A Time for Silence by Thorne Moore

Author:Thorne Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 978-1-906784-64-5
Publisher: Honno Press
Published: 2016-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

16

Pallid streaks bar the sky above the mounting trees to the east and up there on the road there will already be enough light to tint the world with grey highlights, but even now in summer it will be hours before any light creeps down into this dell. The yard is pitch dark.

Hanging the oil lamp in its place on a rusty nail, Gwen starts on the milking, forcing her cold aching fingers to work. The cows low gently, softly, as if unwilling to disturb the silence that she brings to the task. Perhaps they are thankful she is alone.

She is alone.

Gwen takes a deep breath and shakes her head to clear away thoughts of despair. It is probably just the gloom of another damp dawn and she has neither time nor energy for such nonsense. Daylight will sweep it all away.

But such thoughts have been growing and the day will come, she feels with a shudder, when even the brightest sun will not dispel them. For weeks now she has been conscious that doom, indistinct and unspecified but somehow long awaited, has arrived, unfolding its black wings on the narrow valley. John has always been a driven man, but now he is driving himself to destruction. Something is terribly wrong, and he can no longer cope, some failure within has unhinged him. Every morning he rises at four, as he has always done, to work and slave and struggle until darkness descends. But now he does not work. He moves to do a job and his will seeps away. He stands inert in the fields, staring, at the clouds, the rain, the soil, the dripping woods, or maybe at none of them. Just staring. Sometimes he takes a billhook, but the hedges remain untended, roses, elder, honeysuckle daring to assert themselves. Sometimes he takes his shotgun, but the crows caw in mockery and the vermin slink by unmolested. The cows stop their lethargic grazing to watch, waiting warily for commands that don’t come. Jess runs with him, or round him, puzzled, a dog growing deranged for lack of employment, waiting for his word, but John barely seems to notice her.

In former times he would have been beside her here in the milking shed, directing her with a grunt and a gesture. Today, she is not even sure where he is. He has gone, striding off into the dark, shoulders hunched, as if to put space between himself and his family before the sun comes up.

Four cows to milk. Gwen straightens as she moves to the next, rubbing her aching joints. There were days when she had to drag the heavy-laden churns up to the top of the lane, stumbling along with Jack’s aid, for John will not have the cart used. Maybe Jack has been talking too much at Castell Mawr, but things have mercifully changed, at least on that front. Not a word said about it, but William sends Peter down every morning to collect the churns for her.

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