‘It just feels it because the house has been empty. Wait until we’ve got the range lit.’
‘I’ll do that,’ Sorrel told him, knowing he was anxious to start back. ‘You bring the rest of the stuff in.’
She filled a small kettle and had just set it to boil on the emergency gas ring she had brought with her when Simon came in with the last load. The range was now lit and the chill just beginning to ease off the kitchen.
‘I’ll fill the lamps with oil,’ Simon told her. ‘I checked upstairs when I came with Fiona. The bedroom isn’t damp, so you should be OK. Remember to keep the range in, though, otherwise you’ll have no hot water.’
‘Don’t even mention it,’ Sorrel groaned.
‘Why don’t you light a fire upstairs?’
Sorrel had forgotten that the main bedroom had a working fireplace. In view of the unexpected iciness of the wind and the frozen ground outside, it seemed a good idea.
She made Simon a cup of tea while he checked that there was nothing left in the Land Rover and that she would be comfortable and safe.
Once he had gone, Sorrel didn’t feel alone, as she had expected. Perhaps because there was so much still to do.
The bedroom, as he had said, was dry but very cold. She lit the fire, and once she had assured herself that it was going properly, mentally thanking heaven for the convenience of modern firelighters, she set about making up the old-fashioned double bed with its wooden footboard and headboard. It had to be polished first, and the faint smell of beeswax that hovered in the air after she had finished this task reminded her very much of her childhood visits to her grandparents.
Her mother had wisely sent up a very large duck-down duvet and, a little to Sorrel’s surprise, the patchwork cover which had originally covered the bed and which had been made by her grandmother as part of her trousseau.
Once that was on the bed, the fire casting dancing shadows on the plain white walls, the room suddenly took on a cosy, homely look. Unlike the old-fashioned bathroom, which felt as though it was refrigerated, Sorrel reflected, her teeth starting to chatter before she had been in it for more than five minutes.
It needed, as her mother had forecast, cleaning, and by the time she had performed this chore she was beginning to feel a bit warmer. Even so, she did not envy her grandparents having to leave the warmth of their bedroom on a cold winter morning to come in here.
Downstairs the range was now thoroughly warming the kitchen, and Sorrel polished the large oak dresser which was set into one wall, unpacking the crockery from home and putting it on the shelves. It looked rather lost on a dresser designed to show off an entire family dinner service.
At first she was so busy that the sudden change in the quality of the light from outside didn’t strike her, and then a certain betraying silence, a certain inborn instinct, made her lift her head and go to the window. Her heart sank as she saw the snow swirling down outside.
Uncle Giles had been right, after all. She only hoped that it wasn’t snowing in Ludlow. If it was, her mother would be having forty fits of anxiety.
What time was it? She looked at her watch. Just gone four. Too early yet for the appearance of Valerie, if indeed she could still appear. If the weather deteriorated as dramatically as it could do at this height, the hill pass would soon be blocked and the farm would be cut off. It happened almost every winter.
Everything was ready now and there was nothing she could do other than wait … and hope that Cousin Val did not get stuck somewhere in the snow.
She lived in Perth, the beautiful town on the Swan River where Sorrel, whose knowledge of Australia’s weather was only sketchy, suspected they did not have the winters suffered by the Welsh hills. She wondered how Val’s parents felt about their daughter going half-way across the world to visit unknown relatives. What would she be like?
Sorrel filled the kettle and placed it on the hob of the old-fashioned range and then went to the window.
Already the landscape had turned white, the low stone walls thickly covered in snow. The wind had increased, driving the flakes into a frenzy of blizzarding white violence that eddied and whirled in front of the farm, changing the landscape as she watched.
Sorrel shivered. She was safe enough here inside the old farmhouse, and Simon would be back in three days, but she would hate to be driving in this weather. How far had her cousin got? To Ludlow perhaps, with its historic castle, now merely a ruin, but even in its destruction impressive, giving to the imaginative a strong sense of what its power must once have been. The redstone fortress on the River Teme conjured up to Sorrel’s eyes vivid impressions of all that it had once been.
Or had Val already driven through Ludlow and into the Welsh hills?
The kettle sang and Sorrel shivered. She felt restless and ill at ease in a way that was unfamiliar to her, alien to her normal placidity and calmness. Her placid nature was one of the things Andrew admired most about her. For some reason or other, that seemed to amuse her family. It was true that as a child she had often been driven to quick-tempered outbursts against her brothers, but she had outgrown such childishness long ago. She sat down in front of her tapestry, trying to concentrate on the stitches. It was an ambitious project, unlike any of her previous work—something she was doing purely for the creative pleasure it gave her; something along the lines of a medieval wall-covering, depicting the four seasons in relation to the traditional work of the farmer’s wife. She was doing it as a special gift for her mother, who had often remarked that the bare galleried landing of the old farmhouse cried out for some kind of tapestry.
The Shropshire farmhouse was even older than the Welsh one, but its Tudor-style beams and wattle and daub walls gave it a soft prettiness that the more sturdy stone Welsh building lacked.
The light was fading rapidly, and Sorrel had to get up to light the lamps and to go upstairs and check on the fire. The bedroom felt deliciously warm now, although the bathroom was still icy cold. She hadn’t investigated the other bedrooms, which she knew would be bare of their furniture and very cold.
Simon had brought down a box from the attic which contained the old diaries, and on impulse Sorrel kneeled down on the floor beside it and lifted one out.
It had been a tradition that the women of the Llewellyn family kept diaries, originally merely to record the events of their working year: to record details of their produce from the kitchen gardens, to list the ingredients of herbal remedies and the money paid out for those household necessities which could not be made at home.
Their farm had been a productive one compared with many, but even so it made Sorrel wince to realise how hard their lives must have been.
She was so deeply engrossed that it was gone six o’clock before she lifted her head from the book. She went to the window and could see nothing in the dark, so, picking up one of the lanterns, she opened the door.
The moment she opened the outer porch door, the wind blew in fierce eddies of snow, the lamp flickering wildly as she held it up.
Beyond the farmyard lay a sea of white. Deep drifts blocked the drive. No car could possibly get through them, and even a Land Rover would have had problems. There was no way Cousin Val was going to be able to make it to the farmhouse now and, mingled with Sorrel’s feeling of relief that she had been spared the three days’ intimate company of a woman she had no idea how she was going to get on with, she had a prickling sensation of apprehension as she wondered where on earth her cousin was.
And it wasn’t even as though the farm had a telephone and she could alert her family to the situation.
If anything, the temperature had dropped even lower, and just those few minutes’ exposure to the cold had turned her fingers numb and was making her shiver. Sorrel was glad to get back inside.
The remoteness of the farm caused her no fear, and neither did she find the thought of her own company disturbing. It struck her that by rights she ought to be yearning