By Sophie Thompson
THE HAGSTONES ON the garden gate will always unnerve the postman. They will clack against each other when he pushes it open, like your baby teeth when you shook the matchbox your mother kept them in. He will think you’ve put them there, strung them up with garden twine on the black wrought iron. His rap of the knocker will be curt. He will never demand a signature for your parcels.
He will never close the gate after himself.
Ernest will come every morning at six. The first time you see him will be on your first day of work after moving in, the first time you get up to the alarm’s first cry. It will be the first morning of late autumn where the sky isn’t bleeding as you rise. Then, as with every morning after, you will watch him from behind the curtain. You will watch him make his way down the houses across the road, a dark pool sliding over a grainy grey scene. You will watch him pause at each one, as a dentist counts molars, before crossing and making his way up your side of the street. You will get a good look at him as he waits at your next-door neighbour’s gate.
His skin will be yellow as a smoker’s smile. His sockets will be sunken and his nose a set square. His scraggly, slate hair will lie lank with mizzle. His tan coat will look all the more battered and ill-fitting when he raises his arm to splatter water over their railings, the cuffs gaping and swinging sack-like around his corvid wrist. His threadbare lips will flicker, his gaze veiled by ink lashes.
When he is done, he will stop only to hang a hagstone on your gate. He will lift his eyes to meet yours, then move on.
You will watch for him each day. You will warn yourself you won’t each night. Your stomach will squirm at the thought of him. Yet you will find yourself rooted by the window come morning. His ritual will not change. You will amass a fine collection of hagstones; you daren’t extract a single one.
You will finger them one night many months later as you return home late. They will shine beneath the moonlight, all dove and enamel and pearly white. They will click and tut as you run your knuckle across their strings. One will snap and the stone will clatter to the pavement, rolling off and over the edge of the kerb.
You will stoop to get it.
You will run your thumb around the smooth edge of its perfectly worn cavity. You will bring it to your eye and sweep your chin the length of the road.
You will survey the houses with their gaps for windows.
Luminescent London brick.
Doorways sheathed in tar tangles of wisteria.
Ernest will be waiting on the street corner.
One day, Ernest will not come. You will wait for him. You will make yourself late for work. You will crane your neck and maintain your vigil the rest of the week, turning that rogue hagstone over in your palm. You will find yourself about to raise it to your brow. You will curse yourself for being silly and drop it to the windowsill.
You will hear the family are clearing out his house. You will walk by on the way to the shop, kicking fallen leaves and shaking the soggy ones from the toe of your boot. The gloaming will come down in earnest that time of year. In the half-light and the street lamp’s acid glare, your attention will snag on a plastic tub waiting for the binmen by his gate. Glowing at the brim, hundreds of hagstones beaming back.
You will hurry home, yank your own stones from the gate, twine snapping, weathered and white and brittle as floss. They will topple down on top of the others, a palmful of dice. Some will chip, like your front tooth when you tried leapfrogging a bollard after a night out.
You will take the rogue hagstone from your pocket. You will place it on the mound last of all.
A fox will cackle in a nearby garden and you’ll flush with fire. The stone will tumble from the tor. It will crack in two, lying there like an adder’s unhinged jaw. Your gut will groan, your skin will jitter as you scoop it up and place it back with the others.
You will think of its glinting remains, as you reach for the milk in the shop and decide to take a different way home.
The damp patch will appear the next morning. You will notice it by the hall table on your way out to work. It will first bloom nicotine yellow, a nebulous stain with a patch untouched in the middle. Over the next few days, it will darken to a treacly mass. Another will appear on the hall ceiling, a third on the wall by the bathroom door. Several plumbers will thank you for the tea and tell you not to fret. There will be no problem that they can tell. Let it dry out, then a bit of sealing primer and a fresh coat of paint. They will check whether you’ve decorated before and give you a number for a decorator, anyway. They will all know a guy with reasonable rates, to save you having to worry about such things.
There will be scratches on the skirting boards too. They will run the length of the landing, a litany, a muttered mass. They will curl their way down the stairs and wreath around the doorframes. The bannisters will creak in chorus. Scrabbling will echo from the cavities of the walls. You will set mouse traps, call in pest control, but nothing will take the bait you leave. Nothing will keel over from the poison.
You will wake at six as usual. You will jerk the curtains back, shudder at the frost shrouding the other side of the windowpane.
You will curl your thumb and forefinger into a ring and peek through.
The window will crack.
One morning you will wake sodden. You will turn the light on to find the whole bed damp and musty as mulching mushrooms. You will press a hand into the mattress and a pool will form around your palm.
The alarm will make you jump and you will haul yourself into the shower. You will study the shower door, streaked with spindly drips, baring its fangs against the world beyond.
The kettle will not boil and the toaster will trip the downstairs circuit.
You will try to open the front door but find it clenched shut. The back door too.
You will look past the crack in your bedroom window at the garden path. Paving slabs will protrude from the soil, a crooked grin from diseased old gums. You will wait.
But he will not come, and you will be going nowhere.
| 
