Chapter 9 Clarity
The rain had given up an the earth it so loathed deciding that it if it had to go down to ground level it would touch as little as possible turning into a thick fog. When the group left Barbara's house to get back to work they could hardly see the windmill on the other side of the street. Despite knowing better Jenny felt alone in this moment. She left the others behind their muffled voices slowly swallowed by the fog, moving towards what was left of her dream. The looming carcass of the watermill slowly solidifying out of the white mist in front of her while the lights of the houses bind her slowly vanished. The part of the roof that had collapsed was pointing bits of splintered beams towards the heavens, a futile gesture perhaps but this building would not breakdown without a fight. Seeing this comforted Jenny. She placed her hand on the heavy wooden door, she had come to think of this door as the main entrance. The real main door was probably near the milling room, but to her this was the real one, this was the door she had passed through when she had taken shelter from the rain. As she moved inside she felt sheltered again. Over the last few weeks she had passed through the steps of grief: denial, anger, depression, bargaining, in several variations and combinations; it was exhausting. She was ready to leave all of that behind. She went to the breakthrough in the wall that led downstairs, garbed one of the torches that were standing there and went downstairs.
The light of the torch illuminated grey steps step worn smooth by centuries of use. Jenny noticed that everything down here was made from the same grey stone. With a splash she found the last step and the rest of the water. It was bitter cold and reminded her that she should have gotten her rubber boots first. She didn't care. She got worse things to worry about than wet feet. She had imagined that the basement would be a creepy place, dark, damp and full of the things that other people had left here to rot. It certainly had its share of empty bottles, the odd mattress, folding chairs rusted into strange forms, enough to make any haunted house prod, but it lacked the feeling of ruin. This place in its strange dilapidated way felt safe. The decaying items here did not tell the story of a place that had been left in a hurry, but one that had been maintained with love. Here was a room where Jenny could see the skeleton of a dead sofa. the remains of two or maybe three large chairs grouped around a low wooden table that had just turned black in its years under water but was unwavering in its function. There where shadows on the grey walls of where once posters had hung and while there were broken bottles pretty much everywhere they were covered in wax. Once upon a time this had been a cherished place. Jenny imagined this being the secret retreat for the local teenagers where they could be the adults they knew they were.
Every room was like that. These were nests. The dark was not a menacing dark hiding unknown predators but the reassuring dark of a comfy duvet, the kind that made one invisible to the monsters. People had found solace here, company, joy, friendship, hope. As Jenny examined the walls she could see for how long this had been this way. They were all marked with names, dates and little pictures. A surprising amount from them endearing while those which were obscene were so in a way that would have been hilarious to the adolescent mind. Jenny sniggered when she saw an especially silly one. Some walls had been papered others had been plastered over, the water revealing many layers one over another all of them carrying the mementos of the many, many people who had found shelter here. At one point Jenny removed a large bit of plaster revealing the same grey stone as the one the steps where made off and even there on the original surface were names written in old long dead languages.
As she emerged from the basement, she had left all the stages of grief behind she was now calm, having not found acceptance but determination.
The others upstairs were busy putting up portable steel columns according to the acerbic commands of Claire who did not waste time on being nice when she had to stabilise a patient. They were to busy to talk to Jenny or maybe they did not dare talking to her preferring her to be the one to start a new conversation, and set the tone for it. This suited Jenny just fine, she didn't want to talk, she wanted to feel the watermill, to understand it like she had done when she had fallen asleep there on her first day dreaming of her grandfather. Now that she knew what she was looking for it was easy for her to notice that this warm feeling permeated the whole place. She entered the milling room. Here too she could feel it. This was a safe place even with the broken roof. She to the middle of the room climbing over the rubble and looked up into the sky. She felt warm, but up there there was just the grey sky and the apathetic rain that was still falling under protest towards the earth. Of course it was, the sun did not break through, there was no symbolic ray of light. It was not this kind of story. But that didn't matter. Jenny closed her eyes, she could feel the misty rain coating her face, it was a nice clean feeling, but beyond that she could feel the summer sun, it was bright and warm, telling her that everything would be alight.
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