‘A badger. In the daytime.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
He stared at her with his strange, slightly evasive eyes. Last night it had been worse. His squint. Probably because of the wine. ‘No,’ he said.
Her thigh muscle started to quiver so she put her foot down on the floor, then pulled the sock back on. She poured the coffee. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes. With the sound of the stream.’ He started to eat. The dog sat next to his chair and kept its eyes on him, head slightly crooked. ‘You’ll get yours, Sam.’
She buttered a slice of bread, put some cheese on it and looked at it. She swallowed. ‘Heading off soon?’
‘Yes.’
A bit of coffee then, she could always manage that. The boy ate in silence, the dog following every piece into his mouth. Bradwen looked in turn at his plate, out the window and at the dog. He glanced once at the clock. ‘I want to go to Snowdon today,’ he said. ‘Have you got a suggestion?’
‘A suggestion?’
‘The most beautiful way to get there.’
‘Can you walk it in one day?’
‘Easy. I’m not going up, just to the foot of the mountain.’
‘I haven’t gone in that direction yet.’
‘How long you been living here?’
‘A month or two.’
‘Is it temporary?’
‘No. Permanent.’
‘Wow.’ He’d finished eating and rubbed his hands which, despite last night’s bath, were still a little dirty. ‘Your turn, Sam.’ He tipped some dog food into the bowl in front of the cooker. ‘I’ll get my stuff from upstairs and then I’ll be off.’
‘OK,’ she said.
*
Ten minutes later they were standing at the corner of the house. The grass was wet, the door of the pigsty open. The alder branches lay gleaming against the garden wall. The boy shook her hand. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. The dog followed the barbed-wire fence, sniffing and barking. The geese were in the far corner of the field.
‘You’re welcome.’ She waited before letting go of his hand. It wouldn’t be strange to say something else now, but she didn’t know what. He’d put on his woolly hat, though it wasn’t cold. ‘I’d better get Sam away from those geese.’
‘You go straight ahead at that bend. I oiled the kissing gate a while ago.’
He carefully pulled back his hand. ‘See you,’ he said. He walked off, whistling the dog, which was now running back and forth along the fence. She could only see his legs, an elbow now and then. Man and dog: man with restless legs, kicking a chunk of slate along in front of him. Just before he went through the kissing gate, Sam ran up to him. There was no squeak, she’d oiled the hinges well. He was gone. The dog barked one last time.
*
She walked over to the goose field. The birds came up to her. Four. It must have happened the night she’d knelt there naked, gazing up at the stars. A whole week had passed without her giving the geese a second glance. She ran into the house, grabbed the chunk of bread off the worktop, ran back, pulled off little pieces of bread and threw them over the barbed-wire fence. She looked at the shelter she’d made. The chicken wire that was supposed to cover the entrance was still folded back. Maybe they crept in at night and weren’t safe even then. Now that she was standing with bread in her hands and had the geese’s attention, she remembered the day she’d tried to herd the birds into the shelter. Lying wet and exhausted on her side in the grass, she had thought of luring them with bread. The next day Rhys Jones showed up and it was his fault she’d forgotten about the geese. How could I have let that happen? she asked herself. Neglecting animals I’m responsible for because I think someone’s a bastard? Where’s he got to anyway? It’s already December and November is the month for slaughtering animals. What’s keeping him? She moved along to the gate and went into the goose field. The birds followed her. She scattered some bread in front of the shelter. They weren’t having it. As if knowing she was trying to trick them, they kept a good distance. She sighed and went back to the gate. After she had tied it up again with the piece of rope, the geese ran to the shelter and started gulping down the bread. ‘Godverdomme,’ she said quietly. ‘Pig-headed, stupid creatures.’ She looked at the kissing gate and the gap in the row of oaks. Slowly, she walked back to the house. In the kitchen the breakfast things were still on the table. She picked up his plate and smelt it, then put his mug to her lips. The house had never been this empty. She didn’t think twice, but grabbed her bag and ran to the car.
31
Music filled the house; a large radio-CD player was set up on the kitchen sideboard. The TV was just inside the front door in its box. She’d do that later. There were felt tips and coloured pencils on the table. She did the washing-up, humming along to the songs she knew and thinking, See you, not goodbye. See you, not goodbye. It could have been a line from a Dickinson poem, although hers mostly alternated between six and eight syllables. The short distance she had run earlier that morning felt like a marathon. She lowered the milk pan into the suds and stared out through the window. The study. She hadn’t been in the study yet. She quickly dried her hands and went upstairs. She could tell how he’d got up from the way the duvet was lying on the divan: he’d thrown it off in one go and hadn’t straightened it afterwards. I need to rest, she thought. I’m tired. She took off her clothes and lay down on the divan. It was cold in the study, the fire had burnt out long ago. The duvet cover chafed her nipples. The sweetness and the smell of bitter leaves she had noticed earlier came together at the top edge of the fabric. She pulled the duvet over her head and ran her hands over her belly.
*
Later, after she had put her clothes back on and lit a fire, she searched the room. Had the pile of books on the coffee table been disturbed? Had he written on the sheets of blank paper on the table next to the open volume of Dickinson’s poetry? She couldn’t remember if she had left it open at this page. A COUNTRY BURIAL. If, she thought, if this was where he had stopped leafing and reading, then…
She sat down and stared out of the window because she didn’t know what came after ‘then’. The sea was visible again over the tops of the now almost leafless trees. But far, very far away. She remembered something, also vague and far away, and stood up to rummage through a cardboard box of books she hadn’t yet unpacked. She had been almost certain that Habegger’s biography was in her office in Amsterdam, but it turned out to be in the box after all. She sat down at the desk and riffled the pages. On page 249 — where the book fell open — there was a thick red line under ‘since nothing is as real as “thought and passion”, our essential human truth is expressed by our fantasies, not our acts’. It was a reference to a book Dickinson had read when she was twenty-one which was supposed to have formed her, along with her great-great-uncle’s coughing fit and all kinds of other insignificant events. Habegger was an old gasbag, but she still copied the passage onto the open page of the poetry volume, a little fearfully and with an empty feeling in her stomach, before closing the biography. Not just emptiness, but pain too, a bit higher than usual today, inhabiting her throat and the back of her head. She walked to the bathroom and took two paracetamol. It was almost time for her to see the doctor. She couldn’t go on like this much longer. She wondered if she was up to it. Until yesterday she had been almost certain she was.