At these times, I am often digging and she stands to my rear, quietly observing, making sure the job is done right. I like the idea of her presence. It gives me comfort when the dark thoughts creep in: when the tor makes its rain to blacken the world and I am out in it alone, when the belltower captain rings out the nine tailors for another man lost and I dwell on the inevitable solitude that comes to us all in the end, or when I wonder what I could have done for or been to a woman.

It is now a while since I have broken a shovel. I have three in all and they live in a low and accessible place, in the porch, near my shoes and raincoat. Not far beyond can be found my mother’s old ottoman where, when May is at its peak and the sun is shining and I leave the door open, I will still often find a chaffinch or song thrush perched. At the close of these sweet, bright, late spring days I will sometimes open the ottoman and put on one of the garments within it. There are a couple of dozen in all that I have collected from the woods over the years, although it’s rare for me to find one there now. I favour a couple of cotton frocks in particular whose bright and intricate patterns seem to match the foliage around me. I take the back way into the trees, through the leaning gate in my old dripping garden wall that is half off its hinges and I tell myself I will repair, drekly. It takes me ten minutes to follow the thread of the stream to the river. All the old bridges on the moor began with stepping stones and the ones that Sarah put down are still there, negotiable in fair weather. As I balance on them, enjoying the way the fabric feels against my skin, I remember her standing there, singing her song to her people that I could not see, remember the great stillness in me that contrasted with the great yearning in her and the yearning in the water that seemed to match it. Sometimes I have imagined that I still hear the song. One time, when I was feverish with summer flu, I was even sure I heard it croaked back to me by the rocks in the river and I shivered and swayed with its power.

After I have stood on our makeshift stone bridge I rest in the long grass, at the end of this unremarkable life, aware, as I lower myself, of every twist and ache and fault and gap in this contraption I still call a body. But then I feel it all getting under the cotton and passing through me – the sun, the butterflies, the maybugs, the tune of the water, the breeze, the falling light – and I am the moment and nothing more.