@brittarnhild
"There will be a reading in the orchard at 4 pm. I hope to see you there!" The man, his whole body a sparkling smile, walked around, talking with everybody he met. Fran smiled back, "Yes, we will be there, we won´t miss it for the world."
Fran and I were spending the afternoon in Monk´s House and Garden, the weekend home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf down in East Sussex, not far from Lewes. We had been inside the house, talking about how Leonard loved to listen to classical music on his wireless, how Virginia, though no church goer herself, loved the view from her bedroom window directly out to the old church. And we had walked around the garden. The places so much loved by both Leonard and Virginia. On the train from Victoria Station down to Sussex I had been reading bits and pieces from Virginia´s A Writer´s Diary, and underlined
As for the beauty, as always I say when I walk the terrace after breakfast, too much for one pair of eyes. Enough to float a whole population in happiness, if only they would look. Curiously a combination, this garden, with the church, and the cross of the churchblack against Asheham Hill. That is all the elements of the English brought together, accidentaly.
The clock approached four though, so we walked over to teh orchard. And there the actor read just that, In The Orchard.
There we were, in the middle of Virginia´s created world, in the middle of her universe.
I had read In The Orchard before. After I came home I have read it again. Many times. It is a story difficult to get into. What is the meaning? Why doesn she writes it three times, three different ways. Why this abrubt awakening "Oh, I shall ne late for tea?"
Standing there, listeing to the story read, watching the apple tree and the young woman who volunteered to play with the actor.....it all made sense.