Tribal frog design

You will think I have gone soft, but the frog has come back to the lock gate. The big one that Mr Tapley swore was a toad. Every evening since the flood it sits on the top rail with its eye fixed on the sluice, black as a wet stone, while the water runs through the brick channel below in banded swirls that look like the markings on its own back. I have started timing my walk from the mill so I can watch it.

Tapley says it is a sign the river is turning. Mrs Oakes at the post office says it is waiting for her husband, who went through the ice at Christmas and was never found. I told her frogs do not wait for anybody. Still, I brought her a jar of the good tea and she pressed a stamp book on me that I did not ask for, so perhaps I am the soft one after all.

Last Thursday I tried to lift it off the rail with a spade handle and it did not jump. It only turned its head, slow as a clock, and looked at me as if I were the trespasser. Then it let the water take it under the gate. I stood there until my boots went cold through.

I have not told anyone that I went back on Friday and dropped a penny into the eddy below the sluice. I could not say why. You always said I was a sentimental fool. Write and tell me whether the lanes are still under water at the church end, and whether you have found a decent fishmonger in London.

Yours, Edie