Saddle the Wind by Jess Foley

in the air now, too, and she bent to Arthur and pulled the collar of his coat more closely about his throat. ‘Come on, we’re going home now.’
    Home
. The word echoed in her mind and the sudden thought came to her that the cottage was home for herself and Ollie, and Ernest, Arthur, Mary and Agnes, but it wasn’t for Blanche. Home for Blanche was the nursery at Hallowford House. That was the only real home she had ever known. Oh, yes, there had been the Sunday visits to the cottage, but Sarah couldn’t pretend that such brief episodes could have counted for much in the baby’s experience of life. And, she reflected, just as Blanche really knew only the nursery of Hallowford House, so, too, she was truly only familiar with those faces she saw around her there – Sarah herself, the nurse, the nursemaid, Lizzie, and the other baby, Marianne. And even Mr Savill to a degree. Compared to Blanche’s familiarity with those faces, her father and brothers and sisters must be almost like strangers to her.
    Strange, Sarah thought, the changes brought about by the birth of Marianne and the death of Mrs Savill. They had affected her own life and that of Ollie, and Blanche and the other children. The lives of all of them had been altered to some degree or other.
    At the very beginning Sarah had spent most of hertime at the house, feeding the two infants, being nurse to them and sleeping beside them in the nursery. Then with the arrival of the nurse proper she had moved into the little bedroom next door. Her brief visits to the cottage had been made between the babies’ feeds. She had looked forward to those times. Ollie and the children had missed her presence and resented her absences – particularly in the evenings when they were accustomed to be all together.
    But gradually things had grown easier. After a period when the changing pattern of the infants’ feeding gave her more time she had been able to get down to the cottage more frequently, there to clean and cook for Ollie and the children and generally spend more time with them. Also she was able to resume her old task of doing the Savills’ laundry, doing it in the scullery of Hallowford House.
    And now things were returning to normal. Both babies were completely weaned now. Even the laundry had been done back at the cottage over these past couple of weeks.
    Earlier, though, the situation had brought problems. Not with the children – she didn’t think they had been harmed by her temporary absences – but with Ollie. There was no doubt that at the start it had prolonged and strengthened the estrangement that had developed between herself and him.
    There had been no sexual closeness between herself and Ollie for some time while she was carrying Blanche, and afterwards, following the baby’s birth, when things might have begun to grow easier between them, she had left to spend her nights with the two infants, only seeing Ollie for brief periods in the evening and at weekends. And then at those times there had always been work of one kind or another waiting for her, added to which thechildren had always been around. As a consequence she and Ollie had rarely found themselves alone for more than a few minutes at a time. So there had been no real opportunity for them to regain anything of their former closeness, and they had remained apart, like polite strangers, as if each of them was afraid to make the first move.
    The situation had continued throughout the winter, until at last, in May, there had come the time when the two babes could go through the night without the need for food and Sarah was free to move back to the cottage each night and sleep in her own bed once more.
    She could recall so well that first evening. Leaving Blanche at the house she had returned to the cottage just before eight, in time to see the children into bed and hear their prayers. Then, somewhat self-consciously she had gone back downstairs into the kitchen where Ollie was sitting sketching. He