blue

I take the kettle to the sink, flick open the lid, turn the tap on. The tap is stiff, needs fixing but of course I’ll never fix it. I never fix anything. The bulbs from the two hall lights died within seconds of each other three winters ago. They sit, after a friend who is good with his hands took them down for me, gathering dust and guilt, on a piece of white paper on the upside down printer’s drawer that operates as a table in the living room. The printer’s drawer, in turn, sits on the Iranian carpet I bought in Wellington out the back of a white van from three men with warm eyes, in grey anoraks and beige sweaters, cash only. It was a lot of money in those days, that carpet. I ummed and ahhed and ummed and ahhed before offering around 80% of the asking price. They accepted immediately. Exchanged smiles with each other and slammed the van doors shut. Drove off with a surely illegal puff puff of diesel exhaust. I spluttered, and kicked myself for months afterwards. The reds of the rug have faded now, but the blues have stayed. Staying blue, stalwart, true.

I fill the kettle just under a third full with whatever temperature the water happens to come out of the tap. I can see it’s just under a third full as it’s an eco-kettle, transparent, or would be if I cleaned it. A third full is enough for a mug of hot water with a mint sprig and just enough water for the hot water bottle I keep on my knees eight months of the year when I’m not moving. The hot water bottle has printed the pale thinning skin of my stomach and thighs a pink tartan cross-stitch. It would be hard to explain this pattern to any doctor or nurse. Sometimes I tell people about it and they laugh and I laugh but I don’t show them the pattern. The hot water bottle is itself reddish pink, which is ironic in a way. Feeling its way onto my stomach and leaving its mark. Staying pink, private, stalwart, true.

I flick the switch on the kettle. Kristine gave me the hot water bottle and the cover seven years ago. She was dying of a cancer that started in her eye and worked its way down to her stomach and everywhere else. She knitted during her various therapies as she thinned and misshaped and she knitted me a hot water bottle cover. She said the pattern was easy and she didn’t need to concentrate. Green and blue and yellow and pink, sock wool, I think they call it, so that when you knit the socks they come out stripey. The stripes are a kind of miracle. I cried a little when she gave it to me. Held it to my cheek. It was rough smooth, two plain two pearl, and smelt of lanolin. There was no miracle for Kristine.

I pinch the top of two mint sprigs from their glass on the window ledge. Drop the leaves into the mug.

Neither was it a miracle that the moth babies ate Kristine’s hot water bottle cover three or four years after she died and I spent three months working up the courage to drop it into the bin in the kitchen. The bin was a Christmas present from a lover who lived here once. We agreed on the bin present so it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The bin was after Kristine’s eye cancer but before it woke up and tore her apart.

In the meantime the moths did what moths do and bred and flew and travelled and bred and flew and travelled and the moth babies moved onto other precious articles – a Mediterranean blue cashmere sweater once owned by a now dead aunt – and a black Icebreaker t-shirt – a present from Bronwyn in New Zealand. Bronwyn took me on a tour of Christchurch after the earthquake, after I’d been to my father’s memorial tea party in Hobart, and showed me what was left of the houses that weren’t insured, and the houses where the owners refused to move out despite being in the Red Zone.

The kettle boils, spitting bubbles at its lid and I turn it off just before it turns itself off. I like to get ahead of the kettle. In my mind I’ve mixed up Bronwyn’s two categories and I imagine a family living under a blue tarp under a street sign, in amongst the hebes that have shrubbed up over the leftover roads and paths, so that even the people who should know, the lawyers and the surveyors and the engineers, no longer understand what they are looking at and they spin around and around, pointing and gesticulating at the street with no houses, no sheds, no BBQs, no trampolines, no swimming pools, not even a roof tile, until they leave too fast and moist-eyed in oversized black or navy SUVs with official logos branded proud white on bonnets and boots.

Moths are efficient eaters of memories, especially the hand-knitted variety. I pour the boiling water into the blue handmade mug I bought on the west coast of Ireland on a camper van holiday. I buy pottery and hand-knitted socks on every camper van holiday. It’s become a thing. Sometimes I keep the socks for myself, sometimes I give them away as presents. The blue of the mug is the same blue as the still blue in the Iranian carpet. I hold the mug to my chin. Inhale the fresh mint. I put the mug down, twist the stopper out of the hot water bottle, pour the rest of the boiling water into it, and reseal the bottle. Kristine’s husband, Kenny, told me never to pour boiling water into a hot water bottle. That it perishes the rubber. I don’t know if that’s true. It sounds kind of true. Like it could be. Me doing to the bottle what the moth babies did to Kristine’s hand-knitted cover.

I carry the hot mug and the hot rubber bottle, which of course doesn’t resemble a bottle at all, through to my study. Place the blue mug on my desk, plump up the cushions on my seat, and sit down. I hug the bottle on my belly. It burns a bit. Adding a bit more pink. Private, stalwart and true.