‘That’s early. Means a hard winter, so they say.’ Lying on her back, she could see nothing save bracken fronds over her head, a hazy blue sky, and a wedge-shaped flight of birds, travelling southwards. Benbow lifted his head from her breast to look at them too. Then he scrambled to his feet in order to watch them better. ‘What birds are they?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know. Some kind of geese, I should think. They fly high, don’t they? Every year they come—a little later than this, though, generally—and fly away over the sea. I’ve never seen them except hereabouts.’ She sat up herself and shook some dried bracken from her hair. Now she could see the world below, the steep fall of the hill, the flat floor of harvest fields, the distant sea. It was a hot day and not very clear. The sea and sky merged in a pale shimmer. Between the fields and the coast there was a long narrow strip of inland water and, beyond it, a rampart of pebbled beach where nobody ever went and where nothing grew except sea-poppies.
