In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill Read Free Book Online

found by a gateway? Ben had picked it up, and buried it in their own garden, under the apple trees. She had watched him. Now they would bury Ben. Perhaps he was bandaged, or already sewn into the cotton shroud. Other people had touched him, people who had no rights, they had been strange, impersonal hands which had undressed him and washed his body, closed his eyelids, and she resented them, he was hers, no one else should have violated him in that way. Because her feeling that his body was nothing, an empty shell, had left her, she could not think of him now, except in terms of flesh and blood and hair and bone, a living body. What she most desperately wanted to know she dare not ask; if the tree had broken open his head, or fallen on his chest, crushing the rib cage, and the lungs and heart pulsing inside it. And what did they do? Did they mend the fractures and stitch up the open wounds of a dead body, or leave it as it was, because there would be no point?
    On Thursday, he would be brought to Foss Lane. It was what Dora Bryce wanted, and Ruth had said, and meant it, that it did not matter to her. But now, it did matter, now she wanted him here, wanted to touch him, to sit beside him as long as she could. He belonged here.
    Ratheman, the curate, had come over about the funeral, and to speak to her, but she had fled upstairs and hidden in the small room, he had been forced to leave a message with Jo. Why had she been so afraid to see him? He was a good man, and she believed what he believed. But she did not want him to talk to her, about Ben’s dying, and being reborn into eternal life, for she knew it already, and what she did not know, she would discover in her own way, by herself.
    The funeral was on Friday, and someone would fetch her, ‘No. I can walk there. I’d rather that.’
    Jo looked anxious.
    “What is it?’
    ‘You ought to … they want you to go to the house first. Then everybody’s together, walking behind, up to the church.’
    Everybody together. She did not want to be with any of them. She resented the people’s grief, and knew how keen it would be, for everyone had loved Ben, everyone would feel the loss. But she wanted to be the only one who mourned him, the only one who was bereft.
    The funeral loomed ahead of her like some terrible cliff face which she must climb, for there was no way round or back. She sat, gripping the arms of the chair, and prayed for strength to bear it all, without losing her reason.
    At first, she did not understand the cry that came from upstairs . She had been locked up within herself unaware of the room and the darkness, the last heat from the core of the fire.
    Then she jumped up. Jo was here. It was Jo.
    He was sitting up in bed holding his hands over his face.
    ‘Jo…’
    He did not move. The room smelled damp.
    Ruth sat on the bed and touched his arm, but when, at last, he took his hands away, she saw that he had not been crying, as she had supposed, his eyes were dry, and huge in his wide-boned face, the skin was taut and gleaming with fear.
    ‘Jo … it’s all right, I’m here. What happened?’
    For a time, he did not reply, or appear to feel her touch.
    Then, he breathed very deeply several times, and lay back.
    ‘I was dreaming, I didn’t know where I was.’
    ‘You’re here.’
    ‘It was the trees.’
    She waited, afraid of what she would hear. ‘I was in the wood somewhere. It was beautiful – sunny and quiet, you know how it is? I was happy and all the trees had faces and the faces were laughing. I was laughing.’
    He took another breath and shivered slightly. Ruth touched her fingers to the side of his face.
    ‘Then it went dark and all the faces changed. They were ugly faces, leering, like those gargoyles on the church tower, they were devils. They were all coming down on me, and I’d fallen, I couldn’t get away.’
    Nightmares. But perhaps, in the end, they might help him to work out his grief and fear. All hers were to come.
    ‘Should I