Sometime in September, I set out one morning to the park along CMH/100ft road. As I walked along the path in the park and admired the lush vegetation, I was struck in one stretch by the heady aroma of the morinda tinctoria. The path was lined with trees laden with the flowers and there was a carpet of white along the way as well. It was as if the entire air around was perfumed with the intoxicating scent.
I was transported to happy valley in Manderley, as described in the book Rebecca --
We stood on a slope of a wooded hill, and the path wound away before us
to a valley, by the side of a running stream. There were no dark trees
here, no tangled undergrowth, but on either side of the narrow path
stood azaleas and rhododendrons, not blood-coloured like the giants in
the drive, but salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace,
drooping their lovely, delicate heads in the soft summer rain.
The
air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as
though their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the
stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dank rich moss
beneath our feet. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little
stream, and the quiet rain. When Maxim spoke, his voice was hushed too,
gentle and low, as if he had no wish to break upon the silence.
'We
call it the Happy Valley,' he said.
Truely, the spell of Manderley was upon me as well.
