Read by Margaret Ashley (second story in podcast, here)
I hear the pitter patter of feet during the night, as I knew I would: the crunch of fresh snow; the whoosh of snowballs cutting through the icy air, landing with soft thuds on trees, on the brick walls of the house, on the glass of my bedroom window.
Are they calling me? Greeting me again after two long, long years. It did not snow last winter, and I have waited seven lengthy seasons.
I have missed them. Time dragged its feet to the rhythm of the grandfather clock in the hall and the dent in the armchair seat is noticeably deeper. I used to roam the house, wandering through the corridors in never-ending spirals, moving from one window to the next. Watching. Now that I can see every knot in the wooden banister in my mind's eye, every broken tile in the kitchen floor, I prefer to sit. The view from the living room’s French windows is encompassing enough. I can see most of the garden, the dark shadows of the forest. Behind me, the corners fill with dust, pale follicles of skin banking up like drifts of snow.
Another snowball hits my window. It makes the panes of glass tremble in their frame. I smile. Maybe they've also missed me. I'd like that.
Once, when I was nine years old, I was quick enough to see the curve of a solitary snowball hit a small tree, shaking free the narrow drifts collected like white Mohawks on its branches. I heard the thump thump of falling snow and watched as the wind whipped the powder into an avalanche of white, like the fluttering moths that circle the wall light in summer.
I told my daughter it was useless trying to catch them, but she didn't listen, as I didn't listen to my own mother. On those special nights as David and I lay in bed, listening, we would often hear the creak of floorboards from the nursery above us and then an exasperated sigh when the dramatic drawing of curtains would reveal an empty garden.
They know.
Tonight, I let them play in peace.
When I rise in the morning, their footsteps are still clearly visible in the thin layer of snow by the backdoor, and the delicate splinters of frost hardened on my window are shaped like hands. Baby hands. I trace their outline with my finger and its heat slightly blurs their edges.
They are coming closer. I have not seen the hands since my husband, since my parents.
'Aren't you afraid?' I had asked them, tracing the hands as I am now.
They stopped what they were doing, my mother folding shirts away in a drawer, my father marking the spot for an extra hole on a belt. They looked at each other.
I wish my daughter were here to trace these handprints with me. It would help her mourn her father, to see they come for her mother also. To see it as a ritual, a tradition. When her time comes, she will be less prepared. If she does ever come back.
I wrap myself in a dressing gown and pick my way downstairs in the grey morning light. I boil water, make a cup of tea and switch on the lampshade next to my armchair in the living room, placing the tea on a mat by its side. The chair and the room are doubled back at me by the shade's orange glow reflecting off the window, making it hard to see the garden beyond.
I fetch the record book from the bookcase and wipe dust from its crannies. The pen I use to log the entry is always a black fountain pen, and I blow on the page to make the ink dry faster. I can't stop myself from flicking through the leaves, the number of entries dwindling as I flip forward to the present day. The sweet, chocolatey smell of shelved time rises from the pages. It reminds me of my childhood, of watching my parents write in the book at breakfast after those special nights. It reminds me of staying up late when the forecast had predicted snow, dozing off in front of the fire. Of my father bursting into the living room shouting: 'It's started!' and then rushing back out, too impatient to wait.
I remember my mother and I stumbling into our boots and out into the cold. The snowflakes glinted silver in the sleepy light and we stuck out our tongues to let them melt on their tips.
'Why are you doing that?' My daughter asked me when she was four. The first fall had come early morning and I had insisted we go out before breakfast.
'I'm hoping to swallow an angel,' I said, closing my mouth to smile at her.
She pondered my answer for a moment.
'Why?' she asked.
I wondered if she was too young.
'Do you know what an ancestor is?' I replied.
She shook her head.
'It's your family, but from the past. Imagine the mother of the mother of the mother of your mother. Me. But as far back as you can go. And imagine the father of the father of the father of daddy.'
I hesitated, unsure whether she could understand, but she nodded.
'Like Granny and Grandpa,' she said.
'Like Granny and Grandpa,' I said. 'This family from the past has left us a lot of letters telling us about themselves. About the family. Our family. And about our secret.'
Her eyes widened in recognition. 'Our secret,' she repeated, make a shushing gesture with her finger.
'Our secret,' I replied, making the same gesture. Just like we had taught her. 'In the letters, they tell us they are angels come from heaven, fallen to earth in the shape of snowflakes. They believed one of our own, a great-grandmother, was in the garden when it started to snow, and as she opened her mouth in wonder at its beauty, an angel snowflake fell in her mouth and accidentally melted on her tongue.'
I tapped her on the nose, which normally would make her laugh, but she was deep in thought.
'Angel,' she repeated.
My angel. It's been so long since I last saw her. I don't want to remember the last time I saw her.
'Don't you think swallowing a snowflake has done enough harm to this family?' She spat the words. I knew I had to tread carefully.
'I like to think it's defined the family. It's made us unique,' I said, looking away, preferring to examine the trees in the forest around us.
'And we've never moved on. That's all we do. Wait for them. Wait and grow old and die.'
There was a silence. A breeze ruffled the needles of the fir trees, tousled her white hair.
'I'm leaving,' she said, breaking the silence. 'I refuse to sacrifice my life like you have, like you all have.'
I smiled. I wanted to de-dramatise the situation somehow, but inside my chest, my heart was pounding. 'None of us wants to become like our parents, it just happens. That's a tragedy every family can relate to.'
She pondered this and I saw again the little girl pondering the idea of ancestors and angels.
'I won't,' she said. 'I refuse to live in the past.'
'There are some things we can't escape from,' I said, and I raised my sunglasses. To remind her. She looked away. There was another silence that she broke.
'I can try,' she said. 'And if I can't at least I can be the last.'
I close the record book, finish my tea and dig out the old broom from the closet beneath the stairs. In days gone by, we would rise early on those special mornings, the fire unlit and the sky still a midnight blue to sweep the garden blank. Now I live alone, so isolated, I'm less diligent.
The snow is wet and sticks to the bristles. It makes it hard to dust the ground smooth. On the other side of the garden wall, the patterns of footprints twist and loop into the forest untouched.
'Don't!' my mother shouted, when I tried to sneak away, the trail of footprints like bread crumbs, luring me into the forest.
'Don't!' I shouted to my daughter the day David died. She continued walking into the forest. I tugged at her arm, but she shook me off.
'You mustn't,' I said. I ran round to block her path. She pushed past. I grabbed her by the waist and she strained forward until we both fell sideways into the snow. We struggled to our feet, standing opposite each other, panting, our breathe materialising as steam.
'It's not your time,' I said. 'It's not your time.'
'I'm bringing him back.' Her voice disturbed two pigeons whose frightened wing claps shook snow into our faces. It stung.
'The hands,' I said. 'They know. They knew it was his time.'
'He wasn't born into this family. He's an in-law. They should have left him alone.'
'He married into the family. He is family.' I suddenly felt immense guilt as if it were I who had killed him. 'He knew it was time.'
'How do you know that?' How do you know they don't lure them? Like sirens?'
I looked into her eyes and saw for the first time a milkiness. The process had started and she hadn't realised it. Or perhaps she had. Maybe this was what it was all really about.
'I know,' I said, and I could see again my parents walking barefoot into the snow. It was the click of the front door that had woken me, and I'd tiptoed to the nursery window. They were holding hands. I had never seen them hold hands before. They turned to look back at the house and their eyes flashed pearly white in the moonlight. Their elongated shadows stayed with me a few seconds after they had disappeared into the forest.
My daughter shook her head. When she turned back to the house, I let her go.
I let her go thinking she would come back.
The wind tickles the back of my neck, making me shiver. It has started to snow without me noticing – fat snowflakes that sprinkle my shoulders like dandruff. I look at the footsteps slowly losing their form, buried beneath a virgin layer of white, and then back at the house, a light twinkling in the kitchen window. Is it time? My irises and pupils have lost almost all colour; just three flicks of black remain.
Not yet, I whisper to myself. Not quite yet. I will wait a little longer. Just in case. I will wait and listen to the snow children play at night. My family. The family I've been waiting for. The family that has been waiting for me.
(c) Peggy Lee, 2019
Peggy Lee was raised in the south of France. She moved to London in 2016 to work as an editorial assistant for a trade magazine and then worked part-time for a literary agency and part-time as a bookseller at Waterstones Piccadilly. She has just started her second year on the prose MA course at the University of East Anglia.
Margaret Ashley has been an actress and voice actor for over 30 years and performed in theatre, TV, film, radio and commercials and audio guides, voiced video games and narrated several audiobooks. TV includes Coronation Street, The Bill, London’s Burning and The Ward. Recent audio dramas include Doctor Who, My Boy Jack and The Christmas Buffet, and for Halloween, an animation as Vampire and Narrator in A Ghostly Tale. www.margaretashley.com
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