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And the people-of-the-common had a wide open, green area. They kept this area trimmed and neat and glowing, as though it were a smooth billiard table. They were good citizens, these people, whose living areas were maintained in efficient, spruced fashion. A community of roughly 500, theirs was an infrastructure of which they were proud. “Good morning!” called the bustling widow to her neighbour who lived in the cedarwood stucture next door. And they stared up happily into the empty bowl of sky.
Slap-bang in an amber afternoon, a caravan arrived. The caravan’s spoked wheels rolled, causing red and green and white flakes of paint to settle over the grass. Because the heat was hot, and the afternoon densely still, not even the dogs of the area took notice. The caravan’s awkward piebald drooped its stumpy neck, nibbling at finely trimmed grass. Two men jumped out. They wore rings in their ears, and natty red neckerchiefs with white dots. As the piebald was apt to wander, the men tethered it to a small stake. Lazily chewing stalks, the men lay on their backs and squinted at the sun, burst like an egg-yolk.
As if by direct connection to this first arrival, a pick-up truck pulled onto the grassy communal area. The engine switched off, shuddering and grumbling. The truck’s dented fenders were grubby. Loud, foreign-sounding music blared from speakers. Unlike the caravan, this truck was not quaint. Women and men spilled out, children also, ranging from toddlers in nappies to almost-adult. Even the young children rubbed their backs, as if they’d been bumped or jolted as the truck drove over potholes. Directing this dazed, scattered group was an old woman, powerful with age. A cherry-red scarf was tied underneath her wattle-heavy chin, while a black-and-white cheesecloth skirt swooned to her ankles. With care, the woman produced a child’s slipper from the depths of her skirt pocket. The slipper was rose-pink and cheaply-made, covered with worn silver stars, half rubbed off, at the tiny ankle. When she set the slipper on the grass, the people gathered around her froze, turning still as a photograph.
But the old woman merely rubbed her chin and directed the making of a fire, rubbing two sticks together. People began to test the air, to test the silence. Half- hidden by the grass, the child’s slipper slipped out of sight. When the flames were merry, a brass teakettle was produced from a streaked gunny sack. Cigarettes were rolled and strolls taken around the nearby pond. The younger children played tag and chase, and stick-in-the mud. Presently, the children approached the homes adjoining the grassy communal area. Not having seen mullioned glass before, the children made faces at the swirled panes, which looked like hardened tree sap. They waggled tongues and scrawled dirty words in the mist from their breath, wheeling away with laughter.
As most of the people-of-the-common were in the fields, or on errands, the new arrivals were noticed by very few. These were either the extreme old who spoke little, or the young who spoke not at all. When these older residents spotted the flitting, starling motions in the dusk and twinkling camp fires, they drew their charges closer and lit lamps, feeling the bright glimmerings of unease. Yet the residents returning from working in the fields were relaxed. This was a travelling fair, they told each other, a raggledy-taggledy group stopping en-route to some distant place, not staying long. The people-of-the-common knew themselves to be sensible. They had no business making life difficult for those passing through.
It was clear these new people were not passing through. Over the next week, hoes and blades were used, and latrines dug. Vegetable patches were marked in the fertile soil. The earth of the region was widely known to be of excellent quality, nourished by steady, temperate seasons, loamy as Christmas cake. It was said seeds could be blindly tossed, and within 24 hours plants would sprout, rich with glossy offerings. Although whether this was because of well-nourished soil or the seeds’ tenacity, it was unclear.
The people-of-the-common felt the new people were a circus without the exciting, main elements of a circus. They made wheeling, haphazard journeys as they picked their way through an oil drum here, a collapsed, disposable barbecue there. When they tried to communicate, they were met with flashing-gold grins, the new people’s soil-lined palms outstretched, as if in prayer, or hope. Often, the new people would break away to duck into tents. There they would remain still as statues, silhouettes sometimes visible, leaving the people-of-the-common to shake their heads and walk away. Yet every dawn without fail, the-people-of-the-common would be woken by the sounds of their rubbish being picked over as they lay in bed. The lids were always neatly replaced afterwards.
Rumbles of discontent began, sobering as a cold wind. At the northernmost field of their neatly-bordered land, the people-of-the-common called a meeting. These women, residents murmured in suspicious whispers, swayed hips and wore black-and-white cheesecloth skirts. They looked different. The men of these people had flashing teeth, wore neckerchiefs, and looked different. They didn’t like to question, said the residents of the common. Not really. Not at all. But. Hadn’t they been generous enough? Yet these were half-queries, vague as the wind, and so received only half-answers.
Finally, one old man spoke. Leaning on his walking stick, he called out that if these new people had been familiar, well. If they had shared some common interest. So. It was time for the people-of-the-common, he said, to take action. If, he added. If they didn’t want to be looted in their beds, gutted from their comfortable homes. His answer was silence. One by one, the people around him began to boo. It was a booing extending outward in waves. No-one, the man was told, was interested in hearing such talk. So the man stumped home, where he vented his dissatisfaction to the hens, then roughly blew out the lamps one by one. Slowly, the rest of the commoners drifted home. Something big, they knew, had been averted. And beause of this, despite their dissatisfaction, they were proud.
***
At the season’s hottest peak, when every moment seemed paused in syrup before being allowed to continue, and the sun’s features skeetered on the pond’s surface, which was iron-steady, two extra vans arrived. Seen from the uppermost window of the tallest home, so a small boy reported, these new vans looked like neatly-parked hyphens. From the first of these vans came a stream of hammers, and saws, and nails, and silver jemmys, and a quantity of other carpenter tools all oiled and winking. From the second van came plyboard sheets, flat and white and gleaming with threat as new bone.
The sinewy, teeth-flashing men of these new people began to hammer and nail and measure. They worked in lines of fours and fives, in synchronicity and in breathtaking speed, as though performing well-rehearsed movements. The original, old people-of-the-common gathered in throngs to watch and take note. Eventually, they realised that the skeleton of an outhouse was being built. With every nail driven, new life was being breathed on, flesh added to the bones. Finally, as if flint had been struck against the people-of-the-common’s souls, they realised. Unless action was taken, unless they woke up, soon nothing would be the same. New structures would be built, and others, their own probably, torn down.
All that had been peacefully protected over the period of their existence here would be destroyed – although no-one could remember quite when that had begun. One old woman living by a brook that was now a trickle, remembered her grandparents as they’d knitted and smoked pipes during one long winter. They had often recounted stories of travelling as little children, for days, weeks, months, years even. And when they’d arrived at this spot, their grandparents they’d said, had collapsed on the soil, crying with happiness.
The people-of-the-common appealed to the mayor of a nearby city. When that didn’t work, they appealed to the main opponent of that mayor, a grizzled, wily politico who saw a select handful of them in his cramped, shadowy office situated at the back of the city. When the residents left, they knew they had found a solution to their problem. That week, nearly all the-people-of-the-common’s grain was neatly bagged up and marked as donation to this wily opponent. It would be hard to survive without the grain, but the people-of-the-common understood this was a price worth paying. After the bags were left on the clean scrubbed steps of the city’s Big Hall, more vehicles arrived. They slid sleekly around the common’s outer grass edges. There were more than ten in number, and when they parked, their engines did not make any sound at all.
Now the common was covered. There was not one inch of space. Not one blade of grass visible. These new trucks were black. They had C.I.T.Y. stamped on them in big, shiny grey letters. Spiked claws were at their sides, like clenched hands with thorns, and flat sheets of iron at their front, to sweep away plyboard and nuts and makeshift bolts as though in a tide of water. The sort of tide that would easily edge objects from their original, truer meaning.
At first the new people didn’t believe what they were seeing. They ran everywhere and nowhere. They wheeled about, giving great hollering shouts. They beat their chests. The response of a small number was to sing. Women and men opened their mouths, velvety tremolos tipping from their throats. But after they’d recovered, the new people fought. Defiantly, they collected sticks, fragile brooms and tent poles, and even hairbrushes, to beat off the masked and armoured men pouring from the trucks. Singeing palms, they hurled firewood with licking fire attached. But the armour worn by these masked figures was barely dented. Everything, including the firewood, bounced off. Flames instead began to lick at whatever was nearest. The masked figures held cannisters of stinging eye-spray. With gloved hands, they aimed these cannisters at adults, children, dogs, patiently waiting mules. Nothing that could be judged as alive was excluded. Hens scattered. Boots kicked at canvas tents or latrines. Blood reddened the grass. Finally, recognising defeat, the new people ran, scooping up shrieking children and hurling them onto whatever pick-up truck or horse was nearest. Or they dove into fields, shivering nose-down along fox dens and badger burrows, to slip silently into the night. One by one, or in packs, they disappeared.
When the rubbish of these lives was left, a cheap-looking spangled scarf here, a ripped khaki tent there, its canvas cloth giving the appearance of a crumpled, grubby skirt, the people-of-the-common worked together. Each put in their fair share. They teamed up in pairs to cleanse the grassy area and tiny cobbled streets. Carefully, they drew out objects strewn across the surface of the pond, and plucked colorful fabric scraps. They were efficient, and tireless. Not one resident stopped until all had agreed the area was returned to its previous spotlessness.
Once the rubbish bags were removed, it was clear that the grass of the common had been starved of nourishment. Where the new people’s main structure and smaller tents had blocked the sun, the shoots were yellowed and pale. It was apparent that the grass of the common had been starved of nourishment. This was with the exception of one oak seedling. Three ridged leaves had sprouted, aiming carefully for the sun. Since this was a tree-less land, the root was extracted with gloves and burned on a fire, under the careful gaze of the common people. Once this act had been completed, many remarked how familiar the area once again felt, an atmosphere stripped of scent, a horizon bare of trees.
For all the people-of-the-common’s efforts, one object had been overlooked. Hidden by a sheaf of burdock, with its silken fringe of dangling threads and a hole gaping in the toe, was a barely recognisable maroon-and-green child’s slipper. Only the old woman who lived by the brook spotted the slipper’s muddied tones and fraying threads. She marked its presence, until one day she marked its absence. A mother fox had taken it, the woman decided. To be tossed and caught between the glistening milk teeth of her cubs. It wouldn’t be long, the old woman nodded only to herself, before the slippers muddied tatters would fall apart and it would be buried by the loamy, rich soil of the area.
***
For a long time, the people-of-the-common tested the width and breadth of this new silence. They completed daily chores dazed, but with care. They said good morning to each other before nodding up at the empty bowl of sky. Pails were filled with local blueberries and roseberries, and front gardens swept clean. The communal area sparkled, once more returned to its billiard-green brilliancy. Autumn was on the horizon, and the people-of-the-common prepared for the colder, cleaner, surer months winter would bring. Days slid by, taking with them the slow, stewed months of autumn. Winter settled in, a season for sitting by the fire while stories were embroidered, added to. As always, the people-of-the-common were patient. And soon, quicker than they had imagined was possible, they began awakening to lime-and-honey scented blossom. Spring – so perfect a season – had arrived once more.
For the summer’s remainder, the silence of the common was golden, and the silence of the common was deafening. Autumn slid by, and as winter approached, the people-of-the-common were pinned to the cloth of this silence like miniature frozen puppets.
About Rebecca Swirsky
Rebecca Swirsky is a London-based writer specialising in short fiction, and is being mentored by the writer Stella Duffy through the Word Factory Apprenticeship. Rebecca's fiction is featured in, among others, the ’13 Bridport Anthology and the Big Issue in the North Anthology, Matter, Ambit, The View From Here, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Pygmy Giant, Stories for Homes anthology for Shelter, Cease, Cows and online Royal Academy of Arts Magazine. She has been highly commended for The Manchester Fiction Award, shortlisted for the Bridport Flash Fiction and Short Story Prize, Fish Short Fiction Prize, commended for the Bristol Short Story Award, longlisted for The Bath Short Story Award and Sean O’Faolin Prize, semi-finalist in the Big Issue in the North anthology and awarded third prize in Ilkley’s Literature Festival. Copywriting includes journalism for the Royal Academy of Arts Magazine online, the Royal Society of Literature Review and an acupuncture blog. In March 2013, Rebecca will be running Flash Fiction and Art Workshops and Life Writing Workshops as part of Haringey’s Literature Live Festival, for which she hopes you'll join her. She won the A.M. Heath prize for her MA (Distinction) in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University and is shaping her debut collection 2.4, for which she was awarded a Literary Consultancy Free Read bursary.
