Footsteps

 Dear Reader,

 

In my teens we lived in a very haunted cottage by the river Mure.  It had no electricity and the water tank had to be filled by hand pumping.  My father gave my sister and I sixpence for every hundred pumps we did.   As it grew dusk my mother would light the Tilly lamps and the small log fire to keep us warm. I remember climbing the creaky old stairs to our bedroom, my heart thumping, knowing we would hear the footsteps on the path outside the front door. The cottage was at the end of a long lonely drive and there was silence in the lane once we were in bed.  But about midnight every night my sister and I heard slow footsteps right under the bedroom window.  Then they stopped and started again the next night. The cottage apparently had been inhabited by a groom, there since Charles II had stayed in the manor house, when the man had had a fight and been killed by a gypsy living in a camp nearby. The gypsy was hung but they say he put a curse on the cottage but I don't know what it was, I just do know that my sister and I heard these slow heavy footsteps in the night, and they terrified us.

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At last we have seen and felt a little sunshine.  Wasn't it lovely?  I had almost forgotten how pleasing it is to feel warm on going outside.  The blackbird outside my window is especially pleased and sings all day long.  I have watched him collecting things to make his nest and he seems to be very busy with this. In fact all the small birds have been busy with their nesting arrangements, the blue tits are never still. Perhaps with a little luck we will be able to sit in the garden in the coming months but I don't bank on it. 

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From Dorothy Wordsworth, 1800, May 20th, in Westmorland

'A fine mild rain.  After breakfast the sky cleared and before the clouds passed from the hills I went to Ambleside.  It was a sweet morning.  Everything green and overflowing with life, and the steams making a perpetual song, with the thrushes and all little birds, not forgetting the stone-chats.'

From DH Lawrence, 1916, May 24th in Cornwall

'The country is simply wonderful, blue, graceful little companies of bluebells everywhere on the moors, the gorse in flame, and on the cliffs and by the sea, a host of primroses, like settling butterflies, and seapinks like a hover of pink bees, near the water.  there is a Spanish ship run on the rocks just below - great excitement everywhere.'

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Footsteps

In a cottage built for a trusty groom
in the Merry Monarch's reign,
lying in a wooded valley
where the river Mure runs its course,
a woman climbs the twisting stairs,
a Tilly lamp in hand
to light her dark ascent,
the flame flickering in the glass.

In the attic bedroom
she opens the small window,
sees the ghostly watermill
in the winter moonlight,
hears the spectral cry of an owl.

She lies on her bed,
pulls up the patchwork quilt,
breathes deeply, hoping for sleep,
but, on the gravel path outside
she hers the tread of footsteps.

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My novel : Victoria Scott's Dilemma is available here. It is rather a charming romantic tale with lots of laughter.  Look on Amazon under books: Patricia Huth Victoria and it will come up.

 

 

                                                   VICTORIA  SCOTT'S  DILEMMA

 

                                                                       PATRICIA HUTH

                                                                                      *

 

With very best wishes, Patricia