Home life
Signs of spring
Alice Thomas Ellis
This has been one of those weeks when incidents chime together, forming coinci- dences. I sit in front of the telly reading a book about the son-in-law of the Prophet, and a number of Shi'ites immediately rush across the screen. I say to myself, 'I really must ring Deirdre' — and lo, the phone rings and it is she. I am hanging up the washing in the garden among the daffodils and the mud occasioned by the log-rolling operation, wondering idly why I haven't heard of any deaths since I arrived (I don't think I've ever been here for five minutes without hearing of a death), and Janet comes back from the station announcing that she got caught up in a funeral cortege in the village. She also brought a copy of the Spectator and I learn that Jeffrey's cleaning lady thinks I'm an upper-class charwoman. Well, if you leave out the upper-class pal/ that is precisely what I am. I've been sweeping and dusting and mopping and I even managed to tidy up a bit. Janet made me. We threw out a black bag full of single socks and halves of pyjamas and baby- clothes with moth holes. It nearly broke my heart. We threw out a number of sleeping-bag liners too. Nobody ever used them because they twine round the sleep- ing person constricting his movements and even his breathing. I'd left them on the floor of the cupboard, and after two years of unremitting rain they'd got damp and adhered each to the other. I had to throw them away, but I couldn't help thinking they'd come in frightfully handy as shrouds.
I have thrown away a little bottle of lavender-water that went rotten and smel- led worse than muck-spreading, and an ancient bottle of Tabasco that lost its flavour and went pale. Perhaps because Easter was imminent, this put me into a spiritual frame of mind. The lavender- water epitomises the soul of the sinner: once pure and fragrant as babies' breath and now absolutely stinking. I don't know what the Tabasco signifies. Same thing I suppose — if the Tabasco lose its savour wherewith shall the Tabasco be Tabas- coed? I think I'll change the name of the house to that. Tabas Coed. I always wanted a cottage called Pen-Y-Silin and I think it's true what they say about house- work. It deadens the faculties and scram- bles the brains. I'm not going to do it again.
When I feel stronger I must just throw away the door mat. If I can, that is. We inadvertently left it outside and the grass is growing through it, so I shall have to wrench it away from the earth and burn it. That sounds biblical too. One minute the door mat is lying in front of the door and the next it is cast into the oven. Oh, help. Now the funeral party is leaving the graveyard and going back to the village. There's a peacock crying eerily from the hillside and I bet the ghost is plodding round the barn. I've given up the bottled sort of spirits in order to be strong and healthy and get through all the work, and this is my reward: signs and portents and scrubbing floors. I wish Jeffrey was here. Once upon a time he worked in a forest nearby. I wonder if he was planting Christ- mas trees or tearing them up. I do hope the latter.
PS: For some reason I can only get Irish radio here and I've just heard somebody making an impassioned plea for the plant- ing of Christmas trees in order to create jobs.
Previous page
