The Last Swallow
‘For in the end all human life aspires to hope, the highest expression of which is love.’ – Richard Flanagan
It was the middle of May and still there was no sign of the swallows. The roof of the yellow house, where every year since before even Greta could remember, a pair had perched, waiting for each other’s return, remained empty. The sky hung the same blank grey it had been since September, shedding rain, day after day, onto the waterlogged fields circling the village. People watched anxiously for signs of the swallows’ return, knowing that spring couldn’t arrive before them.
Inside the yellow house, Greta moved listlessly between rooms, scanning each window for a swoop, a patch of blue sky. She could feel the rumble of lorries carrying neighbours out to the city in search of new homes below her in the lane. All across the valley rain seeped into thatch, cob and stone, spilling debris into paths and roads.
In the yard she peered into the red-tiled shed, a jumble of Peter’s tools and paint tins, but there was no sign of the swallows, just last year’s nests on the ledge. She climbed the steps to the garden. The air smelt metallic. Maybe this was it, the world was in reverse, folding in on itself.
She lowered herself onto the sloping lawn, feeling like a pinball on a tilted bagatelle. Nearly seventy and she was still doing this, performing the same ritual, registering the quickening and dulling of the earth’s pulse the same way that others registered weather patterns. Well, good luck with that. She turned her ear to the ground to listen, knowing this might be the time that she heard only her own heart.
Below the sodden surface was the sound of the earth movers in the fields behind the house, grinding through layers of shale and sandstone, volcanic rock and animal bone, through layers of leaf mould pulled down by earthworms during the overlong winter. The soil sighed as it gave way to metal. Below this the fizz of electricity, the clickety clack of tiny beetle legs rubbing together. Where was it? She strained to hear. There it was. A soft ticking, a rhythmic thud; the slow pulse of winter.
***
“They’re still not back,” she said later, moving stiffly from the aga to the sink and back again, the warm kitchen heavy with the smell of simmering tripe.
At the table Lotta continued to pick at a scab on her wrist where the cat had scratched her.
“That smells minging,” she said, twisting her mouth.
“Migration routes have been blocked by officials and migrant camps set on fire at Calais in scenes of repeated violence and protest on the French border,” announced the smart speaker on the dresser.
“Once the world was one big garden,” Greta sighed, “before we started putting up fences. Soon, Lotta, when you try putting a spade in the soil, you’ll only dig up plastic.”
Lotta kept worrying at the scab, “I’m not actually planning on putting a spade in the soil Gran, but, thanks.”
Peter came into the kitchen then, rolling down his shirt sleeves and taking his place at the table. The glasses he wore for mending watches and clocks were pushed back on his head, making exaggerated moons of his thinning hair.
“Still no swallows,” said Greta, spooning tripe into a bowl and setting it down in front of him.
“They’ll come, love,” he said.
“Yeah, they’ll come,” said Lotta.
***
In the time before, when the yellow house was being built, layer by layer, from stone pulled from the red earth by boys and men with hammers and chisels, black creases lining their hands and brows, and carried by thin horses up the steep slope of the village, clouds of swallows woke from the muddy reedbeds around the pond in the wet meadow to bring spring back to the village. They carried beakfuls of mud to the pig shed in the yard of the yellow house, building nests for black-eyed clutches who greeted the baker as he carried swill to the pig. The villagers welcomed the swallows with streaming ribbons and crowns of flowers, with dancing and singing and beer-filled bellies. As the fields greened and hedgerows billowed, the skies grew feathered with flight and chorus. Here was life returned! Here was hope!
***
“I’m going out to listen again,” said Greta, pushing away her bowl and getting up from the table.
Peter put down his spoon, exchanging a worried look with Lotta. She followed Greta into the garden.
Together they pressed their bellies and ears to the ground. There were the earth movers, insects and electrical pulses, and underneath the same faint thud of winter, like a rubber band stretched between two thumbs.
“Hear anything?” Greta asked, turning her face towards Lotta.
“Only winter,” said Lotta, with a small shake of her head.
Greta groaned, letting her forehead rest on the ground. Lotta reached across to stroke the pink skin of her grandmother’s neck.
***
Were the swallows released from gilded cages, the playthings of gods? Were they Aphrodite transformed? When the yellow house was transforming, from baker’s cottage to gentleman’s villa, the swallows’ compass drew them back, across sand and seas, to the red-tiled shed, home now to a fat-bellied wash copper. The housemaid shooed them away with her broom, cursing the pesky guano that marked her white sheets. They took to the village barns, following the cattle as they grazed and came down to milk, plucking horseflies from warm air. At dusk and dawn they circled and chased above the village square as ruddy-faced villagers, the white-handed vicar, giddy schoolchildren, the last remaining weavers, looked up at the skies, at the carnival swooping and burbling, feeling the fullness of life, of fields full of livestock and crops, of air thick with quarry.
***
Greta’s body tensed. What was that sound?
“Did you hear that?” she asked, sitting up.
Lotta tilted her head to listen.
“Can you hear it?”
They scoured the sky, a look of concentration mirrored on their upturned faces. A musical current, trickling and lifting, fell toward them. And there was the unmistakable black arrow of a swallow cutting through the grey, darting and weaving; the sharp blue swagger of a moustachioed cad, a chestnut flash. A chink of light broke through the clouds. A second swallow appeared, chasing the first.
Lotta was on her feet, pointing at the sky.
“Look, the sun!”
With urgency Greta pressed her ear back to the earth. There it was, the quickening pulse, the rising shudder of the earth’s heartbeat.
She sat up, pulling Lotta towards her, cradling her, singing softly into her cropped brown hair.
So this wasn’t the beginning of the end after all.
They might still have time.
Further information
This short story was commissioned as part of the Bridging Cities Exeter X Jakarta project between Unesco Exeter City of Literature and Jakarta City of Literature. The British Council-supported project helped to create new work from writers and artists from both cities examining the impact of climate change. You can view the work in exhibitions in Exeter and Jakarta until the end of October 2024.
Find out more about the project and download the digital publication
