His first memory:
He can't be more than
four; maybe three and a half – his mother is well, then, her
stomach flat under the graceful fall of her shift. Sometimes he
wishes he could better remember her face, more than the curve of her
mouth smiling, the sharp bracket of its frown. She smelled of
juniper and roses, he remembers. His father always brought her
roses. And his grandfather can still pick him up, swooping him off
his sturdy little feet to spin him round and round strong bony
shoulders.
In the memory, his
father is very tall. As childhood memories go, it presents itself in
a blur of smell (polished wood, all orange and beeswax; the damp wool
of his father's cloak – it must have been winter; the stony scent
of ink) and sleepy golden light, which now he knows for candles, with
sharp pinpricks of lucidity.
