All the meadows had been cut and saved, the bales stacked in groups of five or six and roofed with green grass. The Big Meadow beyond the beeches was completely clean, the bales having been taken in. Though I had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay, I now felt a keen outrage that it had been ended without me. Rose and my father were nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened?’ I asked when I found them at last, weeding the potato ridge one side of the orchard.
‘The winter feeding got too much for us,’ my father said.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
My father and Rose exchanged looks, and my father spoke as if he was delivering a prepared statement.
‘We didn’t like to. And anyhow we thought you’d want to come, hay or no hay. It’s more normal to come for a rest instead of just to kill yourself at the old hay. And indeed there’s plenty else for you to do if you have a mind to do it. I’ve taken up the garden again myself.’
‘Anyhow, I’ve brought these.’ I handed Rose the box of chocolates and bottle of scent, and gave my father the watch.
‘What’s this for?’
‘It’s the watch I told you I’d get in place of the old watch.’
‘I don’t need a watch.’
‘I got it anyhow. What do you think of it?’
‘It’s ugly,’ he said, turning it over.
‘It was expensive enough.’ I named the price. ‘And that was duty free.’
‘They must have seen you coming, then.’
‘No. It’s guaranteed for five years. It’s dustproof, shockproof, waterproof.’
‘The old gold watch — do you still have that?’ He changed after silence.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you ever get it working?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘But it’s sort of nice to have.’
‘That doesn’t make much sense to me.’
‘Well, you’ll find that the new watch is working well anyway.’
‘What use have I for time here any more?’ he said, but I saw him start to wind and examine the new watch, and he was wearing it at breakfast the next morning. He seemed to want it to be seen as he buttered toast and reached across for milk and sugar.
‘What did you want to get up so early for?’ he said to me. ‘You should have lain in and taken a good rest when you had the chance.’
‘What will you be doing today?’ I asked.
‘Not much. A bit of fooling around. I might get spray ready for the potatoes.’
‘It’d be an ideal day for hay,’ I said, looking out the window on the fields. The morning was as blue and cool as the plums still touched with dew down by the hayshed. There was a white spider webbing over the grass. As the day grew, I found myself stirring uncomfortably in my suit — missing my old loose clothes, the smell of diesel in the meadow, the blades of grass shivering as they fell, the long teeth of the raker kicking the hay into rows, all the jangle and bustle and busyness of the meadows.
I heard the clear blows of a hammer on stone. My father was sledging stones that had fallen from the archway where once the workmen’s bell had hung. Some of the stones had been part of the arch and were quite beautiful. There seemed no point in breaking them up. I moved closer, taking care to stay hidden in the shade of the beeches.
As the sledge rose, the watch glittered on my father’s wrist. I followed it down, saw the shudder that ran through his arms as the metal met the stone. A watch was always removed from the wrist before such violent work. I waited. In this heat he could not keep up such work for long. He brought the sledge down again and again, the watch glittering, the shock shuddering through his arms. When he stopped, before he wiped the sweat away, he put the watch to his ear and listened intently. What I’d guessed was certain now. From the irritable way he threw the sledge aside, it was clear that the watch was still running.
That afternoon I helped him fill the tar barrel with water for spraying the potatoes, though he made it clear he didn’t want help. When he put the bag of blue stone into the barrel to steep, he thrust the watch deep into the water before my eyes.
‘I’m going back to Dublin tomorrow,’ I said.
‘I thought you were coming for two weeks. You always stayed two weeks before.’
‘There’s no need for me now.’
‘It’s your holiday. You’re as well off here as by the sea. It’s as much of a change and far cheaper.’
‘I meant to tell you before, and should have but didn’t. I am married now.’
‘Tell me more news,’ he said with an attempt at cool surprise, but I saw by his eyes that he already knew. ‘We heard but we didn’t like to believe it. It’s a bit late in the day for formal engagements, never mind invitations. I suppose we weren’t important enough to be invited.’
‘There was no one at the wedding but ourselves. We invited no one, neither her people nor mine.’
‘Well, I suppose it was cheaper that way,’ he agreed.
‘When will you spray?’
‘I’ll spray tomorrow,’ he said, and we left the blue stone to steep in the barrel of water.
With relief, I noticed he was no longer wearing the watch, but the feeling of unease was so great in the house that after dinner I went outside. It was a perfect moonlit night, the empty fields and beech trees and walls in clear yellow outline. The night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm, but I knew too well it neither was nor could be. It was a dream of death.
I went idly towards the orchard, and as I passed the tar barrel I saw a thin fishing line hanging from a part of the low yew branch down into the barrel. I heard the ticking even before the wrist watch came up tied to the end of the line. What shocked me was that I felt neither surprise nor shock.
I felt the bag that we’d left to steep earlier in the water. The blue stone had all melted down. It was a barrel of pure poison, ready for spraying.
I listened to the ticking of the watch on the end of the line in silence before letting it drop back into the barrel. The poison had already eaten into the casing of the watch. The shining rim and back were no longer smooth. It could hardly run much past morning.
The night was so still that the shadows of the beeches did not waver on the moonlit grass, seemed fixed like a leaf in rock. On the white marble the gold watch must now be lying face upwards in this same light, silent or running. The ticking of the watch down in the barrel was so completely muffled by the spray that only by imagination could it be heard. A bird moved in some high branch, but afterwards the silence was so deep it began to hurt, and the longing grew for the bird or anything to stir again.
I stood in that moonlit silence as if waiting for some word or truth, but none came, none ever came. Only what was increased or diminished as it changed, became only what is, becoming again what was even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison.
Suddenly, the lights in the house went out. Before going into the house, I drew the watch up again out of the barrel by the line and listened to it tick, now purely amused by the expectation it renewed — that if I continued to listen to the ticking some word or truth might come. And when I finally lowered the watch back down into the poison, I did it so carefully that no ripple or splash disturbed the quiet, and time, hardly surprisingly, was still running; time that did not have to run to any conclusion.
Parachutes
‘I want to ask you one very small last favour.’
‘What is it?’
‘Will you stay behind for just five minutes after I leave?’
It was the offer of the blindfold, to accept the darkness for a few moments before it finally fell.