Essay
The Roof Before the Rain
落雨之前的天台
The flat is the top of a Victorian conversion, and the roof is not really ours, but the landlord has never climbed the stairs to check. At seven the tiles are still warm. I carry up a mug, a book somebody is paying me to read, and the folding chair with one arm missing, and I sit where I can see the cranes and the church spire and nothing else.
In August the neighbours' wisteria comes over the wall and hangs there like it is waiting for permission. I water the tomatoes. The mint escaped years ago and is now a policy issue. By half seven the light goes the colour of weak tea, and the whole city seems to be setting down what it was carrying.
A book can wait twenty minutes
I read for a living, which means I read badly on purpose — fast, suspicious, hunting for the missing piece. On the roof I try to read the way I did at fifteen, when nobody was paying me and a plot could take as long as it liked. It is harder than it sounds. My hand still goes for a pencil.
The best thing I know about London is that you can always find one hour in which nothing is asked of you.
Someone three gardens over practises the same four bars on a piano, badly, every evening at this time. I have never seen them. I have come to think of it as a public service, like the bells. If it stopped, I would probably go downstairs and check on the street.
When it rains I stay another minute anyway, because rain on a warm roof smells like the inside of a greenhouse, and I am the sort of person who likes that. Then I take the mug in, dry the chair, and go back to page two hundred and eleven.
There is a photograph of me up here that I keep. Cream knit cardigan, hair doing whatever it does, the mug at the very edge. I am not looking at the camera. I am looking at the tomatoes, worrying about frost, which is roughly what I look like when I am happy.
Frost, and the end of the season
By October the tomatoes are finished and the chair is too cold to sit in. I bring the pots down to the kitchen windowsill, which is a small defeat, and start reading submissions at the table again. Every spring I carry them back up. That is my entire relationship with gardening: two journeys a year and a great deal of optimism.
中文译文
公寓在一栋维多利亚式改建房的顶层，天台其实不算我们的，只是房东从没爬上来查过。七点瓦片还温着。我端一杯茶上去，带一本有人付钱让我读的书，坐上那把缺一条扶手的折叠椅，挑一个能看见塔吊和教堂尖顶、其余一概看不见的位置。
八月里邻家的紫藤翻过墙来，垂在那儿像在等一句许可。我浇番茄。薄荷多年前就越狱了，如今是一个需要开会讨论的问题。七点半，光变成淡茶的颜色，整座城市像在把手里拎着的东西放下。
一本书可以等二十分钟
我以读书为业，也就是说，我故意读得很糟——快、多疑、专找缺的那一块。在天台上，我试着按十五岁的方式读：没人付钱，情节想拖多久就拖多久。这比听起来难。手还是会去摸铅笔。
关于伦敦我知道最好的一件事：你总能找到一小时，没有任何人向你要求什么。
隔三个院子的某个人，每晚这个时候练同样四小节钢琴，弹得不好。我从没见过他。我已经把它当成一项公共服务，像钟声。要是哪天停了，我大概会下楼去看看街上出了什么事。
下雨我也还是会多坐一分钟，因为雨落在温热的屋顶上，闻起来像温室里面，而我恰好是喜欢这个的人。然后收杯子，擦椅子，回去面对第二百一十一页。
有一张我在这里的照片一直留着：奶白针织开衫，头发爱怎么乱怎么乱，杯子搁在最边上。我没看镜头。我在看番茄，担心霜。我高兴的时候大致就是这个样子。
霜，以及一季的结束
到十月，番茄完了，椅子也冷得坐不住。我把花盆搬下来放到厨房窗台，这算一次小败仗，然后重新在桌边读投稿。每年春天再搬上去。这就是我和园艺的全部关系：一年两趟路程，外加大量乐观。
