When the children returned from school Ava didn’t like to work unless she was doing something that included them. Time with her children was precious. Ava knew they liked to have Jean-Paul around. He took time with them and played games that were always creative and original. They’d watch birds, drawing them in notebooks their mother gave them, writing their habits in their large, childish scrawl. Poppy collected feathers and stuck them onto the pages along with leaves of interest. She would have stuck creatures in there too had her mother not explained that they were living animals to be treated with respect. “Just because they are small, doesn’t mean they don’t feel as we do. If you were to look down on us from a great height we would be as small as them, but we feel pain, don’t we?” So Poppy carried around a shoe box in which she collected worms and slugs to look at closely before setting them back in the earth.
Jean-Paul helped the children sketch. He taught them how to observe and put down on paper what they saw. Angus, although only six, had a natural talent, taking his sketches back to the house to color in at the kitchen table. Ava framed the best and hung them in her bedroom.
One afternoon in early December they went on an expedition to the woods. The cows had been let out into the field beyond the thyme walk. The children liked to tame them, putting out their hands so the animals could lick their skin with their rough tongues. Ian Fitzherbert had taken the time to explain why they had tongues like that and how they had five stomachs in order to make milk. The children considered all animals their friends, even the hairy spiders that Ava secretly loathed. Every time Archie collected one for his jar, she was tempted to scream, but she knew she’d only teach her children to fear them. So she smiled proudly and told him how clever he was and how deliciously juicy they were with their fat little bodies and swift legs as they scurried about the glass. She showed them webs, especially after a rainfall when they sparkled with gems, or in winter when the frost made them glitter. She reminded herself that spiders were ugly by no fault of their own. How could she love gardens if she didn’t love all who lived in them?
That evening they carried baskets to fill with “treasure” from the woodland floor. Poppy searched for feathers, many from the pheasants and partridges Ian Fitzherbert reared, but also those of pigeons and smaller birds. The boys preferred more substantial things, like conkers, but they had gathered those in October, polishing them and tying them to string for their games. Now there wasn’t much to collect except mushrooms. Ava wasn’t sure which were edible and which were poisonous so she forbade the boys to touch them, encouraging them to find other things like unusual leaves, or spent cartridges from shoots.
As they busied themselves among the trees and bushes, Jean-Paul and Ava walked together up the path that cut through the middle of the wood. They didn’t feel the need to talk. They watched the children, praised their efforts when they ran up to show what they had found, but otherwise they walked in the comfortable silence of old friends. The light was mellow as the sun hung low in the western sky, hitting the tops of the trees and turning them golden. It was chilly down there in the shadow, but Ava wore only a T-shirt and her face glowed with warmth. They watched the changing colors of sunset, moved by the melancholy of the dying day. Finally they reached the edge of the wood. Jean-Paul stopped walking.
“There is great beauty in the tragedy of sunset,” he said.
“It’s because it’s transient,” she replied, gazing across the field. “You can enjoy it for a moment only and then it is gone, like a rainbow.”
“I suppose it is human nature to want what we cannot have.”
Ava pretended not to notice the significance of his words.
“I love this time of year,” she said brightly, walking on. “The weather is crisp yet there are still leaves on the trees, turning into wondrous colors. Midwinter makes me sad. Nothing grows, everything is dead.”
“I admire you,” he said suddenly.
Ava laughed. “Whatever for? I don’t think there’s much in me to admire.”
“You have a loving family. Your children are happy. Your home has a magical warmth to it. And you, Ava, you have an inner beauty that grows the more I get to know you.”
“Really, Jean-Paul, that’s very sweet. I’ve never thought I have an inner beauty.”
“You do. You have a quality I have never seen before. You are contradictory. You seem very confident and yet I sense that inside you are not as you appear. You are a great storyteller, a good entertainer, and yet you prefer to be alone. You pretend you like spiders but I can see that they frighten you. You are a good woman. For that I admire you the most.”