The Scent of Dried Roses [antikvár]

Chapter One The time that I dream of, that I imagine, that I reconstruct more than any other, is a Monday early in March 1988. Oddly, I have never troubled to check the exact date, yet in every other detail I try to be meticulous. That day I remember as being neutral, without any sense of imminence. Perhaps there was a slight wind that made the rowan tree on the tiny front lawn of my parents' house falter. When my father. Jack, woke at around eight, Jean, my mother, was already awake. She had been sleeping badly of late and had been prescribed what she told Jack were sleeping pills. Jack slept naked, but Jean wore a nightie. It would have been a pastel shade — Jean tended away from strong colours. Muted tones edged the lives of her and her friends. They lived in pale houses between magnolia walls with faint watercolours. They wore clothes that were slightly flounced, or slightly firiUed, or inscribed with floral prints; clothes that were cream, or cucumber, or scrubbed lemon. They did not wear black, or abstract, or self-confident, shouting blue, but colours that were either apologies, or absences, or blustery smiles at unselfconscious jokes. Jean also wore a headscarf in bed, knotted tight in gypsy style, the way girls - women really, but they were aU girls then - had been taught during the war. It kept their long hair safe from the machinery that was punching out igniters, capstans, locking mechanisms, firing bolts, grenades and light arms to fight the German enemy.