In the Springtime of the Year

by Susan Hill

  Her hand was on the gate. Yes, the paint was fresh, smooth and rich and shining like new cream, the sun had not had time to blister and dull it down.

  She could still go back. She would go back and never speak to him or ask questions, need never hear the truth; she might turn away, now, now, and run, he had not seen her yet. Why had she come at all?

  The common was quiet under the sun and it was warm. There was only the regular chop of the spade and the smell of wood-smoke.

  She pushed open the gate, went inside and slowly round to the back of the house, and felt that she must have been struck dumb. She saw Potter, his back bent and turned away from her. And realised how much she had let her own garden go wild, for here, everything was flowering and fruiting and clearly in its place, here, the hedge was trimmed and the sunflowers tall as men on stilts, a peach tree was splayed out against the wall. Michaelmas daisies were bunched and tied back, and the vegetable tops sprouted and feathered up, just watered. Here, there was riot and yet very great order. That was how Ben would have had it, given another year, he had worked as hard as Potter was working now, and it had all been allowed to run down to nothing, and that was her fault. She had not even bothered to follow through the little that Jo had managed to do.

  He straightened up for a moment and rested one foot on the edge of the spade; not a tall man, and almost white-haired, though he was no more than fifty.

  She should go back now. Or else call out, somehow bridge the distance that lay between them, which was the whole of the garden. She could not move. Through a gap she could see the tops of the beeches. Sweat was running down her neck, and clinging to her upper lip, and Potter’s shirt was dark with sweat, which had glued it to his back in patches. The sweat of fear and the sweat of work. But why should she be afraid?

  She made no sound. Then, the dog Teal came out of the house and barked. Potter looked round. He saw her and called the dog back. They looked at one another, and for a long time, neither of them started forward or spoke, both waited and thought, and remembered; and did not know what was to be done.

  The dog sat, obedient but making a small, whimpering noise in the throat, its body quivering. Ruth stretched out a hand and half-called to it, for this seemed a way of breaking the silence between herself and the man, and, knowing it too, Potter murmured to the dog, and it came at once, reassured, trotted quickly to her and let her stroke its head, nuzzled against her. Then, after a moment, it ran back down the garden. She followed it slowly.

  ‘Ruth Bryce,’ he said, looking her full in the face questioningly, before glancing down again, at the spade which was half-buried in crumbly soil. ‘Ruth Bryce.’

  ‘I – I’d wanted to come. Before this. I meant to come.’

  Potter nodded. He had a curious face, the features pressed down together as though a weight lay on top of his head, there were deep lines, one below the other, and fine ones, criss-crossing his forehead like the marks on a map.

  She said, ‘It’s a nice garden,’ and felt foolish. But how might she begin?

  ‘Yes.’ He took his foot off the spade. ‘Yes, it’s well enough.’

  ‘We … I haven’t done anything. It’s all – there’s so much, all the vegetables and flowers, and I don’t know about them. It looks so untidy. I haven’t done what I should to it.’

  ‘I’d have come. If there was anything. But I didn’t like.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need help, with the heavy work – the digging.’

  ‘Jo did some – he put up the beans. He’s done what he could.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it’s not enough. I shouldn’t have let it go.’

  ‘There’s time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll find that. There’ll be time for it all. In the end.’

  ‘The apple trees – I don’t know what to do with those either – there isn’t any fruit. Hardly any. They’re old – Ben was going to fell them.’

  ‘They were neglected. Left for years.’

  The dog Teal was sitting close to Ruth’s legs and she bent again and touched its black coat, she thought, perhaps I should have a dog. Perhaps it would be company. Yet she already had the donkey Balaam, and the hens and had scarcely bothered about them since the spring, only done what she must, with food and water. How could she be responsible for a dog?

  Potter spoke to it. ‘We’ve a visitor. Eh? We’ve a visitor.’

  The dog thumped its tail.

  ‘I want you to tell me,’ Ruth said quickly, before she could lose the courage and make some excuse, run away. ‘It’s – I want to know. Everything about Ben’s death. I’ve wanted to know but I couldn’t ask. Not until now. I want you to tell me.’

  ‘You should know, yes. If it’s what you want, you should know.’

  The bonfire slipped down in the centre, all the twigs and leaves shifted and sparks went spitting up.

  ‘Making a fire,’ Potter said, watching it with her, ‘that’s a thing I like to do. And in the house, in winter. It’s a thing I can be satisfied with – making up a fire.’

  ‘There’s so much here – all the different flowers, things I’ve never seen before.’

  ‘Herbs,’ he said, pointing, ‘Miss Fry would have known. They’ve more scent than a good many flowers. I grow them for the scent – and the show they make. I don’t have much use for them.’

  She walked over and looked at the fragrant green bushes, marjoram and silvery-grey shaded thyme, and the tall, pale feathery stalks of fennel. She stopped and picked a leaf of mint, rubbed it between her fingers and it was dry and hairy, until the juice was pressed out.

  ‘I’d give you anything you wanted,’ Potter said, ‘cuttings and plants, for you to make a start. There’s nothing to growing those, once they’ve taken a hold.’

  But she turned away, weary, unable to think of planting new things, of making any changes in the garden, unable to put her mind to anything beyond this evening, and the questions she had to ask. Until she knew, all of it, and had accepted what it meant, nothing else could happen. She was on one bank and must cross this river to the other side.

  ‘We’d best go into the house,’ Potter said.

  And here, too, everything was neat and in order, everything clean. The grate was full of dry logs, laid crossways one on top of the other. Potter went to wash his hands and the chair Ruth sat in was huge and heavy, a man’s chair, the room was crammed full of dark pieces of furniture, well-used. She wondered, again, what he did in the evenings and why he had never taken a wife.

  Beyond the small windows, the sky was fading and marbled with mulberry-coloured veins of cloud. Well, he must be content, he must not mind the silent house, and only the dog beside him in the room.

  He came in, his hands and forearms scrubbed and reddened and the hairs that covered them white as salt.

  ‘Would you take a glass of cider?’

  She was aware that he was uneasy, perhaps little used to having strangers in the house, and anxious to make her feel welcome.

  ‘Or tea – I could make you some tea.’

  ‘I’d like to taste the cider.’

  ‘It’s good – good and clear. Last year was fine for apples.’

  She held the mug he gave her, and felt it cool between her hands; the cider was the colour of honey.

  ‘I get a dry throat, working with wood all day and digging and so on – and then the smoke from the bonfire.’

  ‘It’s been hot.’

  ‘Yes. A dry summer.’

  ‘Every day – I get so tired of the sun, everything being parched. I’m tired of the glare of it.’

  He nodded, and sat down in the chair opposite her, and the dog stretched itself out on the rug. The cider tasted smooth and sweet in her throat. Potter leaned forwards, hand on his knees, and did not look at her, and she remembered how he had come into the cottage the night of Ben’s death and been so concerned about her, and unable to say or do anything in the face of her stubbornness and grief. She
felt that now she should make some apology, or thank him, but she could not. She sipped the drink in silence and smelled the smell of apples.

  ‘I’d thought of coming,’ Potter said, ‘often enough. I’d not like you to feel I hadn’t. I’ve gone past the cottage, taking out the dog.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d spoken to the boy. If there’d been anything I could have done …’

  ‘But there was nothing.’

  ‘No. No.’ He glanced at her. ‘It stayed with me,’ he said, ‘I’ve lived with it every day since.’

  She watched him and was ashamed again, for here was someone else about whom she had thought nothing, someone who had known Ben all his life and been close to him, loved him. And how had he borne it? Not only the grief, and the memory of those few hours, when he had been the last person to see Ben alive and the first to see him dead on this earth, but the guilt he must feel, even though the accident had not been his fault. She should have come to him here long ago, said something. But what? How? Oh, she had kept Ben’s death to herself, as a private thing, tried to possess it utterly and allow no one else the right to mourn, but it was not here only, for no one lived to themselves alone.

  ‘You were good,’ she managed to say at last, ‘that night – that day. Good to me. I’ve never … I couldn’t take it in, not then, but I’ve remembered it.’

  ‘I worried about you, there on your own, not seeing any one except for the boy. I’d go past and look for a light. I did worry.’

  ‘No one’s that strong. Nobody could be. It isn’t meant.’

  She set down the mug of cider. The shadows lay like fingers over the room, but Potter’s white hair and shirt and the bones of his folded knuckles shone.

  ‘Tell me everything, everything that happened. I want to know now.’

  ‘It’s time?’

  ‘I’ve got to know, everything, all the things I can’t imagine, all the things I wouldn’t let anyone tell me before. I’ve got to know now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But there was a long silence before he began and she saw his face, and his eyes were far away, looking into the past, she saw how that day had changed him. The dog lay, heavy as stone.

  ‘It was a good day, that. It was fine, clear. I remember looking out, first thing, letting out the dog, and seeing it was going to be a fine day.’

  Yes, she thought, as though it had been spring come early. A good day.

  ‘We’d worked down through the slope, clearing out the undergrowth until after dinner. I was with him all the morning, and young Colt up behind us, on his own. Just a day like any other.’

  ‘Did he talk to you? What did he talk about?’

  ‘Not much. He never said much. I worked with him since he was fourteen, we knew each other. But he’d never say a lot.’

  ‘Sometimes he said – oh, strange things.’

  ‘Yes. That day … he’d often be silent for an hour and then say something you’d not be able to forget. And he never missed anything, he saw whatever went on around.’

  ‘That day?’

  ‘He said – “It’s a good life. I’ve got a good life.”’

  He bent down and stroked the dog anxiously. Ruth was quite silent. ‘A good life.’

  ‘I’d stayed further back, then, up the slope out of sight, and he was down in Helm Bottom. I’d told him to look and see what we could mark out for felling. Rydal was wanting a couple of trees down, big ones, he’d an order for a ton of logs. And there was still a lot of clearing and thinning out to do. It was warm, that day. In the sun. I don’t know what I was thinking of. Nothing, I daresay, nothing special. Only enjoying it – I’ve always been a man who’s enjoyed his work. And the good weather.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘There was never a sound – nothing, not any warning at all. I’d have known, heard it, and so would he. You get used to what every sound means, and you can tell if a tree’s bad and ready to fall, months before. You can see it. Elms – if an elm’s rotten the crows don’t nest in it. A couple of years ago, on the edge of Great New Common, that row of elms – the crows always nested there, right up high, and then, that time, they left two trees alone. Two, in the centre of that row. It was Ben who saw that, and they were rotten. We had them down. They know, the crows, something tells them. But this one – I’d not seen it, and nor had he. I should have seen it. Rydal didn’t think so, he said nothing could have told us. But I should have seen it, after all these years. If I’d looked well enough, I’d have known.’

  ‘Why did it fall just then? Why?’

  ‘The roots spread out underground. When you start on a tree, start up with the axe or the saw, there’s a movement and it disturbs everything. And there’d been the gales a few weeks before. But this one – it’d been weakening, anything might have set it off, and the chances were no one would have been near. I shan’t ever know what happened, not for certain. I’d heard the axe strike. There’s a rhythm to it, everyone has his own. You work to a rhythm. I’d gone further away, up the slope, and there was the noise – just the first sound of strain, but I’d scarcely thought what it was, and the next thing, the sky was falling in, you know, all the weight of a tree crashing down, hitting against others. Crashing down.’

  He wiped sweat off his forehead with one finger, and Ruth knew that he was hearing it all over again inside his head, and heard it with him. She knew the noise of a falling tree.

  ‘That was it – but I couldn’t seem to move, it was like being struck myself, as though my legs had … I don’t know how long, I don’t know – it can’t have been long. He’d not shouted out, or else I’d never heard him. It went quiet. Quiet. I was standing stock still in the sun and I didn’t need to go down, to look – I felt it happen. It went through me. I felt it. Felt him die. I knew.’

  He made a gesture of helplessness, trying to make her understand and believe, and she wanted to tell him that she did, for she had known, too, though she had not been anywhere near. In the garden she was overwhelmed by that knowledge and dread, at the moment of Ben’s dying.

  ‘I went down, I ran down, and saw it, saw the tree – where it had broken off, snapped. It was rotten through the centre, though the bark looked fresh enough. I should have seen it, I should have known. Months before.’

  ‘No,’ Ruth said. ‘No.’ But he seemed not to hear her.

  He said, ‘It was like summer in that clearing. Warm as summer.’

  He stopped. The dog turned and stretched its legs.

  ‘Tell me,’ Ruth said, ‘you must tell me.’

  ‘He was under it, the tree, it had hit him across the back and pinned him down, it was right below his shoulders. He was lying on his face underneath it. He had his arms out. I didn’t have to touch him … I didn’t need to.’

  ‘What did you think? Looking at it, at him? What did you think?’

  ‘I thought…’

  How could he tell her? For he did not know himself, could not truly describe the silence that had fallen over the whole wood and the way every corner of the air had been seething with the awareness of this sudden death.

  ‘We got it off him – I don’t know – somehow. Young Colt had heard, he came running down, and we got it off him between us, dragged it away. But then he was shaken, sick – he’s a boy, he’d never seen anything like that, he couldn’t … I knelt down and turned him over. Laid him on his back. I knew, but I had to look, that was only right, I had to be sure, and send for help, even then, in case. Just in case. But I knew.’

  ‘What …’ Ruth picked up the mug of cider and tried to drink from it but her hands were shaking and she had to set it down again.

  ‘Tell me what he looked like, how he was. Tell me that.’

  ‘It had crushed him – crushed his ribs in, and his chest bone.’

  ‘And his head? His face?’

  ‘No. No, only a graze. He’d fallen on to leaves, there was only a bit of a graze on his forehead. Nothing. His eyes were open. I shut his eyes. No, it w
as just in his chest like … like something …’

  He clenched his fist tightly.

  ‘And he’d started to bleed, there was blood coming through his shirt and jersey, just coming through. But not his face. Nothing else.’

  Ruth closed her eyes and saw Ben lying there, his rib cage and breast bone smashed down into heart and lungs, pressing through the flesh and skin. But not his face, she thought, not his face, or his hands or arms or legs. Nothing else.

  ‘I sent him off – Colt … off down to the road. Dent was there somewhere, hedging, and then they met Carter, they went off for the doctor … for the others.’

  ‘But you stayed.’

  ‘I sat by him. Just sat on the ground. On my own with him. It… I’ve never known it like that. I’ve never been with death before, seen it come over a man and take him. I’ve been with it often enough. But I’ve never felt the same.’

  ‘What? Oh, what?’

  ‘What was true,’ he said slowly, ‘what was true about it, once and for good. I couldn’t doubt the truth, after that. After sitting there with him in the wood. Touching him. It was death and – and life. I’d never doubt that now. Never. It was inside me and all around. And him. A change … some great change.’

  He moved restlessly in his chair. The dog growled through its sleep.

  ‘I can’t tell you how it was. I can’t make you know it.’

  ‘But I did know. It doesn’t matter what’s happened since, what I’ve thought – I’ve gone over and over it and every day it’s been different and I haven’t believed it. I haven’t believed in God or … But I knew it that day. I can’t pretend I didn’t know.’