Winter and spring passed. The thorn-trees flowered on Greffington Edge:
dim white groves, magically still under the grey, glassy air.
May passed and June. The sleek waves of the hay-fields shone with the
brushing of the wind, ready for mowing.
The elder tree by the garden wall was a froth of greenish white on green.
At the turn of the schoolhouse lane the flowers began: wild geraniums and
rose campion, purple and blue and magenta, in a white spray of cow's
parsley: standing high against the stone walls, up and up the green lane.
Down there, where the two dales spread out at the bottom, a tiny Dutch
landscape. Flat pastures. Trees dotted about. A stiff row of trees at the
end. No sky behind them. Trees green on green, not green on blue. The
great flood of the sky dammed off by the hills.
She shut her eyes and saw the flat fields of Ilford, and the low line of
flying trees; a thin, watery mirage against the hill.
Since Mark died she had begun to dream about Ilford. She would struggle
and break through out of some dream about Morfe and find herself in Ley
Street, going to Five Elms. She would get past the corner and see the red
brick gable end. Sometimes, when she came up to the gate, the house would
turn into Greffington Hall. Sometimes it would stand firm with its three
rows of flat windows; she would go up the flagged path and see the sumach
tree growing by the pantry window; and when the door was opening she
would wake.
Sometimes the door stood open. She would go in. She would go up the
stairs and down the passages, trying to find the schoolroom. She would
know that Mark was in the schoolroom. But she could never find it. She
never saw Mark. The passages led through empty, grey-lit rooms to the
bottom of the kitchen stairs, and she would find a dead baby lying among
the boots and shoes in the cat's cupboard.
Autumn and winter passed. She was thirty-two.