High up in the hills, in an out-of-the-way place near the old, grey outfield fence, where the green summer land ends, there stood some weather-beaten dwarf willows in the midst of a motley array of wild grass and big, juicy sorrel. You could lie here out of sight and all on your own and as it were outside everything.
You used to lie in the grass here and long for Merrit when she was away.
It was not often she was away, usually only a few hours a day, but once for several days on end, for her mother had been taken ill and so she had to “look after the house”.
The memory of the infinite length of these days and the sense of longing is still in your mind like a deep sense of loss, and your inner ear can still hear the wind whispering in the grass and leaves of the Willow Grove – a sound that like the melodic minor scale bears a quiet complaint within it, but also something else, something joyful beyond comprehension: the first enormous, uncontainable, restless joy of falling in love for the first time – the feeling that no word can express, but for which music has always been able to find a happy expression in its wordless outpourings.