The Birds of the Innocent Wood Read Online Free PDF

was foolish to long for the summer to come.
    At its first falling the snow was beautiful, but the first days of the new year have now passed, and no more has fallen. The thaw has not begun, but the snow has gone from the roofs of the buildings, from plants and from branches, so that the trees in the orchard are now all black against the sky and the snow no longer sparkles but looks dull, unreflective and damp. Sarah looks past the edge of the dark orchard and across the level fields which stretch beyond it, to the little cottage which stands near the lough shore. She looks long and intently, pretending not to hear and trying not to think about the pronounced wheeze of her sister’s breath as she steadily works. Instead, she tries to concentrate upon the desolate sound of the wild birds.
    This is her home.
    The great sense of space given by the wide sky and the flatness of the land is belied everywhere by the melancholy want of colour. Now she is literally seeing the place in its true colours, for the brightness of spring will be spurious in an area which is truly sad, drab, and dead. If you have been born here you can never belong elsewhere. If you have been born elsewhere, you can never belong here. Sarah knows that she is trapped. Now, as she stands by the window, she feels unspeakably sad. Why, on this winter’s afternoon, should she feel so strongly that everything is ending? The year has barely begun, but she knows that it is foolish to expect that it will bring any hope; that it is always foolish to expect too much from the simple passage of time.
    She is glad that Christmas is over, for it is a feast which she has never liked. Even as a child it was always a disappointment to her. She does not turn around – she does not need to – to see the decorations which will be stored in the attic until the following December. Their mother had bought these decorations when the sisters were tiny. In later years they always intended to buy some fresh ones and throw away the most bedraggled of the strands of tinsel, and the most tarnished of the little gilt stars. But each year comes and goes and the same decorations adorn the tree year after year after year. By virtue of this it has become timeless, and the little Christmas tree with its strange apples of chill, pastel-coloured glass is as eternal as the trees in the orchard with their unfailing cycle of bud, blossom and fruit. Sarah does not turn around to look at the decorations for she remembers them all.
    Catherine, on the other hand, forgets everything. Every year she forgets about the little elves whose bodies are made of pine cones, forgets the Chinese lanterns of coloured tissue paper. She cannot remember details of texture, colour, dimension and smell. Sarah cannot understand the way in which her sister’s mind works, nor indeed the way in which her whole life operates, when every experience becomes so quickly and so absolutely a thing of the past: a dead thing. It is even tempting to think that she has forgotten her disappointment of the autumn: but that is surely too much to expect. For a moment, Sarah allows herself to think of her sister’s life and of her future, and she feels a great sense of pity.
    Because of her bad memory, Catherine keeps a diary, stout as a ledger, with marbled endpapers. In this she contains her past. Sarah now thinks that it is a good idea to keep a diary as comprehensive as this, for it gives Catherine a degree of power over her life. Leaning her head against the glass she thinks, Perhaps tonight I ought to write all this dawn, I too ought to try to recreate this afternoon on paper, and contain it all: the fire, the holly, the tree, the snow: and Catherine.
    But even as she thinks this she knows that it is foolish to struggle against the passage of time. When Sarah thinks aboutthe future she feels great confusion, and even greater fear.
    ‘Sarah?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Give me a hand with these boxes, please.’
    Sarah pauses for a moment