Sarah's Story: Sisters of the Quantock Hills

Ruth Elwin Harris began storytelling during the Second World War when she and her brother went to stay with their grandfather in his isolated Somerset house. "We led a very solitary existence," she says. "Not that we minded. We read a lot and made up stories to entertain each other." It is that house, christened Hillcrest, that plays an important part in her Quantock Hills series. "My grandfather bought it in the 1930s from three elderly sisters - all of whom had been painters. Their murals still remained on the stable walls. I used to think about those sisters and wonder about life in the village when they were young."They lurked in the shadows, all the evil spirits of every fairy story that she had ever read, ghouls, goblins, imps, crowding round the edges of the room, waiting for her to move into the darkness. One step outside the safe circle of lamplight and she would be trapped, caught in shadowy arms, carried away.brEven in her most terrible dreams she knew that in some way, at some time, there would be an awakening. Not tonight. Tonight was worse than any nightmare. She could not pretend tonight that her body was lying in bed upstairs. She knew it was here, in the kitchen, shivering on a stool, while Annie, like a witch at her cauldron, took the brightly coloured garments from a pile on the table and dropped them one by one into the bubbling copper on the range. One by one, the happy colours became the dreary black of night until only one garment remained.br"Not my yellow dress!" She fell off the stool, grabbed Annie's arm. "Please, Annie, not that. I don't want black. I hate black. Please, please, let me keep my yellow dress."br"Oh, Miss Sarah," Annie said, "you can't wear yellow - not at a time like this. 'Twouldn't be respectful. Let me have it now, there's a good girl."br"I won't, I won't!" But her voice wavered as she struggled to hold the material. It was no good, sh