To the House - Part Two

Lily was at the house again, standing on the front lawn, again with a pen and notepad in her hand; this time she decided she was going inside. The first mark on the blank page had been made but it wasn't right; it wasn't wrong either, but it wasn't whole. The problem would only be solved if she went in. She had done so before, why was she pausing? No, she must not let herself be put off. What waves could possibly hurt her? None that hadn't been felt, on and off, on and off, for years, not too many years to count, but years still.
A shrub, possibly the same shrub, as it had done in the past hid the dark brown front door with its one step. Nobody went in that way (very few left by it); its doorbell was only rung by the milkman, the postman and the newspaper boy, or as a game. Run away, run away. Friends and family went in by the high white side gate, walking up the drive and passing the kitchen window, to open its top grey latch [tricky for those small in height and for those with little fingers, though its bottom board could be stood on; if a bigger person was around, it could be opened and swung inwards with the smaller still hanging on.], and be met, two steps from it, by the painted blue kitchen door, mostly open, sometimes shut.
This, Lily, the skimpy old maid of forty, did now. She was in the inner sanctum! There was the garage, where not only was the white Mazda kept but the tins of the dog food which the Labrador fetched himself, carried in his smiling mouth; the red gummy mouth that also liked to play towel-tug. There was the garden, its long green strip and its wider bottom, with its silver-barked trees and bonfire pile. And there, of course, was the door, the wide open kitchen door.
There was movement inside. Mrs Ramsay! Mrs Ramsay! Lily cried. Expecting her to turn round. But Mrs Ramsay was preoccupied slicing bread and frying bacon and brewing tea. Fried or scrambled? she called through the serving hatch; fried, a deeper voice replied. She cracked an egg on the side of the frying pan that contained the bacon; it spat and sizzled. The bread, white and brown, was being grilled at the top of the cooker, at just the right eye-level height.
From the other side of the hatch came the sounds of spoon against bowl. Lily placed her face before it and looked though. There! There was Mr Ramsay! Same as ever, a hearty man (his wife a whippet compared to him; some might say a terrier, a small Jack Russell), with his thick white hair like a stiff brush eating cornflakes with condensed milk. His wife had had her branflakes, which she would in a moment follow with toast. Brown toast and marmalade. And tea, there was always tea, with sugar.
Mr Ramsay was reading The Telegraph; a folded Telegraph, next to the place-mat on which his bowl sat. Not at the table Pop! Mrs Ramsay reproved as she took his empty bowl and set down his breakfast plate (Mr Ramsay grumbled but said nothing). Lily had trailed in after her and squeezed in the seat against the wall, next to the sideboard. Mrs Ramsay reappeared bearing the toast, white and brown, and cut into triangles, in its holder, and took her seat opposite Mr Ramsay.
So there they were, he at the head of the table and she at the other. And Lily, as so many times had been the case, in-between. Mrs Ramsay buttering (with her butter) brown toast and then adding a blob of marmalade on the corner and biting into it, while Mr Ramsay tucked into his fuller plate, then went on to white toast with his butter. All swallowed down with tea.
Other mornings, breakfast might be Mr Ramsay's kedgeree, but mostly it was cereal, then eggs (any way), with bacon or without, and toast, and tea. Different tastes in this house, near the sea, on the mainland, were catered for.
Was nobody else joining them? There were no sounds from upstairs, and no signs of the dog. Sam dog. No signs of Lily herself. No, wait, there was classical music playing. How had she missed that? There it was in the background, the radio on. If anyone else had been there, Lily remembered, Mrs Ramsay would have ordered rather than asked, though phrased it as a question, Pop, can't we have that off? Instead, breakfast over, she had taken a section of the paper and was now leaning over it doing the crossword puzzle. 

Picture credit: P R Francis.

See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.

To the House - Part One

Always to one house I am drawn. It's been many years since I stepped foot in it, though I believe it's still standing; much changed, changed by time, but standing; lived in.
It wasn't a childhood home, it was a home from home; if you like, a holiday home, inhabited through all the seasons by my grandparents, just a short walk from the sea, to which I came on day trips, on overnight visits, on half-term and end of term and summer holidays.
There, Mr and Mrs Ramsay were waiting, waiting...
[the names I will give my grandparents, my mother's parents, though they were nothing like them. They had not eight children, just the two, a girl and a boy who I shall call hereafter (if I speak of them at all) Cam and James, though these aren't their names. I shall call myself Lily, though you will say (if you have read To the Lighthouse) it makes no sense to do so. It will soon.]
...waiting in this strange shaped house, of no shape I could put a name to; Mr and Mrs Ramsay, their roles perhaps reversed. Cam and James have flown the nest. James nearby and Cam further away, nearer to where they used to reside, in Wimbledon. James at some point will have a little boy; Cam already has a girl, Lily.
Years pass, in which memories are made. Years pass, memories remain.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay were separated then united. The house lived in by one, then sold; pulled apart, updated, renovated.
Mr and Mrs Ramsay wait no more, but the house still stands. Waiting; holding in its ceilings, walls and floors the echoes of all those that inhabited it before.
Cam has aged, James is ageing (and has been for some time), and Lily has grown, into a skimpy old maid of forty [four whole years younger than the other Lily's forty-four] and is at present standing on the front shared lawn (shared with the neighbours next door), by the roses and the broome bush, with a pen and notepad in her hand, sizing the house up like an estate agent. Screwing up her small blue-grey-green eyes (it depends on what light you see them in, whether she's bare-faced or behind thin-lensed spectacles) wondering how to go about making the first mark, for a first mark on the blank page must be made. She is a writer, but others, should they happen to glance out of a window at this breakfast hour, might think agent.
There's the living room. Behind that window lies the wooden stairs on which she sat, her legs swinging through the gap, colouring in, or watching, watching, watching for her parents (Cam and William) to arrive; and behind them was the passage to and from all the lower rooms; and off that the dining room, the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom. The kitchen was the window on the side, looking at the drive. The window alongside it the bathroom, where the vacuum was kept and where a white cupboard which held...which held...coats...outdoor shoes...? made a good hiding place; the window above that the upstairs bathroom and next to that Mr and Mrs Ramsay's bedroom, which had its own shower and basin.
Ah, the play room, she'd forgotten the play room, for the play room it was to her, where the dolls and their prams and books lived. Yes, there it was, she could just make out it's flat roof, stuck on the end, on the right as she faced the house, shaded by trees. At its side there stood a fig tree and at its back, beyond the two uneven steps [the doll's pram bumped bumped down them] a stumpy money tree, with leaves like that of ivy.
But what about the upper floor Lily thought, turning as she thought her gaze upwards. Behind that window there was the landing. It was passed going up the wooden stairs; once on the landing a railing could be leant on and the space that held the stairs looked down on, through. Dizzying...exhilarating...was it safe? The pot plant suspended from the ceiling, down below, spun. Behind the window on the left was a small cosy bedroom; James', then hers and Andrew's, her cousin, when they stayed at different times. Next to that a larger, a double room, where Cam and William, if they stayed, slept. Though that too also became Lily's [Lily and Prue's (another cousin) sometimes] with its tall dark wardrobe and chest of drawers with mirror. All pass and vanish; nothing stays. Lily sighed.

Picture credit: P R Francis.

See To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.

On to R

On to R. Rook. The old rook. The father rook, old Joseph. With his wife Mary, who comes every night to the same trees, and who every night can't quite decide which tree-top to settle on. And so they fight and shove the air aside with their black wings, beating out, out, out. Mrs Woolf in her role as Mrs Ramsay describing the sight accurately enough. My eyes are pleased, my mind more so. The image she made lingered long over, and after, dinner where her Boeuf en Daube had been 'a perfect triumph'.
An interesting scene, the dinner, with its internal chatter, the unspoken thoughts, the private musings of all those seated around the table, but my mind, like Lily Briscoe's, kept returning to its mental note: the rooks, the rooks. Tomorrow Lily Briscoe will move the tree to the middle of her painting, and I will write of rooks, of old Joseph in particular.
Tomorrow however would not wait. I felt myself growing as irritated as Mr Bankes, impatient to be working. My fingers drumming, drumming, drumming on the table without a tablecloth. Alone, and comfortable, with a book, yet itching to write. The day was still young, though Mary and Joseph had gone to bed. Even now had their heads under their wings.
The rook, if likened to a gentleman, a seedy old gentleman (Mrs R makes that comparison), would be awake however. A top hat on his head outside a public house, playing a horn. An old man with top hat and umbrella looking at his watch. Another with the umbrella under his arm: It looks like rain. An old man with top hat and hands crossed. With top hat holding a cup, drinking coffee, eating from a plate, and standing near a stove to keep warm. An orphan man, a full-grown orphan man. A series of old rooks; a series of sketches by van Gogh.
Where can such old gentlemen be seen? Nowhere. There are no gentleman, young or old, to be had these days, with or without top hats, with the exception perhaps of theatre or ballet but then it's an act, an act of a few hours. No gentleman anywhere to give you their arms, unless you're old or in need of steadying. Have their wings been broken; have they been shot? Jasper, many Jaspers, have done away with them. Murderous little boys turn into men. Men who won't give you their arms, if you're not in obvious need of it, and even then you might have to ask, perhaps beg. 'Gentle' is unlikely now to put in front of man, though the same could be said of woman.
Old men, disreputable old birds. There Mrs R is wrong I think. Life has been lived, it shows.
They are nearing the end of the alphabet. Their youth has been drained, their strength has been given, their peak has come and gone. They are forced to play a balletic villain, a role which requires more exaggerated acting than muscular energy. Such is life.
Can an old rook be told from an old crow?
Is it the eyes, is it the nose? The shuffling gait, how he holds (and folds) the umbrella, or warms his feet by the fire? I do not know what makes rooks rooks and crows crows.
I only know old Joseph was a rook with half his wing feathers missing. Many men reach that sorry state. Pecked at. Worn down. Worn out. Old Joseph, in this case, (I speculate) does not rule the roost.
Mrs Ramsay does not see what she thinks she sees from her bedroom window, where in the glass she is looking at her neck and shoulders (but not her face) as Jasper and Rose select what jewels she should wear that evening. Which would go best with her black dress? Which might impress fifteen people? Choose dears, choose. As outside in the darkening light Mary, not Joseph, is scolding. Settle, alight, swirl, hover. Descend to rest in the topmost branches of a tree, side by side, or each perhaps in a different tree, to exchange a sharp word or two, then vexed (both with each other), flap wings and rise. Mary never satisfied with Joseph's choice, he with hers. Yet it's always Mary's tree they settle in, because (as I see it) from long habit Joseph gives in. Anything for a quiet night.
Since by day old Joseph needs to guard against little boys who want to break their wings and shoot them from their perches.

Picture credit: Old Man with a Top Hat, 1882, Vincent van Gogh (source: WikiArt).

See: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.

Written in lock-down, May 2020.