sponge cake with a layer of cream on top. Ooh, it was a treat.’
Alice’s flying fingers finish the gooseberries; she leans back a moment, tilting her face up under the hot sun. Then scrambles up and takes her fruit into the kitchen. While the cold tap
runs over the colanderful, she searches in the scullery for jars. Some are dusty; she fills the bowl with hot soapy water and washes them thoroughly. She leaves them to drain on the wooden draining
board; tips the colanderful of gooseberries into the iron jam kettle. Puts the gas on low, adds a little water. As the gooseberries begin to soften, their strong sharp scent fills the air. She
stirs, adds sugar, stirs. Looking out of the window she sees ox-eye daisies sway in the wind, the petals fall from a full-blown rose. She feels the grittiness of sugar dissolve beneath her stirring
wooden spoon, and turns up the heat to boil her jam.
When she has finished twelve jars cool on the top shelf in the scullery. Twelve clear shining jars, each neatly topped with Cellophane sucked down in a taut semi-circle over the bright green
jam; each labelled in black copperplate on white: GOOSEBERRY August 1971. When she tips one the contents do not shift. It has set well. She steps back and counts the jars again, with
satisfaction.
Yes. On that day and on other days. Satisfaction. Though the jam goes to the church fair where she may not go, and thence to breakfast tables across the parish where it may be left in preference
for marmalade, or put away without the Cellophane and wasps get in it. No matter. She has made it and it’s there, shining and green in bright sealed jars.
Satisfaction. In pegging out the washing between showers and having it dry before the next rain. Satisfaction running out as the sky darkens, to gather it into the basket and hurry back to the
house, to shake and fold it in neat piles on the kitchen table: for Ruth, Vi, Gareth, me, airing cupboard. Satisfaction in its fresh-air smell, the rough texture of clean dry towels. Satisfaction
in my airing cupboard piled high with clean sheets and blankets, extra bedclothes for visitors, outgrown clothes for jumble sales. The house and its order were mine. Gareth owned nothing, worked
for nothing in our lives. Only himself, his advancement, and money. All the things that were washed and polished, grown and cherished, fed and cared for – children, garden, furniture, floors,
the bricks and mortar that sheltered us from space – were mine. I made them, I loved them, I earned them.
But Ruth and Vi are not mine. They have chosen to go to Gareth. Away from me.
And for the tiles and furniture and chattels of the house – who wants them? The house is no more than a pit of work, an endless drain for labour. The floor is littered with the crusts and
splatterings of food the twins have dropped.
It’s indulgence, Marion. Everything was precious then. The gleam of a floor you no longer have the heart to sweep. Alice Clough can’t have been unhappy always. Only in the story of
her life, not in her days.
Fri. 14
A Nightmare
It’s two in the morning, I’m sitting in bed with my jumper on. A nightmare. Devastated landscape. Hot sunshine. Flat empty grassland – to my left the ruins of
a city, jumbled skyscrapers tilting at crazy angles, some snapped in half, with jutting broken edges against the skyline. Over to my right, near the horizon, the old dilapidated huts of a tribe
– perhaps the original inhabitants of the plain. I thought South Africa. It was still and hot, a huge pregnant silence. I started to walk towards the ruined city, afraid of what I would find
but not daring to stand there alone. I became aware of a noise, and very gradually – slowly, as if I were hearing in my sleep and couldn’t wake up – I began to recognize the
children’s voices, Vi and Ruth shouting at me, and the twins crying, screaming in terror, at the tops of their voices. I ran towards the city as fast as I could, hurling
Alice’s flying fingers finish the gooseberries; she leans back a moment, tilting her face up under the hot sun. Then scrambles up and takes her fruit into the kitchen. While the cold tap
runs over the colanderful, she searches in the scullery for jars. Some are dusty; she fills the bowl with hot soapy water and washes them thoroughly. She leaves them to drain on the wooden draining
board; tips the colanderful of gooseberries into the iron jam kettle. Puts the gas on low, adds a little water. As the gooseberries begin to soften, their strong sharp scent fills the air. She
stirs, adds sugar, stirs. Looking out of the window she sees ox-eye daisies sway in the wind, the petals fall from a full-blown rose. She feels the grittiness of sugar dissolve beneath her stirring
wooden spoon, and turns up the heat to boil her jam.
When she has finished twelve jars cool on the top shelf in the scullery. Twelve clear shining jars, each neatly topped with Cellophane sucked down in a taut semi-circle over the bright green
jam; each labelled in black copperplate on white: GOOSEBERRY August 1971. When she tips one the contents do not shift. It has set well. She steps back and counts the jars again, with
satisfaction.
Yes. On that day and on other days. Satisfaction. Though the jam goes to the church fair where she may not go, and thence to breakfast tables across the parish where it may be left in preference
for marmalade, or put away without the Cellophane and wasps get in it. No matter. She has made it and it’s there, shining and green in bright sealed jars.
Satisfaction. In pegging out the washing between showers and having it dry before the next rain. Satisfaction running out as the sky darkens, to gather it into the basket and hurry back to the
house, to shake and fold it in neat piles on the kitchen table: for Ruth, Vi, Gareth, me, airing cupboard. Satisfaction in its fresh-air smell, the rough texture of clean dry towels. Satisfaction
in my airing cupboard piled high with clean sheets and blankets, extra bedclothes for visitors, outgrown clothes for jumble sales. The house and its order were mine. Gareth owned nothing, worked
for nothing in our lives. Only himself, his advancement, and money. All the things that were washed and polished, grown and cherished, fed and cared for – children, garden, furniture, floors,
the bricks and mortar that sheltered us from space – were mine. I made them, I loved them, I earned them.
But Ruth and Vi are not mine. They have chosen to go to Gareth. Away from me.
And for the tiles and furniture and chattels of the house – who wants them? The house is no more than a pit of work, an endless drain for labour. The floor is littered with the crusts and
splatterings of food the twins have dropped.
It’s indulgence, Marion. Everything was precious then. The gleam of a floor you no longer have the heart to sweep. Alice Clough can’t have been unhappy always. Only in the story of
her life, not in her days.
Fri. 14
A Nightmare
It’s two in the morning, I’m sitting in bed with my jumper on. A nightmare. Devastated landscape. Hot sunshine. Flat empty grassland – to my left the ruins of
a city, jumbled skyscrapers tilting at crazy angles, some snapped in half, with jutting broken edges against the skyline. Over to my right, near the horizon, the old dilapidated huts of a tribe
– perhaps the original inhabitants of the plain. I thought South Africa. It was still and hot, a huge pregnant silence. I started to walk towards the ruined city, afraid of what I would find
but not daring to stand there alone. I became aware of a noise, and very gradually – slowly, as if I were hearing in my sleep and couldn’t wake up – I began to recognize the
children’s voices, Vi and Ruth shouting at me, and the twins crying, screaming in terror, at the tops of their voices. I ran towards the city as fast as I could, hurling
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