by Angela Huth
Prodge stomped out of the kitchen, hands weighing down the pockets, enjoying the softness of their lining. The sun, strangely warm for so early in the year, burned down through the leather. The zip – a great corker of a zip – he had judged best to leave at half-mast: something sexy about a half-undone jacket, he thought, not that sexiness was going to get him anywhere in a field full of nothing but sheep. Prodge moved his arms. The jacket creaked. He felt as if he had been listening to the friendly sound his entire life.
To get the feel of the jacket, to test its bending power, Prodge strode quickly over a couple of meadows towards the river. All he needed now was the bike. Wow, what could he not do on a bloody great Harley-Davidson. John Prodger: the one with the jacket and the bike. But that was a dream so far off it was beyond a dream: it was a pathetic hope.
When Prodge reached the bank of the river he stopped, sat down, lit a cigarette. This is all very unusual, he said to himself: he could see the humour of the situation. John Prodger, tenant farmer dedicated to nothing but farming, loving every inch of the land, every cow, every sheep, every hour of his working day, suddenly taking a half-hour break, mid-afternoon, lighting up, sitting on a river bank in a new black leather jacket that cost the same as half a dozen good ewes. Madness! What had come over him? Still, not a bad idea occasionally to act so completely out of character that you surprised yourself. Every man was entitled to experiment with change. So long as nobody caught him, there was nothing wrong with this stolen half-hour. Prodge took a long drag on his cigarette, sucked it deep into his lungs, let the smoke slowly out in a spire that wavered against the sky, then disappeared. If a Harley-Davidson had been parked beside him, he would have been completely happy.
Prodge pulled faster on his cigarette. He let his eyes drag along the water with the fast current of the river. They rose again to the bank on his side, some hundred yards further along from where he was sitting. There he saw a creature, a vision, a woman, walking slowly towards him. This, he knew at once, was the wife he was looking for in his black leather jacket. Funny thing was, she’d arrived far quicker than he’d ever expected. And not through a crowd in the pub, as he had imagined, but all alone in Longer Meadow.
The glorious certainty withered within seconds. There was madness everywhere this afternoon, Prodge realised. Maybe it was the cigarette. He hadn’t had one for a week or so. Must have been the Marlboro. Gone to his head. Disappointment struck. He thought he recognised the girl: the Lily girl who’d come to stay with George some time back, and Nell said was returning. They’d only met once, briefly. He hadn’t thought her right for George, her in a fancy scarf in the country: but then he’d never thought any girl right for George. Not that there was any reason to suppose George was on the lookout. It was he, John Prodger, in his helpful black jacket, who was in search of a wife. He threw the half-smoked cigarette into the river, pulled himself to his feet. Awkward, now, was what he felt.
‘Hello,’ Lily called out. She was only a few yards away.
‘Afternoon.’
‘I’m Lily Crichton. Don’t know if you remember – we met briefly last time I was here.’
‘I remember. I do.’ She was right by him now, holding out her hand. Pretty daft thing to do on a river bank miles from anywhere, Prodge thought. But he also liked the idea: all rather Captain Livingstone, British. They shook hands. ‘Nell’s gone up the village,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her you were looking for her.’ The one thing he did not want was for Lily to suggest coming up to the farmhouse with him and waiting for Nell to return. Christ, he’d not be able to walk straight.
Lily smiled. Some looker, thought Prodge. Perhaps George had got lucky this time. ‘What a fantastic jacket,’ she said.
The mind-blowing event of Lily appearing from nowhere into the landscape, exuding beauty and friendship in equal measure, had blasted Prodge’s jacket completely from his mind. Now it came to his rescue, gave him the self-assurance he had always known black leather would give a man.
‘You like it?’ he said. ‘I got it only yesterday. I was sort of … trying it out.’ He smiled. ‘Hadn’t reckoned on bumping into anyone. Looks a bit silly, doesn’t it? A farmer in this sort of clobber, a Tuesday afternoon. Should be hosing down the yard
‘I think it looks brilliant. Suits you to perfection.’
‘Really?’
Prodge, still feeling that he was hallucinating, wanted to summon a golden chariot from his childhood story books, put this goddess inside it and drive her across the skies. Or take her to the village shop where they did cream teas out the back in a nice little whitewashed courtyard, or to the pub for wine or beer, or just walk with her into the copse, bluebells not far off now, and lay her down on his jacket in a private dell, moss and new grass their bed.
‘Cigarette?’ he said.
‘I don’t smoke, thanks.’
If she didn’t want one, then he didn’t want one either.
‘You here long, then?’
Lily turned away from him, eyes bouncing along the water. He could see her profile. God Almighty. ‘Plans aren’t at all firmed up,’ she said, quietly. ‘I just thought it was time to come back.’
‘Right.’ If ever a girl of even half the beauty of this Lily decided it would be right to return to him, thought Prodge – well, it would be a miracle. Not the finest black leather jacket in the world could make that happen. Suddenly, hands roaming in the pockets that had so recently given him pleasure, he saw his new purchase as nothing more than a cheap gimmick. He felt sickened by the thought of the money he had spent. Sickened in general. ‘I must get back to work,’ he said.
‘Will you tell Nell I’m longing to ride? Soon as she has a moment. I’ll ring her tonight.’
‘I’ll do that.’ She looked on him with such piercing gentleness and understanding that Prodge knew there was nothing about him she did not know. In another world, another time, they could have melded (was that the word? Perhaps it was moulded) together as one, like couples in toshy films. He felt close to tears, uncertain, in the brightness of the afternoon, of what was real, what was throbbing fantasy.
Lily gave him a small, waist-high wave: a rather prissy little wave, he thought, but maybe that was all part of his misjudgement. Perhaps it was really a wave that signalled she was aware of some – well, something, between them. She turned away, started to walk back towards George’s farm. Prodge, dissatisfaction prickling his skin, headed towards home. He tried to make a mental list of the things he had to do, but all he could think of was lying in a grassy bed, ravishing the girl who had returned to his best friend, George.
Prodge’s hope of seeing no one in his black jacket was dashed a second time. As he walked through the farmyard gate, George drew up in his car. He wound down the window, smiled widely.
‘Christ!’ he said.
Caught off his guard, Prodge had no time to decide whether or not to say anything about his meeting with Lily. A little giddied by the approval in George’s face, he decided not. A man must sometimes have an innocent secret to keep him going.
‘Like it?’
‘It’s terrific’ George grinned. His approbation was the undoing of Prodge’s resolution.
‘Lily thought so too.’ Lily, for sure, would report back to George. Silly to think the meeting might have been their secret. She would be bound to report it: it meant nothing to her.
‘Lily?’
‘I just ran into her down by the river. She was on her way over to find Nell. Told her Nell was in the village so she went back to your place.’
‘Prodge …’ George paused, decided to enjoy a tease. ‘What were you doing in that magnificent jacket in the middle of a working afternoon down by the river? Hoping to run into a wife?’
‘Something like that.’ How the hell did George know the reason for the jacket in the first place? He was something of a mind-reader, sometimes. Spooky. ‘As a matter of fact, I did run into a wife.’ He now decided to carry on the tease. ‘Your visitor. Now there’s the
kind of woman I wouldn’t say no to.’
‘Ah.’
‘But bugger me, you got there first.’
‘I haven’t got anywhere with Lily, Prodge. She’s just a friend. Invited herself to stay’
Invited herself? Why should George be the receiver of such luck?
‘Right. Still, she’s out of my class. All I can hope for is some sub-Lily comes my way, takes to my jacket.’
George laughed. ‘Nell was saying you’re seriously thinking about marriage.’
‘So it’s Nell been telling tales? Serious as I can be about anything beyond the farm, I suppose. I mean, time’s come I wouldn’t mind a few kids running round the place, a good woman by my side. Take a bit of pressure off Nell.’
‘Quite.’
‘How long’s she staying?’ Prodge cursed himself for this question. He didn’t want George to see which way his mind was jumping.
‘She hasn’t said. A week or two, perhaps. Nell’s glad she’s back. They like riding together. Talking.’
‘So Nell said. How’s this for a zip?’ Prodge pulled the huge zip up and down several times. It made an expensive sizzling sound. ‘Ever seen one like it?’
George, impressed, smiled. ‘This is a side of you I’ve not seen before,’ he said.
‘I done too much growing up too fast these last years.’ Prodge frowned, suddenly serious. ‘This is my youth-flash. Probably too late, but I want to have a go. Anyway, I got cows to milk. Can’t stand here all day talking to the gentleman farmer.’ It was an old joke between them: often they called each other by their titles – gentleman farmer, tenant farmer. George laughed again and started the engine. Prodge, hurrying now, late, guilty – you should never keep a cow waiting – decided that the best way to disguise the fantasy that had so unexpectedly hit him this afternoon was to make the whole thing into a joke. Pretend he fancied Lily like crazy. Be quite open about it. That way, he would have an opportunity to flirt with her, and because the whole idea of him and Lily was so unlikely, so outrageous, so jokey, George and Nell would never guess the truth.
‘I ran into Prodge on my way over to Nell this afternoon,’ Lily said that evening. ‘He was wearing this extraordinarily beautiful black leather jacket. Bit bizarre, mid-afternoon down by the river. But he said he was trying it out. I admired it and he seemed pleased. Odd: he doesn’t look the sort of man to be struck by vanity’
‘He’s not usually,’ said George. ‘The jacket is just a little experiment, a little whim, a fantasy he’s given in to and he’s enjoying it no end. I ran into him, too. He said he’d met you. You rather dazzled him, I think. Well, meeting you unexpectedly on a river bank would dazzle anyone.’
‘Nonsense! Don’t be so silly’
She was moving about again, in her fluid way, from table to fridge to dresser: opening cupboards, taking out bowls and jars and returning them – preparing, it seemed, something that would be added to the cottage pie Dusty had left in the low oven. George remembered that on her previous visit Lily had not acted like this: she had been a more passive visitor, making no suggestions about food, not offering to cook, just accepting whatever was put on the table. She had spent a lot of time sitting by the fire, drink in hand, ankle twirling. George hoped she would resume this former stillness once they had eaten. It was all he could do not to interrupt one of her small journeys and demand she forget about cooking while he kissed her. But he remained standing, motionless, watching her, fascinated by the way she could quarry silence with her movements. The kitchen spun again.
‘I’ve made a – well, I hope Dusty won’t be offended. Perhaps she won’t find out. I’ve made an aubergine mousse, first course. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Mind?’ said George. The evening sun, intent on catching her, singling her out from the shadows, made her into a pyre of light. A halo danced round her head, shoulders, skirt. The dusting of tiny hairs on her arms were sleek with transitory gold. George sipped his drink, wondering if the wine was the begetter of this vision. Then he shut his eyes, unable to believe.
There followed a couple of days of unseasonably high wind and rain. Lily reported a leak in the ceiling of her bedroom. George said he knew there were loose tiles on the roof: he would ring the man who supplied replacement tiles and mend it.
On the second gusty afternoon George returned from the afternoon milking to find a ladder propped up against the front of the house. He looked up to see Lily balanced against the slope of the roof, intent on work at the tiles. Alarmed, George ran to the ladder, called up to her.
‘Lily! What on earth—’
She turned to him. ‘The man didn’t turn up. I waited for ages then decided to have a go myself. I found a couple of spare tiles in the barn.’
‘Don’t be … ridiculous. You could fall. Come on down.’
‘I’ve almost finished. It was nothing serious.’ The wind made her voice dip and sway like seagulls flying over waves.
‘Please, Lily’ George knew he sounded exasperated, had a feeling he was being unreasonable. ‘What do you know about mending roofs?’
‘We’ve a tiled roof like this at home. Tiles often blow off, Norfolk winds. I often put them back.’ She turned away, raised her arm to check the tile she had been securing.
George cautiously mounted the first three rungs of the ladder. It juddered. Lily snapped her head round again, hair a stiff mask over her face. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Please, Lily’
‘I’ve almost finished. Coming down in a minute.’
George, helpless, all too aware of his foolish stance two feet from the ground and gripping the ladder, kept his eyes on her every finely balanced movement. Certainly she seemed to know what she was doing. Very odd. But he wished she’d come down now. A gust of wind carried a new squall of rain that freckled his upturned face with stinging cold.
‘Please,’ he shouted once again. Lily gave no sign of having heard. Instead, to his horror, he saw her beginning to climb higher. The ladder reached almost to the spine of the roof. When she arrived at the top, Lily swung one leg over so that suddenly she was astride the house. George gave a wordless scream.
Lily now rode the house like a horse, her visible leg kicking at the flank of firm tiles. Her jacket billowed in the wind, her hair was a stiff flag. She looked down at George laughing, shouting something he could not hear. Then she took her hands from the withers of the roof, flung them in the air.
She’s mad, thought George. Mad and wonderful. There’s only one thing for it.
On his own journey up the ladder the icy wind and rain blew all sense of Lily’s danger from him. He began to enjoy himself. As he passed the patch of tiles that Lily had repaired he saw that, amazingly, she had done a good job of it. He was proud of her.
On reaching the top – less adroitly than Lily – George swung his leg over so that he, too, was astride the house. Lily roared with delight, though her actual words, despite her nearness, he could not hear. In her balloon jacket she was an absurd, happy figure: face aglitter with rain, hands reddened with cold. George joined her laughter.
He had no sense of how long they stayed riding the roof that wild afternoon. George had the impression they were trapped in a cloud. Mists roved about them so that there was no wide view of the landscape: only, in the frayed edges of the mist, the ghostly tops of trees.
Lily at last swung herself back on to the ladder and climbed quickly down. She held on to its sides to steady George’s descent. On terra firma again, they moved towards each other simultaneously. George’s waxed jacket creaked as he opened his arms. They stood hugging each other, shaky and cold and laughing under the vicious rain.
‘Finish off a pheasant, mend a roof – anything else you can do?’ asked George, as they drew apart.
‘You’ll see,’ said Lily, licking the raindrops from her top lip. ‘Come on: hot baths, dry clothes.’
‘Did you set out to astonish me, or did—?’ But Lily already running to the door, didn’t hear, so George got
no answer to his question.
Lily’s presence so enchanted and jumbled the next few days that, looking back, George was unable to remember precisely how long she had been there when the evening of the pictures came about. He had come in later than usual, having waited a long time for the vet who had been called to see a cow with mastitis. A light rain was shredding the kitchen window, and Lily had lighted two candles – fine church candles that she would not have found in any drawer. She must have been out shopping again. Over supper they had talked about the perils of farming, animal welfare, the rotation of crops (Lily seemed keen to learn as much as she could), Wordsworth, Ted Hughes, Auden, Nell’s bantams’ eggs, the forthcoming agricultural show where Prodge hoped once again to win several prizes – shifting from one thing to another, but always avoiding the subject of themselves or future plans. Then suddenly Lily put a hand over George’s and said, as seriously as she could manage, ‘You know, there are an awful lot of pictures all over the house. I’d like a proper tour, a proper look. Explanations.’
George hesitated. Then he laughed. ‘I was hoping you weren’t going to show an interest in them. The collection was built up with great pride by my father who always had an eye for a bad picture. You couldn’t argue with him. He came from the school of “I like what I like” and nothing could budge him. I didn’t have the knowledge and skill to explain the difference between art and rubbish, and my mother didn’t try. She simply put all the worst pictures in rooms that weren’t much used – spare rooms.’
‘So that’s why there’s a sort of hard-boiled egg of a podgy naked girl in my room?’
‘Exactly. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten about that. You could take it down.’
‘No, no. I’m getting used to her. Soon I’ll be quite fond of her.’ She jumped up, pushing away her half-finished coffee. ‘Come on! I want to see them all.’
