Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

There is a deadening of volume as the ambulance rolls over slush and everything goes dark, just like that.

— It’s like someone switches the lights off, Dylan says.

He peers out at the streets, lamp posts lighting up the snowy pavements.

— That’s winter arrived properly. I reckon we are now officially getting completely dark at two-thirty p.m., Constance says.

— I thought we were already in winter, he says.

— Not quite before, but that’s it now.

— It’ll be like a three-month night, Stella says.

— I think maybe we should leave the country after all. Vietnam is nice, he says.

— Some of these winter days you still get really amazing blue skies, but it is going to be bloody dark this year!

Constance switches on the windscreen-wipers as snow begins to fall.

Perhaps tonight is the right time to ask her on a date.

It’s not like either of them are going anywhere.

— I found the canister to make a stove, Dylan. It’s basic, but if we make sure the flue is right, then it’ll keep the place warm and you won’t get any risk of carbon monoxide. We could fit it tomorrow?

— Sounds good.

They drive along in silence for a good three or four minutes.

— I’m going to string the Christmas lights around the caravan tonight. It’s too dark outside already. Stella, can you stop picking at your face in the mirror, Constance says.

Stella sits a fraction closer to Dylan.

— Beatniks and star children don’t do well with scientists, she says.

They pull into the caravan park behind the car of a young woman with a red woollen hat pulled down over her ears and she stops at Ash Lane and gets out with a bag, and she has her nose pierced and she gives Stella a wee wave as she goes up to Barnacle’s door. The girl has a mongrel sheepdog with her and it wags its tail, waiting for her to come back.

— Chip-shop delivery girl, Stella says.

Stella unclips her seatbelt and waits for Dylan to get out, then she ricochets along the path and straight in the door and into the bedroom and kicks off her boots and climbs up onto her bunk. He steps in behind Constance and she puts a log on the fire as he pulls out a bottle of wine she stashed in the cupboard below the sink. She kicks her boots off and puts her bare feet underneath her on the sofa and tucks her short hair behind her ear and flicks the television on. He pours the wine.

— I like you, but it won’t change anything else, she says.

— What, like if Caleb comes back, or if you want to see Alistair? he asks.

— It is how it is. I’m not looking to settle down.

— I know, he says.

THEY WALK down the path together in silence. Stella can smell chips and pie from Barnacle’s caravan and hear the sound of televisions playing different channels in caravans right next to each other and someone having an argument, and right on the other side of the park someone fires up a power tool. They walk down his path easily, now all the thistles are cut back and it is just snow and ice on his path, with grit lying on top of it that Constance threw down earlier. The doorway to Dylan’s caravan looks even shabbier now it is not hidden by lots of thistles. Dylan opens the door and holds it to let them both walk through.

— What’s in the parcel? Stella asks.

— The missing part for my gin-still.

— Excellent! Stella says.

— I’m thinking about setting up the projector next year.

— Where? Constance asks.

— I might ask the site manager if she wants to do a screening at the back of the store. Could do it outside when the weather gets better. It’s a big old wall — it would work.

— I cannot imagine a cinema in Clachan Fells! Stella says.

— There didn’t even used to be a coffee shop here, Constance says.

— Mum, you’re such a dinosaur.

— That’s nothing; if you’d told me about the industrial units, car showrooms, giant warehouses selling stuff in bulk — when I was a kid — we would have thought you were talking about some kind of voodoo! When I was a kid in Clachan Fells it was exotic to eat French bread; seriously, we thought it was from France. I remember when people started eating pasta! They’d say Have you tried this pasta? — it’s from Italy! Or tortillas: we thought that was eating Mexican just a few decades ago, Stella. Things change fast.

— Your caravan is freezing, Stella shivers.

— That’s why we’re here, Constance says.

— It’s an empty Calor gas canister, Mum, what exactly is it going to do?

— Give me that marker: okay, this is where I am going to weld out a door. It will need to be fixed back on and the flue will fit here.

Constance sketches onto the red canister with a black marker pen.

— I’ll need to paint it black and put in tensioning latches. You need a viewing window here at the bottom and insulating fire-brick to line the inside. Then we need some vermiculite insulation, and luckily for you I have some left over from doing Ida’s last winter. And you’ll need a decent heat exchanger, then you can fix it up to provide hot water, if you get a back-boiler and a thermal store. I couldn’t find enough pieces for that yet, but we can add them on — at least this is free and it will work for now, though. We can fix your water heating up next year and put in a more detailed system.

— I love that you’re the kind of woman who keeps spare vermiculite insulation, he drolls.

— Does that turn you on, does it?

— A little.

— I have a grinder disc and welding electrodes as well, Constance mocks.

— Remind me again why nobody married you?

— Remind me again why I would want to marry anybody?

— Will fitting this stove mean that Dylan won’t freeze to death in his bed?

— Stella, don’t say things like that.

— How many layers are you wearing to sleep? she asks him.

— About four, plus your hot-water bottles and all the extra blankets and two duvets, he says.

— I’m not sure that’s enough, she says.

— What would you add?

— A hat.

Stella goes into the kitchenette. Dylan is watching Constance mark where the hole will go for his stove flue. He looks happy when he is near her mother. He has learnt how to walk around the caravan so he is not stooping totally. He sits down a lot. This place is too small for him really. He needs to get an old barn up on the mountain and convert it, and maybe they’ll all move in together and she’ll take the blockers that she bought online and everything will work out okay. How does her mother do all of this stuff? She watches as Constance measures the distance to the wall for the flue and up to the roof. Dylan and her mother place pieces of pipe out and get together a saw and a mask for the welding gun, and this will probably take the rest of the day, but her mum will have the whole thing fitted out for him by tonight. Stella looks in Dylan’s cupboards for biscuits.

— What’s this?

Stella picks up a sketchbook.

— No!

Dylan lunges over and grabs it, puts it in the cupboard.

— It belonged to my mum — I’m still working through it, he says.

— What’s there to work through?

— Nothing! Just leave it alone, alright?

— Okay then!

Adults are weird. They can’t help it. They’re defective. Outside it has fallen dark again and it is only 3 p.m. but it is like this every day now from 2.30 p.m. They are living in a world of night. There’s something heavy and easy about the darkness, like a weighted blanket. There are some tins of food and beer and a loaf of bread in his cupboard above the sink, but not much else. She opens the cupboard to the left and finds an old-looking ice-cream tub and a Tupperware box; there’s no biscuits inside, either, just a load of old ash. She goes to the front door to see if the stars are out yet and peels off the Tupperware lid and launches the entire contents of ash right across his garden because at least she can help by tidying while they do all of that.