A Winter Book Part 5

Never mind. I rowed on and came near the narrow gap where the shallows open to the sea, after which the small islands thinned out and it became cooler.

Now I was getting near the most important part of my trip and I had to stop and think. I dropped the anchor-stone overboard, with the line secured to the rowlock. There seemed no need to sleep but I took out Mum's sandwiches. They were each separately wrapped in greaseproof paper, and on the outside of each she'd written 'cheese', 'sausage', etc., except that on one she'd put 'Long Live Freedom'. Silly. So I just ate hardbread and opened her appleade and watched the moon, which was about to climb the sky. It was still large and looked like a pickled apricot. The road from the moon stretched straight out to the boat and now you could hear the sea properly again.

This is the turning point, this is exactly where the way back begins and I'll be able to draw my journey on the coastal chart in a bold loop like a la.s.soo thrown round an archipelago! Now I'm coming to the creeks that face the sea, the uninhabited places that are my secret territory because I know them better than anyone and love them best.

I come here when I'm feeling lonely and especially when it's blowing, which it does most of the time. There are five creeks and six headlands with not even a shack as far as the eye can see (the pilot's cottage doesn't count). I go slowly, hugging the sh.o.r.e, into each creek and out round each headland; I mustn't miss anything out because it's a ritual. Naturally I must salvage anything that may have washed up on sh.o.r.e and secure it with a couple of stones but that has nothing to do with the ritual everyone rescues flotsam without even thinking about it. Now I'm about to see my territory from the sea for the first time, that's important.

I pulled up the anchor-stone and rowed straight out into the path of the moon. Of course the moon's path is lovely as a picture in calm weather, but when it's rough it's even more beautiful, all splinters and flakes from precious stones like sailing through a sea set with diamonds!

And at that very moment Dad turned up, I knew it was him because I recognised his Penta. So he'd found me, and now it was just a question of whether he was angry or relieved or both, and should I let him have the first word or not and then he turned off the motor and came alongside and grabbed the gunwale and said h.e.l.lo.

I said h.e.l.lo.

"Climb over," said Dad. "We'll take her in tow, and now I'm going to ask you once and for all: why do you have to worry your mother like this!?" He fixed the stern line, adding: "The way you're behaving is almost criminal." Then he started up the Penta, which made it impossible for either of us to add another word.

I sat in the bows. The boat danced after us as light as a hind and didn't take in a single drop of water.

I knew Dad enjoyed driving the Penta on the open sea, so I left that to him and concentrated first and foremost on my own territory, which I could now see from the sea. The further from it we went, the more I realised that seen from the sea it was nothing but an extremely boring strip of Finnish coastline, which no one else would ever be the least bit interested in seeing, which was fine by me: they could all stay away if they had no idea what beauty was!

I took off my cap and loosed my hair to the wind and thought of other things.

Dad had found the sandwiches and eaten them.

It was a very beautiful night. He began playing and showing off among the waves; every so often he looked at me but I pretended not to notice. It was beginning to get light; outside our home creek, he brushed Hallsten in a tight clever curve, but kept the tow-rope permanently slack so the boat had time to reach the sh.o.r.e sedately. When we came near the hill, Dad said: "Never do this again, just so you know." We said goodnight. It was getting steadily lighter; the sky was big and white, as it usually is before sunrise.

PART III.

Travelling Light.

The Squirrel.

ONE WINDLESS DAY IN NOVEMBER, NEAR SUNRISE, SHE saw a squirrel at the landing place. It was sitting motionless near the water, scarcely visible in the half-light, but she knew it was a real live squirrel and she hadn't seen a living thing for a long time. You can't count gulls: they're always leaving; they're like wind over waves and gra.s.s.

She put on her coat over her nights.h.i.+rt and sat down by the window. It was cold, with a cold that stood still in the four-walled room with its four windows. The squirrel didn't move. She tried to remember everything she knew about squirrels. The wind carries them on pieces of wood from island to island. And then the wind drops, she thought with a touch of cruelty. The wind dies or changes direction and they drift out to sea, it turns out to be not at all what they expected. Why do squirrels go sailing? Are they curious or just hungry? Are they brave? No. Just ordinary and stupid. She got up and went for her binoculars, and when she moved the cold crept inside her coat. She found it difficult to adjust the binoculars, so she laid them on the window-ledge and waited a little longer. The squirrel continued to sit at the landing place doing nothing, just sitting there. She watched it intently and, finding her comb in the pocket of her coat, combed her hair slowly while she waited.

Now the squirrel came up the hill, very quickly, ran forward towards the cottage and stopped suddenly. She studied the animal closely and critically. It was sitting upright with its paws hanging down, occasionally jerking its body in a nervous and apparently unmotivated movement, a sort of crawling leap. It dashed round the corner. She went to the next window, the one facing east, then to the south one. She could see right across the island from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, there were no trees or bushes in the way; she could see everything that came and went. Unhurrying, she went to the fireplace to light the fire.

First, two pieces of plank at the sides. Over them, a crosswork of kindling, amongst the kindling birch bark, and on top of that some long-burning wood. Once the wood was alight she began to dress, slowly and methodically.

She always dressed at sunrise, warmly and with antic.i.p.ation, pulling on sweaters and b.u.t.toning moleskin trousers round her broad midriff, and when she had got into her boots and pulled down her earflaps she would usually sit in front of the fire in an inviolable state of wellbeing, completely still and without a thought in her head while the fire warmed her knees. She met each new day in the same way, waiting sternly for winter.

Autumn by the sea had not turned out to be the autumn she'd expected. There had been no storms. The island was withering peacefully, its gra.s.s rotting in the rain and the hill turning slippery with dark algae which reached far above the waterline as November became increasingly grey. Nothing had happened before the squirrel came ash.o.r.e. She went to the mirror above the chest of drawers and detected on her upper lip a delicate latticework of little vertical wrinkles she'd never noticed before. Her face was an undefinable grey-brown like the November earth; squirrels become grey-brown in winter but they don't lose their colour, they only get a new skin. She set the coffee on the fire and said: "Whatever else, squirrels have no talent." The thought calmed her.

She mustn't be hasty. The animal needed time to get used to the island and most of all to the house, and to discover that the house was merely a motionless grey object. But of course a house, a room with four windows, isn't really motionless; the person moving inside it must seem a sharp, threatening silhouette. How would a squirrel understand the movements it sees in a room? How, seen from the outside, do movements in an empty room look? All she could do was move very slowly and in absolute silence. The prospect of living an entirely silent life seemed tempting, if she could achieve it voluntarily and not merely because the island was silent.

On the table lay paper in orderly white sheaves, always placed in the same way with pens beside them. Any sheets of paper she'd already written on lay hidden against the surface of the table, because if words lie face down there's a chance they might change during the night; you may suddenly come to see them with a new eye, perhaps with a rapid flash of insight. It is conceivable.

It was possible the squirrel might stay overnight. It was possible it might stay through the winter.

She very slowly crossed the floor to the corner cupboard and opened its doors. The sea was restless today; everything was restless. She stood still holding the cupboard doors open while she tried to remember what she'd come to fetch. And as usual she had to go back to the fire to remember. Sugar. And then she remembered not sugar, not any more, because sugar made her fat. These delayed acts of remembering depressed her; she let go and her thoughts ran on, and sugar led to dogs and she wondered what if it had been a dog that had come ash.o.r.e at the landing place, but she pushed the thought away and cut it out of her mind; it was a thought that diminished the squirrel's importance.

She began sweeping, painstaking and calm. She liked sweeping. It was a peaceful day, a day without dialogue. There was nothing to defend or accuse anyone of; everything had been cut out, all those words that could have been other words or might simply have been out of place and have led to great changes. Now there was nothing but a warm cottage full of morning light, herself sweeping and the friendly sound of coffee beginning to simmer. The room with its four windows simply existed and justified itself; it was safe and had nothing to do with any place where you could shut anything in or leave anything out. She drank her coffee and thought about nothing at all, resting.

A mean thought pa.s.sed through her head: so much fuss about a squirrel, there are millions of them, they're not particularly interesting. One, a single specimen, has happened to come here. I must be careful, I'm exaggerating everything at the moment, perhaps I've been alone too long. But it was only a pa.s.sing thought, a knowing observation that anyone at all might have made. She put down the cup. Three gulls were sitting on the promontory, all facing the same way. Now she was feeling a bit unwell again; it was too hot in front of the fire she always felt ill after her morning coffee. She needed her little tot of Madeira, the only thing that helped.

That's how a day starts: light the fire, get dressed, sit in front of the fire. Sweep up, coffee, morning Madeira, wind the clock, brush your teeth, have a look at the boat, measure the height of the water. Cut firewood, worktime Madeira. Then comes the main body of the day. Not till sundown do the rituals begin again. Sundown Madeira, take in the flag, see to the slop-pail, light the lamp, food. Then comes the whole evening. Every day must be written up before dark, including the height of the water, the direction of the wind and the temperature, and the shopping list on the doorpost: new batteries, stockings but not knitted, all kinds of vegetables, embrocation, spare gla.s.s shade for lamp, saw-blade, b.u.t.ter, Madeira, sheer-pins for the propeller.

She went to the wardrobe to fetch her morning medicine. The Madeira was kept furthest in, closest to the chill from the hall, she liked it cold. A bottle must have its fixed place. The steps down to the cellar under the floor were precipitous and awkward and she thought it cowardly to hide bottles outside the house. There weren't many bottles left. Sherry didn't count: it made you sad and wasn't good for the stomach.

The morning light had grown stronger, and the wind was still calm. She ought to catch the bus in to town to get more Madeira. Not yet but soon, before the weather got too cold. The motor was giving trouble; she ought to try and do something about it, but it wasn't the sparking-plug this time. She understood nothing about the motor beyond the sparking-plug and sheer-pin. Now and then she emptied the tank and filtered the petrol through cloth. She had leaned the motor against the wall of the house and covered it with a bag, and there it stood now. Of course, one could row. But the boat was heavy and tended to veer into the wind. It was too far. The whole subject was disagreeable; she shut it out.

She noiselessly opened the screw-top, holding the bottle between her knees and pressing the stopper against her palm as she turned it, coughing the moment the metal sleeve broke and filling her gla.s.s with the bottle held at right angles before she remembered none of this was necessary. It was her morning Madeira anyway, which she had a right to because she wasn't feeling well. She carried the gla.s.s into the cottage and stood it on the table; the wine shone a deep red against the light from the window. When the gla.s.s was empty she hid it behind the tea-caddy. She went to the window and tried to see the squirrel. She moved very softly from window to window waiting for it to appear. The wine had warmed her, the fire was burning in the fireplace, she moved round anticlockwise rather than clockwise, very calmly. The wind was still quiet and the sea and the sky joined together in a grey nothing, but the hill was black from the night's rain. Now the squirrel came. It came as if to reward her for having been calm and having cut everything else out of her life. The little animal leapt over the hill in soft S-shaped curves, straight across the island and down to the water; now it was sitting at the landing place again. It's going away, she thought. 'There's nowhere to stay here, nothing to eat, no other squirrels, and the storms will come and then it'll be too late.'

She got down laboriously on her knees and pulled out the bread bin from under the bed. Animals know when it's time to move on, like rats leaving a sinking s.h.i.+p, swimming or sailing away from what's doomed. She crept over the hill, moving as carefully as she could, and broke small pieces from the hardbread and put them in crevices. Now it had seen her. It ran down to the water's edge and sat there motionless; all she could see was a speck, a silhouette, but its outline radiated watchfulness and mistrust; now it's going to leave, now it's afraid! She went on breaking the bread as quickly as she could, faster, faster, hitting it with her fists, snapping it against her knees and throwing the pieces about on the ground, then scurried back into the cottage on all fours and over to the window. The landing place was empty. She waited an hour, went from window to window. The breeze was marking the sea with dark streaks; it was difficult to see whether there was anything moving out there, any floating object or swimming animal. She could only see birds that were resting like white spots on the water before flying up and gliding away out over the promontory. Then the streaks made by the breeze intensified and she could see nothing at all; her eyes grew tired and moist. She was desperately sorry for the squirrel and for herself too. She was a fool and had made herself ridiculous.

It was time for her worktime Madeira. Never mind cleaning her teeth, cutting firewood and measuring the height of the water, all that; she must be careful not to grow pedantic. She took out her gla.s.s, filled it quickly and carelessly, and, after emptying it, put it on the table and stood still and listened. The quality of the silence had changed, it was blowing a bit now, a steady easterly wind. The morning light had vanished from the room, the early glow of expectation and opportunity, now the daylight was ordinary and grey, a new day already partly used up, a bit soiled with wrong thoughts and pointless actions. Everything to do with the squirrel seemed unpleasant and embarra.s.sing, so she cut it out.

She stood in the middle of the room in the warmth of her worktime Madeira and knew: 'This is only a moment, a moment that will pa.s.s quickly, I must use it or make it new.' All her pans hung in a row above the fireplace, all her books stood side by side on their shelves and all her nautical instruments were on the wall, decorative objects without which it might be hard to survive on a winter sea. Though there were never any storms. In other circ.u.mstances she might have been able to write to someone: We're in a number eight force gale. I'm working. The salmon float is banging against the wall outside and waves have covered the windows with spray. No. The windows have been blinded by salt water. Covered with spray from... blinded. Spray from the breakers is cras.h.i.+ng over... Dear Mr K. We're in the midst of a number eight gale...

'There is no storm. It's just blowing, spiteful and stubborn, or there's a s.h.i.+ny swollen sea licking endlessly at the sh.o.r.e. If the wind gets any stronger, I ought to have a look at the boat, and when I've done that I'll deserve an extra Madeira which needn't be counted in with the others.'

At this point the squirrel came. A little rustle, a scurrying along the cottage wall, then its claws sc.r.a.ped the window and she saw its watchful face, its snout moving spasmodically with ridiculous little twitches, its eyes like gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s. For a moment it was really close, then the window was empty again. She started laughing, 'So you're still here, you devil...' Now she needed wind, any kind of wind, no matter what, so long as it stood out from the mainland and the big islands. She tapped the barometer and tried to see whether it was sinking. Her specs weren't where they usually were; she could never find them, but surely it would say unsettled as it usually did. She must get the weather, the weather report; then she remembered that the batteries in the radio were dead. Never mind, no problem, the squirrel had stayed. She went to the list by the door and added: Squirrel food. What do they eat, oats, macaroni, beans? She could cook oatmeal porridge. The two of them would adjust to each other. But it mustn't grow tame, at all costs not too tame, she would never try and get it to eat out of her hand, come into the cottage, or come when she called. The squirrel mustn't become a domestic animal, a responsibility, a conscience it must be allowed to stay wild. They would each live their own lives and just watch each other and recognise each other, be tolerant and respect each other, and otherwise get on with their own activities in full freedom and independence.

She didn't give a d.a.m.n about that dog any more. Dogs are dangerous, they mirror everything, instantly, they're superficial, compa.s.sionate beasts. A squirrel's better.

They prepared themselves to winter on the island, they got used to one another and developed habits in common. After her morning coffee she would lay out bread on the hill and sit at her window to watch the squirrel eat. She'd decided the animal couldn't see her through the gla.s.s pane and that it probably wasn't particularly intelligent, but she persisted in moving slowly and had become used to sitting still for long periods, hours even, while she watched the squirrel's movements and thought about nothing in particular. Sometimes she talked to it but never when it was within hearing. She wrote about it, imagining things and observing things, and drew parallels between the two of them. Occasionally she wrote offensive things about the squirrel; insolent accusations that she regretted later and crossed out.

The unsettled weather grew steadily colder. Every day, immediately after she'd measured the height of the water, she would go up the hill to the place where she kept a great pile of wood. She would pick out several planks, and a section of trunk perhaps, and saw and chop them into firewood, carefully and not without skill. Doing this she was as strong and sure of herself like when she sat in front of the fire at sunrise, ready dressed, still as a statue and without a thought in her head. When she'd finished cutting the wood, she would carry it down to the cottage and arrange it carefully in the fireplace, every chunk and fragment of plank, into compact and elegant triangles and squares, broad and narrow rectangles and semicircles, creating a puzzle, a perfect intarsia. She'd collected the winter firewood herself.

The wind changed constantly. The boat lines had to be lengthened and moored again. Waking in the night she lay listening and worrying about the boat, worrying it might be banging against the hillside. In the end she pulled it up out of the water. But she woke all the same, thinking of high water and storms. She must haul it higher up, on rollers. One morning she went to the lumber-pile and chose a smooth slender trunk to cut rollers from; she took hold of it and pulled. A log fell down on the far side and there was a quick movement as of a living thing; something slipped out and vanished in a lightning movement of fear. She let go of the trunk and stepped back. Of course, this was where it lived. It had made itself a home and now its home had been destroyed. "But I didn't know," she argued in her own defence. "How could I have known!"

She let the trunk lie, ran back to the cottage to get some wood-wool and flung back the trapdoor to the cellar, only remembering her pocket torch when she was already down in the darkness, she always forgot it. Jars, cartons, boxes had she ever had any wood-wool? Perhaps it was gla.s.s-wool she'd had and that wouldn't be any good for a squirrel gla.s.s fibre, if gla.s.s-wool is made of gla.s.s... She groped along the shelves and felt again that uncertainty which in many ways afflicts everything that exists, a constant stumbling between forgetfulness and knowledge, recollection and ideas, rows and rows of boxes and you never know which are empty... 'Now I must pull myself together. The box I'm looking for is full of muddle and confusion, things for the motor, a cardboard box under the stairs.' She found it and began to pull out the mess it contained in long recalcitrant tangles, opposition and darkness becoming an image of the night's dreams, dreams that she must hurry and that it was almost too late. She tore at the tough hostile material and knew: 'I'm not going to make it.'

It was no longer just a matter of the squirrel, but of everything that can ever be too late. In the end she took the whole box in her arms and tried to get it up the cellar steps. It was too big. It became wedged in the trapdoor hatch. She pushed with her shoulders and neck, the box broke and the confused tangle fell out over the floor. Now she only had seconds left. She ran up the hill, stumbled and ran on, crept round the woodpile and pushed the tangled waste in everywhere where it would be easy to find and couldn't get wet. "There you are! Build! Make yourself a home!" Now it was obvious she could do nothing more. Her large body had never felt so heavy; she manoeuvred herself slowly down into a sheltered crevice in the side of the rock, pulled up her legs to sleep and put the squirrel altogether out of her mind. She was safe and private, totally self-contained inside her sweaters, boots and raincoat, coc.o.o.ned deep in a warm s.p.a.ce of damp wool and easy conscience.

After midday it began to rain. She was woken by an awareness that had matured during her sleep, about the winter firewood, the wood she would need every day right through the winter. Constant ant-like expeditions up the hill, to saw and chop her way deeper and deeper down into the pile, an obstinate and implacable enemy getting nearer and nearer and opening new apertures of cold and light around a seduced and accursed squirrel lying in its home of tangled waste.

They must divide the winter firewood between them, that was absolutely clear. One pile for the squirrel and one for her and it must be arranged at once. Her body was stiff after her sleep but entirely calm, because there was only one thing for her to do. She went straight to the woodpile, heavy as a house. She dragged down logs, clutched hold of one and staggered down the hill with it towards the cottage. The hill was slippery, her boots slid on the moss, but she kept going to the bottom and offloaded the log against the wall of the house, turned and went up the hill again. The logs had to be carried, not rolled. A rolling log is an uncontrollable and arbitrary force that crushes everything in its path. The logs must be carried, carefully, to the exact place where they were needed. The person carrying them must herself be like a log: heavy and ungainly but full of strength and potential. 'Everything must find its place and one must try to understand what it can be used for... I carry more and more steadily now. I breathe in a new way, my sweat is salt.'

Now it was nearly dusk and still raining. Her repeated trek up and down the hill had come to seem unreal in a calm, automatic way, and as she trudged up and down again and again she entered a dizzy state of lifting and carrying and balancing, of throwing timber down against the wall and then going up again, and as she did this she became strong and sure of herself, which smoothed out all her words and clipped them short. Props, boards, planks, logs. She pulled off her sweaters and let them lie in the rain. 'The result of what I'm doing will be what I want. I'm moving what's in the wrong place so it will end up in the right place. My legs are tensing in my boots. I could carry rocks. Lever them and roll them with crowbar and pulley, enormous rocks, build a wall round myself in which each rock would have its own place. But maybe it's pointless to build a wall round an island.'

When it grew dark she felt tired. Her legs began shaking, she let the heavy logs lie and carried boards. In the end she was reduced to lining up small pieces of wood in rows against the wall of the house. And small, worrying thoughts came to her. Maybe the squirrel didn't just use the exterior of the woodpile as a shelter but lived right inside it where it was really dry. She'd done the wrong thing. Every time she'd moved a plank, that particular plank might have been the roof of the squirrel's home. Every time she lifted something, she might have been causing disturbance or destruction. Anyone altering the shape of the woodpile should have calculated carefully how the logs lay, how they balanced against one another, should have considered the matter calmly and judiciously, so as to know whether a deliberate sharp heave would have been best or a cautious bit of patient coaxing.

She listened to the whispering silence lying over the island, to the rain and the night. 'It's impossible,' she thought. 'I'll never go there again.' She went back to the cottage and undressed and lay down. This evening she didn't light the lamp, a breach of ritual, but it showed the squirrel how little she cared what happened on the island.

Next morning the squirrel didn't come to eat. She waited a long time but it didn't come. There was no reason why it should be offended or suspicious. Everything she'd done had been simple, unambiguous and just: she'd divided the woodpile between them and withdrawn. More than just, the squirrel's woodpile was many times bigger than hers. If the animal had the slightest personal confidence in her, if it was capable of understanding that she was a living creature and well disposed, then surely it must have grasped that from start to finish all she had done was try to help.

She sat down at the table, sharpened her pencil and set out the paper in front of her, at right angles and parallel with the edge of the table; this always helped her to understand the squirrel better.

So if now, despite everything, the squirrel saw her merely as something that moved, an object, something trivial and unimportant, then it might be equally unlikely to consider her an enemy. She tried to concentrate, she made a serious attempt to understand how the squirrel might perceive her and in what way the scare at the woodpile might have changed its att.i.tude to her. Perhaps it had been on the point of forming an attachment to her only to be gripped by distrust at the crucial moment. If on the other hand it thought her of no importance, just a part of the island, a part of everything that was withering and marking autumn's progress towards winter, then, as we've seen, it would be unlikely to consider the episode at the woodpile an aggressive act, but more a sort of storm, a change that - She felt tired and began to draw squares and triangles on the paper, as she did so, understanding the squirrel less and less. She drew long twisting lines to connect the squares and triangles, and tiny leaves growing out in all directions. The rain had stopped. The sea was swollen and s.h.i.+ny; what endless nonsense people talked about the sea being beautiful. And then she saw the boat.

It was far off but moving, approaching, a black inorganic form that was neither gull nor stone nor navigation buoy. The boat was coming straight for the island, and there was nowhere else for it to come. Boats seen from the side are harmless, pa.s.sing by in the s.h.i.+pping lanes, but this one was coming straight on, black as fly s.h.i.+t.

She clawed at her papers. Some fluttered to the floor: she tried to gather them up into the drawer but they crumpled and wouldn't go in, and anyway it was wrong, completely wrong, to hide them. They should stay in view, discouraging and protecting. She pulled them out again and smoothed them down. Who was this coming, daring to come? It was them, the others, now they'd found her. She ran about the room moving chairs and other objects and then moved them back again because the room must remain as it was. The black spot had come nearer. She grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, stood still and listened for the sound of a motor. There was no way round it, they were coming. They were coming, straight at her.

When the sound of the motor was very near, she threw open the window at the back of the cottage, jumped out and ran. It was too late to launch the boat. She crouched and ran onwards to the far side of the island, where she slid down into a crevice near the water. From here the motor was inaudible you could only hear the slow movement of the sea against the rocks. 'What if they come ash.o.r.e? They can see my boat here. If they find the cottage empty, they'll begin wondering, they'll go up into the island and find me. Crouching here. That won't do. It won't do at all, I must go back.' She began to crawl, more slowly, towards the crest of the island. The motor had been switched off; they'd landed. She lay full length in the wet gra.s.s, edged forward a few metres and raised herself on her elbows to look.

The boat had anch.o.r.ed in the shallows off the island, and the people in it were getting down to some fly-fis.h.i.+ng. Three square men sitting with their lines and drinking coffee from a Thermos. They may have been talking a bit; now and then they pulled a line in; perhaps they were catching some fish. Her neck was tired and she let her head sink onto her arms. She didn't care about squirrels, or fly-fishermen, or anyone, but just let herself slip down into a great disappointment and admit she was disappointed. 'How can this be possible?' she thought frankly. 'How can I be so angry that they've come at all and then so dreadfully disappointed that they haven't landed?'

Next day she decided not to get out of bed, a melancholy and admirable decision. She thought no further than: 'I shall never get up again.' It was raining, with an even, calm rain that might continue indefinitely. 'Good, I like rain. Curtains and draperies and endless rain going on and on, pattering, rustling, spattering on the roof, not like the challenge of suns.h.i.+ne that moves hour by hour through the room, over the window-ledge and the carpet, marking afternoon on the rocking-chair and finally vanis.h.i.+ng on the chimney breast, red as an indictment. Today's a respectable and straightforward grey day, an anonymous day outside time; it doesn't count.'

She made a warm hollow for her heavy body and pulled the quilt over her head. Through the little airhole left for her nose, she could see two pink roses on the wallpaper; nothing could reach her. Slowly she drifted into sleep again. She'd taught herself to spend more and more time asleep. She loved sleep.

The rainy weather was darkening into evening when she woke feeling hungry. It was very cold in the room. She pulled the quilt round her and went down into the cellar for a can of food. She'd forgotten her torch and picked up a can at random in the darkness, then stood listening, uneasy, can in hand. The squirrel was somewhere in the cellar. She heard a tiny scurrying sound, then silence. But she knew it was there. It would live in her cellar all winter and its nest might be anywhere. The hole must stay open, it mustn't be allowed to get snowed up again. All the cans of food, everything she needed, must be taken up into the house. And even so she'd never be sure whether the squirrel was living in the cellar or the woodpile.

She came up and closed the trapdoor after her. The can she was holding was meat with dill and she didn't like meat with dill. A belt of clear sky had opened on the horizon, a narrow glowing band of sunset. The islands lay like coal-black streaks and lumps on a blazing sea, burning right up to the sh.o.r.e where the swell was surging and gliding over and over again in the same curve round the promontory against the slippery November hill. She ate slowly and watched the red deepen over sky and sea, an unbelievably violent red, till it suddenly went out and everything was violet, shading slowly into grey and early night.

She was very much awake now. She dressed and lit the lamp and all the candles she could find, then lit the fire and laid her s.h.i.+ning torch beside the window. Finally she hung the paper lantern outside the door, where it shone clear and still in the peaceful night. Then she took what was left of the Madeira and set the bottle on the table beside the gla.s.s. She went out onto the hill, leaving the door open. The s.h.i.+ning house was beautiful and as full of secrets as an illuminated window on an unknown boat. She went further, right out to the end of the promontory and began to circle the island, very slowly, at the very edge of the water, constantly turning her face towards the wide-open darkness of the sea.

It was only when she'd gone round the whole island and come back to the promontory that she would allow herself to turn and look at her radiant house, and when she'd done that she would go straight back into the warmth, shut the door behind her and be at home. When she came into her house the squirrel was sitting on the table. It panicked and knocked over the bottle, which started rolling; she threw herself forward too late and the bottle fell and smashed on the floor, leaving broken gla.s.s between her fingers and the carpet quickly darkening with wine.

She raised her head and looked at the squirrel. It was sitting among her books as if fixed to the wall, its legs apart in a heraldic pose, motionless. She got up and took a step towards it, then another step; when it didn't move, she stretched out her hand and came nearer, very slowly, and the squirrel bit her like lightning, sharp as slicing scissors. She screamed and screamed with anger in the empty room, then stumbled across the fragments of gla.s.s and out onto the hill, where she stood and roared at the squirrel. Never had anyone ever forfeited her trust or abused an unspoken understanding with her to the extent the squirrel had. She wasn't sure whether she'd reached out her hand to the animal to stroke it or to throttle it. It made no difference she had simply reached out her hand. She went in and swept up the broken gla.s.s, extinguished all the lights and built up the fire. Then she burned everything she'd written about the squirrel.

In the time that followed, their rituals didn't change. She put out food on the hill and the squirrel came and ate. She didn't know where it was living and didn't want to know; to show her contempt, an indifference that didn't condescend to revenge, she no longer went near the cellar or the woodpile on the hill. But, this apart, she moved violently about the island, rus.h.i.+ng out of the cottage and slamming the door after her, clattering and stamping, and in the end she took to running. She would stand still a very long time, entirely motionless, before setting off over the hill, backwards and forwards across the island, puffing and blowing as she ran, waving her arms and screaming. She didn't give a d.a.m.n whether the squirrel saw her or not.

One morning she woke to find it had been snowing, a thick covering of unmelting snow. Now the frost had come she must go in to town, buy things, get the motor going. She went and looked at the motor, lifted it up for a while, then put it back against the cottage wall. Maybe after a few days, there was a strong wind. Instead she started looking for the squirrel's footprints in the snow. The ground was white and unmarked near the cellar and the woodpile; she went round the sh.o.r.e and systematically over the whole island, but found no tracks but her own, clear and black, cutting the island into squares and triangles and long curves. Later in the day she became suspicious and searched under the furniture in the cottage, opened cupboards and drawers, and even climbed up onto the roof and looked down the chimney. "You're making a fool of me, you devil," she told the squirrel.

Then she went out to the promontory to count the pieces of board, the squirrel-boats she'd set out ready for a favourable wind to the mainland just to show the squirrel how little she cared what it did or where it went. They were still there, all six of them. But for a moment she was unsure: had there been six or seven? She should have written down the number. How could she not have written it down. She went back to the cottage, shook out the carpet and swept. These days everything was happening in the wrong order. Sometimes she cleaned her teeth in the evening and didn't bother to light the lamp. All because she no longer had any Madeira left to help divide the day into proper periods, defining them and making them easier to remember.

She cleaned the windows and reorganised her bookshelves, this time not by writers but alphabetically. When she'd done this, she thought of a better and more personal system: she would have the books she liked best on the top shelf and the ones she liked least on the bottom. But she was astonished to find there wasn't a single book she really liked. So she left them as they were and sat by the window to wait for more snow. There was a bank of clouds to the south that looked promising.

That evening she felt a sudden need for company and went up on the hill with her walkie-talkie. She pulled out the aerial, switched on and listened: she heard a remote scratching and sighing. Once or twice she'd found herself in the middle of a conversation between two s.h.i.+ps; perhaps that's what was happening now. She waited a long time. The night was pitch-black and very quiet; she closed her eyes, waiting patiently. Then she heard something, incredibly far away no clear words, but two voices talking. Slow and calm, coming nearer, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. Then their tone changed and their speeches got shorter; it was clear they were bringing their conversation to an end and they said goodbye. She was too late.

She began screaming: "h.e.l.lo, it's me, can you hear me?", though she knew they couldn't hear her, and then there was nothing left in the apparatus but the far-off sighing and she switched it off. "Stupid," she told herself. Then it occurred to her that the batteries she had might fit the radio and she went down to check. They were too small. She had to go to town. Madeira, batteries. Under batteries she wrote nuts and crossed it out again. The squirrel had gone there was no doubt there had been seven pieces of board, not six, all at exactly the same distance from the water: sixty-five centimetres. She read through her list and suddenly it looked like an inventory in a foreign language, nothing whatever to do with her: sheer-pins, embrocation, dried milk, batteries a list of unreal and hostile objects. The only thing that mattered was the boards: had there been six or seven? She took her measuring-rod and torch and went out again. The sh.o.r.e was empty, absolutely clean. There were no pieces of board there any more, not a single one; the sea had risen and taken them away.

She couldn't believe her eyes. She stood at the water's edge, s.h.i.+ning her torch down into the sea. The light broke the surface, illuminating a grey-green underwater grotto full of small indefinite particles she'd never noticed before; the grotto grew progressively dimmer the deeper it went. She lifted the torch and shone it out over the water into the darkness. The weak cone of light was captured by a colour out there, a clear yellow, a varnished boat being driven away from land by the wind.

She didn't immediately understand that it was her own boat; she just watched it, noticing for the first time how helpless and dramatic the movements of an empty, drifting boat are. But the boat wasn't empty. The squirrel was sitting in the stern, staring blindly straight into the light like a cardboard shape, a dead toy.

She made half a movement towards taking off her boots, but stopped. The torch was lying on the rock, s.h.i.+ning obliquely down into the water, revealing a bank of swollen seagra.s.s disturbed by the rising sea, then darkness where the hill curved downwards. It was too far out, too cold. Too late. She took a careless step and the torch slid down into the water. It didn't go out at once, but continued s.h.i.+ning as it sank down along the slope of the hill, gradually fading amid brief glimpses of ghostly brown landscapes and moving shadows, then nothing but darkness.

"You d.a.m.n squirrel," she said softly, in admiration. She stayed on standing in the darkness, still amazed, a little weak in the legs and not quite sure whether or not everything had now utterly changed.

It took a long time to make her way back gradually across the island. It wasn't until she'd shut the door behind her that she felt relieved, hugely exhilarated. Every decision had been taken away from her. She no longer had a need to hate the squirrel or concern herself about it in any way. She had no need to write about it, no need to write anything at all. Everything had been decided and resolved with clear and absolute simplicity.

Outside it had begun to snow, heavily and peacefully winter had come. She put more wood on the fire and turned up the lamp. She went to the kitchen table and began to write, very fast. One windless day in November, near sunrise, she saw a human being at the landing place...

Letters from Klara.

Dear Matilda, You're hurt because I forgot your venerable birthday. That's unreasonable of you. I know the only reason you've looked forward to getting birthday greetings from me all these years is because I'm three years younger than you are. But it's time you realised that the pa.s.sing of the years isn't in itself a feather in your cap.

You're asking for Guidance from Above, excellent. But while you're waiting for it to arrive, might it not be profitable to discuss a few bad habits which I have to admit aren't totally alien to me, either.

My dear Matilda, one thing we should all remember is not to grumble if we can possibly help it, because grumbling immediately gives bad habits the upper hand. I know you've been fortunate enough to enjoy astonis.h.i.+ngly good health, but you do have a unique capacity for giving those round you a bad conscience by grumbling, and then of course they hit back by cheerfully writing you off as someone who no longer matters. I know, I've seen it. Whatever it is you want or don't want, couldn't you stop whining? Why not try raising your voice instead and shaking them up with a few strong words or, best of all, scaring them a bit? I know very well you're capable of it: there was never any mewing in the old days, far from it.

And all that stuff about not being able to get to sleep at night, presumably because you catnap eight times a day. Yes, I know; it's true that memory has an unfortunate habit of working backwards at night and gnawing its way through everything without sparing the slightest detail that you were too much of a coward to do something, for instance; that you made a wrong choice, or were tactless or unfeeling or criminally un.o.bservant but of course no one but you has given a thought for years to these things which to you are calamities, shameful actions and irretrievably stupid statements! Isn't it unfair, when we're endowed with such sharp memories, that they only function in reverse?

Dear Matilda, do write and tell me what you think about these sensitive matters. I promise I'll try not to be a know-all; oh yes, don't deny it, you have called me that in the past. But I'd be fascinated to know, for example, what you do when you can't remember how many times you've said the same thing to the same person. Do you extricate yourself by starting off 'So, as I said...' or 'As I may have already said...'? Or what?... Have you any other suggestions? Or d'you just keep quiet?

And do you let conversations you can't follow continue over your head? Do you ever try to make a sensible contribution only to find that everyone else has moved on to a completely different subject? Do you try to save face by telling them they're talking nonsense or wasting their time on matters too trivial to be worth discussing? In general, are we any of us in the least interested? Please rea.s.sure me that we are!

Only if you write to me, please don't use that antediluvian fountain pen of yours; it makes your writing illegible, and in any case it's hopelessly out of date. Get them to buy you some felt pens, medium point 0.5mm. You can get them anywhere.

Yours, Klara PS I read somewhere that anything written in felt pen becomes illegible after about forty years. How about that? Good, don't you think? Or are you planning to write your memoirs? You know the sort of thing: 'Not to be read for fifty years' (I hope you think that's funny).

Dear Ewald, What a nice surprise to get a letter from you. What gave you the idea of writing?

Yes, of course we can meet; it's been ages, as you say. Something like sixty years, I think.

And thank you for all the nice things you wrote maybe a little too nice, my dear old friend. Hasn't time made you a little sentimental?

Yes, I think growing roses is a great idea! I understand there's a very practical gardening programme on the radio every Sat.u.r.day morning, repeated on Sundays. Why not listen to it?

Give me a call any time, but remember it may take me a while to get to the phone. And don't forget to say whether you're still a vegetarian, because I want to make us a really special dinner.

Yes, do bring your photograph alb.u.m, I hope we'll be able to have a reasonable stab at dealing with the inevitable 'd'you remembers', and then go on to talk about whatever comes into our heads.

Yours sincerely, Klara Hi Steffy!

Thanks for the bark boat, it's beautiful and it's lovely to have it. I tried it out in the bath and it balances perfectly.

Don't worry about that report, tell Daddy and Mummy it's sometimes much more important to be able to work with your hands and make something beautiful.

I'm sorry about the cat. But if she lived to be seventeen she was probably quite tired and no longer very well. The words you wrote for her grave aren't bad but you must take care with the rhythm. We'll talk more about that when we meet.