How she rose to meet the never-ending dances swept across her lino floor! In their cottage, never locked until warm milk brought bed-time, music lit the evenings. And how the piano longed. Sometimes fine county waltzes, other times a reel, laughter and boots buffed brighter than gold filling the village hall.
Insistent flutes speak to her, she’s sixteen,walking home her favourite way up Scratton, sunlight playing tag across the hillside. The same hills where later moonbeams may spool lovers’ dreams.
Colours with no names drip from velvet strings, with the murmur of distant seas, islands of flowers. Bluebells and cowslips all year round. How she misses her bluebells. Hours she sat spellbound. Her useless right-hand would twitch now and then, re-calling how it shaped a melody.
Music leaps into a clear sky, stretches hills to peaks, sets lambs cavorting. Many she’s reared, slow ‘uns and spry, never misses a smile at their frolicks. Poor things, eyes that shine like corn so soon to be cut. Childers’ tunes chase a merry-go-round and here’s the brass, lagging as ever, big now and full, strong and proud. Martial. She glances at pictures either side her mantelpiece. Sentinel.
Drums hush. A hawk, no, a lark breasts the air. Holds. Gathers. Rises strong, rises true. A song so pure it would steal the soul of you. Past the chair, bought ten years after her wedding ring, as good as new, the procession ends and begins.
Lit by bluebells, still ends and begins.
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