OLD-SCHOOL
Empty now, the bottle of old-school aftershave has survived each lunging cull and lives at the back of the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. Alongside is a horse-hair brush with a base of winter-chapped red like a tiny buoy hauled ashore from a childhood sea. A bowl, too, of medicated soap, Measham’s or Daunt’s, scarped and abraded to an old-gold moon like the broached lid of a miniature Party Four.
They share a quiet such as is found beneath leaves when light falls back and the climb of the earliest owl threads thicket to star. History too – days long gone under the main when Fridays after mealtime meant ritual, sluiced armpits, faces confected brow to jaw in mirrors