36

Two days later the sun was shining. After standing with her back against the pigsty, feeling how the pale bricks had soaked up the warmth, she said, ‘Come.’ The smoke from her cigarette rose straight up into the air. Mist hung between the trunks of the trees along the stream. The boy lowered the wheelbarrow full of crushed slate. He had already removed the grass from the rectangle in the lawn and lined it with alder branches.

‘Coffee?’ he asked. He had pulled his hat up so it was perched on the back of his head, sweat gleaming on his forehead.

‘No, we’re going for a walk.’

He looked around. ‘Sam!’

‘He can’t come. We have to lock him in the house.’

‘I’ll put him in the shed. He’d tear the place apart. He can’t stand being alone.’ The dog came running up past the oil tank. Bradwen grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the pigsty. ‘Let’s go, quick.’

They followed the garden wall to the kissing gate.

‘Why don’t we just climb over the wall?’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’re not that old.’

‘No, I’m not that old. Do you have any idea how old?’

‘I don’t care.’

They went through the kissing gate and followed the garden wall to the beams over the stream. The light brown cows were grazing at the other end of the field, a good bit lower down. They could hear howling from the pigsty. Bradwen stayed behind her, even where the path was wide enough to walk side by side. There was a car driving somewhere; she couldn’t work out where the sound was coming from, which reminded her of the steam train and made her imagine the boy sitting next to her on a wooden bench in the train. She climbed the stile, expecting at any moment to feel a hand on her hand or a knee against her calf. At the stone circle she caught a smell of coconut again. She wondered if it was the gorse flowers. She sat down on the largest stone and gestured for the boy to come and sit next to her. He did. ‘This is where I was lying,’ she said, ‘when the badger bit me.’

He sniffed a little and slid back and forth.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Sit still.’

She pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one.

‘What are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Don’t talk.’

After smoking a second cigarette she gave up. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘What didn’t happen?’ he asked.

‘Every time I sit here, a badger sticks its head out from under those bushes.’

‘In the daytime?’

‘Yes, of course. Or do you think I come and sit here in the middle of the night?’

‘I’ve never seen a badger. Not a live one.’

‘I have. I’ve seen it three times.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said the boy.

‘Come.’

At the stile, things went fuzzy. Then everything turned dark purple and when she came to her senses again she was leaning on a crosspiece, the boy pressed up against her back with his arms wrapped around her. She saw thick grass, a rusty barbed-wire fence, tree trunks and rotting posts, mud. She heard Sam whimpering, realised vaguely that he was probably howling very loudly a long way away, and she heard agitated chirping. What kind of bird is that? she thought. I want to know. No time, no time. She smelt something sour, a smell she had until recently taken for the smell of fallen leaves or wood, the plank her hands were resting on. She felt the boy’s body, which felt stuck to hers along the entire length of her trunk. He was breathing on the back of her neck, his forearms clamped around her belly as if he were scared something would fall out of her. ‘There, there,’ he said, encouraging her to stay calm. Like her ‘ach’ had been for him, it was a kind of English without a Dutch equivalent. She didn’t know if he’d realised that she’d already come to. I have to eat, she thought. I have to eat more. Something moved in a tree, sliding down a trunk. A grey squirrel ran across the path. It stopped, sitting up straight with its tiny front paws crossed discreetly across its chest. It seemed to look at her, then scampered off. Would a little creature like that think that I’m a slightly oversized squirrel with a second squirrel on my back? Does a squirrel see people the way a dog does? She didn’t straighten up, she wanted the boy to hold her like this a little longer. She watched the squirrel until it ran up a tree just down the path. It all happened without a sound. The bird had fallen silent. I have to send him away, she realised suddenly. He has to leave. I can’t have this. ‘I’m not going to fall over,’ she said.

The boy let go of her. ‘A minute ago, you fell over.’

‘Not any more.’

‘Can you climb over it?’

‘I think so.’ She lifted a foot and put it on the lowest rail. My badger foot, she thought. She put the other foot next to it. She saw that she was going to manage and moved a hand from the plank to the post. Standing on the other side, panting slightly and turned to face the boy, she saw the black cattle she had seen the day she went to the pond. They were as black as his hair and her gaze sank from his hair to his eyes. Dark grey. She couldn’t look straight into his eyes, she could never look straight into both his eyes, she always had to choose left or right.