The chair has been out all winter, pushed against the back wall under the apple tree, gathering green along the seat slats. I dragged it forward on Tuesday, into the patch of sun that had appeared on the flagstones, and I sat down in my coat with a cup of tea and I didn’t go back inside for nearly an hour.
That’s all there was to it. The sun was on my face. The wall held the heat in a way it never quite manages in November, when you sit out hopefully and give up after ten minutes. This was different – a proper warmth, faint but committed, the kind that makes you believe something has actually shifted rather than just paused.
Bess came through the gap at the bottom of the gate before I’d heard Tom on the lane. She put her nose to the vegetable patch, thought about it, decided against. Progress, from her, after December.
‘Grand day,’ Tom said. He was at the gate, one hand on the post.
‘Sit down,’ I said. I didn’t have another chair out, so he leant on the wall instead, which is what he always does.
‘The garlic’s showing,’ he said. He was looking at the far corner of the patch.
I hadn’t noticed. I got up and had a look – a few small green tips, barely an inch, right where I’d put the cloves in October. I’d half-convinced myself I’d planted them at the wrong depth.
‘About time,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ Tom said. Which was that.
Bess had settled at his feet and was watching the apple tree with deep suspicion – a bird up there, or a memory of one. The tree itself has only the thinnest suggestion of buds, nothing you’d call a decision yet. But they’re there. I hadn’t looked properly until then.
We stood for a bit in the way you can when there’s nothing that needs saying. The light was low still, the way March light is, coming in sideways and making more of the shadows than the brightness – but it had colour in it. That was the thing. The flat grey of January had gone while I wasn’t paying attention.
‘I might paint the gate,’ I said. I have no intention of painting the gate.
‘Mm,’ Tom said.
He left around half three, Bess ahead of him down the lane. I made a second cup of tea and brought it out and sat in the chair again, though the sun had gone off the flagstones by then and it was colder than I’d have liked. I stayed anyway.
I don’t know what the rest of March will do. It could turn bitter again tomorrow – it’s done it before, the first mild day followed by two weeks of wind and horizontal rain. But Tuesday happened, and the garlic is up, and that has to count for something even if the weather doesn’t follow through.
The chair’s still out.