The Girl Green as Elderflower by Randolph Stow Page B

girl, Lucy. She says you’re much better, whatever she meant by that.’
    ‘Yes, I am,’ Clare said. ‘So you must know any news I have.’
    ‘Not from you,’ Perry said. ‘You’ll be at the station, then, on Saturday? I think I remember that station. Stuck out in the fields, with no reason you can see for being there.’
    ‘That’s the one,’ Clare said, and hung fire, wondering how to keep up a conversation with a man he had not seen since their teens. ‘Well, Matt.’
    ‘Well, Clare,’ Perry said, ‘I won’t hold you up. But what is it like where you are?’
    ‘Through the window, from where I’m standing,’ Clare said, ‘I can see a mass of lilacs, not in flower yet. On the lawn, as you might call it, there’s an infant rabbit nibbling. There’s also, usually, a magnificent cock-pheasant strutting about, and a stoat of a very tender age which seems to want someone to play with it. The birds never let up from first light, but what seems to fill the house is the noise of wood-pigeons. If I held the receiver away you could probably hear them. “Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods”—remember?’
    ‘Oh God, yes. Old Pickers and his country pieties. He’d be proud of you. Well, Clare, I did say I wouldn’t keep you.’
    ‘On Saturday, then,’ Clare said. ‘Matt—I’m very glad you rang.’
    ‘So am I,’ said Perry. ‘It’s been æons, C.C. In case you’ve forgotten me, I’ll be wearing the
Financial Times.
Till then.’
    Putting down the receiver, Clare stood watching the little rabbit in the new grass and the weeds. A jay, with a flash of blue from its wing, swooped threatening near, and the bundle of fur threw itself up in fright, then vanished into the lilac hedge.
    When he had washed and breakfasted, Clare went out into the pigeon-moaning garden. In its rough meadow-grass daffodils were beginning to fade, and a few tulips were fiercely agape. The one part of it which he tended was crammed with wallflowers, and their scent came almost violently to his reformed smoker’s nose.
    A tractor came racketing down the hill on the road leading to the farmhouse, and John waved and bawled: ‘How do.’ The farm’s Alsatian was loping beside, but with a change of interest made off to see Clare, leaping the gate which was closed against ponies. Clare bent to pat the hard body squirming against his legs, and said as his face was flannelled with a tongue: ‘Dead soppy, aren’t you?’
    With the big dog prancing ahead, he crossed the stream and took the farm track towards the marsh, between the green-misted wood and a hedgerow frosted with blackthorn flowers. At the edge of the wood, leaning out over the green road, a tall wild cherry caught the breath with its drifts of white bloom. He stood and stared up at it, the sight of its smooth limbs like a tactile pleasure, while now and again a papery flower fluttered down.
    There was a crash in the hedgerow, and turning, he saw among primroses the Alsatian’s rear-end, violently absorbed. Then the dog bounded back, and he caught a glimpse of crimson, a flash of metallic viridian from the neck-feathers of the pheasant. Before he could think, the bird was crunched down, bolted, gone. Only a wing remained, hanging hideously from the dog’s jaws.
    ‘Oh, you horror,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, you shuck-dog, you.’
    He was afraid that the dog would choke, and moved to help her. But she gulped a few times, and the wing with its coarse feathers disappeared. She stood for a while with an air of thoughtfulness, then ambled off preoccupied towards her home.
    Clare walked on to the marsh, where the dank green was yellow-starred with celandine, white-starred with stitchwort, and where catkins hung from the willows. It had been his own cock-pheasant, he felt sure, the constant visitor which had marched so masterfully under his windows. What at one time would have sickened him he could now once more take with calm. It was the way of the green god.
    That