In the Springtime of the Year

by Susan Hill

  Ruth had wept, then, out of shame and guilt at the waste of the food, and for pity of the rabbit, which had been living, and then shot dead, and all to no purpose.

  After that, there had been no more cooking.

  She left the potatoes on the kitchen table, and drank a cup of cold milk. And all the time it was there, lying at the back of her mind like a dog, waiting to leap out and attack, the thought of what she must do. For the past fortnight, now, she had half-acknowledged that it was there, only to draw herself back from it in dread. When she imagined all that it would mean, her heart pounded, she had to clutch on to a chair or the wall to steady herself. She dare not do it, go there, find him, and ask the questions, listen, discover. For, once she had discovered, none of it could ever again be forgotten.

  The pile of sewing, sent down by Mrs. Rydal, lay beside her chair. They were always small, fussy jobs, tedious and unrewarding, jobs no one else would do. She would have liked the chance to make something new, a dress or some petticoats, but even if they felt she could manage it now, they would not ask her; she was the girl who did the mending not the making.

  It did not engross her, and so she went over and over the same things in her mind, while her hands patched the elbows of shirts and darned socks, shortened or lengthened hems. Much of the time, it seemed to her that the garments were only fit to be thrown away, the material was almost past repairing. Yet the Rydals owned half the villages and woods for miles around, they could not be poor. It was poor people who darned and redarned, and made up a sheet out of two old ones, sides to middle. If she had had the choice, she would have refused the work, but she had to live, and the only other way to make money would have been to sell the cottage. It was hers, bought with the money Godmother Fry had left her, they had been proud, she and Ben both, that they were not tenants. Leaving here she could not contemplate because it was all she had left to cling to, it was Ben, it was life to her, familiar. She dreaded change, new places. And so, she did the sewing, and ironing, too. One of the men brought parcels over from Ridge Farm, and she herself walked back with them and, as often as not, tried to leave them somewhere, to slip into the kitchen when it was empty, and leave again at once, to avoid meeting anyone, having to talk.

  People around here were lucky, they said, to have Rydal for an employer or a landlord, he paid good enough wages and kept the houses in repair – though he worked the men hard. Ben had worked hard, but that had only been his nature, he had hated to be idle, could never rest, even at home in the evenings, though he had been up and out at half past six, and not home again until seven – or later, in the summer.

  ‘Sit down,’ she had said sometimes, ‘just sit down with me.’ And he would do so, to please her, but after a few moments, he was restless, he would lean over and start to fiddle with the fire, re-arranging the logs, getting up a draught, and then remember some job to be done. Well, she had not minded. It was the way he was. And he had been there, hadn’t he, there with her, even when he was digging in the garden or mending the roof of the shed, she had been able to hear him, to catch sight of him from the window. He had been there.

  She looked down at the clothes. A jacket with the collar frayed, a skirt missing two buttons. Nothing.

  The room had gone cooler. The lamp threw its shadows. And if she did not begin to work now, did not find her needle and thread, she would just sit for hours, until she was tired enough to go to bed, sit without moving, her hands in her lap, staring ahead. It seemed now that not just half a year, but half of her life had gone by like that – except that it was not life, it was not anything, except time passing, and the thoughts which passed to and fro like shuttles, the same pictures she saw in her mind, the same words remembered.

  She began to sew. She said, I am getting better, and I am doing it by myself for that was the most vital thing of all, if she was going to recover somehow, she should do it without help. Though there were days when she did not believe that anything had changed after all, days which were worse than those at the beginning, because she was no longer shocked or numb now, and so she knew, that it was true and would go on being true, and it was on those days that, if she had not been so afraid, she would have killed herself. It was what they were all expecting, wasn’t it? Perhaps even what they wanted – Ben’s family, and all those people whose help she had spurned.

  ‘Burying herself up there. Brooding. Living from hand to mouth. Is she right in her mind? A young woman, twenty-one years old just, and alone in that cottage, talking to herself, never giving thought for anyone else.’

  Perhaps they thought that she was becoming like old man Moony, out in his hovel beyond Priors Fen. But no, that was different, for he had been odd since anyone could remember, a cussed, dirty old man, who stumped for hours about the countryside, eyes down, giving no one Good-day. They accepted Moony. There had always been one like him, somewhere about. Moony had come back from the war and some said that was what had crazed him, that was the reason for his shutting himself away and trusting no one.

  Was that how she wanted to be? ‘Proud,’ they said, ‘she was always proud.’ And it was more than likely she didn’t wash or bother with herself now, didn’t clean the house – though Jo told them that was not true. She had kept herself and the house as tidy and fresh as she had always done. That was what her pride meant.

  So they talked about her, Dora Bryce, and Alice, and the wives and mothers of the men Ben had worked with, and told anyone who passed through the village too. They waited for her to go mad and run about the countryside stark naked, to be taken away. To be found dead.

  No one missed anything. They knew how often she went across the four fields and down through the slopes of the beech woods to Helm Bottom, and how long she stayed there, crouched near to where the tree had fallen; they knew that she went up, and how often, not by day but at night, to the graveyard. There was nothing they did not know, and although she shut her doors and bolted her windows and the elms were thick and the bracken grew high as a man, although it was a mile to the next house and three to the village, she felt that they could see every movement she made, listen to her voice and her crying.

  She sat on, sewing, and the house was quiet as a coffin and outside, too, it was quite still and the trunks of the beeches were like columns of lead under the moon.

  In his bed, at the top of the house in Foss Lane, Jo lay, his eyes open, so that he saw the thin band of night sky, where the curtains did not meet together, and thought of Ruth, as he always thought of her, with love and fear. He knew that whatever she needed, it could only come from him, all the responsibility for her had fallen from his brother’s shoulders on to his own, and he was not always sure how well he could bear it, along with his own grief, which he had to keep locked within him, he dreaded that he might one day let Ruth down, and be unable to help it. She said, ‘I manage. I don’t need anyone,’ and only he knew that it was not true.

  He felt tired. Yet, in the end, there was always something, a hard core of energy and hope which he could touch like a charm, and draw strength from. If he feared, he did not ever despair. He was master of himself.

  Sounds carried. A squirrel or some night-bird scuttling over the tin roof of the shed at the other side of the garden, might have been scuttling in her own head. She folded the pillow case, and put needle and thread and thimble back into the padded work-box. She went upstairs to bed, and her arms and legs felt as if they were held down by weights. She would sleep, as she always did now, a sleep that was dark and thick and stifling, as though it was she who had the great clods of soil and turf piled on top of her. She did not dream or stir, nor ever want to waken, and have another day begin.

  But tonight, after only an hour, she opened her eyes suddenly, and heard the silence in the house, and beyond it, and remembered what she had to do. It was time, it was six months since Ben had died, and now, she had to know about that death, every detail, to discover all the things she had shut out, by pressing her hands over her ears and screaming, so
that they would not make her listen. Well, they had not. In the end, they had gone away. She knew nothing except that a tree had fallen in Helm Bottom, and Ben was dead.

  Potter, the man who had been with him, lived a mile away, across the common. Tomorrow, she would go there. Tomorrow.

  She slept again.

  PART TWO

  2

  THE DAY BEFORE, she had been into the market at Thefton and bought a present for Ben there, a small, rough chunk of rose quartz crystal, from the one-eared man who set up his stall with jewellery and china ornaments, bits of this and that picked up from houses around the country. There was always something new and strange, she loved to stand, looking, imagining where things had come from and the people they had once belonged to, though she had never bought before.

  The stone was grey and pitted on the underside, like a piece of lava, but where it had been cut, the quartz glittered like chips of ice flushed through with pink, in the sunlight. And suddenly, standing there among the fruit barrows and corn bins, in the middle of the street, it had seemed the most important thing she could do, to use some of the money left from Godmother Fry’s gift, spend it extravagantly, like the woman who had poured out the jar of precious ointments. She had to give something to Ben, and not a useful gift, just an object to touch and keep and wonder at. Though, on the way home, she had been worried, for fear that he might scorn her and care nothing at all for the stone. Perhaps she had bought it only for herself, her own pleasure. She kept putting her hand down to where it lay at the bottom of the basket, wrapped in newspaper, feeling the hard peaks, like a cluster of tiny needle mountains.

  The weather had changed, it was like early spring, and even warm, as she walked the two miles up from the road in the late afternoon. There were aconites and celandines just pushing up through their green sheaths on the banks. Too early, Ben would say, the snow might come again yet, even in March or April. The woods and coppices were still leafless, branches open-meshed, or else pointing up, thin and dark against the blue-white sky; she could see all the way down between the wide-spaced beech trunks, to the fields below.

  But there was something in the air, something, a new smell, the beginning of growth, and, as she walked, she had felt a great happiness spurt up within her, and the countryside had looked beautiful, every detail, every leaf-vein and grass-blade was clear and sharp, it was as though she had been re-born into some new world. There was a change in the light, so that the dips and hollows of the valley that she could see between the gaps in the hedges, as the track climbed higher, up to the common, had changed their shapes, and the colours changed, too, the bracken was soft moss-green and the soil gold-tinged like tobacco. Yesterday, it had been dark as peat.

  She wanted to sing. Because she had all she could ever want, the whole earth belonged to her, and in the end, seeing the cottage ahead, she had had to shake her head to clear it, she was giddy with this happiness. She had to remind herself that nothing had really happened, had it, it was still winter – there was only the last of the warmth and light of the sun, over Laker’s Wood.

  She unpacked her basket slowly, but it stayed with her, this light-headedness, her eyes saw everything in the house itself as if for the first time. And then there was the rose-quartz lying on the wooden table.

  Ben had not been scornful. He had examined the crystal, without touching it, for a long time, and then gone to the desk to find the magnifying glass his grandfather had given him years before, and together, standing near to the window, they had looked at each of the glittering points and smooth slopes.

  ‘Jo would know about it. Where it came from, how it got fashioned.’ Yes, that was the sort of thing Jo always knew.

  She said, ‘It didn’t cost much and I took it out of my own money. I just wanted it for you.’

  He seemed not to hear her. He never found it easy, to reply to affection, or to speak about what he himself felt.

  ‘Where shall you put it?’

  He hesitated. Shook his head, ‘I’ll think.’

  So, for the time being, it had stayed there on the table, she had looked at it again and again, as she cooked their meal.

  That night, he had not tried to find a job to do in the house or the garden. He had eaten, and then read the paper she had brought back from the town, and after that, a book Tomkin the pharmacist had lent him, about change-ringing.

  They had asked him to join the ringers a couple of years ago, just before he and Ruth were married, to fill the place left by old Riddock, and at first, Ben had been doubtful, it was something new, a skill quite unlike those natural to him. But they had seemed sure. He was even-tempered and he worked with his hands, Tomkin said, as well as being young and strong, and he’d grown up to the sound of the bells, he would have a feel for them. And so he had. The older men had all learned the changes by heart, and by working as a team for years together and so becoming sensitive to one another’s movements and to all the rhythms and patterns. But Tomkin studied it by book, too, and thought Ben ought to do the same.

  He read for an hour, and Ruth had watched him, and only been glad to enjoy this unusual quietness, which somehow linked itself with the happiness she had known, walking up the hill.

  It had dropped down cold in the room. Ben had built up the fire with the last of the chestnut logs.

  ‘It’s not spring yet – there. Don’t you forget it.’

  But she had not believed him.

  Nor could she the next morning, as he stood drinking his mug of tea and the dawn came seeping, white-grey as a ghost, up through the meadow and the garden.

  ‘Frost,’ Ben said, and pointed to where the sprout-tops gleamed faintly. The tea steamed up into his face.

  By the time he left the sky was pink as raspberries, the sun coming up.

  ‘Spring,’ she said, ‘you’ll see.’

  He shook his head, laughing, and when he opened the back door, the air came in cold and sharp as glass. She watched him walk away unhurried, the lunch-bag over his left shoulder, and again the happiness began to suffuse her like wine, she felt that she might do anything, anything in the world.

  She cut the last of the stale loaf, and some bacon fat, and then filled the corn bucket, and went down to feed first the tits and blackbirds, and then the hens. It was the last day of February. Tomorrow meant March. ‘Spring,’ she said.

  Balaam brayed softly from behind the fence and the hawthorn hedge and the branches of the apple trees were crowded with birds, singing, singing.

  *

  By mid-morning, it was warm again, the frost on the short grass had melted to pin-heads of water, glistening in the sun.

  She worked in the kitchen with the door open, washing, making the bread, and then paused, to watch the long-tailed tits, swinging and swooping upside down like acrobats on their string. An ordinary day. Quiet, as it was always quiet here.

  Carter came earlier than usual for the swill, and told her about the birth of another daughter to the curate’s wife. She liked Carter, because he passed on news and never gossip, he never made scandal. A birth or death, disease among cattle, weather on the other side of the ridge. But nothing private, no half-truths or speculations. People trusted Carter.

  The sun rose higher in a clear sky.

  Just before four o’clock, she took the clothes basket and pegs and went down to the washing-line, slung between two of the apple trees. And it happened then. As she lifted up a shirt and shook it open, she felt as if she had been struck in the face; but it was not pain, it was a wave of terror, rising, breaking and pouring down over her, the sky seemed to have gone black. She felt faint at the impact of it, her hands shook so that she dropped the wet shirt on to the grass, and stood, her heart drumming. It was the first time in her life that she had known anything like it, such dread and foreboding, and she waited, wondering if she were ill. She had neither seen nor heard anything to make her afraid. But something had happened, some terrible thing, and now, she could hardly breathe, there was a squeezing in her ches
t and she panted for air, like the Riddock boy in one of his fits of asthma. What was it? She had her arm up, she was clutching on to the trunk of the tree, and dare not move, for if she moved, she felt that she herself, or else the whole world about her, might disintegrate. Her skin was cold, she was shivering and the blood seemed to be moving more and more slowly through her body, and to be held in suspension, dead as a pool of stagnant water, within the bowl of her skull. What was it that had come into the garden?

  She had no idea of how long she stood there, nor how, at last, she managed to loosen her grasp upon the tree and walk back very slowly to the house, leaving the basket, and the white shirt where it had fallen, on the grass. She tried to pour herself some water but her hand trembled so much that she dropped the cup and broke it and looked down with renewed terror at the splintered pieces on the red tiled floor. She wanted to run away, get out of herself, out of this fear, and she could not move; she wanted to hide, in a cupboard or behind a chair, as she had hidden from thunderstorms, as a small child, to escape from what might be coming. The sight of the garden filled her with horror now, though it was the same, still in full sunlight, full of plants and trees and birds, and the donkey was there and the pecking, scratching hens. Oh, what had happened?

  The tightness went from her chest, she began to breathe more easily, but she only managed to get as far as a chair in the other room, and to sit on the very edge of it, all her nerves and muscles bunched up hard together. She put one hand on her wrist and felt her own pulse leaping irregularly, like the ticking of some crazy clock. The air smelled thick with her own fear.

  The light was fading, the sky beyond the window had lost its translucence.

  She would have to do something, pull herself together somehow and get up, go into the kitchen, begin preparing their meal. But at the idea of moving at all, it rose up again like sickness, the panic at what was happening to her mind and body and the recollection of the way it had come upon her, with such violence. If it was an illness, then how could she explain it, what pain or injury could she single out? There had been no pain, no, everything she felt had been shock and fear. And this certainty that something was wrong.