The tracework of thin black lead sailed in and out of a sea of colour. It was a pure colour, virgin and untainted, that was the only way to describe it. There, in its depths, washed unutterably beautiful crystal-shard sparklings, born of a single split ray of sunlight. It took Peg's breath away, quite unexpectedly.
All her life, she'd imagined that to be an exaggeration. 'It took my breath away', people would say to her, and she'd nod in response. Up until now it had meant little more to Peg than when somone couldn't find the right words and blurted 'really, really' into the middle of a sentence. She'd done it herself, wishing words like 'exquisite' and 'draped' existed comfortably in her head outside of Jackie Collins novels. Up until now, that is. For now it meant this, and it was perfect.
'It is, it's perfect,' she breathed to herself, a hand creeping to her mouth. Perfect meant glimmering pools of colour, rippling like stones had skimmed a still body of petrol-slicked water. Layers of detail rushed at her in overwhelming ranks then retreated to form a backdrop for the next phalanx of components, bursting on the surface of the stained glass lake and dragging her in with siren calls of translucence.
'Beautiful,' she said. 'Truly beautiful.'
But this beautiful translucency is misleading. Its beauty hides a single, near ironic secret, for it's hard to believe that the grit that fills shoes and beats endlessly against the cliffs, such commonplace oxidised silicon - the endless tons that cover the sea-bed - can be changed so utterly merely by heating to an appropriate temperature, perhaps adding sodium to temper the ferocity of this newly-made, brittle crystal. But that's all it is. The grit in the oyster, the scratch in the corner of the eye. Peg knew all this - she'd spent many an afternoon on Brighton beach when the kids were still kids, chewing grimly on sand sandwiches in the shelter of a hired windbreak, washing it down with luke-warm tea from a twenty-five pence deposit mug.
It's all just sand, she knew that, and yet despite this she allowed the beauty of the translucency to lure her, to draw her in. She reached out, and in an instant's slow-ticked space she found her fingers plunged into the liquid depths of a single plane. Not merely stroking the surface, Peg saw, to her amazement, that her fingers intruded into some new, crystalline space. The sensation, or rather the detached knowedge that her hand was somehow inthe glass, was surreal. Her fingers were immersed in ice and she gazed at them and gave them an experimental flex, entranced by the ripples that moved away from her fingers and circled into the tight, lead-enclosed space. They even reflected back from the lead tracework, she noticed, as though the deep cobalt were nothing more than a perfect quadrilateral of thick, mulish water. It was only when her whole hand began to feel like ice, as though it were being eaten alive by the cold and hungry glass, that she withdrew her hand and put the fingers in her mouth.
She felt the experience settling down inside her. It left her feeling giddy, and she whirled round like an excited child, ostensibly to survey the rest of the chamber. She felt strange. Full, and yet empty. Hanging onto the edge of something, like this point in her life were a cliff and she were halfway over the edge. She could clamber back up onto the clifftop, or allow herself to drop down into the depths. Which way was right, she wondered, which way was she trying to go?
Most of the time Peg felt such a small, small part of the world. Dipping a finger into a scrap of glass probably wasn't big-time news on the universal scale of things, she was sure, but then her finger did feel like it had delved into the secret place of something precious. Even if all she had to show for it was a slight feeling of cold, perhaps even a little residual tingling, on her own, insignificant scale of things it felt like pretty big news. She wondered if she could ever tell Alan. Probably not. She could see it in her head, how he'd be when she got home that night, slopped before the screen like spilt oil, clad only in his pants and a thin layer of stale sweat from the heat, his belly spilling out over the top of his waistband and his hand jammed down the front, cupping his balls, perhaps for comfort or maybe just that he might scratch himself in accompaniment to his favourite programmes with minimal effort.
No, she could never tell him - miracles became an everyday mundanity in the face of such pale and naked flesh; if she ever tried to tell him there'd be a moment of scorn that crossed his face and a comment. His comments confused her; they were often so cutting that she could never quite be sure that he'd meant it that way, because surely no-one could be so unforgivably mordant one minute and so compassionate the next. He was capable of sensitivity, she knew, expressing understanding way beyond that which his appearance might suggest she should expect. It didn't happen often, but it happened often enough to keep her with him. On occasion, though, she still remembered the day they married and somehow regretted it all a little.
Shaking her head, ever so slightly, she caught fields of cerulean blue and her head, drawn upwards, began to nod in accordance. Peg smiled, despite herself. She'd find someone to tell, she simply had to. And maybe, you never know, maybe Alan would catch something in her smile, something special... something magical. Perhaps it would spill over into him and it'd all be like the wedding, back before his gut got the better of his romance. You never knew...
Part 2 to follow | 
