Apricity, the mole catcher and the promise of returning light

We have a storm porch, now. It feels luxurious, a strange Maritime phenomenon in a suburban setting. A glass vault that holds us in it, a space so damp and glacially cold where boots are toed off and delivery drivers lob in parcels. A poorly insulated landing space. A corner for debris; the dried leaves we accumulate on walks and found twigs, a space for soft pollen and spiderwebs, for dust, and the hardened ears of terra firma dislodged from the soles of shoes. Depending on audience, I adjust my terminology. Sometimes I elevate my references to the storm porch. In the company of literary types, I say we have a tempest porch or a squall porch. Sometimes I call it a hurricane porch. A gale porch at work. To my parents: the blizzard porch. To the boys: the whirlwind porch.

I belong. I have earned my badge in the village where I know by first name the horsey-spirited woman who runs the coffee place who knows my order so I never have to speak it. In the butcher’s my dad waves as I pass, knifing grass-fed animals into palatable shapes for Christmas lunch. There is a Bic-pen-thin youth in Tesco who always says: Have a good evening, now, as though his present tense announcement is a permission of sorts.

In the new book shop I share snatches of my life with the owner who drove me over free boxes so I could transfer one life to a far better one. If the woman who owns the bookshop had a different name, it would be Luna because she radiates a special amber light, holds some really earthy pull. I tell her about nights where I was ill, the long hours in the bedroom with the mirrored fitted wardrobe and she tells me about yet another man who likes to play mind games.

I have moved so much. I never look back. Recently, the youngest said he missed Lorne Grove and when I asked what he missed, he said seeing the church spire at my bedroom window and the summer time, and knowing his room so well. We walk at night, routinely, and of late the twinkle of string lights transforms the familiar structures of the village into a yule greeting card. I point out the church steeple, explain it is still there, that we just see it from a different perspective now. 

He forgets that summer will come here, too, to this house: as suede and hot as it always does. Knowing something of old isn’t actually a missing at all. I believe the same of nostalgia. We think we want to go back to times past, but then we would have to sacrifice all of our wisdom. I don’t attempt to convince him. I let him have his grief. 

I tell him we will grow kitchen vegetables like proud pea shoots and fuzzy-felt thyme. I tell him we will have an urban garden with a wildflower patch and a higgle-piggle of ceramic pots and troughs that won’t match. I tell him summer will peach in through our new bathroom window, always thrown far open, whilst we shower, and that we will wash our hair to birdsong, the symphony of bees.

I belly crawl through December without thinking about nativity plays or mainstream education. I pay no heed to parents who assume they parent the right way and I remove social expectations like they are Japanese knotweed. I say no to every social event that requires the youngest’s emotional sacrifice or some facade of conformity. Everything becomes on my terms.

At Wollaton Hall we speak of family ghosts and we hold hands, all three of us. It has been too long, our hands no longer slip together like well-worn gloves. At a wildlife park, we feed the upturned faces of capybaras with smiling slices of melon and we communicate about their beauty with gritted teeth, and love squeezes close to pinching. Later, at home, we make hot honey in batches - the youngest’s rarely seen writing in fir green cursive on parcel tags.

Christmas Day passes quietly with small gifts that matter; herbaceous fragrance for the eldest, a rolling pin for his brother to flatten out dough for bread. I watch yoyo tricks, play games of Jenga, books are exchanged about lessons in physics and solitary night animals. The boys get me a candle, a silk eye mask to help my quest for sleep.

The boys were told they would never have a home bigger than the terraced one I rented and to get used to it. I was told to consider shared ownership as I wouldnt ever be able to buy on my own. The boys are already conditioned to believe that education is futile and I was once mocked: where has it ever got you? Saving up for a good solicitor, though, and getting a distinction in a Master’s degree for family law wasn’t such a bad decision, after all.

I buy a second-hand bookcase made from mahogany. The seller puts a chair out on the road in the sticks to show us where to collect it from. It smells of church organs, it screams of funerals. It takes me weeks to slot the ill-fitting shelves into the right brackets. I call it bad names, I rage at how autistic I am, how painful anything jigsaw-like is for me. I find a snail glued to the back with a diamond-shaped hole in its iridescent shell. I set it free and wipe the silver constellations away, and feel unjustifiable guilt for destroying its natural map.

My solstice presents: a tin of sliced peaches, a stack of plain notebooks with cream leaves, antique coloured ballpoint pens. A ruby pomegranate. Fingerless gloves. Cocoa lip balm. Apricot jam. Vintage tea strainers for loose leaves.

A break comes after Christmas. A blessed gift. Stone cottage in a chilly place with long winter walks. Cumbria. The lilac sky is fish bone stew. Glass puddles everywhere and grass tipped by frost and dead moles skewered on to barbed wire fences in scores of ten with ivory claws like boat paddles. I do a Hail Mary. I pray their murdered souls get redemption. Far out in the fields, sheep blank back at us like rugs.

We walk to a pub named after a horse for dinner. We walk back way after dusk. The sort of dark that envelopes, it creeps. It is a lace of navy shadows, the trees scratching out their fingernails against a cameo of night. En-route we had met pigs as big as tents with teeth like a giant’s sugar cubes. Black on pink went their patchwork skin. We don’t woo them on the rush back in the dark, though. We hear them gork as we pass but the urban tale about the time it takes a pig to consume a human is a deterrent.

We talk about what to do on New Year’s Eve. I mention the forest, say that at the threshold of a New Year stands the birch. I say I could tell us an ancient Czech story about a Wood Maiden: part birch tree, part woman. He says what about something more low key like the story of Thor the God of Thunder, his stolen hammer and the feathered cloak.

Walking on we notice the sky drops, how it does so sudden, a double darkening. I think about how these are lean, cold times. Frost makes my face hurt, my lungs bulge, but I can always count on the next breath. For now. I have learned how to keep on breathing even when air pressure orders me not to. My fingers are blueish. Holding hands used to come easier. I tend to misread when is the right time for skin to touch skin.

I still want a piano, I say, to him and to the big outdoors really. I still want a piano. A standing one, I say, and why don’t we chase fog on New Year’s Eve and walk far, and ever so gravely in absolute dark - it is more of a question than a statement.

Then, I say it again, I start to shout it. I still want a piano. A standing one, I say, and why don’t we chase fog on New Year’s Eve and walk far, and ever so gravely in absolute dark. I shout it up to the featherly spine of the trees and the push of cold, to the way the moon is glassy, how it lends a full stop to the great blueing roll of clouds.