31. On the cold

and ch-ch-changes...

Dear Readers,

How are we doing? I started this letter thinking about the coming to an end of this old year and the changes taking place as we move through Samhain o the new year and all that, but lads, tá mé bate. There’s a lot of what on this island is called the lurgy going around and I am low on fuel. I need to sit and stare out the window for a bit, so no yap this week – you can have a story instead.

The New Coat

She watched the first flakes as they fell and she stood at the sink. Still, through the morning dark of the kitchen window she followed them, floating low and out of her sight and then she leaned forward, hoping to see them stick to the frosted roof of the downstairs flat. Her deepening breath made clouds on the cold glass. He'd never liked snow. 

She put her steaming breakfast bowl on the drainer by the mug and spoons, pulled off her mismatched Marigolds and reached over the sink to open the window. The bite of winter air surprised her, though she'd thought herself ready. The radio had been chattering about colder and colder days and nights but she couldn't know the truth of it without leaving the house or sometimes allowing the outside in and here it was, suddenly present. 

She looked around the kitchen. Everything was how she preferred it. Thoughtful now, she made her way to the bedroom and in the hallway by the door spied as usual the last box of his things. An ordinary box. She had grown into a habit of staring at the box on her trips across the flat, as if willing it to account for its continued presence.

In her bedroom, the curtains hung open to the whitening sky and the air still held some of the warmth of sleep. She stood by the window and looked out for a moment, then opened the doors of her wardrobe and looked at the things inside. She ran her fingers over the shoulders of the hanging clothes, over textures she knew well. She closed her eyes and imagined how their colours might look in the new whiteness of the world. She imagined how their cloth would feel on her skin. He had always preferred her plainest things and he had never liked snow. He complained of the sweet-sharp cheek-peck and flurry of it in wind-blown darkness. 

The first thing that she chose was a blue scarf. She held it in her upturned hands, vivid already against a backdrop of sensible bedclothes. She tried to remember the last time that she'd worn it anywhere, and frowned when she could not. She frowned a second time at its bobbles and sat on the bed, draping the scarf over her knees. In the light from the window she began to pick gently at tufts that had grown haphazardly along the stitched rows. More than once she found that she had stopped in her picking and was instead quiet, gazing up and out at the sky. She thought about the Saturday when she had found the scarf ,in an Oxfam they'd loved to visit together. It had been on a bold and bright afternoon. An afternoon by herself. 

When she was satisfied, she stood again and by the window pulled the scarf first to her throat and then to her face, measuring the memory of it in faded perfumes. Outside, snowflakes stacked themselves quietly on the roof of the neighbour's flat. She wondered if she could be seen. She wondered how she might look to someone on the outside, in the snow. 

She turned, stood on her tiptoes on the end of the bed and pulled down a box from the top of the wardrobe. She rested the box on the bed and took off the lid. Inside, wrapped in layers of crisp, thin paper was something she'd never, ever worn. With care, she lifted the long wool coat from its wrapping. She held it against herself, feeling its strange weight. Grey eyes in the mirrored door of the wardrobe caught her gaze and held it and for a moment she thought again of the box in the hallway. Her arms tightened around the coat and around herself. She found it funny, that someone could not like snow. Peculiar, that the wonder and delight of it didn't touch everyone with the same intensity. The new coat felt heavy and already warm in her arms.

She fished a second pair of tights from a drawer, slowly putting them on over her first before stepping into a favourite skirt. She felt its topmost button loose in her fingers and took care with the others. Another thing to repair, though not today. When she was a child they had all gone sledding together on the days when it snowed, finding the steepest paths and hills and careening down them in twos and threes on plastic sacks and bin lids. She thumbed at a tiny scar on the first knuckle of her right hand and smiled. Everything was so much bigger then. He had never gone sledding with her, of course. She turned to the mirror. The skirt would do. 

She pulled on a pair of thick socks, wriggled her toes, then clicked through the row of clothes hangers and found two thin tops to wear together under her coat. One black, one not-quite still-black. She pulled on the older one first, enjoying the recently-washed tightness of cotton around herself. She smoothed her front with her hands and looked in the mirror again. She breathed in, a long, deep breath, and released it with a longer sigh. From the street at the front and from the houses at the back she could hear the shouts of children waking up to a morning of unexpected joy. Soon they would be racing out of doors, dragging their parents with them into the impossible surprise of it, turning their faces up to catch the falling wonder on their tongues.

In the bathroom, their voices were louder still. She thought about where they would go with their parents. To the park, naturally, the big hill beckoning. She imagined going there before anyone else, her boots making the first marks on that great quiet blanket between the bare trees. He had never liked the cold underfoot slip-squeak and fresh crumple of it. But you were never first. There was always a dog-walker or a youthful jogger or a night-time worker out there earliest, making those precious prints. Still, it was exciting to think that it could be done. She brushed her teeth. She thought about where she would walk. To the the park, certainly. To see the ponds with their deep-brown coats of flooding ice, gripping here and there at the drooping willow branches. To see the dogs, high-stepping and pock-marking and some cowering confused, some chasing children and balls and some wrapped in coats and carried. To see the view from the top of the hill, the roof tops bright and neat and the windows of warm rooms lit in their grey walls and the dark cuts between them of the streets still carrying buses and braver drivers too. To go beyond, to the high street, the passers-by no doubt buoyed by the new weather and more generous with their smiles and glances. To a fireside seat in that pub she loves. To be warmed for a while before setting off again, to wander along the river path and out of town to quieter places. To see the sun falling low on long fields traced by fewer steps and hear the calling crows as dusk nears. To find her way home again, cold-tired and happy. She washed her face with palms full of cold water and looked back at her reflection. Her hair would hide inside a hat. She squeezed some moisturiser from a tube and rubbed it gently on her face, pressing the skin of her cheeks up and down and around and grinning at the resulting rosiness. 

She felt then a flutter of some half-remembered thing. All at once she worried that she'd spent too long in getting ready. That the snow would cease to fall and turn as it did to gritted grey slush that sulked in icy eaves and gutters and do this before she'd made her decisions. The feeling did not last.

She stepped into the hallway and flicked the light on. Worn at the heels and faded at the toes, her warmest winter boots stood ready. She skipped to the bedroom, slipped into the coat and wrapped the scarf close to her neck as she walked to the front door. She put on her knitted hat. She put her feet into her boots and knelt to tie them, double knotted and tight. She stood up. She put her arm through the strap of her handbag and found the movement unfamiliar in her new sleeves. She unlocked the deadbolt, put the keys back into her bag and put her gloves on. She picked up the box, opened the door, and stepped outside.

Until next time, a chairde,

Paul