Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

WHEN GROWN-UPS hear a little dark door creaking in their hearts they turn the telly up. They slug a glass of wine. They tell the cat it was just a door creaking. The cat knows. It jumps down from the sofa and walks out of the room. When that little dark door in a heart starts to go click-clack click-clack click-clack click-clack so loudly and violently their chest shows an actual beat — well, then they say they’ve got bad cholesterol and they try to quit using butter, they begin to go for walks.

When the tiny dark door in her heart creaks open, she will walk right through it.

She will lie down and sleep inside her own heart like a bird in the night.

If the door goes click-clack she’ll take her shoes off and walk barefoot, ready for whatever comes, but all of that is a long way from now and her mother is standing in their garden, frowning and worrying about how many tins they have and how much wood and, if this is going to be an Ice Age, how will they earn any money when they can’t even scavenge in the skip? There will be a lot of dead people, though. They both know that. Winter is working all of their hinges loose. A man lost in the countryside drove around in his car for four days in a snowstorm and he said he couldn’t get a signal anywhere and everything looked the same. He died two streets away from home. An old couple lay down in each other’s arms and left the windows open; they were frozen by morning. A whole bus full of men froze in the Sahara. Three kids fell through an ice-pond in Manchester. In Italy there have been electrical blackouts for weeks. It is so cold at the moment that her skin is already like a corpse’s and the thought of it not wholly displeasing. It must be a goth-thing. After a year of finding her own look, Stella has become paler in her make-up, darker in her lipstick; she only wears tights if they’re striped, even if they go under her long-johns and fleece trousers. She is obsessed with the idea of having jade-green hair.

Dylan is still standing quietly watching all three suns in the sky.

— We’ll be okay, Dylan says.

— I miss clarity.

— What do you mean by that, Mum?

— I mean I miss things being clear. The weather, Stella! Not you. No, I miss a good long shit-summer, rainy autumn, miserable winter, debatable spring. Now we have this endless-fucking-Narnia and where is it all going to end?

Stella’s feet flat on the deck and her fists a little clenched. Not hearing it the way it is said but hearing something else. A tiny creak in the door to her heart. The suns settle with two on either side, fading until the snow is just white, and there has been little snowfall since last night and the farm road will be packed solid. She has to get out of here.

— I’m going out on my bike.

— No, you’re not, Stella.

— You can’t make me stay in and you spent four days making my bike ready for the ice-roads, those tyres can handle it!

— She’ll be fine, Dylan says.

— Okay, but stay on the farm road and first you need to have some breakfast. Dylan, do you want some?

Constance’s voice has got higher at the end and she sounds vaguely hysterical. It’s unlike her. Dylan shakes his head slowly.

— Got to go and get ingredients for gin, he says.

Stella sticks her tongue out at him and grins and he does the same as he walks away.

They didn’t eat before the suns came. The kitchen clock reads 9 a.m. They must have been out there for an hour. Everyone simply flung on any old clothes and went outside to look. From the back window the three suns are still there, but the two smaller ones on either side are fading to long bright lines. They might still be there when she goes out if she hurries up, though.

— Stella, do you still want to go to the doctor’s later?

— Why would I change my mind?

— I’m just asking!

— No, I don’t want to go but I have to, so I’m going and I’ll remember all the things we said and if I get stuck I will let you take over, I promise!

— Okay.

— I’m going for a shower.

Stella goes into the bathroom and unpeels her clothes quickly because it is freezing. The water is hot and the heat in the shower makes ice on the outside of their window crack. She dries herself with a blue towel and looks in the mirror. She has no breasts. That’s okay. That’s fine. A beard is less good. A deep voice is a terrifying thought. Sometimes, in quiet moments like this, she has to fight not to hate her body for threatening her with a baritone. She won’t do that, though, she won’t let herself hate it, because her body is a good one. It is strong. A girl is a girl is a girl. Stella unfolds a pair of ankle socks and dries her hair. She tucks one sock into each cup of her training bra. She dresses quickly and goes back into the living room. Her mother is pulling out her medical file from the kitchen cupboard. Outside the robin hops on top of his holly tree. He flits away toward the park. Stella sits back-to-front on her sofa at the window and eats the toast her mum made. It has marmalade on it, like Paddington’s. She used to say that all the time when she was a kid and now that is how Stella thinks of toast and marmalade and it has to be brown bread, with only a touch of butter. Icicles elongate all the way from their window ledges to the ground. They are so thick she couldn’t break them off without a hammer and chisel. They hang from all the caravans on Ash Lane, from everything now in fact. They’re bony fingers, or long toothy spiky grins everywhere you look. Stella puts another pair of socks on just to be sure and then her waterproof trousers and then boots with metal grips on the bottom.

Outside the mountains are crisp and clear against the sky and the white peaks are bright. Stella unlatches the old metal window. The rubber rim is easy to lift up and underneath she can see black dirt. The air smells different, like each scent of the world is being preserved — even from here she can smell wood fires and the wild garlic under their snowy lawn. Winter is an alchemist who draws out (and heightens) the essence of scent: that was a line in a poem written on the Mother Superior’s wall. She closes the window carefully before it siphons off their heat. Her mum has put draught excluders around the door and soon she’ll cling-film the windows to double-insulate against the ice outside.

Down in the village church, bells ring loudly.

— Mum?

— Yes.

— Is alchemy against religion?

— Not if your religion is witchcraft.

— The Mother Superior has a quote on her wall about alchemy being kind of poetic and good.

— Alchemy is a science. Perhaps the Mother Superior is into science.

— What did alchemy create?

— Whisky, among other things. A group of alchemists were trying to create the most precious metal on earth in lots of different ways, like using lead as a base. One day a particular alchemist got liquid gold — the first hint of whisky — and he probably never looked back from there. He might as well have made pure gold. They were medieval chemists really, practising chemistry, and there are all the myths around it as an ancient spiritual science. I don’t know much about it. Alistair knows more. He was down here last night.

— With you?

Constance looks out of the window and doesn’t say anything.

— Are you seeing him again?

— He was asking for you.

— Why?

— He wanted to know if you’re okay and if you want anything for Christmas.

— Yeah, I’d really love a vagina.

— You’re getting more sarcastic by the day, Child.

— I don’t want anything from Alistair; he can’t even call me by my name and every time you get involved with him again you get thinner, and you drink more, and then you’re ill.