The Girl They Call The World

Both of us are worried someone’s going to find out. Someone’s going to see, someone’s going to realise, and that will destroy everything.

This is our favourite place. It’s our hill.

Alice says we have to come here because it makes us closer to the cobalt sky. At this height, it’s like she can reach her arms up and stroke the white clouds – run her warm fingers against the soft cotton, caress their curves.

But it’s not the clouds we’ve come to see – no. We’re here for the aeroplanes.

We’ve been doing this for a few months now.

At first, I wasn’t sure.

I said, ‘Can’t we go to the common, it’s closer to home, we can look at the sky from there?’

Alice stared me out with that beautiful frown of hers and said, ‘No, Dave, there’s people there. They will see us. It has to be on the hill if you want to look at planes. Got to be close to them,’ she said.

And then her smile.

‘Got to be close enough to smell the metal,’ she said, ‘caress the engines, stroke the landing gear.’

And she wants us to come here twice a day. Morning, evening. Because this is where they pass over, the planes. Flight path.

But I just hope we don’t get caught.

Let me tell you about when we come here in the morning, because I want to do her justice.

That’s when the light is just breaking, and everyone round here is still asleep.  The sky is crisp, and the air is as fresh as a gentle and polite slap on your face.

We love to look up at the planes as they climb high into the sky, and as they take off you can hear the engines screaming, and she says they’re like some prehistoric steel birds that have been unearthed and are fighting and screaming for their freedom.

And they lift and they roar and they shout their desire to break free of the Earth, free from the ground and the soil and they want to reach up, climb up, fly up… up into the blue, and they soar, and they race, in their rush to explore the world and go above and beyond and go… out of sight, and out of mind.

To meet the world.

She says, ‘Dave, do you see what they’re doing? They’re finding out for themselves what the world is all about. To see the world and make the world their own.’

That’s how she puts it. Do you like the way she says that? I do.

And let me tell you about when we come back, at dusk, because I think you should know all about this.

That’s when the night starts to fall, but it isn’t yet black; and as she says, you’ve still got enough light in the sky to find your way round the hill, but you know that black is drawing into the dark blue gently, slowly, a slow kiss around the planet to lull it into a soft slow sleep.

That’s when the people round here are indoors for the day, and they’re not looking. And we’re alone.

And that’s when the planes are coming back, and they wink red and blue, that soft signal, soft despite the roaring of the bullet engines, and she says it’s like they’re saying, ‘We are coming home, we have been to places and seen things, we have changed for the better. We are coming back to you as something else from when you last saw us.’

‘We are growing, we have found ourselves in the world and we are doing the best we can to make the best of our lives.’

And she feels they’re saying, ‘We are growing and developing as creatures, as beings, as life. We are doing our best to touch the world, to know it, to claim it, to grasp it, and to steal it. To hug it to ourselves in our hands and clasp it to our chests. To make it our own and develop and improve ourselves and grow.’

‘We have come into this world unasked, but we will seize our chance, and make the most of the world around us, and go into it and return with it, having made it our own.’

And she loves to see those various lights caressing their bodies as they come into land, as they come home to their sleepy, still, waiting, slumbering, watching, and waiting, land.

With my lips a soft kiss against her cheek, I say, ‘Explain those lights to me.’ Because I know it makes her glad to have the chance to explain them.

And so she points them all out to me: ‘Those are the navigation lights; that one’s the strobe. Don’t forget the beacon. Those are the landing lights. See the logo light? And the wing inspection lights.’ She loves them all.

I say, ‘But what light do you like best?’

And she says, ‘The cabin lights.’

And she’s right. Because, despite the distance, you can still make out those small windows, and that soft yellow reading light, and you wonder who those people are in the seats, where have they been, what did they do, what do they want.

And when the plane lands at the airport at night, in the dark, with the cold moon watching and they leave, you think, ‘Where will they go, what will they do next?’

She loves all that. Well, we both love all that.

And as her eyes are locked on the sky she says, ‘I want to travel! I need to travel! I want to rush out into the world and escape myself, escape identity, get out of my head. I want to escape from this island of bone, and this transient skin that is meant to die and pass away, and I want to become the blue.’

‘To become something that will last longer than I will. Something longer than I am. I want to become the blue and let it become me. I want the Nile of Egypt to pulse in my veins, and the rainfall of the Amazon to dance in my throat.’

She says, ‘When I come back to you from my travels around the world, I want to pass on all these things to you. So that my words can hold all these places, my words can be the tender keys for you. And when I speak to you, the air in my throat shall be stolen from the breeze in the Caribbean. And you will feel that the world is coming through me to meet you.’

And during this I steal my glances at her – I read that in a book, it sounds good doesn’t it, but it’s true. I steal my glances at her. I love to look at her face. Joy. Enraptured.

But like I said, both of us are worried someone’s going to find out. Someone’s going to see, someone’s going to realise, and that will destroy everything.

You might be wondering what we’re so frightened about.

Well listen to me, and I will tell you why.

[end of extract]

Copyright © Paul Badger 2008

~ by Paul Badger on 23 April, 2008.