Seònaid (short story)

   She sat on a stone at the bank of the River Wharfe in Langstrothdale, her arms folded around the long skirt that covered her legs, and looked at her own reflection deformed by the fast flowing water.

Her flaming red hair, the same colour as the leaves of the very few trees on the hills that surrounded her, moved softly in the wind.
   

   It was an exceptional warm day for Autumn and the sheep, only recently separated from their lambs, walked up and down the hills calling for their absent offspring.

Their wool was still stacked in the barns but would soon be transported to the wool factories. A long journey for her husband and the other farmers and hopefully the job was done before the rain started to poor down from what was now a perfectly blue sky.
   

   Seònaid, a Scottish lass who married the Yorkshire sheep farmer Mathe, moved here from the rough Highland Glens to the hills of Langstrothdale. Both families were not happy with the two young people falling in love with each other! Although there were no great wars anymore, the Seumasachas (Jacobitism) was still busy to restore Roman Catholic - leaded by England and Ireland – to the throne of the heirs of the Kings. And the Scots were wild people!

   But the young couple was not interested in the endless discussions about Seumasachas, they were very much in love with eachother and hoped to raise a family in their own little kingdom Cowside Farm, built by the grandparents of Mathe who’s family belonged to the more wealthy sheep farmers.
   

   The view from Cowside Farm was breath taking on a sunny day like today. For the best view she had to leave the house that was built with only a very few small windows viewing the river at the cold side of the house. The front was up hill with the vegetable garden and the beautiful flowers that passed their best time in late September. Although there was enough work to do for her, she could not resist a walk down hill, watching the water following the bends in the river with high speed, curling around the boulders and falling down the flat stones. When the water level was low, you could cross the river jumping from one stone to another but there had been much rain and she needed the wooden bridge to cross.

She did not so, she felt comfortable and at ease where she was, listening to the sound of the sheep, the lark in the bright sky, the pheasants and the many crows gathering in the large trees surrounding and sheltering the farmhouse.
   

   Seònaid smiled when she thought of her parents who she had to leave to follow her heart and Mathe. It was not an easy decision but she hoped to visit them next year. If there were no fights between the English and the Scots! Their war history goes back many centuries and she would not be surprised if they continued the following centuries! But she did not want to think of wars, only about nice things and happiness. Like her pregnancy, Mathe would be thrilled tonight!

There was so much to be thankful for!
   

   It was time to return to the farm and she climbed the steep hill. Close to the farm she could smell the bread she was baking and she hurried the last few yards, afraid she stayed away too long.

She ran through the corridor to the kitchen at her left and opened the large range with the ovens for bread, cakes and food. And during the cold season it kept the house, together with the large fire in the room at the other side of the corridor, comfortably warm. The thick walls kept the warmth inside during the winter and the warm sun outside. 
   

   The next few hours she worked hard to get tea ready for Mathe and afterwards she cuddled up next to him on the sofa in the cosy room with the beautiful fresco decoration and proverb, painted by her father in law who was more an artist than a sheep farmer. Being retired he made beautiful paintings for customers in the surrounding area and villages.

  While she looked at the paintings she wondered if she was going to tell Mathe the great news now or tonight in bed, in the intimacy of their bedroom and she lay her hands on her belly which soon was going to show the growth of their very first child.       

   
   This was now all a very long time ago. Their life passed by and that of many generations after them and the world changed.

Not for the better Seònaid thought when she observed the female visitor of her long abandoned farmhouse which she never left after she died at the very old age of 83. Not many people got that old in those days!

   There were still wars, she remembered the first World War in which two descendants of her, strong young men, died. She could feel the loss and the grief of their mother and wanted to comfort her but could not reach her. Only a very few people felt her presence although they could not always explain it.

These very few people were her own blood and therefore she immediately knew if a visitor of the derelict farm was one of her descendants like the woman who now entered the house.

   She could feel the atmosphere changing when the woman stood in the corridor, looking around. She saw a sign of recognition in her eyes, if she had been here before. She spoke softly, only to her self but Seònaid could hear her clearly: “I must have been here before but a very, very long time ago. I know the kitchen is at my left hand and the room with the decorated wall at my right. Straight forward is the diary and ‘cold’ storage room and the stairs to the next floor. But I have not been here before, how come I feel at home in an unknown farmhouse I enter for the very first time in my life??”

    

   First the woman entered the kitchen and looked at the rusty Yorkshire Range which went cold long ago and smelled bread and food and not dust and damp but this was impossible! Instead of food, there were generations of twigs of crows nests, pushed down the chimney for decades.

Seònaid watched her walking around the kitchen table made of sanded pine and smiled, did the woman realise there was no table?

The woman went to the right side of the hearth and looked if she was looking for the salt and herbs which were stored there in the past.

Photo: Helen Varras

Then she turned around and walked through the corridor to the room and looked surprised, even disappointed, as if she hated the idea of the chalk paint covering the once so beautiful fresco and proverb. She shook her head and turned to the hearth which was blocked in to fit a ‘modern’ heater.

   Seònaid understood the disapproval but there was nothing she could do when a new generation modernised the farmhouse. She learned to ‘live’ with it. The expression made her smile again.

   The woman wanted to go upstairs but Seònaid warned her softly, the wood was rotten, so were the floors. The woman turned around and instead walked to the stone bench in front of the windows where she sat down, her head resting against the wooden shutters, closing her eyes. Sunbeams danced around her.

Seònaid watched the woman listening to the sounds of the house. Not the usual sounds of the flutter of the wings of insects or cracking floors but the sound of the people who lived here long ago.

The sound of the voices and laughter of Mathe, their daughter and 3 sons, their many grandchildren and herself. The sound of ancestors.

   For the very firs time in almost a century, Seònaid felt happy and in harmony with the visitor from abroad to which she had passed on her love for the Dales.

 ~

 Seònaid is fiction, a figment of my imagination. However, the visitor and Cowside Farm are not!

The visitor entered the farmhouse for the very first time in 1978, very determined to restore it to its former glory but lacked of necessary finances.
Instead The Landmark Trust restored it and did justice to the dignity of this beautiful and very old and rare survivor of maybe even the 17^th century. And of course to the approval of Seònaid!!

Cowside Farm is available for holiday bookings. Please visit the link for more information about prices and availability and for details about and photo’s of the restoration: The Landmark Trust/Cowside farm

Last but not least my word of thanks to Amy Taylor of The Landmark Trust.

Helen

The Reader (short story)

He always loved reading. He read books and newspapers even before his governess was supposed to teach him reading and writing.
His parents were so proud of him and his father loved to tell everyone who showed even a little interest, how intelligent his son was. Yes, 'his' son. It was only 'their' son if the little boy did not live up the expectation of his father who also wanted to teach him horse riding, hunting and mathematics because, one day he was going to be the Monarch of the Glen. The grand estate and Loch Locherty was going to be his, long after everyone else had gone. Therefore the father was hoping for male offspring of his son and decided who the boy was going to marry long before he could read. As said before, this was at a very young age.

The father introduced his son to the visitors, standing near the enormous fireplace in the cold and dark hallway with in the middle a pompous staircase that led to the first floor, surrounded by hunting trophies and portraits of proud and grim looking ancestors.
Waving with one of his costly cigars made of the finest tobacco, his round belly pushed forward like a display for the golden watch chain, he exposed his young child as the 'natural equivalent' of his own bright and well developed brains which of course his whole pedigree was well known for.
The child learned at a young age that he was more a subject of proud presentation than a son of flesh and blood with emotions and feelings.
His books rescued him from the harsh and cruel world within the boundaries of his existence in the Scottish Highlands with no one else than his father, a mother with a long lasting migraine, a governess who was not known for her exceptional beauty and a long row of servants he was not allowed to talk to: "They will not add anything valuable to your intelligence."

Maybe this was one of the reasons he started to read books at such a young age. His governess was more than willing to teach him the alphabet and to help him to decrypt the symbols called letters.
The children books given to him were soon not satisfying enough and he silently slipped into the library to hide a book or two under his silk blouse to read them in the nursery.

It took a few years before the father heavily disappointed, discovered that all his son could do was reading. Of course he blamed his wife - still suffering from headaches - who had little interest in her son. But to no avail.
The governess was blamed but was not fired because she kept his Lordship's bed warm during lonely nights and she was good at it.

The boy grew up without love but with the wonderful stories in all the books of the library of Bramhall Castle. He read and read and read. And after his father passed away and the governess became the nurse of his mother, he openly sat in a chair near the roaring fire in the library. The servants brought him food and drinks and kept the fire burning all year round.

The boy became a man who's mother passed away. The governess stayed but was seldom seen; her old rheumatic feet could not walk the stairs any more. And when she finally died followed by a modest funeral, the Reader did not even notice it.
Surrounded by his books, he never felt lonely. Not even when all the servants left the house and he had to take care of his own. He survived a long time on little food and water. While he sat in his straight chair behind the old folding table covered in books, the castle crumbled down around him. Ceilings gave up and caused an extra layer of dust on top of the books in the library. And on top of the reader with his long white beard and hair, his skin tightly leathered around his bones.

Photo: @forgottenheritage (Instagram)

This is what the brave adventurist saw when he explored the long forgotten castle, embedded in large bramble bushes, ferns, trees and so many varieties of weed he never saw before.
The silence in the library, the old man in the chair who still held a book in his mummified hands, he would never forget this.
The police came and said they were going to investigate the 'suspicious' death of the man everybody had forgotten about.

The adventurist returned to the castle shortly after the body was removed and took a photo. The chair as shiny as 30 years ago; shielded by the body of the Reader against thick layers of dust.

Helen

Word of thanks: the photo of @forgottenheritage (Instagram) inspired me to write this story and I was given permission to use the photo as an illustration for which I am very grateful. "I am a great admirer of the photo's of your Instagram account!"

Link: the beautiful book Forgotten Heritage by Matthew Emmett

Note: the story is pure fiction!A figment of my imagination!