The breakfast table was being cleared, Lily, older than five, younger than ten was helping. Mr Ramsay still in his towelled dressing gown was vacuum cleaning the carpet, the dining room. (around and under the table), the living room (the central part of it), and and the passage from it leading past the dining room to the kitchen, where Mrs Ramsay was filling the sink with hot water and bubbles. A young Lily having finished putting used plates, cups, forks, spoons and knives on the side was standing slightly behind Mrs Ramsay (at the sink, her pink shirted and tartan skirted figure with its back to her) with a checked tea towel in her hands. She was going to dry and put away. Mrs Ramsay left nothing to drain. All that had been used was washed; all that had been prepared on was wiped over.
Forty-year-old Lily observed a younger Lily through forty-year-old eyes. Step forwards, pick up, dry; step backwards, set down. Until all had been dried and moved to a unit on the opposite side of the kitchen; only then was it put away, in roughly the place it was supposed to be: everyday cutlery in the kitchen drawer, large plates in the cupboard underneath, side plates and cups in the unit above with sliding doors. Mrs Ramsay and young Lily were performing a dance, only Lily the younger was leading, flashing here and there; Mrs Ramsay, at the sink, was restricted to hand and arm gestures. There were sparks between these two; of humour teased out.
Was this what life was all about, the older Lily wondered.
Mr Ramsay meanwhile had put the vacuum away and could be heard, one foot after another, going up the stairs to shave and dress. The downstairs stereo had been turned off, the radio upstairs (in their bedroom) would be turned on, tuned as it always was to classical music. Music sometimes too rousing for that time in the morning. Mr Ramsay would exult with it; Mrs Ramsay would not; she would protest.
Mrs Ramsay, Lily observed (the young and the old) was feeding the birds; 'slinging out a tray' (she used to say) of bread and odds and ends (usually at this time bacon rind). [The birds (or the dog, Sam dog) were given anything that hadn't been eaten and couldn't be saved. She would do all manner of things with cold potatoes for instance.]
Next, Mrs Ramsay too would disappear upstairs to put her face on; then she (with Mr Ramsay) would be ready to confront the world. Young Lily of this morning didn't want to watch her, and neither did the old; forty-year-old Lily wanted to watch Lily, for she knew Mr and Mrs Ramsay's movements so well but was less sure of her own.
What would this young Lily do? Would she read – a Famous Five or My Friend Flicka; would she play that addictive game on the calculator with its high-pitched rolling rrr (which her tongue could never imitate); would she play marble solitaire; would she sit like Mrs Ramsay [the To the Lighthouse Mrs Ramsay] and take up the knitting needles? She sat on the sofa, that to her resembled animal fur; she knitted; continued to knit a ball of coloured wool into nothing, and waited for the next part of the day to begin: shopping, perhaps, at the small local stores, where old friends would be hailed and new introduced; washing put on, washing pegged out; lawn mowing; kind Mr Carmichael might drop in (he had bad skin) unannounced for a coffee; a salty ham sandwich on white crusty bread (which butter?); a walk to the beach (sometimes instead of that a nap; Lily would read); the (compulsory) afternoon cup of tea.
All this old Lily could see clearly in her mind's eye, as could the young. The day, and days to come, were spread out before them both.
But where were Cam, William, James, Andrew, Prue? Where were they now? Cam and William [her parents] were in Surrey; James [her uncle] had moved to London, remarried and relocated [with her aunt Minta] to Yorkshire; and Andrew and Prue [her cousins] had turned out a little wild. Mrs and Mrs Ramsay [presumably Mr Carmichael too] were dead; perished, each alone. Only forty-year-old Lily comes and goes, as a ghost, free as smoke, to the house.
Picture credit: P R Francis.
See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Written in lock-down, May 2020.
