In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill Page A

one, any stranger. She could not register the truth of where she was and what it meant, it did not seem possible Ben here, Ben dead, and never able to speak or move or breathe again in this world. It was a nonsense.
    She knelt down on the grass. She said, ‘We went to the sea, Jo and I. To Hadwell Bay. And there was only the sand and the sky and the sunlight, we walked and walked . You should have been there. Why weren’t you there, why?’
    Silence pressed in upon her. The yew trees and the poplars were columns of stone.
    She thought, what has happened to him now, what does he look like, how has he changed? She did not know anything about the time it all took. And in a moment of terror and desire to rescue him, to free him from the prison of earth and the pale wooden box and bring him back to life, she scrabbled at the turf and tore it and a lump came away easily in her hand, for it was loosely laid, there had not been time for it to take root. She let it drop and her hands were mealy with the crumbs of soil.
    Then a picture came before her eyes of his body lying in that close darkness, straight and still, and of his flesh beginning to flake and fall away from the bones, his hair drying and going brittle and the blood caking inside his veins. She told herself, over and over again, what she knew when she was sane m her mind, she said, what is here is nothing, this is not Ben, this is an old coat, like a chrysalis, outgrown and of no more use, he is not here. Then where, where? For the flesh she had loved and the breath which had mingled with her own breathing, all she had been able to see and hear and touch of Ben, were under her feet, the same – and no longer the same, nothing.
    If she had been afraid of how the tree had injured his body, what was that? That was nothing to what the earth and the creatures and the juices of the earth were doing now, to how they would break down and utterly destroy him.
    Words, phrases reeled through her head, one detached itself and she spoke it aloud.
    ‘A time to be born and a time to die,’ and she believed that to be true. But if she had known when she first met Ben that his time to die would so soon come, she would have gone away from him at once, would never have taken the appalling risk of love.
    Would she?
    But she did not know, she knew nothing any more.
    She was beyond tears, and so she lay down on the mound of turf and rested, hoping, hoping, and the hours passed, the moon rose, and she was given nothing, no comfort, there was only the chill from the ground, a seeping moisture of earth and grass. She no longer blamed anyone, God or life, Ben or chance, the falling tree. It had happened, it had been necessary, the pattern was complete. But she cried out, ‘Please, please …’ without knowing for what she asked.
    If she could die, herself, here, now … But she could not.
    She stayed and the warmth and brightness of sun and sea, the peace of that day, belonged to some other life, long past.
    After that night, for weeks, she came here, to sit or lie beside the grave and her visits were noted, she was watched and the story spread through the village and out into the countryside, they talked about her. Predicted. Waited.

6
    ‘THE SEA? WHAT are you talking about? You’ve gone daft, boy. The sea?’
    Jo stood at the far end of the room. That night, they had been waiting up for him and in the end, he had had to give away his secret, because for some odd reason, his mother had demanded to know about his doings, though she had not noticed, until now, whether he existed or not.
    ‘You’re to tell me what you’ve been at.’
    ‘We went to the sea. On the train from Thefton. That’s all.’
    ‘She may be half-crazed but does she have to drag you down in it?’
    ‘Don’t talk about Ruth like that.’
    ‘That’s it, turn against me, you as well. All of you. It’s only what I’ve come to expect, though God knows why I should deserve it. I’ve tried, I’ve struggled on in