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

make a drink?’
    ‘What time is it?’
    She did not know.
    ‘But I’ll sit here with you. I’ll make us some cocoa.’ By the time she returned, Jo’s face had relaxed, there was some colour in it and his eyes were no longer wide with the recollection of his terror.
    He said, ‘What will you do, Ruth? Afterwards? What will happen to you?’
    Afterwards? She had not thought of it, such a time did not yet exist.
    ‘I shouldn’t want you to go away.’
    ‘Away? No … Oh, no.’
    For even if she could bear the idea of it, where was there to go? This was her home, she belonged nowhere else now.
    She had come three years ago to stay with Godmother Fry, after the wedding of her father and Ellen Gage. Ellen, who was kind to her, wanted to love her and be accepted, who would make a good wife for him. Ruth had been happy about it, most of all because now she could be free, she was not the only person her father lived for, he no longer wanted to tie her to him. She liked Ellen, but, after the marriage, she had wanted to come away, to prove to herself that it was possible, now that she was eighteen, a person in her own right.
    Godmother Fry had been almost ninety by then, and half-blind, she walked with a stick. But there had never been anyone so full of vigour and courage, and she cared about others, interested herself in them, so that the house was always full of visitors, being happy in her company. She had welcomed Ruth as a child of her own, and Ruth, in return, had cooked and done work about the house, and taken the old woman out, to walk slowly through the village. It was June, high summer, the backs of the men haymaking in Rydal’s top fields were burnt brown as toffee. It seemed like home then, even before she met Ben.
    ‘Where could I go, where else is there, Jo?’
    He set his empty mug down on the shelf.
    ‘Did I tell you about the shells?’
    She blinked. But this was typical of him, he always expected people to have followed his quick changes of thought.
    ‘I found them in the attic cupboard. They were shells my great-grandfather brought back from the West Indies and China. Some of them look as if they were made of pearl, and there’s a pink one, coiled like a snake. I’m going to read about them.’
    Shells. Shells and stones, birds and plants and insects and the fungi that grew in the damp, secret crevices of the woods – Jo knew about them all.
    ‘I’d like to go to those places.’ His voice was becoming drowsy. ‘I’d like to be a sailor. Think of what I’d see.’
    ‘Shouldn’t you miss it here? Everything you’ve always known?’
    ‘Yes. And so I don’t know what I’ll do. There are countries I read about, hot places, where the birds are all bright as parrots, flying about among the trees, just like sparrows and things here. And jungle rivers and forests. And storms, going round Cape Horn. All of that … sometimes, it’s all I want.’
    He opened his eyes. He was rested. But he said, ‘What about you, Ruth? What about you?’
    She shook her head, and after a moment, left him. And stood on the landing opposite the door of the room she dared not enter.
    It was almost four o’clock. She slept a little, restlessly, and took on Jo’s dream, so that she flinched back from the faces of the trees and the way they threatened her, and then, she saw that they wore the expressions of all those people who had been up here since yesterday, Potter and Alice, David Colt, the curate, and others, too, the ones she had still to see, Dora and Arthur Bryce, and all the people of the village. It seemed to last for hours, but when she woke again, it was only just after five. She sat, letting the nightmare wash over her and recede gradually, until her head was rinsed clean and clear of all things, memories, faces, fears. She watched the hands of the clock move from five to half past, to six, and then seven, when Jo came quietly into the room.
    Now it was Thursday. Only another day and another night, only