result it was unusually free from lines without looking in any way youthful.
He crossed the room and put the dolly where he would remember to take it to school next morning. He paused by the window and glanced out at the soft blue sky, ‘I think I might do an hour or two in the garden,’ he said as he had said on a great many other fine evenings.
Rachel made no reply, absorbed again in the music and in her stitching; she was embroidering a set of kneelers for the church. She took great care over the work, knowing it would stand as a measure of her skill for years to come. Henry wondered if he had actually spoken, she gave no sign of having heard. He experienced again the curious unpleasant feeling that had begun to afflict him of late, that inside the precincts of Parkwood he no longer existed, that if he were to pause to look in the hall mirror he wouldn’t be able to see his face. A thought that terrified him sometimes when he woke in the night was that he might soon begin to find he was ceasing to exist in other places as well, and might end up before long not existing anywhere at all.
He left the room and Rachel scarcely noticed that he’d gone.
He went up the graceful curving staircase to his bedroom across the wide landing from his wife’s room. He changed into an old pair of trousers and a superannuated shirt and went downstairs again and out through a side door into the garden.
The air was warm and dry. A few feet from the door a great bed of cream and pink spiræas flaunted its full splendour but he gave it only a passing glance. He went over to the toolshed and selected a billhook, then he walked with his head lowered down to the far end of the garden, overgrown and midgy, full of birdsong and humming green shadows.
He began to lay about him with ferocity, slashing at the grassy tussocks and the long arms of brambles, laying low the great strong flowering weeds, putting paid to the offending growths for the time being, if not unfortunately finishing them off for ever.
The evening air was still warm and caressing when Janet Marshall came out of the back door of her cottage and walked up to Mayfield Farm for her goat’s milk. She bought the milk as she needed it, usually three or four times a week.
Facing her as she walked up the field was the end wall of the turkey sheds which had been constructed some years ago from existing farm buildings. The sheds formed three sides of a rectangle, the open side facing across the field to the back of the school. She could hear the clatter from inside the sheds and as she drew nearer, the raucous cries of the birds.
Ken Bryant, her next-door neighbour from Mayfield Cottages, came out of the rear of the main farm buildings some little distance ahead on the right and walked down the field towards her, on his way home.
He glanced over and saw Miss Marshall with her lithe, slender figure, her beautifully shaped head covered in close curls. How neat and trim she looked in her casual outfit of jeans and check shirt. He closed his eyes for a moment in a brief shudder at the thought of his wife in a similar rig.
He raised a hand and called out to Miss Marshall. She halted and stood waiting till he came up to her. ‘I wanted to have a word with you about Jill,’ he said. His dark eyes showed open admiration.
‘Yes?’ She gave him back a courteous, neutral glance. A strong growth of black hair showed at the open neck of his shirt. He gave off a powerfully masculine farm odour – by no means disagreeable – that no amount of baths or changes of linen could ever totally remove.
Ken was ambitious for his children and he was currently anxious about his daughter’s maths. ‘She’ll be going to the Cannonbridge Comprehensive in September, as you know,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid her maths are going to let her down. I shouldn’t like her to get off to a bad start.’ He’d be grateful if Miss Marshall would agree to coach Jill in the holidays. ‘You’ll be here for some part of the time, I’m sure,’ he added. ‘Of course I’ll pay whatever’s right and I’d see she wasn’t a nuisance to you.’
‘Jill’s not in my class,’ Janet pointed out.
‘I know that but I don’t like to ask Mr Lloyd, he’s got a lot on his plate. And Parkwood’s a good mile and a half away, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as handy for Jill. I’m sure Mr Lloyd wouldn’t mind you coaching her.’ He saw her hesitate. ‘Think about it,’ he urged. ‘You’ve no need to give me an answer right away, I’ll mention it to you again later.’ He went off down to his cottage, whistling.
As Janet passed the open front of the turkey sheds the young resident farmworker, Neil Fleming, came out of one of the sheds. He’d already changed out of his white overalls and was shrugging on a drill jacket.
‘Hello there!’ He gave her a friendly smile. He’d given her the eye, bowled over by her looks, when she first came to Longmead back in the spring, not many months after his own arrival at Mayfield, but it had taken him very little time to realize she wasn’t interested.
He walked with her towards the dairy on his way to the farmhouse. ‘I’ve got quite fond of goat’s milk myself since I’ve been here,’ he told her with a grin. ‘I’d never drunk it before, never fancied it. I always thought it’d have a rank taste but now I’d sooner have it than cow’s milk.’
He was a pleasant-looking lad with a fresh open face, curling sandy hair and a thickly freckled skin. He had a very full lower lip and his grin showed a milk tooth surviving in the front of his mouth. It gave him a touching, boyish air. He was twenty-five years old, studying and saving in the hope of getting into farm management; he felt there was precious little chance of ever owning a place himself.
He went on through the rear entrance of the farmhouse, a large old dwelling of mixed period and considerable charm, while Janet turned aside into the dairy, fresh and cool, lined with white tiles.
Mrs Slater was standing by a window, carefully setting a shallow pan of milk down on a slabbed surface. She glanced briefly up as Janet came in and gave her a friendly nod, then she gently settled the pan into place. She straightened up and wiped her hands on a towel. She drew a long breath and moved her shoulders, easing them.
She was a small slim woman in her middle thirties with a clear, fine skin and short light brown hair simply cut. Her lips were curved in a faint habitual smile and her customary look was one of amiable reserve. Over her freshly laundered dress of flowered cotton she wore a white overall with the sleeves rolled up, showing her pretty arms, smooth and rounded, with delicately tanned skin.
‘It’s the end of term on Friday, isn’t it?’ she said as she poured the milk for Janet. ‘I’m sure you’re looking forward to the holidays, it must be tiring dealing with youngsters all the time.’ The Slaters had no children. ‘Have you made up your mind yet if you’re going away?’ She stood chatting for a few minutes.
Margaret Slater wasn’t a native of Longmead, she came from Stanbourne. After eighteen years of marriage she was still looked on by the village – and still looked on herself – as an incomer. Not that anyone in Longmead disliked or resented her but she wasn’t Longmead born and bred and never could be.
She had come to Mayfield Farm as a girl of sixteen, when Oswald Slater’s mother was still alive. The old lady had begun to ail and had been ordered goat’s milk by her doctor. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting someone to live in, to give me a hand with the housework and cooking,’ she told Oswald. ‘If I can find a sensible girl who also knows something about livestock, we could buy a goat and she could look after it as well as helping in the house.’
Within a short time she found Margaret, neat, capable and well-mannered, the daughter of a Stanbourne smallholder. Margaret had kept goats
