The last time he’d been here the house had been for sale but now it was clearly occupied. Washing hung on a line stretched across the yard and, once again, he could hear children’s voices as they clambered on to the swing beside the tall escallonia hedge. A young woman was encouraging them, her laughter mingling with their cries, pushing them gently as they clung together on the swing, shrieking with delight.
The schoolmaster smiled in sympathy, touched by the simplicity of the scene, and then paused, staring intently. It seemed that another woman, tall and slender, was standing in the shadow of the escallonia, watching the happy group by the swing. Yet, as he watched, a rippling breeze shook the branches so that the sunlight danced and trembled and he saw that, after all, the figure was simply a delicate fusion of light and shade. The house, built at the moor gate, in the shadow of the hills, always reminded him of some verse he’d known from childhood. As he set off, descending rapidly, his face to the west, the lines were clear in his mind.
From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends.
The sun was dipping towards the sea and smoke was rising, drifting up from the chimneys of the cottages which huddled in the village in the valley. Long shadows, indigo and purple, crept upon the slopes and now, in the quiet spring evening, he could hear the rooks, quarrelling in the wood below, and the high, plaintive cries of the lambs.
A Week in Winter: A Novel Page 38