The climbing hydrangea droops, the leaves of the smoke shrubs have lost their sheen. Thaddeus’s spinach goes to seed, the potatoes he digs are small. The drought is worse than the drought of 1976; the worst, so people interested in such matters say, for two hundred years. In the fields the sheep are fed hay, cattle are parched when streams dry up. But the apple trees in Thaddeus’s garden are laden, the pear trees and the plum orchard. Gooseberries and redcur-rants ripen before their time. Cosmos has grown high, its misty foliage heavy with purple flowers, and pink and mauve and white. Butterflies flap silently through the buddleia. Beneath the catalpa tree, with her grandchild on a tartan rug beside her deckchair, Mrs Iveson reads. Casting shadows on the pages of her book, lacy white panicles hang among the vast leaves, their scent delicate in the heat. On a cold grey morning in late December Mr Charles set forth as usual, his letters stamped and sealed.
