again. They wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in this!
She struggled on, her feet damp but not soaked through. She was far too hot now, what with the walking and carrying the basket, never mind Daphne’s extra cardigan. Sweat was running all down her body and her eyes and nose were pouring, too. She must look a sight, she was sure, so in a way she was pleased the others had gone ahead. She wished she had slacks on, like some of the real walking girls. They had proper boots, too. Expensive they looked, the slacks, and flattering; the girls looked very comfortable in them. Best of all, they didn’t have the worry of the wind blowing their skirts up, because Evelyn had that to manage on top of all her other woes, keeping one hand free to hold her skirt firmly against her legs, for modesty’s sake. But then, she thought, even if she had had the money for them, there wouldn’t be a pair of slacks she could get into, not at the stage she was at now.
Now and then when she stopped for a rest the wind felt colder, and it was lovely for a moment, feeling the sweat dry off on her skin, but after a few minutes the wind would start to bite. If she didn’t keep moving she got chilled to the bone, and she was getting so tired. The wind was cutting right through her jerkin and freezing her legs. The others were too far ahead for her to shout and tell them she was heading back down and she didn’t want to make a fuss by having them fret that she had got lost. Anyway, she was carrying half the picnic. She gave herself a talking-to and moved on.
She caught up with the others by the sheep gate at the top of the dam. There was shelter out of the wind if you tucked in under White Brow, with the reservoir stretching away to your right, so that was a blessing. Daphne, Paul, and Evelyn found themselves a spot not far off the path with some flat stones for them to sit on and one on which they could set up the stove. Paul got it lit after several attempts. Evelyn was heartily glad to stop. After a while she could breathe more easily and she could even say, by the time she had a hot brew warming her hands and was munching on a sandwich, that she was enjoying herself again.
They ate and drank gratefully. Sometimes the sun came out strong and warm on their faces and raised the flat, reedy smell of grass and rocks. Evelyn could hear birds, miles above them it seemed. The other two were going on and on about the view and passing the binoculars between them, but she was more interested in the sky, lying back on the blanket and sensing the vastness of it above her and all that lovely emptiness. The wind was high and gusting, and though she didn’t feel it in the shelter of the Brow she could hear it, a high-up rushing like a faraway waterfall, washing and washing the air clean, sweeping grey and white plumes of cloud over the sun as if it was chasing swirls of dust out of the corners of the sky.
Maybe it was because of the baby and all the extra weight, or maybe it was simple fatigue, but when they were packed up and ready to move off Evelyn had stiffened up so much she could hardly stand straight.
“Oh, wait, let’s not go yet!” she said, rubbing her back, trying to make light of it.
Daphne understood. “Oh, all right, let’s have another ciggie,” she said, passing round her packet while Evelyn sank back onto the ground.
“I should’ve brought a hip flask,” Paul said, clicking his tongue.
Evelyn immediately thought of Stan. Was he up here on the hill, too, taking nips from a flask? Would he be content with just nips?
Now, down below them on the path, folk were filing through the sheep gate and on up to William Clough. It was boggy either side of the path, so everybody slowed up and went through single file, and Evelyn thought to herself that even though it was too far away for her to make out faces, she would know Stan if she saw him. He always had on his red scarf these days and he was a big, tall devil. What with that and his way of stooping so his head poked forward, she’d know him even from that distance.
She explained to Daphne and Paul that she would only hold them up if she went any further. They were content enough to go on without her once she had reassured them that she would be fine on her own. All she knew, she told them, was that she couldn’t go back into that wind stinging her eyes the way it did. She would stop here and mind the picnic things. They would get on faster with nothing to carry, and if Paul left her enough matches she would have tea waiting for them when they got back.
Dusting, because it was the quietest, became my favourite task. While the floor was creaking softly above me I would sweep a cloth over surfaces, lifting and setting down Ruth’s things, reaching behind objects and into crevices. I drew my hand across the veneers and ornaments and slipcovers of her life, and by their contours learned her ways. At 27 Cardigan Avenue she was both visionary and manager: Capability Ruth, the romantic yet practical arranger of all the miniature landscapes of her house. I could hear her scolding Arthur, telling him how upset she was about the mess everywhere. She imposed a kind of foursquare, insistent balance; she liked a vista of furniture receding into well-angled, decorous forms against warm-hued walls, she liked to frame windows in drapes tied back like garlands. Her taste veered towards the chintzy: nature improved upon and improbably floral so as to invoke stasis and order. Her cushions lay on the sofa as plump and peaceful as solid little cherubs from a pastorale, asleep on a bank. Her floors were predominantly green and gold, somewhat bleached and shady in the light of the moon. I imagined she liked carpets to remind her of moss and sand.
When I cleaned the composed and satisfied arrangements of Ruth’s downstairs rooms I moved carefully and quickly among the lamps and vases and dishes on side tables. Their settled roundness seemed slightly to reproach me for my angular, darting manner. And when my work was accomplished I took my leave like a verger, turning at the threshold for a last look, to watch emptiness flow back into the space I had disturbed. Knowing I had done all I could, I was content to leave the room to guard its own frail shadows, as though my parting gift were to stop the clocks and arrest Ruth’s hazy idyll in the dark where it could rest undisturbed. No new stark encounter on a deserted road under windblown trees could violate it now; I was keeping it safe from any further brash and irreverent tests of its flimsiness.
And oh, the repetition! Arthur would undo all my work in minutes and not even notice. Whenever I put a room to rights after one of his foraging raids on cupboards or drawers or shelves, I knew that I would probably find it all upside down again the next night. Sometimes I would stifle a sigh when I came across the kitchen or bathroom filthy again, but I didn’t really mind. The endless round of these tasks released me into a ritual both seemly and devotional, and as elevating as meditation.
I think that my grandmother found a similar, steadying comfort in housework and the mild tyranny of its routines. Perhaps housekeeping, for her, was a mundane anchoring force in a life made unstable by my mother’s erratic ways, though my grandmother herself would never have expressed it like that. All she might have said, with a sigh and a smile, was that she didn’t suppose the floor was going to wash itself.
She rolled her two main responsibilities-housekeeping and me- into one, setting about chores with her face tipped up smiling and her hands going like feelers around her, chivvying me along in the role of little helper. By touch and with great care she washed and rinsed and wrung laundry through the mangle; she hung out, folded, smoothed, and ironed our clothes and linen, and sorted it into piles for me to put away. She scrubbed floors and sinks, she dusted and polished. She timed an egg by singing four verses of “Abide With Me” while I, sometimes singing along, watched the trickle of coloured sand slip through the neck of the timer; she was never off by more than a few seconds. The rising gurgle of boiling water going into the teapot told her when she had filled it to its limit. She kept her white stick by the top of the stairs leading down to the shop; indoors she measured the distances between obstacles in counted steps.
By the scent and slant of the wind on Mondays she could judge how long to leave the washing to hang out in the back yard, and if I was good and quick and pegged up the handkerchiefs for her before I left for school, she might play our wet ghosts game, tiptoeing invisibly along on the other side of the line and keeping me guessing which of the vast, obscuring sheets she was hiding behind. No matter how I gazed I was never able to tell if this one or that twitched from a touch of the breeze, from a flick of her hand, or from the breathy sigh of a ghost. I hardly dared peep underneath for a glimpse of her splayed feet in the black shoes, for what if they were elsewhere and
One Monday she didn’t put the washing out at all. When I got home from school she told me there was grit in
