When she moved into his tiny house in Stroud, and took charge of his four small children, Mother was thirty and still quite handsome. She had not, I suppose, met anyone like him before. This rather priggish young man, with his devout gentility, his airs and manners, his music and ambitions, his charm, bright talk, and undeniable good looks, overwhelmed her as soon as she saw him. So she fell in love with him immediately, and remained in love for ever. And herself being comely, sensitive, and adoring, she attracted my father also. And so he married her. And so later he left her - with his children and some more of her own.
When he'd gone, she brought us to the village and waited. She waited for thirty years. I don't think she ever knew what had made him desert her, though the reasons seemed clear enough. She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney-jackdaw, she made her nest of rags and jewels, was happy in the sunlight, squawked loudly at danger, pried and was insatiably curious, forgot when to eat or ate all day, and sang when sunsets were red. She lived by the easy laws of the hedgerow, loved the world, and made no plans, had a quick holy eye for natural wonders and couldn't have kept a neat house for her life. What my father wished for was something quite different, something she could never give him - the protective order of an unimpeachable suburbia, which was what he got in the end.
The three or four years Mother spent with my father she fed on for the rest of her life. Her happiness at that time was something she guarded as though it must ensure his eventual return. She would talk about it almost in awe, not that it had ceased but that it had happened at all. | Cuando mi madre se trasladó a la pequeña casa de Stroud y se hizo cargo de los tres niños pequeños de él, era todavía bastante atractiva, a pesar de haber cumplido ya los treinta. Supongo que nunca había conocido a nadie como él. Ese joven algo puritano, con sus buenos modales y su apariencia, su música y sus ambiciones, su encanto, su conversación brillante e innegable atractivo, le causó, nada más verlo, una profunda impresión. Se enamoró de él en el acto, de un amor que duraría toda la vida. Y ella, bonita, sensible y cariñosa, también sedujo a mi padre. De modo que se casó con ella y de modo que la abandonaría más tarde, dejándola a cargo de los hijos de él y los de ambos.
Cuando él se fue, ella nos llevó al pueblo y se dedicó a esperar. Esperaría durante treinta años. Creo que nunca supo exactamente por qué él la había abandonado, por muy evidentes que fuesen las razones. Era demasiado sincera, demasiado natural para aquel hombre temeroso. Distaba demasiado de su natural metódico. Ella era, al fin y al cabo, una chica de campo, desordenada, histérica y afectuosa. Atolondrada y traviesa como una grajilla, hacía su nido con trapos y joyas, era alegre bajo el sol, chillaba ante el peligro, era entrometida y de una curiosidad insaciable, se olvidaba de comer o se pasaba el día comiendo, y cantaba en los atardeceres rojos. Ella se guiaba por las leyes sencillas del campo, amaba el mundo, no hacía planes, se extasiaba ante las maravillas de la naturaleza y no era capaz de mantener un hogar impecable. Lo que mi padre necesitaba era algo completamente distinto, algo que ella nunca pudo darle: el orden protector de un respetable barrio residencial, cosa que al final consiguió.
Los tres o cuatro años que mi madre pasó con mi padre la colmarían para toda la vida. Guardaba como un tesoro esa felicidad perdida, como si de esa forma tal vez pudiese hacerle regresar. Cuando hablaba de aquello, lo hacía casi con veneración, no quejándose de que hubiese acabado sino admirándose de que le hubiese sucedido a ella
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This translation received 2 votes and the following comment:
Salvo por un pequeño error aritmético (4 hijos), me gusta mucho la fluidez del texto.Congrats
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