Switching off the phone, I’m suddenly assailed by tiredness. I stretch my feet until they’re only inches from the glass of the woodburner, curling and uncurling my toes as the warmth penetrates through the wool of the socks. I’m getting drowsy now. I begin to drift off, with a thick duvet wrapped around me, all the anxieties of the drive and arrival now receding … the infinitely comforting roar of wood burning and the metal of the stove ticking gently and the flickering of flame patterning the ceiling above.
*
I wake with a start, momentarily not knowing where I am. The unfamiliar sound – close to a wail of grief, a high keening note – of a storm turning into a hurricane outside. Then, shockingly, a grating, crashing roar culminating in what sounds like splintering rock. Instinctively, absurdly, I duck, as if the ceiling is about to give way. That must be slates coming off the roof, unless the chimney itself has gone … I get up with the duvet still around me like a cloak, gingerly open a curtain, but it’s hard to see much in the dark. Nothing I can do except hope that this is the peak of the hurricane. I wonder how much stronger the force has to get before the glass of the windows will simply buckle and crack. The woodburner is almost out – just a few embers of one log left, flecks of dark, burnt orange amongst the ash – and, with it, the temperature in the room has dropped significantly. The clock on the wall tells me it’s 4.30.
Before going back to sleep I go to the bedroom upstairs, the howling of the wind is even louder up here, and bring down another duvet, knowing the temperature will drop even further in the hours before light. I then set about reviving the stove, opening the heavy metal door, kneeling on the cold stone floor. I scrape the ash and gather the few remnants of embers together, then feed in some dry bark, and tear off splinters of wood, just thicker than matchsticks. Then, as gently as possible, blow on these, and within a couple of minutes, a plume of greyish-white smoke, and then the flame breaking through. Now I can put twigs and kindling in, and, when these have caught, some smaller logs and, within minutes, with the door an inch open to allow the cross-draught to do its work, it’s roaring again. I then turn the air vent down to its lowest setting, and pack it with more logs, to give it the greatest chance of burning through the night. I move the sofa even closer to the stove, and disappear into my nest of duvets, feet closest to the woodburner. Even through the covers I can feel the heat doing its work. Within a few seconds the flickering ceiling recedes again as my eyes close, and soon I’m sinking into sleep.
*
A dream of anxiety. Not quite a nightmare, but I wake for the second time. I’m back in Cambridge, with a companion I can’t identify. The place far more beautiful than I remember, and now dominated by a fine hill, which gives it an oddly Italian aspect. But there’s a toxic atmosphere of high tension, strong differences of opinion, a group issuing threats, an impending sense of bullying … all the details frustratingly vague on waking. Light now edging the curtains. I reach out for my torch, the clock on the wall says it’s 8.30. I must have had five hours’ sleep in total. Not enough, but at least the hurricane roar has relented to what sounds like a high wind now. I make for the bathroom. There’s a strong draught coming from somewhere and the candle gutters, threatens to go out. I finish and, as I flush, the yellow spirals away. At least that’s not dependent on electricity. I hesitate by the kitchen door; shall I just pretend I’ve had a full night’s sleep or is that ridiculous? Make a cup of tea now and watch the morning light, or try to sleep more? I’m still groggy with tiredness, and I head back to the sofa. At the window I peek outside, the trees still bending in the winds, but the sense of real danger has passed now. In the post-apocalyptic grey haze of morning I can see half a dozen end-slates which were lifted off the cottage in the night and smashed in the yard. One large branch of the sycamore has almost been wrenched off entirely – like an arm hanging out of its socket – but the tree’s still standing. The sea below is boiling, bringing in all kinds of flotsam and jetsam to the shore. The grey whiteness of a winter morning.
Back in my cocoon on the sofa I close my eyes again, but sleep is not coming back. I go over the writing challenges that lie ahead this week. Hannah Arendt has been on my mind, having just reread Eichmann in Jerusalem. She and Hilberg together, so key to my understanding of these questions, yet I’m not sure they’re represented as strongly as they should be in these pages. I’ve only recently discovered the true extent of the appalling witch-hunt she faced when the New Yorker first published the work, in sections, in 1963. The organised campaign of vilification and vicious misrepresentation captured so acutely by the German director Margarethe von Trotta in her recent film.fn2. I turn over and watch the stove, trying to detect any flickers of flame, but there’s nothing there. The wind seems to have dropped a little. At some point drift I off again, momentarily sensing I’m on a boat in the middle of a turbulent sea …
Another couple of hours of sleep, and waking for the final time, my nose, outside the duvets, is intensely cold, the rest of me still warmish. The stove is out, the room is freezing once again. I know that I will have to get up to relight it, but I also know that this manoeuvre will mean losing the little heat that remains in my bed. With a sigh I clamber out of my nest and pull on a sweater, and then a coat. I light the stove again, then go to the kitchen and fill the smaller pan with water and bring it back to the stove top. When the water’s hot enough I carry it through to the bathroom, taking great pleasure in letting the hot water chase out the icy dampness of my flannel, and then the morning ritual of feeling the heat on my face, but never lovelier than this morning. Another pan of water for my tea. Everything taking longer without power, but I’m not rushing, I’m actually appreciating more the act of waiting. I drink more slowly too, pulling the curtains back, moving a chair to the window to survey the night’s damage. The light in this room, even in the daytime, is pretty poor. But as the stove is the only source of heat I’ll have to write in here. My laptop has almost no charge left so I’ll have to write by hand. Everything feels awkward, I hear myself sighing, but immediately another voice tells me to ‘Get on with it! Don’t think that because of a few practical challenges today you can get away with less than your usual word limit’. And after the first hour or so it does become easier. I find myself adapting to my new situation.
After four hours I break for a late lunch – the remains of last night’s soup, the rest of the bread and cheese. In the kitchen I watch three blue tits, oblivious to the wind still blowing, absorbed in extracting seeds from a bird feeder that’s swinging just outside the window. I’m curious at the pecking order – quite literally so – the way that other birds wait their turn on a neighbouring bush, and, as soon as one of their sisters or brothers moves away with their booty, another swoops down. I take my first, tentative steps outside today. The ground is entirely saturated. I walk next door to the woodshed. The wheelbarrow has been blown right across the yard; I retrieve it and throw a load of logs in. After I’ve stacked the wood inside, I decide to go for a little walk up the track to see what’s changed overnight. Just over the brow of the hill and down the other side, two mature oak trees, each two to three hundred years old, have been uprooted as if they were a pair of daisies. The dark, almost rusted earth around the roots as raw as an open wound. The roots still holding on to slabs of rock, like fingers gripping after death. Further down the valley I can see dozens of silver birch, shallower-rooted than the oaks, flattened like matchsticks. There’ll be work for tree surgeons for the next year and beyond; at least somebody benefits from all of this destruction.