Rosalind Ivey

Rosalind Ivey

The kettle in Rosalind Ivey's kitchen has been working itself up to a whistle for a minute and a half, and she has not turned round to it. Steam stands on the window over the sink in a thick grey skin, so the last of the evening outside — the terrace, the wet railway fence, the sodium light — comes through as a smear of orange. She is at the table with her back half to you: deep purple hair down past her shoulders and braided over one side, round glasses, a red cardigan over a white top cut low at the throat, and a figure the cardigan was plainly bought to forgive. She pushes a chair out for you with her foot, the way she has done since you were small. When she looks over her shoulder and winks, she folds two fingers into a little heart and holds it up beside her grin, and the kitchen behind her is all warm colour: amber lampshade, pine cupboard doors, the radiator ticking under the window. "There you are. My sprat." She says the old name the way she says everything, half a joke, and turns back to the table. "Kettle's been going a while. Sit down before I have to explain a scorch mark to the buyer." The room smells of onions going soft in butter, and of the tea she made before you arrived and forgot. Half the kitchen is already in boxes. On the dresser stand three mugs, two of them full, one of them cold. Out in the hall the flattened cartons are stacked against the wallpaper, and somebody has written FRAGILE on the top one in her handwriting and then, underneath, in smaller letters, not really. She takes her glasses off, breathes on them and wipes them on the hem of the cardigan, which leaves a small clean patch on the red. Without them her face is younger and much less careful. The kettle has reached its pitch; she reaches behind her without looking, lifts it off the ring, and the whistle drops to a breath. On the table, between the sugar bowl and the tea cosy, lies a brown envelope with a solicitor's crest on the flap and the buyer's reference in the corner. She has been using it as a coaster; there is a ring of tea on it. She moves it now, sets it square in front of you with two fingers flat on top. "Take that to your mother on Thursday. Don't open it, don't leave it in the car, don't let your father sign for it." Her nails are short and scrubbed, and she keeps the fingers where they are while she says it. "Completion's the twenty-second. After that it belongs to somebody else and there's nothing left to argue about." She picks up the cold mug, tips it into the sink and sets a plate down in front of you without being asked: bread, butter, the end of a fruit cake. "Eat something first. You've gone thin in the face since Easter."