Before All Else by Fiona Holland

Author:Fiona Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SilverWood Books
Published: 2016-07-26T09:29:08+00:00

11

Ned

By four thirty, the rain starts to fall in earnest. The fat splots that earlier fell percussively on the steel barrows and turned the piles of pebbles into ore, give way to sharper, more spiteful points of rain.

The field is now empty save for a few scuds of litter. The grass will quickly grow back over the bare patches where molehills were flattened and squirrel diggings and rabbit and rodent holes were filled in. The brutal flaying of the overgrown hedges will soon temper in colour. The ash from the still-smouldering bonfires will lift into the air and blow away in due course.

It is doubtful the Sunday Supremoes would ever call upon his services, all being of the ‘Well How Hard Can It Be?’ school of tricky undertakings. It is possible one or two Doughty Ladies might call him at some time but, to a woman, they all seemed eminently practical and capable, reducing their gardens down to a few herb pots and the odd hanging arrangement once the putative male of the house had shuffled off in his carpet slippers to the greater golf course/betting shop/bird hide in the sky.

The paths are neat and clearly marked, the widest one linking the gate to the rise in the bottom left corner of the now open field, with lesser paths branching off towards the river bank or continuing to a dead end in the hawthorn hedge. Maybe, at one time, there had been a bridge across Black Brook linking this field to Abbeyclere, the former religious house, now just a vast mound hunkering under agricultural land otherwise stretched flat and taut as far as Ned’s eye can see, the tumble of stone blocks softened by centuries’ accumulations of turf.

Several crows lift themselves into the freshening air from the copse in the next field. Alders and willows follow the river as it meanders off towards the low horizon. A line of poplar trees stands sentry against the sky. He’d heard the village legend that the trees were an unclaimed dowry, the bride-to-be preferring to hang herself than marry her prospective husband.

Ned drives out onto the road and jumps down to drag the warped and misshapen gate into place, securing it behind him. All in all, not a bad day.

Marcus

Walking back from the Town Field through the village, Marcus feels slightly harried after a day of working in the open, as if the cascade of roofs, the small unseeing windows, the miscellany of doors are a jostling crowd pushing into him; as if the houses, the workshops, the garretts, like the people who occupied this village over generations, are clamouring for his attention.

He passes the wide, generous door to Cecily’s house. A bare light bulb is visible in the half-moon glass. He wonders if one day he could just knock.

What would he say? Would he ask if she can hear the voices too? The shouts of the warriors, the well-drivers, shoemakers, tailors, saddlers, grocers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, corn millers, farmers, ministers, publicans, glovers,

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