Читать книгу The Book of Rapture - Nikki Gemmell - Страница 19

Motl and you wormed that fat little teapot of a house into all their hearts. You both dreaded a blunting when wonder would not cradle them but it never came, for the two of you pulled happiness around them like a wondrous cape. So much of it in this briny new life! You’d forgotten how to be a mother immersed in Project Indigo, but Salt Cottage taught you that a nanny makes you afraid of your kids and it’s so much richer to do it all yourself. They chisel out your deepest feelings, your wildest love and rage and frustration and euphoria, they haul you to the coalface of life. You could be distant, remote without them; but as a parent you were forced to participate. And to your shock you revelled in it. These were the shining hours; the kids burnished your life.

There were complaints, of course. About the new poorness. Crockery chipping and not being replaced, duvets stuffed with newspaper, baths topped up with saucepans from the stove. Complaints about windows encrusted with salt because there wasn’t a cleaning lady any more and about your cooking which you never did quite well enough (‘Not cereal for dinner again.’ ‘My repertoire is extremely limited, all right? I’m a scientist, not a cook. Give me a Bunsen burner and you’d really see something bubble up.’ Cue Motl, cowering under the table, ‘No, no, anything but that!’).

And gradually the whining stopped because each of you knew that Salt Cottage meant one thing above anything else — survival. You were safe here, you were safe. And it was enough.

He who is an alien to grace seeks and finds naught but disgrace and adversity: if thorny brambles grow, it is the requital of his sowing.