Bittersweet

‘I have so many memories of him,’ Eira said to her granddaughter, ‘but it’s one of the earliest ones that I always go back to, the first night he came knocking. It’s a beautiful memory. I notice it’s always the most beautiful memories that give you the most pain, like a price to pay for all the happiness you got in the moment. Later, when that person’s gone, and you finally, definitely know they’ll never be back, it’s the memories of the good times that’ll haunt you, with a sweetness that makes their absence so very, very bitter.’

A china teacup sat loosely in her wrinkled, dappled hands, the saucer ready to slide off her pleated woollen skirt.

Amber watched a flame as it grew, flickering and nervous, around a blackened log.

‘What is that memory you always go back to, Grandma?’

‘It’s a naughty one.’

‘I’m twenty-three, Grandma.’

‘Alright. I was working in New York at the time. A British girl living an American dream. I had a job as a secretary in a building on Madison Avenue, and I imagined I would marry one of the men in suits whose recorded voices spoke to me through the transcription machines as I typed. God knows I had no intention of returning to dreary Manchester. My mother had enough children hanging on her apron strings for me to leave without worrying about who’d be looking after her in her old age. I’d escaped, made it across the Atlantic, and I would find my handsome American and keep my suburban house immaculate. At work, there were regular send-offs at the lunch break, small celebrations amongst the office girls, when one of us had been paired off with a male counterpart, and was due for a status upgrade to “married woman”. All of us who remained behind watched enviously as she left the office for the last time, going off to her future life of luxury on a man’s salary, as we scraped together enough to buy a new pair of stockings. We preferred it when a friend married outside of the office though, then we wouldn’t have to turn a blind eye when, several weeks later, her husband would leave early, his arm around the waist of the new girl who’d replaced her.’

Eira paused then and tilted her almost empty cup, watching the last drop of tea adjust to its new centre of gravity.

‘Grandma, your memory,’ said Amber gently.

Her grandmother came from a different age, and listening to her was rather like reading a book: tangents and circles, intricate stories, carefully chosen words.

‘Oh yes. Well you see, the behaviour our male colleagues didn’t bother to hide never put us off. We always believed we’d find the one who was different, who’d take the train home every evening, who wouldn’t need an apartment in the city. I believed that too. But then your grandad turned up. He was only in town to see his cousin, who worked for our company, and he looked quite out of place. He was healthier, to start with. The office men suddenly looked very pale, next to him; I noticed a yellow tinge to their skin I hadn’t seen before. He asked me the way to his cousin Ronnie’s office. Ronnie worked on the floor above, so I offered to take him there. He didn’t answer straight away, just kind of stared. It was the first time he’d heard a British accent. Then he said “Thank you kindly ma’am, and if you’d talk to me some on our way there I’d love to hear your pretty accent again. I’m Walter, by the way.” He shook my hand, and I don’t think I’d ever felt a handshake like it: firm, warm, yet ever so soft despite his rough skin. He only touched my hand, but something deep inside me felt exposed, and held at the same time. Outside Ronnie’s office, he asked if he could take me out to dinner, but I already had plans; I could have cancelled them, of course, but to tell you the truth, I was happy to take refuge in them. The handshake had left me a little awestruck, and I could already feel the ground shifting beneath my feet. He was leaving the next day, so I imagined that would be the last I’d see of the handsome stranger. But I was wrong. I got home late from the pictures that night, and I was sitting on the sofa with my flatmate Nora. She already had her curlers in, I’d just thrown my coat off. We were smoking - don’t look so shocked, it was 1959 - and flicking through catalogues while she told me about her sister’s wedding plans. Then there was a knock on the door; it was almost midnight. I rose to answer it. Nora watched with wide eyes as a broad-shouldered flannel-clad woodsman entered and kissed me without asking.’

‘Grandma!’

‘Yes. And that’s not all. I told you it was naughty. Now, don’t you go getting any wrong impressions about your grandma. I was no easy girl, but somehow, it just felt right. Or irresistible maybe. In any case, I didn’t send him back out into the cold until next morning. “He’ll never be back,” Nora said as we ran to the subway the next morning. “He’ll be back,” I said. And he was. Only I knew he’d never stay in New York. He missed the mountains too much. So I followed him. I didn’t have a send-off at the office; I had no ring to show, no suburban plans to share. I just left one evening and never returned.’

‘Weren’t you sad, not to have a ring?’

‘There was no space for sadness. I was having the time of my life, and I had too much to learn. I had made a second escape: first industrial England, then the suburbs of New York. I had arrived here, amongst the giant pines and clear streams and snow-capped mountains. But it was awfully frightening. There was to be no pinning down your grandad. He was terrified of being squeezed into the dutiful husband box, and I was terrified of living without him. Marriage would have been so very reassuring, but I had to learn to do without all of the structure I had come to expect of life, all the structure the office girls so proudly awaited from their faded, clean-shaven fiancés.’

Eira slowly reached a stiff arm out to the coffee table next to her and laid down her cup.

‘Put some wood on the fire, dear, and take me out before it gets dark, would you?’

Amber spread a thick woollen blanket over her grandmother’s legs, tucking it tightly around her thin bluish ankles.

Eira laid a bony hand on her granddaughter’s head.

‘Take some apples for the horses.’

A thin layer of snow covered the path outside. Frozen mud showed through the white powder, and provided just enough grip for the large wheels of Eira’s chair. A drop formed at the end of her nose; she let it hang there, unaware. The creased, pale skin of her face did not change colour in the crisp afternoon air. Behind her, Amber pushed with mittened hands, burying her chin in a thick scarf. Her cheeks burned red, and her breath spread in generous clouds through the stillness. She stopped when three horses came to the fence next to the path, and bent to lock the wheel brake into place. With her teeth she removed one mitten, and laid a pink hand on a warm brown muzzle.

‘Here,’ said Eira, handing her an apple.

The women watched in satisfaction as the horse's strong jaw crushed the apple, juice bubbling from the corners of its mouth.

‘Did you ever regret it, Grandma, leaving it all behind?’

‘I don’t know about that word, regret. But it was hard. And I know now that I made it even harder than it had to be. Your grandad didn’t have a woman in the city like the office boys, but his mistress was… up there.’

She gestured to the mountain tops, barely visible in the white sky, thick with the next snowstorm.

‘He was always galloping off, chasing her, never quite getting enough of her.’

‘What was she, Grandma?’

‘I don’t quite know… freedom? Space? Some form of stillness I couldn’t provide. And so I had to learn to live in his absence. And always in fear, in constant fear he wouldn’t return. I spent nights alone imagining him at the bottom of a ravine, only to hear hooves approaching the next morning.’

The brown horse had stopped munching and seemed to listen. Eira stared into one of its deep black eyes.

‘And then I would run to the door and he would kiss me like the first time.’

‘And then you were relieved?’

‘I should have been. I really should have been. I should have lain in his soft arms and felt the fullness of his body, the fullness of his presence. But even in his presence there was the promise of his next absence. Always a feeling that it wasn’t quite enough, that I needed to be even closer than my skin would allow, touching his. And I didn’t know how to get closer, how to hold his next departure at a safe distance. So I would talk to him and stroke his hair and kiss him over and over and make plans for things to do together, and when we did those things I would be scheming about what to do next, and all the while he slipped further away and she pulled him stronger towards herself: irresistible, commanding. Even as I screamed through labour pains, the midwife had to reassure me that he was still alive, and the hooves sounded on the gravel just as your father’s head crowned.’

Eira’s face looked greyer, and her eyes smaller. Her thin shoulders hunched tighter.

‘Let’s get you home,’ said Amber.

‘Wait. Take me to the viewpoint.’

There was something imperative in the voice which spoke from the frail body. Amber pushed obediently, and stopped the chair again at the end of the path. A wide valley stretched out below, the full river flowing fast between white banks.

‘There’ll be icicles dripping into the river,’ said Eira.

She was silent then, and very still. From the confines of her chair her eyes travelled over the hushed landscape.

‘It wasn’t a ravine that took him in the end,’ she said after a while.

‘I know,’ said Amber. She knew her grandfather’s story.

Eira continued, as if talking to the valley below.

‘We were going through a tight patch, with a teenager who needed to go to university, so he went to work at the factory for a time.’

At the far end of the valley, thick grey smoke rose from a tall chimney.

‘I always feared he’d fall from his horse, but it was a machine that got him, in a tired moment of inattention. A blow to the head sent him down to die on the concrete floor. It was everything he’d always defied and despised, and it got him in an instant.’

Amber stood in silence behind her grandmother for several minutes.

Eira didn’t resist when she felt the brake being released and the chair turning around.

Back home, the fire had turned to bright, hot embers. Eira spread her fingers in the hot air, and held them suspended as they thawed.

Amber sat at her feet, her legs curled beneath her.

‘From then on the absence was real, not imagined,’ said Eira. ‘But it was too late. I wanted to go back and lie in his arms again and hear about his adventures, or sit around the stove in the kitchen and make plans for our land, or watch him throw our little boy in the air, and know that he was really there, and know that was all that mattered at that time. But I couldn’t do that, and I knew that I had spent every moment of his presence worrying about his absence, and now that time was gone.’

The phone rang then and Amber stood to answer it.

‘It’s the gallery,’ she said, covering the mouthpiece. ‘They want to talk about your next exhibition.’

‘You can call them back tomorrow, and give them a piece of me then. Tell them we are busy now.’

Amber obeyed, and put the phone back on its hook, resuming her position on the rug.

‘It’s a good thing you painted, kept yourself busy while Grandad was away.’

‘My dear girl, it did not keep me busy. It kept me from dissolving into insignificance. What was I to do, with your father at school and your grandfather chasing immateriality on a reckless mare? I remember the first time I put brush to canvas. It had taken weeks for the materials to arrive by mail order. And I had just one book about colour theory. But the moment I started spreading that colour over the white space, it no longer mattered when your grandfather came home. I still felt it when he was here, the latent absence, and the longing for him to stay by my side. But there were two of me then, one of me pined, and one of me created, lost track of time, built myself a world of my own. I felt a little guilty at first, like I should be baking or dusting or ironing instead. But I think he preferred to think of me painting, when he was away, if he thought of me at all. And I think that’s why he built me such a beautiful studio.’

The two women sat in silence then for a while, and Amber put a generous log on the fire.

‘Tell me,’ said Eira some time later. ‘How is Charlie?’

Amber stared at the floor and pushed her lips together, not answering straight away.

‘Well, I think he has a lot of work at the moment.’

Then she laid her head in her grandmother’s lap, and let the old bony fingers run through her hair.

‘Pass me that box,’ said Eira after a while, gesturing to a high shelf.

The slim wooden box was flecked with several different colours of paint. Like in her paintings, blues, greens and yellows predominated. Eira grasped it with difficulty, and opened the metal hinge on the front. Inside were half-used tubes of paint, lined up in a neat row, and paintbrushes of different sizes, and little glass bottles of clear liquid. Turpentine vapours drifted into their nostrils.

She closed it and handed it back to Amber.

‘This was my first set. It’s yours now.’

‘I can’t paint, Grandma.’

‘I know. But there are lots of things you can do. Just keep the box somewhere where you can see it.’

It was a gentle evening after that. Amber cooked some soup, and helped her grandmother to the table. Then she settled her in the armchair by the fire and read to her while she dozed.

Around ten P.M. Amber suggested they go to bed.

‘You go,’ said Eira. ‘I will manage. I want to stay in my chair a while longer.’

Amber kissed her forehead and went upstairs.

Eira watched the flames dance, then let her eyes slowly close.

The backs of her eyelids played a long film, in dreamy, blurred episodes that ran into each other:

Grey chimneys, long lines of small red brick houses, children with grime on their faces, rain on the window panes. A wide open ocean. An irresistible stranger in a bedroom somewhere in New York, with dull wallpaper and a creaking iron bed frame, making firm, tender love to her without asking permission – sure that he already had it, unspoken. The next day, gaunt, pale men looking at her, thinking she was theirs to pluck from the office at the time of their choosing, unaware of the nocturnal transformation that had saved her from a life of ordinariness, all because she had been the girl to walk a stranger to Ronnie’s office. Paint on canvas, colours swirling into galaxies, time standing still. A screaming baby landing in a horseman’s calloused hands, a father’s proud smile. And horse hooves, always horse hooves, sometimes receding, sometimes arriving. The horseman, bursting through the door, pushing her against the wall, his damp forehead on hers, beard rough on her chin, hands travelling, urgent. Strangers admiring paintings hanging on faraway walls. Tall pines, mountain streams, crisp winter air. Amber – strong, intelligent, caring – a life just beginning.

The film slowed, and then stopped. She opened groggy eyes and looked at the clock above the fire: five minutes to midnight. A firm but gentle knock sounded on the door, that somehow she now knew she had been expecting. She rose, and her legs seemed more agile than usual. They carried her across the floor without effort. She put her hand on the doorknob to enter the porch and noticed that the skin was smooth. Inside the porch the air was cooler, the old windows around the door were decorated with delicate patterns of ice that glistened in the moonlight. She could just make out a familiar figure through the stained glass of the door. It seemed to open for her. A horse stood to the side, its hot breath suspended in the soft light coming from the house.

Reins in hand, Walter stood opposite her, broad shoulders straight, frost on his moustache.

Eira no longer felt the cold.

‘You came back,’ she said.

‘I always did,’ he replied. ‘Ready?’

‘Ready.’

And they galloped over the frozen ground into the night.