Swallows

Swallows appear at two turning points in the journey, bringing the book’s seasonal world into view while connecting the lost farm to the coast. First, hundreds or perhaps thousands gather around a lighthouse at the mainland’s southernmost point; later, their return in spring stirs the narrator’s memories of the coast and its wildlife.

Gathering at the Southern Lighthouse

At the lighthouse, the swallows twitter, swoop and heave around the southernmost perch on the mainland. Their concentration seems almost compelled by the geography: the narrator imagines them pausing there before committing to a journey south. Watching them prompts a question about the swallows that had spent the summer in the farm’s pigsty—whether they, too, have arrived with a new family. The possibility remains a wondering, not a confirmed identification, but it draws the farm’s former life into the travellers’ exposed coastal present.

Spring Return and Recollection

By late April, the swallows are returning as the lambs grow strong on the hillside. The scene is part of a wider spring landscape: in the wood, a fallow deer has a young fawn, while gulls mass over a recently ploughed field. The swallows’ return becomes a cue for the narrator’s thoughts to drift south, toward the coast, where gulls would now be raising their young on cliffs and rooftops and gathering around harbours for pasties.

Seasonal and Narrative Significance

The swallows’ appearances frame movement as both natural recurrence and human memory. At the lighthouse, their anticipated southward departure gives the birds a direction and a moment of hesitation; in spring, their return marks a changed season at the farm. Their presence also helps the narration move between places: a flock at the coast recalls the farm, and returning birds draw the narrator’s attention back south. They remain wild creatures in their own seasonal cycle, while their passage through the narrative makes that cycle a measure of the distance between the life left behind and the journey continuing.