It can be the smallest thing, a tiny detail, like the seashell trapped in enamel on the window table in the guest house on South Marine. I’ve forgotten it’s name now, I used to know, I used to recite as I walked. It is a ubiquitious one. Something to do with wind or the sea or a view. Seeing that thing, a cheap thing, mostly to be found in seaside souvenir shops. Something that as a child I would’ve liked to hold in my hand, a treasure, a wonder. Anyway it reminded me of the various craft sets I’d ask for for Christmas. I had a candlemaking one, a macrame one, a weaving one and an enamelling one. I trapped all sorts of things. Feathers mostly and tiny shells. I thought them magical. I still do.
I thought about J., the Russia expert, and her son. I’d seen them making their way to the cafe yesterday morning. I remembered how she’d told me one Saturday morning at the BBC studio that she was going home to make waffles with her son. I’d pictured him as a shining boy, precocious, bright, talkative, small with blonde curly hair. Is that why it plays on mind? The fact that I made assumptions and got it so wrong? He is a savant. He is always smiling but he is not the blue-eyed little boy I’d imagined. He sits with his parents every Saturday while they read the papers and eat breakfast. He stares about the room, seemingly quite content, he eats, as they do, and once I saw him tracing his finger along a line of text in the paper. I imagine her sadness. Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps there is joy in the other, in the different. We cannot know. I cannot know.
