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Authors: Marcia Willett
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anxious for Jakey lest he was hurt by the rebuff, but Jakey was already turning back happily to Sister Emily and Mother Magda – his new friends.
Clem finishes his porridge and puts his bowl aside, still brooding on the oddness of bringing up a child in such a place as Chi-Meur. The point is that they are all bringing Jakey up: Janna, the Sisters, Father Pascal, Dossie, Mo and Pa. Clem watches Janna cutting soldiers of toast and spreading honey on them. She puts them on to Jakey’s plate and he eats them, relishing them and offering bites to Stripey Bunny at intervals.
It is as if we are a family, Clem thinks. And I’m sure Jakey is happy here.
Janna smiles at him and pushes some toast towards him and he thinks: If only I could fall in love with her, how simple life would be.
The snow falls, freezes, and falls again: in Cornwall the schools are closed and roads are blocked with drifting snow.
‘Unheard of down here,’ Pa says crossly, staring disconsolately from the bedroom window. ‘Climate change. We can look forward to this kind of thing now: floods, snow, heat waves. All this energy in the atmosphere; that’s what’s causing it. Tsunamis, volcanoes erupting. How am I supposed to get the dogs out in this?’
Straight-backed, one hand clenched in a fist behind his back, he raises his coffee mug and drinks. Mo watches him from the bed. His intensity, his high-octane energy, has always been slightly exhausting, even when they were both young; now it is poured out in tirades against the government, roaring at the television, raging at newspaper articles. She is terrified that these storms will cause another stroke. Their GP has been understanding about her anxiety but realistic about Pa’s character.
‘We know him,’ he says, resigned. ‘And it’s no good trying to change him at this late date. He’ll probably crash down with another stroke, just like he did before, and it might be worse next time, but can you honestly imagine him sitting quietly on the sofa with a tea cosy on his head? Might as well let him get on with it, Mo. I know it’s hard for you …’
And it is hard. At first she watched anxiously as he bellowed down the telephone at an unknown voice trying to sell him double glazing – ‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying ? This is a grade-one-listed property . We can’t put in double glazing. Why don’t you check your facts before you waste people’s time?’ – or she’d keep an eye on the clock whilst he spent an hour digging a trench for the runner beans, popping down the garden at intervals to make sure that he hadn’t collapsed again. Gradually she built up a defence against the fear, knowing that her anxiety added to his awareness of his vulnerability and weakness, and by degrees they’d fallen back into their old cheerful ways.
‘If you could get the ride-on mower out of the barn somehow,’ she says now, ‘you could fix something on the back and make a path through the snow to the lane. They’ll have the tractors out soon, so as to get to the stock. The dogs will enjoy it. Wolfie can ride on the mower with you.’
She can see by the alert tilt to his head that he is thinking about it. She stretches her hand to Wolfie, curled on the quilt by her knees and, at the bottom of the bed, John the Baptist beats his tail on the rug. He’s always been sensitive to Pa’s occasional outbursts – ears flattened, an eye rolled backwards to glance at his master whilst he laid a conciliatory head on Pa’s knee – and even in his most fiery moments Pa’s hand is tender on the black head, gently pulling an ear, smoothing the soft coat. John the Baptist understands all about barks being worse than their bites and he adores Pa.
Mo finishes her tea. She watches Pa’s shoulders shrugging inside his disgraceful old dressing gown, his fingers clenching and unclenching, as he plots and plans and works things out.
‘ If I can get it out,’ he says, with a kind of gloomy relish,
Clem finishes his porridge and puts his bowl aside, still brooding on the oddness of bringing up a child in such a place as Chi-Meur. The point is that they are all bringing Jakey up: Janna, the Sisters, Father Pascal, Dossie, Mo and Pa. Clem watches Janna cutting soldiers of toast and spreading honey on them. She puts them on to Jakey’s plate and he eats them, relishing them and offering bites to Stripey Bunny at intervals.
It is as if we are a family, Clem thinks. And I’m sure Jakey is happy here.
Janna smiles at him and pushes some toast towards him and he thinks: If only I could fall in love with her, how simple life would be.
The snow falls, freezes, and falls again: in Cornwall the schools are closed and roads are blocked with drifting snow.
‘Unheard of down here,’ Pa says crossly, staring disconsolately from the bedroom window. ‘Climate change. We can look forward to this kind of thing now: floods, snow, heat waves. All this energy in the atmosphere; that’s what’s causing it. Tsunamis, volcanoes erupting. How am I supposed to get the dogs out in this?’
Straight-backed, one hand clenched in a fist behind his back, he raises his coffee mug and drinks. Mo watches him from the bed. His intensity, his high-octane energy, has always been slightly exhausting, even when they were both young; now it is poured out in tirades against the government, roaring at the television, raging at newspaper articles. She is terrified that these storms will cause another stroke. Their GP has been understanding about her anxiety but realistic about Pa’s character.
‘We know him,’ he says, resigned. ‘And it’s no good trying to change him at this late date. He’ll probably crash down with another stroke, just like he did before, and it might be worse next time, but can you honestly imagine him sitting quietly on the sofa with a tea cosy on his head? Might as well let him get on with it, Mo. I know it’s hard for you …’
And it is hard. At first she watched anxiously as he bellowed down the telephone at an unknown voice trying to sell him double glazing – ‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying ? This is a grade-one-listed property . We can’t put in double glazing. Why don’t you check your facts before you waste people’s time?’ – or she’d keep an eye on the clock whilst he spent an hour digging a trench for the runner beans, popping down the garden at intervals to make sure that he hadn’t collapsed again. Gradually she built up a defence against the fear, knowing that her anxiety added to his awareness of his vulnerability and weakness, and by degrees they’d fallen back into their old cheerful ways.
‘If you could get the ride-on mower out of the barn somehow,’ she says now, ‘you could fix something on the back and make a path through the snow to the lane. They’ll have the tractors out soon, so as to get to the stock. The dogs will enjoy it. Wolfie can ride on the mower with you.’
She can see by the alert tilt to his head that he is thinking about it. She stretches her hand to Wolfie, curled on the quilt by her knees and, at the bottom of the bed, John the Baptist beats his tail on the rug. He’s always been sensitive to Pa’s occasional outbursts – ears flattened, an eye rolled backwards to glance at his master whilst he laid a conciliatory head on Pa’s knee – and even in his most fiery moments Pa’s hand is tender on the black head, gently pulling an ear, smoothing the soft coat. John the Baptist understands all about barks being worse than their bites and he adores Pa.
Mo finishes her tea. She watches Pa’s shoulders shrugging inside his disgraceful old dressing gown, his fingers clenching and unclenching, as he plots and plans and works things out.
‘ If I can get it out,’ he says, with a kind of gloomy relish,
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