Authors: Lucy Wood
She bought Ada a purple scarf with beads on that Ada wore for one day. Ada bought her a bright green belt, which Pearl wore for two.
Storms the following winter. Trees tossed from side to side like an ocean; lightning, thunder, an oak cleaved in two and burnt inside. A branch smashed tiles on the roof. Pearl went up there and nailed the tiles back down, she bought wind-up lamps for when the power was out, she got ripped off in a deal for fuses which were all duds.
She found otter tracks and tried to tell Ada about them. But Ada only glanced at the photos, didn’t want to know that there must be a den somewhere and that the spraint smelled like jasmine tea. So Pearl stopped asking what Ada was cooking. She went back to eating all her food out of tins: baby potatoes, peaches, spaghetti. She developed a peculiar fondness for those tinned sardines in tomato sauce.
But it couldn’t go on forever. She found an old recipe that Ada had cut out. She put a handful of flour in a jar, added honey and warm water and left the jar in her study. After a few days there were bubbles. The acidic, pissy smell changed to something warm and yeasty. She took the jar into the kitchen and scooped some of the starter out and mixed it with flour, shaping it into a loaf. It rose overnight by the fire and Pearl kneaded it and shaped it again. She turned the oven on and slid the loaf in. She went back into her study and waited for Ada to come home. Got to work on a tricky bracelet, head down, hooks and pins out. Hours passed. She smelled something, thought maybe the wind had pushed smoke down the chimney and went to check the fire. It seemed OK. The smell got stronger. The fire alarm went off. The front door opened and Ada rushed into the kitchen with her boots still on.
Pearl slid the tray out. The loaf was black and smoke curled out of it. A deep, dark split in the crust.
‘You made bread,’ Ada said.
And Pearl felt such a fool that she said, ‘No I didn’t.’ Took the thing out and threw it in the bin, where it smoked for hours.
For Christmas she gave Ada cash. Ada gave her some tinned sardines, but not the ones in tomato sauce.
Then there was that terrible winter that dragged on until April. The snow started falling and didn’t stop. A thick blanket that covered everything. Sounds became muted, but not peaceful. Snow falling on snow, the world humped and submerged and unfamiliar.
Pearl bought a roll of cheap insulation, put tape over the draughty windows, tended the fire, using up more logs than she should have. Looking out for signs of spring. Winter dragged on and on. A single daffodil peeked out and, startled to see the white world, withered and turned brown.
The house was quiet and muffled. Pearl listened to Ada moving through it. She stood by the study door, running her finger along the grains in the wood. Suddenly thankful for the way the TV blared, covering up the small noises and echoes: the clink of cups and forks, the footsteps, the creaking springs in the sofa. Sometimes only a handful of words passing between them: please, thank you, dinner’s ready. As if they were struggling with a new and complicated language. Weeks passed and the snow didn’t shift. She opened the study window and scooped up a handful of snow from the windowsill, went towards the kitchen ready to burst in and throw it at Ada, make her shriek. But she stopped in the hallway, thought: maybe next year, and let the snow drip through her fingers and onto the carpet.
December was rushing by already. One morning Ada thought about snow as she opened the curtains, and then there it was: a dusting on the ground, as if a dandelion had blown apart in the wind. She shut the curtains, waited a moment, then opened them again. The snow was still there. She had been so busy at the pub, Val asking her to do more and more shifts – one minute trying to use up the rest of the deer, the next minute working out what the hell de-bearding a mussel was – that she hadn’t noticed how short the days were getting, or how raw the air had become.
She went outside and touched the snow with her fingers. It was crumbly and fine, not like the heavy, cloying snow she remembered, which heaped up and stuck to itself like burs. But maybe that was to come. She looked up at the laden clouds. Almost clasped her hands together.
By mid-morning, the snow had disappeared.
The sound of hammering on the roof and then the ladder bouncing as Tristan went down to get more tiles. Replacing the ones he’d already prised off; nailing them on in neat rows. A work-belt slung across his hip. He’d made his way around the house looking for the source of the leak, running his hands up walls, levering floorboards. Decided that the only way was to completely seal the roof. So now he was up there every day, only stopping when it got too dark or the wind suddenly reared up.
When Ada was upstairs, she could hear him talking to himself about what he was doing: overlapping tiles, keeping the felt taut. His voice muffled because of the nails in his mouth. She kept finding reasons to go up and listen, or watch him on his breaks – he would go down to the river and rinse his hands in the water, or cut across the bridge and walk up one of the paths. Once he’d climbed halfway up a tree and sat on a curved branch. She would make herself turn and go back downstairs. Not what she needed to get involved with. Follow the recipe exactly and everything will turn out as expected.
But it made sense, didn’t it? asking him to work on the house. Fix the leak, repair the walls. He was reliable, everyone kept telling her that, and he didn’t have any other work on at the moment. It made sense, it definitely made sense. Get it done before winter set in properly.
She went into her mother’s bedroom and looked at the wardrobe. Took a deep breath. Couldn’t keep putting it off any longer. She opened the doors. The wardrobe was stuffed – coats and shirts and trousers creased into strange poses, like a line of people gesturing at different things. A row of felt shirts, drooping at the waist and unravelling. Baggy cords with damp brown knees and flecks of yellow grass. Wrinkled waterproofs, crushed shoes and knapsacks. A pair of waders slumped in the corner, a tide-line of silt around the thighs. The overwhelming smell was of mildew, but also soil and strong coffee. The oil used to clean jewellery.
Ada unhooked a shirt from its hanger. A tissue fell out of the sleeve. There was a rip across the collar. She folded the shirt carefully and put it in the box she’d brought up. Blew her nose on the tissue, which was running from all the dust. Then saw all the dust coated on the tissue. She picked up a pair of canvas shoes with mould around the eyelets and petrified laces. She put them in the box along with a bright green belt, a horrible thing with a fat buckle. The hangers swayed. Maybe that would do for now. But she made herself take out a stack of jumpers and lay them out on the bed. One of them was much bigger than the others; a man’s jumper, navy with thick ridges. When she was growing up, she used to find things around the house: a bottle of spicy-smelling aftershave, a battered harmonica, a silver cufflink that had slipped under the carpet in the bathroom. Things that, one by one, disappeared, and she never saw again.
Ada folded the jumper neatly and left it on the bed. Then looked at the rest: all snarled together, the crusty wool stained and snagged. Could hardly untangle one from the other. She heaped the pile onto her lap and worked carefully at the wool, licking her fingers to gather loose yarn and threading it back onto itself, closing up the holes and finishing them with small knots.
The front door opened and she heard Tristan come in. The kettle clicked on. Ada tied one more knot, then went downstairs. Tristan was rinsing his coffee mug, his cheeks mauve with cold. ‘Do you want one?’ he asked. He’d left his boots by the door. Ada, her eyes acclimatised to noticing loose thread, saw a fraying lace, tattered heels on his socks.
She nodded and he reached up to the shelf and got another mug. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. She stood by the kettle; it seemed to take a long time to boil. Tristan radiating warmth and that bloody pine-and-soap smell, which stayed in the house for hours.
‘I’m working around the chimney now,’ he said. ‘You know there’s different stone there. All the rest is local stone but the chimney isn’t.’
Upstairs, the wardrobe creaked open. ‘Grockle stone,’ Ada said. Then frowned and poured out hot water.
Tristan got the coffee and shook it in straight from the jar. ‘Are you going to Luke’s party at the weekend?’ he asked.
She had forgotten about the party. Luke had mentioned it a while ago, a small gathering he’d said, for the festive season. She imagined awkward small talk in his living room, mostly people she didn’t know. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She would probably be working anyway. She took the jar from Tristan and spooned the rest of the coffee in. Regretting telling him he could come and go as he pleased – no idea he would be around this much.
Tristan stirred his coffee with his finger. Seemed to dislike spoons. ‘You can tell how far the stone’s come by the amount of quartz in it,’ he said. ‘A lot of people don’t like working with the stuff around here, but to me, it’s the best kind, splitting it open and finding a seam of quartz in there.’
There were bits of bark and tile snagged in his jumper. She wondered where he would go, if he had to move on. ‘Are you going?’ she asked. ‘To the party?’
‘I told Luke I would,’ he said. He picked up his mug and crossed the kitchen. Bent down to tie his boots. ‘He’s worried no one’s going to come.’
‘Lots of people will,’ Ada said. ‘I’m sure lots of people will.’
Tristan shrugged. ‘Maybe it will just be me and him. Talking about the good old days.’ He whistled a bar of quavering music, then saluted her with his mug and closed the door.
The wardrobe doors clunked. The hangers rattled. Ada went back upstairs. The box had tipped over and spilled onto the floor. The clothes in the wardrobe were rumpled and very cold. Specks of snow on the edges of the sleeves. She crouched down and pulled out handfuls of shoes from the bottom shelf: trainers, walking boots, sandals with Velcro straps. A pair of leather boots, the heel cracked like paint.
‘Don’t get rid of those,’ her mother said. She was standing by the window looking out.
Ada ran her hand along the cracks. Some of them had gone right through. ‘I think they’re broken,’ she said.
‘Everyone needs old shoes. You can get rid of any new shoes you want.’
Ada got back down on her knees and looked along the shelf. Saw hatched bootprints, tissues and dust. There was a slipper by itself in the back corner, worn right through at the toe and the heel. She reached in and brought it out, then glanced at her mother. ‘There aren’t any new shoes,’ she said.
Her mother stared at the slipper as if she didn’t recognise it. ‘Do what you want then,’ she said. ‘Get rid of all of it.’
Ada put the slipper on the floor next to the box, then gathered up the tissues and threw them away. She looked through the hangers slowly, all the clothes blurring together, the smell of coffee and oil and grass getting stronger. She saw a shirt that used to be red and blue checks, the colours now faded and the seams unravelling like old cobwebs. An unwashed fustiness clinging to it. Imagined her mother wearing it, sitting by herself in the quiet kitchen. When before she had worn it to yank up weeds and sweep the chimney. She slipped the shirt off the hanger. ‘I could keep this,’ she said. The sleeves were edged with soot.
Her mother barely glanced at it. ‘I never liked that one,’ she said.
Then fleeces, all daubed with stains. Ada gathered them up and clutched them like a bouquet. They were much smaller than she remembered. ‘I could wash these,’ she said. What she wanted to do was wash them all, smooth them out, then hang them back up neatly.
‘Get rid of them,’ her mother said. ‘Look at the state they’re in.’
Ada held onto them. ‘I could wash them,’ she said.
But her mother was looking deeper into the wardrobe. There was a dress which had fallen off its hanger. She looked at it for a long moment and muttered something. It was a brown dress with an ugly band of shiny material at the hem and sleeves. A strange glittery belt around the waist and the neck cut into a hard V. Ada took it out. Swallowed. ‘It’s nice,’ she said.
‘You can keep it,’ Pearl told her.
Ada fiddled with the belt – the material was very cold. Glitter stuck to her hands. The hangers clacked together softly. ‘I don’t think I need it.’
Her mother stared at the dress. ‘Well I definitely don’t need it.’
‘I don’t need it either,’ Ada said. There was a price tag dangling down the back of it. The first price had been scribbled out and a new one had been written next to it. Less than half price. She swallowed again. ‘You never wore it,’ she said.
Her mother’s face suddenly looked crumpled, her eyes pale and watery. She reached out and touched the hem, slowly working her fingers over it. ‘Actually,’ she said finally, ‘brown would probably make you look ill.’ Neglected to notice the brown jumper Ada was wearing right now.
Her mother turned away from the dress and started looking through the wardrobe again. Muttering, pushing things aside. Shirts and bits of snow fell onto the floor. She leaned deeper in, then stopped.
There was a green blazer and a skirt. The wool was thick and expensive and the blazer had brass buttons. One button was missing halfway up. Pearl moved her hand up towards it but didn’t touch it. A baffled look on her face.
‘When did you,’ Ada said, then hesitated. ‘When were these for?’ The suit must have been there all the time, hidden behind the jumpers and tattered shirts. Ada looked at the thick wool. There was a faint trace of perfume on it. The shoulders stretched out of shape from so long on the hanger. Her mother stayed in front of the wardrobe and didn’t answer.