Wooden Shepherdess, The by Hughes Richard

Author:Hughes, Richard [Hughes, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Modern Classics, Novel
ISBN: 9781590175323
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 1973-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

26

But Hitler, Strasser—how could these distant rivalries ever matter to Coventry?

Here the picnicking season had really come at last. If you passed those allotments and followed the Quinton Road for a mile or two you came to the line of poplars which guarded Quinton Pool; and there began those seven Elysian Fields collectively called “The Chesils”: a tinkling stream, and a sheep-dip—and wonder of wonders, a donkey with cloven hooves! A spring where watercress grew for the picking; and even cowslips (rare in the arable county of Warwick, because they need permanent pasture and cannot survive the plough). Where it was dry there were harebells and lady’s-slipper and scabious: where it was damp forget-me-not grew. There were trees to climb, and bushes for hide-and-seek: later on there’d be hazel-nuts—even walnuts, and prickly Spanish chestnuts.

The Chesils of course were a favorite haunt of Norah’s horde; but even here there was just one field where none of them ever went, though there too sheets of pale pink lady’s-smock painted the meadow (as Warwickshire Shakespeare says) “with delight.” This was that seventh field down Baginton way where Quinton Stream runs into the Sowe; and they shunned it for fear of a certain and horrible death. For where all those tempting king-cups and bullrushes grew it was bottomless bog, and each generation of children had scared the pants off the next with tales how that bog could catch you and swallow you down if you even peeped at it through the hedge.

By now it was tulip-time at Mellton: moreover Mary’s chair had arrived (a metal contraption which moved on pneumatic wheels, with hidden padded supports for her body and in-conspicuous straps), so Mary too could be taken out in the open air. Twice the great occasion had been postponed because of a fill-dyke deluge of rain which seemed more winter than spring; but then at last came a day when the sun was shining into her downstairs room and everything sparkled. The chair was brought to her bedside, and Nurse and Gilbert together lifted her in.

But Mary had lain in her bed so long that the limited scene in front of her eyes had flattened itself in her sight like a painted scene in a picture, that same two-dimensional world one supposes the sea-anemone sees staying fixed to his rock; and even the changed perspectives effected by moving her just this foot or two were enough to make the familiar scene unreally three-dimensional suddenly, wholly ominous.... Once they began to wheel her moreover those new-found solids began to move, and all these restlessly-wheeling objects around her made her so giddy she longed to ask them to stop. She’d have asked them to put her back in her bed and to leave her there for good if she hadn’t felt too ashamed; and worse was to come, for as Mary was wheeled from the room altogether doors hurtled towards her widening just in time to swallow her up (unable even to turn her head in its padded iron collar).

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