Pauline Masurel

Anybody’s Moon

The River Avon is a mint-chocolate ribbon tonight, spilling down in a fat V sign at the city. Urban seagulls splash themselves on the ledges of the weir, squabbling, unwilling to sleep. They are youngsters, feathers still mottled, not subject to the pull of the tides further downstream like their coastal cousins. They hang out together on scaffolding, party on parapets, terrorize tourists and eye up the moon.

I cross the road and hurry down the stairs behind the bridge. In the moonlight, an elderly woman skips, little more than four foot tall. She bobs as she gathers up kindling and scraps of litter from the ground. I have seen her walking along the river before, once, further along the towpath where bindweed festoons the wire mesh fences, twining up and then trickling back down. The builders have done what German bombs couldn’t in 1942. They’ve razed Southgate, and the crater gapes back at the water in amazement.

The only thing to do now, as the light dwindles, is to set out along the path, keeping my eyes fixed, not looking back. Once you’ve begun something you keep going, step by step. The woman reminds me of an apple core that’s been mysteriously reanimated into blossom. Sometimes she spins as she bounces along.

Tonight she’s found a stray dog and hitches up her long skirts to throw a stick for it. Then she lollops on, crouches down and pats at her lap, calling, “Come on boy. Come on.” The dog approaches, ears flattened to the back of its head, whining slightly, not certain any more that it wants to play. It slinks off, and when I pass the tiny woman she’s staring up into the sky. She wrinkles her nose and says, “Look at her, the tart.”

I look around. The only other people nearby are a couple of lads at the top of the steps slouched over bicycles. She points upward, above the river. I realize where her finger is aimed as she clacks her tongue. She’s telling off the moon for flaunting it above Pulteney Bridge -- too low, too gaudy, turning cheap tricks for the visitors’ camera phones.

“The hussy. Isn’t she obvious!” She wags her finger. “Put it away! Don’t you think we’ve seen it all before?”

She laughs and laughs. I consider how many moons she must have seen. The full moon glows back, leaving everything on show and nothing to the imagination. I laugh too.

She motions at the backsides of the shops on the bridge, which hang out over the river.

“And they’re no better than they ought to be,” she says.

I nod. “Maybe she’s just feeling pretty tonight? Not asking for it at all.”

“Figure I should cut her some slack?” the woman asks.

She drops me a stiff curtsey and seizes my arm. “Do you want to know my secret then?” she asks.

I nod again. Sometimes it’s easiest.

She looks at me, with two pools of blue.

“Never grow up,” she says.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Tried and tested. I never have. And look at me!” She releases me and scampers downstream, more agile than the dog, which is going the same way but giving us both a wide berth.

I gaze into the river and then back up at the promiscuous moon. I feel an urge to skip a little too.

Pauline Masurel lives in Bath. Her passions include writing tiny stories, growing plants and recycling things. Her short fiction has been published online and in anthologies, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. Discover more at www.unfurling.net.