PodCastle 756: O Cul-de-Sac!

* Author : Tim Major

* Narrator : Nicola Chapman

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published in “And the House Lights Dim”, from Luna Press

Content Warning for postnatal depression

Rated PG-13

O Cul-de-Sac!

by Tim Major

O neighbours! If only we might speak!

Do you feel as I feel? Do you think as I think? Here we are, all crouching in our circle, so close to one another. It is maddening.

I see your people come and go. I hear snippets of their conversations. They are happy, your people, are they not? It is healthy, all this coming and going. But we remain rooted, facing one another implacably.

We are so young: sixteen this coming year. How many people have we had between us?

Recently I have paid less attention to your people than to mine, I confess. But in those early days, in those first glimmerings of consciousness, I was empty and I watched you all with intense fascination. There seemed so much to learn, and the opportunities for my education so few. Your people hurried to and fro — on what errands I had no way of imagining — and when they returned they appeared so grateful to see you. I came to distinguish between adults — more direct in their routes across our cul-de-sac, bustling into the cars on your driveways — and children, who dallied and bickered, whose movements were a joy to me. The children belonged to the adults and the adults belonged to you. When your people were nestled within you I gazed at the sky and the fields. I tested the radius of my attention, peering as far beyond my walls as possible. I perceived the disturbances of animals in the long grasses and swooping above me, I saw trees bending with the force of an unseen hand, I saw the rust-coloured roofs of the village that is tied to our cul-de-sac by an umbilical lane. I called out to you. I beckoned to your people. I was alone.

I was unoccupied.

My first people came a year later, following a smattering of visitors who declared me too large or too expensive or characterless. Their names were Anton and Beverly Grieg. They joked about show homes and the plastic fruit that still filled the wooden bowl beside the sink in my kitchen, but they were happy to have arrived and I was happy to receive them. More than happy! I embraced them from the moment they removed their shoes and padded inside me. Perhaps you remember the too-large white lorry with its rear end awkwardly jutting into our cul-de-sac, blocking three of your five driveways. Anton and Beverly Grieg set to filling my rooms with their furniture, their friends, their conversation. How they talked! Beverly was a lecturer at the university in York. Anton had once been her student and was, if anything, more passionate about learning than his wife. They talked of books and Francis Bacon and the governance of Britain and jazz music and the preparation of food and desire. These were the elements of their world, but they taught me about mine, too. They described the stars in the night sky, patterns hitherto unnoticed by me but suddenly, spectacularly, clear. They named the plants that encircle the lawn of my garden; they defined the willow, ash, and pine trees. They lifted tiny creatures in their cupped hands so that I might better see them.

It wasn’t only their teachings that provided my education. Two radios — one in my sitting room,