, until the solstice, but that isn’t what happens. Instead they wake early, 6am, 5am, sometimes even 4am, and shuffle around the house in the cold, waiting for the sun, expecting breakfast and stories and warm fires from me. Every winter I make up rules. Tell them they mustn’t wake so early. Tell them it isn’t fair. Tell them I won’t. But I always do.

They try. For minutes at a time they hold back their restless energy and lie in bed, searching their senses for morning clues. They listen for the stillness before dawn, the distant rush of cars, birds stirring, a change in the feel of things. . . They listen until the exquisite pain of anticipation propels them out of bed and into the new day.

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‘Nowhere Man’ is set in concentric airports, literal and then increasingly metaphoric and spiritual. Ivan, the central character, escapes his thirteen years of life in an unnamed airport, only to discover his need for the safety of a psychic terminal. Nowhere Man offers a bleak vision of contemporary identity, nation, citizenship and freedom and a spectacular, satiric, anti-Dickensian view of London’s streets.’

Dr Eva Sallis

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Chapter One

Ivan tastes every angle of his moment. It is sweet, but tinged with bitterness. With a sweeping gesture he brushes the bitterness aside. It is not important. Today he is going somewhere. Today he is brimming with well being. He brings his hands to his mouth, kisses the ends of his fingers and waves benevolently to the air hostesses, so perfect in their little uniforms, their hair tucked neatly into place, their well wishes gratefully received.

‘Farewell, farewell,’ he cries before being whisked into a tunnel and sucked along with the hundreds of passengers. And in this tunnel there is just the faintest hint of the seasons. Underneath the stifling internal atmosphere he is so used to, Ivan can sense, almost smell the cold winter air of outside. He can’t believe it. Not really. After so long he has finally arrived. A dream has come true.

But at the very last moment the people before him stop suddenly, quite arbitrarily it seems, and everyone is forced to stand around under the ugly glare of fluorescent lighting with nothing to look at but each other. All of a sudden they are shy, they fiddle with baggage, peer at their passports, straighten hair and collars, avoid each others eyes. Ivan stands on the tip of his toes, staring wildly out over the sea of heads, trying to grasp what is happening ahead. He too avoids the eyes of others, not wanting to witness their guilt and fear, nor wishing to reveal his own, sensing somehow that when eyes begin to meet, then panic will follow. (more…)

in the darkness behind
closed eyelids
you can sometimes see
the rounded belly
flying fists
a foetus curling
away

only at dawn
when dews golden drops
sit glistening poised
on the perfect symmetry
of the spider’s web
can you see
the baby
strung
trembling
between worlds

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