Flowers from the garden, daisies from the bank, cowparsley, grasses, ferns, and leaves – they flowed in armfuls through the cottage door until its dim interior seemed entirely possessed by the world outside – a still green pool flooding with honeyed tides of summer. All day she trotted to and fro, flushed and garrulous, pouring flowers into every pot and jug she could find on the kitchen floor. Our Mother too was distracted from duty, seduced by the rich wilderness of the garden so long abandoned. Here was bounty the girls had never known before, and they darted squawking from bush to bush, clawing the fruit like sparrows.

The currants were at their prime, clusters of red, black, and yellow berries all tangled up with wild roses. The sisters spent the light of that first day stripping the fruit bushes in the garden. We were washed up in a new land, and began to spread out searching its springs and treasures. Chaos was come in cartloads of furniture, and I crawled the kitchen floor through forests of upturned chair-legs and crystal fields of glass. We were washed up in a new land, and began to spread out searching its springs and treasures.īut on that first day we were all lost. Come down ’ome and we’ll stuff you with currants.’Īnd Marjorie, the eldest, lifted me into her long brown hair, and ran me jogging down the path and through the steep rose-filled garden, and set me down on the cottage doorstep, which was our home, though I couldn’t believe it. ‘There, there, it’s all right, don’t you wail any more. They leaned over me – one, two, three – their mouths smeared with red currants and their hands dripping with juice.

Faces of rose, familiar, living huge shining faces hung up like shields between me and the sky faces with grins and white teeth (some broken) to be conjured up like genii with a howl, brushing off terror with their broad scoldings and affection. They came scrambling and calling up the steep rough bank, and parting the long grass found me. I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully.įrom this daylight nightmare I was awakened, as from many another, by the appearance of my sisters. I was lost and I did not expect to be found again. For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning.

For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans.įor the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans.

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee