Everyman's England by Victor Canning

Rutland is an elusive county. One minute you are in it and the next – you are away in Leicestershire or Lincolnshire.
    I was soon lost again for I tried to take a short cut on the advice of the postmistress…
    When I found the cottage I was despairing of ever reaching Oakham at all. I wish all lost travellers such a happy ending to their wanderings as I found in that cottage.
    At my knock on the door it was opened by a large genial woman. She wore a blue-and-white print overall, and her hair was piled on her head in an old-fashioned bun and her face was obviously the face of a woman who loved children, animals and anything which had strayed. I came into the last category and, almost before I had finished explaining that I was lost, that I was thirsty, and that I wanted to get to Oakham, she had taken me in hand.
    I was conducted through a low room, full of plush-framed pictures and photographs, with a mantelshelf burdened by a vase of imitation chenille flowers, to a kitchen that smelt of cleanliness, and soon I was washing myself under a tap.
    â€˜Freshen yourself up there, my dear,’ she said and disappeared. It was a hot spring day and I needed that wash. And afterwards I sat in the wooden porch-way, with the sun cutting slants of golden-moted light across the shadows and slaked my thirst; but not with draughts of well-water, or the proverbial glass of milk fresh from the cow, or even the herby homemade beer which the cottagers of the Peak district love to force upon one. No, Rutland is a homely English county and I was given tea, and I wanted nothing else. Whilst I drank and smoked my pipe and tried to stop one of a horde of black kittens from drowning itself in my cup, the good lady told me about her life and her garden.
    â€˜It’s lonely here at times,’ she said, ‘for the master’s away most of the day. I find me company in the animals and the garden, though.’ As she spoke she relieved me of the kitten which was about to make another attempt in my cup. The ‘master’ was her husband, who was a hedger and ditcher.
    â€˜You like animals?’ I asked.
    She nodded. ‘They take the place of children with me. There’s the pigeons, the kittens – I don’t know where the old lady is. She’s away mousing in the barns very likely. And Sarah, our bitch that is, she’s away today with the master. She’s due for her pups soon. It keeps a house lively to have young things around –’
    To have young things around – I wondered what sorrow lay behind her words.
    â€˜Then there’s always the garden,’ she went on. ‘Master does the kitchen garden at the back when he comes home and I look after the flowers. You should come and see the garden in the summer. It’s a real picture. That’s the one thing I want to go to London for. I suppose you’ve been to Kew Gardens many a time?’
    I nodded.
    â€˜They say it’s a rare sight. Maybe if I went and saw it I should feel dissatisfied with our little plot here.’
    I thought of Kew and wondered if she would feel dissatisfied, and I was afraid she might for a while, though I doubt whether Kew could ever mean as much to anyone as her garden meant to her.
    It was while I sat there, resting and enjoying the sunshine, that I realised for the first time that spring had really come. She always comes with a burst, and there is a moment when we open our eyes and acknowledge her presence with a cry of surprise. And at that moment in the porch-way spring came to Rutland.
    Not far away a dark-coloured stream rushed by in spate, the green flags dipping and bowing in the current. Over the water hung a tall willow, the light through its young leaves turning it into a waving wonder. Everywhere the leaves were bursting their bud cases; blackthorn, sycamore and hazel were all alive again and hiding the dark tracery of their boughs with the brightness of their foliage. Only the beech and