Cardamom Hills (extract)

I screamed in the night and there was no-one there to hear me.
 
Upon returning to my native St Catherine's from such travels in Provence as can be better told another time, I found our normally sleepy summer warmth to have faltered under a creeping mist whose silvery fronds inveigled their way beneath your clothes causing the skin to become damp and cold and uncomfortable. Oh how then I missed the lazy bees humming over those acres of purple hillside, the conversations at the village café, the French girl that I'd left behind. But a family tragedy had brought me back and I had duty to perform.
 
My brother was waiting for me as my train pulled-up to the platform. He had brought me a spare coat knowing I would not be expecting this freezing haar. I gratefully accepted the proffered tweed and out we stepped to catch a cab back to the familial pile. The cab travelled slowly for the freezing mists made haste a dangerous luxury, yet such was the oppressiveness of our unknown situation that we did not find ourselves taking advantage of this time to talk, to catch-up no, not to make conversation. We had last seen each other in January when the crisp frosts were settled over the tiled rooves of the church porch at his daughter's christening; those happy times were long distant now, seemingly from another dimension.
 
Lee's wife welcomed us in with hugs and smiles, less affected than we brothers, I supposed, due to her slight removal by dint of blood from the whole damn business confronting us. Nevertheless she looked somewhat drawn, no doubt she had been up all night with the child, or with Lee. My brother did not look fully himself and he excused himself for half an hour that he might visit the post office before they shut for the weekend, some necessaries still needing to be sent.
 
As soon as he was out of the door, peeking through the netting to see him depart, Grace turned to me, 'You will stay a while, won't you, Peter? It would be lovely to have you here. And Phoebe could do with some more enlightened company.' 
 
'Grace, I'm not sure I'd be much company for a baby. I'll stay as long as needs be, but my work awaits me back in Arles, you know that, surely?'
 
She looked at me with those beautiful hazel eyes that had been so used to gaze into mine those many years ago, 'Peter, every day you're here will be a blessing.'  She left it at that and went to finish making preparations for supper leaving me at a loss. I had not felt anything for Grace in over seven years and was appalled at the feelings that stirred in me now. Did we not already have one tragedy to deal with without the lusts of a wandering vagabond to add to the confusion? It was Grace who had sent me away all those years ago, I would have remained by her side for ever given the chance. But she insisted that writing, and not her, was my future and I had taken the hint when she announced she was already minded to look for another; for someone 'whose mind was in the present and looking to the future.' So the dreamer in me wandered the roads and visited seldom. Even more seldomly since I heard news that the husband she was to take was Lee, my older and more sensible businessman of a brother. But the manner in which she approached me had been wrong, somehow. Desperate and coy, like a kidnapped ingénue pleading with a visiting coal merchant to save her from some awful fate.