Previously published online in (mac)ro(mic), May 2021
Each doorstep-thick slice impaled on a long fork licked by flickering orange flames,I toast bread over an open fire while Nan fetches butter from the pantry meat-safe.
Cut from stoic cloth, she raised fifteen children in this tiny house, witnessed two World Wars with milky-eyed, mustard-gassed Grandad, now long-wintered, like blackbird song on window snow.
Now, she stoops when she walks, coarse brown stockings encasing thin pale flesh. Now, her pinned ash-grey plait is wound round her head like a Cumberland sausage. But when her hair flows loose and free – a silver waterfall – crowning her shoulders, she becomes a girl again.
I ask what life was like, then. Her reply always: What’s past is past. It can’t be changed. Life goes on. Then it stops.
Yesterday, blue tits pecked through foil-topped bottles for the cream, and the wildflower posy I picked – yellow-bright celandines, purple clover – takes pride of place in a repurposed jam jar on the mantelpiece, where the clock ticks loudly. The fire is slowly dying, pale embers dimmed, like a decaying peach.
Nan takes the knife, bone handle worn, deftly slices a knob of yellow butter onto hot toast, watches it melt golden. Sprinkles salt on top. Together we sit. Eat. Stare into the fire’s star-spitting crackle. Sharing warmth.
