Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie

Author:Vanessa Gebbie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Salt
Published: 2016-02-23T13:22:41+00:00

Take then, this lifeblood of Meggie Lightfoot, and add to it one little day in Advent years before the time when sand came into church, a day when sleet was slicing at the stone walls of the village, and when Meggie was to clean the window of St Sebastian, this being its centenary and it being mazed with candle-grime and dust.

Add a vision of Meggie slipping from her high bed in her house overlooking the dunes on the very edge of the village, the Lightfoot house for as long as anyone can remember, the bed in which she was both conceived and born, and her mother before her and her mother before that, back and back and back until darkness falls over memory, or story. Watch her leave the house, pulling the collar of her raincoat round her ears, lifting her sharp face for a second to acknowledge the smell of low-tide seaweed in the sleet. Watch her, back to the wind, knotting her belt, tying her headscarf tight under her chin. See under that raincoat an old oiled-wool fisherman’s sweater belonging to her dead father, a blue overall and scuffed brown leather sandals with one buckle hanging by a thread. Put in her hands a basket of cleaning cloths and sponges, and half run with her through the dunes to the lych-gate. Pause with her as she pauses, writing her frozen initials in the sleet on the stone bench then putting her forefinger in her mouth. Push open the church doors with her and enter its heavy penumbral chill. Wait while your eyes take in what light there is and magnify it.

Lay at her feet an old dented metal bucket half full of warm soapy water. Find her a wooden step ladder and lean it against the peeling wall under the saint’s window. Steady it on the uneven flagstones with an open hymn book. It does not matter.

And set little Meggie, the virgin, to work.

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