The Night Following

the wind that day. The wind was blowing from the wrong direction, carrying smoke and dust from the railway and bringing soot down the chimney. She said this as if she didn’t care. The weather, it seemed, had blown away all her briskness and left her dreamy and vague, or perhaps it was rather that the wind had brought something else to her attention. She closed the windows and told me to find the tin of polish and a duster and give the sitting room an extra going-round while she washed the kitchen floor.

I heard her sighing as she reached for a bucket and ran the tap. The wind had made me contrary, too, in the way that the wrong weather upsets young animals; suddenly I was full of a skittish, supple anger. I dug my thumb into the tin, climbed on a stool, and smeared a lump of polish along the top of the picture rail. When I got down I waved the duster a few times, then I wandered away, past the room where my mother was spending a second day in bed with a stash of bottles under the covers, up to the dull quiet of my room in the attic. I sat on my bed until I felt blank. When I came down my grandmother was smiling but her eyes were as cold as pearls. The spell of dreaminess brought on by the weather was broken. Whatever the wind had brought, she had washed it along and out of the day.

“I gave you a job to do.”

Anger gusted inside me again. “I did it.”

“It’s still dusty in here.”

“How do you know?” She didn’t reply. The lavender and beeswax air lay over us like a coat. “You can smell I’ve done it!”

She moved across to her chair and sat down. “I can see you didn’t.”

“No, you can’t! How can you?”

She was still smiling. “Aye, well, miss. I see what I see.”

“But you can’t see!”

“Even so. There are colours. Everything’s got its colour.”

“But you can’t see them,” I told her. “You can’t see anything.”

“Maybe, aye. Maybe not things. Not as such. But I get the colours for things. They go roaming about,” she said, drawing her palm across the side of her head, “in here.”

“How you can see the colours of things but not the things? That’s daft!”

“Don’t you be cheeky. Colours for things, I said, not of things. There are colours for things. And you did not dust this room.”

“All right then, what’s the colour for dust? There isn’t one!” I took a deep, brave breath and announced, “You’re just talking daft!”

“Maybe there isn’t,” she said matter-of-factly, “but there’s a colour for big fibs.” She fished with one hand for the bag of knitting on the floor under her chair and pulled it onto her lap. “Yes, and there’s a colour for a girl who cheeks her grandma. Now be a good girl and get us a cup of tea. And don’t bang the kettle.”

Dear Ruth

I’m angry, if you want to know.

You might have replied. Just a few words would have done. What’s the matter, run out of words?

Bloody words. That woman Della from your writing group. She brought the tribute. Her eyebrows shoot up and down a lot, don’t they? She says the whole bunch of them contributed but she came on her own in case presence of the others was too much. They don’t want to overwhelm me.

She’s had it written out in fancy writing and framed. Stayed ages pretending the visit was for my sake not hers, for example did I want to ‘“talk about dear Ruth”? There’s no reply to that, I said nothing, just cracked my knuckles. So just to kick us off she brings down her eyebrows and says, “Oh! Didn’t Ruth have such a sensitivity for words?!’”

They stick around, don’t they, words. They’re all over the place, only not a one from you to me.

I told her, And well she might’ve, she was still an English teacher this time two years ago. And very highly regarded, did I have to remind her how many former pupils turned up at the funeral?

At which she said “Awwwww, Arthur. Awwww, I know…”

Imbecile. I said, Mr. Mitchell to you, thank you very much, Della, but she ignored me.

She said she was glad I was managing to talk about you “a little,” “at last,” and she’d “hardly dared hope” the group’s tribute would help me “make the breakthrough” but she was thrilled it had. What on earth is she talking about? If I have something to say I say it, and if I don’t I don’t. Why should it bother anyone that I haven’t got things to say to the people who turn up here?

I honestly think they show up for entertainment. And I shan’t oblige.

Nobody including Della wants to hear about what’s important, ie what the driver of that car’s got coming to him.

She insisted on reading the tribute out loud, because she said it was quite powerful and she didn’t want me to be alone the first time I read it, after she’d gone. Also poetry can be such a comfort at a time like this, etc etc.

Well, prepare to be amazed, here it is:

Tribute to Ruth

Friend, knocked off your bike:

Cut down

And who’s to say not in your prime?

For sixty-one is only the counting of the years

The measuring of Time,

Time allotted by a Higher Power

That dispenses Life’s green springs and verdant summers,

Its mellow autumns and fading winters.

Friend, your gifts were many

And freely given: spread around

For the benefit of friends and family

And members of the wider community.

Neighbour, teacher, wife, friend.

Your generosity was without end.

Ruth, your name’s meaning is obscure

But your life was crystal clear, like pure

Running water.

Wise proud warrior!

Woman! Of flesh and spirit, earth and sky!

A Writer, and in this a Mother to boot-

For your poems and short stories

Are your children: the fruit

Of your creativity, given birth through

Life’s long labour in the orchard of womanhood.

As roses ramble upward through a tree, hold fast to the trunk

And blossom, so your work holds, clings to the memory of you.

Ruth, cut down like a reed,

We whom you leave behind

Can only hope it was quick, a swift

Release without pain.

Your poems and short stories full of humour and wisdom

You leave them behind, a legacy to keep

For those who stand by the grave and weep.