Laying the Fire

I am downstairs early looking for something to do when I find my father on his knees at the fireplace in the sitting-room sweeping ash from around and beneath the grate with the soft brown hand-brush he keeps especially for this. Has he been here all night waiting to catch me out? So far as I can tell I have done nothing wrong. I think so again when he calls my name without turning round; he must have seen me with the eyes in the back of his head. ‘What’s the matter old boy? Couldn’t sleep?’ His voice is kinder than I expect, as though he knows we have in common a sadness I do not feel yet. I skate towards him in my grey socks over the polished boards of the sitting-room, negotiating the rugs with their patterns of almost-dragons. He still does not turn round. He is concentrating now on arranging a stack of kindling on crumpled newspaper in the fire basket, pressing small lumps of coal carefully between the sticks as though he is decorating a cake. Then he spurts a match, and chucks it on any old how, before spreading a fresh sheet of newspaper over the whole mouth of the fireplace to make the flames take hold. Why this fresh sheet does not also catch alight I cannot think. The flames are very close. I can see them and hear them raging through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy and President Khrushchev racing towards each other in their motorcars both shouting I’m sure he’s going to stop first! But there’s no need to worry. Everything is just as my father wants it to be, and in due time, when the fire is burning nicely, he whisks the newspaper clear, folds it under his arm, and picks up the dustpan with the debris of the night before. Has he just spoken to me again? I do not think so. I do not know. I was thinking how neat he is. I was asking myself: will I be like this? How will I manage? After that he chooses a log from the wicker wood-basket to balance on the coals, and admires his handiwork. When the time comes to follow him, glide, glide over the polished floor, he leads the way to the dustbins. A breath of ash pours continuously over his shoulder from the pan he carries before him like a man bearing a gift in a picture of a man bearing a gift.