For a Rainy Afternoon by RJ Scott

Author:RJ Scott [Scott, RJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2015-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

THE RED Lion is one of those beautiful English pubs that was once a coaching inn. Built in the sixteenth century, it was older than Apple Tree Cottage. The inside was tiny, more a bar with lots of small rooms down dark, narrow passages. I loved it here. There weren’t a lot of people inside, and we ordered food and carried beers through the pub and out into the back garden. Because this side of the village was on the hill, the views were stunning, add in the balmy late September evening and suddenly this was a place for romance.

Jason stood for a moment, simply staring out at the expanse of country before him, the greens meeting the sky in an undulating patchwork lined by hedges and dotted with distant houses.

“This is England,” he muttered profoundly before striding around the tables and grabbing me by the hand to drag me toward the gate that led to the field behind the house. “What do you see?” he asked quickly.

My hand in his had shorted a few circuits, and the intense, preacher-like focus of his gaze was doing a number on my head.

“What?”

“In your words. You live here, tell me what you see.”

“Marchant’s farm,” I replied, pointing at the nearest farmhouse four fields away. “They own everything you can see up to that red building, which is a private school. The school own everything to the west of here. Uhmmm.” I wracked my brains for something profound to say because he looked like he expected me to say something poetic and utterly perfect. I was doomed. I saw everything in color, so if he wanted history, then I was really fucked. “I can see the train line, or what’s left of it. See the rows of bushes? That is the abandoned line that used to run through Burton Hartshorn.”

“I get that,” Jason said. “But what do you see?” He glanced across at me and squeezed my hand. “What would Maggie have seen?”

“Green. A lot of green, umber mixed with white, cadmium green in the firs, and the sky, it meets the land on the horizon and there is a haze of mauve, and the sky itself is a beautiful azure today.” The words just tumbled out of me, and I felt impassioned by the end of it.

“There. That’s it. I wanted to know through an artist’s eyes.”

I did my usual self-deprecating thing in which I belittled myself and let my lack of self-esteem trickle through. “I’m not an artist.”

“You are so wrong. When I write England, I don’t have your vision. I can write the characters, but the place itself, it’s so different from where I live.”

He released my hand, and together we wandered back to the wooden bench where our beers were. It took until I got back there to get over the disappointment that he had stopped with the holding hands part. How shallow was that, he was getting serious and having an epiphany over his writing and all

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.