The world stood still. There was hardly any noise, even the stream sounded as if the water was being sieved through gauze. She was working in the garden all the same. The first alder was now cut back completely and she had already lopped a couple of thick branches off the second. She set about it very calmly. When she felt that she was tiring, she carefully climbed down off the kitchen chair and went inside to sit for a while in front of the cooker. It was only after drinking a cup of tea, having a snack and smoking a cigarette that she went out again. She stripped the side twigs off the branches and stacked them against the garden wall on the short side of the lawn. In weather like this, Dickinson would have sat inside coughing and sighing, she thought, writing about bright spring days and the first bee. The sawing was easier now she’d learnt to let the saw do the work. The light was on in the pigsty, the door open; it looked warm in there. The diffuse glow in the mist made her think of donkeys and oxen standing round a crib.
