Full Circle

In gardens all over the town people raked up gold and brown leaves into great piles and the evening air was filled with the soft sweet smoke of autumn bonfires. Birds tired from a summer raising children huddled in the branches and waited for winter.

And as it had done since the beginning of time, winter followed autumn and the days grew short and cold. The sun stayed low in the sky, its light weak and tired and it gave out so little heat that the heavy frost lay undisturbed from dawn to dusk. Every twig, every blade of grass, was held in suspended animation and an intense cold crept into every corner.

As the winter sank deeper into the earth so the animals that lived in its heart dug down below it. Some animals had flown away to warmer lands while those that were left did the best they could to survive. Some curled up in their beds and slept. Others sat it out and waited for spring.

Soon winter passed and the air was crowded with anticipation. Sleepers awoke, plants began to move and in the late spring it began to rain, not the destroying rain of winter but a hesitant rain that carried the promise of summer. A delicate uncertain rain fell in tiny drops, so small that you could barely see them. They hovered in the air like wet smoke, drifting down from clouds that were so thin the sun shone through them lighting everything with a dreamlike sparkle. The new grass twinkled as if every blade was made of glass and anyone who walked on it would break it. The children sat in the house, their chins resting in their hands, and stared out at the garden.

By the open French windows the children’s grandfather, back from a life at sea, sat on a kitchen chair and smoked his pipe. The day was so peaceful that even the bees buzzed silently. Everyone felt themselves being lulled to sleep.

Through the open window came the wonderful smell of soft new rain on warm grass. It was that lush smell that first comes to you in your childhood and sits quietly in the back of your brain until you die. And for the rest of your life, every time it returns, it brings with it the same magic drawn up from the roots of the earth. It is the same smell that our most ancient ancestors, long before they walked on two legs and were human, caught in the mosses and ferns of the primeval swamps. It goes back far longer than that and tells you so by the shiver it sends down your spine. Its caressing softness filtered into the children’s senses marking them forever, labelling them as two more specks in the palm of nature’s hand.

Sunshine replaced the rain and the swallows came back from Africa. In great sweeping waves they flew across Spain and north over France. They swept across the sea and spread out along the south coast of England on the journey back to their old homes. As they moved northwards they split up into smaller and smaller groups. Last year’s children followed their parents back to the nests where they had been born. Under bridges, in dark caves, in the roofs of barns and houses, wherever they had grown up, they made their new homes. They swooped low over water shaking off the last of the desert dust they had carried all the way from Africa.

Many years before, the old grandfather’s sister had lived in the house with her old dog. When the dog had died she had moved away to live by the sea and for many years the house had stood sad and empty. Like the hibernating animals waiting for summer, so the house had waited for life to return to its rooms. Only Ethel, the old chicken, had been left behind. Only she had still been there when the old lady’s nephew had brought his family to live in the house. Now Ethel was gone too but life never sleeps and Ethel’s children still scratched and fussed about the garden. The old dog was buried beneath his favourite tree and on hot summer days, that was where Rosie took shelter from the midday sun.

The years passed, the grandfather went to live by the sea and the children grew up and moved away. Rosie’s beard turned from brown to grey and Ethel’s children had children of their own.

And through it all, the old house and its wild and wonderful garden grew older and older and as each year passed and each new coat of paint was added, generation after generation of children and animals made the house called fourteen their home.