Free The All of It: A Novel by Jeannette Haien Page B

us—”
    “The way it nests in its own glen, would it have been?”
    “That. And the slopes behind. And the sea so close, of course. But…it was more the feel of the place, ruined even as it was”—she brought her brows together—“that in its time, it’d been a glad thing—”
    “And could be again,” he put in.
    “Aye! That’s what we said when we finally did speak, that while it was sad it’d been allowed to go so far to pieces, still, there wasn’t a hint ofanything unnatural about it, of a haunt or the like, you know, and how, if it was fixed up and cared for, it could be ever so wonderful again.”
    “Did you go into the yard then and there, or did you come back to it at a later time?”
    “Oh, then and there! You couldn’t have kept us from looking the place over.” She drew her hand through the air. “We found the thinnest spot in the raspberry tangles…. The yard, though, it was but one stone-heap after another—them, and old hay-mounds beaten down by the weather, and knots of vetch and thistles…. The door was screened over with bolted roses, but of course, the windows being out, we just stuck our heads through the frames for a peek inside. As I said, the thatch was on the floor in places, but from one of the window-openings there was a clear view of the hearth, and that set my heart to beating faster….” She leaned forward. Her eyes came together in slits: “That image, Father, I’d had of the blue tea-cloth spread on a table? Well, you’ll not believe it, but for me, it was there…. It, and a lit fire. Not the rubble and mess, but order , the truth, you know, of the way it could be.” She spoke the last words deeply, like a proven sibyl.
    He nodded vigorously. Truly, she was marvellous. “Keep on,” he urged.
    “Well, it wasn’t till we went full around to the back of the house that we took in the cattle-fold….We’d seen a hint of the roof of it from the front, it’s slate you know, but the fold itself doesn’t really show from there, so we weren’t prepared for the full wonder of it.”
    “It ’tis a fine one. Unique of its kind,” he affirmed.
    She beamed. “That’s the word for it, Father! Unique . And it’s a fact that just as perfect as it is now, it was then—the walls stout, laid solid, and every stone of it dry as a bone…. Kevin let out a whistle over it, it charged him so. He said it was built to last a thousand years…. The door of it was opened in all the way, and we figured a gale’d blown it so a long while back as the hinges’d rusted to a point where there was no swing left in it…. Kevin ventured to walk over the sill. Have you ever noticed the sill, Father?”
    “Noticed it and admired it, both. A prize beauty of a stone it is.”
    “Aye,” she nodded in dreamy satisfaction. “Well, as I was saying, Kevin stepped over the sill and called to me over his shoulder, ‘Will you look at this,’ awe-struck like. I didn’t know what to expect, good or bad, so I stepped fast to him. Of course, the minute I was inside I wondered he was able to talk at all, the fineness of it, Father! The fittings ! Stalls and pens and hay-racks, even a saddletree, and turned holding-pegs set in the beams, and all along the far wall that lovely deep bench! There was a grand tinker’s lantern too, hung justinside the door. Birds’d built in it; a jackdaw, likely. They’ll take over anything, bold as they are.” Her brows came together again: “There were cobwebs thick as fish-nets between the beams, and daubers’ nests galore, and that smell bats let off that gives their presence away, and, well, all such-like as you get when a place hasn’t been used for a long time, but somehow all that seemed as nought…. To me, what ruled was the mindful way the place had been left…. You couldn’t, I mean, but see how dearly it’d been tidied and of feeling that whoever had had to leave it had suffered a regard for it that must have made the parting from it a