by Susan Hill
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Susan Hill
Dedication
Title Page
Part One
Chapter 1
Part Two
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Three
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
About the Book
After just a year of close, loving marriage, Ruth has been widowed. Her beloved husband, Ben, has been killed in a tragic accident and Ruth is left, suddenly and totally bereft.
Unable to share her sorrow and grief with Ben’s family, who are dealing with their pain in their own way, Ruth becomes increasingly isolated, burying herself in her cottage in the countryside as the seasons change around her. Only Ben’s young brother Jo, is able to reach out beyond his own grief, to offer Ruth the compassion which might reclaim her from her own devastating unhappiness.
The result is a moving, lyrical exploration of love and loss, of grief and mourning, from a masterful writer.
‘I love this wonderful book … Just read it’ Jo Brand, BBC Radio 4, A Good Read
About the Author
Susan Hill’s novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewellyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over forty books, including the Simon Serrailler crime series. The play adapted from her famous ghost story, The Woman in Black, has been running on the West End stage since 1989 and the film adaptation, starring Daniel Radcliffe, was released in 2012.
Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King’s College, London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing company, Long Barn Books.
Susan Hill’s website is www.susan-hill.com
ALSO BY SUSAN HILL
Featuring Simon Serrailler
The Various Haunts of Men
The Pure in Heart
The Risk of Darkness
The Vows of Silence
The Shadows in the Street
The Betrayal of Trust
Fiction
Gentlemen and Ladies
A Change for the Better
I’m the King of the Castle
The Albatross and Other Stories
Strange Meeting
The Bird of Night
A Bit of Singing and Dancing
In the Springtime of the Year
The Woman in Black
Mrs de Winter
The Mist in the Mirror
Air and Angels
The Service of Clouds
The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read
The Man in the Picture
The Beacon
The Small Hand
A Kind Man
Non-Fiction
The Magic Apple Tree Family
Howards End is on the Landing
Children’s Books
The Battle for Gullywith
The Glass Angels
Can it be true?
In happy memory of David
PART ONE
1
SHE CLOSED THE door behind her, and then it was quite silent, quite dark. She stood, and she could smell very faintly the dry smell of the bracken, coming over the common. Everything was dry now, for three weeks the sun had shone. It tired her. But throughout April and May, it had rained, and that, too, had been tiring, the endless, dull pattering on to the cottage roof. She had not expected to notice, certainly not to be disturbed by, those things – weather, heat or damp or cloud, night or day, things which existed outside her own self, her own misery. But they had been like burns or abrasions that never healed, irritating her, intruding.
She waited until she could see just a little, and then go down the narrow path between the vegetable beds, and beyond the fruit trees, to where the hens were. There was no sound tonight from the owls in the copse, over to the left of the cottage, no stirring in the trees themselves.
She thought suddenly, I am alone. I am entirely alone on this earth; there are no other people, no animals or birds or insects, no breaths or heartbeats, there is no growing, the leaves do not move and the grass is dry. There is nothing.
And this was a new feeling. No, not a feeling. Loneliness was a feeling, and fear of the empty house and of the long days and nights, and the helpless separation from Ben – feelings. This was different. A condition. A fact. Simply, being absolutely alone.
Then, a cloud slid off the face of the moon, and there was a little light, she could see the grey trunks of the old fruit trees and the bunched tops of the elms. There was no colour, but there were shapes. She began to walk slowly down the garden. It was only nine o’clock. It was the end of August. Each night now, she would put the hens into their coop a few minutes earlier, and those minutes would bring the winter forward. She did not want to think of winter.
When the donkey brayed from the meadow, she stopped in terror, startled out of herself, almost out of her own body, by the suddenness of it, and by the sadness, too, for it had always seemed to her something sad, and painful, this cry, like a harsh appeal for help, comfort – though Ben had laughed at her, the donkey was perfectly happy now, he said, how could it not be, with an acre of meadow, and the affection they both gave it. And Ben’s brother Jo had told her about animals in Africa, hyenas and zebras and jackals, which made even more weird noises though he had only read about them in books, only imagined the sounds. There was so much Jo had told her, so much that he knew, partly from reading, partly from some mixture of awareness and intuition within him, about the world. And Jo’s ears were sharper than anyone’s, he could tell every bird cry, and their different noises from season to season, he could distinguish the movements of a rabbit, a fox or a stoat, hidden in the undergrowth. Jo. It was a week, more than a week, since Jo had been; she did not lose track of time so easily now, as in those first weeks, when morning and night, Monday and Friday and all the hours between them had been shuffled together, and with no purpose to any of them.
The donkey brayed again, hearing her, and she called back to it softly, no longer startled. Why had Ben bought a donkey? Leading it home, with a soft rope tied around its ulcerated neck, a present for her, and for himself, too, he had said, something living, to belong to them. He had found it tied up with a great leather collar and chain, to a tree by the roadside beyond Long Thicket, and owned by a tinker who was glad enough to sell it, for a pound, and the cheese, boiled eggs and beer that Ben had with him in his bag.
The animal had looked at them out of dead eyes that day, and its coat was scabbed and dull, it had shuffled down the path into the meadow, and then stood, only stood, unaware of its new freedom from the collar and chain, and perhaps afraid of it, also, afraid of the great expanse of grass.
For days it had stood like that, close up to the fence, and when Ruth had taken down water or hay, it had not touched them; then, after a few days, had bent its head to the bucket only when she had gone out of sight, back into the cottage. It had taken weeks, weeks of patience and gentleness, of speaking to the animal as she came down the path, of daring to put her hand, for a second or two, on the coarse, sore neck.
At the beginning, they had given no name to it; Ben had gone down the garden and only called out ‘Here, donkey’, or ‘Boy’. It was Jo who
had said ‘Balaam’ and gone and found the Bible and the story of Balaam’s ass, which saw an angel and spoke to it in a human voice. Ben had said no, Balaam was the man, his donkey had not had a name. But then, they had all of them looked down towards the meadow and seen the animal shambling off a little distance from the fence, head up, ears pricked forward, beginning to explore, and at once it had seemed right, the only possible name. Balaam. Though Dora Bryce had sneered at them when she heard it, and her husband said it was blasphemy, Ruth was unsurprised, for she was used to all that, had accepted from the beginning that they did not like her, and would never forgive her for marrying Ben. Jo had said at once that the donkey’s name was his idea – Jo, honest and fierce in Ruth’s defence, Jo, the youngest, the cleverest one. But it had made no difference. Nothing would ever make any difference.
There had been days, during these months since the spring, when she had thought of letting the donkey go, selling it. After Ben’s death, she had paid no attention to it, only stared, as she had stared at everything else, without interest, as it lumbered about the meadow, grazing. It had missed her, missed the attention it had grown used to in its new life here, there had been mornings when it had come up to the fence and peered towards the house, lifted up its head and brayed. When Jo came to see her, which had been almost every day, he would go down to the meadow, refill the water bucket, talk to the animal, so that it did not feel, as Ruth felt, completely bereft, completely alone.
Now, as she heard it down in the darkness ahead, she thought again, should I keep it? Why do I keep it? And knew why – because it was hers, and Ben had bought it, it was part of the old life, and now she no longer wanted everything which reminded her of that to be done away with. Besides, she liked the donkey, liked to see its ungainly grey body and odd legs, it comforted her, as the hens were a comfort, she would not like to look down towards the meadow and see it empty now.
The apple trees grew so close together, the path between them was so narrow that always, at night, she put a hand out in front of her, feeling her way like someone blind, to ward off the down-hanging branches. Now, as she reached out, she tripped off the edge of the tussocky grass path on to the soil, and half-fell forwards, against the trunk of a tree. She was not hurt. She righted herself, and moved the palms of her hands up and down over the bark. It was scabbed and grainy in patches, and very cold. Ben had been going to fell the apple trees. They were years old and neglected: Old Slye, who had owned the cottage for half a century, before them, had never pruned them, so that now, there were only a very few apples each year, hard and small and bitter, growing in clumps at the very top. Cut them down, Ben had said, and we’ll have firewood enough for years – for apple wood was good, it burned sweetly and left a soft, clean ash. Then he would plant saplings, more apple and pear, too, and a quince, and meanwhile, until they grew up, there would be an open view, straight down from the cottage to the meadow and the beech woods beyond.
Now, the trees would stay. For even if one of the local men had been willing to fell them for her, she would never ask. She asked nothing of anyone, had vowed not to do so, the first day. Besides, the trees, like Balaam, were part of the old life, of everything she now wanted to cling to.
She realised after a few moments of standing there, touching the tree, that she no longer felt strange, the only person in an empty, dead world. The donkey had brayed, she could smell the last of the sweet stocks and the tobacco plants, and there were the hens, just ahead of her, in a line on the top of the coop. Other things lived. The world turned.
The pleasure she took in caring for the hens was the only thing that had never left her, and she had clung to that. This nightly journey down the garden had been one thing, the only thing, to which she looked forward each day. The hens knew her. They were trusting. And reliable themselves, too, always in their places as darkness fell, ready to be put away. They made small noises which seemed to come from deep within their plumage, dove-like sounds, as they heard her lift the latch of the gate into their run. She put her hands round each one firmly, and felt the softness of feather, and the sinewy wings, and, coming through them, the blood-and-flesh warmth. They never struggled, unless she picked one of them up awkwardly, and then it would beat its wings into her face, and she had to go on to the next, wait for that one to settle down again.
Ben had laughed at her care for the hens. He had no dislike of them, they were useful, he said, and no trouble, they gave good eggs. But they were stupid creatures, weren’t they, with such small heads, small brains, they made such graceless darts and bobs of movement. He would never believe that Ruth could tell one from another, to him they all looked the same, dull russet-coloured. Balaam now, Balaam he could take an interest in, the donkey amused him, and it had character, but what character had the hens? Ruth had only shaken her head, unable to explain, and he had not minded, as she did not mind his teasing of her.
She shut down the flap of the coop and bolted it, and listened for a moment to the scuttling sounds inside, as the birds settled themselves for the night. But in the end they went quiet, and then it was over, and there was nothing else to do except walk back up to the cottage, and she did not want to do it, she never wanted to go back. Not because she was afraid. Or else, if afraid, then only of her own feelings and memories and of the silence that pressed in on her ears within every room, of the sound of her own movements.
She lingered outside. She went to the vegetable patch and knelt down, touching the cold, damp leaves of the spinach plants, and burying her hands deep into the soil, feeling about until she found a potato, and then another; she would cook them, perhaps, make up a small fire and bake them and eat them with butter, it would be a treat. It would be something.
The scarlet runner-bean flowers were grey like laburnum pods in the moonlight. It had been Jo who had come up, and planted and staked them, Jo who had drilled the seed rows, and then thinned out the plants as they grew up. Jo, never asking, only seeing what needed to be done, and getting on with it in silence, keeping things going. Jo knew that he was the only person she would allow at the cottage, to help her, and sometimes to talk. Jo, Ben’s brother and so different from Ben, different from them all. He was fourteen and he might have been a hundred years old, he knew so much, had so much wisdom, so much awareness of himself and of others. She had been able to bear it most easily because he did not look like Ben either, though even with fourteen years between them the brothers had been very close. But she loved Jo for himself for what he was, for how he treated her, not because he was a Bryce and her dead husband’s brother.
*
In the kitchen, she said, ‘I will cook them. The potatoes I will cook them,’ and she had spoken, almost cried the words aloud. It no longer terrified her, that she talked to herself, she no longer thought that it was a sign of madness.
During the first weeks, she had gone up and down the stairs, stood in the middle of this room or that, she did not know where, and talked; about what had happened, and how, about her own thoughts and feelings and what she would do. She had talked to Ben, too, because he was still there, wasn’t he, just behind her shoulder, at the end of the landing, on the other side of a door, and it was sometimes just ordinary talk, she might only say, ‘Hello, Ben.’ But for the rest of the time, she blamed him, screamed out in resentment ‘Where are you? Where are you? Why did you have to die? Oh, why did you die?’
What she would not do was talk to anyone else except, occasionally, to Jo. She had been silent, unless when answering what questions she must about the immediate arrangements, or else refusing something they wanted to give her, food or drink or comfort. They had all watched her, they had been anxious, clucked advice at her, admonished, warned. But she had not talked, or wept, in front of any of them.
‘I will cook them.’
The potatoes lay in her hand, heavy as eggs, dusty. But she would have to kindle a fire, and she could not make that effort, just for herself, for cooking two potatoes. The range was out. Jo was the one
who came up to light it, when he thought that she might need the water hot, and Jo had cooked things for her once or twice, too, until he saw that she did not want them.
But since July, and the long hot days of sun, she had let the range go out, and left it. She washed every day, and her hair, as well, in cold water, and she ate at odd times, in the middle of the morning, or late at night, bits of fruit and cheese or raw vegetables, and the last side of baked ham, never sitting down, with knife and fork and plate, just wandering about the empty house and garden. The eggs she sold now, all of them, she needed the money.
People had sent food up to her at first – even Dora Bryce, who hated her for her independence; plate-pies and legs of chicken, cakes, loaves of bread. She did not eat them. She resented their gifts, saw them as an imposition upon her, though now, she was ashamed of herself, at this churlish rejection of what had only been kindness, after all, and caring. She had not known that it was in her nature to be like that, but her nature had changed, hadn’t it? Or else the truth of it had been uncovered by Ben’s death.
Once, though, she had tried to cook, just once. Jo had come in the morning with a rabbit, ready skinned and cut up, though he had said nothing about it, only found a dish and left it there, on a slab in the larder. And that night, she had found fat and flour and made a pie, with a sauce of stock and herbs and onions for the meat, and the smell of the baking filled the house like new life, her stomach had felt hollow with longing for the food, it had made a pain below her ribs.
The pie had come out of the oven with a soft, barley-brown crust, the meat and gravy spilling out, dark as port, over the white plate. Yet, when she had put a forkful of it into her mouth, her throat had gagged and she could not swallow, she held the meat against her tongue until it went cold, lumpy, and she had rushed outside to be sick upon the grass.
The pie had stayed there, congealing, losing its glaze and savour until, after a couple of days, the flies settled on to it, and she threw it all into the swill bin, which Carter came and emptied every week, for his pigs.
