Toulmin Prize Winner: My life through Colin
June 2010
by Kenneth Paul Stephen
I should probably tell you about Colin. I do things.Then I describe them to Colin.That way, he feels he has done them, too. There is stuff we do together, like watching the seals in the harbour, or me pushing him to WH Smith on the High Street to look at any new books that might have come in.
But mostly what he does are the things I have done. Then I leave him in his wheelchair, in his one-bedroom flat, and go and do more things so there is always something fresh.When I leave, I say: ‘Bye pal’, or ‘Bye Colin’.
He says: ‘See ya, Gav’ and I walk out the door. It may be raining or the streets might be busy. There could be a cat on the path or you might see the light reflected in puddles, but my life continues and Colin’s, basically, stops.
A couple of days later, I return with new experiences, gift them to him, and he becomes Colin again. He says his life is like some road he once saw by a motorway. There was a gate where the old road was blocked off. You could still see the white lines men had made in the middle of the tarmac but then the road just ended and was covered over by grass. The grass had self-seeded. That part of the road is Colin.
I have to describe feelings to him, mostly. This is hard for me because I am not sure if I feel much. If I do, I usually don’t want to speak about it. If it is a subject he likes, he presses me for details; little thoughts which might have passed through my head. He likes to know if I was hungry or if there was background noise or maybe even bird song.
More than anything else, though, Colin wants to have sex. Colin won’t ever have sex. It is up to me to have it for him so I can tell him what the feeling might be like if he ever did, but I just don’t feel like it just now. I don’t think my present prospects of sex are very good at all.
It’s the first anniversary.
I’ve been thinking of the Castanet and the puffed-up body of my father; his ears and canals and rib cage full of water.
My father would be 58 now. For me, he will tick, tick away like a ship’s clock until they bring him out of the North Sea.Then he will stop ticking. Thunder rattles and sometimes I think the sea has plans for me.
The wheels stick on wet cobbles. I tilt Colin slightly in the wheelchair to get over the lip of a stone, then right him again.
“Have you had sex?” he asks.
“I only saw you, Tuesday.”
“Aye. This is Thursday.”
“So, that means I only had yesterday.”
“Christ, how long does sex take?”
We laugh.Over the road, the roof of a Vauxhall Vectra has become a dance floor for terns.The breeze is a ‘see-through’ kind.There is some peach about the sky, threads of translucence like dried children’s glue.
Colin says it is ‘pink-hurting-light-over-chimney-pots’. He describes things the way they are to him. A bit like the road. I have noticed he thinks of himself as things that don’t live. He is a ski centre, too.“One where the chairlifts swing and creak that rusty noise. But there are no people because there is no real chance of snow.”
“Have you told the skipper of the _Danzig?_” he asks.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know.”
We stop beside the window of the Outdoor shop. A woman clings to the inside of the glass. She has a duster and hair like cauliflower florets. She squeaks at the window with All-Purpose Flash; arranges waterproof map covers. Even through the milky pane, I feel she has entered our conversation.
Colin doesn’t mind. “I thought you loved the sea,” he says, staring at something inside, through the arc of the girl’s open legs. “Remember that time you were out. You said it felt like trying on a new jacket and even before you had both arms in, knowing it would become your favourite.”
“I know, it was like that.”
“And remember, you told me the size of that small bunk and those aches. You told me not to think of them as sore aches because you said if aches could be happy, they were happy and glad aches.”
“Aye I know but it feels different. My father’s still down there.”
I pretend to shiver. “Can we go inside or something, Colin?”
I push him to a tall stand of books. Colin can only see the titles on the lower rungs properly. He points to one. I get it down for him.
“Is it still as painful? he asks, sniffing the shiny cover.” I mean, it’s a year past now?”
I look at the pictures, lots of men labouring up peaks. I feel like I have practised this question. Maybe it’s something I ask myself, without really knowing. Am I fine? Am I better now?
“Do you know the church by the old scout hall? The one where the slates flew off last winter and all the windows are panned in?” I say.
“Aye, between Dalgety’s and Domino’s pizza.”
“Aye.Well, kids throw stones in there.It makes a particular noise. It’s hard to explain. The sounds the stones make when they land is not a sound I’ve heard anywhere else. I was thinking I feel like that. That noise. If someone could listen to me, I think that’s the noise I would make.”
Colin puts the book down in his lap. His eyes flicker with what seems like recognition.
“Aye,” he nods.“I know that noise. Definitely. Aye. I’ve heard that as well.”
We don’t say anything for a minute or more. We are just us, being us; being close without words. We both sniff the rubber smell in the air and blink and look around in this same place. Our eyes come back, to focus on us again.
“Give us a wee push, Gav.”
I nudge the chair forward, just enough to lend momentum. With his one good hand, he wheels himself to the counter. He lays a book down, in front of the teller.
There is a man on the sleeve, driving a tiny ice axe into a mountain. Touching the Void. Colin pulls a tenner from the pouch round his waist and the new-looking note curls in front of the boy at the till. I pull his blanket up higher, over his rubbishy legs and wonder why I feel the need to do that.
“Do you want this wrapped,” the assistant asks. “Is it a present?”
“No, it’s for me,” Colin says and I know, as soon as the guy reddens and his head lowers, that he will not look at Colin again during the transaction.
And I know that, because he does that, Colin will say something. So I wait.
“Well, I’m not going to buy a book about a bloke who can’t feel anything from the ribs down. No much of a read, that, is it?”
I let Colin wheel himself out. I know, even walking behind him, he’s glad he’s said something. But the wheels turn faster. Even in his small triumph, I know he craves to go.
“Let’s do the seals,” he says outside, letting me push again. His breath is filmy in his chest. We leave the shop behind, physically, and in our thoughts, and make for the harbour. I coil the bag with the book around one of the chair’s push handles.
Spots of rain fall illogically. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. Five or six seals duck and glide by the hull of Arcana. They watch us park up at the bench and pitch their backs up out of the oily water to signal they’re keen to play. Colin nods, smiling. Of all living things, bar me, he’s most at one with the seals.
“Look at them flippy-flappying away,” he laughs.
“They’re like great bulbous slugs with eyes, aren’t they. Flapper slugs.”
They watch us watching them until we wonder who’s watching who.
“Aye, except their heads are soaking,” I say.“Look. It’s like they are covered in slavers.”
“Aye, slaver heads,” Colin says. “Or whisker puses? Look, Freddie Mercury. That one there.”
The rain begins to fall heavier. Out at sea, way beyond the harbour wall, there is a single ring of blue.
“Looks like its clearing over that way,” I say.
Colin gazes at the brushstroke of colour.
Without saying anything, we both turn our heads towards the prawn boat Danzig, bobbing on its chains below the disused ice house.
“I’ve never really thought it looked the most comfortable boat,” Colin says, tipping his head in the direction of the stern. “Its crew have red discs for eyes. I reckon it must be hard to sleep on it, like kipping in a bed of old haggis.”
I laugh loudly, happy to hear my own voice break the sad patter of the rain on the railings.
“If I had known your old man I would have a better idea what’s going on in your head just now,” Colin says. “I mean, are you afraid you’ll find him out there or something?”
I answer quick. I’m confused, I know, but I don’t fear that.
“No,” I say. “I just don’t know how I’ll take to it. My mum used to say the sea took my dad long before it did.”
Colin stares over at two men in yellow oilskins sweeping ice into the sea.
“What do you mean?”
“I suppose I don’t want to like it too much. Like he did. I still want the things I have back here.”
“But you’ll be back. They can’t keep you out there, it’s illegal for a start. The boats are coming in and out all the time.”
“I know,” I say.
“It’s just fish and water, Gav. And a bit skelp of sky.”
Ignored, the seals head for open water. Colin follows their movements with his eyes.
“I read a thing on Tuesday after you’d dropped me back,” he says. “Sometimes you read something and it makes you think. It was this guy. He said: you can’t cross the sea by standing and staring at the water.”
I know what he is trying to do and I don’t know if I feel strong enough to face it.
“Oh aye? Why were you reading that?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says.“Just. I know you’ve got to go, Gav and I want you to know I understand. I’ll be OK.”
We head slowly back in the direction of Colin’s flat. Without a word, we know Colin wheeling himself would feel like a severance. He lets me push him. The noise of the wheels turning overpowers all.
We stop at the ramp, leading to his door.
“Anyway,” he says, breaking the silence. “I’m fed up of you, Gav. I’ve given you months to have sex. It’s not going to happen. You may as well go and tell me what it’s like to fish.”
Kenneth Paul Stephen is an emerging voice in Scottish fiction. He grew up in Forfar and his writing often draws on early life in Angus. A resident of Perth, he has been published in Leopard magazine, Chapman Magazine, New Writing Dundee, and Cinnamon Press, England and Wales.
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