Muriel – Jane Osborne

The birds are singing outside. It’s very early in the morning, probably about five thirty, and the mist is just starting to clear over the Levels. But it could be anywhere.

All over the world fires are being lit, twigs are added to the mix and smoke is curling up into the cool, fresh air. Mothers are moving about silently so they don’t wake sleeping dogs, children and husbands. Water is drawn from a tap above a sink, from a standpipe, or if there is no running water from a large earthenware pot with a little lid called a loka. It is poured into a kettle or a pan and when it comes to the boil, tipped onto leaves or dark brown grounds that could be pepper or mud.

 What a strange but essential ritual that signals the start of the day of millions of women all over this planet we call Earth. It’s so peaceful at this time of the morning. Sitting in a doorway of a mud hut in a village in Kerala or in the kitchen of a house in Manchester, the silence and space is the same. Then sons and daughters start to wake, shops open, cocks crow, dogs bark, traffic is on the move and that magical still moment before humanity springs into action gone.

Muriel is sitting in her dressing gown musing on this, her hands clasped round her first cup of coffee of the day. One slightly heaped scoop of ground Arabica beans in the bottom of a cafetiere for one. She always uses filtered water, filling the kettle half full. The water should have boiled but not be bubbling when she pours it into the cafetiere. After waiting for a good five minutes she will plunge the filter into the murky brown liquid and pour it into her favourite mug. Then she will pick a spot in the garden or the patio dependent on the temperature and sunlight, and quietly ease herself into the new day.

She has been recovering from a week away from the house. She loves travelling she decides but dislikes the rigmarole of packing, unpacking and repacking that goes with the travel experience. Muriel has been to visit two of her closest girl friends and was fascinated to see how they are moving through their lives, dealing with the minutiae of every day living and the big life changing events that redirect everyone’s path from time to time.

Her friend Rhoda lives with her husband in South Kensington in a small balconied mansion flat above Sotheby’s with a locked front door, opened by tapping on a keypad. The door leads through further glass doors into a carpeted hall, lined with pushchairs and a lift. Unless the french windows overlooking the street are firmly shut, the noise of sirens, the bustle of the cafes and restaurants, lorries delivering, vans collecting, streams of students from the Lycee Francais, is endless. Even at that cherished early time of the morning under Rhoda’s windows, builders are clunking, buses are passing and ambulances are wailing. There is never any peace.

Lucy on the other hand lives in quiet seclusion on the edge of a small market town in Dorset. The house is not particularly spacious but comfortable: the kitchen warm and cosy. It is the sort of kitchen where women can unburden their emotional selves, confide and be comforted by large mugs of steaming tea or Nescafe. Outside her back door, in the early summer Lucy will sit, curled up on an old wooden stool, her back against the wall and watch the baby bluetits making their first forays into the world of flight; lurching from one branch of the apple tree to another. Sometimes they will miss and end up as fluffy balls buried in the long grass but they will always make a miraculous recovery, hopping off before trying again and never giving up. In Lucy’s universe that early peaceful time of the morning is one of her greatest pleasures before the world of work and life kicks in.

Muriel feels guilty. She has not visited Lucy for over two years. They keep in touch by phone and email and Lucy had been to visit her in Somerset. But after that early morning vigil Lucy becomes one of those women who always feels she should be “doing” something. Whenever Muriel has suggested a visit to Lucy’s rural Dorset idyll in the past, Lucy is always involved in some new project, starting a new restaurant, running an am dram theatre company, planning an imminent departure to new shores. She never seems to give herself time to breathe except in those early morning minutes.  In addition to this, in Muriel’s opinion, Lucy seemed to surround herself with women who are very preoccupied by what Jane Austen would have called their “station” in life.

So dear Lucy who had always been a thespian in her younger days, a bohemian who didn’t care whether the house was tidy or whether the bathroom sink was clean, has become this house-proud, domineering woman who surrounds herself with a coterie of ladies who are slightly in awe of her. She has this flamboyant theatrical nature that they lack but they approve of her because she runs a very tight ship and cares if her bins are clean and her napkins ironed. Her husband and son do as they are told and woe betide them if they do not. But she always gives herself time to breathe in that deliciously tranquil early morning air.