The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  ***

  WHEN SHE REACHED the kitchen it was fragrant with the roasting pork, and Alec was swirling cornmeal around in a gently bubbling pot.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “What it’s going to be is polenta with rosemary,” he said as he turned. She seemed even more beautiful than the night before, but this time he held his tongue. His eyes said it all.

  “Are you sure this is your birthday and not mine?” she asked, smiling.

  “I’m having a good time doing this, Fiona, truly. Besides, it’s been a long time since I had the pleasure of cooking for a lovely lady.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute,” Fiona teased.

  Alec was about to respond with a wisecrack, but found himself turning serious. “Look, Fi, I’m not sure what sort of life you think I lead. Yes, I’m single, but I make a lousy Lothario. First of all, I’m fifty; there are not a lot of women interested in a man my age. Second, I’m terrible at dating. I don’t know how to be ‘casual’ in relationships. I’m meant for marriage. I suppose that makes me old-fashioned, but there you are.”

  Fiona sat at the table, poured herself a glass of wine, and then said, “I have three things to say: first, I apologize for teasing you; second, you underestimate yourself terribly; third, that pot is about to boil over.”

  Alec spun around, turned the heat down on the polenta, and added a bit more hot water, along with salt, pepper, olive oil, and chopped rosemary.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  Fiona wasn’t sure whether it was for the apology, the compliment, or the warning.

  “I need a hand here,” he said. “Could you stir the polenta while I work on the spinach?”

  “I suppose I might manage that,” Fiona said, rising and walking toward the stove. Alec wondered whether there was anything more quintessentially feminine than the sharp click of a woman’s heels on a hard floor.

  He tossed washed spinach leaves into the pan with the softened leeks and added butter, turning the leaves quickly as they wilted. Then he removed the tenderloin from the oven, set the meat on a plate, and made a sauce from the juice and browned bits in the pan by adding a little white wine and butter. He shooed Fiona back to the table, put a large spoonful of the soft polenta on each of their plates, arranged thin slices of the pork on top, and drizzled the sauce across the meat, finally adding the spinach and leeks on one side.

  When he turned around again, Fiona had lit the candles they’d used the night before. She poured wine into his glass as he set the plates down and they sat. She lifted her glass.

  “To the astonishingly old Alec Hudson on his birthday.”

  “How very kind you are,” Alec laughed, clinking her glass. “Now, if you’re finished insulting me, may I suggest we eat?”

  Fiona took a bite, and slumped in a mock swoon. “Oh my God, what is this?!”

  “I suppose there’s an Italian name for it, but it’s just herb-stuffed pork tenderloin with rosemary polenta. I learned it from a chef in New York. A real chef.”

  “Yum!” she replied, fluttering her hands and bouncing in her chair like a child. For once she wasn’t teasing.

  Alec grinned. “That’s the nicest birthday present you could give me.”

  “Mmm,” she mumbled, filling her mouth again. “My pleasure, I’m sure. If this is any example, he must have been a very successful chef.”

  “He was a she, actually, and yes, she was.”

  “Sounds like there’s a story there ...”

  Alec made a face.

  “Oops, there I go creating a romantic life for you again. Sorry.”

  Alec smiled. In very short order they moved on to the second bottle of wine. They talked about the farm, about lambing season, about the enigmatic mountain, about Owen and what a help he was, about the new guests. They talked, in short, about everything but what had happened at the converted hay barn. Alec didn’t ask; he figured that if and when Fiona wanted to talk about David, she would.

  As they ate and talked, Fiona was struck by the ease with which the conversation ebbed and flowed, sometimes playful, sometimes serious. She thought, too, about how comfortable their silences were. Why didn’t she and David do this? Why had they never been like this? When Meaghan was still at home, there would be talk about school and her friends, but David seldom joined in. It was as if he had nothing to say, as if supper were nothing more to him than a refueling stop. If he said anything at all, it was something to do with the farm. He had no life besides the farm, she now understood, either outside in the world or inside himself. It was all he knew and, apparently, all he cared to know. Fiona realized she was hungry for mature conversation. She was ravenous for it. She wondered whether she didn’t miss this form of intimacy with a mate even more than lovemaking. She could hardly remember either.

  The Llewellyns returned from town just as she and Alec were finishing dinner and Fiona hurried out to the hall to see to them. He could hear her inquiring about the restaurant they’d chosen. They chatted for a while and then she bid them goodnight, drifting back into the kitchen after a few minutes to find him filling the sink with soapy water.

  “Leave that there, you. The chef does not do the washing up. Besides, I’ve started a fire in my sitting room and there’s a lemon tart waiting for you there.”

  “If there’s a tart waiting for me somewhere,” he said, drying his hands, “I’ll definitely follow.”

  “You are a cad.”

  “I only wish.” Alec followed her across the house, watching the graceful sway of her hips.

  There was Celtic fiddle music playing softly on a small radio set into Fiona’s bookshelf. “Is that music all right?”

  “It’s lovely; this kind of music always makes me happy,” Alec said. “A remnant of the Celtic part of me, I suspect.”

  “Hudson doesn’t sound Celtic.”

  “It’s not. It’s phony.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a made-up name. The name of a river, actually. In New York.”

  “You made up your surname?”

  “Not me, my grandparents. My father’s parents, Gustav and Marie Brinkmann, moved to Brooklyn from Germany right after the turn of the century. When World War One broke out, they changed their name. A lot of Germans did; they were worried about reprisals. The story goes that they were taking a steamship excursion up the Hudson River one summer Sunday. When the boat got to the narrow, twisting part of the river up near Bear Mountain, the tour guide who was pointing out the sights along the way told them that the Hudson was known as ‘the American Rhine.’ Apparently, my grandfather turned to his wife and announced, ‘Hudson: that will be our new name.’ My grandmother knew better than to question her Prussian husband and that was that. The Brinkmann line in America became extinct.”

  “Well, Hudson suits you better than Brinkmann, I think.”

  “Thank you. Not that I had much to say about it.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the Celtic bit.”

  “My mother was born in Brittany.”

  “That’s why you can cook; you’re part French!”

  Alec laughed. “It’s a good thing my mother isn’t here; she’d argue—passionately—that she was Breton, not French. It is a point of pride. Brittany was as Celtic as Ireland or Wales long ago.”

  “Don’t tell me you have ‘Onion Johnnies’ in your background?!”

  “Onion who’s?”

  “Johnnies! Frenchmen—excuse me, Bretons—who used to come across the Channel every year and travel around on bicycles strung with long braids of onions. When we had the money for a holiday, which wasn’t often, my father took us to Cornwall—so he could be close to the sea, I suppose—and we’d see them there, selling onions door-to-door. I can’t imagine how they made a living, but they’d been doing it since the 1800s. David told me they were here in Wales, too, when he was a boy, just after the war. Rumored to be rogues with the ladies.”

  “You’re making that part up.”

&
nbsp; “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

  “Hmm. Is that what you were hoping, or were you hoping for a hint of that roguishness in my DNA somewhere?”

  She laughed and quickly changed the subject. “Tell me what you think of the tart.”

  “Which one?”

  “That was so rude!”

  Alec was instantly serious. “You’re right, Fi; it was. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly; I’m teasing. I think I’d know it if you were insulting me. Besides, it’s been a very long time since anyone’s suggested I was a tart; forever, in fact. Nice at my age, actually. And anyway, I don’t think you have rudeness in you; you’re too well-bred.”

  Alec burst out laughing. “Well-bred; that’s a good one.” He took a bite of the tart. “Umm. Tangy. Sweet.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Well, you certainly had me fooled. Who are you, Alec Hudson?”

  He noticed a decanter of sherry on a table in the corner by the fire.

  “Mind if I answer that over a glass of sherry?”

  “Of course not. Make it a large one; I want to hear all the details.”

  It was a bone-dry amontillado, perfect with the lemon tart.

  Alec sat down and stared at the fire for a few moments. Then he began. He told her about his troubled father; his long-suffering mother; the kid sister he adored; the tiny one-bedroom apartment, like an emotional hothouse, in which they’d all lived; the neighborhood that got rougher as the years passed and now was largely demolished. He told her about being lucky enough to receive a scholarship to go to a state college and wondering how the arc of his life might have changed had he been smart enough or rich enough to attend a better school. He told her about falling in love with writing and about working for Jimmy Carter.

  Fiona did not interrupt. When he seemed to have run out of steam, she said, “I’ve been meaning to ask, what exactly is it that you write?”

  “Boring stuff, mostly. Books on economics, welfare policy, education reform, environmental issues. That sort of thing.”

  “But if it’s boring, which I doubt, why do people buy the books?”

  “Regular people don’t, but politicians and people who care about those things do. It’s not the books that support me, anyway; it’s the consulting work I get after they’re published.”

  “I guess I don’t understand,” Fiona said, frowning.

  “You’re not alone. My mother doesn’t, either. Okay, here’s what I do: I try to figure out what major public issue is peeking its ugly head over the horizon, research it, then write a book suggesting ways that issue might best be addressed. Now, let’s say you’re the governor of one of our states—or, here in Britain, the government minister responsible for dealing with such things. You tell your staff to find out what is available on the subject and they come up with my book, mostly because it’s the only one out on the subject yet. You read it and then call me in for a meeting. Pretty soon I have a nice short-term contract to serve as your adviser.”

  “It sounds pretty abstract to me.”

  “That’s my little party trick: it isn’t—that is, the books aren’t. I worked at a university once and hated it. It’s as if professors try to make their writing as difficult to understand as possible so they can sound important. The people I write for don’t have the time for that sort of thing, and academics never publish their work fast enough for it to be useful. My books are short and easy to understand. It’s been a pretty successful formula, except ...”

  He hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Except the only part of me that’s engaged in it,” he answered, holding one hand below his chin and the other above his head, “is this. My heart isn’t in it; it’s all intellectual. I used to persuade myself that I was helping the world a little, making life better for people who are disadvantaged. But I’m not even sure about that anymore. It’s built my reputation and given me a good income ...”

  “But it doesn’t make you happy.”

  “Something like that, yes. When Gwynne died so suddenly a year ago, it made me think about how wasted all these years of writing have been.”

  “Why don’t you write something else?”

  “I do. I write poetry from time to time. Some of it’s been published. But you can’t make a living as a poet. Most poets have nice, safe, tenured positions at some university. I don’t fit in that world; I haven’t the patience for it.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know, honestly. I need to think about it some more.”

  She laughed. “Isn’t that the problem?”

  “What?”

  “Seems to me you’re trying to think your way through this instead of feel. Hasn’t that been the root of the problem all along?”

  Alec stared at her.

  “Oh dear, I’m being presumptuous.”

  “Not at all,” he said, “it’s just that I’d never thought about it that way before.”

  “There you go again!” she said, and now they both laughed.

  Fiona rose, walked across the room, retrieved a small wrapped package from her bookshelf, and handed it to Alec as she sat again.

  “Happy birthday.”

  Alec was speechless. Carefully, he removed the wrapping and found inside a pocket-sized Welsh-English dictionary.

  He looked up. “It’s a wonderful gift, and completely unnecessary.”

  “Oh it’s silly, really; it was just a whim. You’ll probably never be back again to need it... .” It was a something she’d said off the top of her head, but suddenly the thought was like a vise squeezing her heart.

  The thought of returning to America hadn’t been in Alec’s mind either, and he pushed it aside. He looked at the woman sitting across from him in the firelight.

  “Now,” she said, “do you suppose I might have some of that sherry, too?”

  Alec leaped up. “That was rude,” he apologized. “I’ll leave the decanter right here beside you.”

  “Are you plying me with my own liquor?” she teased.

  Alec put the decanter down on the table next to her. He hesitated before her for a fraction of a second, then turned away, kneeling to add coal to the fire.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, Fiona,” he confessed to the flames.

  Fiona said nothing for a few moments. Then she stood up and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “You are a dear, sweet man.”

  Alec stood, took her face in his warm hands, hesitated, then placed a light kiss on her forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she whispered.

  “I think it would be wise for me to take myself off to bed.”

  She understood what he was saying and smiled. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night, Fi, and thank you for sharing my birthday.”

  “My pleasure entirely.”

  He nodded and ducked out the door.

  Fiona got her breathing under control, heard Sooty scratching at the door and let him out, then banked the fire and set up the screen to keep embers from popping out onto the rug. Finally, she went through to her bedroom. She stepped out of her clothes and took her long flannel sleeping shift off the hook on the back of the bathroom door. Then she paused, put the shift back on its hook, climbed up onto her big old bed, burrowing under the duvet and relishing the cool cotton on her bare skin. She let a delicious desire sweep over her and began to pleasure herself, imagining Alec’s hands where hers were, feeling his long body spooned behind her, his left arm curved under her neck and left hand cradling one of her breasts, the warmth of his belly against the small of her back, his hardness pressed against her rump as the fingers of his right hand made slow magic.

  There was a crash in the farmyard. Fiona shot bolt upright in the dark, the sweet fantasy gone in an instant. There were never sounds in the farmyard at night. They had no cows or horses in the old stone barns. There were no late arrivals tonig
ht. The farm was remote.

  David!

  She slid down off the bed and crept to the window facing the farmyard. Pulling the curtain back slightly, she peered out into the gloom. The weather had broken. Low clouds sped across a sky pin-pricked with stars. There was enough moonlight that the chips of silica and quartz in the granite walls of the barn opposite glittered. She strained to see the source of the crash. Instead, the inky shadows acted like a movie screen upon which were projected the image of David brooding volcanically in his chair in front of the mute television; David struggling out of the chair and lurching toward her, his eyes aflame with fury; David advancing on her, his mouth twisted with malice; her own feet unresponsive to the urge to flee; spit like poison spewing from David’s mouth as he roared; that thickly muscled arm swinging back, back, then rocketing forward, the back of his hand connecting with her jaw. Was he out there now? Had he come after her?

  Fiona stood by the window, barely breathing, but nothing in the farmyard moved. The silence throbbed in her ears. Then it was broken by another sound, a mewing at the kitchen door, and her shoulders relaxed. She walked to the door of her bedroom, slipped on the flannel shift, went through her rooms and out to the kitchen. When she opened the back door, Sooty waltzed in.

  “I think we’ve just found the source of the crash, haven’t we?”

  The cat, of course, ignored her.

  April 13, 1999

  nine

  FIONA AWOKE AT DAWN, feeling oddly disoriented. It had been a night of haunting dreams: her father falling into black water at the bottom of the canal lock; the bargeman plunging into the dark water, pulling the body to the surface and dragging it out, turning it over only to reveal that it was not her father, after all, but David.

  She lay in bed for a few minutes and watched a wan light gather beyond her window, the window at which she’d stood, terrified, only hours earlier. What if it had been David? What would she have done? What could she have done? The kitchen door was always unlocked. There was no lock on the door to her rooms. Should she install one? No, that was ridiculous; David hadn’t been out there. Her fears were getting ahead of reality.