Read Online Turning the Stones by Debra Daley - Free Book Online

branches. Last year’s grasses and brambles lay withered at the feet of leggy hedgerows and the daffodils seemed to be stuck, their points hardly showing above the ground. The only yellow in the world belonged to the French shoes that I was wearing. They had formerly belonged to Eliza. Their supple leather the colour of butter, their mannerly heels and winking buckles made me feel puffed up and important.
    I walked westwards until I came to the intersection of Wood Lane, where the rolling fields decline towards the shore a quarter of a mile away. From that vantage point I could seethe vague outlines of several tall-masted ships congregating at anchor downstream on the lacklustre waters of the Dee. Miss Broadbent once told me that our ancestors worshipped the rivers of this land – but if the Dee is a god, then it must have been offended in some way, because it shrinks from us and prevents us from flourishing.
    The hush of the morning was disturbed by a gang of big black-backed gulls. They came swaggering up from the estuary, elbowing finches and warblers out of the way, and wheeled low over my head, screeching their usual prophecy of bad weather. The sky, however, looked quite harmless except for a dirty cloud loafing above the Welsh hills on the far side of the river. Then I remarked the source of the gulls’ hubbub. There were several buzzards approaching from the north. They sidled up to the field on the corner of the lane, where drovers sometimes park their animals before taking them to the market at Great Neston, and hovered in a sinister manner. I parted the branches of the hedge to see what had attracted them and discovered a sheep felled by the burden of itself. Its wool had become waterlogged for lack of grease and the poor thing had keeled over in the mud.
    The remainder of the daggle-tailed flock lurked uselessly in a corner of the field, their heads turned away as if embarrassed by their fellow’s plight, chagrin their only weapon against the buzzards. I guessed that the drover was probably taking his ease in the beer-house at Parkgate. The sheep exuded helplessness. I was sorely vexed at it for slumping there under its fatally heavy fleece, which meant I must ruin my shoes in order to set it to rights, if that were even possible. At that moment a sparrowhawk fluttered on to a nearby sycamorebranch and perched quietly, waiting, and I thought, well, I must try.
    I removed my shoes and stockings, hitched up my skirts and squelched across sloppy grass pockmarked with the imprints of hoofs. As I approached the inert animal, a foul miasma climbed out of the wool and rose to welcome me odiously to its host’s death – for I saw as I came closer that I was too late to be of any assistance. Froth was bubbling at the corner of the black mouth and the bleary eye oozed dark liquid. Before my gaze the creature’s life leaked away and the flank fell still beneath the dun-coloured coat. The eye filmed, the lower lip subsided into an awful grimace that exposed brown teeth. I shouted at the buzzards, waggling my arms at them like a bugbear, but they continued lazily to circle the field, laughing under their dark-fringed wings, I imagined, at my futility.
    I hastened downhill towards Parkgate and swung past the master’s storehouse and granary. The pens behind the beerhouse were empty. They usually heave with cattle swum ashore from the Irish boats, but there had been no landings for nearly a fortnight. The conditions were still light, I recall. The beer-house’s sign barely creaked and a backlog of passengers was hanging around outside the booking office. Parkgate is the terminal for traffic to Dublin and people are always twiddling their thumbs there, awaiting the caprice of the winds. The beer-house stands hard against the shore on a projection. The sight of it at full tide looking like a ship on the waves always makes my heart swell. I get the impression that it is trying to launch itself seaward, in spite of its