Common Ground by Rob Cowen

certainly paired in the autumn and were probably well into the feathery tangles of mating. Or perhaps even past that, relaxing through post-coital rituals of preening, rest and roost, pressed up flank to flank by their nest site. There’s a softening in behaviour after copulation, a shift away from the talon-flashing late-night flirtations towards mutual trust and friendliness. Maybe the calls I could hear weren’t dirty talk; they’d moved on to rowing about kids, mortgages and money.
    Although I didn’t see or hear it move, the male’s calls were suddenly directly above me in the black crown of a pine. I’d never heard an owl as clearly or closely, at the level of valves and throat vibrato, of air being worked to an owl’s purpose, but I couldn’t stay much longer. My own mate was calling; Rosie had been at home in bed for two days with sickness and exhaustion. Now she wanted feeding. The text request was unequivocal: ‘please bring pizza’. It didn’t sound much like the flu to me.
    A coincidence: snow fell the exact moment I learned I was to be a father. And in that moment everything changed. Entranced by a blue line emerging in the little white window of a pregnancy test, we looked up to find snowflakes pouring into the street as if tipped from the back of a truck, obscuring where the horizon meets the grey roof slates of the terraces opposite. Then we lay together on our bed and watched the snowstorm form. Squalls of silent white swarmed the glass then backed away; flakes doubled in quantity, thickening into conjoined masses like cells dividing. The town was soundless; traffic frightened and slowed.
Remember all of this
, I told myself.
Remember this ethereal quiet and the lines of melting snow streaking down the glass. Remember the heat of Rosie’s happy tears dampening my shirt.
    After a while, a burst of laughter from guests downstairs popped our bubble. Suddenly our house was filled with life. Friends from London had booked to come up weeks earlier before any of this was on the cards. It was too early to tell them so we pretended our giddiness was down to the snow and suggested a walk in the blizzard. Half an hour later we were wrapped up and battling down Bilton Lane past houses that looked offended by the covering, like pensioners on their way to church unexpectedly caught up in an impromptu foam party. Cars were crippled. The wind rushed low and fast from the north and sent waves of snow upwards so that the storm appeared to be emanating from the edge-land. A sky of white tracer and the land beyond thick and grey as putty. It soon reached its zenith, though, and waned as we reached the crossing point. The familiar topography beyond formed slowly, as if through a demisting shower screen, then the low clouds flared with sun and evaporated into sky. Suddenly, in every direction, there were two tones: the linen-white of fresh fall and the coal-black of under-tree and under-hedge. Chaffinches struck up from hazels as we squeaked up the lane through virgin drifts. From the high rise of the fields the sun spreading over the distant reaches of the landscape made my eyes ache, but I fancied I could see further than ever, an effect wrought by this great levelling. All bumpy ground was smoothed; there was a new coat of paint. Everything clean and clear.
    We let the others go ahead and stopped at a gap in the hawthorns at the holloway’s entrance. The edge-land was still new to Rosie and the view had rooted her to the spot. I put my arms around her, over her stomach, and my head on her shoulder so our faces were side by side looking at the same things – the lone oak, the razor-cut line of hills, the pylons, the smothered steeples, domes and towers of town. My mind raced with the power of nature inside and out; joy swelling and fluttering my stomach, happy as a man can naturally be. But it came with worry. I couldn’t shake the thought of how easily things can go