by Pat Barker
Angela looked sideways at Kate, thinking the surgical collar looked a bit like a ruff, reflecting light on to her face, emphasizing the lines of tiredness, the blue shadows underneath her eyes. Kate said she hadn’t been sleeping well in hospital, but then nobody could. Footsteps squeaking up and down the ward, blinds on the corridor side left up because you had to be observed all the time, and then there were admissions, sometimes in the middle of the night. The memories of her hysterectomy were fresh in Angela’s mind. Poor Kate, she thought, and such a bad patient.
They were approaching the scene of the crash. Angela slowed down – had to, it was a dangerous bend – though, imagining what Kate must be feeling, she would have preferred to pick up speed and get past as soon as possible.
‘Do you mind if we stop here?’ Kate said.
Surprised, Angela pulled over on to the grass verge. Kate got out. It was a struggle and Angela came round the car to help, but by the time she got there Kate was shakily standing up.
‘Why do you want to stop?’
‘I just want to see where it happened.’
Kate walked along the verge, thinking she might not recognize the spot, but there was no danger of that. Skidding off the road, the car had left scars, flattened bracken, made tyre tracks in the mud, smashed stripling trees – and then her nemesis: the tree whose branches, broken by the impact, had reached through the shattered windscreen to get at her. She had a flash of it happening again and closed her eyes. The trunk had proved solid, though the roots had been disturbed. She looked down and saw how they’d been prised loose from the earth. At that moment a light wind started to blow between the trees, a current of air moving at ground level, quickening the forest floor. Dead leaves rose up and formed twisters, little coils and spurts of turbulence, and the shadows of branches danced and shook on the snow-stippled ground.
Then it was over and the wood was as quiet and still as it had been before.
Kate was aware of her breathing, the sound, the movement of her ribs, and the sight of it too, furls of mist escaping from her lips to whiten the air.
Angela shifted behind her. Coughed. She thinks I’m being eccentric, Kate thought. Well, she can talk.
There was something else, something she needed to get clear, a memory that bulged above the surface, showed its back and then, in a burst of foam, turned and sank again. It was the sound of her breathing that had summoned it. She groped after memories that dissolved even as she tried to grasp them. She had a sense of missing time. The minutes – how many minutes? – she’d drifted in and out of consciousness, while somebody had stood by the car, breathing, watching, not calling for help.
But all her memories were confused, and for large stretches of time she had no memory at all. Nothing about the ambulance journey or the arrival in hospital, nothing about the emergency treatment, the fitting of the back brace and the surgical collar, nothing about that. Nothing, in fact, until she woke the following morning to find her mother and Alice by the bed. So probably her memory of the man who’d stood and watched her was a distortion. A symptom of concussion.
Two days after the crash a young woman doctor had sat by her bed for half an hour, asking her questions about what time it was, who she was, where she was, why she was there, and, although she hadn’t felt confused or uncertain of the answers, she’d got most of them wrong.
It was a relief to turn and see Angela’s worried face.
She made herself smile. ‘Lucky escape.’ She was thinking of another road, in Afghanistan, the road Ben had died on. For a moment she felt a deep affinity with him, a closeness, and then it vanished, and the loneliness rushed back, worse than before. She raised her hand to her neck and touched Ben’s amulet, feeling the disc cold under her fingertips, rasping it along the chain. ‘That’s that, then,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Two
Back home, Angela bustled around quite as if the place belonged to her. Kate would have liked to make herself something to eat, but Angela had brought stacks of home-made food from her freezer. Feeling useless and too tired to protest, Kate sat in her armchair and let Angela get on with it.
The fire was already laid and only needed a match put to it. Angela propped a newspaper up against the hearth, and a photograph of burning cars was sucked into the draught. The paper darkened, grew crisp and thin. An orange glow began at the centre of the page, which blackened round the edges until, at the last second, Angela whisked it away, filling the room with a spurt of acrid smoke.
This is like old age, Kate thought, looking round the room. Shadows leapt across the walls, tentative flakes of snow fumbled at the window pane and were whirled upwards out of sight. Watching them, she tried to trace the progress of a single flake, but her eyelids were heavy, and when she opened them again Angela was putting a tray with pâté and warm bread rolls on to the table beside her chair. She watched Angela’s faded English-rose face turn pink again from the warmth of the fire. A strange girl – though she shouldn’t say girl, Angela was forty-five if she was a day, but girlish still in many ways, gushing, giggly, inclined to develop crushes on people. Also stoical, unassuming, brave.
And a trial at times, Kate thought guiltily, wanting to be alone. All those times when Kate had tried to talk about her grief for Ben, and Angela had gently, but firmly, reminded her that she had lost Thomas and William and Rufus and Harry. Yes, Kate had wanted to say, but Ben was my husband, and they were like, well,… SHEEP?
She’d always managed not to say it, remembering the time she’d switched the television on to watch the six o’clock news and seen Angela rolling around on the muddy ground, displaying her knickers to the whole nation, as she defied the men from the Ministry of Agriculture who’d come to kill her ‘boys’. It had taken three policemen to hold her down. And anyway who was she to quantify somebody else’s love or decide how much grief was reasonable? She remembered watching Angela feed them, how they’d all stopped cropping the grass and answered her with their plaintive cries when she called their names.
Kate ate and drank and drifted off to sleep again. When she woke, Angela was putting on her coat. ‘You sure you’ll be all right now?’
‘Quite sure. Thanks. I’ll just sit over the fire a bit longer.’
‘I’ll be in again tomorrow first thing. Ring if you need anything.’
After she’d gone, Kate stood for a long time by the window, listening to the minute creaks the house made – wood and stone still settling after five hundred years – and watched the snow, falling more thickly now, cover the ground. Darkness seemed to rise in a blue vapour from the snow. She went back to the fire, wondering how she should spend the next few hours. Having slept, she supposed, for an hour or an hour and a half, she now felt too awake to go to bed.
In the hospital, with its unchanging routines, she’d been protected from the urgency of time passing, but now she counted the days lost since her accident – nineteen. She was tempted to go across to the studio, but knew she mustn’t. The desolate expanse of floor, the tall windows open to the night sky, no, she wasn’t ready to face that yet, and anyway there was nothing she could do. By now there should have been a roughly carved figure standing there. Instead there was nothing, not even an armature, and it would take five to eight days of hard work to produce that.
And she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t work at all without an assistant, and even the best assistant would leave normal working hours curtailed. She regularly started at five or six o’clock when things were going well. That would have to change, and not only that. The way she worked. Everything.
She hobbled back to her chair, missing the other patients whose slow progress back to mobility had mirrored her own. Round about now the visitors would be leaving. The nurses would be stuffing flowers into vases, drawing the blinds, settling people down for the night – and her solitary, shuffling progress suddenly seemed lonely and pathetic. Sometimes the only cure for feeling sorry for yourself is a good long sleep. She would make herself stay up t
ill ten o’clock, make a few calls, watch television, have a couple of stiff whiskies and go to bed.
She was just about to switch on the television when she heard a car approaching. The forest road at night was not much frequented even in good weather, and she wondered who it might be, and hoped it wasn’t Lorna or Beth or Alec come to see how she was. The car slowed to take the bend. She pictured the unknown driver spotting the damage to the trees and wincing – though by now the snow would have covered the tyre marks on the verge. She waited for it to pick up speed again, but it slowed still further, crawling along, looking for the entrance. A shifting skein of light drifted across the wall and stopped as the car stopped. Going to the window, she opened it slightly and heard the crunch of approaching footsteps, but could see nothing. The drive was thickly lined with rhododendrons that in winter formed a long dark tunnel. The footsteps grew louder. A young man with bent head, his dark hair stringy with melted snow, emerged from between the bushes. The security light flicked on as he broke the beam, and flung his shadow behind him up the wall of thick green rubbery leaves.
The door bell rang.
She almost knew who it was. The name was on the tip of her tongue, but to be on the safe side she put the chain on before she opened the door and peered through the crack.
‘Hello?’
‘I believe you’re looking for an assistant.’
‘Ye-es.’
‘Alec Braithewaite sent me. I used to do the churchyard last summer, do you remember?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She released the chain and opened the door. Light streamed on to the path, catching his glasses so that for a moment he looked blind. ‘Come in.’
He stepped over the threshold, bringing with him a smell of wet hair and wool, and began stamping his snow-clogged boots on the mat, shaking off thick curds of white. Snowflakes caught in his hair and on his shoulders dissolved as she gazed.
‘I didn’t realize it was still snowing.’
‘It’s not.’ He smiled. ‘I knocked a branch and got a shower. I think I’d better take my coat off. I’m only going to drip all over your carpet. And these,’ he said, looking down at his feet.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name.’
‘Peter Wingrave. Look, would you like to ring Alec and check?’
‘No, it’s all right. He did mention you.’
She was thinking it was no wonder she hadn’t recognized him. Last time she saw him he’d been suntanned, stripped to the waist, wielding a scythe on the long grasses between the headstones. She’d bumped into him once or twice as she was walking across the churchyard on her way to the shops, and they’d exchanged a few words about the cull. ‘Isn’t it awful?’ they’d said in passing, as people did who weren’t directly involved. There was no ignoring it. Clouds of oily black smoke from the pyres dominated the skyline. The smell of burning carcasses had hung over the village for weeks.
The cull was the reason for his presence. Until last summer the grass had been cropped by sheep imported for the purpose. Black sheep – she suspected Alec of a clerical joke. They kept the grass down and their droppings, even when deposited on a grave, were not too offensive – or at least nobody had complained. ‘Cows, now,’ Alec had said, ‘I don’t think we could go as far as cows.’ The great thing was they fed themselves and didn’t need to be paid. But then the men from the Ministry came and carted them off to be killed. Peter was more expensive than the sheep, but also, she couldn’t help thinking, more decorative. She remembered him clearly now, sweat glistening on his arms and chest, his jeans slipping further and further down his hips as he swung and turned. As a young single woman, she’d have been seriously tempted. Even as a happily married middle-aged woman, she’d paused to admire the view.
He stood up, flushed from the effort of getting his boots off, wriggling his toes in their damp socks. The boots were old and obviously leaked.
‘Come through,’ she said, hobbling ahead of him into the living room.
‘Oh, a real fire. That’s nice.’
An educated voice, deep, pleasant. She wondered how he’d ended up doing unskilled jobs – but that was his business. And anyway, she thought, gardening isn’t unskilled – it’s just badly paid. He’d shown plenty of skill with that scythe. ‘Do you know, I think you’re the only person I’ve seen using a scythe.’
A small shrug. ‘I grew up in the country.’
‘Oh, whereabouts?’
‘Yorkshire. My grandfather used to use one. But you’re right, I think he was the only person I ever saw doing it. Though it’s not difficult, once you get the rhythm.’
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Yes, please.’ He looked around for clues and spotted the whisky bottle on the table. ‘Whisky’ll do fine.’
She poured two large glasses. ‘Well,’ she said, lowering herself cautiously into the armchair, feeling like a frail old lady in contrast with his obvious strength and vigour. ‘Alec said he was going to have a word with you.’
‘Yes, he rang a couple of days ago. I left a message on your answering machine, asking if I could call round.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t got to the answering machine yet. I only came out of hospital this afternoon. So you’re a gardener?’
‘Mainly, yes.’
‘Must be pretty lean pickings at this time of year?’
‘Awful. Basically it’s dead between November and March. There’s very little.’
‘So how do you manage?’
‘Do a bit of tree surgery. And I’m trying to specialize in water gardening, because actually this is the best time of year to dig ponds. If you leave it till Easter, you’ve missed half the season. And then if it gets too bad, I give in and get a job in a restaurant.’
‘Cooking?’
‘No. Chopping veg and loading dishes.’
‘Sounds pretty dire.’
‘It is, yes, but it’s only for a few months. As soon as the grass grows the phone rings.’
He had a charming smile.
‘Did you train as a gardener?’
‘No.’ A pause. ‘No, I read English.’ He raised the glass quickly to his mouth, hiding his lips.
All right, she thought, no personal questions. Well, that suited her. The last thing she wanted in the studio was chatter.
‘I can give you references. People I’ve worked for.’
He fished in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper, folded twice and slightly damp. Five people were listed on it, four of whom she knew fairly well. ‘Fred Henderson. He’s got that big place just outside Alnwick, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, that’s right. I did his water garden. He went in for it in a big way when he retired. In fact I think it’s the biggest job I’ve ever done.’ He smiled. ‘What can I say? The patio’s level. The ponds don’t leak. The waterfalls work. And the stream’s full of fish.’
She smiled back at him. It was impossible not to like him. ‘Shall I tell you what I want first? Then you can judge for yourself if you can fit in with it.’
He nodded, watching her intently, rocking the whisky from side to side in the glass, amber lights darting across his fingers. He had big hands.
She sensed he was desperate for work, that chopping veg and loading dishes might be looming, so she didn’t bother making the hours attractive. Eight till four, five days a week. Saturday mornings would be great if he could manage it. ‘And I’ll pay whatever Fred paid. Is that all right?’
‘Fine.’ He looked at her – perhaps he sensed desperation too. ‘You haven’t said what you want me to do.’
‘Driving, lifting, making an armature…’ She waited.
‘I know what it is. I’ve never made one.’
‘I’ll show you.’ It hurt her to say it, to think of other hands on her work. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Alec said it’s a statue of Christ. How big?’
‘Fifteen feet.’
‘Fifteen?’
‘Yep.’
He was looking at her
, assessing the extent of her disability. ‘How high can you raise your arm?’
She pulled a face. ‘Shoulder height.’
‘You’ll need a scaffold. I can’t see you shinning up a stepladder’ – he nodded at her stick – ‘with that.’
‘Could you make one?’
‘Yeah, it’s not difficult.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yeah, no problem. Anyway, I’ll bounce up and down on it first, so if anybody breaks their neck it’ll be me.’
‘Might be as well.’ She smiled. ‘I don’t think my neck could take any more.’
‘How long do you have to wear the collar?’
‘Another month at least.’
‘But you will get the mobility back?’
‘So they say.’
A pause. ‘So how shall we leave it?’ he asked. ‘Do you want to check with Fred first?’
‘No, I need to get started. How about tomorrow?’
‘Are you sure you’re well enough?’
‘I’ve got to be.’
‘Well, if you don’t feel up to doing much, I can always be making a start on the scaffolding.’
She felt relieved beyond measure. It had all happened so quickly, so easily. Her first job tomorrow morning must be to ring Alec and thank him. It was a bit late tonight, she thought, glancing at her watch.
Immediately, Peter put his glass on the table and stood up. ‘No, don’t get up,’ he said, seeing her reach for her stick. ‘I can let myself out.’
She heard him pulling on his boots, grunting with the effort, and then went to the window to watch him go. The security light flicked on again as he crossed the beam. He seemed to sense her watching and without turning round raised his hand as he disappeared into the dark tunnel of rhododendrons.
A moment later she heard the car start. The noise was distorted, as every noise here was, by the wall of trees. He reversed, turned, and then she heard the hum of the engine diminishing into the distance before being swallowed up by night and silence. Then there were only the trees, and a few flakes of snow shuddering on the black air.
