Our Picnics in the Sun (22 page)

The place had changed color by losing color, its surfaces turning pale and powdery like disintegrating paper, its edges softened by a pall of clay dust. But tracks on the floor from the door through to the back were darker where someone had recently gone to and fro, and a tracery of scrapes and smears near the middle marked the spot where the old work stools had been broken up and splintered for firewood. Howard’s eyes scanned the shelves on the back wall. All his tools and jars and tubs of glazes stood under a fuzzy coating of dust; to his relief, all looked untouched. The large biscuit tins he was looking for were there, too, stacked as before. He scraped forward.

The immediate difficulty, which he’d anticipated, was reaching the tins at all. In the past he would stand on a stool to lift things off the shelves; now, even if there had been a stool left in one piece, he wouldn’t be able to manage that. But he knew there was a pair of tongs somewhere in the studio, left from the time he was experimenting with raku ware, and he found them where he hoped they’d still be, on their wall hook above the glazing bench. The handles were fashioned like a pair of shears, requiring one hand each, so he held the tongs by their closed flat pincer ends, designed for lifting newly fired pots red-hot from the kiln into tubs of sawdust. Howard winced, remembering how he’d botched it, the sooty black smoke that had filled the air as the sawdust ignited. The place might have burned down, and when he’d brought out the blackened pots and dipped them in the vat of water that was supposed to wash the smoldering sawdust ash away and reveal the crackle pattern of the raku glaze, they’d shattered to pieces.

With the tongs, there was no question of lifting the biscuit tins from their shelf; all he could do was dislodge them. They were seven of them, all rectangular and sitting one on top of another. The one he wanted was at the bottom, where for years its contents had been safe from Deborah’s eyes; she had no cause to go looking for anything in the pottery, least of all something in a biscuit tin at the bottom of a stack of seven; she seldom even went in the place. Howard poked and nudged at the tower of tins until it came crashing down, banging the lower shelves, shedding lids and raining an assortment of pottery tools: cutters, pins, scalpels, looped wires, sponges, kiln props. The tins, lids, and contents hit the floor in a cacophony of clangs; objects rolled and tumbled away. Howard squeezed his eyes shut and waited for his ears to stop ringing. Then he went searching about the floor, stooping only when necessary, holding on to his frame with one hand and bending his knees cautiously, then stretching upright very slowly so that he didn’t get dizzy and keel over. In this way, painstakingly, he found everything that had spilled from the tin he was interested in.

He came across the T-shirt first: it seemed to have shrunk and was of no real color anymore, though he remembered its being yellow on
the day he wore it last. He flapped it against the wall to get rid of the clay dust it had picked up from the floor, which brought on a fit of coughing. When he’d recovered from that, he stroked the T-shirt across his chin and felt it catch on his stubble; it still carried the slight pungency of his sweat and maybe the animal scent of birth blood. The nurse had tried to take it away but he’d closed his eyes and clung on to it, afraid to ask her if he could keep it in case she failed to understand that he
had
to keep it, and told him no. He’d rolled it up when she left the room and sneaked it under his sweater to bring home. Now he placed it again under his clothes, and tears broke from his eyes at the sensation of it, the cotton flattened and cool against his skin.

But breaking down would stop him doing what he had to; he braced himself next to pick up the bracelet from the floor. The plastic was yellowed and splitting and the words in faded ballpoint were hardly legible under the clouded name panel. He understood what the label said more because he’d so long ago memorized it than by recognizing the letters. He closed his hand around it and pushed it into his pocket.

The last thing had landed on the floor some way away, blown perhaps by the breeze from the doorway. Howard shuffled through the spilled litter and picked it up. The little hat, shaped like an acorn cup, had been fashioned from a tubular length of muslin, cut and knotted at one end. He brought it to his face and squeezed the tight cloth button of the knot in his good hand; he breathed in the scents trapped in its fibers. It was too much; quickly he bunched the whole thing in his fist and stuffed that, too, in his pocket.

Howard pushed himself on his frame all the way back to the door. He was shivering now, and the return journey across the yard took even longer. He did not notice the sun again, and did not have enough strength to make the small detour to retrieve the waxed jacket; he left it flapping on the ground. The back door stood open—deliberately he had not closed it behind him—but once inside he could not keep hold of the doorhandle to bring it to again. When he made it back to his chair in the sitting room he pulled out the T-shirt, identity bracelet, and muslin hat. Without looking properly at them again, he
stuffed the T-shirt and bracelet deep in the upholstered crevice between the seat and side cushions of his armchair. They’d be safe there. Nobody in this house had any reason to lift chair cushions from their places. But he kept for a moment in his hands, before pushing it also into the depths of the chair, the muslin hat. He brought it to his face and held it, dabbing it against his eyes as he wept. Because although after all these years it couldn’t be possible, he thought he could still smell in the soft bundle of cloth the new, damp hair of a baby.

A
few years back I forgot to renew the tax disc and insurance on the van. It was an oversight that first time but since then I’ve let the whole business slip. The older the van gets the more it’s a waste of good money to insure it, and I resent paying out tax to the government just to drive four miles to Bridgecombe once a week on a frost-cracked road that’s all but deserted. Even in summer there are more sheep and wild ponies wandering along it than cars and I don’t notice them paying road tax, and my little bit of wear and tear on it can hardly make any difference. On top of that they never grit the road in winter so it’s not as if they’re spending a penny on it. Theo and I are of one mind on this. So inside my week-in, week-out orbit from Stoneyridge to Bridgecombe I never really think of myself as breaking the law, and even though I am, who’s to know? I don’t think I’ve once seen a policeman in Bridgecombe. But once I’m outside my safe orbit by even a few miles, I can see that if I’m stopped by the police I will be considered a cheat or a petty crook, or merely feckless and slightly nuts. That’s not how I am, and Theo confirms it. I don’t accept that picture of myself. But being stopped would be troublesome.

And out here on the main road the van shows its age and takes all my concentration. On the Bridgecombe journeys I don’t much notice the scraping gearbox and how the steering pulls to the left. The accelerator pedal is worn silver-smooth and when I try to get up any speed it rattles so hard it nearly shakes my foot right off. The passenger’s window judders down every few minutes because the winder’s broken and then the wind and road noise roar in, spinning my hair across my face and making me deaf even to the rasp of the engine.
Going up the hills I mash my foot down but the van just slows and slows so I have to pull over to the left and crawl along. Then I can see it all as if from the outside and at a great distance, a metal box scabbed with rust shaking along the smooth black sweep of white-striped tarmac, its tires snapping through the gravel on the shoulder while shiny cars and trucks whip past. And all around, the shoulders of the wind are pushing, pushing, pushing at it because it’s going slower than everything else on the road, and slower even than the great plumy clouds up above that are racing over the empty hills on either side and going higher still, way, way up to where there’s nothing but weather and huge sky and the streaks of plane trails. Down here the van scuttles along like a tin cockroach. I feel small and out of place and afraid. It’s a mistake, I should not have come. All my truant’s joy at the idea of this expedition has vanished. What does bread matter? The van breaking down will bring a heap of woe, and all for a few bags of flour. But I can’t return with the task abandoned for want of a little courage. If I do that it will mean that yet another thing—in this instance, Theo’s encouragement—will have failed. I don’t want him to feel failure of any kind. So I keep on driving, holding on tight to my plans for the bread-making and to my dreams of an October kitchen with Theo in it, because I don’t know what else to do, and besides, those plans and dreams are what I want.

At least I don’t have to go all the way into Taunton. I pull in to the farm shop and health foods co-op just off the roundabout where in summer
Welcome to Taunton
is spelled out in geraniums among white petunias in a long curving flowerbed. On this autumn day it’s an empty brown rectangle. I haven’t been here in over three years and it’s a little disorienting to find there’s now a children’s play area and a fancy sort of shed selling garden pots. Across from the co-op a new cinder-block building is going up and bulldozers are leveling the ground all around it, pushing the smashed turf and roots and chalk-smeared clay into a low, thick wall.

It’s even more disorienting to find that inside the shop, Christmas has arrived. I haven’t given Christmas a thought, but as the tinselly banners over my head point out, it Is Coming. However, the dread
that usually comes with the idea of Christmas begins to fade as I push my cart around, because of course it will be different this year. Theo will be with us, and so it cannot fail to be delightful. (I don’t have to ask if he’ll still be here. I know he will.) So when I’ve got everything I need for baking every conceivable kind of bread, I go on buying, piling the cart with dried fruits and brown sugar and mulled wine spices and nuts, which are all on special offer. I am going to make plum puddings, Christmas cake, mince pies, everything. The prospect of being really busy is exciting in a way it hasn’t been for years. I shall make it a Christmas to remember.

The bill at the end is a dreadful amount, but I won’t need to come back here anytime soon. Apart from the expense, the thought of repeating this expedition is unbearable. I have been stuck at Stoneyridge for so long that leaving Howard to drive twenty-six miles to go shopping is a momentous and fearful adventure, and no wonder I’m anxious to get back to him. But the fact is, although I am concerned, it’s got nothing to do with Howard. It’s Theo I’m anxious about. Of course he had to stay behind, but I still wish I’d been able to bring him. I need him with me. Shopping for the special Christmas baking and imagining his pleasure at the lovely things I’ll make has me missing him all the more, and now I have to face the return drive on my own before I’ll be back with him. I push the cart out to the car park as fast as I manage and start loading everything into the van. Then I hear my name.

“Deborah?” It’s spoken like that, as a question. I know the voice. I hate the voice. More than ever I wish that Theo were with me. I keep my head down and go on with the packing.

“Deborah, hello! It
is
you. Gosh, hello!”

“Oh, Pat. Hello,” I say. “What a surprise. Didn’t see you there, sorry!”

“It’s lovely to see you! How are you? How’s everything? Been stocking up? Here, let me give you a hand.” She pushes her empty cart out of the way and starts loading my things in.

“It’s fine, honestly, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“So, how’s Adam doing? I don’t hear from him so much these days. What’s he up to?”

“He’s fine. Very busy, he’s got big responsibilities now. His firm think the world of him. Still based abroad. Going from strength to strength.”

“It is lucky, bumping into you like this. I only came in to get stuff for the Christmas cake. I always get the fruit and nuts here. They’re Fair Trade.”

“Are they? They’re quite expensive,” I say. “Still, only once a year,” I add, realizing in time this is the correct attitude. “So, how’re Vince and Flora?”