The long winter eventually retreated to her hollow of grey. Like a cat stretching on a step in the sun, the days began to lengthen and warm. Alice and John spent days walking together with Hetty in the dene and along the jagged headland. Nights spent in the cottage on the green were tender and sweet. When John spoke her name, Alice felt a surging sense of weightlessness, freedom and light. It was as if she herself was no longer tethered underground by twisted, tangled roots. Spring felt like a blessing. Tiny shoots of life burst from the brown soil into temperate air.
Once, only once, John invited Alice to his flat in the colliery. The rooms seemed petrified in stillness. Like a station waiting room after the last train has departed, the loneliness was palpable: it was in the discarded newspaper, the unfinished mug of tea, the crumpled bank statement. The fragments of John’s existence seemed bald and exposed. As they spoke in the chilly, bare living room, Alice found herself whispering, sitting on the edge of the sofa stiffly. John paced up and down the room, unable to relax. An imperceptible line had been crossed. Their happiness existed and bloomed away from the rest of the world: in the crystalline air of the headland or the dappled light of the dene. It was unable to survive the cold, stark light of reality.
Before she left his flat, John showed Alice his daughters’ bedroom. Alice stood and stared at the wall of pictures for the longest time. There was so much to see; she had the sensation of being overwhelmed by beauty and colour. She reached out and touched a picture of a yellow cat with her paw in a fish bowl of green water. She could almost imagine the walls of the room were pulsing energy. How perplexing that this was the only room of the flat in which the vigour of life was affirmed.
John sat on one of the beds and gestured towards the wall. ‘Stella did this before she left, the year after the girls were taken. What do you think it means? She was so lost when she did it. Without hope. I thought she would die of grief. I didn’t come in here then. I only saw when it was too late. Even then I never mentioned it to her. I couldn’t find the words.’
Alice sat on the bed next to John and leant into him. He felt tense. She ran her hand over the yellow cotton quilt. It was decorated with daisies and buttercups and smelled of washing powder, fresh air and springtime. ‘I don’t know what it means, but it is lovely. It makes me feel joyful. All those pictures are warm and wonderful, don’t you see? Look at those fields of wheat and sunshine. That yellow cat. It doesn’t feel without hope to me. Quite the opposite, actually.’
John pulled away and walked over to the orderly bookcase and started examining the titles. ‘Maybe you are right,’ he shrugged. He opened a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses and began flicking through, ‘The moon has a face like the clock on the wall. They loved that one,’ he said simply. He closed the book and slotted it back into its home on the shelf and turned again to the wall of pictures. ‘Stella always loved art. It was one of the first things she told me when we met. Then marriage happened, children happened and all of that was forgotten and set aside. I set things aside too. That’s life, I suppose. We set aside our own dreams for the girls, and then they were taken from us too.’ He paced to the open bedroom door and stood in front of it with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Clearly, it was time to leave. Alice stood up, noticing as she did the pair of red sandshoes neatly placed together by the side of the bed.
Although Alice would never be able to pinpoint exactly when John began to turn away from her, after her visit to his flat the gentle fluidity between them began to harden and cool. Alice sometimes felt she could see the shadow that stalked him, and understood he would never be free of it. The days lengthened with the change of season, and so too did their absences from each other. His distance and silence was counterbalanced with an equally stubborn desire within Alice to hold a piece of herself back. She stood on the perimeter of the relationship, determined never again to feel out of control. Under the surface, feelings surged like magma, but they never spoke of their relationship. They never defined it. Those words were too dangerous to explore. Time together was spent in the fragility of the blue hour, outside the harsh daylight of reality. It was beautiful, but ephemeral and sadly Alice began to understand, momentary.
Oh my!
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