Klara and the Sun

‘You keep saying it’s important. Important for Josie. So yes, I’d like to help. This is over my head, but then I’m used to that. If we’re going, we have to hurry.’

He turned and lowered himself into a crouching position. I understood I was to climb on his back, and immediately I did so — clasping my arms and legs around him — he began to move.

***

Now I was higher, I could see better the evening sky, and the roof of Mr McBain’s barn ahead of us. Rick moved confidently, crashing through the grass, and since his arms were occupied holding me, most of the impact was taken by his head and shoulders. I felt sorry about this, and that there was so little I could do myself to push back the grass.

Then I looked up past Rick’s head and saw that the sky had become divided into segments of irregular shape. Some segments were glowing orange or pink, while others showed pieces of the night sky, sections of the moon visible at a corner or edge. As Rick moved forward, the segments kept overlapping and displacing one another, even as we passed through another picture frame gate. After that the grass, instead of being delicate and waving, came towards us as flat shapes, possibly made from heavy board such as the sort used for street advertising, and I feared they would cause Rick injury as he plunged into them. Then the sky and the field were no longer in segments, but one broad picture, and Mr McBain’s barn was looming before us.

The uneasy thought that had been growing in my mind could now no longer be set aside. Even before Rick had come to my aid, I’d started to wonder if the Sun’s resting place really was inside the barn itself. Of course, I’d been the one, not Josie, who’d first suggested such a thing, that time we’d gazed out together from the rear window, so any such error was entirely my own. Certainly, there was no question of Josie having misled me at any stage. Even so, it was a discouraging thought that the Sun was about to descend not into the place I was making such an effort to reach, but somewhere further away still.

What I now observed obliged me to accept that my fear was justified. Mr McBain’s barn was unlike any building I’d seen. It resembled the outer shell of a house the men hadn’t yet finished. There was a gray roof with a facing triangle in the usual manner, supported to the left and right by walls of a darker shade. But apart from the sections enclosing the roof, the structure had no walls front or rear. The wind, I knew, was even then blowing right the way through with barely any obstruction. And the Sun, I saw, had now fallen behind the barn’s structure, and was sending his rays through the rear opening back out to us as we approached.

We’d meanwhile come into a clearing not unlike the one upon which Rick’s house was built. There was grass here, but it had been cut, perhaps by Mr McBain himself, to just above feet level. The cutting had been performed skillfully, so that a pattern could be seen weaving towards the barn entrance, and because the Sun was now shining straight through the barn, its shadow was spreading across the grass towards us.

Though it seemed discourteous, I signaled urgently to Rick by tightening my arms and legs. ‘Please stop!’ I whispered into his ear. ‘Stop! Please let me down!’

He lowered me carefully, and we both gazed at the scene before us. Although I now had to accept the barn couldn’t be the Sun’s actual resting place, I allowed myself an encouraging possibility: that regardless of where the Sun ultimately settled, Mr McBain’s barn was a place he made a point of calling at last thing each evening, just as Josie always visited her en suite before retiring to bed.

‘I’m so grateful,’ I said, keeping my voice low, despite the outdoor acoustics. ‘But from here, it’s best Rick leaves me and I go alone.’

‘Whatever you say. If you like, I’ll wait here for you. How long do you suppose you’ll be?’

‘It’s best Rick returns to his house. Miss Helen will worry otherwise.’

‘Mum will be fine. I think I’d better wait. Remember how it was going before I came on the scene? And your journey back will probably be in the dark.’

‘I’ll have to manage. Rick has been too kind already. And it’s best I enter alone. As it is, standing here like this, it might already be stealing too much privacy.’

Rick looked again at Mr McBain’s barn, then shrugged. ‘Okay. I’ll leave you to it. Whatever this is you have to do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Good luck, Klara. I mean it.’

He turned and walked back into the tall grass, and soon I could no longer see him.