Limestone Man by Robert Minhinnick Read Free Book Online Page B

smiled Nia. Doesn’t anyone sleep round here?
    It gets better, said Mina. After a few years. You know, I used to think I wasn’t tired enough, that I shouldn’t have gone to bed. But it’s not that. Some nights, dead of night, it’s just me and the World Service. On quiet in case the flat next door can hear.
    That’s… said Nia
    Life, said Mina. Had problems with sleep on and off for twenty years. Maybe it started when my daughter was about ten. But it’s not always so bad. Have my little rituals of course, with candles and drapes over the lamps. So everything’s red and pink. But subdued. Like a Paris brothel.
    I’ll bring some CDs round, said Parry. Got these gentle Indian ragas that last forever. You play them so low you hardly know they’re on. They help you switch off.
    And I love the radio, added Mina. That’s my greatest friend. Radio and halogen heater, with that orange glow.
    Soothing, said Nia.
    Making life bearable, laughed Mina. Yes anything as long as it’s not pills. A friend gave me some of those.
    Okay, she added, it’s own up time. I’ve tried the lot, and yes, some worked. But I took this different tablet once. Was told it would really do the trick. Woke up fifteen hours later with a head like a bucket. My tongue had turned green. Not healthy, those sleeping pills. Take my word.
    Yes, said Parry. Stay off the medication. Music’s the answer. Try ‘Riverman’ by Nick Drake. Or I’ll record the sea for you. You know, that slap and tickle of the tide on Caib Slipway.
    Hey, maybe I’ll market a CD in the shop. Call it ‘Soothing Sounds’. Then we’d expand the idea. Record the wind in the dunes, then real Caib seagulls. Call one record ‘All the Moods of the Sea’ . We could create Caib Records…What sound does the fog make?
    Is there no stopping the man? asked Nia.
    We know people who’d join in, said Parry, warming to his subject. Think of Gil and his website and all that recording equipment…
    Nia raised her eyes in mock horror.
    No, we need younger people, added Parry. Like Glan and Serene, so we can spot trends…
    Was it to do with children that you stopped sleeping? Nia asked Mina.
    No, Alys was only ten. Perfect age. Before the terrible twelve.
    She looked round the bar. There were fewer people in now the excitement generated by free drinks was wearing off.
    There was a man in the corner, the moisture on his sleeves pearls in the striplight. He hadn’t pulled down his hood. Yet Mina thought she had seen him somewhere before.
    IV
    Once, Parry recalled, he had fallen into stinging nettles. The rash had lasted three weeks. Or so it had seemed.
    Parry could still see those nettles. Tall and violet, the flowers bearded. How his fingertips had tingled, smothered in white freckles. Sea foam on limestone.
    His father’s fault, of course. Jack Parry wanted to cut nettles for his ‘luxurious nettle soup’.
    Ideally the nettles should have been fresh and green. But the whole expedition proved a disaster. Parry had tumbled into the nettle bed and the soup turned into gruel. Even his father refused his own cooking. Parry sat blowing on his fingers, tormented by the nettles’ needles.
    But now the discomfort was elsewhere. He tested his tongue again, pushing it between his teeth. Yes, the dentist had been a careless fool. He had nipped his tongue and weeks later, Parry still felt tender.
    As a child he remembered visiting the speech therapist. Being told to keep a pebble in his mouth. A stone that rolled around, an impossible word in his cheek.
    But it had worked. There was barely a trace of the stammer he had suffered as a boy. The hesitancy was gone. The unhappiness it brought hardly a memory.
    V
    Like a hamster, he thought. Or more likely a chicken. A stone in its gizzard. A grindstone of the throat.
    Yet it had worked for him. A forgotten miracle of childhood had restored language.