I felt rain, she said. Did you feel rain? Richard will be happy that his rain is coming.

He looked at the sky. I’m not so sure, I think this might pass. I think it might not rain at all.

The sky out there, seen from the fields, was so open and wide. Wide horizons in every direction. Cloud all across but high, he thought, too high for rain.

They were walking in the fields. She thought that it was about to rain. Jonathan was moody. He was moody at home in a way that she had not seen him moody before. She felt drops of rain on her face and hands, isolated drops like the beginning of a shower. She wanted it to rain. Then they would laugh and get wet and run in the rain. Or they might shelter under a tree. Let’s go in here, she said, when they came to a little wood. There was a wood at the edge of the barley field, the sort of little wood he called a spinney. She was glad that she was wearing jeans for once because there were thick clumps of nettles they had to walk through at the edge of it, though under the trees the ground was clear. There was one great tree, an oak, with wide branches, and a dense canopy that would have held off the rain, if it had rained. They might have stood beneath that tree and stayed dry for quite a time, even if it rained hard. She said what a fine tree it was, and put out a hand to touch it. Do you see, Jonathan said, how old this tree must be? It must have grown big before the other trees grew around it, you can see that by the spread of its branches. When those branches formed it was growing out in the open, with light all around it.