Winter, my love

A great citrus coloured ball of a sun, that is how Nora will remember it, the day the young man first came to the door. She is kneeling, ungainly among the ripening tomatoes, picking fallen fruit from the ground, the soil’s crust crumbling beneath her hands. It was her husband who told her that tomatoes were fruit not vegetables, in the same way that figs are flowers not fruit. But I put tomatoes in salads and make soup, she remembers saying, nobody makes fruit soup. He had shaken his head, indulgent then of her ignorance, as if she was a peasant girl. That was when she was young, a little wild, a lot free, escaped from Dublin and a dank tenement house not far from the River Liffey. Her hair was wavy and seal brown, when she looked in the mirror her eyes sparkling and merry, a hint of green in their depths. She and her mother had set off for England, catching the night ferry from Dublin to Liverpool, because her big brother had got sick in the hospital ‘over there’ and there was nothing to be done but to make the great voyage, her holding her mother’s hand because her mother was so afraid, trembling as they walked up the gang plank, counting her rosary as soon as they were seated, calling on God to keep them safe and return them soon and what would she have done without Nora. On the boat, Nora met her husband, just one night of standing on a deck with the wind blowing through her brown hair, a chance encounter, then before she knew it saying yes to the man with epaulettes on the shoulders of his military uniform and it was the end of one war and another one on the horizon and he was seeking to emigrate. No point now, in remembering her mother’s anguish as she left for a far country. What will I do without you, Nora? And who will help me with your poor sick brother? And am I never to see you again, Nora?

Well, that was a long time ago, her mother in the ground God rest her, and the husband long gone. Not dead, just tired. Tired of her, that was. Tired of her not knowing her manners, tired of her ways, he complained she didn’t want to learn. Being pretty was notenough he decided in the end, not the colonel’s wife she was meant to be. Nor was it enough for her to mother their children, a girl and a boy, though she thought she had done that well in all the times alone, in this strange country where for a time he thought he might settle, but never did, not after the next war when it came. It was up to him, he had said, to teach their children worldliness, the way to live in the world. Somewhere in that world, in the English country garden where he came from in the beginning, he is not alone, there is another woman. She is alone, her children gone. With him, of course, he took them with him. This is something she cannot forgive. At Christmas, they send her cards. Love, they say. Love, and their names.

Love, she says, the word acid on her tongue, and puts the cards in her incinerator, watching the flames curl with blackened paper trails.

But that day, surrounded with the dark red bursting ripe flesh of tomatoes, purple aubergines couched on the earth nearby, the blue lasiandra which she can dry and smoke when tobacco is short, the crimson bougainvillea stretched along the trellises above her, such an abundance of light and colour, a day just to celebrate that it is summer, that the heat is upon her, its sunshine that keeps her alive. And there, standing at the gate, is the young man, a tin jug in his hand.

‘It is nice place that you have,’ he says, his English halting.

She shrugs and looks around her. ‘It is a shack,’ she says, looking towards the cottage.

‘Shack? What is shack?’

Black eyes, a boy’s ripe mouth. In spite of the intrusion, she finds herself smiling. She likes to be alone, but for a moment she is curious.

‘Never mind,’ she says, and gestures to the jug. ‘You’ve come for water?’

It has happened before, the road menders hard at their toil, smoothing over the potholes on the new roads, who come to her gate, needing to quell their thirst . The bosses forget to bring water. You need to bring your own, they are likely to say. The roads fall apart so fast, laid down a few years before, somewhere round the time of the last war. The men who came from Dalmatia seeking their fortunes in the gumfields have had to turn their shovels to the roads. Nearly fifty years have passed since the British introduced a law to keep them off their patches where they toiled, the swampy wetlands where the treasure lay. Why did they do that, she had asked her husband. The money was all getting sent back to their families in some godforsaken strip of land on the Adriatic Sea, he had told her. To their families? When he nodded, curt as ever, she thought not to mention the ten shilling note she slipped into letters home whenever she could, the little housekeeping she could spare.

She takes the jug from the young man’s hand. As she turns to fill it from the tank of rainwater, she sees his hand, bleeding around fresh blisters.

‘You’d better come in,’ she says, pushing the strands of her grey hair back behind her ears; it is long and straggles over her shoulders.

‘It is not so bad,’ he says, his eyes following her gaze.

‘Come.’ She is holding his jug.

Inside, the air is dim, a smoky haze from the coal range, and her morning cigarette. The ceiling is pointed and hollow beneath its wood rafters. She has built this place herself. In the corners stand remnants from another life, a copper kettle, a silver vase, dense with dust. When he is seated at her table, she takes his hand in hers, examining the wounds. ‘You are new on the roads?’

‘I am not so long here.’

‘You are not born here?’ The Dalmatians are mostly second generation now.

‘My grandfather sent for me. I begin here.’

‘I see.’ And she does, more or less, as she cuts a bandage and laces it round his thumb and back between his forefinger so that it is held in place. She sees, too, that there are tears welling at her touch. She holds his hand in hers a moment. ‘It will get easier.’

Towards evening of the next day he comes back and somehow she is not surprised. He is carrying white roadside daisies. She beckons him in and takes the flowers. He is pointing to the silver vase, which the evening before she has dusted and polished, so that the room is illuminated, the shadows lit, as if in readiness for visitors.

When she has made him tea and cut a slice of bread, he sits a while without speaking. It’s enough that he is there. But she talks to him, telling him about her life and what has gone before. Why not? She has not told anyone before, she is just the old woman who lives in the cottage, a little mad perhaps, the locals may well think. Nora, they recall, the woman who had everything and lost it all. Some of them might remember the days when she wore bright dresses and jitterbugged on the verandahs of the settlers, while the gramophones played ragged tinny music and they all drank gin and laughed into the night.

Not enough.

Too wild.

Badly behaved, the husband said. What is it that you want Nora, he’d asked her, as if she was a recalcitrant child.

She is known in the village for not having much to say for herself. At the grocer’s, they hand over her supplies with little comment, know she doesn’t like talking these days. She could bite their heads off as quick as look at them. But now it pours forth, her own life story. Besides, what will this boy remember, what will he understand? He nods and smiles as she talks and talks.

The next time he comes, she gives him beer she has brewed in the copper, not the one that stands on the corner table, but the one she lights a fire beneath to boil water. The beer is made using hops she grows in lines on her far boundary, near a stand of gum trees that rustle and twitch even when the air is still. He sips and nods, the pungent bitter brew that it is, but it seems to win his approval. He holds out his glass for more, and they drink, and she talks some more, and he goes on smiling.

In a day or so he is back, and this time he flourishes a bottle with a label. ‘Dally plonk,’ he says, laughing. ‘We drink again.’ His grandfather, he is able to explain to her, has turned to making wine and selling a little. It is bought down south in Auckland, a nice little business he has started. So that is how his grandfather has the money to bring him here, she thinks.

‘I’ll teach you to read and write English,’ she says. ‘If you would like that.’ She has changed from her worn old overalls into a pair of green linen slacks and a pale yellow cotton blouse. Her loose hair is caught up in a loose bun.

His face brightens, then falls. ‘How can that be?’ he asks. ‘You are Irish woman. My grandfather says.’

‘I speak English,’ she says, her tone stiff. ‘That is what I am speaking to you now.’

‘I know,’ he says, confused. ‘My grandfather speaks English, good. And my father went to school here.’ But his father is long dead; he had gone to the old country to marry, a girl from his father’s village. The young man was the product of that marriage, but his father had taken sick and died before the return to New Zealand. So that Nora knows that is why the grandfather has sent for him, the last of his generation, precious cargo.

‘Never mind then. If that is all you need.’

She has turned away, shrugging her shoulders, dismissing him.

‘Well, yes, please Miss,’ he says on his next visit. ‘My grandfather says I need some lessons, more than he can give me. He says he speaks better than he writes. He says we will pay you for the lessons.’

She shakes her head. ‘They are a gift.’

‘For what?’

‘You could turn a spade for me now and then. Dig, I mean dig in my garden. I am getting old.’

So he comes to her cottage for an hour when his days on the roads are done. The words in his head are piling up, he can write his grandfather’s address, start a bank account of his own, apply for a driver’s license. You don’t need to learn poetry, she says.

‘Poetry? What is that?’

‘It’s the words like in a song, only they are spoken. Though it is possible to sing the words of some poetry anyway.’

He sings then to her, in his own language, his voice sweet and low. ‘This then is a poem, Miss?’

‘Perhaps. I’m sure it must be a poem. But for now, I will teach you how to read the signs on the sides of the road. And the names of items at the grocer’s shop.’

‘Flour,’ he chants, ‘sugar, cocoa, soap, tin of soup, dried peas and cheese.’

‘Very good. Tomorrow we will go to the shop together and you will point to these goods, one by one as I name them.’

In the shop, she senses his unease. They are getting sideways looks. He finds it hard to say the words she has taught him. ‘My pupil,’ she says to the grocer, a nuggety short man with a sharp tongue. His father owned the shop before him, and his father before that. They are old family, they know what goes on here. She is remembered.

‘What ever you fancy, Nora,’ the man says, insolent, using her name in a familiar way that he would not ordinarily do.

Although she had expected the young man to take his leave outside the shop, he takes her shopping bag from her and indicates that he will walk with her. ‘I am sorry,’ he says, ‘I’m no good pupil. Pu-pil? Right?’

‘Yes, pupil.’

‘You have flour and sugar in your bag.’

‘Yes, very good. But you must learn to say them in the shop.’

‘Peas and cheese. These words make the same sound.’

‘Oh yes, that is very good. And now you are making good sentences. That is excellent.’

With his free hand, he picks up hers, and they walk along together, his palm warm and his fingers laced around hers are strong. and he sings his Dalmatian poem and she feels a joy rising inside her, an overwhelming delight, such a dizzying sense of pleasure that she can hardly walk. Her head is spinning when he leaves her at the door. ‘Will you come in?’ Her voice is high and young.

He gives her an odd look, letting go of her hand. ‘Not now. I must run along,’ he says, ‘I must go home, my grandfather has the pot on the stove.’ He beams, as all these words appear, as if nothing had taken place.

It’s as well, she thinks, would I know what to do? But she knows what it is that she feels, and her face burns. It cannot be, he was helping an old woman carry her parcels. She is nothing, she is an atom of light, soon to be consumed by the darkness. The desire she feels nestles between her legs and she touches it and cries out.

The weather begins to turn. There are golden moons high in cooling nights, some much needed rain falls, corn on the cob is ripening and she picks it by the bucketful. Soon it is autumn, she stakes up plants, prunes and tidies, turns over spadefuls of soil, sweeps leaves. The young man comes, but not so often now, although he takes a turn at her shovel. Weeks pass before she realises that he is no longer working on the road.

‘My grandfather teaches me about the wine trade,’ he tells her. ‘He is pleased. There are many orders.’

The rains come as the middle of the year approaches. A month has passed since his last visit. The leaves in the gum trees fret as the winds rise at evening. When she has almost stopped daring to hope, he appears carrying a fat rolled-up newspaper. A downpour has come on quite suddenly and his shirt is wet through and sticking to him.

‘Take it off,’ she says. ‘I’ll dry it in front of the stove.’

She helps him peel the garment off his wet pelt. His skin is honey-gold. Black hair feathers his back all the way down his spine. At her touch, he shivers. Nora stands stock still, her fingers resting on his shoulder. She is flooded with certain knowledge, that this is all the happiness in the world, all that has been denied her. If it is never better than this moment, it is enough.

He is unwrapping the newspaper; it contains a bottle of wine that he places on the table between them. She places the shirt in front of the fire and steam rises..

‘I’m in love,’ she says. Not to him, not directly, just to the room, to herself.

‘Love,’ he says. ‘I know that word. I also love.’

She holds her breath in, releases it.

‘I know I will love her, though we are yet to meet.’ The newspaper has been protecting not just the bottle of wine but a roll of documents.’ You will help me please, there are many forms that must be filled in before I leave?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Nora says, although already she thinks she does.

‘My grandfather did not expect me to be ready so soon to marry, but he is pleased with me. With my, progress, do you call it? We are making money. So he has written home and my bride is waiting for me. I will love her, I will be a good husband.’

‘Yes, I see. Yes, of course I’ll help you,’ Nora says. Soon she is putting pen to paper, asking him questions, filling in the forms.

‘I leave next week,’ the young man says.

‘I wish you safe journey.’

‘Soon I’ll be back. A few months perhaps. I will see you then.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You will be here though?’ His voice is agitated.

The rain that has been lashing at the window pane is abating. The room is cloudy with steam. ‘You should go now,’ she says, offering him his shirt. ‘Goodbye.’

He shakes his head, as if trying to clear it of something he does not quite understand, as if this is not final.

‘It is winter, my love,’ she says, ‘it is winter.’