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

this small amount of precious time, like a globule of water hanging from a tap, but ready to fall, to burst open.
    In the kitchen, Jo filled the range and put the kettle on to boil. The sounds comforted her.
    *
    It was just after five o’clock. She rinsed her hands and face at the tap in the kitchen, and the water was icy, burning her skin.
    In that time between the fading of moonlight and the rising of dawn, everything about her seemed curiously insubstantial, and she herself felt weightless, as though she were in a dream. But the long grass at the side of the path brushed against her legs like damp feathers. The world was real enough.
    The path led out into the lane, which sloped for a mile, between the beeches. All the night animals had retreated into nests and burrows, and as she came up to the field gate, the first birds were making individual, exploratory calls.
    The sky paled a little and now she saw the mist, like soft grey bundles of wool left about at the bottom of the meadow, and on the margin of the wood. The grass smelled sappy and fresh as she trod it down, and the mist gave off its own peculiar, raw smell as she passed through it.
    Inside the wood, the ground sloped sharply downhill, and was a mulch of wet leaves and moss and soil, she had to hold on to branches and roots, to steady herself. But every moment, it was growing lighter, now she could see the grey outline of trees, a few yards ahead. She felt nothing, was not afraid, she only concentrated upon getting there.
    Lower down there was more mist, trailing about her like tattered chiffon scarves. The beeches gave way to oak and elm, with low bushes and briars. A weasel streaked across the path ahead of her, red eyes gleaming like berries. Then, another slope down to the last clearing. It was very still here. Everything was gradually taking on its own colour again, as the first light filtered through, the various shades of grey separated themselves from one another, and the brown of soil and dead leaf, the silvery fringed lichen and mould-green moss.
    Helm Bottom.
    At first, she saw nothing to indicate that this was the place. And then, behind her, the pile of cut-down undergrowth and pruned branches, laid together.
    The tree itself was a few feet away, the roots had been half torn-out of the ground like teeth from a gum, leaving a ragged hole. When she went close to it, she could see that the wood was rotten, a honeycomb of dead, dry cells running through its core. But the outer branches looked healthy, there were buds forming. It had been nobody’s fault, no one could have known.
    Very slowly, she crouched down and put her hands on the tree bark. It was faintly spongy with moss. So this was it. This. Though she had no way of telling which part of it had fallen on to him, the ground was trampled and churned up, where all the men had been, he might have lain anywhere.
    She understood that it had been utterly right for Ben to die here, in the wood. Because it was his place, he had known it since childhood, he was a forester. She was grateful. She would not have wanted him sick, in bed for months in some strange hospital. Everything was well.
    A thin dart of sunlight came between two branches and caught on a cobweb laid out on the hawthorn, the tiny water-beads were iridescent. She was stiff and cold, kneeling there, she could feel the damp soaking through her clothing, but she did not go, she laid her face against the fallen tree, and it gave her some sort of courage, some sort of hope. She half-slept, and pictures shuffled like cards before her eyes, she heard the bird-song and then it was confused with snatches of human speech, so that she thought they had all come for her, were surrounding her, in the wood.
    When she opened her eyes again, she knew something more. That this was a good place, because Ben had died here and he had been good. ‘Whenever she came here, it could only give her peace, she could not be assailed by any fear, nothing could harm