The primroses had started. I suppose it was some time in March.
I』d driven through Westerham and was making for Pudley. I』d got to do an assessment of an ironmonger』s shop, and then, if I could get hold of him, to interview a life-insurance case avering in the balance. His name had bee in by our local agent, but at the last momeaken fright and begun to doubt whether he could afford it. I』m pretty good at talking people round. It』s being fat that does it. It puts people in a cheery kind of mood, makes 『em feel that signing a cheque is almost a pleasure. Of course there are different ways of tag different people. With some it』s better to lay all the stress on the bonuses, others you scare in a subtle way with hints about what』ll happen to their wives if they die uninsured.
The old car switchbacked up and down the curly little hills. And by God, what a day! You know the kind of day that generally es some time in March when winter suddenly seems to give up fighting. For days past we』d been having the kind of beastly weather that people call 『bright』 weather, when the sky』s a cold hard blue and the wind scrapes you like a blunt razor-blade. Then suddenly the wind had dropped and the sun got a ce. You know the kind of day. Pale yellow sunshine, not a leaf stirring, a touist in the far distance where you could see the sheep scattered over the hillsides like lumps of chalk. And down in the valleys fires were burning, and the smoke twisted slowly upwards aed into the mist. I』d got the road to myself. It was so warm you could almost have taken your clothes off.
I got to a spot where the grass beside the road was smothered in primroses. A patch of clayey soil, perhaps. Twenty yards farther on I slowed down and stopped. The weather was too good to miss. I felt I』d got to get out and have a smell at the spring air, and perhaps even pick a few primroses if there was nobody ing. I even had some vague notion of pig a bunch of them to take home to Hilda.
I switched the engine off and got out. I never like leaving the old car running iral, I』m always half afraid she』ll shake her mudguards off or something. She』s a 1927 model, and she』s done a biggish mileage. When you lift the bo and look at the e reminds you of the old Austrian Empire, all tied together with bits of string but somehow keeps plugging along. You wouldn』t believe any mae could vibrate in so many dires at o』s like the motion of the earth, which has twenty-two different kinds of wobble, or so I remember reading. If you look at her from behind when she』s running iral it』s for all the world like watg one of those Hawaiian girls dang the hula-hula.
There was a five-barred gate beside the road. I strolled over and leaned across it. Not a soul in sight. I hitched my hat back a bit to get the kind of balmy feeling of the air against my forehead. The grass uhe hedge was full of primroses. Just ihe gate a tramp or somebody had left the remains of a fire. A little pile of white embers and a wisp of smoke still oozing out of them. Farther along there was a little bit of a pool, covered over with duck-weed. The field was winter wheat. It sloped up sharply, and then there was a fall of chalk and a little beech spinney. A kind of mist of young leaves orees. And utter stillness everywhere. Not even enough wind to stir the ashes of the fire. A lark singing somewhere, otherwise not a sound, not even an aeroplane.
I stayed there for a bit, leaning over the gate. I was