Elizabeth Guilt reads and writes stories to make her daily commute on the London Underground in the United Kingdom more enjoyable. She has fiction published, or upcoming, in Luna Station Quarterly, Straylight Literary Magazine, and All Worlds Wayfarer. She can be found on www.elizabethguilt.com and on Twitter @elizabethguilt.
“I can’t believe how warm it still is.”
“No, must be that global warming they’re always on about.”
They roll me backwards and forwards between them, smoothing the new sheets onto the bed with a practised lack of attention.
“The seasons are all over the place. When is autumn supposed to start, anyway?”
The September equinox. It fell on September 23rd this year.
My voice comes out as the faintest wisp of sound and the uniformed nurse looks as surprised as if the pillows had tried to join in the conversation.
“What was that, Mr Peters?”
The equinox. The 23rd.
Even I can barely hear my words.
“I’m sure that’ll be lovely,” she says loudly, patting my shoulder. They tuck in the final sheet corner and bustle on.
I gaze out of the window, where the trees are dancing their green-gold leaves against a cloudless sky. The window is shut, but I can imagine the dry and rustling chatter of the branches.
* * *
I can still hear the deep, hearty crunch of the drifts of leaves I waded through as a child. Golds, reds, browns; I loved the colours of autumn. The gorgeous, glowing scarlet of the acer tree in the churchyard and the shining gloss of a conker newly popped from its shell. I came home with my pockets stuffed with leaves and horse chestnuts, and was soundly scolded by my mother.
“Why are you bringing those dirty things into the house? Look at the mess!”
I gazed dismayed at the crumbs and crackles of dead leaves that lay around my feet on the pale grey rug.
“Get back outside and put all that rubbish where it belongs!”
I trooped dutifully into the garden, heading behind the trees to the compost heap where the gardener threw the grass clippings, windfall apples and raked leaves. I emptied my pockets, stroking my fingers over the fiery colours and trying to ignore the heart-breaking wrench of throwing such beauty away.
The three biggest, shiniest, newest conkers I hid in various pockets and resolutely turned my back on the neat row that now lined the edge of the compost heap. My mother shook her head as I slunk into the house.
I smuggled the conkers up to my room, and in bed that night I took them out to gloat over them. By then they were already beginning to dull, and by morning they were simply the pleasant brown of the table in the dining room downstairs.
I never tried to bring autumn home with me again, but each year I roamed through the woods, rustling through the giant piles of leaves and glorying in the colours. I could never resist picking up conkers, cracking them damply out of their spiny shells. I took beeswax polish from the kitchen, and varnish from the tool shed and even my mother’s face cream from the bathroom cabinet, but nothing could preserve their beautiful sheen.
* * *
“Come on, Mr Peters, nearly finished.”
She lifts the spoon up to my mouth, tilting in the soup. Carrot soup, I think, though I can’t be sure.
She follows my gaze out of the window, where the sun is setting behind the trees, and for a moment she puts down the spoon and smiles at me.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
* * *
As I got older, my walks strayed out of our grounds and into the wilder woods beyond. The bare trees were noble in the frosts and snows of winter, and each spring I watched for the acid, stinging green of the new beech leaves. Late summer saw me eating wild blackberries until my lips were stained and my fingers scratched and torn. But it was in autumn every year that I spent every hour I could outside.
My mother frowned and sniped about my long walks, but so long as I kept ahead in my schoolwork and got home in time for meals, my father nodded his permission. Daily I raced through Latin declensions and algebra, determined to have an hour or two of daylight to walk the narrow paths before supper.
That September I had been watching a hare, hoping to catch a glimpse as she returned around sunset to feed her last litter of the summer. I crouched half behind a tree, watching for the reddish fur and black tail in the long grass, wondering when the leverets would be left to fend for themselves.
I turned my head to one side, trying to ease my cramped neck, and gasped as I saw a girl my own age lolling easily against the base of a huge oak. The afternoon sun fell on her brown hair, hitting pure notes that sang like new chestnuts. She smiled at me, and her lips looked berry-stained even though I knew the last of the blackberries had fallen weeks ago.
I straightened up, holding my hand out to pull her to her feet. I wanted to gather her into my arms, run my fingers through her shining hair, kiss her berry lips. I reached towards her, then snatched my hands back, shocked at my own rudeness.
“I’m sorry! My apologies, miss.” I felt my face burning, probably an unpleasant brick red compared to the delicate apricot flush that spread across her cheeks.
She laughed and swung easily to her feet, put her arms around my neck and leaned against me. She smelled of late, golden sunshine and bonfire smoke, and when I put my hand on her arm her skin was as soft as the furred inside of a beech husk. She kissed me, and she was every shining autumn colour I’d ever seen and every ripe fruit I’d ever tasted.
I ran away every evening to meet her, skimping on homework and scrambling recklessly through the forest. My feet dragged deep scars in years of decomposing bark and leaves as I took the shortest routes down steep banks to reach her. The sun set earlier each day, and after a few weeks the failing light made her hair seem plainer and her lips less red.
But each day we fell into each other’s arms, kissing and laughing as the leaves turned brown and dry around us.
One evening, around the time I was regretfully thinking that I must head home, she shivered a little against me.
“I won’t be here tomorrow.”
“Won’t be here? Why not? Where will you be?”
“It’s time for me to move on.”
I was sixteen, and in love for the first time, and I couldn’t bear to think of losing her. I cried, I begged, I even shouted at her in a rage, but she simply held me, told me she loved me, and that she had to go.
I tried to persuade her to come back to the house with me, to meet my parents. “My mother will be delighted!”
“Will she?” she asked.
“Of course,” I began. But then I looked at her beautiful hair, tangled and threaded with dry leaves. At her arms, bare and scratched and marked with loam where we’d rolled on the forest floor. Her skirts were torn and muddy and she wore no shoes.
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