getting home (1)

He got out the van and un-picked the drive from his muscles.  The hills and tight bends around the sea lochs had knitted his concentration and muscles into a tight ball. He stretched and looked up to the cottage and waved. It was late in the evening and the last of the sun dazzled from the window where he was sure his Nana Jess would be. He took out his bag from the boot of the van and went up the garden and through the unlocked door into the living room. And there she was.
“Good tae see you son.”
She sat in her armchair by the window as always, the loch and the hills beyond the road framing her. He came over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. She gave him a little tap on the arm.
“Aye, it’s good tae see you.”
He stretched again and yawned and looked out of the window.
“My favourite view!”
She looked out at the rippling water, liquid silver in the setting sun. Two oystercatchers flew low, quick-winged against the shoreline, their cries puncturing the evening air.
“Aye. There’s always something to look at. No that it’s changed any, mind.”
He stepped back from her.
“Those windows could do with a right good clean Nana. First thing in the morning I’ll have them so’s you’d think they wereny even there!”
He mimed breathing and buffing the glass.
“Right then ... I’ll just go and dump my bag in the room.”

He went to the room and threw his bag on the thick mattress of the bed that had been there forever. When he was wee and drowsing he used to feel himself seeping into it, as if it was soaking him up like a sponge and squeezing him out to a dreamy bracken world of wood sprites and pointy witches. He would wake up with his back feeling beat-up and his head a disturbed blur of dark-green. He had been lost in shady groves. Even now he was never really at ease among the dappled light of trees.
He let out a sigh at its familiarity and dived onto it, letting the springs strain to his grown weight. Once at rest he turned himself around and looked up at the ceiling. He’d projected so many fantasies onto that blank screen as a boy…

“Alexander!”
He stirred into the gloom. His back hurt.
“Alexander!”
He tried to move but found that his muscles were still wrestling the bed.
“Alexander!”
“Eh .. Yes! Coming Nana!”
He made a huge effort onto his side and fell off the bed.
“Alexander!!”
His head was full of children skipping dangerously on the stony shore. Bare feet poised above razor rock. He blinked desperately for the present.
What age am I?, his heart was fluttering.