Free Sandlands by Rosy Thornton

to me again. I trust I may rely upon your discretion to make no trouble with my wife or daughters. If we meet henceforth, it must be in public and as befits a limited acquaintance; I think it unlikely that our paths should cross with any degree of frequency. I pray that God may save and keep you.
    So cold, so imperiously cold – at least until that closing benediction. And still not even the avowal of a signature, a name. She’d had the wrong idea, too, all this time, she realised. It was not his tin, but Annie’s: not he but Annie herself who had hidden the letters in the barn owl’s tree.
    Slowly, almost mechanically, she laid his letter back in the tin, and on top of it the cotton-shrouded archive of Annie’s outpoured love. Sitting back on her heels she raised her chin, looking up through the branches to the broken bough where the owl kept guard. She wanted to stand, to jump and shout and flap her arms. Stupid, shiftless, impotent bird! What purpose was there in seeing more than men could see – or more, at any rate, than blind, deluded women – if it did not lead to action? What good was all the watching and waiting, after all – as Annie had watched and waited, and for nothing?
    But she didn’t stand up. Instead, she tipped forward into a squatting position, and laced her hands across her stomach. There was an ache there, a dull clutch in her lower abdomen. Not the returning pain of cancer – not that, thank God, at least – but something like remembered menstrual cramps. And yet it was different: a rhythmic clenching, like something else remembered, a pain experienced just once, over forty years ago.
    Reaching once more into the hollow of the oak, Rebecca lifted out the box of letters and, as she did so, saw what lay there buried underneath. Clean, white and fragile, these were not the remains of some dead bird or mammal, an owl’s discarded prey. These were no bones tossed down at random, but placed with reverence, laid down to sleep with a mother’s loving care. And beside the tiny skull – so small, so very small – against its cheek, was the single feather of a barn owl.

Mad Maudlin
    I’m looking at a piano. That is, I’m looking at the video image of a piano, because I’m in the half-light of a rented bedroom at the back of a pub after closing and it’s just me and the laptop.
    Some time between 1954 and 1979, I notice, a new piano has appeared. The one in the earlier documentary clip has scrolled shoulders and is flanked by a pair of hinged brass candlesticks; I can make out the discolouration of the keys, even in grainy black-and-white. No surprise either, since back then everyone in the bar seems to have a roll-up attached to their bottom lip, the singers included. By the late seventies they’ve installed the piano that’s still there now, a functional modern upright in a satinwood case. The piano stool has survived the change. Its velvet seat and fanciful, fluted legs don’t match the angular new instrument, but there’s something admirable about their unconformity, like an old woman dressed defiantly in furs and silks to attend the Ritzy that’s now a multiplex. Everything else has survived, too, even down to the straw pack donkey which stands centre stage on the piano top, presumably a memento of some former landlord’s long-past holiday, its baskets the repositories of old ha’pennies, scoreboard chalk and a single featherless dart.
    Pubs, I’ve always thought, can be divided into two camps according to the stability of their decor. There are those that undergo a complete refit once or twice a decade, reinventing themselves from Haywain kitsch through ebony veneer and mirrors and back again in accordance with the latest fashion (or in spite of it) like the shifting political colours over some volatile town hall. Then there are others, the ones you’ll generally find me drinking in, where change is