Weathering by Wood Lucy

Author:Wood, Lucy [Wood, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2014-11-25T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Typical for Ada to come back now, right in the middle of winter. Not a good time – what with the roads iced up and the house freezing; difficult to get anywhere, cooped up for days, the lights clunking on and off and plunging everything into such deep darkness that it was impossible to move without clouting your hip or your shin. A fretwork of cracks on their bones probably, like maps of the long winters.

Pearl would work out the finances, which always boiled down to the same thing: not enough money for the endless supply of wood the stove needed. So, two jumpers, two pairs of trousers, tie a hot-water bottle to your stomach, don’t sit still long enough for chilblains to get you between the toes. But Ada never listened. She would sit for hours under a blanket, her feet sticking out, nose numb and red. She would run a bath when the tank was low and shiver in tepid water. She would cook a pie that took so long the gas would cut out halfway through, leaving them to pick at the crust, the middle gooey and raw.

One winter, when Ada was twelve, ice took over everything. Pearl chipped it away from the windows, brushed piles of hail from the steps, knocked frost from the car’s wheels. A bracelet of icicles hung from the porch roof. Ada ducked under them when she went out of the door; she had grown three inches in a few months. A new habit of tearing at her nails, a lisp when she was unsure of what she was saying. Made it hard to hear her sometimes.

And they started to mishear each other a lot. Table slipped to ladle, flour slipped to fire. Pearl went to the doctors and got them to check her ears – skulking in at fifty-seven, worried about going deaf, sitting amongst the other mothers with their soft skin and perfect eardrums. She was given drops to soften any wax. Outside, the ice thickened. She bought a bag of cheap salt for the lane which turned orange and smelled like metal. It didn’t stop the ice. She scooped up a handful and threw it at Ada and Ada shrieked and threw some back. Ada said it looked like someone had peed all over the lane. Pearl said, since when has your pee been orange? Ada said, my pee has never been orange. Pearl said, so why did you say it looked like someone peed all over the lane? Ada said, I said it looks like orangeade all over the lane. Pearl passed a hand over her ear as if she was pushing aside a curtain. She scraped the grit up with a shovel.

For Christmas she bought Ada a yellow mixing bowl. Ada bought her a glass photo frame wrapped in tissue paper.

The next winter it rained. At first it was a relief – every day was mild, grey, wet. The sky looked like wet newspaper, water collected in footprints in the fields.

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