*
That afternoon she let the new garden rest, using the wheelbarrow to transport the chicken wire to the three ponds instead. The six geese were standing waiting for her. When she walked through the gate and into the field, they ran off. As if they’re expecting something from me, she thought. But what? She used one foot — the injured one, to test it — to push against different parts of the collapsed hut. After she had pulled away a few planks, the roof, which was covered with tarred sheets, rested on the ground as a triangle. More than enough room for the geese. She unrolled the chicken wire and realised that she would need something to cut it. As before, she found useful tools in the old pigsty. She walked back up the drive with a saw, a large pair of pincers and a roll of thin wire. First she closed off the back of the triangular shelter, fixing the chicken wire in place by nailing it tight under planks that weren’t completely rotten. Look carefully and think it through, she thought. If I do that, I could even put together a wall unit. Clucking quietly, the geese watched her. In the next field the black sheep had come closer and most of them were now lined up at the fence. She pulled the packet of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one. A big bird, brownish red, swooped down into the boggy copse and landed on a branch of an oak, facing towards her. ‘Is it you?’ she called out in English, as if a bird wouldn’t understand her if she spoke Dutch. It stared at her unmoved. She threw the half-smoked cigarette into one of the ponds.
She did the front differently, first cutting planks to size, then using them to close off the top of the triangle. She left wide gaps between the planks; there wasn’t enough solid wood. The chicken wire was 120 centimetres wide. Again she walked back to the pigsty, this time to look for staples. She found them too. She lined the wire up along the ground, folded the superfluous triangle down over one side of the roof, then attached it by pounding staples in with the hammer. Then she didn’t have a clue. She took a few steps back and considered the shelter. She looked at it and thought deeply. She felt like giving up. Everything in her body said: Stop it. Leave it. Go inside, have a drink, smoke a cigarette, lower your body into a bath full of hot water. There were two good planks left. The short one standing up and the long one on the ground, she thought, and after that I can work out how to close off that last bit of chicken wire, which has to serve as a kind of door. Just keep at it. After nailing the two planks to each other at right angles with another piece of wood at an angle as a brace, she put the structure up against the front of the shelter, then crawled inside to staple the wire to the wood. With nothing to hold the horizontal plank in place, it was very difficult to get them in. ‘Godverdomme,’ she said. She had to put something behind the plank. She crept back out of the shelter and looked around. There were large rocks by the ponds. Much too heavy. The wheelbarrow, upside down. She pushed it up hard against the plank and tried again. The wheelbarrow started to slide away, but by hammering as lightly as she could, she managed to get the staples into the wood anyway. Her arm hurt, she could feel her foot. Cursing, she crawled back out of the shelter, wondering what in the name of God she was doing. She pulled the wheelbarrow out of the way, turned it upright and checked her handiwork. It seemed reasonably solid. Solid enough, she thought, to keep out a fox. A big bird definitely couldn’t get in. Now she just had to figure out how to close off the last bit without nailing it shut permanently. She had about ten large nails left and pounded six into the roof at intervals of about twenty centimetres, exactly opposite the triangle she’d stapled down on the other side of the roof. She cut lengths of wire and twisted them to attach them to the chicken wire, also at twenty-centimetre intervals. She made sure the lengths of wire were more or less aligned with the six nails and only then did she trim off the excess chicken wire. ‘Godverdomme!’ she said again. She stank of goose shit and her hands were bleeding.
The geese refused to be herded into the shelter. They ran off the wrong way in a column or scattered, as if understanding that it was hard to choose between six separate birds. The sheep in the adjoining field remained unmoved. Most of them grazed on calmly; some looked up now and then. Panting, she scooped up a few pebbles and threw them at the geese. ‘Ungrateful, dirty, filthy, stinking, pig-headed creatures!’ she shouted. ‘I’m trying to bloody save you!’ She decided to try again one last time, very calmly. The geese were standing by the largest pond, close to the shelter. She lit a cigarette and sat down in the grass. The geese clucked a little, two of them drank some water. Not too fast, she told herself, I’ll let them get used to me first. She stood up and spread her arms, cigarette in mouth. Taking their time, the geese thronged away from the pond and walked past the shelter. She stayed where she was. The birds stopped four or five metres away from the bent piece of chicken wire. ‘Go inside,’ she said quietly. ‘Go on. It’s safe in there.’ She listened to herself speaking English and thought, I have to head them off. Very calmly. As quietly as she could, she crept around behind the geese, believing she was going to succeed: the birds stood still with their fat bodies pressed against each other, only their heads and necks turning. Now she walked towards the shelter, arms still spread. Yes, she thought. Yes. Smoke curled up into her eyes, making tears run down her cheeks.
In that same instant something skimmed over her head, so close she felt the wind rustling her hair. A half-second later, the reddish-brown bird flapped its wings, then glided up over the house and off into the wood. By that time the geese were already in the far corner of the field. A few white feathers floated down to the ground. She fell to her knees and collapsed sideways in the wet grass. ‘Why am I doing this?’ she said quietly. She spat out what was left of the cigarette. ‘I can’t do it at all.’
*
A couple of hours later she was lying in the claw-foot tub. She studied her fingers, raised her left leg and picked the scab off her instep. The water at the foot of the bath took on a reddish tinge. ‘I can do it,’ she said. She got out of the bath and dried herself. The small mirror above the sink was misted over; she saw her face and upper body as pinkish lumps and took a couple of paracetamol. She draped the towel over the rail on the landing next to some damp clothes. A fire was burning in the fireplace in the study, the desk lamp on the oak table was switched on. She stood in front of the fire. The skin of her thighs and belly felt tight. She ran her hands over her breasts and looked Emily Dickinson straight in her black eyes. ‘It’s easy for you,’ she said. ‘You’re dead.’
19
It wasn’t until a couple of days after she’d abandoned her mobile phone on the ferry that she realised she’d always used it as a watch and calender. She had brought her diary with her; if she really wanted to she could work out the date. Not having a clock — the one on the kitchen wall had probably stopped a long time ago — was not a problem. She ate when she was hungry and went to bed when she was up to it, though never without taking a paracetamol first. No alarm clock.