A Late Lark Singing [antikvár]

It was going to be another sweltering day. All East Anglia lay baked in the sunshine that had begun in June, just in time for the 'wedding of the year', a great occasion for everybody in Old Swithinford because it was 'as it should be'. Charlie Bellamy was a farmer's daughter, marrying Charles Bridgefoot, who was a farmer's son. Rural England was not dead yet. The wonderful weather had gone on all through harvest, right up to the end of August. By that time drought was threatening, the fields already ploughed lying baked in the glaring sun, the landscape chequered by other fields where stubble had turnéd to britde, shining white, somé of them textured by bales of straw casting dark shadows. Trees in the garden of Benedict's House had begun to look dry, dusty and sad. Ned, the gardener at Benedict's, meeting the postman under them one morning, had complained that he had had quite enough of 'that bloody blue sky' to last him a lifetime. The two at Benedict's had returned from a holiday in Wales in time for the wedding, bringing with them the parson who had come specially to perform that ceremony. What they had not expected was to arrive home a respectably married couple themselves, instead of openly 'living in sin' as they had been. It was only en route home that they had made up their minds to keep quiet about it, so as not to steal all the limelight from young Charles and Charlie, and persuade their friend the Rev. Nigel Delaprime to aid and abet them. So they had said nothing, and the longer the time went on, the more difficult it became to spring the surprise on their friends. It was now three months, and still no word had been said. When September came in and the only difference to the weather was that the dry heat had changed to day after day of cloying, sticky humidity, even Sophie complained. Arriving for work at Benedict's on the first Thursday of