Read Online The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons - Free Book Online

canopy, and I felt clammy and damp, slightly embarrassed about the dark patches of sweat showing through my blouse. Eventually, a white hole of daylight appeared at the end of the line of trees, blocked by another gate. The horse paused once more, Art unfastened the latch and ushered us into the sunshine. The air changed instantly. Salt wind whipped around me, flinging my hair into my face, and I saw we were perched upon the open backbone of the hill range. The landscape fell down to the sea on both sides. To the right lay a lacework of silver-grey rivers running through small green fields, spotted with the brown and white backs of cattle. Ponds glimmered like ladies’ hand mirrors, growing larger until they rushed into the vast grey sea. The breakers foamed on the distant beaches and I imagined the rush of noise in my ears was not the sound of the hilltop wind but the crash of the sea. On my left, coarse heath grass rolled down into a shaded valley nestled between the banks of hills, which formed the vale like a pair of cupped hands.
    Art chewed on his pipe and the horse huffed and sighed.
    ‘Tyneford valley,’ said Art. ‘Can yer feel it?’
    I looked at him, and then at the yellow beach beyond. I smelt heather and wood smoke and something else, something intangible that I did not yet have the words to express. Art chuckled.
    ‘Aye. Gits everyone. Spell o’ Tyneford.’
    He turned to face me and gave me an odd look. ‘Don’t talk much, do yer? Some of them new maids, won’t stop their rattlin’.’
    I smiled, wondering what Julian would think of this assessment of me – a quiet girl, not chattering on like the others. It had only been a week and already he would not know me. I was not quiet – my lack of English imprisoned me in silence. I was longing to question Art about Mr Rivers and Mrs Ellsworth and Tyneford and the name of the bay that I could see glimmering in the distance, and if it was safe to swim out to those rocks where the gulls rested and the kind of bird with the long tail feather that burst out of the bush, singing a flurry of honeyed song. Questions tumbled over one another in my mind, and yet I could form none of them into sentences. So I walked beside the horse in dumb silence, and allowed Art to believe me a nice, quiet kind of girl.
    He steadied my elbow as I clambered back onto the cart, grateful for the rest. I had been travelling all day, and my head was starting to ache. The track was narrow and tufts of dusty grass or thistle sprouted in the middle in a dull green stripe. Mr Bobbin plodded along as birds soared to and fro, or twittered frantically from the low gorse bushes. The sky stretched vast and open from the hills to where it merged with the sea in a grey-blue line, and I tilted my head back to gaze at the racing clouds, feeling myself reel, dizzy at the thought of my own smallness; I realised I was nothing more than a feather on the wing of one of the brown-backed geese that swooped overhead.
    The horse turned to the left, down an even narrower track leading into the valley of Tyneford itself. The path sloped steeply, and he edged forward, hooves slipping and catching on the loose pebbles. Wild flowers and shrubs brushed the cart on either side, and tiny heads of cow parsley ripped from their stems and lodged in the wheels of the cart and the wooden side slats. A tiny speckled bird hitched a lift on a battered milk crate in the back. Another series of gates barred our descent, and Art leapt down again and again to open them. Cattle and sheep grazed freely beside the road, or dawdled in front of the cart, causing Art to hiss and shout, ‘Git, git. Yer bony good fer nuthins.’
    Art steered us through the final gate and past a pair of low stone cottages, their walls darkly overgrown with ivy and smoke curling from their chimneys. I saw more cottages and a scattering of larger houses all cut from the same rough grey rock, lining a narrow street leading to a water pump and a small