Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

those days, handy for the shopping and good in the weather but you couldn’t be always popping them into cars and lifting them on and off buses and trains the way people do now, she just used to carry Marcus in her arms and Melissa trotting alongside and were there still porters, then, for the luggage? David, she says, were there still porters, do you remember, on trains when the children were little, or did people help you when you needed it? What, he says, lowering the book. Porters, she says, when did there stop being porters on the trains? I have no idea, he says.

The young man down there, the father, is holding two mugs and he’s smiling and talking to his wife and the baby has wrapped himself around the girl and lain his head on her shoulder. She remembers that weight, the lolling hardness and the smell of baby hair. There won’t be grandchildren, she thinks, which is silly, the ages people have babies now there’s still time, even for Melissa, though Melissa’s babies will presumably be in – in that place. One of Queen Victoria’s daughters, and not New Zealand but the other one. And Marcus is, what, coming up forty-five which would be fine if he were married, or even living with someone, but if you allow at least a couple of years for all that and assume that she’s not much younger than him, time’s running out. They said Mary was an ‘elderly primigravida’ back in the day, waiting for David to qualify and get set up in practice, but by today’s standards – Melissa does have a boyfriend, they’ve seen him on the computer, a man with a beard and one of those New World names that’s really a surname, or quite often a town. Warwick, that’s it. Imagine looking at your baby and thinking, let’s call him Warwick. Do they even know how to pronounce it? War-wick. War, candle-wicks, candlesticks, they’ve some around here somewhere, candlesticks, in case of power cuts, must be candles too, surely, you wouldn’t have just the candlesticks. Pewter, with handles like teacups. She’d like to know what the children on the shore are called, hopes they have real names of the sort that served everyone just fine for centuries, saints and the Old Testament, Romans and Greeks, forebears. Melissa, she’d probably just be called Honey these days. They do these things better in France, with that list of names acceptable to the state, stops people who don’t know any better being ridiculous, though trust the bloody French, wasn’t there some trouble over Mohammed? Still, there won’t be any French babies called Chardonnay. Miel, wouldn’t it be, like a vacuum cleaner? Something like that. She remembers Melissa with two plaits and a missing front tooth, je m’appelle Melissa, j’ai huit ans, j’habite à Bearsden avec mon père, ma mère et mon frère. There, some things you don’t forget. Test me again, Mummy, I got ten out of ten last time. The things we learn to say first: here I am. I announce myself. My name is Mary, I am – well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Getting on. Not dead yet. Je suis, tu es, il est. Nous sommes, vous êtes, ils sont. See? She even remembers the accents. Circonflexe. And she can still do poetry, Deep asleep, deep asleep, Deep asleep it lies, The still lake of Summerwater Under the still skies. Herself in little white socks and the dress her mother made, real Liberty lawn with the red berries on it, stepping forward on the stage and seeing her parents in the middle of the front row, smiling, Dad mouthing along with her, Mum in that hat. No, Semmerwater, not summerwater, took her ages to remember to say it right, Dad listening to her every night when he came back from work, and here she is getting it wrong again sixty years later. Or sixty-five. Once there stood by Semmerwater, A mickle town and tall; King’s tower and Queen’s bower, And wakeman on the wall. Then what? Came a beggar, halt and sore, ‘I faint for lack of bread.’ King’s tower and Queen’s bower, Cast him forth unfed. There, all the words, she can still do it. And then the shepherd feeds the beggar. They gave him of their oatcake, they gave him of their ale. And then? The rhythm goes odd, she remembers that, the lines stretch out. Something about glimmer of scale and gleam of fin, weed and reed in the gloom. And a lost city in Summerwater – Semmerwater – deep asleep till Doom. An odd choice, really, for a young child, though people worried less about that kind of thing in those days. And she still knows the songs, doesn’t she, most of the hymnary, she’d be willing to bet, second and third verses too. They stand, those halls of Zion, Conjubilant with song. Has anyone ever said conjubilant? One of those hymn words. And Christmas carols, the music teacher didn’t like them to be holding papers so they learnt everything, all the verses, even if you weren’t in the choir you had to do it. And our eyes at last shall see him, Through his own redeeming love. For that child, so dear and gentle, Is our Lord in Heaven above. The floor tilts and she rests a hand on the curtain as she sings quietly to herself, And he leads his children on, To the place where he is gone. Flickering candles, cold stone underfoot, the scent of pine on the air.

The mother has perched herself on a rock now, with the baby on her knee and what’s probably the mug balanced at her side, not really a good idea when the mugs belong to the lodge and they’ll surely have to pay for breakages. The father is showing the little girl how to skim stones although he’s not very good at it himself. We were like that, Mary thinks,