Saddle the Wind by Jess Foley

Author:Jess Foley [Foley, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sagas, Fiction
ISBN: 9781446429754
Google: aEUK5zoPtH4C
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The days, the weeks went by. Summer mellowed and the harvests were brought in. In the hedgerows hazelnuts, elderberries and blackberries ripened, while on the heath the bracken grew shoulder high. At the cottage when Sarah recovered sufficiently to leave her bed the old couch was brought into the kitchen and she spent the greater part of her days there in the company of Blanche.

Towards the end of August Marianne returned, suntanned and radiant after her summer in Palermo and Messina. At the cottage in Hummock Lane she visited Sarah and Blanche and sat in the small kitchen telling of her experiences. And so many times in her narrative Gentry’s name came up, and Blanche could see – who could have missed it? – how much in love she was. Blanche did not want to hear about Gentry, though, did not want to hear about all the wonderful times they had had together, and looking at Marianne as they sat opposite one another, she reflected on how much everything had changed. It was as if her own life had come to a stop, while Marianne’s was suddenly beginning. Her own life had come full circle; now she was back with her mother – where she had begun. Where, she said to herself, she belonged.

A little later she walked with Marianne from the cottage to the front gate. There Marianne turned to her and took her hand. ‘Let us know if there’s anything you want, anything we can do,’ she said.

‘I will.’ She would not, though, Blanche knew. She could never now go to them at Hallowford House, asking for their charity. She had taken enough during her life, and now she had come to a turning point, and she would ask for nothing more.

Back in the kitchen she spent some time manipulating her mother’s left leg and left arm. It was a regular twice-daily routine, when for a period Blanche would try to encourage a greater degree of life into Sarah’s sluggish limbs. It was a slow business, though, but even so, it had shown results, and Dr Kelsey had admitted himself surprised at the extra mobility which Sarah had gained over the weeks since her attack. She could walk now – albeit with an ungainly swinging of her left leg – but even her gait was improving. Now when Blanche had finished helping her mother with the day’s exercises Sarah took a child’s rubber ball in her left hand and sat trying to squeeze it in her grasp – another means of trying to coax additional life into her wasted muscles.

As Blanche worked in the kitchen she looked at Sarah manipulating the rubber ball and reflected how much a part of their routine it now was. And her own life had settled into a routine, she said to herself – up in the morning to get Ernest’s breakfast and then help her mother to wash and dress. That done she would start on the chores around the cottage – the cooking, the cleaning.

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