‘Yes.’ Funny name for a big dog. She knew it meant something, but translating it was somehow beyond her. She wanted to go upstairs to the shelf under the mirror. Not one, but two tablets. She stood up. She walked through to the living room and stairs. The boy didn’t call after her. Without turning on the bathroom light, she grabbed the strips and dared to look at her backlit self. Fortunately she was wearing a hideous hat, a fancy-dress article, nothing anyone could take seriously. ‘Carlo,’ she said. ‘Ohhhhh.’ She saw her mouth open and close again: vague, colourless. The bathroom smelt of Mrs Evans, of course, as if she’d got out of the bath ten minutes ago and dried herself, leaning on the washbasin now and then with one hand. She swallowed the two tablets with a single mouthful of water. When she straightened up again, the two tassels swung cheerfully.
*
‘You’re not smoking,’ the boy said. He had cleared the table, letting the food slide off her plate into the bin. Now he was washing up.
‘What?’
‘I haven’t seen you smoking since this morning when I was doing the raking.’
She looked around. The packet of cigarettes wasn’t on the table. She stood up slowly and rested on the back of the chair before moving farther.
‘You don’t have to,’ he said without turning.
She picked up her coat, which was lying on the chair next to the sideboard, and felt the cigarettes in one of the pockets. The lighter wasn’t in the other pocket. Now that she was standing next to the sideboard anyway, she turned on the radio. Music. There was something she wanted to do, something she had to do. She thought about it. From the sound of it, Bradwen was up to the cutlery, the crackling of burning wood came from the living room. The radio was turned down. Something. She’d already got rid of the tablet boxes. She thought hard and saw the lighter sliding out of her hand, heard it bounce off the rock with a dry click and land in the grass. ‘Throw me those matches,’ she said.
The boy took the box of matches from the windowsill and lobbed it over. She reached out to catch it, but was too sluggish or else the box was moving too fast. It bounced off the sideboard and landed on the floor near the Christmas tree. She bent over and fell. Immediately he was beside her.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’
He took her by the hand and pulled her to her feet.
She sat down at the table and finally lit the cigarette. It was horrible, almost disgusting. As if she was fourteen again and smoking her first cigarette, a Camel non-filter her uncle had given her. That must have been one of the last times she was allowed to stay at his house. She coughed and tried again. Something that had tasted good for years couldn’t suddenly turn disgusting, could it? Bradwen was still standing close by, at her elbow. The very idea of a cloud of smoke passing through her mouth and windpipe and into her lungs was so repulsive she couldn’t inhale. She stubbed the cigarette out.
The boy coughed. Then asked, ‘Coffee?’
‘No.’ She drained her glass, stood up and walked into the living room. She switched on the TV and sat down on the sofa. She heard him turn off the radio and go back to the washing-up. There was movement and noise in front of her, everything with a one-second delay. A wide ditch, more a canal really, a boat with two men in it. They pulled baskets out of the water and one of them contained an eel. They shook it out. Catches down 95 per cent since the replacement of the wooden lock gates, the fisherman explained. In the field next to the canal there was a solitary sheep. She stood up immediately and returned to the kitchen.
‘Coffee after all?’ the boy asked.
‘No.’ She went over to the freezer and pulled it open, removing the hunks of meat and putting them in the plastic crate that was still on the floor next to the freezer.
‘What are you doing?’
She didn’t answer, but picked up the crate and walked into the living room with it. The boy watched her every move like a dog. Ears pricked up, eyes alert, waiting for a command. She had to put the crate down to open the front door. It wasn’t cold, even though there were no clouds. A vast sky hung over the house and garden. For the first few steps she had light, shining out through the kitchen window. Beyond that band of light, she stopped briefly to let her eyes adjust. The stream murmured and the crushed slate crunched under her bare feet. One by one, she took the stiff, frozen pieces of lamb out of the crate and hurled them into the water with all the strength she had. Each lump was as heavy as a rock; like rocks they would lie on the bed of the stream. Holding the empty crate loosely in one hand, she stared at the dark water in which the enormous sky slowly became visible. Giving up smoking, she thought to herself, that’s something healthy people do. Walking back to the door, she saw the white rosebud grow lighter. Her head was warm. Maybe the hat was made of real wool. Sheep’s wool.
*
After closing the front door, she heard Bradwen rummaging around upstairs. ‘What’s going on up there?’ she called, wiping the grit off her feet.
Bradwen emerged from the study. ‘I’m arranging the new bedroom.’
It was hard for her to look up after having looked down for a while.
‘I’ve put your bed in front of the fireplace. I still have to light it.’
‘And you?’
‘On the divan as usual.’
‘Godnogaantoe,’ she swore softly, under her breath. Only now, after weeks and weeks living in this house, did she realise that the stove in the living room and the fireplace above it shared the same flue. ‘After Christmas, you’re gone,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said, coming downstairs.
54
She woke up because the boy had laid two logs on the embers and needed to blow to get the fire going again. He crept back to the divan. Earlier he’d pushed both windows up a little. It was unbearable in the study otherwise.
‘It was very different with Sam here,’ he said.
She didn’t answer, staring at the ceiling.
‘Dogs like Sam can’t sleep all night, they start to move around. He’d whimper and come and sniff at me.’
‘He even went downstairs.’
‘No, not that. He’d always stay here.’
She sighed, turning her head towards him. Bradwen was half under the duvet with his hands behind his head. ‘What time is it?’
‘No idea. Three-ish?’
Her whole body seemed to be full of heavy things: lead, concrete, oak beams. She didn’t even want to try to turn over onto her side. She thought of the night Bradwen vomited, the idea that some part of the tension in his body had passed into hers through her hands. ‘You’re moving around too,’ she said.
‘Just now. The fire was almost out.’
No, her body itself was the heavy things: legs made of oak beams, a belly of concrete, liquid lead flowing through her veins.
‘What’s your real name?’ the boy asked.
She thought for a moment. ‘Emilie.’
Bradwen rolled onto his side very easily, leaving his right hand under his cheek and scratching his chest with his left. His eyes glowed in the firelight.
‘What was Mrs Evans’s first name?’
‘I don’t know. She was Mrs Evans to me.’
‘Did you come here often?’
‘I used to. In the old days.’
‘Did you know Mr Evans too?’
‘No. He died when I was two or three.’
‘Do you still smell her?’
‘What?’
‘Do you still smell Mrs Evans? Here, in the house?’
He lifted his head up from his hand. ‘No.’
‘I do.’ The stream was clearly audible here in the study too. More clearly because the window on the drive side was closer to the water than the window in her bedroom. It sounded different, as if it were a different stream. Or a different house.