19

It wasn’t until a couple of days after she’d abandoned her mobile phone on the ferry that she realised she’d always used it as a watch and calender. She had brought her diary with her; if she really wanted to she could work out the date. Not having a clock – the one on the kitchen wall had probably stopped a long time ago – was not a problem. She ate when she was hungry and went to bed when she was up to it, though never without taking a paracetamol first. No alarm clock.

When she came downstairs the next morning, she was able to walk straight out the front door, which was wide open. It was already light and the grass was damp on her bare feet. These are the days when skies put on / The old, old sophistries of June, – / A blue and gold mistake. She wasn’t entirely sure why those lines had popped into her head. November and still so mild. Deceptively mild, perhaps. Blue and gold, but a mistake. There were two rubber boots on the doorstep. She turned round and didn’t close the door. The man was sitting at the kitchen table as if he came for a coffee every morning. He had folded up the map and was calmly drumming his fingers.

‘Bore da,’ he said.

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb.

She looked at the clock: thirteen minutes past nine. She couldn’t remember what time it had been stopped at all these weeks.

‘Have you been here for a quarter of an hour?’

‘Yes.’

All she had on was the baggy T-shirt she used as a nightie. It came down to just above her knees. Was it too late to go back upstairs?

The man stood up and extended a hand. ‘Rhys Jones.’

If he hadn’t stood up, she could have excused herself. She pulled the neck of the T-shirt up a little and held out her other hand. ‘Good morning,’ she said without giving her name. She filled the coffee pot with water and coffee and raised one of the lids on the big cooker. She heard the farmer sit down again, the chair creaked.

‘Indestructible, that is,’ he said.

She looked out of the window. ‘Milk?’ she asked, keeping her back to him.

‘Yes, please. Milk and sugar.’

She raised the second lid, took a plastic milk bottle out of the fridge and poured the milk into a small saucepan. She picked the whisk out of the cutlery tray, which was on the worktop. She saw that her hand was shaking. ‘I’m just going upstairs,’ she said, not budging.

The man didn’t react.

‘I’m going to get dressed. I overslept.’

‘You don’t need to on my account,’ said Rhys Jones.

She faced him. ‘Wasn’t the door locked?’

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a key, which he laid on the map. ‘I have a key.’

‘Which you are now leaving here?’

‘If you’d rather.’

‘Yes, I’d rather.’ She turned away again to stir the milk with the whisk, feeling her bum rocking slightly beneath the thin T-shirt material. ‘There is cake. Would you like a piece of cake with your coffee?’

‘Lovely.’

The coffee pot started to splutter. ‘Did you write the instructions?’

‘Yes.’

‘You did it very well then. I can manage the Aga now.’

‘The oil tank’s been filled. It’ll last you months.’ He slid the map to one side. ‘Mrs Evans liked the idea of me having a key.’

She poured the coffee into two mugs and added milk to one. Then took the cake out of the fridge, cut two slices and laid them on plates. She slid the cake and coffee over to him and, before sitting down and as inconspicuously as possible, held the hem of her T-shirt against her thighs.

Rhys Jones looked like a caricature of a Welshman: a broad face, thick greasy hair, watery eyes, unshaven. She thought she could detect a faint smell of sheep, but it could have been last night’s beer. The nail of his right thumb was blue and torn. He finished the piece of cake in five bites.

‘You’ve been down with the geese,’ he said.

‘What was the arrangement you had with the woman who lived here before?’

‘Regarding the sheep?’

‘Yes.’

‘Free pasture. Mowing and haymaking once or twice a year. And a lamb in autumn.’

‘A lamb?’

‘Butchered.’

‘And that lamb? I get that too?’

‘That’s right. You’re living here now. My sheep are grazing the land you’re renting. The arrangement’s the same.’

‘And if I don’t like lamb?’

‘You still get it. I can’t supply pork or beef, but the lamb is excellent.’ He stared at her. ‘Zwartbles.’

‘Pardon?’

‘They’re Zwartbles sheep, a Friesian breed. From your own country.’

She looked at her cake and knew she wasn’t going to eat it. Never again would she see this man at nine o’clock in the morning, she thought. ‘Was this Mrs Evans a relation of yours?’

‘No.’

‘Why wasn’t the house sold?’

‘She had no one. I asked an estate agent friend of mine to put it up for rent.’

‘To make sure you can still graze your sheep here?’

‘Amongst other things.’ He slurped what was left of the coffee out of his mug. ‘Meanwhile they’re looking for family. It could take a while.’

‘Another?’ she asked.

‘Lovely.’ He relaxed a little on his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. ‘I arranged her funeral.’

‘Are the geese yours too?’

‘No. They belonged to Mrs Evans.’

‘So now they’re mine?’

‘Yes. More or less.’

She had to stand up to get his mug and walk over to the sink with it. He stared at her as if he knew how difficult her situation was. ‘More or less,’ she said. ‘What does that mean?’

‘They’re rental geese. They don’t belong to you. I’d be guessing you’re not allowed to put a rented goose in the oven for Christmas roast.’

She stood up, staring back at him so that he wouldn’t be tempted to lower his gaze. It worked, he didn’t glance down at her hips until he had handed her his mug. She put the milk pan back on the hotplate and stared outside again, where the grass now looked a little drier. She wished she was out there: digging with the spade, stringing the cord along the path, working on a metaphorical wall unit. She noticed that the three flowering plants on the windowsill needed watering. She was appallingly tired and got a numb feeling in her arm while whisking the milk. But a numb arm was nowhere near as bad as talking to a man who had apparently come to assert his authority over the land and this house.

‘I only counted six by the way.’

‘What?’

‘Six geese.’

‘Have you been counting my geese?’

‘Of course.’

Goddomme, she thought.

‘Mrs Evans looked after them well. She fed them bread.’

She refilled the mug with coffee and milk and calculated how long it would take him to drink it. She no longer cared what he thought of her and, after passing him the mug, even bunched the T-shirt up a little to sit down. He started drinking straight away, sliding the key back and forth across the hard cover of the map with his free hand. She pushed away the cake and didn’t say another word.

‘It’s a temporary situation. The house is occupied. You’re happy, I’m happy, the agent’s happy. But the situation can change at any time.’ He bent forwards and pulled her plate over. ‘May I?’

She didn’t answer, but he ate her slice of cake all the same. It disgusted her, the broken thumbnail hovering round his chewing mouth. Silently she watched him gulp down the coffee. Then she stood up. She didn’t know what to say. Maybe he’d work out for himself that he’d spent long enough sitting in her kitchen. She gestured at the living room and the front door.

‘Aye, I’m on my way again,’ he said. He rose and walked slowly to the living room. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Having all the furniture, like.’

‘Why isn’t there a bed?’

‘I took it.’

‘And the clock?’

‘Climbing up on a stepladder was completely beyond her. I used to change the battery every now and then.’

She was pleased to see him crossing the room in his socks. A man in socks, and especially a man in socks with holes in them, is hard to take seriously.

At the front door he turned and looked her over from head to toe. ‘Injured?’ he asked.

‘Bitten by a badger.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I still got bitten.’

‘Badgers are shy animals.’ Shy. He stepped over the threshold. ‘I’ll be back then,’ he said, before pulling the door shut behind him.

He doesn’t want me to see him bending to pull on his boots, she thought, and smiled. ‘Goodbye,’ she called through the door when she saw that he was reaching down. She dragged herself upstairs and lay on the divan in the study, closing her eyes. Rhys Jones tore off in his car, which was undoubtedly green. A pickup, probably, with room for a few sheep in the back. Or bales of hay. A double bed. She didn’t feel the slightest inclination to look out of the window. Two hours later she started the day again. Properly, this time.