The Robber Year

All rituals are doorways. Jeanette Winterson

Vivien wipes her hands on the damp tea towel, watching the water spill from the tap, filling the saucepan. The pan is overfull but she places it on the hob and ignites the gas, the blue flame casting an icy warmth like the last shudder of December sun on the kitchen’s window pane. 

In the growing dark, she picks up the peeler and makes short work of the eyes and sprouting growths, gorging them out of the potatoes like so many black pupils and little hooked fingers. With a knife’s blade, she casts the offcuts into the dustbin, and starts to slice the misshapen potatoes one after the other, stacking the pile on the chopping board like a pile of yellow coins. In the miserly light of the last day of the year, the horde seems excessive, intended as it is as a repast for just one. It is only after she has tipped them into the saucepan, water spitting over the sides, that she allows herself to cross to the sideboard, take out a single champagne flute and a bottle, the glass smooth against the potato starch on her hands. 

She has not chilled the champagne but it is an oversight that no one will admonish her for, given she is her only guest. The water in the saucepan seethes; only when the heat is lowered do the discs of potato settle down into a drowned submission. Vivien unwinds the wire caging the cork. She should set a timer for the potatoes but doesn’t, collecting instead the glass and crossing to the back door. She will rely on her cook’s sixth sense to tell her when they are soft and pliable, ready to be tipped into the hot oven for her son’s favourite dish, the one they eat every year: potato au gratin. 

The bolt on the back door is heavy, wrought iron which requires both her hands to wrench it free. She never used to lock the door, but this last year she has only been able to sleep in her bed knowing the bolt is firmly fastened. What is it about absence that welcomes the fear of intruders? Something about the slumbering house with its empty neatly-made beds makes her lie in her own, mistaking each noise for a stealthy boot, or a hand on the latch. 

She pushes the thought away as she braces her hip against the door and it gives with a groan, permitting the icy wind entrance. With the toe of her slipper, she scrapes away the frost and settles herself down on the backstep, placing the glass beside her. This is a ritual which she will not forgo even if she must modify it: toasting the old year, whatever it has brought, before it slips away into the hinterland of memories.

Never before has she opened the champagne, but she has observed Ted doing it enough times. Quickly she twists the bottle in one direction and the cork in another, surprised at how natural it feels: this movement apart; how the cork gives itself freely to the air; how the bottle seems to wish it gone, speeding it on its way with an arc of foam. She expects memories of last New Year’s Eve, the packed bags, the kisses goodbye; but as she licks the froth from her fingers, she recalls instead holding the child’s hand, Ted the other, their son between them, taking his first faltering steps through the shallow half moons of bubbling water that the sea had cast upon the sand’s shore, thirteen years ago. Barefoot they had walked together, and when they had turned it was only she who had noticed the retreating tide had stolen the footsteps of husband and child; only hers remained in the dry sand, further up the beach: a mother journeying alone. 

She pours a glass and raises the toast her husband used to make every celebration before her existence became something to forget not to mark: “Viva Vivien!” The bubbles swarm in her throat and it is a struggle to swallow them. Quickly she raises the glass and silently toasts the old year who has taken from her, yes, but accompanied her too, pushing her from one day to the next in a summons of duties and chores. Draining the glass, she pours another and then pulls off her slippers, leaving them on the mat where the boy used years ago to leave his shoes, mud caked from insect hunts in her flowerbeds; later his football boots, laces left tangled for her to unpick with patient fingers while he showered, ate, slept. 

Stepping into the winter grass, the garden’s cold imprints itself into her feet; she feels it radiating up her ankles and into her calves, which threaten to cramp, a sharp pain which she almost relishes. Somewhere high above a half-moon gazes down intermittently as clouds scud by, illuminating in the shadowshow what has remained despite the passage of time: a swing, moving rhythmically by itself, pushed by the wind; a goal post, fallen face-first, its frame crooked like the injured kneecaps she used to dress. So long ago. So long. Ago is now all she seems to have, since Ted took the child far away from her, hundreds of miles as the blackest crow flies.

Vivien buries her feet into the comforting warmth of her slippers; returning to the kitchen, she leaves the back door ajar. There is still much of the old year here, she can feel it rising like the steam which collects above the saucepan and she wishes it gone: there is the back door, leave now and take everything else with you while you’re about it, robber year. 

With the point of a knife she spears a piece of potato. It scalds her mouth but still she chews, assessing the texture, before tipping the saucepan’s contents into a colander. She refuses to relinquish this ritual, the meal they always ate, even if she must eat it alone; takes cream and cheese from the fridge, salt and pepper from the cupboard. Slowly, methodically, she covers the base of the chipped ovenproof dish with the potato coins, grinding salt and pepper, sprinkling the cheese, repeating again and yet again. When she pours the thick cream, she senses the child of yesteryears beside her, shaking the upturned carton above his open mouth to catch every last drop. Yes, tidbits from his mother’s kitchen had been enough, once. 

There is an hour of waiting now. While the wind gathers itself in her kitchen, drawing the last remnants of the year out from its hiding places, she must decide on a ritual to begin in this new, expectant hush. Previously there were games, with family and friends; the child careering through the house in a blaze of noise. In later years he had taken to his room with a chosen friend or two, avoiding his father’s absence: the trips he passed off as work. Custom then had been for her to play the waiting game, clearing the kitchen, ready to welcome her son to the dinner table when the New Year rapped upon the door. She had learnt to leave her phone switched off; she no longer needed to read her husband’s midnight wishes that this year be a happy and new one; she knew the habits of old were hard to shake off. 

She will not clean the kitchen or dress in her finest clothes; she has no one to wait for, having persuaded friends she really would prefer to see this New Year in alone; and so she crosses to the drawer and pulls out paper and pen. This is a ritual she knows many perform: this writing of lists; reaching into the future to pull from its dark one luminous hope. But to write a list would be futile, for her greatest wish will never be granted: the return of her child. So instead she writes in an unstoppable hand: 

Dear 2023, 

This has been a hard year for us both. So much has been taken; we are two mothers grieving the loss of so very much.

I wonder if you, like me, are left wondering at the course of your actions. Do you also regret decisions, perhaps those which others forced upon you? A year ago I resolved to give a blessing to my child; he had asked to go and live with his father whose door stood open to welcome him. What weight did my word have against the combined force of theirs? He was fourteen, the law stated he could choose his family home; it had seemed as simple as that. 

So take him, I thought. What is the other side of the country? Just a different point on a map; a place name I’ll have to learn. For when you pluck a son from the family home, prise him like a milk tooth, lift him like a chick still fluffy with down, does it matter the distance? He will be gone if he lives in the next street or on the other side of the moon.

How wrong I was. A hundred miles is so very, very far. 

I walk the garden a hundred times each day and wonder with each circuit how many times it would take me, pacing these confines, to reach his new front door. To arrive at the place I cannot picture although he writes to tell me there is a football pitch right next to the sea; and that his room faces the lighthouse, which wakes him from his sleep to think about me- how I used to watch from the sidelines as he raced up the pitch: Ben, my beautiful boy.

His is a name I hoard, keep it close to my heart, for fear that it too might be taken; but it is one I can whisper to you. Like me, you recall the name of every beloved who has been taken this past year; keeping them safe in the calendar of your memory. Yes you take, but I hope you treasure the things you steal.

2023, I know you have lost so very much too. In floods, in fires, in the explosion of war; what can we do in the face of all this loss?

I have no answers. Perhaps there are none. Only words to shape the pain, the longing, and out of that, a response of sorts might come.

With hope, I sign.

Yours,

Vivien. 

For a long time she sits grasping the letter, wishing there was something else she could hold onto instead of this flimsy piece of paper and its few words. 

The champagne is drunk, the backdoor left open for the old year’s exit; there remains just one more ritual to complete on this last of nights. As the timer sounds and she places the steaming dish on the kitchen counter, she sees the oven's clock flick to 11.59 pm. Holding the letter, she crosses to the front door and flings it open, the wind tunnelling through as if the New Year can’t wait to charge with boundless energy into her life. What a force it has, threatening to whip the letter from her hand; cracking its whip and promising to break the old asunder. Despite herself she laughs, it’s more than half hysteria but still, she breathes in that power and feels it fill her lungs before bellowing it out in deep raucous howls. 

She doesn’t care what the neighbours think; she feels it surge about- the time for release. She stands in her driveway with her hair blowing about her head, slippers on her feet, holding the paper high above her, laughing and crying. She feels the New Year tugging at the paper with strong insistent fingers; and as the countdown on the road climaxes- 3, 2, 1- she releases her missive into the new day; the first morning of her New Year. The questions, the answers, the hope are 2024’s now. 

She is turning about, ready to close the door once more when she sees a car’s headlights dip along the road, dazzling her. A thought in her mind: who would drive anywhere tonight of all nights? Then reality is buffeted away as she sees what car it is that screeches to a halt beside her, and who is leaping out from the passenger seat: Ben. 

Her ex-husband is speaking, only half jesting:

“Don’t you ever check your phone Vivien? I’ve lost count of the number of messages I’ve sent you today. What a drive. Hours in this filthy weather…”

But the wind bears his words far away as her son careers into her arms and it is like every goal-scoring celebratory hug has been saved just for this moment.

“Surprise, Mum! You know I’d never let you celebrate New Year alone!”