Old Enough

© Tom J Vowler 2007

First appeared in Cadenza magazine Issue 18

The front door bangs shut and the house is mine. I imagine Claire’s school bag dragging behind her as her older brother tells her again and again that they’ll miss the bus. In four years, since they both became old enough to deliver themselves to places, they’ve only missed the bus once. Claire had slipped on the ice, gashing her knee, and they’d watched the snow turn red, listening to the bus weave its way to Tavistock without them. I’d opened the door to her crying, Paul cross at the prospect of their mother dropping them at the gates for all to see. They’ll both be cold today – Claire because she’s Claire, Paul because it’s not cool to wear a coat. Winter on Dartmoor is for the hardy, and I wonder if my children will one day forgive me for the life I’ve given them.

I stack the breakfast plates and Robert’s cup in the dishwasher, before making a strong coffee. Standing at the sink, watching the wind-combed trees in the distant wood, I realise I’ve been standing there for some minutes. I pick up my luke-warm cup and go into my studio. A pale winter sun is working hard to give yesterday’s pots some light and they seem relieved when the stark fluorescent tubes ping on.

The exhibition is six days away, highlighted on my calendar with a blithe sweep of vermillion. I press the switch on the side of the kiln, before loading it with ten plates that will wait patiently for the temperature to peak at eleven-hundred degrees. This first firing done, these anaemic pieces can then be given some colour and life.

A Radio Four play feels stilted, so I opt for Tom Waites. I need to be consumed by work today; for it to envelop me like a hot air balloon collapsing on its basket. But you can’t stop the mind; it’s as if by trying to, you highlight the danger. So when I tell myself the man in the market crowd yesterday couldn’t have been him, that I’m just seeing ghosts, my mind suggests that it was.

Robert knows something is wrong, but will wait for me to reveal what. I am grateful the exhibition allows me to go to bed hours after him, his probing hand on auto-pilot as it accepts – almost expects – rejection. A forlorn look in the morning, or no look at all, tells me his mind retains these exchanges on some level. I look at his photo on my notice board. His eyes follow me around the studio. There’s nowhere in the room he can’t see me.

I sit on my stool, staring at a plate sitting expectantly on my wheel, and suddenly I loathe how it needs me, how it cannot flourish or become without me. Turning to find a brush, I knock over my coffee. Splashes dapple themselves onto the plate’s porous surface, creating unbridled patterns. I contemplate its artistic merit – the accidental versus the deliberate. It hits the far wall and falls to the floor in shards. I wonder if it can still be termed art. Why not? Progressive ceramics. I breathe deeply. The anger tries to find a foothold, but instead falls away.

As if independent of me, my eyes have welled up. I walk to the mirror in the hall, almost in fascination. I can’t remember the last time I cried. The tears are diffident at first, reluctantly snaking down one cheek, then the other. There’s a pause, a consideration, before they drop one at a time onto my shirt.

I walk back into the studio and sit facing the photograph of my husband. He would hate me to call him beautiful, but he is. Not just in the way a father holding his children is, but his features have a symmetry, a grace that is almost feminine.

I find myself talking to him. I want to see if his face changes at all; if his soul can bear this new truth. I tell him about a young woman in her first real job sixteen years ago; about how she was going to change the world with her love of books.

I was twenty-three. I remember battling a fatigue with a large glass of Shiraz. As trainee teachers we had a taste of the hours needed after lessons. But you finish at half three, you lot. No, I’d thought, we come home at half three.

The buzzer of my first-floor flat resounded above Joni Mitchell. I lifted the receiver, pushed the small button and called him up.

Can I have a glass, Miss? I remember his emphasis on Miss even now. I told him to call me Ann – it felt egalitarian. He didn’t, though.

It had been my idea, not two months into the job: a few hours a week for the few disruptive ones showing any promise. Embryonic delinquency was the term used; it was our job to sever the umbilical cord with wisdom. I wrote to James’ parents and each Tuesday at seven I tried to tease out some literary creature from within him.

Just a half…I replied. I presumed he’d drunk beer or cider with his mates, and reasoned that Harper Lee should be savoured with something other than coke or instant coffee. It was meant as a gesture – a device to undermine the formality, to encourage a productive session. The judge called it naïve.