The next time Patrick entered the woods above the whirlpool he was prepared and unencumbered. He had left his bird dictionary and his wildflower book on a small wooden table at the farm. He had dressed in browns and greens for the purpose of camouflage. He had snuck through the orchards like a deserter, his fieldglasses bumping quietly against his ribs.
He was sure she would be there.
The previous days had been overcast, wet, hardly weather to be reading Browning in the woods. Yet somehow, Patrick could not imagine this woman occupying rooms. He believed she would have remained throughout the downpour, hardly moving except to turn the pages of her book. Patrick had stayed indoors, watching the fog in the orchard through the window and also reading Browning, as if in preparation.
At night he dreamed of faceless women, shadows of leaves moving on their white skin.
He was sure she would be there and rejected any possibility that she might have been a transient, a traveller, one who could have paused in that spot merely to catch her breath… for à rest. Something in her posture suggested permanence. The woods were easy with her. And she would be there. He knew it.
Until that moment a week earlier, it had never occurred to him that a figure would enter any of his landscapes. They were fierce places, wild with growth, crazy with weather. Places where, a hundred miles north, huge fires ate their way through darkness while animals ran helplessly before them. Patrick feared the fires though he knew they rarely travelled this far south. He feared them and dreamed them, imagining the inside of his rooms turning orange.
The fires, he supposed, had never made an appearance on this woman’s mind.
Once, when he was a child, a neighbouring barn had burned in winter, melting the snow for yards around. He would always remember the heat of that fire on his face and the cold and the cast of the fire on the faces around him.
Terrifying.
This woman’s face was cool, absorbed.
Now as Patrick crossed the car tracks at the edge of the woods he was pleased to see that the rain had brought the foliage out to such an extent that it created a solid mesh of light green. This screen would perfect his camouflage.
Once he stepped onto the path he began to move in the manner of Indians, checking the ground for fallen twigs and avoiding them, performing a sort of silent, drunken dance. He was amazed to find himself in a set of circumstances where even the snap of a twig might alter everything utterly. Normally, landscape seemed too large for him to have any effect at all upon his surroundings. Now, detail drew him in, connecting him with the earth beneath him. The floor of the woods became an obstacle course, cluttered with natural traps that could result in error.
He recognized the spot he was searching for by the familiar sumac bush and a small, unhealthy cedar that looked as if it couldn’t decide whether to grow beyond shrubhood. Crouching down behind the latter, and adjusting himself to the most comfortable hidden position, he brought the glasses up to his eyes and focused them on the correct location.
Patrick was dumbfounded. He knew she would be there. How could this portion of the forest exist were she not in it? He wanted to start all over again; to walk out the door, over the orchards, through the woods, to approach this spot one more time. As if there had been a mistake in his route that he could now correct. He would do it all over again, right to the moment of lifting his glasses to his eyes. Then she would be there. He searched again. Still no woman. Just lime green woods and several birds whose identities, at this moment, didn’t interest him in the least.
Still no woman. Sick with disappointment and self-doubt, he wanted to turn and leave the place. He felt cheated – as if the woman had made him a promise that she had never intended to keep. He would turn and leave the place. He would never come back, never see her again. He would never again allow a figure to enter his landscapes. He was perspiring with the utter futility of it all.
Then a sudden movement in the bushes near the bank. Instinctively he searched for a bird. A thin, high sound moved through the woods. Singing. And then the woman’s face, followed by her blue dress, emerging from the other side of the bank.
Patrick froze. He was now standing, unprotected by greenery, and she was coming closer and closer. Very, very slowly he returned to the crouching position. He was afraid that she might hear his heart, which seemed to have moved from its normal location in order to pound, disturbingly, in his brain. She was so near now that there was no need for the glasses. His inclination was to bolt, run right out of the woods, back to the farm, onto a train. Vacate the province. Leave the country.
But he couldn’t move. At this moment his eyes were less than two feet away from her blue skirt, which for some crazy reason he now noticed was wrinkled, and covered with spots of mud. She’s been reading, he thought, and the mud comes from the bank.
The sound of pouring-water. Objects he had previously overlooked came into focus: a wash-tub vaguely in the middle distance, and a barrel, not three feet away from him, probably for collecting water. He remembered the tea.
She was now using a dipper, pouring water from the barrel into a galvanized pail. He heard the pot scrape against the edge of the wood and then the luxurious sound of water falling and connecting with liquid already in the pail.
The sound soothed him. He knew she would not see him now, now that she was absorbed in this activity. He relaxed, listening to the rhythm of the task. Dip, pour… dip, pour. Her skirt moving in front of him like a heavy curtain in the wind, as she leaned forward to scoop the water out of the barrel, and then sideways to pour it into the pail.
When she was finished, she bent to lift the pail and walked, straight-backed, away from him, the weight that she carried never once interfering with the level line of her shoulders. Then, as she moved into the distance, he watched that level tilt to the left as she poured the liquid from the pail into a large pot which hung over the makeshift fireplace. Several dishes were scattered around this location; cups, plates, saucers and cutlery gleaming in the sun.
Suddenly he understood. Breakfast. A domestic event had taken place very near the spot where he had first sighted her. This water was for washing up. She would begin, once the water was warm, to wash the dishes, like an ordinary woman. As if there had been walls around her, and furniture.
Patrick lifted the glasses and focused on her face. He wanted to see if he could tell by a change in her expression, the exact moment when the water began to boil.
