Eoin left the turf stacked against the gable end last Tuesday, plastic sacks still tied, and I’d been stepping past them every morning since on my way to the clothesline. Not quite ready. The weather in late October had been cool but not cold in the way that demands an actual fire – a bit of damp, a bit of grey, nothing that couldn’t be managed with a jumper and the Stanley ticking along in the kitchen. But yesterday evening the light went early, and when I sat down with my book around half four the room had a particular stillness to it, cold at the edges, the kind of cold that starts at the skirting board and works upward.
That was that. I went to find the firelighters.
The chimney has to remember itself first.
The box of firelighters was at the back of the press in the hall, behind a tin of paint I’ve been meaning to bring to the recycling centre since the summer and three pairs of gloves that had drifted in there over the winter of 2023 and never left. One glove from three different pairs. I don’t know how that happens. The firelighters were fine – a bit soft, the way they get if they’ve sat in a damp press for months, but they’d do. I brought in four sods of turf from outside, then thought better of it and brought in eight, and fetched some kindling from the bag under the sink, and then I was about as prepared as I ever am for anything.
The fireplace in the sitting room hasn’t been lit since March. It always takes a moment to draw properly at the start of the season; the chimney needs to remember itself. The first match went out. The second caught the firelighter, and I held the grate door half-open and waited and watched it in that slightly anxious way, willing it to take, and then it did – the kindling caught, and after a few minutes I put the first sod of turf on and left it alone.
There’s a smell to turf smoke that I’ve known my whole life and still can’t describe properly without resorting to the words I’ve always used – earthy, ancient, nothing quite like it – all of which are useless. You either know it or you don’t. My mother had a range that ran on turf and the smell of it used to meet you at the gate. I thought about that, sitting back on the sofa with a mug of Barry’s, watching the fire begin to settle itself in.
Eoin had dropped off the delivery while I was in Tralee with Bríd the week before last. He’d left it stacked, mostly neatly, and put a note through the letterbox in handwriting so hurried it looked like it had been written from a moving vehicle. He’s always in a rush, Eoin. I’ve never seen him still. Even when he’s talking to you, one hand is already on the van door. I left the money in an envelope on the windowsill the day before, which meant the whole transaction happened without us ever being in the same place at the same time, like a relay race where neither runner sees the other.
Bess came to the back gate around six, as she does when Tom is still up the hill and she’s finished her rounds. She sat outside the gate and I could hear her through the kitchen window – a small high whine, not quite a bark. I didn’t go out. She’d have gone home by the time I found my boots. She always does.
The fire was properly lit by eight, which meant the sitting room had warmed through and I could stop thinking about it. There’s a particular satisfaction in that, in a thing working the way it’s supposed to – the turf catching, the room lifting its temperature by a few degrees, the whole machinery of a winter evening proceeding as it should. I finished the last thirty pages of the novel I’d brought home from Schull – took me long enough, it has to be said – and sat for a while afterwards doing nothing in particular, which is easier to do when there’s a fire to look at.
Donal rang on Sunday and I mentioned I’d finally lit the fire. He said he rarely bothers in Cork, the house is insulated to within an inch of its life and he has one of those electric stove things that glows red in the corner. It sounds grim to me but I didn’t say so. He said the real fires are a lot of work. I said they weren’t, not really. We left it there.
The unposted letters are still on the kitchen windowsill, for what it’s worth. The fire was not enough to make me feel productive about those.
Tom’s land was smoking this morning – not fire, just mist rising off the bog after the frost. I stood at the back wall with my tea and watched it for a while. The apple tree is bare now, or nearly. Probably it’s been bare for two weeks and I’ve not really looked.