The night was crisp and cold. Enormous, glowing sparks from the exploding fireworks illuminated the harbour and hung in the sky like a shoal of fat fish. They cast their otherworldly lights - orange, blue, red, and gold - on the faces of the Mad Hatter, Alice, King Kong, and another Alice, as they stood among the thousands of other revelers gathered at the centre of St Ives in fancy dress. The harbour was so full of onlookers that it was impossible to move. Hundreds of people had lined up and packed so tightly together that the waterfront was beginning to look like an overfilled pencil box.
A mischievous wind whistled through the crowd, over the cobbled streets and along the waterfront, blowing the Mad Hatter’s hat off and whipping Alice’s blue satin skirt up around her ears.
The church clocks in the churchyards around the town hammered out their strokes. It was midnight.
‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ A thousand voices chanted and whooped.
Complete strangers brought their faces close together and kissed through their masks. A slap rang out as King Kong kissed the wrong Alice in a case of mistaken identity.
In a clearing among the bodies, a teenage girl dressed as Rapunzel – Charlie Fisher, with bright red hair that fell in a torrent down her back – was dancing alone and swigging on a bottle of champagne she had smuggled out of the local off-licence under her billowing Rapunzel skirts. Her face gleamed in the light cast by the pyrotechnics. She looked like a medieval queen lost at Woodstock, surrounded by psychedelic light. Charlie smiled at the night and everyone around her – the smile of a girl looking up into the cascade of shooting stars above her head, and in them seeing her future. It glittered.
Yet in the world beyond the lights and the wall of jubilant noise, in a bay not very far away from the place where the New Year’s celebrations held the Cornish town in the grip of their hug, there was bad weather.
The wind beat the coast with a savagery that could not be felt in the lea of the harbour, under the thick blanket of bodies. Rain had begun to fall.
The wind picked up speed. It whistled and moaned with its tendrils feeling their way along the coast, and drowned out the sound of the festivities in the harbour. They finally reached the beach of Clodgy Bay, whose boulders stopped the wind dead in its tracks. It could go no further. Instead, it threw itself against the rocks and gradually wore itself out as it bounced back inland in every which direction. What little sand there was here was whipped up into the air like water, and blown over the boulders in ankle-high rivulets.
In the almost complete darkness of Clodgy Bay two figures hunched together in a sheltered spot overlooking the sea. They were little more than shadows, insubstantial forms, patches of intense darkness against the land behind them.
One of the figures was Joy, a cuddly old woman with soft, grey hair, soft grey socks, and a warm woollen cardigan of indeterminate colour wrapped around her hunched, nonagenarian shoulders. She was a pillar of the tight-nit, Cornish community. And Charlie Fisher’s grandmother.
The other figure, hunched beside her, was significantly taller than Joy. It was wearing black.
‘Funny old way to see in the New Year, isn’t it?’ said the elderly lady, rubbing her knees, trying to get some of the stiffness out of her legs.
The figure beside her gave a silent nod.
‘’S freezing, it is.’
The figure nodded again.
‘2015, eh? Can hardly believe it.’
There was a silence and the wind howled in the bay.
‘Wonder what they’re all doing in the harbour? Charlie’ll be there with the best of them, letting her hair down. Looks just like me you know. Hair just like her old Nan.’
The figure in black sagged a little and looked bored, in a heavy way that only hulking shadows can.
Joy smiled a small sad smile.
‘Well, hair like mine used to be, anyway…’
There was another long silence, broken only by the sounds of the wind.
‘I love this place. Had my first kiss here as a girl. Arthur, I think he was called. Lovely looking boy. Fantastic kisser. Never was kissed like that ever again. Not even on my wedding day.’
‘I think it’s time, Joy,’ said the figure, losing patience.
‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of postponing this, is there?’ she ventured, her voice more than a little uncertain.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Death.
‘What about those other buggers?’
‘What other buggers?’ Death sounded pained at the expletive.
‘Couldn’t I play you for my soul, or something? You know. Like in the films?’
‘Do you play chess, Joy?’
The old lady looked angry for the first time.
‘Why does it always have to be chess? Seems a bit…discriminatory.’ Joy’s mouth formed around the word uncomfortably. She spat it out. It wasn’t a word she was fond of using.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t have what you’d call a posh education. I never learned chess. Why does it have to be chess? Why can’t it be something like: ‘who can make the best cup of tea?’ or ‘best Sunday roast wins’?’
Death very nearly laughed.
‘Chess is traditional. Though I have to tell you, we stopped doing that a little while ago.’
‘And why’s that then?’
‘Death is final. Can’t have a huge gaping loophole like that! No-one would ever die! The place would be overrun!’
Death gave a shiver, perhaps at the thought of so much humanity.
Joy wracked her brains. It was a beautiful night. Despite the weather. This wasn’t how she had intended on seeing in the New Year. And she certainly hadn’t prepared herself for the shock of the New Year seeing her out.
There was something so infinitely sad, she thought, as she looked out across the choppy Cornish waters, about looking out to sea. The horizon was hovering out there. She had always thought of it as a hyphen. But now it looked to her like a vanishing point, a full stop. Still, it was beautiful, now more than ever. It was as if she was seeing the subtle colours in the water for the first time. She glanced up at the moon. She remembered the stories they had heard as children about the Man in the Moon. In a time before they’d sent up rockets to take a look and found that there was…nothing. There was no kindly patriarch up there. No-one to offer her so much as a crumb of advice. You toiled away for ninety-odd years worrying about the future, and then, one day, like a disappointed Astronaut, you looked around you and saw… nothing. Not a damn thing. Vast rolling centuries of Nothing. Because that, when you really got down to it, is what Death was. A huge, steaming pile of Nothing. Not even a capital n. N… thought Joy, finally… N…
‘What about Noughts and Crosses?’ She asked.
The hooded figure, motionless until now, seemed to turn in its seat.
‘Is there anything in your rule book about Noughts and Crosses?’
After a silence that was longer than it should have been and seemed to be filled with the sound of a rule book being skim read from cover to cover, Death spoke,
‘Well… strictly speaking…’
‘Oh come on!’ said Joy, insistently. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve, for heaven’s sake! Have a bit of fun! Can’t we have a little game of Noughts and Crosses? If you win, I’m off, you just give the word.’
‘And if I lose? No…it’s nonsense. You can’t live forever you know, Joy. That’s not the way all this works!’
‘I’m not interested in living forever.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘I just need one more day. And it’s not for me. It’s for Charlie. I’d like to play for Charlie.’
‘Who’s Charlie?’
‘My granddaughter! Weren’t you listening? I want to play for her. Tomorrow is her birthday. And I would hate for her to spend it crying over the dead body of a silly old woman. It’s no way to spend your 18th birthday! It’s macabre. Even for you!’
Death hesitated.
A slurred rendition of Auld Lang Syne could be heard in the distance, brought to the bay by the wind.
Death didn’t have much time for cups of kindness or New Year’s resolutions. Nevertheless, something was stirring beneath the thick, black cowl. Who was to say the old woman would win, anyway?
After what seemed like an eternity, Joy saw a flash of white in the moonlight. Death had pulled out a pencil stub and a scrap of paper from the folds of his cowl. He handed them to the old lady.
‘What’s that, your shopping list?’ asked Joy with a giggle.
Her joke met with a frosty silence.
‘Joy, you are playing Noughts and Crosses with Death…this is hardly what I would call a laughing matter.’
Joy had no intention of laughing.
She drew a thick, black grid on the scrap of paper, and an even thicker nought in the central square of the grid.
Death looked down at the grid, and back up at Joy.
The old woman held her breath.
‘Oh, what’s the use of even playing?’ came a despondent voice from somewhere in Death’s robes. ‘I gave in to your silly request. You know you’ve already won…’
Joy brandished the pencil, victorious. The relief was so intense, she could hardly breathe. Of all the little victories her long life had afforded her, this moment was the sweetest. She drank it up, savouring every drop.
The pair sat in silence, looking up at the moon. Then Joy got up from the rock they had been sitting on. She felt the cold in her legs. She shivered as she stood there, at half past midnight, looking out over the waters of Clodgy Bay. The waters had lost their lustre. And the wind was becoming ever more savage. She felt suddenly old. And sorely in need of a cup of tea.
‘Take me home,’ said Joy quietly to the towering black figure beside her.
Death wrapped an edge of the woollen cowl around Joy with a bony hand. The heavy fabric was surprisingly warm.
They made their way back to Joy’s little cottage, over the beach and through the town, along Clodgy View, past the St Ives Old Cemetery. On the way they were surrounded by seemingly endless groups of revellers. Nobody took much notice of them. Except to compliment Death on his costume. In the carnival atmosphere, walking through the countless people in the New Year’s masquerade, Death and the little old lady didn’t seem out of place at all.
Joy lifted the latch on the gate to her cottage.
‘Nan!’
A loud, lively voice behind her made her jump. It was Charlie, with a bottle of champagne under her arm.
‘Happy New Year!’
Joy looked about to make sure that her hooded companion was nowhere to be seen. Smiling, she hugged her granddaughter. Tightly. A little too tightly. Charlie gave her grandmother an odd look. Finally, she offered her a swig of champagne.
‘Get rid of that rubbish. I’ll make us a cup of tea. Happy Birthday, love.’
Joy gave the stiff old front door a kick and stepped into the hall, never once looking over her shoulder.
In the garden a hooded figure stood, hidden by the trees that lined the residential street, brooding over another lost game. Waiting. The figure lifted a bony arm and looked at his watch.
A mischievous wind whistled through the crowd, over the cobbled streets and along the waterfront, blowing the Mad Hatter’s hat off and whipping Alice’s blue satin skirt up around her ears.
The church clocks in the churchyards around the town hammered out their strokes. It was midnight.
‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!’ A thousand voices chanted and whooped.
Complete strangers brought their faces close together and kissed through their masks. A slap rang out as King Kong kissed the wrong Alice in a case of mistaken identity.
In a clearing among the bodies, a teenage girl dressed as Rapunzel – Charlie Fisher, with bright red hair that fell in a torrent down her back – was dancing alone and swigging on a bottle of champagne she had smuggled out of the local off-licence under her billowing Rapunzel skirts. Her face gleamed in the light cast by the pyrotechnics. She looked like a medieval queen lost at Woodstock, surrounded by psychedelic light. Charlie smiled at the night and everyone around her – the smile of a girl looking up into the cascade of shooting stars above her head, and in them seeing her future. It glittered.
Yet in the world beyond the lights and the wall of jubilant noise, in a bay not very far away from the place where the New Year’s celebrations held the Cornish town in the grip of their hug, there was bad weather.
The wind beat the coast with a savagery that could not be felt in the lea of the harbour, under the thick blanket of bodies. Rain had begun to fall.
The wind picked up speed. It whistled and moaned with its tendrils feeling their way along the coast, and drowned out the sound of the festivities in the harbour. They finally reached the beach of Clodgy Bay, whose boulders stopped the wind dead in its tracks. It could go no further. Instead, it threw itself against the rocks and gradually wore itself out as it bounced back inland in every which direction. What little sand there was here was whipped up into the air like water, and blown over the boulders in ankle-high rivulets.
In the almost complete darkness of Clodgy Bay two figures hunched together in a sheltered spot overlooking the sea. They were little more than shadows, insubstantial forms, patches of intense darkness against the land behind them.
One of the figures was Joy, a cuddly old woman with soft, grey hair, soft grey socks, and a warm woollen cardigan of indeterminate colour wrapped around her hunched, nonagenarian shoulders. She was a pillar of the tight-nit, Cornish community. And Charlie Fisher’s grandmother.
The other figure, hunched beside her, was significantly taller than Joy. It was wearing black.
‘Funny old way to see in the New Year, isn’t it?’ said the elderly lady, rubbing her knees, trying to get some of the stiffness out of her legs.
The figure beside her gave a silent nod.
‘’S freezing, it is.’
The figure nodded again.
‘2015, eh? Can hardly believe it.’
There was a silence and the wind howled in the bay.
‘Wonder what they’re all doing in the harbour? Charlie’ll be there with the best of them, letting her hair down. Looks just like me you know. Hair just like her old Nan.’
The figure in black sagged a little and looked bored, in a heavy way that only hulking shadows can.
Joy smiled a small sad smile.
‘Well, hair like mine used to be, anyway…’
There was another long silence, broken only by the sounds of the wind.
‘I love this place. Had my first kiss here as a girl. Arthur, I think he was called. Lovely looking boy. Fantastic kisser. Never was kissed like that ever again. Not even on my wedding day.’
‘I think it’s time, Joy,’ said the figure, losing patience.
‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of postponing this, is there?’ she ventured, her voice more than a little uncertain.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Death.
‘What about those other buggers?’
‘What other buggers?’ Death sounded pained at the expletive.
‘Couldn’t I play you for my soul, or something? You know. Like in the films?’
‘Do you play chess, Joy?’
The old lady looked angry for the first time.
‘Why does it always have to be chess? Seems a bit…discriminatory.’ Joy’s mouth formed around the word uncomfortably. She spat it out. It wasn’t a word she was fond of using.
‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘I didn’t have what you’d call a posh education. I never learned chess. Why does it have to be chess? Why can’t it be something like: ‘who can make the best cup of tea?’ or ‘best Sunday roast wins’?’
Death very nearly laughed.
‘Chess is traditional. Though I have to tell you, we stopped doing that a little while ago.’
‘And why’s that then?’
‘Death is final. Can’t have a huge gaping loophole like that! No-one would ever die! The place would be overrun!’
Death gave a shiver, perhaps at the thought of so much humanity.
Joy wracked her brains. It was a beautiful night. Despite the weather. This wasn’t how she had intended on seeing in the New Year. And she certainly hadn’t prepared herself for the shock of the New Year seeing her out.
There was something so infinitely sad, she thought, as she looked out across the choppy Cornish waters, about looking out to sea. The horizon was hovering out there. She had always thought of it as a hyphen. But now it looked to her like a vanishing point, a full stop. Still, it was beautiful, now more than ever. It was as if she was seeing the subtle colours in the water for the first time. She glanced up at the moon. She remembered the stories they had heard as children about the Man in the Moon. In a time before they’d sent up rockets to take a look and found that there was…nothing. There was no kindly patriarch up there. No-one to offer her so much as a crumb of advice. You toiled away for ninety-odd years worrying about the future, and then, one day, like a disappointed Astronaut, you looked around you and saw… nothing. Not a damn thing. Vast rolling centuries of Nothing. Because that, when you really got down to it, is what Death was. A huge, steaming pile of Nothing. Not even a capital n. N… thought Joy, finally… N…
‘What about Noughts and Crosses?’ She asked.
The hooded figure, motionless until now, seemed to turn in its seat.
‘Is there anything in your rule book about Noughts and Crosses?’
After a silence that was longer than it should have been and seemed to be filled with the sound of a rule book being skim read from cover to cover, Death spoke,
‘Well… strictly speaking…’
‘Oh come on!’ said Joy, insistently. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve, for heaven’s sake! Have a bit of fun! Can’t we have a little game of Noughts and Crosses? If you win, I’m off, you just give the word.’
‘And if I lose? No…it’s nonsense. You can’t live forever you know, Joy. That’s not the way all this works!’
‘I’m not interested in living forever.’
‘Then what’s the point?’
‘I just need one more day. And it’s not for me. It’s for Charlie. I’d like to play for Charlie.’
‘Who’s Charlie?’
‘My granddaughter! Weren’t you listening? I want to play for her. Tomorrow is her birthday. And I would hate for her to spend it crying over the dead body of a silly old woman. It’s no way to spend your 18th birthday! It’s macabre. Even for you!’
Death hesitated.
A slurred rendition of Auld Lang Syne could be heard in the distance, brought to the bay by the wind.
Death didn’t have much time for cups of kindness or New Year’s resolutions. Nevertheless, something was stirring beneath the thick, black cowl. Who was to say the old woman would win, anyway?
After what seemed like an eternity, Joy saw a flash of white in the moonlight. Death had pulled out a pencil stub and a scrap of paper from the folds of his cowl. He handed them to the old lady.
‘What’s that, your shopping list?’ asked Joy with a giggle.
Her joke met with a frosty silence.
‘Joy, you are playing Noughts and Crosses with Death…this is hardly what I would call a laughing matter.’
Joy had no intention of laughing.
She drew a thick, black grid on the scrap of paper, and an even thicker nought in the central square of the grid.
Death looked down at the grid, and back up at Joy.
The old woman held her breath.
‘Oh, what’s the use of even playing?’ came a despondent voice from somewhere in Death’s robes. ‘I gave in to your silly request. You know you’ve already won…’
Joy brandished the pencil, victorious. The relief was so intense, she could hardly breathe. Of all the little victories her long life had afforded her, this moment was the sweetest. She drank it up, savouring every drop.
The pair sat in silence, looking up at the moon. Then Joy got up from the rock they had been sitting on. She felt the cold in her legs. She shivered as she stood there, at half past midnight, looking out over the waters of Clodgy Bay. The waters had lost their lustre. And the wind was becoming ever more savage. She felt suddenly old. And sorely in need of a cup of tea.
‘Take me home,’ said Joy quietly to the towering black figure beside her.
Death wrapped an edge of the woollen cowl around Joy with a bony hand. The heavy fabric was surprisingly warm.
They made their way back to Joy’s little cottage, over the beach and through the town, along Clodgy View, past the St Ives Old Cemetery. On the way they were surrounded by seemingly endless groups of revellers. Nobody took much notice of them. Except to compliment Death on his costume. In the carnival atmosphere, walking through the countless people in the New Year’s masquerade, Death and the little old lady didn’t seem out of place at all.
Joy lifted the latch on the gate to her cottage.
‘Nan!’
A loud, lively voice behind her made her jump. It was Charlie, with a bottle of champagne under her arm.
‘Happy New Year!’
Joy looked about to make sure that her hooded companion was nowhere to be seen. Smiling, she hugged her granddaughter. Tightly. A little too tightly. Charlie gave her grandmother an odd look. Finally, she offered her a swig of champagne.
‘Get rid of that rubbish. I’ll make us a cup of tea. Happy Birthday, love.’
Joy gave the stiff old front door a kick and stepped into the hall, never once looking over her shoulder.
In the garden a hooded figure stood, hidden by the trees that lined the residential street, brooding over another lost game. Waiting. The figure lifted a bony arm and looked at his watch.
