0010a 00.15 CLARA

00.15 CLARA

How Clara sleeps depends on the sculpture. Not those in the Hepworth, she is safe from them, but the ones that keep appearing in the street. They make the wind different.

Like tonight.

There is a new dull steel shape under her window on the patch of grass in Burgage Square.

She hasn’t a clue what it is, other than something beautiful.  Simply beautiful.  Nothing that isn’t whatever it is supposed to be. She tries to remember who said Cut away everything that isn’t a horse. The thing down there isn’t a horse … it’s … it’s … she likes the way the middle looks like a taut female belly and the length like a woman stretching, although there is nothing else human in the shape.

The new arrival makes the wind come past differently and Clara can’t sleep.

She thinks, I suppose that is what I did all my life, take away everything that isn’t there, but I am retired now aren’t I? I should be allowed to sleep.