Autumn Laing Read Online Free PDF Page A

terrible problem to be resolved before we can all move confidently to a full enjoyment of our lives. Saint Paul advised the Philippians to Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. But Dr Aiken hasn’t rejoiced. He has puzzled in the Lord. What he has missed is something vital, the key to happiness eluding him. His life has been without a companion. He has not seemed to wish for a woman by him. The manse a cold redbrick darkened by moaning cypresses, the shelves of his study closely inhabited by puzzling tracts to do with something he does yearn for, the Ultimate Truth and the Christian God—staples of his divine preoccupations. No touches of the floral, either in teacups or counterpanes, to lighten his days. And such a handsome man, his manner gracious, his hands fine and well shaped, noticeable when he bows his violin, and other features of nature’s approval gracing his gentle person. A match. But all for nothing, so it seems. His solitariness a puzzle to her mother. For the Presbyterian assembly does not bar its ministers from the sacrament of marriage. Even so …
    No, the floral counterpane is surely more exotic than that, Edith decides firmly and sets her cup in its saucer in the dulled stone of the sink, the sink’s crazed glaze the perfect hue of old bones, the fine lines possibly an antique script. Clink, the cup says sharply to its saucer and Edith looks down and steadiesit, breathing a murmured apology. Once again she has been dragged back into memory and her old home and her mother. Her mother. The decorated hill is not a floral counterpane at all but is something Persian and is not of her mother’s world. A Persian embroidery. The work of silent hours and days when a woman in her solitude dreams of distant events that never were but might have been, and bends her head to her needle in the soft lamplight and smiles at the tiny golden flowers. Pretending that her dreams are memories.
    Standing at the window, her fingers still touching her mother’s lilac-patterned teacup, the smell of the wood stove in the air, something of hot iron and smokiness, Edith thinks: How peaceful it is here. How lovely. How at home I might so easily know myself to be in this little house with him, if only … The horse is a mare. It is an old brood mare, the points of its hips prominent, gut-hung, its spine bowed with the bearing of many foals, its brown coat dry and wintry. Equus caballus . Edith has known the companionship of horses since her childhood on her father’s farm. The old brown mare stands side on to the hill, her hollow flank towards Edith. She, the mare, looks as if she is expecting someone to come over the horizon; her ears pointed forward, the imagination of oats in her distended nostrils. Edith wonders where she has come from and what has prompted their frugal neighbour to offer her the generous pasturage of his paddock. The horse was there this morning, large and brown, turning its great head towards the house when Edith came out the back door to feed the hens and collect the eggs, a newcomer like themselves, curious, alert and a little apprehensive. After feeding the hens—there were no eggs—Edith fetched a thick slice of bread from the house.Gently coaxed, the mare approached the fence and lipped the offering from her hand. The calm innocence of the mare’s eye. It is a fact well known among horse people that the horse has the largest eyes of any land mammal. ‘Will you be lonely in Mr Gerner’s paddock with only the milker for company?’ At the touch of her voice the mare lowered her long lashes and bent her head. The horse is highly sensitive around the areas of its nose, its eyes and its ears. Edith stroked its silky nose. ‘Stallions once trembled before your beauty.’
    The Southern Ocean lies beyond the horizon that is formed by the swelling rise of Mr Gerner’s green paddock. The Great Southern Ocean, her grandfather, the painter Thomas Anderson, called it. Encircling the world. Its