Free Air and Angels by Susan Hill Page B

rough. There was a boat by itself, floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock …
    When we were in the woods beyond Goldbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that theLake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones around and about them; some rested their heads uponthese stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up, but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity,and unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The Bays were stormy and we heard the waves at different distances and in the middle of the water, like the sea.
    Miss Hartshorn falls silent, and for a long time they sit together, and the vision of the daffodils, the landscape of the Lakeside, of all England, lies between them, and they are speechless in contemplation ofit.
    And India stretches away all around, irrelevant, disregarded.
    Kitty has a sudden picture of herself in a railway train, flashing across England, through the wet, green, flat fields that run towards the coast, sees her own feet sticking out in front of her, beneath a blue serge coat. Sees her shoes, black-buttoned, with a scuff on each toe. Sees the very marks on the floor of the carriage.

    The volume of Wordsworth’s poems is open on the wicker table. Miss Hartshorn looks down. Will say ‘And then, of course, there is the poem itself. Her brother’s poem. But that came later, that was not written until 1804.’
    And she will take it up and read it aloud. (She reads rather well.)
    But not yet. Now, they are still too much in the midst of it all. They sit on.
    ‘Oh, I want to go there,to be there, to see for myself. To walk beside the Lake, climb the crag, stand in the rain, feel the cold wind on my face. To read more, read the others. To see their graves. I want it all so much.’
    Kitty’s head is a confusion of disconnected fragments. Names. Places. Hopes. Dreams.
    But she says nothing.
    From the house, a burst of singing, half-chant, half-melody.
    Silence.
    Eyes closed, Kittyrecites.
    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
    When all at once, I saw a crowd,
    A host of golden daffodils …
    (For she has memorised it long ago.)
    Hearing her, Miss Hartshorn weeps.
    Eleanor sits opposite the young woman whose child has died of cholera, the previous day. The fan goes round and round, round and round in the ceiling, and the room is rather dark.

    The first few, formal murmurs having been made, there is nothing at all that she can think of to say.
    But the mother talks.
    ‘He seemed perfectly well . Nothing was wrong. When he went to bed he was … normal. Oh, and I have been so careful, ever since he was born … stood over the servants … had everything boiled … made sure that the food … but someone has been careless … I can’t … I have beenso strict with them. About … things for the baby … everything. I don’t think they like me, but they know … I ordered them … Herbert ordered them … and he was never allowed to drink the milk in any other house … we carried our own … he … the ayah knew .’
    Her voice went on like a slow-flowing river, monotonous and repetitious, over stones.
    Flick-flick, flick-flick, flick-flick went the fan, aroundand around.
    There were swathes of faded and patched English chintz and cretonne covering the Indian chairs, and water-colours and oil