Skull, roses and spiderweb sketch

The Pellow orchard has gone to ruin since you left, and I thought you should hear it from me rather than from the estate man. Mr Garrod came up on Tuesday with his clipboard and stood under the old Bramley with his hands in his coat, saying the trees were finished. He is wrong about the Bramleys, but he is not wrong about the ones along the wall. Those have gone grey, and the bark peels off in strips you could roll like paper.

Something has been spinning between the rows. Every morning the grass under the Kentish Pippins is strung with web, silver and wet, so thick that the wasps stick in it and hang like fruit. Mother used to say a web in the orchard was a bad omen for the crop. I laughed at her. I'm not laughing now, because the crop is only a few windfalls and the sky has gone the colour of a dead man's teeth.

Last Thursday I found the snake. It was lying in the cut grass beside the rose bed, bright as a new ribbon, and it did not move when I walked past. Under the roses there was a skull the mole had turned up, grinning at the leaves as if it had been waiting for someone to notice it. I put the cracked bone in the tin with your initials scratched on the lid. I have kept the lid, Ivy. I have not decided what to do with the rest.

Come home before the first frost. Bring your stick and your bad temper. The apples will fall whether we pick them or not, and I would rather they fell with us both watching.

Yours always, Nell