I took them. I wasn’t sure whether I should. Tying them up with a white ribbon, I attached a little red label and wrote a small X. He was in the Promenade shelter, lying prone on the seat wrapped up in his sleeping bag, his face turned towards me. In the dark I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or awake. I step forward tentatively leaving the little package on the ground beside him.
Boxing Day was traditionally a day about giving, she tells us. St Stephen’s Day. St Stephen stoned to death while he prayed for his enemies. A day for giving not spending. We fill the space, it is our compunction. So uncomfortable with the void. That black bag of Robert Bly’s. See how it has grown.
The wind had dropped. The air was mild. Lots of kids about. The Pier Pressure night club was just spilling out as I walked past. Cocooned. I am cocooned in my waterproofs and muffled against noise with my headphones. Ipod on shuffle. We will rock you, rock you, rock you, carol singing in my head as I pass the open door. We are on parallel planets. They whirl about in slow motion, shouting, barracking. Most are in t shirts, short skirts, heads spinning. One boy runs up the street in a wavy line, a girl hangs over the Promenade railing, her legs akimbo. Hello, a young lad says to me. Hello, I reply and keep on walking. The harbour is quiet, only the oystercatchers pip pipping. No wind. I walk fast, striding. Soldier, she’d said, soldier. Then up through the Castle gardens and down Great Darkgate Street. By now they’ve all pushed along Pier Street and stand in a mangled mess before me. Seems like hundreds, there maybe twenty or thirty. They make such a clamour. Sounds that are wordless. A kind of keening, a moaning, as they lollop about, falling as they walk. Some cling to each other, others lean against shop fronts. Their clothes are skimpy, bare-legged girls going blue. As I stride down the hill a girl follows me. She catches up, her stride matching mine. She carries a mobile phone in her hand. It is lit up, illuminated. Ah, she is mimicking me. She turns to catch the eye of her friends. I feel a frisson of irritation. Usually I am ignored. Usually I am invisible. Not now, not this morning. I keep walking. I remember a time in Covent Garden. The same thing happening. One has to succumb. You have been selected as the fool. So be it. Play it. Succumb to it. We reach the junction opposite Tesco Express. I cross and she turns left. Bye, she whispers.
I’ve never considered myself a bona fide author, says Agatha Christie. (They are playing some recordings of her on the radio.) My profession was a married woman, writing was a side-line.
Then it is Marguerite Patten’s turn. I am preparing supper and he has joined me upstairs. He kisses my cheek. I’ve always thought it rather odd to have cooking on the radio, he says, looking up at me from his paper. I like it, I say. And I do. Especially her. She is making dishes from the 1950s. He was a child then. Lemon Meringue Pie, Crepe Suzette and Steak Dianne. I remember my mother’s cookbooks with their monochrome photographic illustrations. They weren’t the luscious, coffee-table cookbooks of today. The print was small, utilitarian. My first was by Marguerite Patten. I felt so proud of it. It was useful, easy to follow. Calm. Like her. Like her voice, steady, cool as a marble rolling pin. I bought her book when I started studying Domestic Science at O level. It terrified me cooking under the eye of our DS teacher, Miss Macgregor. She was a giant of woman, a Scot. A mannish-looking woman, she wore glasses and thick American Tan stockings. Everything had to be just so. The kitchens spick and span. I could do that. I was always tidy. But the science of it all threw me. I cook with feeling not reason. Nevertheless, I learnt much. But how I wish we’d had Marguerite instead. A little less fear would’ve been good. Now and always. Yes. A resounding yes.
Now its Desmond Morris on Inheritance Tracks. His voice is not what I expected. Posh. Reserved. Polite. We married in 1952, he is saying. People ask me how our marriage has lasted so long. Separate bedrooms, I tell them, he says. Separate bedrooms.
For now the rain has ceased. Not so in Leeds, York, and other parts of North Yorkshire. My heart goes out to them. Here take it. May it make you dry. We have had floods before. We will recover. So too Australia and their bush fires. Two extremes. We will recover. Your suffering is mine. Here take it. My thoughts, my love.
