their feet on the ground.’
She regarded me quizzically, then became aware that she still cradled the injured thrush in her hands.
I found a cardboard box and lined it with an old sweater of mine and a scarf of Midge’s; she laid the bird inside and placed the box in a corner by the dresser. After that, she attempted feeding the thrush, giving up after a while to try again later, this time with a degree of success. What was left of the afternoon – which wasn’t much – was spent sorting out clothes and ornaments, finding a more permanent home for tools, equipment and various household items, hanging pictures, sweeping and cleaning, and generally bringing things together a bit more. O’Malley and his men had done a fine job on the cottage, fixing, painting, and pulling the building into shape. Even the cupboard doors everywhere fitted snugly and I assumed they had been planed down before being repainted. Some of the floorboards still creaked here and there, but there was no sagging and I could find no serious cracks in the wood.
After dinner, a stroganoff which Midge had prepared with much care and devotion because it was to be our first ‘proper’ dinner at Gramarye, we adjourned upstairs to the round room. I tried the TV but the picture was annoyingly snowy and as neither of us was really interested anyway, I soon switched off. I resolved to do something about the aerials for the set and the radio next day. We relaxed to some vintage Schmilson for a while and I was relieved that at least the stereo wasn’t dogged by interference. We both felt at peace that evening, no sad memories marring the contentment for Midge and no reservations about the move nagging at me. When the album was finished, she asked me to play for her, something I often did during the evenings she had to work at her drawing board or those times we merely felt in the mood. I went to fetch the guitar while Midge opened a bottle of wine for me.
Now I was slumped back in the sofa, fingertips of both hands still tingling from their contact with the guitar strings, Midge’s head resting against my chest, and it wasn’t long before our mutual warmth turned into mutual desire.
Unlike that morning’s gloriously frenzied love-making, this time it was languid and exquisite, every movement and every moment savoured and lingered over, all fervency contained yet still indulged in to the full. As the sensuality built in our bodies, so the room seemed to spin and weave around us, the last fading rays of the sun becoming a spectrum of colours, although always influenced by the sanguine flush that stained the walls.
The love act between us slowly became something more. It became a great expansion of emotion that went far beyond our physical bodies, that did not so much explode within our spirits, as erupt in a leisurely-spreading shower of energies. Imagine a slow-motion film of glass shattering into thousands – millions – of fragments, every single part caught by the light, each tiny piece reflecting its own entity, its own being: that might represent a physical equivalent to the sensory response aroused in us, although the comparison is far from accurate, because such a brittle splintering is the very antithesis of the soft starbursts we both experienced. We joined together, fusing not just with each other but with the air around us, with the walls, with every living organism contained therein. In some way we had reached another level, one that perhaps we all glimpse from time to time, but are always on the periphery of, always just at the edge, knowing dimly of its existence, but never able to perceive it clearly, our minds always defeated by their own limiting truth.
Heavy stuff, right? But in my own inept way I’m trying to give you a glimmer of what happened to us that evening in Gramarye. And maybe put it into some kind of perspective for myself.
There was more. We sensed the aura of Gramarye, a spirit that had nothing to do with Flora
She regarded me quizzically, then became aware that she still cradled the injured thrush in her hands.
I found a cardboard box and lined it with an old sweater of mine and a scarf of Midge’s; she laid the bird inside and placed the box in a corner by the dresser. After that, she attempted feeding the thrush, giving up after a while to try again later, this time with a degree of success. What was left of the afternoon – which wasn’t much – was spent sorting out clothes and ornaments, finding a more permanent home for tools, equipment and various household items, hanging pictures, sweeping and cleaning, and generally bringing things together a bit more. O’Malley and his men had done a fine job on the cottage, fixing, painting, and pulling the building into shape. Even the cupboard doors everywhere fitted snugly and I assumed they had been planed down before being repainted. Some of the floorboards still creaked here and there, but there was no sagging and I could find no serious cracks in the wood.
After dinner, a stroganoff which Midge had prepared with much care and devotion because it was to be our first ‘proper’ dinner at Gramarye, we adjourned upstairs to the round room. I tried the TV but the picture was annoyingly snowy and as neither of us was really interested anyway, I soon switched off. I resolved to do something about the aerials for the set and the radio next day. We relaxed to some vintage Schmilson for a while and I was relieved that at least the stereo wasn’t dogged by interference. We both felt at peace that evening, no sad memories marring the contentment for Midge and no reservations about the move nagging at me. When the album was finished, she asked me to play for her, something I often did during the evenings she had to work at her drawing board or those times we merely felt in the mood. I went to fetch the guitar while Midge opened a bottle of wine for me.
Now I was slumped back in the sofa, fingertips of both hands still tingling from their contact with the guitar strings, Midge’s head resting against my chest, and it wasn’t long before our mutual warmth turned into mutual desire.
Unlike that morning’s gloriously frenzied love-making, this time it was languid and exquisite, every movement and every moment savoured and lingered over, all fervency contained yet still indulged in to the full. As the sensuality built in our bodies, so the room seemed to spin and weave around us, the last fading rays of the sun becoming a spectrum of colours, although always influenced by the sanguine flush that stained the walls.
The love act between us slowly became something more. It became a great expansion of emotion that went far beyond our physical bodies, that did not so much explode within our spirits, as erupt in a leisurely-spreading shower of energies. Imagine a slow-motion film of glass shattering into thousands – millions – of fragments, every single part caught by the light, each tiny piece reflecting its own entity, its own being: that might represent a physical equivalent to the sensory response aroused in us, although the comparison is far from accurate, because such a brittle splintering is the very antithesis of the soft starbursts we both experienced. We joined together, fusing not just with each other but with the air around us, with the walls, with every living organism contained therein. In some way we had reached another level, one that perhaps we all glimpse from time to time, but are always on the periphery of, always just at the edge, knowing dimly of its existence, but never able to perceive it clearly, our minds always defeated by their own limiting truth.
Heavy stuff, right? But in my own inept way I’m trying to give you a glimmer of what happened to us that evening in Gramarye. And maybe put it into some kind of perspective for myself.
There was more. We sensed the aura of Gramarye, a spirit that had nothing to do with Flora
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