Elan by Jess Moody

Shortlisted for the second Lunate 500 competition

‘It’s a heart harder than granite that isn’t crushed by Elan: a vividly realised story of enduring, unspoken love. The language is rich but unshowy; the imagery here has been crafted with care and imagination. It takes a rare gift to fashion something as arresting as: “The bus fumes around the bitten hills…” These characters, so powerfully imagined, do something that so many of the characters on this impeccable shortlist do: they live beyond the page. Elan is exceptional: a darkly beautiful love story, and a masterclass in compassion.’

Lunate editors

***

“You wouldn’t recognise yourself if you met yourself,” you once explained, mouth wise and full of stolen sweets. “Because you’ve only ever seen yourself in a mirror. The wrong way round.”

You’d placed one hand over my left eye, then flipped it over, my nose as an axis, to cover the other side. “Inverted,” you—a glitching vision—teased. Then barked laughter, saccharine spittle in the air between us.

I think about that as I watch him chew through lunch. I think of my profile at this table, in this companionable silence, should he choose to look.

Should we ever recognise ourselves?

We eat. Extra salad-cream these days. Taste buds fade.

I keep one eye on the line, wary of rain and the sheets, and my knees no longer suited to a dash.

“I’m at the Home later, mind,” I say into the silence of last crumbs.

He nods, “Ar, well,” starts patting his pockets in readiness for his afternoon. He’ll never send his love. A sister who left and returned an old woman holds little place in a heart out here.

I take the washing in, haul the basket to the upstairs landing. A bungalow is not to be discussed—the house he grew up in, and all that. And I like to think of you here as well, pounding down the stairs, your hot cackle in the pipes, the swish of your skirts daring the slam of the door.

The bus stop is empty but for me and the weeds, though her from the vicarage passes, watching.

“Off to Visiting, Glenys? You’re a saint you are”.

A dutiful sister-in-law, yes. They all approve over their Victoria sponges, though tutting how it’s more than the likes of you deserve—“a wild one that”. They talk of roosting chickens like your life was naught but solace for the way the way they’d lived theirs. Your ignominious return, a warning to all would-be travellers.

The bus fumes around the bitten hills, and I think how easily they all forget that it was you I knew first. Well. Looked across a village playground and saw you knowing me.

Then that summer before you ran, ever-long days by the reservoir. Breeze whipping hair in our faces as we giggled over candied sin and cigarettes.

Remember he found us there once? Your brother, the husband I was left with. Older, but unable to challenge that look from you, the woman you’d already become. He walked on. For a time.

Six decades, and I sign in as usual with the surname the three of us share.

Your room is private. I insisted. I fall into the high-backed chair, while you lie in crusting sweat and the scent of Dettol. Unseeing, and hair crawled back to nothing.

I hold your purpled hand in mine. I turn it over. And back. Over.

I sit and remember the Parma Violet kisses I never dared ask for. And I laugh. Just a little.