It makes you wonder what crystals run through us, what drops of salt? Because something in us gives us a sense of where we should be, too, if we listen.
the Nest
On the walk back to the bog Gareth had tried to think of something else and not the dog, so he thought about the land he wanted, and how he himself would try to build, or just sell the plots. The finance was arranged well past the guide price, but he knew he shouldn’t be eager and carried away if the land got too much. He tried deliberately to think about the land, but he kept thinking of the heat, and Kate, and of the dog; thoughts that were like sounds. Of Kate’s white body. Time alters things, and it is right and good that things change and he accepts her body changing in the way he accepts the changing landscape around him. He is aware now that his care for her outweighs his want, and he knows she feels this as a lack of hunger. Maybe it is different for them, he thinks, different from a man. If you are hungry for a woman it is because you are hungry for women, but you can care for just one.
To buy land at auction you get the catalogue and a lot number and you carry out your searches and surveys. Gareth hadn’t had the land surveyed and had argued with Kate about this, saying ‘I know the land, it’s the same as ours, just a road between them.’ You must have all your finance, surveys and searches complete prior to the auction because at the fall of the gavel you enter into a binding contract to purchase that land. You should seek planning consent in principle first but Gareth has not, because he knows there will be no planning given yet, and he knows how easily ideas get around in this place, and he is hoping no one else will think of this purpose for the land.
While he waits for the time to come for planning, he will use the land to graze, with the extra room perhaps even increase the sheep, and it will pay for itself that way too. ‘It is a crazy idea,’ says Kate, and thinking of her saying this makes him scratchy again. Perhaps it is just a crazy idea, just a crazy idea, he thinks.
He should clear this scrub and use this land. He gets determined to do this whenever he’s down here. All the unfulfilled plans he had, like the plans we have with a lover that never come to anything. Take away the thin growth and the struggling plants and let the land dry out. It would be like writing memoirs, he thinks. Choosing what stays, and giving things space to grow again. The willow just comes up so quickly and the roots, which you would think would drink the water, don’t; they dam it in the ground, turning the ground to bog.
If you take down the trees, the land dries out, and the water starts to drain away. Now would be a good time to do this, with the bog so dry already. He could have four more fields a few years from now. The bog. The stink and dark and the effort of it. And we wouldn’t lose more cows, he thinks. He’s angry he missed the vet. This damn bog makes you lose any sense of where you are. I want Kate to want me, he is thinking, and suddenly, like light breaking the clearing, he knows what it is he must do. He knows it clearly and well. He should just walk. Just walk and keep walking, away from it all, and not stop.
He swallows his anger and says again to himself ‘this will be just a phase, it’s just a change, and I didn’t mean to wish those things I thought earlier’ and while he’s thinking ‘I didn’t mean what I just thought’ he finds the big comfortable place the cow has made. When the cow is not in there he knows inside he cannot look for her anymore. All I have to do is keep walking. ‘I could go. I could just go,’ he thinks.
Chapter Nine the Tractor
The tractor had been on the farm almost since Gareth’s family got there. When they bought the tractor, it was brand new.
Henry Ford had made an unsuccessful attempt to design tractors back in 1907, then went at it again after war broke out, in 1915 — a more concerted effort, backed by Ford mass-production principles. There was a great need for machines on the land, given the men and horses who had gone to war.
In 1917, production of the Fordson F started, solely to answer the needs of the Great British government. In just over ten years, nearly three-quarters of a million were sold, more than ever before or since of one tractor. The Fordson F was the most influential design in tractor history and only the most solid manufactures survived in rivalry against it.
At the Smithfield Show in 1951, (the year Gareth’s father left the bank), Fordson unveiled their new Major E1A. With an easy-starting diesel engine, economical and reliable, it demolished demand for petrol-vaporising oil tractors, but there was clearly demand for a smaller machine. So in 1957 Fordson launched the Dexta.
Bill has it now. They needed a bigger tractor on the farm since and had a new Massey years before. One of the first things it did was take Gareth’s finger, as if it wasn’t tame yet. For a long time, the Fordson sat under the ‘ramp’ — the building Gareth’s brother had built to practise his car mechanics and fix the farm’s engines (that brother had a garage in the north now). In the winter, long icicles that they used to drink and play with hung from the roof of the ramp, but right now this heat made it easier to imagine a unicorn than an icicle.
The tractor’s bright blue paint faded and flaked and the iron of it rusted; the exhaust corroded so much you could put a finger through it, like it was pastry; but still the tractor had a personality. The children would play on the ripped seat, bouncing up and down as they pretended to drive. Emmy liked to give it a bath. And once in a while, when the mind took him, Gareth would look over the engine and would admit that it was still a good engine, and a strong thing, and it should be working, like a person who is strong.
So he gave it to Bill, who helped him clean up the tractor again. The Dexta was the last to bear the Fordson name. It would be a shame if it had become another iron skeleton on the land.
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Bill tocked up and down in the tractor, trying to break up the ground with a chain harrow. He had seen the vet come and go and had hoped nothing was wrong and had waved at the vet because he knew him. Though it was very hot, Bill wore the same things as he always wore, and the sweat came off him thickly.
The cow by now was demented with flies and the weight of the calf in her and the hot relentlessness of the sun and she let out a big, thirsty bellow. Over the hills the day’s haze built up. She was tired of only being able to move in a certain way because of the weight of the calf and wanted to buck and kick as if that would get rid of the heat of the sun. It was nearly evening now but was still hot. The redness of her coat looked golden in the sun.
She was walking on, trying to find a trough of water, thinking I’ll walk on for a while but I could just lay down and sleep and she didn’t know where she was. She had the droll, shaking head of an idiot. She was thinking about crashing herself into the bank and the fence to be insensible and get out of the heat, and of doing crazy things cow’s shouldn’t and she pushed blindly at a corrugated iron sheet in the hedge that just bent underneath her. She could hear the tractor. She let out another long moo and crashed down the hedge. The iron sheet had been all day in the sun and was hot on her udder, and that’s when she found Bill.
I think where he is. I think what I’d do if he left me. If he didn’t come back. If he decided to just go away.
I should have looked for the cow. Should have been with him. It might have been nice, in the sun. I look at him and I know I have been lucky because he is a good man and I love him very much but it makes me feel sick what I did. And sometimes when I feel his hands all I can think of is the other thing and how when it was happening it felt good, and it makes me feel sick thinking that. And though I know that chlamydia can come into a man without his knowing it, sometimes I think of the illness he was putting in me every time we made love, and I hate him for the babies I lost. But without him. I cannot think of being without him.