Drawing with Light
Drawing With Light
Julia Green
For Rosemary
Table of Contents
Notebook 1: September to December
Notebook 3: Summer, Pyrénées-Atlantiques
Notebook 1
September to December
â
Where are you? Kat? Emily?
'
â
Em-il-y?
'
Cassy's voice echoes round the still, hot garden.
I'm wriggling up, about to call back, but a hand grabs my arm.
â
Shh!
'
My sister Kat pulls me down lower, under the tall grass and flowering plants and fruit bushes where we are hiding at the bottom of the garden.
Lying on the hot ground so close, I can hear her heart thumping as if it is my own. The air is heavy and sweet with the smell of hot grass roots and the tang of blackcurrants: above us the ripe fruits hang in shiny black clusters along the branches. Too sour to eat raw: we tried earlier and had to spit them out. In any case my tummy is full to hurting with the raspberries and redcurrants we've been stuffing into our mouths all morning.
â
Ow. You're squashing me.
'
âShh, you great goon. Shut up or she'll find us!' my sister hisses into my ear. She's pressing me down so hard my face is rubbed into the hard edge of the book she was reading to me. I try to lift myself up enough to tug it out from under me but she's pinning me down too tight, as if she wants to be mean and hurt me. She'll swear she didn't, when I say, later.
Why doesn't she want Cassy to find us? Cassy has come to look after us. Cassy is soft and kind and when she reads stories she doesn't hiss or frighten me like Kat does. But
Cassy
is not our mother, Kat says, and we must not like her. And then she might go away.
When Kat says the words âour mother', my head goes fuzzy. The stories make me scared but I have to keep listening anyway; it's like I can't stop.
When Kat is at school, sometimes I get the book out of the blue drawer where Kat keeps it. There's one picture about halfway through the book of a pretty lady with dark hair and a blue silky dress who is drinking water from a stream under some trees. I say the fuzzy words âmy mother'.
Cassy has stopped calling. She's gone back into the house.
â
Sit up, then, silly,
'
Kat says.
â
Look what you've done to the book! It's all squashed.
'
â
You made me. You did it on purpose.
'
I start to cry.
â
Stop that right now, crybaby,
'
Kat says.
â
I didn't do anything to you. I'm reading you stories, aren't I? So listen.
'
She starts over again, reading aloud our favourite story.
I lie down on my back so I can see the blackcurrants shining in the sun and the way the light makes patterns through the grasses when they move. I suck my thumb even though
âyou're too big for that now you're four'
, Dad says. I twist the hem of my dress in my other hand, round and round. My favourite blue dress, all soft and comfy except it's getting tight under my arms now and today it has red stains all down the front, from the berries.
âAt the edge of a big forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children . . .'
Kat does her telling-a-story voice, which makes me sleepy, to begin with, until the horrid things start to happen. In the story, I mean. Not for real, though sometimes I get them mixed up.
My earliest memory. It's the first memory I have of something connected to my mother. So perhaps that is the right way to begin to tell this story.
Bit by bit, I'm writing down what happened, those months we lived in the caravan, Cassy and Dad and me. Kat was away, mostly, at university, but she is part of the story too. Kat was there from the beginning, of course.
I want to include other things: fragments of memory, scraps from the past which help me make sense of it all. It's like making a patchwork quilt, sewing together the pieces of my life, stitching in the squares and making something whole. I could add the photos: I've got more than enough of those now. The letters and emails too. And a painting.
Perhaps it's more like a scrapbook than a quilt, then. In any case, it helps, writing this down. But where to begin is hard. There's the memory, which is the earliest moment. Or there's September, and my first meeting with Seb. If it hadn't been for Seb, I'd never have arrived at where I am, now. Meeting him made it all possible.
You open up your heart and then things happen you couldn't imagine, before.
So here's another starting point: an evening, in September.
It's dusk.
Kat and me are picking our way over piles of stone and rubbish, into the middle of the big downstairs room in a house more like a ruined castle than a home. Tumbled-down walls, swathed in ivy; moss like bright green pincushions on the stones. It smells of damp.
âIt's a total wreck,' Kat says. âDad's really bonkers this time. He might as well build a new house from scratch.'
I lean against the thick stone wall that divides the downstairs space. At the top, where the stone has crumbled, an ash sapling has taken root and sent thin pale shoots up towards the light coming through a hole in the roof. Ferns are growing out of the same ledge, filtering the shafts of grey light.
I can hear the river even from inside. It sweeps past the house in a big curve below the mound the house was built on centuries ago, almost a moat. It's easy to imagine ghosts: the people who lived here, over the years. Voices half caught, echoing off stone.
When it's all restored, Kat and me will have rooms right at the top, under the slope of the roof. Dad's shown us his plans, drawn with his neat architect's pen, black ink on thick white paper. We'll have our own bathroom and sitting room, even: just the two of us. Dad and Cassy's room will be on the first floor, with two spare bedrooms. The downstairs will be a huge kitchen and living room, and two studies: one each for Dad and Cassy. It's hard to imagine, though. Kat's right. It is a wreck. A ruin on a grassy mound in the middle of a field, miles from anywhere.
âIs it haunted, do you think?' I say.
âDon't be daft,' Kat says. â'Course not. You don't still believe that rubbish, do you?' She starts poking around the smaller room at the back, peering up the fireplace â what's left of it.
I wander back to the doorway. The sun's gone right down since we first arrived, on bikes, but even so, it's lighter outside than in the house.
Someone's opening the gate. It clicks shut behind him. My heart starts to thud. He crosses the field, towards the steps up to the house. He hasn't seen me: I suppose I'm hidden in the shadow of the doorway, and he obviously isn't expecting anyone to be here.
If I'd been alone, I might have thought of ghosts, to begin with. He's wearing some sort of black jacket. His hair's shoulder-length, dark. His collar's turned up, and his hands are in his pockets. I can see he's real, now, as he comes closer: dark jeans, bright green trainers, nothing like a ghost from the past, but a really beautiful boy with fine features, a slim build, dark eyes.
He's only just noticed me.
He stops, halfway up the steps. âOh.' He looks embarrassed.
âWho's that?' Kat comes up behind me. âWhat's he doing here?'
The boy half smiles.
I can feel the change in Kat immediately. She sort of melts and softens. âHello,' she says.
I turn round to look at her.
She's smiling. With one hand she twists her hair back from her face and over one shoulder, like rope.
âMy dad's going to be working here,' the boy says. âHe said about the house . . . I came to look. I didn't think anyone would be here, this time of day.'
Kat steps forward, pushing past me. âIt's our house,' she says. âI'm Kat and this is Emily.' She waits.
The boy looks uncomfortable. So she prompts him. âAnd you are?'
âOh. Seb.' He does that half-smile again.
âHello, Seb,' Kat says. âWe can show you round, if you want?'
Of course he wants. Kat has this way of making people fall in love with her, just like that. It's partly the way she looks: long golden hair, pretty, slim, smiley â all the usual things. But it's also the way she takes charge: people love that. I've seen it loads of times.
He follows her round the house, while she points out its features â stone mullioned windows, huge chimneys, massive oak beams, stone roof tiles. I suppose what with his dad being a builder he might be interested in that stuff. Most people his age wouldn't be. He's about seventeen, eighteen, I guess.
I watch them: he's dark, Kat so fair and golden. They look good together. He has this faintly amused look on his face while Kat chatters on, slightly mocking. Every so often he turns round and smiles at me.
I seem to be unable to speak a word.
âAnd while it's all being restored to glory,' Kat says, âI shall be happily far away at university.' She gives a little triumphant grin. âWhile Dad, Cassy and Em have to rough it in the caravan for the winter!'
Seb looks at me again. âHere?' he says. âIn a caravan?'
âNo, on a site with loos and showers, a mile away,' Kat says. âLuckily. It's too awful, living on a building site. Dad found this cute caravan on eBay. It's proper seventies style, like the real thing, not retro.' She goes on and on, practically explaining our entire life history, about moving around because of Dad being an architect and all that.
I can see the boy's getting edgy.
Kat's looking a bit manic. âThis is Dad's dream house. It will be, anyway, when it's all finished. Six months. Do you think they can finish it in six months? Dad says that, but he's always wrong. He's always way too optimistic about how long things take for real.'
âThere's going to be six stonemasons, I think, working full-time,' the boy â Seb â says. He talks quite slowly, as if he is thinking carefully about what to say. âSo they might manage it.'
âWhat do
you
do?' Kat turns the beam of her full attention on him.
He looks awkward. âNot much. This and that. Odd jobs that come up.'
His voice sends prickles up and down my skin, like goosebumps.
The three of us walk to the door. It's totally dark now. There's no electricity of course, no street lights or any house lights for miles. The river sounds louder in the dark.
âHow did you get here?' Kat asks him.
âI ran. It's what I do â running, I mean.'
âWe've got our bikes,' she says. âBut we could all walk back together, if you want.'
âIt's OK,' he says.
He's clearly itching to get away. I imagine he'd wanted to wander around by himself, not be given her guided tour and running commentary. Still, he can come again, another time, can't he?
âI wasn't really trespassing,' he says, going down the steps. âSorry.'