To live by fire.
And inside, seeing him so many times in his chair by the fire, reading, then putting down a book just to immerse himself in the flames. I see him stroking the side of his nose in that gentle and reflective way, and losing thoughts of Lucretius or Rilke in the hissing of a cherry branch or the imminent collapsing of an elm log – matter into ash and particles lifted relentlessly skywards. The patterns of black lines, webbing across the pulsing red. Collapsing of time.
To die by fire.
The twenty third of September nineteen eighty five – Monday 23 September 1985. The last time I saw my father alive. How a date can grow so vast in one’s consciousness. Not vaster than 25 December for a child, but much more constant. A companion that digs you in the ribs on the most gentle of summer mornings, who whispers in your ear in the middle of a February night. The meaning of grief.
He walked up the front path with me, helping to carry my bag to the car. I was moving into my first flat in London later that day. A Monday morning, like so many others. Of course neither of us knew we would never see each other again. I’ve tried, many times, to return to that short walk, only forty paces or so, from the front door of the house to the barn. Trying to recall the details, as if, by doing this, the passage of time, and what happened later that afternoon, could somehow be altered.
I vividly remember the energy of those moments. The sense that here was a rite of passage – my first day of complete independence as an adult. Moving to London, the city I’d always loved with a hunger. And the irony that, on this very same day, he was also experiencing a rite of passage, though in the opposite direction, quite literally so – his first day of early retirement from University College London. So, for different reasons, both of us were in the highest of spirits, gently teasing each other, aware that we would never be son and father in quite the same way again. We put my bag in the boot of the car and then we hugged. That strange awareness that your father, once a giant to you, is now an inch or two shorter. The tricks that time plays. As the car reversed I wound the window down and said something about our phone line being connected later in the week, I’d call with the new number. The utter ordinariness of those words. The last I would ever say to my father. We drove away. As the car turned out of the drive I looked back – as I still do – to see a figure waving, and then walking back down the path to the house.
I’ve completely lost track of time. Lost in the fire and memories. But I’m returned to reality with knocking at the heavy door – Erin asking if I realise what time it is. Supper’s almost ready, the gas is running low, come and eat. I leave the fire for a while …
*
July 2006, Suffolk coast
I’m back at the same window by the Suffolk coast but everything has changed. The shingle that separates me from the sea and seemed so relentlessly stony has sprouted hundreds of bushes crowned with white flowers that I do not know the name of. The path to the cottage has almost disappeared between crowds of neck-high cow parsley, which releases its curiously acrid smell as you push through. And the Arctic winds that battered so restlessly in January have been replaced by a balming summer breeze which carries the scent of clover and a continuous ululating of skylarks. The shaggy black cat who has become my companion here met me as I started to unpack the car last night, two amber eyes emerging from the darkness. He follows me inside and moves straight to the corner of the small kitchen where I put down his milk. Considering I haven’t been here for almost a month this behaviour raises certain questions about the memory of animals.
This time a week ago I was in China. An experience of extreme urbanisation that is as far as you could get from this place. Curiosity led me to accept the invitation – from the Royal Society of Arts, to be part of an Anglo-Chinese delegation of artists and educationalists looking at responses to climate change – but the trip has disturbed me, as it did my fellow travellers. Seeing cities that are growing by 3 million a year, witnessing what must be the most extensive building programme anywhere in history, these experiences concentrate the mind, provoke it. Back in London, putting out my recycling box, I found myself smiling ruefully at the absurdity of such an action in the face of vast global forces. ‘How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?’
My sleep patterns have been all over the place since returning. Thirteen hours at first. Then, over the next days, despite deep tiredness I wake after four or five hours and can’t go back to sleep. Part of me feels it serves me right – there is considerable violence in flying 12,000 miles for a week’s discussion of climate change. And the environmental and political purpose of the trip does not take away this cost, only deepens the paradox. But sometimes it is in precisely these states, of discombobulation and disturbance, that new awarenessnes can break through, when your exhausted body can be ambushed by an idea coming out of the long grass.
The fox cubs in my garden in London are now tumbling into their adolescence – their mother holds them down with her front paws to clean them, but they’re half as big as she is now. And almost fearless. I can open the kitchen window and they’re not disturbed. One comes right up and looks in, two, three feet away. It senses another animal but my silent stillness intrigues. We spend a minute, perhaps longer, eyes locked together. When the cub blinks I blink too. As if wanting to reassure, in some primal way. At such a moment I feel myself released from the rational world. I want these moments to lengthen. I want to let go utterly of the informational and factual hum that persistently dulls our senses. This stare of the young fox encompasses an entire universe. And one that has nothing to do with newspapers or the Internet. One that will be here when all our chatter and vanities are long buried under landfill and waste. What voice will make the last human sound ever heard on earth?
Two dreams have disturbed me recently. The events in each dream have nearly evaporated on waking but leave traces of the accompanying emotion. In the first, Johann, a friend and writer, has died. Physically he may be an old man now but he has kept the vigour and rigour of the passionate young activist and critic he once was. His death seems quite impossible and I’m shaking as I wake. I’m only partly reassured to realise it was a dream. I never use that demeaning adverb ‘just’ in conjunction with dreams. Fighting my instinct to ring Johann immediately, I reflect that we haven’t spoken for several months, though his spirit has been with me, a patient and constant companion through these first months of writing. I wait until the evening, but I’m disconcerted all day, I can’t settle. I hear the long bleep and imagine the phone ringing in that kitchen in the mountains far away. The deep voice of Brigitte, Johann’s partner, answers. We exchange thoughts about the late arrival of the summer but I’m impatient to know about Johann and say that he has been in my subconscious. Is he alright? ‘He’s fine,’ she drawls, ‘that is, as far as I know. But your subconscious is a little off target. He’s not here, he’s in Paris.’ I ring the other number. Another woman’s deep voice, Natalia, Johann’s friend and collaborator. Husky, expressive and strongly accented by her native Russian still: