the sky is the colour of marbles.
A thin, glassy grey.
Everything is dark away to the west,
silhouettes & shadows clinging to the last of the night,
but at the eastern edge of the horizon there is light.
And If you have the time to stand and watch,
you can trace the movement of the light into the morning.
The lines of fields & roads creeping
towards you and then away to the west
until the whole geometry of the day is revealed.
And The water in the drains begins to steam & shine.
And youll notice The workers start to arrive,
stepping out from minibuses and spreading across the fields,
shadows crouching & shuffling
along the crop-lines lines of the crops.
back
When the mid-morning comes
the sky is the colour of flowering linseed
a pale-blue hint of
the full colour to come
back
Sometimes there will be clouds, joining together to form arches
from horizon to horizon
stretching
tearing
scattering patterns across the fields.
Sometimes these clouds bring rain,
and the sky will darken
But the rain will pass
the sky be brighter clearer
back
The workers more visible,
returning to their trays & boxes after the rain,
lifting food from the ground,
sorting
trimming
laying down
moving along the line.
Occasionally one will stand, lifting cramped arms to the sky before
returning to the soil.
Those lifted arms, that arching back.
back
back
When the noon-time comes
(when theres a moment of stillness and silence)
the sky is the colour of the summer noon:
a blue with no comparison
the pure deep blue of the summer noon in this place.
No clouds
no movement
you hold your breath and turn and follow the circle of the
unbending horizon line horizons circle.
back
The workers eat their lunch in silence, gathered beside the road,
looking out across the fields
the way fishermen watch the sea.
back
Celery &
spring onions &
leeks &
lettuces &
fragile crops which would be ruined by machinery.
back
When the late afternoon comes
(when the light is only beginning to fade from the day fall)
the sky is the colour of a freshly forming bruise.
The workers are slowing their pace
pausing more frequently to savour
the warmth of the soil in their hands
aware now of the slight chill in the air
waiting
for the word that the day is over.
back
- - - - - - - -
What placement can do.
- - - - - - - -
back
When the evening comes
(before the embers of the closing of the day)
the sky is the colour of your fathers eyes.
A darkening, muddied blue,
hiding shadows
turning away. Awake, still;
alive, just;
but going.
Going gently.
The workers have left the field and collected their pay,
measured by the weight of the food they have gathered.
The marks of their footprints are fading,
dusted over with soil blown in by a wind from the sea.
back
What he thought hed find.
There is no history here.
No dramatic finds of Saxon villages.
No burial mounds or hidden treasures.
No Tollund Man.
Only the rusted anchors our ploughs drag up,
left when these fields were the sea.
back
Those rusted anchors have been sunk in the soil
ever since before it was drained, and sometimes
the turning of the earth brings them closer to the surface
and sometimes
it will sends them further down.
Buried out there at the edge of the field.Butyouwerethere
The sound of plough metal on soil, the roar
of stones & earth.
As he/it Tumbles further down or is hauled to the surface.
break the flat surface
back
That field. In that field. Down by that field.
The floods have come, again,
the road like a causeway
across the sea.
back
T h e w a t e r s t r e t c h e d a s f a r a s t h e h o r i z o n
t h e
h o r i z o n
l o s t
i n t h e
t h i c k
f o g.
back
Telegraph poles dotted
across the water
like the masts
of sunken boats.
The cars marooned. High & dry.
Piercing red lights suspended in a long line through the fog.
back
The mists of yesterday have disappeared,
the sky reflected clearly in the flooded fields
the sky reflected clearly in the flooded fields.
back
The day is broken open & clear:
the great ship of Ely Cathedral
just visible
across the water.
And we were there.
back
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In Winter The Sky was first published, in a different form and under the title of What The Sky Sees, in Granta 78, 2002.
If It Keeps On Raining was first published in the BBC National Short Story Award 2010 anthology, by Comma Press. It was also broadcast on Radio 4 in November 2010.
The title of Fleeing Complexity is taken from an interview with Richard Ford conducted by Tim Adams, published in Granta 99, 2007.
Which Reminded Her, Later was first published in Granta 99, 2007.
Close was commissioned by the Cheltenham Literary Festival, and first broadcast on Radio 4 in October 2007. It was first published in The Sea of Azov, a World Jewish Relief anthology published by Five Leaves, 2009.
We Wave And Call was first published by the Guardian Weekend magazine in 2011.
Supplementary Notes To The Testimony was inspired by stories I was told whilst on a trip to the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, and uses the very broadly transposed outlines of those stories as its unseen background. Many thanks to Carbino, Anil Osman and Mahamud Ismail for speaking so openly with me; and thanks to Médecins Sans Frontières and the Sunday Times for organising and supporting the trip. I also drew on an interview with Mark Argent, a demining engineer working with Danish Churches Aid in the Nuba Mountains (any errors in the section about landmines being my own, of course), and on a 2001 Observer article by Burhan Wazir.
Wires was first published in the BBC National Short Story Award 2010 anthology, by Comma Press. It was also broadcast on Radio 4 in September 2011.
Thanks, variously, for support, insight, reading and inspiration, to the following: Kathy Belden, Tracy Bohan, Katie Bond, Cassie Browne, Sarah-Jane Forder, Helen Garnons-Williams, Peter Gustavsson, Pippa Hennesey, Chloe Hooper, Erica Jarnes, Maggie and David Jones, Anne Joseph, Kirstie Joynson, Tam Laniado, Elena Lappin, Éireann Lorsung, Carrie Majer, Colum McCann, Maile Meloy, Nottingham Writers Studio, Richard Pilgrim, Mark Robson, the Society of Authors, Craig Taylor, Matthew Welton, Oliver Wood, Writing East Midlands, John Young.
And thanks, for everything, to Alice, Eleanor and Lewis.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Jon McGregor is the author of the critically acclaimed If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin and Even the Dogs. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award, and has been twice longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He was runner-up for the BBC National Short Story Award in both 2010 and 2011, with If It Keeps on Raining and Wires respectively. He was born in Bermuda in 1976. He grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
So Many Ways to Begin
Even the Dogs