Miss Clare Remembers...

"It was a small house, but enough for the young couple, and they arranged their few pieces of furniture to the best advantage and were well content. Mary's taste was good. Her own home, a farm labourer's cottage, had been humble but beautifully clean and neat, and at the farmhouse she was accustomed to seeing solid pieces of well-made furniture, and well-designed utensils of copper and wood in daily use.

She spread the scrubbed deal table with a red serge cloth in the afternoons when the midday meal was done, and enjoyed the site of a white geranium in a pot set squarely upon it. Round the edge ran fringed bobbles which were to delight her little daughters in the years to come. On the mantelpiece stood bright tins containing sugar, currants, tea, and salt. The rag rug before the hearth was of her own making, and the fender and fire-irons of steel were polished first thing every morning with a small square of emery paper, until they shone as brightly as silver...

There were many hazel thickets on the chalky slopes around Caxley... Mary used to enjoy these outings to collect the hazel sticks, and never came back without a few flowers or berries from the woods to decorate the window sill."

Miss Clare Remembers
Miss Read

Red Tablecloth by Nicholas Verrall