Winter Solstice

by Rosamunde Pilcher

If someone asked her the name of a flower, and she had no idea what it was, she simply said, with much authority, Inapoticum, Forgetanamia. It nearly always worked.”

😂

The wind from the sea pounced upon them, and yellow squares of light, from windows and a half-glassed door, lay upon the cobbles.

In later years, looking back to those weeks she spent at Emblo, the thing that Elfrida most clearly remembered was the sound of the wind. It blew perpetually; at times shrunken to a lively breeze, at others pounding in from the sea at galeforce strength, assaulting the cliffs, howling down chimneys and rattling at doors and window-panes. After a bit, she became used to its constant presence, but at night the wind was impossible to ignore, and she would lie in the dark, hearing it sweep in from the Atlantic, stream up across the moor, send the branches of an elderly apple tree tapping like a ghost at her window.

she would cross an empty moor, and the road would slip down into a tiny valley thick with rhododendrons, where enviable gardens were still verdant with hydrangeas and the dangling ballerina blossoms of fuchsia.

Perhaps that was the worst of all. Not having someone to remember things with.

I send my deepest sympathy and my thoughts are with you, he would write, and sign the letter and duly post it with the knowledge of a necessary task performed to the best of his ability. He knew now that he had not had an inkling of what he was talking about. Grief was not a state of mind, but a physical thing, a void, a deadening blanket of unbearable pain, precluding all solace.

He had always despised self-pity, and now, sitting huddled in the small wooden shelter, he fought it like a lion, striving to be positive, to count present blessings.

I must go on, he told himself. Move forward, a step at a time. But at sixty-seven, with most of his life behind him, it sometimes seemed impossible to summon the energy.

Standing freezing cold and trying to be patient, she looked up at the sky, and saw it turning sapphire-blue and quite clear. In the east, over the sea, the glow of dawn was a streak of pink, although the sun had yet to edge its way over the horizon. It was, she decided, going to be a fine day, and was grateful.

The windows of the church were tall, arched in gothic style. But from the outside, the colours and patterns of the stained-glass were dimmed. He knew that to appreciate their jewel-like beauty one had to view them from within, the light of day streaming through the colours and throwing lozenges of ruby and sapphire and emerald onto worn flagstones. Perhaps this was symbolic.

“If only is like hindsight. A useless exercise.

As for God, I frankly admit that I find it easier to live with the ageold questions about suffering than with many of the easy or pious explanations offered from time to time. Some of which seem to verge on blasphemy. I hope so much that no one has sought to try and comfort you by saying that God must have needed Francesca more than you. I would find it impossible to worship a God who

deliberately stole my child from me. Such a God would be a moral monster.”

the one thing we should never say when a young person dies is ‘It is the will of God.’

the Church has been so much part of your life for so many years that you will be as familiar as I am with the great biblical promises about life and death. The problem is that traumatic grief can often render them unreal. For a while, what you are probably going to need most is not people who will quote the Bible to you, but close friends who will continue to hold your hand, and lend you a listening ear

Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger.”

Carrie could not remember how long it was since some other person had cherished her. Had said, You look tired. And, How about a little rest? She had spent too many years being strong, looking after others and their problems.

She realized that she was tired of being strong. Tired of being the sturdy pillar against which everybody leaned.

You know, it’s rather nice, isn’t it, having a different Christmas. Not knowing what it’s going to be like.”

She unlatched the gate and opened it, and beyond was a wide path, straight as a rule, leading across the garden towards a distant stand of beech trees. In the middle of this path, in line with the flights of steps which climbed the terraces to the house, stood a stone sundial and a curved wooden seat. Another flight of steps led down to a parterre garden, sheltered by shrubberies of rhododendron and azalea. Its formal structure, radiating from a stone statue of some mythical goddess, was composed of curves, circles, ellipses, all edged in box, and, buried in snow, resembled nothing so much as an artist’s design drawn on thick white paper with a stump of charcoal.

How can a path be visible if everything is covered in snow? How would you see steps?

at only four o’clock, the blue dusk had crept in, and a fine new moon, delicate as an eyelash, hung above them in the sapphire sky. The snow-capped hills became almost luminous in the strange half-light, and the ebbing tide was draining the firth, revealing sweeps of beach and sandbank. Curlews still flew, skimming the shore, but other birds were silent, their song finished for the-day.