When they at last allowed me to get up again, the season was nearly over. The summer was about to fall, and the leaves had begun to turn on the chestnut trees. To celebrate my recovery we took Flora and Joseph out into the country in Neville’s car: David sang all the way, “This is Flora’s holiday.” He sings very nicely, being Welsh. We went up on Ewyas Harold Common, just beyond Abbeydore. The common is beautiful, all bracken and buzzing creatures and sheep. We lay down in the bracken, David and Joe and I, and Flora rushed around making the sheep run. She would dash up to the poor dozy sacks of wool and wave and clap her hands and yell “Baa-baa black sheeps,” and they would stumble to their feet and shamble off. David and I watched her with our usual painfully acute mixture of anxiety and delight, and after a while Joseph, who had hardly yet got round to talking, suddenly made a loud sheep noise as well. We were overjoyed; Flora came running back to admire her brother’s new accomplishment, and Joe sat there saying “Baa-baa” for hours. Had David and I been two entirely different people, we might well that afternoon have been entirely happy; and even being what we were, we did not do too badly.

On the way back to the car Flora dashed at a sheep that was lying in the path, but unlike all the others, it did not get up and move: it stared at us instead with a sick and stricken indignation. Flora passed on quickly, pretending for pride’s sake that she had not noticed its recalcitrance; but as I passed, walking slowly, supported by David, I looked more closely and I saw curled up and clutching at the sheep’s belly a real snake. I did not say anything to David: I did not want to admit that I had seen it, but I did see it, I can see it still. It is the only wild snake that I have ever seen. In my book on Herefordshire it says that that part of the country is notorious for its snakes. But “Oh well, so what,” is all that one can say, the Garden of Eden was crawling with them, too, and David and I managed to lie amongst them for one whole pleasant afternoon. One just has to keep on and to pretend, for the sake of the children, not to notice. Otherwise one might just as well stay at home.

About the Author

MARGARET DRABBLE is the author of The Sea Lady, The Seven Sisters, The Peppered Moth, and The Needle’s Eye, among other novels. For her contributions to contemporary English literature, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2008.