Face The Wind And Fly

by Jenny Harper

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  He picked up his waterproof jacket and spread it against the wall so that they could sit with their backs to the stone, out of the wind. ‘I had a feeling folk might be getting a bit pissed off with digging. We need to look ahead to what we’re doing it all for, don’t you think? So I put this together. Course it’s not final, it’s only up for discussion. Thought the Committee might look at it first, then once it’s updated, maybe they can find a notice board to stick it up on.’

  He’d done the plan in watercolour, with detail added in fine pen.

  ‘Where did you learn to do this?’

  ‘At college. We were always having to present ideas and designs and we all developed different ways of doing it. I found this easiest.’

  ‘Hardly easy.’

  He’d sketched in a wrought-iron gate between the garden and the school playground, with another at the other end where the path from the road ended. This was currently walled up but opening it would be straightforward. In the north-east corner he’d drawn four trees with a tent-like covering slung between them.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I thought rather than applying for planning permission for a small building, we might just have a stout canvas covering there. It could be a teaching space, or a picnic spot, or a music area, anything really. It could be a proper building, if there’s enough money and people want to wait for planning.’

  ‘It would take years to grow trees big enough to support it, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘If there’s enough cash, you can buy big trees.’

  ‘It’s just a question of cash?’

  ‘Everything’s about money, isn’t it?’

  ‘Even trees?’

  ‘Especially trees.’

  She pointed to another section of the drawing. ‘And is this a maze?’

  ‘Probably just low box hedges, or stones, or maybe a one-foot high willow fence. We could get people weaving. Anyway, we don’t want to lose children – or have them playing kiss chase out of sight of the teachers.’

  ‘Now there’s the voice of experience.’

  He laughed. ‘And this—’ he pointed at a substantial area in the corner, ‘—would be the allotment area, fruit bushes and veg. Over here, maybe a pond. We could bring in frogs.’

  He’d spent ages thinking the design out, varying it for interest, crisscrossing the patch with paths so that you could make a dozen different choices to reach any one spot. You could get lost, if you wanted, but of course, you would never be lost.

  ‘What’s this?’ She peered at the southeast corner, where a series of blue and pink spots had been painted.

  ‘A friendship garden.’ He smiled at her quizzical look. ‘Tree stumps, sawn flat to make stepping-stones. You take your friend’s hand, boy on blue, girl on pink – or the other way round if you like,’ he added hastily, seeing the look on Kate’s face, ‘or you could make them green and red, whatever. Anyway, you stay on the colour you started on. The idea is to work your way round the stepping stones without letting go of your friend’s hand. Sometimes you’ll have to stretch as far as you can because the blue stone might be three yards from the pink. Sometimes blue and pink will be on the same spot, half and half, with the next stone the other way round, so you have to snuggle up really close or wind yourselves round each other to find a way past. You have to work at it a bit, it won’t be easy. It’s a game.’

  ‘And a metaphor.’

  ‘Take it any way you like.’

  ‘I like.’ Kate stretched up and kissed his cheek, then sat back immediately, as if shocked by her own temerity. ‘You’re right – people need a vision or they’ll lose interest, but not everyone would have been wise enough to understand that.’

  He wanted to take her face between his hands and kiss her lips till they frayed. Kate Courtenay was fast becoming a temptation that was difficult to resist.

  Kate began to suspect that Andrew was still seeing Sophie, but decided not to spark another confrontation. Such clashes always ended in fervent denials and made her feel as though she was the one in the wrong. It seemed easier to ignore it and pretend, though discomfort about Andrew’s ever more frequent absences was swelling inside her. She couldn’t bear to think of Andrew’s hands on Sophie’s alabaster skin, of words of endearment passing between them like gift-wrapped parcels.

  When she came home from work one day, she discovered that Andrew was out – again. Ninian was out too. His mobile was off and she had no idea where he was, either with Banksy or Cuzz, at a guess. She hoped it was Banksy, and she hoped he wouldn’t be too late home because she never slept properly until she heard his key in the lock and the front door opening and closing. She eyed the papers in her briefcase, but she’d had enough of work. She needed air. Clean air and bracing exercise. She needed – if she had a shred of honesty – to see Ibsen.

  By the time she got down to the garden, it was late. It was almost October, and the days were much shorter now. In another couple of weeks, the clocks would go back and the evening would start to get really dark. For a moment she thought there was no-one in the garden, but then she caught sight of Ibsen in the corner, packing up his tools.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘It’s getting dark.’

  ‘Yes. Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘No worries. There were a few folk here.’ He surveyed the land. ‘Almost finished.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fundraising’s going to start soon.’

  ‘That’s good. There’ll be money, you know, if—’

  ‘Don’t say it. Don’t mention the words “wind” or “farm”.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘There are too many minuses, Kate.’

  She couldn’t just ignore it, not because it was her job, but because she felt passionately about turbines too – she just happened to have the opposite view to Ibsen’s. Yet there was no point in arguing because his views were entrenched. Might there be any other way of winning him over?

  Don’t tell him, something in her head said, show him.

  She glanced at her watch. It was only eight o’clock. Ninian was unlikely to be back for hours, ditto Andrew, and anyway, she was angry with both of them and tired of being left alone in Willow Corner.

  ‘Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘Not really. Why?’

  ‘Fancy a spin?’

  ‘Where to? My van’s shockingly dirty.’

  ‘I have mine.’

  He shrugged on a sweatshirt. Kate could smell the evening air on him like the sweet breath of freshly-cut grass and shivered.

  ‘Well, I’m willing to risk it. Where d’you want to go?’

  The mischievous grin was Ibsen’s trademark, but this time Kate got to do it first. As he climbed in, she flashed him her best smile and said, ‘Wait and see.’

  She turned the car towards Gifford and smirked into the darkness. She liked being in control – and especially, for once, in control of Ibsen Brown.

  She threw the car along winding country roads in the gathering gloom and they reached the site in twenty minutes. The entrance was secured with a coded lock and the codes were changed weekly, but they were the same on all AeGen gates. She had to stop to open up. When the headlights illuminated the large board, ‘Dun Muir Wind Farm’, Ibsen groaned.

  ‘Good God, woman.’

  ‘I thought I’d show you something magical.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘You could look on it as an educational visit, if you like.’

  ‘You’re dragging me up to some wind turbines in the middle of the night and you think you’re going to change my mind.’

  ‘Perhaps, though it’s hardly the middle of the night.’

  ‘Hah!’

  She’d made a series of rapid calculations in her head before she’d made the suggestion in the first place. It was dark, but the sky was completely clear. Soon it would be filled with stars and she knew that the moon would be large. There was
something that happens around wind turbines in these conditions – to her biased eye, anyway. She set the car up the hill, slotted it into first and took the slope gently.

  ‘Just open your mind, Ibsen. That’s all I ask.’ She glanced at his profile but in the dim light from the beam of the headlamps it was unreadable.

  From this side, the turbines were invisible, but when they crested the hill a few jerky minutes later, she knew they would spring into full view. At exactly the wrong moment, though, a cloud passed across the moon and they couldn’t see anything. This wasn’t the spot Kate had had in mind, so she didn’t panic, she merely turned left and up another hill, where they wound up a small sidetrack.

  The Dun Muir wind farm was only five years old, so the technology was modern, but because of the nature of the terrain, the landscaping already looked quite mature. The land itself was undulating, so although there were thirty-eight turbines, it was impossible to see all of them from any one spot.

  ‘Here.’

  She cut the engine and sat for a second, tense with anxiety. She desperately wanted Ibsen to see this through her eyes, as she had seen his cottage garden before Melanie’s tantrum.

  A blade of a wind turbine, as beautiful and symmetrical as a petal on a dahlia. Her wind-flower.

  She opened the door. ‘Come on.’

  They walked ten yards to the brow of the hill and just as they reached it, the cloud moved away and the moon shone silver. Below them, as far as they could see, a small army of turbines arced skywards. Some of the blades were rotating slowly, others stood still. They were miles from any road, there were no houses or farms on this wild bit of moorland. The silence was absolute.

  She pursed her lips together and found she was trembling. Speak, she willed him. Say something. Anything.

  ‘It’s really quiet.’

  Her heart lifted. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought they were noisy.’

  She tried not to smile, or to lead his thoughts.

  ‘They must get much noisier when they’re really turning.’

  ‘New turbines are both effective and quiet. Anyway—’ She swept an expansive arm from left to right across the landscape, ‘—there’s no-one to hear.’

  They stood in silence. Something flew across the moon. A buzzard, out hunting. She touched Ibsen’s arm and whispered, ‘Look.’

  He’d already seen it. They watched in silence as it hovered in the indigo sky to locate its prey, then plummeted, like a stone, towards its kill. As it rose, she could see the shape of some small creature in its beak. Nature is cruel.

  ‘Christ.’ It was barely a whisper. ‘Look there.’

  She felt his arms come around her as he turned her thirty degrees to where a ghostly white shape was swooping across the dark heather. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A barn owl.’

  The bird passed like a phantom, soundless, mysterious, and eerily beautiful, but Ibsen still held her tight. She could feel the warmth of his body seeping into hers and was grateful for it because the night had grown chilly. She scanned the landscape in front of them. Where the last fold of rock gave way to an infinity beyond, there was a small ruin, the remains of an ancient watchtower, its crumbled masonry like jagged teeth against the sky. The sky was darker now, and the moon brighter. Its clear, luminous light picked out the dull gray of the turbine towers and the elegant sweep of the blades so that they gleamed and shone. They stood like sentinels guarding this lonely landscape.

  ‘Still, Kate, they’re not natural, are they?’

  ‘Natural? No.’ She pointed at the ruin. ‘Nor is that. It was built to safeguard this land when it was under threat from raiders. These turbines have been built because our world is under threat from carbon emissions.’

  ‘I can’t win, can I?’

  She snuggled back against his warmth. ‘I hate fights,’ she said. ‘I just want to do my job. Sadly, it seems I have battles every day. Did you know that someone has been calling me at home, all the time. A heavy breather.’

  ‘Really? Don’t you find that threatening?’

  ‘You have no idea. I’ve been prodded in the chest, spat at—’

  ‘Spat at?’

  ‘Not in Forgie, not this time, but yes, there has been aggressive behaviour. Someone sits outside the house in a car. They’re watching me.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I – Kate, I’m opposed to Summerfield Wind Farm, but I would never—’

  ‘I know.’ He’d eased back from her and she hated the space between them. ‘Listen, I have a rug in the car. Shall we sit for a little?’

  They found a spot under a tree and spread the rug. The grass was springy and soft below their feet. She could feel the bark of the tree rough against her back and hear the gentle rustle of its leaves above their heads.

  They sat in silence until Ibsen hooked an arm round her and tucked her in close. ‘Cold?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘It’s—’ She could feel him hesitate, ‘—better than I thought.’

  ‘When Melanie trashed your dahlias,’ she said tentatively, ‘how did you feel?’

  ‘Do you need to ask?’

  ‘When people tell me they hate my turbines—’ She let it hang. The silence was profound. Nothing stirred except the leaves above their heads, gently moving.

  At last Ibsen said, ‘Is that really how you feel about them, Kate?’

  She nodded. A hand curled round her cheek and gently turned her head towards his. In the darkness, his eyes were no longer blue, but inky. His lips came down on hers, so softly that she thought at first that she had imagined the touch. Then she felt his breath, warm, on her face, and all thoughts of propriety were swept away in the need to touch him, to join her mouth to his, to feel the urgency of his desire fuse to hers in an incandescent blaze.

  ‘I want you, Kate.’ The confession was barely more than a breath. ‘I’ve wanted you for ages.’

  It seemed a very long time since someone had truly desired her. Years of child rearing and homemaking and career building had bundled ardour into a damp wad and tied it with a yarn made of habit. Even so, a deeply ingrained sense of loyalty and her marriage vows should stop this. Andrew’s face insinuated itself into her desire, a reminder and a remonstrance. She had never strayed before. She had never even questioned her love, in her mind it had remained as strong and as steadfast as the day she had fallen in love with him. But now all the anger that had been smouldering inside her ever since Ninian had burst out with his accusation reached the end of the slow fuse and ignited. I have the right to do this, she argued silently in her head, he has given me the right.

  ‘Kate.’ It was a whisper. ‘Are you sure you’re okay with this?’

  She loved him for asking, she loved that he had the self-control to think of her at that moment. ‘I want you too, Ibsen Brown.’ It was impossible not to thrill to the urgency of his desire and set it in the scale against the slick, unemotional action that her lovemaking with Andrew had become.

  In the still of the night, their panting was the only sound, and when they climaxed, together, it felt as though they were joined to the universe.

  ‘You know I’m divorced,’ Ibsen said.

  They were huddled together, wrapped in the big rug. Kate felt suffused with warmth and peace, so his words spun out of the dark like an arrow, right into the soft part of her head.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  He hunched closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. ‘Lynn was a teacher – at Summerfield Primary, as it happens. She was a pretty girl and I’d have done anything for her.’

  ‘How long were you married? What happened?’

  For a few minutes he didn’t reply and the night seemed more silent than ever. Kate waited as patiently as she could.

  ‘We had a baby. Violet. She died.’

  ‘Oh, Ibsen. How?’ Kate tried to turn so that she could look at his face, but he kept his arms like a vice around her, keeping his expression private.

  ‘I went in to
get her one morning, and she was dead. There in the cot, looking so sweet and so—’ His voice caught and he stopped speaking. Kate clung to his hands. ‘—so perfect. But she’d stopped breathing.’

  ‘What was wrong?’

  She felt him shrug. ‘They couldn’t find any reason. We’d done everything right. Neither of us smoked or took drugs. She wasn’t too hot, she was on her back. We don’t know.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything more terrible.’

  ‘No.’

  Somewhere below them, a deer crashed out of the woods and bounded across the heather and out of sight.

  ‘I don’t talk about it. I just wanted you to know.’

  She said, ‘And Lynn?’

  ‘We staggered on for a couple of years, but being together was too painful and in the end we decided we’d be better apart.’

  ‘Do you still see her?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through.’

  ‘It hasn’t made me a better person. I wish it had. I’d like to have another serious relationship but I can’t face what it might lead to.’ He gave a self-deprecating snort. ‘I’m a shit, really. I do tell them, no strings, no commitment, but they all think they can change me.’

  Kate shifted away. She said, ‘It’s all right, Ibsen, you have nothing to fear from me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean— God, Kate, not you! I didn’t tell you this because— Christ! I’ve never told anyone before.’

  But the spell had been broken. Whatever form of lust had overtaken them under the trees and lifted them to the stars, it had been dumped back on earth with a thud. They drove back to Summerfield in silence.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Andrew was still asleep when Lisa Tranter called a week or so later, his graying hair visible above the duvet, his skin more aged than she had realised. Now she compared everything about her husband and her guilty secret, at least subconsciously. Ibsen was broader shouldered and more powerful. Andrew’s hands were slender and graceful, but showed signs of liver spots. Ibsen’s skin glowed with outdoor energy, Andrew’s had an indoor pallor. She was not used to viewing her husband in this way and it was not wise. It diminished him and made her uncomfortable.