Licence to Crenellate Chapter 4

The past blasts...

It’s all normal. Rhythmic. Repeating the actions of a person making a good life. Chick is collected by her chaotic (all right she’s not that chaotic) mother and she goes home with a box of eggs and sweet peas to dress the chilly Rectory kitchen waving back at Ellen as she and Tessa take the path to town across the field.

Ellen takes Chick’s sheets off her bed and pulls out the washing machine she keeps in the corner of the scullery and plugs it in to the taps above the Belfast sink there. The floor isn’t quite flat in the scullery and so as the machine flumps the sheets around its washing drum it gallumphs its way around the room a bit. When it’s spinning it’s best to be out of the house.

Ellen sets about her end of day chores without the little hands to help her. The chickens are still pottering about in the summer evening light so, rather than pick a fight trying to get them into their beds, she cuts a bunch of sweet peas and sticks them in a jam jar. They stand up better, make a better bunch if they’re tied so she does that with a bit of jute string. She walks down the field with them and across the stones to the church. She puts them on the altar there and makes a sort of companionable nod to the plain wooden cross on the table. The silence without Chick is noisy.