To and From a Room

   I decided to make a cake for Vanya.  It would be the Cup Of Tea Cake that my grandmother had made for us every Sunday and which I in turn made for her when I was old enough.  Later still, I'd learned it was a kind of Bara Brith, which was intriguing since I didn't know what the Welsh connection might be. It would take me two days;  First, I would soak the mixed dried fruit and muscovado sugar in the hot tea and leave it over night;  The next day, I would bake the cake in a loaf tin and this would take an hour in the oven and then some to cool. Once cool, I would warm some honey, prick the top of the cake and pour the honey over as a glaze. In the evening, I'd wrap the cake, ready to put in my haversack next day and take to the room. I delighted myself with this plan, imagining giving her the tea loaf and explaining what it was and how you could put butter on it if you liked, which made me think I should take some best butter too and resolved to buy ...

It wasn’t surprising that the post box was empty, but it was amazing that the steps had been cleared and that a light came on in the hallway on entering.  Music and voices, some of them children, even a dog barking brought the house to life. The place, though still dingy and smelling of damp and dirt, no longer felt derelict. When I shoved open the door to the room and saw the lamp, I gasped a little, I’d almost forgotten, rushing to the plug I felt it for overheating  cool, I let out a grateful breath and uttered a prayer under another breath  which was making ghosts in the air it was so cold and so I put the electric fire on, having inspected its plug and flex for wear.  The   kettle boiling, cinnamon tea in a large mug waiting to be revitalised, I stood at the window looking at the hills above the snow line, still coated white and picture postcard beautiful when there was a quiet, tentative knocking at the door  On opening, a frail, wan, thin young woman...

It snowed heavily and I had to stay home for a few days. The back roads and footpaths were treacherous, besides, the one small electric fire in the room had been woefully inadequate, even when the temperature was merely moderately cold.  Besides, I told myself, this hiatus created a natural impasse between me and the owner of the room and so stubbornly I left the question hanging between us.  until  I remembered the lamp There followed an anxious day and a restless night, during which all worries, connected and unconnected to my responsibility for the room and the well-being and safety of the other inhabitants of the house, paraded before me in all their shadowy gloom and, fitfully, in vivid, noisy dreams until once again I woke with a jerk after a very short nap just after dawn and could see and feel that the temperature had changed, perhaps the Gulf Stream had changed direction or something because a thaw had already begun and I could hear the ice drip drip drippin...

  That winter was bleak - they so often are around these parts - but this one particularly so, with the canal frozen to solid black in parts, my thoughts drawn involuntarily to the child, murdered and buried at the bottom near the lock gates much further up some time ago now but the memory still ringing like an alarm in my imagination each time I took the ancient bridge over to the path up on my way to the room .  I visited each day, whatever the weather, having promised to pick up the mail which was left in one of the boxes in the communal hall-way. I didn't like leaving it there.  To begin with, everything was done in half light because I hated the glare of the central bulb which hung, without a shade, from the middle of the ceiling in the small sitting cum kitchen room,  didn’t want to take candles in case of fire so one day I took a small lamp and decided to leave it on even after I left since the hallway was often very dark even in the day with no-one coming...

  I’d   taken a room for the winter.  No rent to pay,  I was merely picking up the post for someone and keeping an eye on things, but it was mutually beneficial being potentially somewhere for me to go and lick my wounds in the midst of life’s painful turmoil. Not far from where I was living, yet the route I took went down such old worn and overgrown paths to the long road it was on, my daily trek felt like a trip to a different town and so, to some small extent, took me away from the troubles I was experiencing at that time, or at least gave me a different perspective.  I remember seeing the house for the first time;  set back from the road, a few stories high with unswept steps up, the leaves of many autumns left to rot on well worn stones, they looked treacherous to climb and so I paused at the bottom, unsure, nervous.  Branches from the unkept high hedge hung over the way too.  I felt like I might be taking the wrong approach - was there anoth...