Coming Home

It was November when you reached your childhood home after a night and a day driving from the shame, through the tears, into the past. You had no career, no friends, no man, no home. You had nowhere else to go, so you decided to go back to your parents’ house, a small cabin, miles from the nearest town. But when you got there, it was to find that your parents were gone. A man, thirties, forties, was there. Caretaker, he said. They’d gone on a cruise, he said. An extended cruise of a few months to get the warm sun on their cold, winter bones.

They hadn’t told you. But why would they? What notice have you given them over the past few years? You haven’t visited for over three, and last Christmas they didn’t even warrant a gift, a card, seasons greetings. You tell yourself it’s their fault for living so far from civilization, somewhere where there’s no Wi-Fi, no phone even, when in fact you could never be bothered to check if they were okay. You wonder with their frugal life how they could afford a cruise. But how do you know what their life has been like? How do you know how they have lived these past years since you last deigned to acknowledge their very existence? And now that your busy, successful life in the city has turned to dust, through the fault of no-one but yourself, you expect to come here and be welcomed like the prodigal daughter. But instead they are not here. Just this man. Just this caretaker.

Not knowing what else to do, and exhausted from the long drive, you decide to stay the night. You sleep in your old small bedroom, choosing to remain clothed against the unfamiliar cold. In the night there’s an early snow, and you realise in the morning that you must get out soon or remain for the winter. If you leave now, where would you go? Who would want you? You’ve no other family, and no-one back in the city wants you. Not after what you did. As you’ve nothing else to do, you decide to remain over the winter, lick your wounds, plan your next move.

As you change from your journey-weary clothes, you hear a noise outside. You look out your bedroom window to gaze at the once-familiar yard that was not properly visible in last night’s gloom. There’s the area that they cleared, where they always grow their vegetables, with the dark forest backdrop. And there’s the man, in the lee of the shelter built outside the only door to keep off the worst of the snow. He’s chopping wood on the block. He picks up the axe, swings it expertly, and gathers the chopped wood, putting it in the store ready to be put on the fire. You’re grateful; you’d forgotten how cold it could be here, how cold in these woods, how cold in this cabin with only one fire. Last night, you’d been too exhausted to worry too much about the cold, but this morning, when you leave your room, you see the man has stoked the fire for you. Still, staying here will require practical layers, and this is something you did not possess in the city. You search through your drawers and find some old fleeces, enough to keep your city-softened blood warm. It seems your parents have not forgotten their absent daughter after all.

You go downstairs to make coffee and see if there’s anything for breakfast. There’s nothing fresh, why would there be, though there is coffee and powdered milk. You decide to take your coffee black, though you mix some of the powdered milk with the oatmeal for breakfast. 

The man comes in with more wood for the fire and you ask his name. He pauses, as though he’s considering the answer, before telling you his name in Jon. Without the ‘h’. You ask where he’s staying. Small shack down by the river, he replies. You remember the place from your childhood, even more remote, more rundown than this place. You’re not sure who owns that bit of land, you never knew. You ask where he comes from. He shrugs; he’s had enough of your questions. He asks how long you’ll be staying.  When you say awhile, he says he will do what is necessary until the spring. You assume that then your parents will return.

It’s still snowing, so you decide to go to town to stock up before it gets impossible to drive, but when you try your car, it will not start. You ask Jon about your parents’ old 4x4. He looks at you slowly before telling you they took it with them when they went away. Of course, they did. You ask to borrow his car, but he says he doesn’t drive. There’s enough for now, he says. There’s roots in the cellar.

You go down in the tiny cellar, dug only so that the year’s harvest could be stored over winter, and there is indeed a good collection of carefully stored vegetables. There’s lots of tins and dried goods too, even some salted meat. It’s as if they had already been stocking up to see out the winter. Or maybe this was from last winter. How would you know?

You busy yourself in the kitchen preparing something for dinner. It gives you something to do, and keeps you moving as you adjust to the cold. You make enough for both of you, but when you ask Jon if he’ll share a meal, he refuses. He says it’s not necessary, he has his own stores. His job is that of a caretaker, and he’ll do that and chop wood. Until spring, anyway. That evening you lock the door as you listen to the wolves in the surrounding forest and eat alone. You’d forgotten about the wolves too. The meal was not satisfying to your city palette, but it would have to do, and you had the leftovers to look forward to.

The following day, you look out of your bedroom window again as Jon chops more wood. He’s well made, muscular, might even be thought of as good looking, but there’s something about him that hid any attraction you might have felt towards him. If only there was a smile inside of him, a meeting of eyes. But his eyes are dead and evasive, his lips permanently turned down as if his mother never taught him to smile. Perhaps he had problems, and if so, who are you to judge? You’ve judged enough of late and been found wanting.

That morning, you plan how you will spend your days. Water will be needed, and you can’t expect Jon to bring that up. It is not, after all, within the remit of a caretaker. It’s the property he’s taking care of, not you. You suspect that if you asked, he’d oblige but bring the bare minimum required for cooking. No extra for washing. Besides, fetching water each morning gives you something to do. If the weather’s not too bad, you’ll go down to the river, knowing that when it gets bad, you’ll need to gather snow from round the cabin and wait for it to melt.  You’d like to walk further, but daren’t go too far, not with so many hungry indiscriminate mouths sniffing around. 

There’s no bread, but there are the ingredients for flatbread and cornbread, and you have to rediscover your ability to make these. It was something your mother taught you as a child. And you become reacquainted with the mealy bugs that compete for the grains. You make it fresh every other day. On alternate days, you make your meals, such as they are. After a couple of weeks, your palette adjusts to this frugal fare.

Washing is restricted to a small bowl of water each morning to freshen up. There’s no running water, only a basic toilet, which you flush with the washing up water. The tank will not be emptied until the spring. You find some dried lavender in the basement to make it smell a little sweeter. You learn to wear clothes for a week or two, though you draw the line at your underwear which you try at least to rinse out daily.

You clean the house each day, making sure dust does not settle, making sure you don’t disturb too many spiders. They will be needed to feed on next year’s flies, after all. There’s not much to clean, just one room downstairs, and the two bedrooms upstairs. It seems wrong, somehow, intrusive, going into you parents’ bedroom, the room in which you must have been conceived. It’s not a room you went in much as a child, and never alone. Such mundane tasks seem important to you now, but once these are done, there’s hours to fill.

You find some of your old childhood books and reread them. And you find some books that must have belonged to your parents. These comfort you, and you decide to write yourself. No excuses now as you’ve no other life left to distract you. You start slowly, but soon get into a routine of putting words on the page, even though they’re not necessarily good words. They will improve with practice. You write about your life, about your childhood here, about your life in the city. About where you went wrong. And you write about other things too, about the world outside as you see it. And you start to make plans of where you could go from here now that your old life is closed to you.

Each morning you look out your bedroom window to see how much more snow there is on the vegetable plot. And some days you see Jon chopping wood which he puts in the store. If not, the axe remains on the block. For the most part, Jon doesn’t pay you any heed, though he does occasionally bring you some small creature he has trapped. The first time he brought you a rabbit, you baulked at the idea of skinning it, but good sense and need overcame that. It was something else your mother had taught you as a child, after all, and when you sucked the moist fresh meat off the bones that night, you knew it had been worth it.

Somehow, you’re not sure when, Christmas came and went. And now the year is on the turn. It’s been getting warmer and last night, there was a thaw. Today when you look out your bedroom window, you see the snow has gone from the yard. You notice in the vegetable plot that there are two patches of ground where there is a depression. It’s as if someone had buried a load of balloons that have since burst, causing the soil to collapse. Or as if something beneath had rotted. Two depressions, about six feet by two feet. Two depressions side by side, like a regnal number, like Castor and Pollux. You look at the block. The axe is not there. You hear footsteps coming upstairs, and you know spring has arrived.