Mrs Angus Steynton
At Home
For Katy
She took it out from behind the clock, and read it for the last time, then tore it into pieces and dropped the scraps on to the flames. They flared, burned, shrivelled to ashes, were gone.
She went to the door that led out into the garden, opened it, descended the steps and walked out on to the sloping lawn. With the sun gone, and the sky filled with sailing grey clouds, it felt very cold. Colder than it had been all autumn. September was passing, and soon the winter gales would begin.
She made her way to the foot of the garden, to stand by the gap in the hedge, looking out to the south, over the incomparable view. The glen, the river, the distant hills: sunless today, sombre, but beautiful. Always so beautiful. Never would she tire of them. Never would she tire of life.
She thought about Pandora. And Geordie. Geordie, wherever he was, would keep an eye on Pandora. She thought about Edie, and for the first time the dreadful possibility occurred to her that perhaps her dearest friend would die before she herself died, and she would be left with no contemporary, no person to turn to, to give her comfort; no person to talk to, remembering together the days that were gone.
She said a prayer. “I know I am a dreadfully selfish woman, but please let me go before Edie goes, because without her I don’t think I could cope with living. I don’t think I could cope with growing old.”
A sound caught her ear. High up, far beyond the blowing clouds. A distant honking and gabbling, both haunting and familiar. The wild geese, returning. The first she had heard since they had flown away north at the end of the spring. She gazed up into the sky, screwing up her eyes, searching for them. And then the clouds momentarily parted, and she glimpsed the birds, a single skein, beating their way south, the vanguard of the many thousands already on their way.
They were early. They had left late, and were returning early. Perhaps it was going to be very cold. Perhaps it was going to be a hard winter.
But she had survived hard winters before, and this one would be no worse. In fact, it would be better, because she felt, in some strange way, that her family had been restored to her, and she knew that, together, the Airds were strong enough to withstand whatever the fates chose to hurl in their direction. That was the most important thing. Togetherness. There lay the greatest strength. Her family, putting the past behind them, and never losing sight of the fact that, beyond the winter, a new spring was already on its way.
“Mrs Aird.”
She turned, saw Edie standing there at the open door. She had tied one of Violet’s aprons on over her good skirt, and her white hair blew in the breeze. “Come away in and get your dinner.”
Violet smiled, raised her hand. “Coming, Edie.” She walked…slowly at first and then briskly…back up the sloping lawn towards her house. “I’m coming.”
September Page 58
