In the Springtime of the Year

by Susan Hill

  And so, he tidied up and put some food on a covered plate, and a note on the kitchen table, and left, to walk, in the rain across the fields and over the ridge, where he could breathe again, take hold of himself, where all the fear and unhappiness drained out of him. Because always, here, he sensed that Ben was with him, and be was healed by the contact.

  He prayed, looking over the misty fields and black wet woods, that his deepest fear of all would not come true. That Ruth would not kill herself.

  *

  She asked for nothing, expected nothing. And so, this second day came to her as a gift, and she was startled out of her-self, but accepted it gladly, and it shone out ever afterwards, like some golden coin lying among dull pebbles.

  The sun woke her, it filled the room, and was bright on her face and her arms, stretched above her head, and when she went to the window, she saw a shimmering blue sky and the last of the raindrops like baubles of glass on the hedge. Aconites and snowdrops were clustered here and there under the bushes.

  She had an overwhelming desire to get away from here, to slough off all the days and nights of weeping and the memories of death. She washed and dressed, and felt an odd excitement, like a tingling under the skin.

  Jo was walking up the garden with the scoop full of eggs, and when she called to him, he hesitated, anxious, for they had scarcely spoken these last days, he had come and gone like a shadow. And now, she stood in the doorway in a fresh blue dress, her face changed, softened.

  ‘Happy,’ Jo thought, ‘she looks happy.’ And he wanted to cry with relief, for she was Ruth again, the Ruth he knew, he could reach her. She had not killed herself. Every morning, be had dreaded reaching the house, for fear of what he might find there.

  ‘Twelve eggs,’ he said, ‘two of the hens are broody, I think.’

  ‘Jo …’ But she did not know how to tell him of what she felt, how to thank him for having come here so faithfully and done the work and asked no questions, never tried to intrude. She loved him now, as she loved no one else in the world.

  He held the eggs out to her.

  ‘Jo, let’s go somewhere.’

  He frowned.

  ‘I don’t want to be here, not today, I’m so tired of it – upstairs – all the rain. But I woke up and saw the sun – I want to go out.’

  ‘It’s the market at Thefton.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  No, not there. For what she wanted was not to remember, not to have any of the past thrown up before her eyes, but to forget, just for this one day, to get away, somewhere else, somewhere new. She knew that this was a day which would not come again, that the grieving was not over but only suspended in time, so that she might take a breath, recover something of herself.

  ‘Jo, we’ll go …’

  She hesitated. Everywhere about this countryside, all the fields and woods and valleys, even as far as the river, held memories, were too close.

  ‘We’ll go to the sea.’

  ‘The sea?’ He sounded unsure.

  ‘On the train. We can walk to Thefton. And have a whole day – at Hadwell Bay.’

  ‘That’s where we went for our holiday. Where I found the stones. Hadwell Bay!’

  It was still early, seven o’clock, there would be a train sometime that morning.

  ‘Ruth …’

  They had gone into the sun-filled kitchen. Jo was putting the eggs away. She turned.

  ‘I was afraid… I was afraid you’d never be well.’

  ‘Jo … Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think of you. You come up here every day and I don’t talk to you, I …’

  ‘No, it was …’ He shook his head.

  ‘A dream?’

  ‘No.’

  “What is it?’

  ‘Sometimes, in the night, the house is so quiet. And they don’t know if I’m there or not. They don’t know anything. Then, I think about you.’

  ‘Do you think about Ben? Do you miss him?’

  ‘I – it’s strange.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I go over there, up on the ridge and then I see – then I think about him. Over there. It’s all right. I know it is. Ben was different. He wasn’t like us.’

  ‘Yes. He was like you.’

  ‘When I was seven, I killed a rabbit. There was a boy I knew – he lived at Hedgely – and he borrowed his father’s gun – or took it. He said he knew how to shoot and I didn’t. I never would. It made me angry. I said I could, I could do anything he did, anything in the world. So I had to show him, and he gave me the gun. It was very heavy. I didn’t think guns were so heavy. It hurt my arm. But I saw a rabbit – it wasn’t very far away and it didn’t move. And I shot it. I heard it squeal, I … And that was the only truly wicked thing I’ve ever done in my life. I can remember it – the sound it made. And it was my fault.’

  He was standing a few feet away from her, holding himself stiffly.

  ‘I cried in the night,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t stop hearing it. I dreamed about it. Ben came. I told Ben. I’ve never told anyone else.’

  There was nothing she could say, but she realised then as never before how close he had been to his brother, how much Ben’s death had affected him.

  The kitchen was warm, it smelled of something fresh, clean. She looked around her and saw how tidy Jo had made it, how he had arranged the pans and dishes on the shelves, and polished the top of the range until it shone. What would she have done, how could she have lived, without Jo?

  She said, ‘Shall we go to the sea?’

  ‘If – I’ll do what you want.’

  He searched her face and saw her excitement, her hope of pleasure, said, ‘Yes. We’ll go.’ And abruptly, he came and put his arms round her, she heard him say, ‘The sea!’ and his voice was full of wonder.

  The sun rose higher and shone like a disc of metal out of a transparent sky.

  They might have been the only people in the world. Hadwell Bay curved out in front of them, the sea far, far out, the sand flat and pale and, closer to them, the rocks glistening wet, with small, secret pools hidden in their clefts, as though cupped between two hands. It was very still, quite warm and at the rim of the horizon, the sky was silver-white.

  Jo stood, looking, as if he could not believe in any of it.

  He said, ‘It’s the same. It smells the same … it’s …’ He pressed his arms to his sides tightly, and released them again.

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Anything. You say.’

  Already, for Ruth, the day had taken on the quality of a dream, she was in it and yet outside of it, but whatever happened, she must hold hard on to every moment, nothing must slip past her unnoticed.

  They walked very slowly down on to the beach and the sand made a rasping sound as they stepped on it, the imprints of their feet strung out behind them, like small, following animals. There was no wind, but everywhere, a particular smell of salt and fish and the curious reek of the black ribbon seaweed, scattered with small blisters, which Jo went for, and carried over his arm.

  ‘If you take it and hang it outside the door, you can tell the weather – if it’s going to be wet or dry, by how the seaweed feels in your hand.’

  And then he left her again, to climb over some pinkish brown rocks. A different weed was draped over them like green hair, slimy to touch.

  ‘Sea anemones,’ he called, and she followed him, they bent down together and saw their own two faces reflected in the rock pool, their eyes dark and shining in pale moons. And again, breathing up the sea smell, she thought, I shall never forget this, and I shall never come here again, in case it is spoiled, changed. She put her finger down into the cold water and touched a fronded anemone and it closed over the tip like the pink wet mouth of an infant suckling a nipple.

  ‘They’re alive,’ Jo said, ‘they’re not just plants, they’re really a kind of animal.’

  He was happy, released from the anxiety and strain of the past days. Looking at him, Ruth thought that if she had done nothing else, at le
ast she had given him this.

  They walked and walked along the rim of the sea, which only shifted a little, and the sun shone on to them and on to the cliffs above them, the sky was spread thin as new paint, Jo found shells, razors and conches and an abalone, and very small, smooth pink pebbles, and stored them all away in his pockets. She did not wish for Ben to be here, it was enough that she had Jo, they were held together in this capsule of quiet, sunlit pleasure.

  They lay on the sand, and Ruth half closed her eyes, so that the sea and sky danced together, were incandescent, it was a magic world and time went on forever.

  *

  It was dark, and much colder. Coming up the lane, her body seemed to be floating and her head was full of the sound of the waves, she felt washed clean by the salt air and sunlight, the reflections off the water. She was vividly awake, every nerve was vibrating, she heard every sound very clearly, like the ringing of bells; their own footsteps on the road, the creak of a tree branch, the quick dart of some animal in the ditch. When she breathed, it was as though the fresh air passed through every vein.

  The moon was full, papery pale as a circle of honesty.

  Jo was tired and silent, hugging the brightness and joy of the day close to himself. At the bottom of the slope, they stopped. He should turn right to the village, and Ruth would go on, up to the common. But perhaps she should go with him to Foss Lane, perhaps, in this mood, she would be able to say something to them, break through the barriers of hostility and mistrust.

  ‘They don’t know where you’ve been. I ought to come with you, tell them.’

  ‘They don’t care.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Nobody notices. Don’t come, Ruth, don’t.’

  His voice was tense.

  ‘I ought to talk to them.’

  ‘No. And I don’t want them to know anything about today. It’s private, I don’t want it to be spoiled and if they know, it will be. Don’t come.’

  She sensed that he was trying to protect her from them and that there were other, hidden reasons of his own.

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow.’

  He turned away from her, then back again, he hugged her tightly for a second. He said, ‘Thank you, thank you,’ and reached into his pocket, took out one of the shells, the abalone, and gave it to her.

  ‘Jo – don’t forget today. Don’t forget anything about it.’

  But she had no need of a reply.

  He walked off and she stayed there, holding the shell, listening to his footsteps, and did not want to go back to the cottage, because once there she would know that the day was over, and that what she had deliberately put out of her mind would be waiting for her in the empty rooms. And a sudden picture of Ben, walking towards her across the common, filled her head and she cried out, because he was not there, because she was alone in the dark lane, she wanted to be with him and there was no way, no way.

  There was a way.

  As she came to the top of the hill, she began to run, as though time mattered and she might somehow be too late, might find him gone. And she blamed herself for having stayed away so long, she had to make up for all the days and nights of neglect.

  She had imagined him to be with her, in the cottage or else gone somewhere beyond her reach, but now, she faced what seemed to be the only truth, that this was where they had brought, and left him. Had others been here? Had Dora Bryce and Alice and the black mourners, the neighbours and relatives? If they had, she resented it, she wished this to be a private place, a locked garden to which only she had the key. But it was open, anyone might walk in and view, as they had all stared down upon him in the open coffin.

  She walked through the lych-gate and then stepped on to the grass, moving between the old, moss-covered headstones. The flints on the church face gleamed pewter. She did not need the moonlight, she could have found her way unerringly if she had been blind.

  The old graves gave way to new, along the south side of the church, with his the last, the most recent, at the end, and beyond that, open grass.

  Ruth stopped dead. They had taken the flowers away, all of them, there was only a bare oblong mound, like a molehill pushed up through the turf. It might have belonged to any one, any stranger. She could not register the truth of where she was and what it meant, it did not seem possible Ben here, Ben dead, and never able to speak or move or breathe again in this world. It was a nonsense.

  She knelt down on the grass. She said, ‘We went to the sea, Jo and I. To Hadwell Bay. And there was only the sand and the sky and the sunlight, we walked and walked. You should have been there. Why weren’t you there, why?’

  Silence pressed in upon her. The yew trees and the poplars were columns of stone.

  She thought, what has happened to him now, what does he look like, how has he changed? She did not know anything about the time it all took. And in a moment of terror and desire to rescue him, to free him from the prison of earth and the pale wooden box and bring him back to life, she scrabbled at the turf and tore it and a lump came away easily in her hand, for it was loosely laid, there had not been time for it to take root. She let it drop and her hands were mealy with the crumbs of soil.

  Then a picture came before her eyes of his body lying in that close darkness, straight and still, and of his flesh beginning to flake and fall away from the bones, his hair drying and going brittle and the blood caking inside his veins. She told herself, over and over again, what she knew when she was sane m her mind, she said, what is here is nothing, this is not Ben, this is an old coat, like a chrysalis, outgrown and of no more use, he is not here. Then where, where? For the flesh she had loved and the breath which had mingled with her own breathing, all she had been able to see and hear and touch of Ben, were under her feet, the same – and no longer the same, nothing.

  If she had been afraid of how the tree had injured his body, what was that? That was nothing to what the earth and the creatures and the juices of the earth were doing now, to how they would break down and utterly destroy him.

  Words, phrases reeled through her head, one detached itself and she spoke it aloud.

  ‘A time to be born and a time to die,’ and she believed that to be true. But if she had known when she first met Ben that his time to die would so soon come, she would have gone away from him at once, would never have taken the appalling risk of love.

  Would she?

  But she did not know, she knew nothing any more.

  She was beyond tears, and so she lay down on the mound of turf and rested, hoping, hoping, and the hours passed, the moon rose, and she was given nothing, no comfort, there was only the chill from the ground, a seeping moisture of earth and grass. She no longer blamed anyone, God or life, Ben or chance, the falling tree. It had happened, it had been necessary, the pattern was complete. But she cried out, ‘Please, please …’ without knowing for what she asked.

  If she could die, herself, here, now … But she could not.

  She stayed and the warmth and brightness of sun and sea, the peace of that day, belonged to some other life, long past.

  After that night, for weeks, she came here, to sit or lie beside the grave and her visits were noted, she was watched and the story spread through the village and out into the countryside, they talked about her. Predicted. Waited.

  6

  ‘THE SEA? WHAT are you talking about? You’ve gone daft, boy. The sea?’

  Jo stood at the far end of the room. That night, they had been waiting up for him and in the end, he had had to give away his secret, because for some odd reason, his mother had demanded to know about his doings, though she had not noticed, until now, whether he existed or not.

  ‘You’re to tell me what you’ve been at.’

  ‘We went to the sea. On the train from Thefton. That’s all.’

  ‘She may be half-crazed but does she have to drag you down in it?’

  ‘Don’t talk about Ruth like that.’

  ‘That’s it, turn against me, you as well. All of you. It’
s only what I’ve come to expect, though God knows why I should deserve it. I’ve tried, I’ve struggled on in this place and do you think this is all I was born for? Don’t you think I had chances enough, when I was your age, for something better?’

  The same things, over and over again. Alice sat stiffly, her face expressionless.

  ‘How much do any of you care or understand? What do you know about how I suffer? The sacrifices I’ve made. You don’t, you know nothing. He was the only one, he was sensitive, and he was taken from me, and what have I left?’

  Jo turned one of the small stones about between his finger and thumb.

  ‘And why does she have to have you? Going all the way up there, doing everything for her. What do you ever do for me? Why can’t she lift a finger? Others have had to. Hasn’t anyone told her, life goes on and she’s no exception? As if I couldn’t have taken to my bed and never got up. She’s not in her right mind and whose fault is it but her own? She’s making use of you. It’s to stop. You’re not to go over there, spending half the day and night, locked up with a mad woman.’

  ‘She is not mad, you shouldn’t say those things.’

  ‘Is that how you’d talk to me? My own son? Don’t you take on her airs. She’s the proud one, she’s cut herself off. Well then, let her be, she’s nothing to us now.’

  ‘She is to me.’

  ‘Yes, you’re on her side, she’s turned you against me. How do you know anything, boy? You can’t see the truth about her, a child like you. Nor he. She took him and now she’s trying to take you.’

  ‘She needs someone. Me. I have to help her.’

  ‘Have to? And if I say you don’t?’ Dora Bryce turned away, making for the kitchen. ‘The sea. What right has she to go spending money, going on pleasure trips, enjoying herself. The sea! So much for what she feels. How long is it? Four weeks? Less. And she can go off to the sea. She’s hard as hard,’

  ‘No,’ said Jo quietly. He felt sick inside himself, but he would not let Ruth down, he would defend her against all of them.

  ‘And what will happen to her? I’ll tell you. It’s only what anyone could tell you. She’ll either go out of her mind and have to be taken away, or else find another man, quick enough, and be off. That’s what.’