53

The boy had put new candles in the holders on the windowsill. There was a lit candle on the table too. Dickinson’s Collected Poems lay next to her plate, shut. On the plate it was haddock again, with mashed potato and fennel. Colourless food.

She sat down and looked at him, thinking of the almost subservient way he had worked for her an hour and a half ago. Stamping down the soil, pouring the water. ‘Why haven’t you gone away?’ she asked.

‘Who’d cook?’

‘I can cook too.’

‘Who’d plant the roses? Who’d do the shopping? Who’d keep the stove burning?’

‘Why?’

The boy looked at her. The hat looked really good on him, even at the dinner table.

‘Have you already brought in the pan?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she asked again.

‘Do I ask you questions?’ he said. ‘Just look under the Christmas tree instead.’

She looked aside. A present was lying there. Before standing up to get it, she took a big mouthful of wine. She stayed next to the Christmas tree with Bradwen’s gift in her hand.

‘Socks,’ she said softly.

The boy sniggered. ‘That woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

She tore off the paper. He had simply bought her a woolly hat. An incredibly ugly hat, purple, with sewn-on flowers in a range of colours, almost all of which clashed with the colour of the hat itself. A hippie hat, it even had two tassels hanging down the sides. She swallowed and was glad she was facing away from him. She swallowed again before pulling it on. It fitted perfectly. ‘Just what I needed,’ she said, turning and going back to the table.

Bradwen looked pleased and ate.

She drank and poked at the fish.

‘What is it with this Dickinson?’ he asked, gesturing at the poems with the mash-filled serving spoon.

‘Yes. I wanted to ask you that too.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Why do you keep turning her portrait round?’

‘Those beady little eyes.’

‘It’s a photo.’

‘So? She gives me the creeps. And you?’

‘I was involved with her because of my work.’

The boy chewed. ‘Hmm.’

‘She had a dog too.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes, Carla.’ She squeezed her lips into a circle between her thumb and index finger. It was called Carlo, the name was in her head, another detail that had angered her in Habegger’s biography because the man only mentioned the dog four times. It was a Newfoundland, an enormous hairy beast – she had looked up a picture of the breed – and it was called Carlo. A timid little woman whose only friend was a big dog and Habegger didn’t care. Now that she’d squeezed her lips into a circle, she tried it again. ‘Carla.’

‘A lapdog,’ the boy said.

‘No, a very large one.’ She ran the back of her hand over her hot forehead and drained her glass of wine. ‘Pour some more.’

Bradwen picked up the bottle obediently. ‘Funny name for a big dog.’

‘Yes.’ Funny name for a big dog. She knew it meant something, but translating it was somehow beyond her. She wanted to go upstairs to the shelf under the mirror. Not one, but two tablets. She stood up. She walked through to the living room and stairs. The boy didn’t call after her. Without turning on the bathroom light, she grabbed the strips and dared to look at her backlit self. Fortunately she was wearing a hideous hat, a fancy-dress article, nothing anyone could take seriously. ‘Carlo,’ she said. ‘Ohhhhh.’ She saw her mouth open and close again: vague, colourless. The bathroom smelt of Mrs Evans, of course, as if she’d got out of the bath ten minutes ago and dried herself, leaning on the washbasin now and then with one hand. She swallowed the two tablets with a single mouthful of water. When she straightened up again, the two tassels swung cheerfully.

‘You’re not smoking,’ the boy said. He had cleared the table, letting the food slide off her plate into the bin. Now he was washing up.

‘What?’

‘I haven’t seen you smoking since this morning when I was doing the raking.’

She looked around. The packet of cigarettes wasn’t on the table. She stood up slowly and rested on the back of the chair before moving further.

‘You don’t have to,’ he said without turning.

She picked up her coat, which was lying on the chair next to the sideboard, and felt the cigarettes in one of the pockets. The lighter wasn’t in the other pocket. Now that she was standing next to the sideboard anyway, she turned on the radio. Music. There was something she wanted to do, something she had to do. She thought about it. From the sound of it, Bradwen was up to the cutlery, the crackling of burning wood came from the living room. The radio was turned down. Something. She’d already got rid of the tablet boxes. She thought hard and saw the lighter sliding out of her hand, heard it bounce off the rock with a dry click and land in the grass. ‘Throw me those matches,’ she said.

The boy took the box of matches from the windowsill and lobbed it over. She reached out to catch it, but was too sluggish or else the box was moving too fast. It bounced off the sideboard and landed on the floor near the Christmas tree. She bent over and fell. Immediately he was beside her.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’

He took her by the hand and pulled her to her feet.

She sat down at the table and finally lit the cigarette. It was horrible, almost disgusting. As if she was fourteen again and smoking her first cigarette, a Camel non-filter her uncle had given her. That must have been one of the last times she was allowed to stay at his house. She coughed and tried again. Something that had tasted good for years couldn’t suddenly turn disgusting, could it? Bradwen was still standing close by, at her elbow. The very idea of a cloud of smoke passing through her mouth and windpipe and into her lungs was so repulsive she couldn’t inhale. She stubbed the cigarette out.

The boy coughed. Then asked, ‘Coffee?’

‘No.’ She drained her glass, stood up and walked into the living room. She switched on the TV and sat down on the sofa. She heard him turn off the radio and go back to the washing-up. There was movement and noise in front of her, everything with a one-second delay. A wide ditch, more a canal really, a boat with two men in it. They pulled baskets out of the water and one of them contained an eel. They shook it out. Catches down 95 per cent since the replacement of the wooden lock gates, the fisherman explained. In the field next to the canal there was a solitary sheep. She stood up immediately and returned to the kitchen.

‘Coffee after all?’ the boy asked.

‘No.’ She went over to the freezer and pulled it open, removing the hunks of meat and putting them in the plastic crate that was still on the floor next to the freezer.

‘What are you doing?’

She didn’t answer, but picked up the crate and walked into the living room with it. The boy watched her every move like a dog. Ears pricked up, eyes alert, waiting for a command. She had to put the crate down to open the front door. It wasn’t cold, even though there were no clouds. A vast sky hung over the house and garden. For the first few steps she had light, shining out through the kitchen window. Beyond that band of light, she stopped briefly to let her eyes adjust. The stream murmured and the crushed slate crunched under her bare feet. One by one, she took the stiff, frozen pieces of lamb out of the crate and hurled them into the water with all the strength she had. Each lump was as heavy as a rock; like rocks they would lie on the bed of the stream. Holding the empty crate loosely in one hand, she stared at the dark water in which the enormous sky slowly became visible. Giving up smoking, she thought to herself, that’s something healthy people do. Walking back to the door, she saw the white rosebud grow lighter. Her head was warm. Maybe the hat was made of real wool. Sheep’s wool.

After closing the front door, she heard Bradwen rummaging around upstairs. ‘What’s going on up there?’ she called, wiping the grit off her feet.

Bradwen emerged from the study. ‘I’m arranging the new bedroom.’

It was hard for her to look up after having looked down for a while.

‘I’ve put your bed in front of the fireplace. I still have to light it.’

‘And you?’

‘On the divan as usual.’

‘Godnogaantoe,’ she swore softly, under her breath. Only now, after weeks and weeks living in this house, did she realise that the stove in the living room and the fireplace above it shared the same flue. ‘After Christmas, you’re gone,’ she said.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, coming downstairs.