Marcel

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THE HOUSE LOOKED LIKE ALL THE OTHERS ON THE ROAD: sagging slightly after two centuries of habitation, driving winds and war. Behind the hedge a spine of roof tiles slumped between two gables. The windows sat a little tipsily in the walls; wooden clogs potted with petunias hung by the door.

Most of the rooms harboured a limbo of darkness, cool in summer, chilly in winter. In some, the walls had absorbed the smell of generations of cooked dinners, as in the kitchen, where grease clung to the rafters. The cellar stored, the attic forgot.

By the end of August the cold began to rise from the floors. At night there was a smell of frost in the air. Sometimes, before a downpour, the clouds skimmed so low over the roof that they seemed to be torn asunder by the finial. The light grew thin. The grass in the orchard sparkled until well after midday. The garden shrugged off its last lingering touches of colour and assumed the same grey shade as the gravestones in the churchyard nearby.

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