2012
Esther dreamed she was going backwards, time was going backwards. Back and back, faster the further she went, through her own unfurling life.
Leaves leap from the ground, reattach themselves to trees, soften and colour, blaze briefly, turn green, then begin to curl up, tighter and tighter, into bud. The sun falls and rises, comes and goes behind scudding clouds. Buildings vanish and older, more complicated structures, then simpler ones, take their place. The sea recedes, the snow softly, softly floats up into a leaden sky.
Once, she was a person who always moved forward, anticipating the future. She did it on the back of the comfortable dolphin sleep, eight hours a night, and only less when she had to get up early to catch a train or deliver husband or child to the station or airport, or a waiting bus for a school expedition.
That was in the days when she had trains to catch, the days when she had a husband and the children were still at home. Of course you move forward when you are always looking ahead, when the only things you care about are burning now, or lie in wait.
She had grown up in a family of five with grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts. Then there was Jack, and they made their own family, with children, cats and dogs, and people coming and going all the time. She was always at the centre of something. Now she was alone, walled by quiet. The remaining animal was a cat so elderly she rarely moved from her chair in the kitchen.
Pressing the button that lit up the face of the alarm clock, she saw it was ten to four, a bad time: too early to get up, too late for any worthwhile rest to be had.
It was cold in the bedroom; the temperature had dropped in the night. Her arm, moving from the clock to the radio lying on the other side of the bed, Jack’s side, was chilled, and when she had righted the radio, still hissing faintly, and turned up the sound a little, the arm brought back under the covers seemed to spread its coldness to the rest of her.
The voice coming from the radio more intelligibly now was telling her about a project for women in Afghanistan, something about education. There was comfort in this remote, calm voice, relaying information which could make no difference to her life or cause her grief, conjuring mild interest only. She closed her eyes, the cold arm thawing by her side. Her feet were very cold too, but if she got up to fill a hot water bottle, she would be wide awake with no more hope of sleep. She wouldn’t sleep anyway if she went on being cold. She lay still, the dilemma floating in her head. Despite the cold, she began to doze.
The shrilling of the telephone jerked her awake and she started up, heart hammering. In her blind haste she knocked the telephone off the bedside table, her groping hand unable to trace the noise, still calling her in the dark. By the time she had put on the lamp and fumbled under the bed where the phone had slid over polished floorboards, the ringing had stopped and the answerphone cut in, her own detached voice giving way to a beep as the caller hung up without leaving a message.
She was shaking with shock and cold. Tracing the call, she found it was a number she did not know. A mistake, that was all. The clock told her it was still only half past four. Rising with a sigh, she pulled on her dressing gown. At least she could get warm, even if there was no point in trying for sleep.
Even in the kitchen the chill of an icy February night had penetrated. She put water in the kettle and set it on the hot plate of the Rayburn, holding her hands over it for a moment to heat them. The cat looked up, blinked, then tucked her head down again, curling her tail over her eyes.
February.
Margaret had given her a calendar with a seasonal recipe for each month. It was still at January with Scotch Broth, a soup for winter days. As she waited for the kettle, she turned it over to the next month. Lamb hotpot with dumplings and curly kale. This was not a calendar for people on a diet. She was tempted to look at July, but suspected summer pudding or strawberry trifle.
February.
She hung the calendar on its hook again. ‘It’s over a year,’ she told the cat. She had got through a whole year, the first year that everyone told her would be the worst. Everyone except Margaret who said the second year after being divorced was terrible, it all became real and permanent then, and she assumed widowhood would be like that too.
‘Well, thanks,’ Esther had said, ‘You’re not cheering me up.’
‘No.’ Margaret was frank. ‘I know. But it’s better to be warned, don’t you think?’
All through the past year, she had done everything for the first time without Jack. Would doing it for the second time be worse?
She sat on the chair next to the cat’s. Much worse, she realised, with a yank of despair. Now it’s real, it’s forever and the whole world will expect me not to mind so much. They will expect me to get on with it, I’ve had my year of mourning, the sympathy, the flowers, the invitations, help with the garden and the house. I need to get out of deepest black and change to grey or purple or whatever it was they used to do in Victorian times. The year is up.
I’ve survived it, and that’s what matters, isn’t it?
The familiarity of the kitchen had begun to soothe her. My house, she thought, surprised all over again that this was how it was. My kitchen, my home. Here I am, the inheritor, with everything that means. It took an effort these days not to concentrate only on the year of grieving, the year she had just survived, but for once, her mind was travelling farther back.
When she made herself get into bed again for an hour or so, since daylight would be a long time coming (rain was spattering against the windows, a dreary day beginning), armed with a hot water bottle, she did drift towards sleep, and in that half dreaming state, encountered shadows, since she would not call them ghosts.