Both men might have gazed out over the val ey and Bob might have picked his moment to say, “But you’re doing okay, aren’t you, Jack? Things are okay?” Or to say, “And how’s El ie? I couldn’t help noticing she wasn’t here.” But thought twice about that question and perhaps about asking any others, because he wasn’t honestly sure what might make Jack, sitting here amid al the transformations that had occurred at Jebb, suddenly burst into tears.
A silence might have passed between them, broken only by the cackling of rooks, in which they might both have stared at the crown of the oak tree. How could they say between them whatever it was that needed to be said about the death of Tom Luxton?
Jack might have looked at Bob and thought: Is he going to arrest me anyway, after al , for something much bigger and worse than being found on private property? But Ireton might have looked at his watch and said, in a shepherdly way, as if he’d simply chanced upon someone who’d got lost, “Wel , Jack, I can leave you here to carry on trespassing by yourself, or I can drive you back up to the road and see you on your way.”
LOOKING BACK, Clare Robinson could admit that her first, shadowy misgiving—even before that “shiver”—had been the foot-and-mouth. She’d been able to tolerate the long dragging-on of the building work. After al , they’d let themselves in for it. If they’d been over-ambitious, it was their own fault. On the other hand, if it al bore fruit the way they visualised, it would have been worth the waiting. Fruit was meanwhile borne anyway—and rather unexpectedly—
in the form of their third child, a girl to go with the two boys, and Clare vaguely believed that this had happened precisely because their “country place” awaited them.
Since, apart from al its other virtues, it would be a haven, a perfect paradise for the children. Another child could only justify it al the more, and sanction the scope of their intentions for it. And little Rachel simply took up their time and made the continual postponement of when they might actual y “move in” seem only practical. They’d move in when she was old enough to know about it.
They started to joke about the whole thing as their
“mil ennial plan”—would they or wouldn’t they move in before the next century?—but they became excited al over again and forgot about al the time and money consumed, when at last it neared completion and they saw what actual y splendid things had been achieved. The builders final y left and they “moved in” in the autumn of 1999, though they didn’t make their first proper use of the place til the fol owing summer.
Her husband had said that the foot-and-mouth outbreak, in the spring of the next year, wasn’t their problem and it would blow over. In any case they didn’t have to be there, that was the beauty (though Clare thought this was a rather sad argument) of its being their second place. Nor were they. It was a sacrifice, of course, and al rather gal ing.
They watched the TV pictures of vast piles of cattle being burnt from the safety of their living room in Richmond. It seemed best. It was nothing to do with them. They’d look insensitive, perhaps, if they went down there. And by the summer, anyway, it would surely have al been dealt with.
But, even at a distance, Clare hadn’t liked this thing happening so plainly and upsettingly close to their new property. She felt it as if she were down there. She didn’t like the idea of the smoke from that huge pyre being carried on the wind towards Jebb Farmhouse. Her husband’s remark about its blowing over had been unfortunate. She felt it like a contamination. And, though it wasn’t logical and Toby would have scoffed, she felt it as something they should feel responsible, even vaguely guilty for, in a way they couldn’t have felt about the BSE which had struck, as it were, before their time.
Mrs. Robinson was glad when it did, so far as it might actual y impinge on them, “blow over.” She’d perhaps been overreacting. And when, in fact, something far worse—far worse for the world at large—occurred later that year, she didn’t feel nearly as troubled as she might have done had their “country place” not now been ful y up and running. She felt that the whole exercise was now vindicated. She felt glad and relieved. When those planes hit the towers that September, everyone said that the world had changed, it would never be the same again. But she’d felt it less distressingly, if she were honest, than the foot-and-mouth and those previous clouds of TV smoke. Since now they had this retreat, this place of green safety. It had been a good decision.
One of the big issues for her and Toby had once been choosing between flying off for holidays in exotic places (something they very much liked to do) and putting al their eggs, so to speak, into this basket in Devon. It might have its limitations, not least the English weather. But then again, with the children at the age they were—even before the new with the children at the age they were—even before the new baby—going abroad had begun to have its limitations too.
Now the whole prospect of foreign travel, of having to deal with airports and people in states of crowded transit, seemed to Clare (her husband stil travel ed on business) touched by something sinister in the global atmosphere. So their purchase of Jebb Farmhouse seemed right in every respect. It seemed provident, even vaguely patriotic. How simple and comforting, just to have to drive down the M4.
By the summer of 2003 their presence at Jebb was a familiar reality. They would invite friends to join them—with their children—and the friends would be suitably impressed and envious. To cap it al , the weather that summer smiled for them. That the Martha thing seemed stil not to have blown over made little effective difference. She made a pact with herself to push it aside, if not quite to ignore it.
Everything else was too marvel ous, too precious. It wasn’t worth risking al that they now abundantly had by making an issue out of it. And surely, one day, Toby might take the same view—about his carrying on with Martha. He might put an end to it. Especial y if, she rather perversely argued to herself, she was—lenient.
It was the only blot, and when they were al at Jebb it could sometimes seem to evaporate completely. The place had a healing effect. And yet, that dazzling Sunday in early July, as if some silent, invisible explosion had occurred, it had al seemed suddenly, deeply wrong.
That weekend the Townsends and their two children were staying. One thing they liked to do with guests on Sundays, if the weather al owed, was to hold a grand picnic under the big oak tree. It was real y a case of a late and lazy breakfast on the terrace gradual y spil ing over into a late and extended lunch in the field beneath. It was absurd, in one sense, to have a picnic so close to the house, yet it seemed exactly what that field and that tree were intended for. So, while the children ran on ahead and used the field (just as once imagined) as their exclusive playground, al the components of a picnic would be carried down in stages. Everyone would enjoy the feeling of a smal -scale, rather preposterous expedition. The several trips down the steep slope and up again worked up a thirst and added to the general fun. It wouldn’t have been in the right spirit to pile everything into the Range Rover and drive down—