The Arrival of Missives Read Online Free PDF Page A

'In plain daylight. I have nothing to hide.'
    'You can claim that, but I see you watch him and I see you hope for him,' says Daniel, 'and it's embarrassing to look upon.'
    I have had enough. 'There is no mooning on my part, Master Redmore! Not after anyone. Not even you.' Now where did those words come from? He looks oddly pleased with himself, all of a sudden.
    'It bothers me, is all,' he says. He drops his arm.
    'I have my own plans,' I tell him.
    'The whole village knows. A letter to Taunton. Well, good, I say. Good for you. I would wish you far away, all the way to China, as long as you don't waste yourself on that cripple.'
    He has gone too far and he knows it. I draw myself up tall. 'I am sorely disappointed in you, to hear you talk of our teacher that way. You escaped the war only by a year or so, that is all. Just by the sheerest luck of your birthdate. That's the only reason you are here now, and whole, and your advantages must make you a better man than the generation before, can't you see that? Instead of sowing discord you must promote peace. It's your solemn duty.'
    His lips pucker, his eyebrows crease, and he is a small boy in my eyes again, being reprimanded for his inkwell antics. It makes me feel both victorious and sad. I have banished the man who, after all, was engaged with my personal welfare.
    I stomp off towards the village, and do not turn to see if he follows along behind me.
    He said that it bothered him to think of me caring for Mr Tiller. Does he view me as one of his sisters, then? We have grown up together, and such ties promote close feelings.
    But I find, in my disquiet, that I do not exactly view him as a brother. No, that does not describe how I feel at all.
    *
    Westerbridge is 12 miles from Taunton and 20 miles from the coast, as the crow flies. It appears in the Domesday Book , where it was valued at four pounds.
    Apart from that written record of existence it is a singularly uninteresting village. Nobody of note has emerged from it, or even visited it. It does not lie on the road to anywhere in particular, and is in itself no person's willing destination. Exmoor lies to the west, but not close enough to encourage the presence of those walkers and painters who seek wild natural beauty there.
    Because of this the same families have inhabited this patch of unremarkable land for so many years, occasionally marrying outside by a few miles or so (such as in the case of my own father and mother, who met through his presence in Bickbrook at a travelling fayre) but generally keeping to themselves, producing unremarkable children to suit the unremarkable nature of the village.
    You can trace these families through the graveyard. Take the Redmores, as a fine example of this; Daniel's mother is far from the only Redmore to lie in the soil there. His grandparents, and their parents, and their parents before, backwards, backwards, are marked with stones. And Daniel's mother was a Barbery, and Barberys have been in this village even longer than the Redmores. They are intertwined in their histories. They do not wish to leave, or to have others find their way here to interfere with their sense of self-importance.
    The Fearns are just as grounded as these others, and I am considered to be one of their number. Westerbridge, born and bred. This explains why a Redmore would think me interested in his opinion of where I go and what I do.
    But the times are changing. The farm keeps getting richer as my father finds new ways to make the land profitable, and he employs more men and the ingenuity of more mechanisations to take his goods further and faster than ever before. He brings city money to this village, even if electricity has not yet arrived in our village. He may have been too old to fight, but he yet retains a young man's attitude when it comes to business dealings.
    I do not think this village will be small and self-important forever, what with the changes taking place. The arrival of Mr Tiller proves