At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travellingIn search of something chance would never bring,An old man’s face, by life and weather cutAnd coloured,—rough, brown, sweet as any nut,—A land face, sea-blue-eyed,—hung in my mind...Edward Thomas ‘Lob’
It was my recent sojourn with all things Edward Thomas that led me to At Hawthorn Time by Melissa Harrison, and I doubt there can be a more perfect book to read in the month of May.
After several years of what have seemed like indistinguishable seasons here in the south west...mild winters segueing into spring, mediocre summers drifting into autumn, with the plants hardly knowing where they are, it has all been very different (and dare I say more normal) this year. Everything has had a jolly good freeze and knows exactly where it stands...yes, sadly we have lost the Tinker’s dahlias but other things have really benefited. The month of May has been a proper month of May this year, packaged with that sense of relief and excitement and no small wonder as everything suddenly comes back to life, especially our wisteria which is outsmarting itself...
And our swallows, a month late arriving but now nesting furiously..
The narrative arc of At Hawthorn Time is prescribed from the opening pages. There has been a car accident on a main road before the turn off to the village of Lodeshill. The clues are all there, the big Audi, the Simon & Garfunkel CD, the souped-up boy racer car, clues that will resonate and become clearer throughout the book, and hanging over it all the hawthorn hedges, in country lore so often associated with death...never bring May blossom into the house.
As I read, even knowing all this, I was still in a state of suspense over exactly how and why and who. There was guesswork going on along with a careful reading for more clues, but this was all as an aside, the warp to Melissa Harrison’s exquisite wefts of nature and rural living that thread through the book. There were moments that pulled me up short. I would read them over and again and think ‘Yes, it is exactly like that, you’ve got that right.’ Details that can’t be invented, can only come from close observation and taking notice.
’Spring was at its most fervid and riotous. The grass was lush and high, the cows sleek and giving good milk, and the narrow lanes around Lodeshill were hemmed with goosegrass and umbellifers. They stroked the sides of cars when they pulled over to pass each other, whispering along their hot flanks and striating the dust accumulated from faraway city streets and motorways.’
Our lane is barely a car’s width in places and ‘tis folly to have a mind to your paintwork as you drive along it. A layer of dirt offers some protection and thankfully is readily available. You have to be as good at driving backwards as forwards and be prepared to do so, because if you could see the look of terror in the other car. The greenery is starting to ‘stroke’ the side of the car, it does ‘whisper’ along the ‘hot flanks’. I’m noticing it now.
A small and manageable cast of characters quickly took on a reality as I read...
Howard and Kitty the incomers to the village. Howard never quite sure if he will ever belong, but perhaps he just hasn’t tried hard enough. Kitty, the opposite, almost trying too hard to embrace rural life with her paintings of bluebell woods. The couple at odds with each other, the move from the city exposing all the cracks and crevices in their marriage.
Jamie’s family the locals. Born and bred in Lodeshill, part of the village furniture. Jamie’s ambitions thwarted by lack of opportunity and limited resources.
And then there’s Jack the itinerant wanderer. Jack, for me, was Everyman, channelling the life and loves of John Clare. The misfit who needs to be free to roam, carrying his notebooks with him, seeing and watching and listening to the natural world around him, at odds with the status quo.
We had a Jack (actually called Jack) who lived around us here who had worked and wandered the land all his life. He turned up at our gate one day with a rose cutting that he’d picked from the garden of the derelict mill about a mile along the lane, urging us to plant it. I’m not sure we realised the significance of him or his offering at the time, and nothing came of the cutting either which is one of my big regrets. I walk back down there occasionally and do you think I can find any hint of a rose. Jack knew where to look, I don’t.
As the book moved towards its inevitable conclusion, and it does so very quietly, almost gently and without drama or bells and whistles, I found myself thinking ahead beyond the final page. The lives that would be left to cope afterwards, those lives that may not even be missed and thinking about the mark we all make, what we leave behind. At Hawthorn Time proved to be a remarkable book for me, one that will linger long in the memory and with much anticipation for where Melissa Harrison takes me next with All Among the Barley to be published by Bloomsbury in August.
If you have read At Hawthorn Time, I would love to know your thoughts..
And I'm trying to think too, of other novelists who entwine nature into their fiction as effectively as Melissa Harrison, and do you think I can bring anyone to mind...
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