(11/20) Farther Afield by Miss Read Read Free Book Online Page B

morning in jubilant spirits. Through the bedroom window I could see two men examining the standing corn. No doubt the farmer was hoping to start cutting later in the day when the dew had vanished. I should not be there to see it, I thought happily.
    The harvest fields of Bent would be far distant. I should be watching Mr Roberts, our local farmer, trundling the combine round our Fairacre fields. But that would be a week or so later, for our uplands are colder than the southward slopes of Amy's countryside, and all our crops are a little later.
    Amy and I lingered over our coffee cups. I was looking hopefully among the newspaper columns for some crumb of cheer among the warfare, murders, rapes and attacks upon old men and women for any small change they might have had upon them, without – as usual – much success. Amy was busy with her letters.
    She had left until last a bulky envelope addressed in James's unmistakable hand. She slit it open, her face grave, and gave the pages her close attention. I refilled her coffee cup and my own, in the silence, and turned to an absorbing account of a woman with nine children and a tenth on the way, who had struck her husband over the head with a handy frying pan, after some little difference about methods of birth control.
    She was reported as saying that 'he didn't like interfering with. Nature,' and I was glad to see that her solicitor was putting up a spirited defence. I wished her luck. Really, marriage was no bed of roses for some women, I thought, congratulating myself, yet again, on my single state.
    The rustling of paper brought me back to the present. Amy was stuffing the letter back into the envelope. Her mouth was set grimly, and I looked hastily at the newspaper again.
    I was conscious that Amy was staring blindly across the cornfields. I finished my coffee and rose.
    'If you'll excuse me,' I said, 'I'll go and finish packing.'
    There was no reply from Amy. Still as a statue, she stared stonily before her, as I crept away.

    An hour or so later, we packed up the car together. Amy seemed to have recovered her good humour, and we laughed about the amount of luggage I seemed to have accumulated.
    Tibby's basket took up a goodly part of the back seat. An old mackintosh had been folded and placed strategically beneath it. We had had trouble before, and were determined to prevent Amy's lovely car 'smelling like a civet's paradise', to quote Mr Willet, referring to the poet Aloysius Stone's noisome house long ago.
    Two cases, a pile of books, a bulky dressing gown and a basket of vegetables and flowers from Amy's garden, filled the rest of the back seat and the boot, and we still had a box of groceries to collect from Bent's village stores.
    'Anyone would think we were off for a fortnight's holiday,' observed Amy, surveying the luggage.
    'Well, you will be soon,' I said.
    Amy's smile vanished, and I cursed myself for clumsiness.
    'Let's hope so,' she said soberly.
    I edged myself into the passenger seat while Amy returned to the house to lock up. How I wished I could help her! She had been so good to me, so completely selfless and welcoming, that it was doubly hard to see her unhappy.
    But nothing could be done if she preferred to keep her troubles to herself. I respected her reticence. Too often I have been the unwilling recipient of confidences, knowing full well that, later, the impulsive babbler would regret her disclosures as much as I regretted hearing them. 'Least said, soonest mended', is an old adage which reflects much wisdom. I could only admire Amy's stoicism, and hope that one day, somehow, I should be able to help her.
    We set off for Fairacre, stopping only once to pick up the groceries. Our pace was sedate, for the faster we went the shriller grew Tibby's wails of protest from the wicker basket. Even at thirty-five miles an hour the noise was ear-splitting.
    'I meant to have told you,' shouted Amy above the racket, 'that I had a letter from Vanessa this morning.