At least it means there’s no baby coming, she thought, but her thoughts were very secret. She knew people expected her to have another child. Only the previous week, Polly Fletcher, stopping her on the Green to admire Alice, had said, ‘And when’s the next one coming? You’ve only got the lame boy now besides this little girl, haven’t you?’

Marion, as so often, was aware of a secret dilemma. Every pregnancy meant risking her life at the birth, and thereby risking the welfare of all previous children. Could one really trust a father, or a stepmother, or some briefly conscientious neighbours, with the upbringing of one’s children? Should one sacrifice the well nurturing of the many to the one new life? She had once tried to explain this dilemma to Peter, but he had dismissed it as ‘women’s worryings’ and so thence forward the worry was buried in her heart, and doubtless in many other women’s hearts too.

So secretly Marion was glad that she was not pregnant. She pulled up a handful of straw between her legs and summoned up her resolution to endure a night of pain.

JUNE

Insects as small as dust are never done

Wi’ glittering dance and reeling in the sun

And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee

Are never weary of their melody

It was a beautiful morning for Sheep-shearing Day. The air was still and sweet as Marion went to the open door of the cottage and looked down the garden to the rising forest beyond, now thick with delicate new leaves, dainty green in beeches, subdued green in ashes, bronze-gold in oaks, and now all so thick in their greenness that the dark yews were almost concealed. The bluebells had gone but their rich juicy green leaves still stood in sheets up the hillside under the smooth beeches.

Closer to, in the garden the rows of peas and broad beans, neat orderly rows because Peter had planted them, had mostly come up, defeating the slugs, and were growing fast, and small cabbage plants for next year’s eating were daily increasing in size. The apple tree was now in full leaf, the blossom gone.

Marion anticipated the day with pleasure. Sheep-shearing was a festival, and cold or wet weather could, and often had spoilt everyone’s pleasure. It was a holiday, so everyone said, traditionally, though no holiday ever seemed to lessen work for Marion nor, in this case, for Peter.

He had been up before dawn, pulled Peterkin off the bed and the two of them had gone to the village to put up all the hurdles on the Green into which the sheep would be herded during the day. As usual there never seemed to be enough hurdles and for the past two weeks Peter had been making others, sending his boys into the copses to cut ever more ash saplings for the purpose.

Alice was sitting peacefully by the log, pulling at the grass and half singing to herself, so Marion took a bucket and went down to the water-place to fetch a bucketful. Molly’s house was quiet. She wondered if Molly and the two old women were already at the Green, but she thought it unlikely that the old ones could walk that far. Even their old, ill-tempered dog was quiet, slowly scratching itself by the gate. Hilda and Dick’s cottage was deserted but Marion knew they had been up and about as early as Peter. No sound came from the Plowrights’ derelict-looking place.