Published 'Wearwolf' 1992

The size of the drawing-room seemed to be ever on the change, like an exercise in breathing space.  The lightshade swung to and fro from its ceiling rose, turning the flock wallpaper tidal. 

Two women who had been dozing in front of the log fire suddenly woke, wondering what had set the light moving - probably a draught from under the door, drawn in by the heat of the fire, or through the cracks of the window.  The curtains were, however, as still as if they formed splodgy ingredients of an oil painting. 

One woman, in her late twenties, was dressed peculiarly old for her age.  The twin set of home-knitted morling wool was crowned with a large crucifix hanging between widely parted breasts: a bluntly carved Christ was just discernible in the flickering yellow gloom...

The light had gone out but the shade still swung like an invisible censer. 

"Must be a power cut," said the woman in the twin set, picking with meticulously filed fingernails at her tweed skirt for precise specks of dust. 

The second woman was older, in a dressing-gown that was hitched above her knees, with mannish lapels flapping open at her chest to reveal the conical ribbing of a heavy-duty brassiere.  She did not reply. 

Before dozing, they had disputed a trivial matter.  The younger woman had spoken of those who first climbed Everest.  She said they had carried a life-size Christ pinned to an oaken cross to the summit where they had buried it in the snow.  It had seemed fitting for such a thing to be done. 

The older woman said this was poppycock.  None of the mid-fifties newsreels had recorded such an event.  There were merely those images of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing standing with flags aloft.  Nothing about burying a cross.

The younger recalled this previous argument and, in the now almost dead light of the log fire, she lifted herself from the armchair and plumped down on the older's lap, lightly brushing her teeth across the furrowed brow.

"I did not mean that you were wrong, dear, but it seemed the obvious thing to do - at that point on the world's surface nearest to God..." 

The older picked up the crucifix from the younger's chest and kissed the icon.  She felt the Christ squirm under her lips as, from the chimney, the night swept into their living space like a black snowstorm.