You work these fields. You walk these fields. You know these fields and they know you. They’ve known you since you were a boy. You are as much a part of these fields as they are a part of you. They’re in your blood. In your bones.
*
It’s the 17th of May 2022, and evening has arrived. The family meal – where all but two of your six grown up children are gathered around the table – is finished. Your grown-up children are noisy. They’re clearing the table, clattering plates, spilling things, chattering over the top of each other. Scraps are being scraped off plates for the dog while the dishwasher is loaded. The kettle is being boiled for a pot of tea. Your wife has escaped upstairs to get something.
The dog, a dippy sheepdog, Poppy, is tapping on the kitchen window, trying to catch your eye. She tilts her black and white head to one side, quizzically: Walk? There’s a beautiful light outside and the peace of the fields is calling to you both.
‘I think I’ll take Poppy for a walk,’ you say, doubting that anyone can hear. They’re discussing something nonsensical at high volume.
You’ve been feeling better – stronger – these last few months, after a terrible long spell in hospital where you nearly died. Where you didn’t see any of these people except on a screen, and didn’t see Poppy at all. Where you were separated from the land and the very air of the place you know best. You don’t take for granted these fields now, not anymore.
And this is your last chance to see them. Your last opportunity to take the dog for a walk. But of course, you don’t know this. At least, I don’t think you do.
So you get up out of your chair at the head of the table. Poppy spots you moving into the back kitchen and putting on your old coat. Hearing the loud creak of the back door being yanked open by her very favourite person, she jumps up at the fence of her yard, wagging her tail madly.
‘Aw, Poppy’s delighted,’ one of your children remarks, walking out to put the pans to soak in the sink. She moves to the doorway now to speak to Poppy, who has her two front paws up on the gate, raring to go. ‘Aren’t you so lucky Pops? To be having a lovely walk with your bestie?’
Once released, Poppy dashes out into the farmyard and darts under the gate that leads from farmyard to fields. She waits for you halfway down the lane, sniffing the grass of the pasture field to the right, taking in the heady scent of May.
The evening is golden. The breeze is soft. The smell of cow parsley is strong.
‘We’ll go this way Poppy,’ you say, and head into the Hill Field, full of barley.
Following the tramlines to the left, you round the corner. Trees on one side, barley on the other and the blue of the low-lying Slieve Bloom mountains rising in the distance ahead. They’ve been the backdrop to your work out here down all the years. A constant presence. How much you missed them in the long hospital months spent in Dublin, confined to a ward with no view of anything but buildings. How glad you were to be moved to the local hospital where you could see them again at last. ‘I’d never gone so long without them,’ you told your eldest on the phone, the one in England who isn’t here this evening with the others – all the others except for the youngest. She’s buried at Ballyfin Church, in the foothills of these mountains. And it’s always out here, on your own, in view of the Slieve Blooms, where the sorrow of this loss hits you hardest.
You continue to walk along the hedge beside the Pond Field, where the maize is starting to grow, and round the next corner. You look out across the whole stretch of your land from here, as far as Scully’s Hill, and take it all in. The beauty of this place on a May evening when everything is growing and greening and blooming. Life in its full flow. With the Longest Day over a month away yet, there’s the promise of more and more light still to come. The barley is rippling before you, like water, red and green and rustling as the breeze moves across the hill. The cattle are standing in the Clover Field and the house martins are swooping low over the pond in The Pasture. The light is soft on you and your heart is full.
But you have come almost full circle now, back to the gate at the corner of the Hill Field. Poppy stops to sniff at something interesting again. You turn around to look back over the field, one more time. The barley sways, changing colour and shape as the evening breeze chases and dances over it. Three yellowhammers flit across this waving field, a parting blessing, as you look at it one final time before turning again for home in the golden light of a May evening.
In the morning, you won’t wake up. You won’t walk these fields anymore. Not ever again.
And yet, part of you will always be here in these fields. You’re as much a part of them as they are a part of you. You will be here when the evening light is soft and the barley ripples and the yellowhammers dance over the hedges, blessing this place for the ones you have left behind.
LESLEY TAYLOR is an Irish writer living in the UK. She facilitates creative writing workshops for adults, young people and children. When she’s not writing, she enjoys outdoor swimming, walks and being in nature close to where she lives in Wiltshire. This is her first published piece.
