Changes at Fairacre by Miss Read

Author:Miss Read [Read, Miss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0618154574
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1991-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Her face was transfixed with pleasure and wonder as she stood inside the sitting-room: 'It still smells the same. Isn't it strange how strongly smells evoke memories? Far more so than sight.'

She crossed to the window and looked across the little garden, now in sore need of attention I noticed guiltily, to the sweep of the downs beyond.

'And the view's exactly the same. What a relief!'

She sat down Suddenly, as though everything was too much for her.

'You know,' she said after a while, 'my friends in Caxley dissuaded me from going to visit a place near the town where we used to picnic as children. There seemed to be every wild flower imaginable there - cowslips, scabious, bee orchids and early purple orchids, and lots of that yellow ladies' slipper. They told me it has all gone. A new estate has been built there, and all the trees cut down "Cherish your memories," they said to me, and I'm sure they are right.'

She looked about the room.

'But this has changed so little, and I'm glad you've brought me. Can we see the rest?'

We wandered into the kitchen, and Mary ran her fingers over the old scrubbed kitchen table, ridged with years of service. She peered excitedly into the larder with its slate shelves, and the massive pottery bread crock on the brick floor.

'It's all as I remember it,' she said delightedly. 'Will you keep things as they are?'

'I shall do my best,' I assured her, as we mounted the stairs.

It was plain that work was in progress here, though not at the moment. Dust sheets draped the beds and the rest of the furniture which had been put into the middle of the rooms. Paint pots and brushes stood on newspaper on the window sills, and there was a smell of fresh paint.

Mary gazed out of the window. It did me good to see how much she relished her visit here after so many years, and I was glad that so little had changed for her. It was right, as her friends had said, 'to cherish her memories'. But how much better to find that some of those memories, at least, were still reality.

She was very quiet as we drove back from Beech Green to Fairacre and, I guessed, much moved by all she had seen. I was careful not to break the silence until we had stopped the car outside my home, when Mary seemed to return to this world with a cry of delight.

'But this is a lovely house!' She turned to me, looking perplexed. 'It is so much better than Aunt Dolly's! Can you bear to move away?'

I laughed, and led her into the house.

As we sipped our glasses of sherry, I explained that the school house was virtually a tied cottage, something that went with the job, and when I retired I should have had to have found another abode. That was why Dolly's wonderful legacy to me had been so deeply appreciated. Her house would be my haven in the future.

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