*****Passing On*****
Page 24
She laughed. ‘I shouldn’t. We’ve had enough trouble as it is.’
The room was stuffy. She got up and opened the back door.
Outside, everything shone in the late afternoon sunshine. She stood for a moment, seeing that the chestnuts in the Britches were showing autumn colour, that the yew hedge was swagged with spiders’ webs. She searched for something else; she scanned the garden for her mother, invited that familiar, forbidding brown figure to come stumping across the grass. But Dorothy was not there, nor had been, Helen realised, for any of the last days. She had ceased to comment, had removed herself, it seemed, to some other plane — from which, Helen saw, she might continue to dispose, but differently.
She said, ‘Why do pigeons fly upwards and then come hurtling downward clapping their wings?’
‘It’s a mating display.’
‘But this isn’t the nesting season.’
‘They do it all the year round. Don’t ask me why.’
Edward, too, looked out. For him, the world blazed; he saw and heard, in one bright intricate living clamour, leaf and branch, flower and fruit, sunshine and wind and creatures that crept or flew. He saw and heard the pigeons, the silver blink of the big poplar, the quivering shadows on the grass. He was numb, neither sad nor glad; he did not know what he felt — only that all this was here, and so was he.
Helen closed the door and sat down again. The hall clock struck. As its last discordant note died away Helen thought, I shall sell that thing. Edward can spend the money on new trees to plant in the Britches. Edward barely heard it; he saw, now, the room — the bat calendar, the Coronation biscuit tin, that sink.
Everything was the same, and yet was not.
The Glovers sat opposite one another, silent, and pursued, independently, the same theme. They saw that there is nothing to be done, but that something can be retrieved. Both sniffed the air; each, gingerly, made resolutions.