Her whole body seemed to be full of heavy things: lead, concrete, oak beams. She didn’t even want to try to turn over onto her side. She thought of the night Bradwen vomited, the idea that some part of the tension in his body had passed into hers through her hands. ‘You’re moving around too,’ she said.
‘Just now. The fire was almost out.’
No, her body itself was the heavy things: legs made of oak beams, a belly of concrete, liquid lead flowing through her veins.
‘What’s your real name?’ the boy asked.
She thought for a moment. ‘Emilie.’
Bradwen rolled onto his side very easily, leaving his right hand under his cheek and scratching his chest with his left. His eyes glowed in the firelight.
‘What was Mrs Evans’s first name?’
‘I don’t know. She was Mrs Evans to me.’
‘Did you come here often?’
‘I used to. In the old days.’
‘Did you know Mr Evans too?’
‘No. He died when I was two or three.’
‘Do you still smell her?’
‘What?’
‘Do you still smell Mrs Evans? Here, in the house?’
He lifted his head up from his hand. ‘No.’
‘I do.’ The stream was clearly audible here in the study too. More clearly because the window on the drive side was closer to the water than the window in her bedroom. It sounded different, as if it were a different stream. Or a different house.
‘How long?’ she said after a lengthy pause. ‘How long do you think the smell of the dog will linger at the goose field?’
‘Fairly long, I’d guess.’
‘Hmm.’ The wood on the fire crackled. She felt its warmth on the top of her head. The old days, she thought. What does an expression like that mean when you’re twenty? Suddenly a thought entered her mind. ‘How could you not have known about the stone circle?’
‘I did know about it.’
‘You said you didn’t.’
‘Not at all. I said I “didn’t notice it”. It was misty that day.’
‘And you asked me how to get to the mountain.’
‘Not how. I asked if you had a suggestion for the most beautiful way to get there.’
‘Are you lying or what?’
‘No, I’m not lying. Are you?’
‘Yes. Constantly.’
The boy sniggered, his chest shaking.
‘Your father wanted to tell me how she met her end.’
‘Yeah?’
‘But I didn’t want to listen.’
‘No?’
‘I wanted to get rid of him as fast as I could.’
Again, he sniggered.
‘I’ll listen to you,’ she said, although she was suddenly finding it almost impossible to keep her eyes open.
The boy got up off the divan with his duvet in his hands. ‘Move over a bit.’
She did what he asked, laying her arms alongside her body on top of the covers. He lay down next to her, half under his own duvet, his head at the level of her breasts. There was something submissive about it that reminded her of the night Sam came downstairs and laid his head on her knees.
‘I found her,’ he said.
‘You?’
‘Did my father say otherwise?’
She thought about it. ‘He acted as if he knew all about it.’ She had to dig deep for the English, translating was an effort.
‘That’s true. I arranged it so he’d find her after me. I owed him that much.’
*
The boy talked. She had to do her best to follow him, trying not to miss bits or let her mind stray, because it was easy to listen to his words as sounds alone. It was summer – last summer, she presumed – and he’d wanted to see Mrs Evans again, maybe for the last time, she was over ninety after all. He’d come by bike from Bangor, not another cyclist on the road. People here don’t ride bikes, even though there’s a bike rental place right next to the train station – it’s for the tourists, who don’t use it either. Up the drive: the grass in the fields was very long, which reminded him of his father who was apparently neglecting his mowing duties. Typical. Sam wasn’t with him, he’d left him at home. Replying to her question as to where that was, he said, ‘Liverpool.’ Was that where he studied? ‘Yes, at Hope University. Don’t tell my father.’ Bangor to here was about fifteen miles, he didn’t know if Sam could do that running alongside a bike. And, of course, there was always a chance that his father might be here on any given day, the father he’d stolen the dog from. She could have interrupted him at this point, she was feeling hot from the fire and his talk of summer, but she couldn’t summon the energy to open her mouth. He’d seen the geese huddled together near the small wooden shed and hadn’t found anyone in the house or under the alders along the stream: she used to sit there sometimes on hot days. He’d leant his bike against the side of the pigsty. The geese gaggled excitedly. He’d walked over to them. They reminded him of a group of people standing around a traffic victim, horny with excitement. He climbed over the fence, the geese scattered and there she was, lying where they’d just been standing. Something had been at her. He didn’t know if geese would do that, but imagined it was more likely to have been a fox or a bird of prey of some kind. A kite. Not a vlieger, she thought, a wouw, and she opened her eyes so that she would see the ceiling of the study and not a goose field in the summer and an old woman lying there dead. He’d only glanced at her. Her dress had been pushed up, he found that worst of all. He ran out of the goose field. A moment before he’d been hungry. On the bike he’d been looking forward to huge pieces of home-made cake. Mrs Evans did that better than anyone, cake-making. He realised that he had to phone someone. He’d grabbed the bike and ridden out to the road. There, at the gate that was always open, he’d rung his father, confident that he wouldn’t be home at that time of day. He’d done his best to sound different, leaving a short, deep-voiced message on the answering machine. Then he’d cycled back to Bangor, returned the bike and got on the train. Change at Chester. Final destination: Liverpool Lime Street. The girl in the room next to his at the student house said that the dog had howled all day and asked him to leave it with her next time he planned to go off somewhere alone.
*
A girl, she thought. ‘Will we see your father around here again?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think so. He’s got his dog back and you weren’t interested.’
Almost unnoticed, the boy had joined her under the duvet. She must have lost the feeling in her left arm for a moment. She didn’t complain, this body full of heavy things was not that delicate. He was giving off something, a kind of electricity: his chest shimmered, his hand smouldered, his breath was as hot as a happy dog’s. What would it feel like if she weren’t wearing her nightie? She wanted to take it off, but the fire had made her sluggish and it was the middle of the night; she was tired, exhausted. ‘Can you…?’ she asked, raising her head slightly off the pillow.
He understood and soon they were lying next to each other in their underpants like two wary adolescents. Her on her back and him on his side, still a little lower, his nose against her upper arm, his arms against her hips. Arms full of tension, she could feel it radiating. The stream was rushing. Just when the sound of the flowing water was about to give way to sleep, he said, ‘We’re going to the mountain. The day after tomorrow. Christmas Day. The train’s running.’
Fine, she thought. To the mountain, I should be able to manage that. ‘Will you go to the baker’s tomorrow? To buy some Christmas pudding? Give them both my greetings. The fondest greetings from the Dutchwoman.’
The boy made a sound at the back of his throat and fell asleep. Did he find her old and ugly? Could he smell something? She sighed and closed her eyes. Don’t think about it. Not now.
55
The boy had gone to the baker’s. On foot. She had the house to herself until he came back. Then he had to go to Tesco’s to get some food in for Christmas. The radio wa
s on. She was sitting at the kitchen table with the woolly hat on her head. In front of her: Dickinson’s Collected Poems, open at pages 216 and 217, ‘A Country Burial’. She’d written down two translations of the first line and crossed them both out: Spreid ruim dit bed and Spreid dit bed breeduit. The first one was a syllable short and the second alliterated where the original didn’t. In the end she shifted the meaning slightly and came up with Spreid dit bed met zorg, ‘Make this bed with care’. The second line was crossed out too: Spreid het met ontzag. She’d changed that to Spreid het ademloos, ‘Make it breathlessly’, ‘with bated breath’. She’d written the third and fourth lines on a separate sheet that was otherwise covered with individual words: variations on ‘judgement’, ‘excellent’ and the several distinct meanings of ‘fair’. The rhythm is most important here, she’d thought. She wrote the four lines down again on a third sheet of paper and gazed out of the window. The flowering plants just kept flowering. Dickson’s Garden Centre delivered quality. The radio played Christmas evergreen after Christmas evergreen, a calm voice announcing the titles after every third song. She got stuck on the first two lines of the second quatrain. That strange imperative still baffled her, it baffled her completely. ‘Be its mattress straight / Be its pillow round’.
The smell of old Mrs Evans grew too strong, she had to go outside. She didn’t put on her coat. Not going outside without a coat is for healthy people who are afraid of catching a cold, she thought. She stopped under the rose arch and stared at how the new slate path came to a dead end on the lawn. It wasn’t right. It needed something at the end. The path had to lead somewhere, to a pillar maybe, with a big pot on it. The stream murmured, the fallen oak lay dead still. She couldn’t imagine the alders ever budding again; there seemed to be no life left in the stumps at all. She went round the side of the house. The geese were tearing at the grass. Still four of them. She wondered if foxes hibernated too. Asleep in a den with a bulging stomach, its snout between its paws, sighing now and then with contentment? She pressed her palms against her temples because she noticed that she was measuring her thoughts in rhythmic syllables, and changed the ‘contentment’ in her last thought to ‘satisfaction’. There was no wind, not a breath of it. The geese saw her and started to cluck softly. She leant on the thick wall. Do they think I’m a goose too, just like the dog thought I was a dog, according to the boy? No, I look more like a turkey, she thought, tugging on the tassels of the purple hat.
A few minutes later she was back at the kitchen table. Instead of returning to what she’d written, she leafed through the section titled NATURE. After a while – she’d almost finished the section – the letters started to run together, making it more and more difficult to read. She didn’t find the words ‘goose’ or ‘geese’ anywhere. Just as she’d thought. It was all ‘bees’ and ‘butterflies’ and ‘robins’. She sniffed, clapped the book shut and pushed it away. Dragged herself upstairs, pressed a tablet out of the strip, went back downstairs and poured herself a glass of white wine. Taking the tablet with the wine. When she heard footsteps on the slate, everything was pleasantly fuzzy again.
*
He’d bring the bread in, then they might talk about the shopping list, then he’d leave again. She would order him to leave. As if he were a dog. He would go to buy superfluous things. Afterwards, possibly after a second tablet, she would get ready. Taking bread and wine to the old pigsty, cushions and rugs, trimming the end of a candle with a sharp knife so it would fit in the neck of an empty bottle, a box of matches next to it. Tonight he could lie next to her, his head lower than hers, his broad thumbs on her breasts. If he dared, at least.
Bradwen came in. He put his rucksack on the table and took off his hat. ‘They said hello back,’ he said. ‘The baker’s wife asked when you’d be coming again yourself.’
She shook her head.
‘You on the wine?’
‘One glass.’
‘She’s in a reading club. She said it would be nice if you’d join.’
‘A reading club?’
‘Yes. She even told me the title of the book she’s reading now.’
She looked at him. His hair was stuck to his forehead and, as usual, he didn’t run his fingers through it. The grey eyes, the squint that made it so hard to see what he was thinking and feeling. He was different, really different, without the dog. It’s his own fault, she thought. I sent him away several times. Water suddenly occurred to her. There has to be water too, wine by itself isn’t enough. While she was adding it to the shopping list on the kitchen table, she tried to picture the faces of Rhys Jones and his estate agent friend. Not the stony expression of the former, seven or so days ago, or the supposedly jovial look of the latter, a few months ago, but their surprised faces about a week from now. She only half succeeded, she had no recollection of the estate agent’s features at all. She tapped a cigarette out of the packet and lit it with a match. Without thinking she drew on it hard and didn’t know what hit her: it was so horrible that she didn’t take the time to use her fingers but just spat it out. It landed on one of the sheets of paper she had written on. When the boy noticed that she was going to leave it there, he picked it up for her and pressed down on the smouldering paper with one thumb. Then he walked over to the sink and held the cigarette under the tap before throwing it in the bin.
‘Did Mrs Evans smoke?’ she asked, after she’d taken a mouthful of wine and had to swallow again emphatically to keep down the rising nausea.
‘No.’ The boy stayed near the sink.
‘You have to go and do the shopping.’
‘You coming?’
‘No. I’ve got things to do.’
He gestured at the table. ‘Were you working?’
‘You could just go away for good,’ she said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean what I say.’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’
She wanted to look straight into his eyes, but couldn’t because the window, the light, was behind him. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she said.
He stood there with his bum against the sink, then started taking the bread out of his rucksack. ‘I miss Sam,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’
She sniffed. Despite the lack of wind, her excursion outdoors had dispelled the old-woman smell, but now it was rising again from her clothes, drifting up from her shoulders. ‘Get going,’ she said.
He picked up the shopping list. ‘Why do I have to buy so much water?’ he asked.
‘I’m starting to get sick of the tap water,’ she said.
‘Have you got some money for me?’ he asked.
56
The ferry’s departure was delayed. There was a problem with one of the propellers. They announced over the PA that divers had been sent down to fix it, without specifying exactly what the problem was. The husband and the policeman drank a second whisky. It was busy on the boat. Fake Christmas trees everywhere, fairy lights, boisterous Brits and quiet Dutchies. Someone was up on a small stage entertaining people. They were sitting off to one side at a round table that was bolted to the floor, next to a window that had rainwater trickling across it on the outside. Through the window they could look out over an enormous expanse of brightly lit petrochemical industry. Somewhere far below them was the policeman’s car, among hundreds of other cars. Christmas Eve. Force 5 to 6 winds, north-westerly.
‘We won’t arrive at nine in the morning then,’ the husband said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ the policeman said. ‘We’re not in a hurry, are we?’
‘No.’ He sipped his whisky: the policeman had got both rounds at the bar, which was decorated with lots of brass. ‘A fine Scotch,’ he’d said, ‘single malt.’ It tasted smoky, peaty. The policeman knew what he was talking about; the husband hardly ever drank spirits. Now that he was sitting here, he remembered a crossing he’d made long ago with a friend from high school. They drank gin and tonics because they were travelling to England. The friend had spent the whol
e night puking into the shared toilet in the corridor; he had warded off the nausea by rubbing his breastbone for hours, lying motionless on his back on a narrow bed in a windowless cabin with two complete strangers in the next bunk. That was before he knew his wife. Now he knew her and now he was drinking whisky, a drink for grown men, he thought, but equally good, or even better, as a way of getting in the mood for England. Packed in his travel bag, dozens of metres lower in the boat, was a marble cake his mother-in-law had made. That was a tradition: when they went on holiday, she produced a marble cake for them to eat at their destination, whether it was a campsite or a hotel room. As if this were an ordinary holiday, as if she hadn’t noticed that her son-in-law was going away with the policeman, not her daughter. He looked at the man on the chair next to him. He had just taken a sip of whisky and was watching the entertainer put a hat on a redhead he’d hauled up onto the stage; he let the whisky wash around his mouth before swallowing it. Even out of uniform he looked like a policeman. Maybe because he knew what he looked like in uniform.
‘I’m not looking forward to it,’ he said.
‘The wind’s not that strong,’ the policeman said.
‘No, not the crossing.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that. I wish it was just a normal trip.’
‘Imagine it is.’ The policeman drank his whisky, seemingly at ease.
The husband looked at the stage, where a clown had now appeared. The large room smelt of chips and deep-fried snacks. ‘I’m going to go and lie down,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ said the policeman.
*
The cabin was nothing like the cramped closet next to the engine room he remembered from more than twenty years ago. Two beds with a picture above each bed and a large window between them, a small hallway with a wardrobe and a toilet with a sink. The husband sat on one of the beds and poked a knitting needle in under his cast. The policeman got undressed, folding his clothes neatly before laying them on a small bench. He went into the toilet. In the cabin you could feel the ship hum and shudder. It was as if it wanted to leave but was being held back. The dark cold sea. Scratching with the knitting needle gave him virtually no relief. He heard the policeman clear his throat and spit, then turn on the tap. A little later he flushed the toilet. Anton was his name.
Ten White Geese (9781101603055) Page 15
