The Scent of Water Read Free Page A

shadow of a dying way of life. The shadow was moving over the grass slowly, while the birds sang their cool ringing song in the trees at the bottom of the garden. Presently it would be gone. Then they would cut down the trees and build a nuclear power station there. You sentimental fool, she said to herself, but her hands were still over her face and she was wondering whether the wistaria still hung over the pillared way that led to the front door.
    Why did she take such a fancy to me? Why did she leave me her poor little bit of money, her house and all she had? I forgot her but she did not forget me, and she was what the world calls peculiar and I’m supposed to be eminently sensible. Yet her memory was better than mine. I thought she was old, that day, but she wasn’t much over forty. When I go back it will be the other way around, she will be young and I shall be old.
    She dropped her hands into her lap, straightened herself and sighed deeply, but more with relief than sadness. Somewhere, at some deep level, she had made a decision. Or it had been made for her. Yet she felt she had something to do with it, for it felt like an act of obedience. She was giving up her work and going to Appleshaw as soon as possible, to live there. It would mean losing her pension but with the small legacy from Cousin Mary, and her annuity, she would manage. She picked up her pen and wrote her letter to the lawyer, but it was not the letter she had meant to write. She asked him to send her the name and address of the village woman who had looked after her old cousin. She would, she said, ask this woman to keep the house in order for her until she came. She would come in the spring, in May, not to view it but to take possession. She stamped the letter, put it in her “out” basket, and turned once more to her work, this time with entire and successful concentration.

Chapter II
1
    B UT why didn’t I go down at once to see the place? she wondered, as she drove smoothly through the London traffic. She drove well. She was in all things capable, as in all things honest. She did not often ask questions of herself, for she was not introspective and there was not enough time, but when she did the answers were generally truthful. This one astonished her, though she knew it was the truth. She had been afraid. She, a courageous woman, had been afraid, and there had been several strands in the twist of her fear. She had been afraid that the Appleshaw she remembered no longer existed, and that she would not find again the old enchantment. Or that she would find the village unchanged but the house a ruin, and in despair sell it out of hand. Or that if she went there uncommitted she might, when she went home to London again, let herself be overborne by Catherine’s disapproval. Now, with her boats burned behind her, she was committed. But why is it so important that I live there? she asked herself. I’m a Londoner. I don’t know about country things. What will I do all day?
    But she couldn’t depress herself, and as she left London behind her, with her friends, her work, her interests and all that she loved, her spirits were actually rising. She had left home much later than she had meant to, and after a scrappy breakfast, and by the time she reached Westwater, a country town by the river which was the nearest shopping place of any size to Appleshaw, it was twelve-thirty and she was hungry. She drove slowly up the beautiful High Street, looking for the best place to eat. She chose an old half-timbered house called the White Swan, with a bay window of diamond-paned glass and the swan painted upon a swinging sign. She went in and sat at a table against a wall. There were as yet only a few people there and they were all by the window, women in from the country, doing their shopping. They seemed to know each other and they talked together, enjoying this weekly break from their home chores. One or two were well-dressed but most of them looked comfortably