It is, in a way, a kind of solution

Posted 2nd July, 2004.

Yesterday I had a day’s holiday and got up at 9. My brother was rushing about and eventually went off to an appointment in the town. Alone in the house, I sat at the dining table drinking a cup of tea and looking out of the window, and thinking how pleasant it was to just sit there doing nothing. The dining room looks out into main part of the garden, and I thought how perfect the scene looked, the lawn clipped and green, the flower beds filled with subtle colours, the chestnut trees casting shadows that moved with the wind and deepened with the sun as it grew higher in the sky.

One year ago I had thought that nothing could save the gardens and that they would be too much for us - that everything needed to be simplified and made more manageable. In the event, we have kept things exactly as they were, despite the cost of maintenance (it costs about thirty pounds per week) and the (let’s face it) very old-fashioned planting programme of flowers and shrubs, arranged in lawns, pathways and banks of vegetation. The only mar is the hedges, as we still can’t find someone to cut them. It would be impossible (well, not impossible, but certainly difficult) to cut them ourselves.

My brother usually walks the dog, but he was in such a hurry this morning that I said I would do it. I took the dog along the lane (“our” lane as I think of it, although anyone can drive up it). Once we were away from the shelter of the chestnut trees we were gently buffeted by the mild wind that was blowing and warmed by the high sun. There are hardly any trees in the landscape, apart from the ones around the house, and one can see for miles in all directions, hardly any houses interfering with the views.

The dog and I ambled along for about twenty minutes until we reached the end of the lane, where it joins the road. There was hardly any traffic on the road, just an occasional passing car, but I decided we wouldn’t walk any further. It was a sort of primeval feeling I had, that one shouldn’t go beyond the safe boundaries.

So the dog and I turned back (not without some reluctance on the dog’s part), and as we retraced our steps I saw the house, and the chestnut trees, and the tower of the old parish church at the opposite end of the lane (again, surrounded by chestnut trees), and I thought… one year since my brother and I went into mourning.

A year is excessive (so everybody says) for mourning these days. And yet, at the conclusion of that year, it seems easier to just go on with another year of mourning. It is, in a way, a kind of solution. It helps us avoid the question: what do we do now?