He was seated on the high-backed chair facing the great window, beyond which rolled the open fields,the little hills of his childhood and beyond them, the sea. He was in his overcoat and blew heavily on his big red hands which he held cupped before his mouth.
“Will you have some coffee in there, dear?” she called from the kitchen. “I will, thanks, love”. The familiarity of her tone, the tenderness in her ordinary question impacted on him in his raw state. Cold, fatigue and a sensation of heaviness pervaded his body. He continued to sit and look out on the winter morning, rubbing the tops, then the palms of his hands. Everything was sparse out there, the blackened trees, the colourless sky, the crows stalking the fields.
The smell of coffee diverted him and he watched her as she came in carrying the tray and as she placed it on the corner of his desk. Still standing, she poured the steaming brew into the two brown mugs and handed him his. He took it with both hands, savoring the heat, holding the mug up to his face to let the stream rise up about him. She pulled up a chair and sat and did the same, then they drank concentrated mouthfuls in silence. Through the many years of their marriage this had been established as a rhythm, the coming together at mid-morning for coffee punctuated their day. They acknowledged each other silently in the way that feeding animals do, and each had developed gentleness in the way in which the silence was broken.
“The winter is set in”, he said, his eyes still on the fields. “Yes”, she responded, pausing for another sip of coffee ,”We wouldn’t be seeing it like this back in town”. “No, nor feeling it so keenly. Will you look at the two of us, with our overcoats on in the house at eleven o’clock in the morning ”. “Well, the fella will be out to fix the boiler today; we’ll be warm by the evening”.
They looked out, both of them, over the fields. She turned to him. “So, shall we go on with the unpacking, it’ll keep us warm at least?” He tried to suppress the sigh that heaved up within his big frame. But she knew his body, saw the helplessness lingering in his face. She got up and stood before him and held his upper arms and looked into his face, then spoke casually, “I’m going to make sense of the shed, I want to get the gardening gear sorted out, it’ll take all morning. What’ll you do?”. “Oh I’ll stay put in here and go on with the books”. “O.K. I’m off so” she said, giving his arms a squeeze before she turned and left.
He rose and took the tray to the kitchen and watched her go off down the path and disappear into the shed. He returned to the room that was to be his study and tried to take in the fields and the hills again. The sensation of his own weight as he stood there before the window followed by what he could only define as an urge to understand, made him stop and be still for a moment. He knew that sensation of old and yet each time it reappeared it struck him unawares; it was the need to come face to face with himself; here it was again. He kept his eyes on the fields and lowered himself into the chair. Why had he come back? There- at last the question could be heard somewhere inside him.
He stood up again out of the chair and buttoned his overcoat and pulled up the collar. He took the old soft brown cap from a pocket and stretched it with both hands from his forehead to the base of his skull, then patted it down on his crown. He plunged his hands into his pockets and set off out of the house down the path and out into the lane.
What would be out there in the winter? The hedges were plucked bare but for the ivy and bracken, there was a stillness broken by the cattle ahead and a barking dog far off behind him. He would walk up to the crossing as he would have done as a child. The rhythm of his step on the cold road began to warm him; he freed his hands from their pockets, dropped his arms and began to feel the old satisfaction of movement up hill. At last he was able to let go of scanning the landscape for answers. The sky began to reveal its varied hints of greys and blues, the greens of the hedges were here and there new and shiny, then dark and musty.
His breathing had deepened by the time the cross road at last appeared before him. He peeled off the cap and opened the top button of his coat as he stood and faced the lane with his arms open at his sides. He heard the question again,’ Why have I come back?’ He took all of this in, the question, the heaviness inside him, the lane, the fields, the little hills, the stark winter sky. His eyes and his memory took him beyond the hills to the road that ran on down to the shore-line. All at once this knowledge suffused the moment it appeared in him, like some lost object he had been hunting for when it was actually there in its usual spot all along.
He was part of something again. He began the walk back to the house, before him was the house, and beyond the house was the sea, the Atlantic Ocean.
A car engine sounded from behind, he stopped walking and stood in against the hedge. It was Paul, the heating fella.”Hop in and I’ll run you on home if you like”. He hesitated, and then manoeuvred his bulk into the passenger seat. The car smelled of cigarette smoke and the radio filled the space with a country and western tune. Paul the heating man had a large ruddy face and he sat in an open necked shirt with his window pulled down as if it were the middle of summer.” How are you finding it coming back?” He asked as he turned off the radio. “Oh we’re taking things slowly you know”. “Everything is on the move across the country now, it’s all changing, you must find it a different place”. “Oh things have changed all right”, he said, turning to face the driver. They continued for a while in silence. “Still, as long as we know the sea is still in the right place things can’t be too bad”. “Oh Jees , you’re right there, they’ll never go moving the ocean on us.” They laughed together lightly as the car pulled into the house.
Marian Imhasly
