THE VIEW ACROSS THE VALLEY
By DEREK VERSCHOYLE
The house was placed on a hill. In front of it a series of narrow terraces reached down to the end of the garden, bounded by a wall of dark Jacobean brick. Beyond the wall was a huge water-meadow, a mile wide, intersected by a dozen streams. The streams were fringed with rushes and osiers, and the grass between them always studded with strawberry-coloured cows. On the far side of the meadow the ground sloped sharply upwards to a high barrier of poplar trees, cut in the centre by a steep narrow road. Beyond the trees, south of the road the ground was broken into a chess- board pattern of cornfields, patches of beans and meadows of standing hay ; to the north it swept upward into a great curving down.
For a mile or more here the land stretched up unbroken, but at the top of the hill a great circular clump of trees stood out blackly against the horizon. Wherever one was in the neighbourhood the clump of trees always dominated the view. The land that went with the Manor Farm stretched behind the house, half a mile each way ; it was broken by hills and hollows, hedges and spinneys, but the brothers found that wherever they were working in the fields they could always see the clump on the hill across the valley. Beside the clump, easily distinguished from near the house but from other parts of their land sometimes only a smudge against the sky, was a small cottage. They never saw a human being on the hill, but they knew that the cottage was lived in, for a thin thread of smoke rose from its chimney, always straight into the air. At that distance they could not judge how close the cottage was to the wood, but they knew that it could not be far for it even at that height to be so protected from the wind. The clump of trees and the cottage fascinated them to the point of obsession, and it became a habit for each to break off the other's work by enquiring what he thought it would be like on the top of the hill. But with their land to put into working order they had no time to spend in finding out. Each of them gazed across the valley to the top of the hill a dozen times a day, and when anyone came to the Manor Farm they always drew his attention to it at once and asked whether he knew anything about it. But they never found anyone who had been there, nor even anyone who could tell them who owned the land. In the course of time, when they found everyone else's interest in the place to be as slight as theirs was great, they almost came to feel that whenever they had the leisure to cross the valley they would be making the place their own.
It was six months to a day since they had arrived before they took a day off. That day was a Sunday. Before they started on their walk they went out together on the lawn and gazed across the valley at the clump of trees and the cottage with its thin thread of smoke rising straight into the air, almost as if they were looking at them for the last time. It was a windy day, and as they went through the water-meadow they remarked how oddly still the clump seemed. The willows in the meadow were bent by the wind, and the grass ruffled, but they could see no movement at all in the trees on top of the hill. As they went up the lane on the far side of the meadow, for a few minutes they lost sight of the clump behind the hedges and the sudden curve of the hill. But when they came to the row of poplar trees and paused for breath, it came into view again, now that only the unbroken slope of grass was between them seeming no more than a few hundred yards away.
They were approaching it now from the flank, and the cottage was invisible. They took the hill at a steady stride, without checking to regain their breath and without speaking. The hill was less steep than they had thought, but for that reason longer, and the clump gained size with tantalising slowness. For the last hundred yards the ground was broken with briars and low bushes ; rabbits scuttled down holes as they came near, and a cock pheasant rose abruptly from the grass and planed over the bill out of sight, As they came in under the shadow of the trees they realised that the wood was immense.
They were astonished by the silence. Out on the hill the Wind had been-strong, and as they started to climb Richard, looking up to the wood, had said, " When we get there we shan't hear ourselves speak for the rattle in the treetops." But the noise of rustling leaves was barely perceptible, and they could see no movement in the branches above them. From the outside they could not see within the wood at all. A protective ring of thick; barely penetrable undergrowth stretched round it as far as they could see. They had to search for a way in, scrambling down into a deep ditch and up again the other side. Then they saw that the place had been a fort ; it formed a complete circle, the circumference a double ring of earthworks with a steep deep ditch between them. The hostility of a fort seemed to be preserved in the wood's atmosphere ; they both felt uneasy, and walked cau- tiously through the wood knowing that their nerves were taut. It was as dark as it was still. The trees, all beeches, were planted astonishingly close together ; they stood to about the same height, and each appeared to rise perfectly straight from foot to top, the upper branches so tangled and matted that they shut out the sky. To both of them it seemed less like a wood than a great vault, with thick stalactites joining roof and floor. There was nowhere any sign of life. They found a small pile of bones beneath a tree, but that was all there was to show that an animal had ever entered the wood. It was very cold under the trees. They did not speak to one another, but as they walked they gradually edged out together from the centre of the wood towards the light. When they reached the fringe of the wood they walked half- way round it on the ramparts, peering between the stems of the trees and gazing out over the ring of undergrowth at the semi-circle of country below them. Then Richard suddenly said, " But where is the cottage ? "
They checked the position where it should be from the direction of their house, and ran to it through a corner of the wood. But the cottage was not there. They made another calculation, but the cottage was not where it brought them. They tried two other directions, more or less at random, but neither of them with success. Finally they walked right round the wood, even searching among the briars and bushes that ran out from the trees over the hill, but they did not find the cottage. As a last resort they circled the wood again and looked out over all the country around them, to see whether conceivably an optical illusion had transplanted the cottage from another hill. But there was no cottage in sight.
At the same moment they said : " We had better be getting back," and then started walking quickly down the hill. They did not speak and did not look back all the way home.
When they reached the Manor Farm, they went out on the lawn in front of the house and gazed across the valley. From the cottage beside the clump of trees a thin thread of smoke rose straight into the air.
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