188 - The Great Storm - 1987

On the night of 15 October 1987 a very deep low-pressure system came rolling up from the Bay of Biscay and a gale with hurricane-force winds hit southern England and northern France.

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[188] The day after a great storm can be very moving and full of strange and wonderful sights and events. We have been staying in Joe’s family house in east Kent while Jim is on holiday in France. Last night a great hurricane came and this morning a seventy foot high Holm Oak from the garden of the house next door is lying across our back garden and blocking the road beyond. The bole of the tree has smashed the wall between the neighbour’s garden and ours and the crown lies partly on our land and partly in the High Street. We were lucky. The tree could have fallen on us as we were sleeping. Now Joe and I talk about dying. About dying and about death and about how short is a life. We met more than ten years ago. Only now do we begin to think about our ending.

Our garden is filled by the fallen tree. The bamboo canes, plant supports and small fences that Jim has placed around the garden have all been overthrown or destroyed and where there once were frivolous pink splashes of Scabious and the imperial red of Geraniums all now is broken, crushed and scattered. The many myrtles in pots have been crushed and in their dying are giving off a fresh lemon and honey smell.

The village is deserted, the roads impassable, soon the chainsaws will start to clatter and buzz but for now no one is venturing out. The wind is no longer violent but still from time to time a squall comes off La Manche and thrashes the plants in the broken garden.

In the night when the storm was raging the boy and I clung together and as the trees came crashing down and the roof tiles and garden furniture flew past our window we and the roof strained together, groaning, pushing and pulling, yearning to break free. Now we peer out of our bedroom window, remembering the passions of the night, the passion of the storm and our own. We are natures great creation and yet nature might thoughtlessly destroy us without regret and lay us among the litter of broken grasses and bruised and dying flowers.

I have put on the denim shirt that Joe wore yesterday and he has wrapped himself in a dark blue towelling dressing gown he stole from a hotel in Somerset. We are each dressed to pass as something we are not. Me as a boy and Joe as a feckless flâneur still lounging in his stolen dressing-gown at lunch time. 

The woman who lives next door is standing in her garden surveying the damage. She is about fifty, elegant with a lovely oval face and a Roman nose. Not pretty but rather beautiful.  Joe catches me looking at her.

“Interesting?”
“I think so”
“So do I.”

The huge roots of the tree, the ball of earth that is held in the fist of roots and the hole from which the roots and earth have been lifted, have blocked all access to the back of the interesting woman’s  house. She has put on short black rubber wellington boots and a full length, brown, waxed-cotton raincoat which is polished by wear at the elbows and in patches across the back. The coat flies open in the wind revealing a white cotton nightdress, trimmed with old lace. Her bare lags are thin and nut brown. The wind presses the cotton nightdress against her body. There is no beauty so great that it cannot be improved by nature and stylish wrappings. 

Joe open’s the window and calls to her asking if she is alright. The woman seems dazed, her long greying hair blows across her face. Soon we are all in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil. The electricity is not working. The power lines are down and it may be days before the power comes on again. We, however, have an Aga range that burns a special sort of smokeless coal called anthracite. Joe is surprised that I know the name of this fuel. I gently explain that the word is French and the stuff itself was first found in America. I can see he is not convinced. 

The phone lines are also down. We are safe and warm but completely alone. The village and the villagers are muffled and far away. We talk quietly stunned into thoughtfulness by the mighty power that has passed us over. I make scrambled eggs and Joe fries tomatoes and slices of yesterday’s bread. We make coffee and eat our breakfast in the kitchen. Our guest is curious about our domestic arrangements. We tell her an edited version of the truth. We load more anthracite bricks into the Aga and make more coffee. The hot water begins to boil in the boiler that sits in the back of the range. The water knocks in the ancient plumbing and the air bubbles bang and rattle in the pipes. Another elemental plea for freedom. 

Our guest asks if she can have a bath. I take her upstairs and show her the bathroom and go to get her a towel and a dressing gown. I am gone only a few seconds but when I return she is standing naked in the bath. She does not flinch. She has a deep suntan with no tan lines. Her stomach is round and full with a deep belly button above and a mass of thick grey hair laid in her lap below. Her breasts are heavy and hang quite flat upon her chest. Her nipples are large and dark and are hardening under my gaze.. The sound of Joe singing in the kitchen below is so clear he could be in the room with us. He is washing the breakfast dishes. Now our neighbour raises her arms above her head, taking her long grey hair in her hands and twisting it into a knot. Her belly is flattened by her action, the muscles in her legs and torso tense, her breasts are lifted. In a slow deliberate motion, with no purpose other than to shown me her body, she turns away then looks back at me over her shoulder, her arms still raised. 

Who is this naked woman turning away from me as though poised for flight, showing her wide hips and heavy buttocks and between them a dark and vertical stroke of a calligrapher’s brush. La raie des miches. A dark and eloquent crevasse, Vas-y, fais-moi plaisir.. What is it about the sweet ascending articulation of her spine, her shoulder dropped, her hopeful glance that works me so. She is, I think, wondering if what she has to offer at fifty is enough. She doesn’t just want me, she wants me to want her. I take her trailing hand and place it on my chest. My heart is banging like the hot water in the pipes. I climb into the bath and putting my arms around her waist pull her to me.

“Je te veux” I say. I kiss her on the mouth. Her breath is hot, her tongue small and pointed. She grasps the hem of Joe’s shirt and lifts it over my head in a single pull. Facing each other we lower our bodies into the hot water. The water level rises. I am much smaller than our guest. Shorter and slimmer. I fit comfortably between her legs.