The Politics of Washing by Polly Coles

Author:Polly Coles [Polly Coles]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780719809934
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2013-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

Wind-battered, I get home after eight to find Lily in a state of hysteria, because she has just eaten some pasta made by Michael which contained a large chip of china. Freddie, oblivious to this drama, is busy emptying the cupboards optimistically in search of a top hat.

I soothe Lily, fob Freddie off with a rogue tweed cap, and have a man-to-man chat with Roland about making more of an effort at school. I then spend twenty minutes trying to explain to Michael, who is desperately studying for a history test, why knowing the difference between the fine details of romanesque and gothic architecture should even remotely matter to a thirteen-year-old boy.

Once they are all in bed, I leave the house for the last appointment of the day. The dark calle is still bitterly cold, but at least the rain has stopped and the high water has sunk back down. As I walk along the water front of the Zattere, a full moon brilliantly illuminates the white face of the church of the Redentore, across on the Giudecca. The wide Canal is like a dark glass filled to the brim. As I stroll through the empty streets I feel, for the first time today, calm. It is after ten and I am exhausted, but it is good to be out in the silent, bewintered city.

I arrive at my destination – the usual, anonymous door in a high wall. I ring the bell and the door snaps open. I pass through and find (Alice again) that I am in a garden. I follow a brick path through bare winter bushes and come to an open door spilling light. I climb the flight of shallow marble steps.

The meeting of the reading group is taking place in a big room where two curving sofas make an oval under an extravagantly sculpted gilt chandelier. Books are artfully heaped on tables and alongside the sofas. On one wall, there hangs an antique tapestry depicting a strangely unpopulated Arcadian landscape: there are trees and rivers and hills and fountains, but not a single living creature in sight. My friends, the members of the group, are sitting around, drinking wine in the candlelight. They are listening to a young woman who is reading aloud.

A little creakily, after so much trudging and huddling and battling against the elements, I sit down cross-legged on the floor, at the edge of the circle. I do not listen to a word the reader is saying, but the warm, subtle, open spaces around me, the intimacy of the group and its quiet unhurriedness, feel like heaven and it occurs to me that, at the end of it all, we might climb into the tapestry, like the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper back into the hillside, and never come out again.

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