THE COLD SNAP
Just before Christmas, the air trembled a little and became delicate. When we went outside our breath plumed in front of us and the frost began to sketch itself onto the grass and the windows of the car.
Memory is fickle of course, a great corrupter, but I cannot remember a time when I didn’t feel different, whether that be by being me, the silent sad one or the new boy in a school or the new family in the village.
When needles of ice began to creep across the water left in the bird bath we began to worry about the rabbits in their hutch in the garden. We gave them much more hay and more nuggets of feed. We started putting in the heat pad that Wendy had had the foresight to buy for times like this. Seven minutes in the microwave stores ten hours of heat for their hutch. With the forecast we sent off for another one.
I remember the evening the cold became intense (for us) The air was still, the night bright with stars and the moon and when I went out to give the rabbits their night time feed and their heat pads I saw that the bird bath was frozen solid, the leaves trapped and still, bubbles scattered through the new solidity. On the decking the frost stood proud of the wood, tiny, tiny, forests of white ice.
I remember classes where I believed I had held my breath for forty minutes, so quiet I was, or play times when I hadn’t a clue what football team I was meant to support for pain of being beaten up if I got the wrong one. I did not connect. I was always apart.
In the morning when I was due to drive for an hour or so for work, I scraped the car clear of ice, my fingers turning red with the bright streak of coldness of the haze of crystals that fell from the scraper. I filled the windscreen cleaners with liquid to hold off the cold, checked on the rabbits and found that their water bowls were jagged with half frozen water, but the wee animals were lively, sniffing busily at their food.
In the dormitory we sometimes called the matrons ‘Mummy’ a bad thing to do. At the age of nine I ached for hugs and cuddles and someone I knew, to look after me when I was lonely and homesick and confused about why I was living hundreds of miles from home.
I left before the sky lightened with dawn, the road pale with frost and the occasional tire track. I knew before I reached Alexandria that the windscreen liquid wouldn’t work as the bonnet of the car was showing no sign of defrosting despite the heat of the engine; the nozzles for the water were rimmed with bright ice. I tried the wipers which swished but no water came out. I felt tense at this, remembering previous winters when driving in the cold, when the windows get dirty but only get more cloudy with smeared mess if you use the wipers.
Years later I saw my school report that said I had spent the year in a lethargic coma. I remembered the narrow ally by the toilets where the boy with the hole in the heart and I spent our break times, backs against the wall waiting ‘till class started again. I remembered my nicknames of Grey and of Morgue, of Greasy Dago and Poof.
Despite this as the light slowly dawned, I could see that the fields and the hedges were beautifully rimmed with frost, everything was cold and white and frozen, the sky cloudless.
When I finished at my work I bought a bottle of water from the café in case the screen washers froze again and was initially delighted to see the car’s frost had partially melted in the sunshine. The windows were bright when I used the wipers but it was not long before the water fell to a dribble and the lines of water turned into wobbly streaks of ice on the window.
I did not understand the things that boys talked about and lived in a bleak school with all my treasured possessions in a foot square tuck box. There were no girls in our classes. I gained a reputation for drug taking, risk taking when really I was watching the herons by the river, wishing someone would talk to me.
We worried the rabbits would freeze and wondered whether to take them inside but decided that might be worse for them in the long term. We fed them much more than usual but had no idea if that would help. We took the throw from the sitting room and draped it over the cage. The rabbits had two heat pads at night and one for the day. We left the wooden side up through the day to keep in the heat, rather than letting them have a view of the garden.
We had a day of freezing fog, the pavements were so icy and so were the roads. When I walked Dash the dog, I only took him for short walks as I feared for his feet on the pavements with their salt crystals and ice. The frozen water of the bird bath began to grow its own ice crystals and gained a new beauty. When I sat outside to get a signal to phone my mum in the evening my breath clouded the air and the bright lights in the house became especially welcoming.
When I turned on the heating in the morning it made a gurgling sound and stopped functioning. We spent a day getting colder and colder in the house, glad of the small fire in the sitting room, me, happy I liked working from my bed. We added another blanket and an old downie to the rabbits hutch.
You were kind to me; the only student that ever talked to me in that new school. You would put my cigarette buts in a tiny box; an early eco warrior! I dreaded going to school, dreaded going home. The occasional lunch time with you was utter heaven
To our relief the plumber arrived in the evening and told us that the problem was that the
water pipe for the boiler had frozen over and that we needed to defrost it before the heating would work again. We took out kettles of boiling water and pans we had heated up. We could hear the ice crackling as we poured the hot water over it. For a time we panicked when the heating wouldn’t restart and the light wouldn’t light up until Wendy realised the plumber had turned the boiler off at the plug.
We had heat through most of the night but the pipes froze over again as dawn approached. They were defrosted again but nothing happened until Wendy turned some weird dial one way then another and the boiler wooshed into life.
I did not know how to talk to anyone, the Jewish student’s society sought me out, the Palestinian one did too. I joined neither. Spent my evenings with an alcoholic learning disabled friend who knew I had money I could help him spend on beer.
The days were beautiful, blue sky and whiteness everywhere, every single surface covered in delicate crystals of ice, the broken puddles refrozen and the rutted mud of the paths like concrete.
I cancelled the trips I needed to use the car for, for work; worried I was over cautious but pleased my boss agreed with my decision.
The outdoor instructors at Ardentinny were utterly shocked that I smoked rollies. I sat on the floor in silence, said nothing at all for hour after hour. Some years later, I would lie silent in the dark in the tiny box room while the person who said she loved me wrote words of hatred on pieces of paper before tearing them up and scattering them over me before going back to what used to be our shared bed.
The rabbits seemed happy; they didn’t freeze and would poke their heads out of the sleeping area when I went to see them in the morning and evening to give them food and fresh water to replace the frozen water they had. They would sit on the heat pads and we began to feel confident about seeing them in the morning.
I used to go with Wendy across to friends on a Friday evening. I was always touched that, instead of resenting my silence, they created things for me to play with at the table while they talked. I drank wine and made shapes out of clay, or twirled little whirly things in front of me, smiling; very occasionally saying a few words into the hub bub of laughter and conversation.
A day came when there was the slightest of thaws and a cold front swept into the country to replace the starkness of the high pressure zone. I woke to silence and snow all over the windows, the bird bath heaped with a pile of fluffy whiteness.
The blankets on the hutch lost their crispness and as the day passed the snow turned to sleet; the blankets began to drip.
The next day the ice on the bird bath had a rim of water all around it and the next the ice had gone, the golden leaves that had fallen into it, free to move if we stirred the water.
We opened the wooden side of the hutch and forgot the need we had had to get lagging for the outside pipe. We must remember to get it for the next cold snap! I remember the shop that said they would be getting in new supplies any day now.
Wendy gives me hugs and kisses, celebrates, almost, my difference. Charlotte says she loves me every day, James barks his appreciation at me. Wendy teases me when I lose my words; this makes me laugh. Charlotte and James steal my phone when I am trying to escape into it. I wake in the morning bleary eyed, maybe hung over a little but knowing somehow I belong here. I smile a lot. I still rarely speak, but I glow and wonder how this has happened to me. My son has started very slowly communicating with me again. Somehow the dawn is very warm. We have a dog we love, rabbits with floppy ears. Last night friends came round, drank and laughed and confided. A rich history of Wendy’s life. I listened to many stories and when they went home after midnight, grinned as the children crept down to choose from the left overs. I slept with Dash on the bed. He is on the floor now wondering if ever we will get out of bed for the new day.
A few days ago in America what was it the said they had? An ice bomb? A weather bomb? The rabbits wouldn’t have lived through that and our water pipe would never have defrosted. What strange times, I wonder what the future will be for all of us?
(Photo's the Bird bath and Cardross : December 2022)