THE KITE
“I’m so sorry, are you alright?” Somewhere around knee height, I
discovered a group of children, the oldest of which couldn’t have
been much more than nine or ten. A small girl in a pink hat, very
clearly the leader, stood before me, bearing a face of remorse and a
red kite.
Clearly I was not their first victim. The red kite cut through the air at
a threatening speed, swerving to the left, to the right, but inevitably
crashing to the ground. Already they had hit a Labrador, terrorised a
group of toddlers, and nearly cut the head off the old gentleman on
the bench. It wasn’t their fault. It was quite clear to anyone watching
that the girl in the pink hat was really quite capable. She could get it
into the air, and even keep it there for a time, but the inevitable gust
of wind and the efforts of her friends would always force it crashing
down.
By this point I was wondering if she’d ever get control of it, the kite
was so mangled. I reckoned she had one more try left in her, and
by the ever more angry looks on her friends’ faces, and those of the
other common-goers, they were thinking much the same. Up, up
it went, the flash of red pin wheeling against the clear blue sky. It
darted back and forth, the girl straining at the string. She kept held
it up, dancing on a bright stage, but despite her best efforts, the
red fabric slipped from the splintering frame and down it came,
spinning, kamikaze, to the heaped autumn leaves below. As the
stricken kite sank beneath the sea of red and gold, a shriek of rage
drew our attention back to the girl, as she stormed over to it, tore it,
and jumped on it, her cries eventually giving way to the oppressive
silence of her friends.
I went back home just as night was beginning to fall. The doorbell
hadn’t even finished ringing when the door was