A line through the moss
The weather had turned almost summery — that April trick — and I’d driven out to Westbury Farm early, wanting a final round of notes before May appeared and the grant deadline loomed. The orchard was already warm by the time I reached it, the light finding gaps in the canopy that hadn’t existed a month ago.
In the orchard the change in season was almost abrupt. The trees had taken on that pale green haze that appears suddenly, as if someone had brushed watercolour across their branches overnight. The birds were louder — a whole chorus of territorial declarations layered on top of each other.
I walked the rows again, notebook in hand. The light made everything clearer and more confusing at once. Details popped out — lichen shapes, bud clusters, the faint rise of old roots — but the overall sense of the orchard’s layout felt no firmer in my mind than it had in March.
I tried to map a central corridor between the oldest trees, sketching a rough line down the centre. When I stepped back a few paces, it didn’t look like a corridor at all — more a loose scatter that almost, but not quite, suggested an avenue. I turned, walked the same space from the opposite direction, and the shape changed again.
I wrote in the margin:
“Rows unclear in strong light. Shapes shift by vantage.”
Too poetic for a grant document. I left it anyway.
A patch of moss near the far boundary caught the sun and threw back a vivid, almost startling green. I knelt to take a closer look. Something had pressed the moss down recently — a shallow, narrow depression, too long for a paw, too slight for a boot. It ran only for a foot or two, then vanished. The impression felt recent, though I couldn’t say why.
I waited, listening to the birds. Nothing else disturbed the orchard.
On my way back toward the centre I noticed the split-limbed tree again. The shadow it cast fell at a different angle today, longer and reaching farther across the moss than I expected. I stepped around the trunk, tracing the line of shade. Nothing remarkable. Just the sun moving with the hour. Still, I found myself circling it twice, trying to recall how the light had fallen last time. Memory offered the usual contradictory options.
I heard footsteps then — or thought I did — somewhere beyond the hedge on the lower side. Not close, not heavy, just a slow tread on soft ground. I stopped and listened. The sound came again, two or three beats, then nothing. A pheasant clattered off a moment later in a loud, offended burst. I told myself that was all I’d heard.
The walk back to the yard was quiet. The distant fields shimmered in the warmth, and a faint breeze carried the scent of something sweet — early blossom, perhaps, or crushed grass.
Tommo appeared from behind the barn holding two wooden crates. “Thought you were the post,” he said. “Expecting a delivery of wildflower plugs. You get what you need?”
“Mostly,” I said.
“Good trees this year,” he added. “Holding their own. Orchard’s older than it looks.”
I started to reply but he’d already disappeared into the barn, muttering about the late delivery.
Back at the Land Rover I flipped through my notes. The orchard sketches from today didn’t match the ones from last week. Not wildly, just enough to make me wonder which version I’d been looking at. The central corridor. The leaning shapes. The bright moss. None of it aligned cleanly.
Emma messaged as I was packing up:
Should be a mild evening. Might take Murphy down to the front later. Fancy joining?
I said yes, closed the notebook, and let the orchard settle back into its shape behind me, whatever shape it had chosen for the day.
On the drive home the sun lowered itself into the sea haze, flattening the fields with gold. For a moment, as I looked across the valley, I glimpsed someone walking the boundary near Tommo’s lower field — or thought I did — a shape with a brimmed hat moving slowly along the hedge-line, head tilted as though studying something in the grass. By the time the lane dipped and rose again, the hat had become a knot of shadow, and then even that was gone.
When I reached town the warmth had settled into evening. The sight — whatever it was — slipped away as quietly as it had arrived.
Winter had gone, and May was beginning to make itself felt..