The winter passing, p.1
The Winter Passing, page 1
The Winter Passing
by Sarah Lay
Copyright © 2018 Sarah Lay
Sarah Lay has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
RY018
Reckless Yes Publishing
www.recklessyes.com
Cover design: Marcus Galley at Mammoth Creative Work
1
Pushing the box back into the gap between the joists I lower the floorboard, carefully pressing it around the edges until it lines up with its neighbour. The scent of summer reaches me with the dust that rises. The heady smell of flowers and sea air, the wild space and years-ago summers, all making me well with the memories. Flipping the corner of the threadbare rug quickly over the hiding place I sniff away the threat of tears and climb back into bed. I pull the covers around me and listen to the close of the front door. His footsteps on the house's shared staircase, then the heavy click of our flat door.
The familiar sounds keep coming; his keys placed on the peg above the sideboard in our hall, crockery scrapes as he slides a mug, a bowl, out of the kitchen cupboards, the sudden hiss of water into the kettle. As I hear each one I picture him going through his morning routine. He takes each item in the same order as every other day, placing them methodically on the table so they were set out how he liked them.
A cold shiver runs down my back as his footsteps approach on the stairs to our bedroom. The pillow grows warm beneath my cheek as I stare at the thin shaft of sunlight stealing around the edge of the curtains. It falls across the bed, catching the bangle around my wrist. The reflection glints on the wall with my movement, the merest hint of red, blue and green to it as the pattern of enamelled flowers shine in the light.
He is in the room with me now and sits lightly on his side of the bed to take off his running shoes. I turn, stare at his back, wait for him to face me. His t-shirt is the palest blue, the blondness of his hair fading into the light skin of his neck. Sensing my eyes on him he pauses as his trainers dangle from one hand, but he doesn't turn. Instead he gets up and falls back into the rhythm of his routine; the shoes are placed carefully back on the rack, the ring on his finger spun three times as he stands in front of his dresser. I watch the muscles of his back ripple under that pale t-shirt as he picks the day's clothes from drawers and hangers in his steady, methodical way. He rolls his shoulders and then stills again. My eyes take this man, this living statue. It must only last a moment, this stillness, but it seems as if we are held forever; my gaze a growing weight on his impervious back.
The merest flush from his run is still across his cheek as he turns slightly, his face so pale my eyes instantly ache from it. His muscles are a taut shadow moving under the skin as he flexes his legs, the solid contour returning as he stands still once more. Inert, a statue again; the lines of him more carved than something flesh. The chill slides down my spine once more and I hold my breath against the feel of it. He turns a little more toward me, pausing as if he might speak. My insides tighten as I hold my breath, half wanting him to ask me and half hoping he never does. He doesn't speak, just takes a deep breath before leaving the room. I let go a ragged breath and watch the reflected light dance madly across the wall, blurring beneath a threat of tears.
Moments later the shower starts up across the landing. The flitting spot against the wall slows as I think of the clouds of steam filling the bathroom, his pale skin blushing as he stands under the scalding water. A wave of nausea passes through me as I think of the heat and I throw back the covers, uncomfortable as I imagine the steam engulfing me where I lay.
Sitting, my toe nudges at the corner of the rug as I try to think of anything but the heat and the sickness rolling around my empty insides. As the line of the loose floorboard slides beneath my toe I wonder what he would do if he knew what was under our floor. I wonder, not for the first time, if this is really madness; the certainty that I must hide the box from him while feeling sure he could tell me what the things inside it mean.
The water falls more heavily as he moves beneath its flow. I press my fingertips against my closed eyes, watching the spots of colour burst in the blackness. That box was the past but it wasn't the bits I could remember, it was memories that were both fascinating and frustrating in the distance they kept from me. Tattered mementoes from the place we were both from, the childhood we had shared, the life we'd left behind. The darkness seeps back in as I drop my hands but keep my eyes closed. I push the pieces around in my mind again, trying to sort them so I knew what was true and what was imagined.
I knew I wasn't supposed to have the box, even though I could see from the photographs inside it belonged to me. That was my mother, my aunt, my home, me. The small book with the tattered blue cloth cover bore my name, not his. It was mine. But he'd kept it from me, not here in our home where I might stumble upon it but somewhere in that windowless cellar room that he called an office, hidden away under the restaurant. If he hadn't been away when it flooded, I’d have never known of it. Or if Tilda hadn't been at work the day the workmen cleared it out, if she hadn't knocked the heap of sodden trash over and had her attention caught by the iridescent pattern inlaid in the boxes lid. Or if she had just put it to one side and handed it back to him when he returned instead of bringing it round to me, balancing it on an outstretched palm with a bottle of gin dangling from the other hand when I opened the door. He'd hidden it from me but it had found its way back.
I place my foot flat on the rug and the floorboard rocks gently under my weight as I stand, pulling the faded and too large t-shirt straight as I do. I look at the closed bathroom door and think briefly of joining him in the shower. The idea breaks a grin across my face even as it forms in my mind. Maybe once the painful heat of the water on my skin would have been worth suffering for the pleasure of intimacy. But not now, not for a long time. I could make myself but he'd tolerate rather than welcome me; an embarrassment for us both.
Dressing, I stare at my reflection in the small age-spotted mirror above my dressing table. The smell of the sea drifts past me again, causing another shudder as with trembling hands I begin the routine. As the water shuts off in the bathroom an uneasy feeling slides over me. I feel adrift, as if the connection to my life is fading. I gaze into my own eyes, my reflection a tether as the shell of my body goes through the everyday actions. I feel as if I am receding, being dragged away from this mundane moment.
I jump as the bathroom door opens but he seems to look right through me, turning quickly down the stairs. The kitchen sounds start again. I turn from the mirror, open the curtains and look across the tree-lined road at the set of white terraced town houses opposite. Their wide front steps, brightly coloured front doors and bay windows a repeating pattern punctuated by the evenly spaced trees. We'd lived here years and I still felt like I was a visitor, that I didn't belong to the regimented order and sameness of the street, to the routine and formality of our home.
I sigh and ignore the pull in my chest for the wild open space and sea breezes of the island where I'd done my growing up. I bury the memory of summer skies, the scratch of heather on my bare legs, the sound of my mother's laugh. I push it deep down, locking it in the box with the rest of my past.
Downstairs I find him, as I knew I would, sat at the kitchen table with his carefully laid out breakfast. His bowl and spoon the right distance apart, the banana curved above with an empty plate to one side ready to receive the discarded peel. A cafetière sits in the middle of the table on the fabric placemat with a red and grey design of a windmill on it, the raised embroidery thread worn soft from me running my finger over and over the pattern. My cup sits empty on my side of the table lining up with his on the other. He leans to one side to read the paper, a broadsheet he collected on his morning run; this creature of habit. He runs his finger slowly underneath the words mouthing slightly as he reads a story about something that had happened, or maybe was going to happen in Parliament. Sometimes he tried to tell me about these things and impress upon me why I should care. He would try to find the right combination of words to make me understand that we were grown-ups now and it was time for me to not just comprehend, but to play my part in shaping the city around me. I resisted because the matters he told me of, often drawing shapes with his finger on the table to try and get me to follow them, bored me. They sounded so very like the dull witterings of men who had never grown up themselves, but rather just exchanged the physical tumble of playground games for barbed words. They seemed to be from a world so removed from my own, holding nothing more than the distant interest that a nature documentary would. But I also resisted because it seemed to bother him so very much that he couldn't convince me to care, a childish stubbornness not to concede on my own part.
As he read this morning the light from the window shone on the gold ring he wore on his middle finger and I find myself mesmerised by it. It was his concession to our past, a strange twin to the bangle I wore, a visible link between us. The ring had been given to him by his father on his sixteenth birthday. That was the day I had first kissed him, as we sat away from the others who had gathered on the beach to celebrate with him, and he showed me how the design was that of the wild centaury flowers that grew across our island and after which my mother had named me. A shudder of recalled pleasure went through me now as I thought about sitting in the light of the fire, sand under my bare legs, and his too warm skin against me when I held my thumb over the pattern and let his mouth find mine.
“Are you cold again?” He looks up at me as he pushes the paper to one side. Unable to stop himself he lets his hand stray back to it and neatly lines up its edge with that of the table. His face seems of stone too, the straight lines of his cheek bones and the small but square jut of his jaw. His lips thin, almost disappearing when he presses them together, barely holding a colour of their own but blending into the paleness of his cheeks. His eyes also seemed to lose their colour, a blue so pallid it was hardly there at all. The blond lashes long and soft, little half-moons as he blinked slowly at me.
“A little.”
He looks away from me, picking up his spoon to eat his cereal. I sigh, pushing the plunger slowly down through the coffee, the grains darting shadows as the liquid rolls and bubbles under the pressure. I pour his cup first and then my own, pulling it between my hands to make a show of trying to warm myself. I watch the muscles of his forearms twitch as he moves, the pale hairs standing slightly and the skin flushed giving a shiny scrubbed look. He dabs at the corner of his mouth with a napkin, placing this carefully alongside the empty plate as he picks up the banana. I watch him, the sense of needing to anchor myself in the familiarity of him pulls at me even as memories begin to carry me away. He catches me staring but I can't hold his eye. I gaze down into my coffee, a ring of light bubbles framing my reflection.
“Are you working today?” I feel the weight of the question press on me and tap my finger against the side of the cup so my reflection bends then dissolves as the coffee ripples.
I worked less and less these days, the small museum where I did whatever needed doing was opening infrequently and hardly saw a visitor even when it did. The collection of books and strange artefacts appealed to a certain type of person, and there seemed to be less of them around. Rationally I knew Professor Wilder, the curator, needed to let me go and keep the museum running a little longer on his own, but I didn't want to leave. I kept turning up and finding things to do in the dark, dusty stillness of the galleries and he kept letting me.
The museum was open just half the week now and I did very little with the rest of my time. More often than I wanted to admit I stayed in bed most of the day, or walked around the city in the rain staring up at the forgotten bits of buildings, hidden only because they sat above the eye line as everyone rushed around, heads dipped. Recently I had waited until I was alone and then sat leafing through the things in that hidden box, the curling corners of photographs, the fragile dryness of flowers and grubby ribbons. I had run my fingers over the blotchy print in the strange little book full of the words I couldn't make myself understand. Whatever I did I was just distracting myself from the thought that wouldn't be put away. As much as I'd needed to run and hide in the city with him all those years ago, now the urge was to leave him, leave this place, and go back. The reasons for leaving were so faded by time. I could almost hear a cool whisper in my mind now, telling me to come home.
“Yes. We're open today.” I sip my coffee and he rolls his eyes, wiping his hands on the napkin before beginning to stack his breakfast things to carry them across the kitchen. As he loads the dishwasher and wipes down the already clean worktops I pour the rest of the coffee into my cup and look out of the window to the small balcony where a few flakes of snow were blowing on the wind. As I watch they grow bigger, fluffy lumps of iridescent white that stop melting as they land on the wooden decking.
He finishes his morning ritual and tuts as he sees the snow too.
“Snow? Really?”
It is a question to which there is no answer I can sensibly give. I tense, feel his eyes on my back as I shrug my shoulders. He sighs loudly and I feel even worse as the snow grows heavier, starts to gather in the corner of the balcony around his pots of herbs. I jump as a cupboard door is closed too hard and then again as he places something on the table at my elbow.
He straddles the wooden bench next to me and places his hand on the back of my neck under my hair, spanning the tattoo I'd got impulsively the day after I left home. He scoots closer and his eyes appear bluer now we're closer. His touch is soft and warm, my skin seems to hum under the press of his fingers and I roll my head shoulders under the sensation. But I look at him with confusion, feeling my eyes narrow as he gives me a rare smile.
He nudges a square box, made of thin wood and without a label, closer to me. “These came to the restaurant with a load of other stuff. Tasters from a new supplier. I thought you'd like them.”
I carefully lift the lid and gasp at the little drops of caramel inside, creamy pink tissue paper beneath them. I catch the scent of sea salt and sugar. “Pete!”
Surprise replaces my confusion and the lines of his face melt as he smiles more broadly at me. “I know. It surprised me too. They taste of home.” He laughs a little under his breath and the change in his mood, his unusually easy reference to the place we'd left, is as unexpected to me as the gift. I look back at the box, counting the peaks between the crumpled landscape of paper. My mouth waters for their taste as my heart beats, beats, beats with the anticipation of home.
Pete leans over and kisses my forehead then my cheek, and as I turn to him, my mouth. His lips warm on my own, kissing away a layer of sadness and making me glad not to be anywhere but here with him now. With the sadness leaves that growing contempt of our familiarity, replaced with the heady exhilaration of being with the only person who knew, really utterly knew, what it was like to grow up on the island.
He pulls slowly away smiling at me. “You missed a beautiful sunrise this morning so do something for me?” He runs a finger over the lines of my tattoo and I feel myself breaking. A part of me desperate to return to where we came from, while the other resolves to staying here, be with Pete. I give the slightest nod, unable even to look away from him. The smile fades quickly from his face, the lines hardening to stone again. I shudder. “Don't miss the sunset sitting in some bar with Tilda. Take these, go outside, watch the sun go down. Feel happy.”
I smile as he kisses the tip of my nose and again my forehead as he gets up. The thought of the rise and set of the sun being so linked to our moods and the smell of the sweets in front of me bring more thoughts of our childhood to mind. Guilt gathers inside me, a rusty barb sticking me as these little reminders push me back toward the place he'd helped me leave, the memories he'd so definitely hidden from me.
In the hall he gathers his things and I hear the rustle of him putting on his coat, the jangle of his keys being collected from their hook, the soft click of the door as he leaves for the day. The light plays across the bangle on my wrist, casting strange patterns across the table top as I place one of the caramels in my mouth. For the briefest moment my chest tightens with the panic I may never find my way home, but then it is gone. I blink and there is only here, only now.
Looking back out at the balcony I roll the salty caramel across my tongue and notice that the flurry has stopped. The pale winter sunshine has melted away the dusting of snow.
✽✽✽
I tap the details from the index card into the ancient computer on the desk in front of me and click on the save icon, listening to parts whir inside the huge plastic block. Spinning slowly on the rickety wooden stool I look for something to do while I wait for the computer to finish churning and allow me to carry on with my work. The room is small, every surface over-flowing with paper, books and boxes of things that hadn't made their way between the stores and the museum galleries.
Getting up I stand on tip toes, leaning against the table in front of me to peer out of the skylight. The view is mainly empty, one of the reasons I liked it. If I pushed myself higher the rooftops of the city came into view but if I didn't try too hard I could fill my eyes with only sky.
