PULSE

He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.

- Cynan Jones

Behind him the rain slanted into the open porch in tight, rattling crescendos. Pulsed with the crashing wind.

It’s foul out there, he called, but she wasn’t in the main room.

He saw the signs of water ingress in the planks below the cabin windows. A wet stain that caught the light. Every autumn. Every autumn, he thought, we say we’ll seal the planks. She’d put towels down where the rain had been driven in.

When he stepped from the doormat onto the wooden floor he felt the damp sock under his left big toe, the result of prising off the right shoe. With the wind baffled by the walls, the spat of the rain seemed even louder as it thrashed the low metal roof.

She’ll be trying to get the little one down for an afternoon nap. That’s why she hasn’t responded. The little one whom they hadn’t expected to have—the child who was at once a present fundamental fact but, even though she was walking now, and talking, still bewildering.

He went into the middle room, knelt by the wood burner, and set the logs down, placing them loosely around the fireguard, trying not to knock them together loudly, even though that wouldn’t be heard above the weather.

Tiny drops of wet mist silvered his jumper.

I should have put a coat on. The wool won’t dry properly.

Two weeks. Nearly two weeks we’ve been waiting. No heating. Still no engineer.

It was wearing. If they wanted hot water they had to use the kettle or heat up a pan on the hob.

He went into the little one’s bedroom, keeping the arm he’d used for the logs forearm up so specks of wood and torn bark wouldn’t fall on the carpeted floor. There she was, asleep, despite the storm.