Last Night, I Walked on the Moon

“The count were at T-minus-four,” Alex announced.

“Was,” his mother grumbled. “It was at T-minus four.”

He frowned and thought for a moment. “Or three. Maybe when Neil winked, told me to take a deep breath an’ hold it. I looked at Buzz. He smiled an’ gave me a thumbs up. Michael were busy wi’ summat.”

His mother tutted and shrugged, glanced at the clock on the wall by the window and peered into the bubbling pan.

“He looked more serious than others, but that didn’t worry me, he allus looked more serious. It’s a good job too, that I took that breath, ‘cause at T-minus-zero, when the rocket fired – well.”

He stretched his eyes wide, shook his head, sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and noisily blew out his cheeks. “Whoosh!” He laughed, leaning back in his chair, tipping his head to the ceiling and throwing his arms in the air like a magician on stage, delivering the big reveal.

“It were like I had a tonne o’ bricks piled on top o’ me, crushin’ me, and I held me breath as long as I could, like Neil told me to, but then I had to let it go and I went down like a popped balloon.” He dropped himself into his seat, as if trying to make himself small.

“Then the bricks were even heavier, and as hard as I tried, I could hardly suck any air back in. Me head went all mushy an’ I thought I were off to pass out.” He swayed his head from side to side like his neck was made of rubber. His hands hovered, palms out, in case his wobbly neck gave out and extra support was needed.

“An’ the rocket roared below us like I knew it would, like I expected… But the whistle it made, like it were a giant firework flying through air, that were a surprise. Then, all of a sudden, just when I thought I might never breathe again, it stopped.” He froze with his hands out in front of him, his eyes wide and sparkling, his mouth open.

“Buzz told me later, it only lasted a few minutes but I didn’t believe him. It felt much longer than that. Afterwards, after the burn, it were so quiet and still like the world had been switched off. We all looked at each other an’ laughed, that nervous laugh, the kind you do when you shouldn’t – like if you’re in church or at a funeral or summat.”

“Your dreams are back?” his mother asked, placing a red, porcelain egg cup with a steaming, brown shelled egg on the table in front of him. “When did that happen?” She passed him two slices of buttered toast on a matching plate.

He frowned at her, wondering why she thought it to be a dream. Then he set about removing the top of his egg so that the yolk would stay runny, because nothing spoiled his day like a hard yolk.

It was a large kitchen with cream painted walls and a white bobbly ceiling supported by arthritic wooden beams, the colour of stewed tea. The table was big, heavy and old, scarred and stained with history like it had rested there forever.

There was an Aga in a brick alcove, where a whistling kettle with a blackened base and a brass handle nestled, and in the corner, a pine dresser, made as a wedding present for Alex’s parents. 

Red Denby dinnerware lined the shelves and photographs of the three of them, taken when Alex was young. Photographs that he would often find his mother standing in front of when he came down in the morning, with a broken look on her face and a damp tissue clenched in her hand.

A pair of double doors opened into the back garden, looking out over the North Pennines, which rose up all around like the arched backs of sleeping dragons, watching over their red-brick cottage.

On warm mornings his mother would open the doors early. She liked the scent of jasmine and wild garlic that drifted in on the morning breeze, and the sound of the sparrows chattering in the hawthorn hedge that separated the garden from the road.

“You should shave before you come down and put a comb through your hair,” his mother said, dropping some bread into the toaster and taking the marmalade from the fridge. She tucked a few rogue butterscotch strands that had escaped the clip behind her ear as she turned to face him.

She had fair skin and a well-proportioned, elegant face like a classical statue. Almond shaped eyes, the same colour as her marmalade, gazed at him through wide, green framed glasses.

Why? Alex wondered, his hand fizzing as he rubbed his chin. Then his face collapsed, his forehead and neck glowed and he began to sweat.

“Why?” he asked, grasping his mother’s arm as she placed the marmalade on the table. “We’re not off out are we? – Are we?”

She looked at him. Her plump lips nipped together and her neatly plucked brows low over her eyes.

“Would that be so bad?” she asked.

His foot began tapping on the floor, ticking like a clock. He was breathing heavily and looking frantically around.

“No, we’re not going out.” She sighed and crossed the room, her blue floral dress rippling like liquid around her legs. “You’re not a child anymore,” she said, turning for a moment, “you should take a little pride in yourself, that’s all.”

Alex watched his mother flick her toast onto a plate with her thumb and forefinger, then shake her hand in the air. He smiled and began cutting his own into dippable soldiers.

He carefully withdrew the first brave volunteer from the egg and studied it. The end was bending over with the weight of the rich, golden yolk, bright as the sun and thick like treacle. Not like the insipid beige gloop that came out of the supermarket eggs.

He bit the end off and chewed slowly, thinking about John, the red-faced farmer who lived in the stone farmhouse a little further down the road; who passed most mornings in his mud splattered Land Rover; who must have called yesterday with a tray of eggs whilst Alex was out walking in the hills.

He swallowed and dipped the remnants of the casualty back in the egg, thinking of how John would stand in the doorway, throttling his cap, shifting his weight from toe to toe. How he would refuse to take any payment for the eggs, except for an occasional cup of tea if his mother had time to make one.

How his eyes would dip tentatively in and out of contact with hers when they spoke, like they were afraid that if they lingered too long, they might never escape, and then, how intently they would stare at her when she turned away and he thought she wasn’t looking. Alex swallowed again, looked at the photos on the dresser, at his mother’s forgotten, happy smile, and began to wonder.

Alex’s mother crossed the room, sat down opposite, and began spreading marmalade on her toast.

They ate in silence. When Alex had finished his egg, he flipped the shell upside down so that it looked new again and leant back in his chair with a noisy stretch.

“I didn’t realise we were weightless till we unclipped our belts,” he began. “Buzz were first I think, then Neil, an’ they flew up out of their seats like Superman.”

He pushed his arms out before him and grinned. “So I undid mine but nowt happened. Then Michael told me I needed to give a little push – so I did.” Alex laughed and put his hands over his face. When he removed them, he was blushing.

“But I shoved too hard and I flew straight up into Buzz, an’ he bounced off the control panel wi’ a clang, but he didn’t mind – not really. Then Neil pulled me over to one of the portholes and told me to look out, and…” Alex closed his eyes and held his breath.

“It were amazin’. The stars that had allus seemed so far away were right there – all around me, so close, it were like I could reach out and grab one. They were like Christmas lights strung out through the sky, all different colours, as far as I could see.” He shrugged. “Forever, I suppose.”

His mother watched him intently, quizzically almost, as she ate her toast. He grinned at her. She laughed, took off her glasses and rubbed her eye.

“What?”

She scrunched up her nose and shook her head.

“‘What?”

“You look like your father when you grin like that,” she said, then stood and gathered the pots, while hiding her face. “It’s nice Alex, really nice.” She crossed the room, placed the pots in the sink, turned on the tap, and watched the water run.

He looked at one of the photographs on the dresser of his dad skimming stones on a Dorset beach. It was true that Alex had the same olive skin, sand-coloured curls, and wide, thin-lipped smile, but he had his mother’s eyes.

“I wonder, sometimes,” she said, without turning around. “You weren’t supposed to be an only child, with all the attention, all the expectation that brings. You were supposed to be the first child, if your father hadn’t…” She turned, trembling, holding the edge of the sink for support. “I wonder sometimes if you’ve been lonely, if maybe, that’s why–”

“It isn’t,” Alex interrupted. Then he turned his attention to the hills and tried to remember what they’d looked like from space.

Alex’s mother placed four tablets and a glass of water on the table in front of him. There were two round white ones to ease the headaches that came on just after lunch. These felt like an iron band tightening around his head, and wouldn’t stop until his skull shattered like an egg. Another two pills, little bigger, pale blue and oblong, like liquorice comfits.

He picked up the first white one and took it. He thought that she watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye as she half turned away from the table. He didn’t look at her.

Then he took the second and a large gulp of water. She smiled and turned her attention to the contents of one of the high cupboards on the wall near the sink. He picked up the blue ones, watching her all the time, and slipped them into his pocket. Then he drained the glass and clanged it down on the table.

“Do you want a coffee?” she asked, placing the pot on the Aga.

“Please,” he replied. “And–”

“I know, I know,” she tutted, “lots of milk and three sugars. You’ll rot your teeth like your granddad did.” She turned and leant on the worktop. Alex stared out again through the double doors at the inviting hills.

“What’re you going to do today? Any plans?” she asked.

He didn’t look around. “Don’t know yet, I’m waitin’ to find out,” he replied casually.

She rocked forward, steadied herself, and walked slowly towards him, her sandals clicking on the tiled floor. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice slower, lower than normal. “Alex, what does that mean?”

He didn’t reply but put his hand to his mouth and began chewing his finger.

“Alex.” She positioned herself directly in front of him, her hands twisting together like they were wrestling one another. “What does that mean – you’re waiting to find out? Is someone going to tell you?”

She looked scared then, like she did sometimes – like she did the first time that the lady in the grey suit, with small pale eyes and no chin, whom Alex used to see sometimes at the hospital, had first used that word: schizophrenia.

Alex had never heard it before, but when he’d looked at his mother’s face, there in that stuffy little room with its white painted walls, hard plastic chairs, and dead rubber plant on the windowsill, he was sure that he was going to die. He learned that day, the power of a word.

“Who Alex? Who’s going to tell you?”

“No one Mum, no-one. I just meant I haven’t decided yet.”

She stared at him, deep inside him like he was made of glass. He felt sick.

“Is it them? Are they here again? – Alex, are they back?”

He pinched his lips shut and shook his head.

“Do you promise?”

He nodded, his hand under the table, resting on his lap; his fingers crossed.

A long silent moment dragged on as she steadied her breathing and the colour seeped back into her face.

The coffee pot began to rattle on the hot plate. She pushed her glasses onto her head, held her face in her hands and breathed out so hard that for a moment, Alex feared it might be her last. “Oh, Christ Alex,” she said, softly. Then she made a strangled sound through clenched teeth as she left to take the coffee pot off the Aga.

He blinked away a tear and rubbed his eyes hard with the palms of his hands. 

“Neil went first,” Alex said, “When we’d landed. Then Buzz, an’ then me.” He was studying the steam curling away from the mug on the table in front of him.

His mother sat opposite, watching him closely, nursing her own mug in both hands like she found the warmth comforting. He tried to avoid her gaze; hers weren’t the listening eyes of before, they were probing, searching – finding him out. He shuffled in his seat and cleared his throat. 

“We had to climb down a ladder, which were awkward ‘cause we had these great big suits on, an’ helmets that were like goldfish bowls. We couldn’t look straight down, because of the suit so we had to do it by feel. It wouldn’t have mattered, I don’t suppose, if we had fallen. We wouldn’t have hurt ourselves, ‘cause of the gravity, or rather the lack of it. It feels soft, y’ see – the moon – when y’ walk on it, like you’re walking on a sponge. No, not a sponge, more like a –”

“Alex.”

“Like a trampoline, more like that, and–”

“Alex.”

He stopped talking and looked at her.

“You have been taking your tablets, haven’t you?” she asked.

“‘Course,” he replied, looking her in the eye and thinking about the white ones.

“You know why, don’t you? Why it’s important that you do – what happens if you don’t.” She lifted her mug to her lips, her eyes fixed on his.

“I know Mum, I know.”

She sighed, nodded gently, half-smiled, leant back in her chair, and sipped her coffee.

Alex’s mum was doing the washing up. She’d put the radio on and she was swaying back and forth, singing along to Dolly Parton, her dress dancing around her legs.

Alex watched her, thinking about the pills in his pocket and what they meant; the silence, the overwhelming loneliness, the immense cold emptiness – like space. He closed his eyes and savoured the lingering taste of sweetened coffee, then he breathed deeply and his thin lips curled into a smile. “You’re here,” he whispered. “It’s about time.”

***

“Ha, told you,” Alex announced, pointing at his watch as he arrived at the summit of the ironically named Little Fell. “Forty-eight minutes from the stone bridge. A new record.” He put his arms in the air and pretended to cheer. The wind bounced against his chest and a clear, blue diamond sky glistened all around him.

He’d climbed up past the daisy-filled meadows where the dairy cows grazed, above the lower inclines, where elm, beech and ash trees huddle in friendly groups. beyond the higher slopes where stocky little evergreens lean into the prevailing wind.

He’d made it up into the sky, to a place where only rocks exist and heather and a kind of coarse, wiry grass that even the sheep won’t eat grows. To a place where the world looks big and people small, and problems went to die.

He remembered the lady in the grey suit with her silver bun tied tightly on the back of her head. How she used to tut and shake her head when they talked, like she felt sorry for him.

He stopped and closed his eyes and tipped his head back and sucked in a lungful of cool, heather-scented air.

Then he opened his eyes and looked at the green and brown hills that rose up around him like stepping stones in the sky, and at the valley below, at the angry little beck that bumped and bounced through its bottom – a sparkling silver thread, dropped on an emerald green carpet. Sorry for him?

He remembered his mother, the nights he’d heard her crying herself to sleep because she didn’t know how to fix him. The dark times, when she’d stand in front of him, her hair in her fists, screaming, “Why can’t you just be normal?” And he’d stare back in dumbstruck silence because he didn’t know what normal was if it wasn’t this – if it wasn’t all that he’d ever known.

Life, he decided, is like this hill: You can choose to look down or you can choose to look up.

He braced himself for the inevitable argument that would always follow such a serious assertion but there was only silence, except for the whining wind and the occasional croak of a crow from somewhere down the slope, sulking again, over the lost wager. They sulked too often, that’s why they always lost.

He reached into his pocket and removed the blue pills, dropped them onto the ground and stamped them into the dirt. He watched the fine blue dust drift away on the breeze.

And as he did, he thought about John, and how his mother would check herself in the mirror before she answered the door and how she would play with her hair when they talked, twisting the loose strands around her index finger to make tight spirals. How she would smile sometimes – nearly like she did in the photographs.

He began the descent as quickly as the dry loose ground would allow – half running, half sliding down the steep gravel path.

“Home,” he said, breathing heavily, “To see if we can get Mum to try looking up for a change.”

He stopped abruptly, sliding to a silent standstill, and tipped his head to the sky. “Why?” he asked, sarcastically. “Why do y’ think? ‘Cause the view is so much better.”

He listened for a moment, then he laughed. “Want to bet?” he said. “I can do anything! Last night, I walked on the moon.”

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