He had his back to me and was putting something into his car, which he had driven up beside mine. He was wearing fawn corduroys and a white shirt with the sleeves half rolled up. He turned when he heard me and, looking happy, opened his arms in greeting, smiling broadly.
‘I didn’t recognise you.’ And he laughed. He seemed so very pleased to see me. And it made me happy. It was something I wasn’t used to, had forgotten about. And I think he knew it.
‘All ready? Good. Well, get in.’
He opened the passenger door for me and pushed the sleeve of my jumper, which was hanging over my shoulders, safely out of the way before shutting the door. Nobody had taken care of me like that for such a long time. And to be taken out! To be driven, not having to find my way alone. I wanted to hug him. Of course, I did nothing of the sort.
It was a small car, rather grubby inside and the back seat was piled up with empty egg cartons and wooden fruit boxes.
‘It’s a bit of a wreck, isn’t it?’ he said as he squeezed his long legs under the steering wheel; he looked uncomfortable. ‘An old dear in the parish left it to the abbey. But it goes all right. I give it a going-over every so often. As a matter of fact, I gave it a clean yesterday, believe or not, especially for you!’
‘Thanks very much!’
And I laughed at his easy manner, his understanding of my strange humour. Not everybody did.
‘You’re good at cars, are you?’ I asked.
‘I wouldn’t say that. But it’s in my own interests.’
He kept turning his head to look at me. I looked straight ahead as if I hadn’t noticed.
‘I’m the only one who can drive here, so I get to use it. And believe me, I’ll find every excuse!’
He had backed the car into the lane, which it seemed I’d driven up years ago. The overhanging beeches cast dark patches across the cracked and pitted surface, and the shadows deepened and lightened like waves as the sun moved in and out of the clouds, for the day, though very warm, had produced some clouds, which moved heavy and ponderously, so there were moments of bright heat followed by a duller humidity.
I wound down the window and the wind caught the top of my head, blowing my hair about. He nodded in mutual enjoyment and somehow, I knew that there had been no need to ask if he minded the window open. Then he pressed in a cassette and we travelled in silence for quite some time and the music, crackling every now and then, was the excuse. He was so easy, so undemanding that I wanted to cry. But I never cried, remember, and so I fumbled in my shoulder bag, firstly finding a handkerchief and then my dark glasses. To hide what? Nothing. Guy turned momentarily towards me. I’m not sure if he knew or not, but he said nothing.
We were travelling along the tree-lined lane that led away from the abbey. In between the trees were wheat fields, meadowland, farmhouses and odd cottages surrounded by barns and tractors. Clumps of distant trees sheltered horses from the sun and just for a second I saw the glint of water.
‘Is there a river anywhere round here? I am quite besotted by rivers.’
‘Yes, we can find a river, but it means walking a bit. What about your foot?’
He turned quickly to look at me and I caught his eyes for a moment.
‘It’s much better. Anyway, I wouldn’t let it stop me from going to a river.’ As I imagined the river – it sounds mad I know – but I longed to be submerged in the water, to feel it, cool and cleansing. I wanted it to ripple across my eyes and forehead, easing the tension and anxiety.
‘I would really like to find a river.’
‘I think we should do whatever we want, whenever we can, don’t you?’
‘So that’s your philosophy, is it?’
‘Definitely!’.
‘Could be a bit dangerous, couldn’t it?’
‘Perhaps.’
I noticed that awful seriousness come over his face, the look I had seen before, and it unnerved me. It was the look of someone who has something dreadful to tell. What was it he knew that he was going to have to tell me? All the terror and panics of days in the past caused my skin to quiver. Then he laughed. And I wanted to laugh too, but instead I looked out of the window.
‘Well, I’ll take you to a river. Before or after lunch?’
‘Lunch?’
‘Oh, yes. We’re going out to lunch.’
‘That’s nice. I don’t mind. Perhaps before.’
We came to a T-junction and turned left into a main road.
‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘Now this is a real farm if ever there was one. Animals, vegetables, flowers – the lot.’ And almost at once we turned, again to the left, through wooden five-barred gates, which stood wedged in baked mud tracks and tied back with barbed wire.
The track, lying between potato fields, wound gently round to the right, where stood two dilapidated outbuildings, two tractors, piles of old car tyres and rusty corrugated iron, which lay haphazardly amongst long grass. Some polythene covering hung limply across the entrance to the buildings; it looked more like a scrapyard than a farm.
The farmhouse only came into view as we continued rounding the bend. It lay several yards beyond and behind the outbuildings. It was a small, red-bricked Victorian house with tall chimneys and a green wooden porch badly in need of fresh paint. Some geraniums in pots stood on the ground outside the porch, perhaps ready for someone to collect.
Guy drove round the side of the house and parked the car beside an old oak tree from which two thick ropes hung from what must have been a treehouse, although the planks were rotting and broken.
‘Coming?’
‘No, you go. I’ll stay here.’
He held up a hand. ‘Won’t be long.’
He opened the boot and took out the piles of egg boxes and disappeared somewhere behind the back of the house.
I was drawn to the oak tree because in my mind I could see the pigeon, caught by its ringed leg, hanging upside down from one of the branches of the old pear tree in our garden. I heard again Fleur’s heartfelt sobs and felt her hand banging on my thigh. ‘Do something, Mummy. Oh, do something quickly. Poor little thing.’
I had wanted to laugh at her ferociousness, but she banged me again. It was no use: I obviously had to do something and so I went next door to Josephine, who came with Jill trailing behind her and all three of us stood beneath the tree and studied the bird, which hung limply, while Fleur, who had retreated upstairs to get a better view, banged on the glass and cried from her bedroom window.
The bird looked absurd hanging there, caught by the ring on one foot, and we all, rather cruelly, wanted to laugh, but a further glance at Fleur’s tear-stained face pressed against the bedroom window soon wiped the instinctive smiles from our faces.
‘Call the fire brigade,’ Jill had demanded, and so we did. Much to my embarrassment, a fire engine arrived and two firemen jumped from the cab.
‘In the back.’ Jill pointed, and so up the garden path, through the side gate and into the garden they tramped.
Once under the tree they stared, bewildered, at the hanging pigeon. I had expected them to use ladders at least – it was the only reason I had called them – but no, instead the larger of the two men wedged himself into the lower branches and instructed his smaller, rather frail companion. It was like a Laurel and Hardy episode, so ridiculous. I thought the smaller man would never manage to steady himself on his companion’s shoulders and meanwhile the one underneath was red in the face, increasingly bending and puffing; I really thought he would have a heart attack, but eventually the little fireman (Laurel!) did succeed in half standing on the shoulders of the large man (Hardy!) wobbling underneath. But he couldn’t reach the pigeon.
‘Pass us a stick up,’ he panted to me, while I stood staring at the whole procedure with utter incredulity. I picked up a fallen twig from the lawn and handed it up, and with this the by now hot and flustered man hit out frantically in all directions at the terrified pigeon, all the time obeying the grunting, painful commands from the crumpling shoulders below.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly the pigeon was loose. It dropped like a stone, recovered for an instant, flapped a couple of times and then dived over the hedge and dropped quite dead onto Josephine’s lawn.
Oh my God. I had to lie to Fleur, who couldn’t have seen the pigeon’s final descent. ‘The pigeon’s fine, Flower,’ I lied to the tear-stained and anxious face.’ He’s flown back to his nest now, I should think. Isn’t that a good thing? Good thing you made me do something.’
I did lie over things like that. If the cat caught a mouse, or worse still a bird, Fleur screamed to do something and every time I would lie that everything was OK, that I had rescued whatever it was that needed rescuing, otherwise the tears and sobbing would have been too awful.
I was so happy to have remembered that. It didn’t make me cry, which was just as well, as round from the back came a small, wiry woman with short-cropped grey hair, wearing baggy blue trousers and a navy-blue-and-white T-shirt. She was carrying a wooden box. She crossed behind the tree and went into a shed, reappearing a moment later with what looked like a box filled with cabbages. ‘It must be some sort of garden shop,’ I thought. She returned without a glance in my direction and again I heard voices and laughter. The woman and Guy? I couldn’t be sure, but honestly, I think for moment I was jealous because they had a relationship, knew each other in a way that excluded me. I was the outsider. I didn’t know them and they didn’t know me. But they knew each other and would do long after I had disappeared from the scene, and I wished I wasn’t there at all. The truth is difficult sometimes.
I sat in the car feeling isolated, but I did give myself a talking-to – I think out loud (first sign of madness): ‘Make an effort. Get out and be sociable.’
But I left the car door open, wishing, as it were, to hedge my bets; I could always return quickly and no one would be any the wiser. The voices were further off. Would it seem like an intrusion? I didn’t know what to do, couldn’t make up my mind whether to go on or whether to return to the car.
It was always the same; I could never make up my mind about anything. Over the simplest choices, I would be in confusion: what to wear; what to eat; what to do. The only release was to go to bed and sleep and then I didn’t have to think about anything for an hour or two. Except I hadn’t slept properly for so long I had forgotten what a good, deep, restful sleep was. It was a miracle that I had managed to work and even more that I had managed to get myself to the abbey, but then, I had had no real choice. It had been that or hospital, for ‘a thorough rest’, the doctor had said.
Guy appeared around the corner.
‘Oh, there you are. I was coming to fetch you. Do come and see the chicks.’
I went with him round the back of the farm and into the open garden, which was mainly a rough, bumpy lawn surrounded with wide herbaceous borders. The bottom of the garden led naturally into the farm, only separated from it by a worn footpath, which ran along the bottom. We followed this and I could hear the frantic cheeping before I saw the masses of yellow chicks. We stopped by the wired pen and watched the heaving, jostling yellow fluff peep and push and peck. I glanced up at Guy, who was grinning at me. ‘Sweet?’ he questioned.
‘Yes!’
‘I thought you’d like them.’
There was something about the chicks that reminded me of the rabbit and Brother Joseph. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about. About Brother Joseph.’
‘When we’ve finished what we’re doing. You stay here if you want while I just pile the stuff into the car.’
I watched him go round the back of the house, outside of which stood laden vegetable boxes, and I assumed he was going for those, but he emerged carrying the filled egg cartons. I indicated did he need help, but he shook his head.
‘Stay there,’ he shouted as he rounded the corner to the car. ‘Molly wants a word with you.’
I looked round, expecting to see someone, but there was no one about. I heard the car boot bang shut and hoped that Guy would return before I had to face ‘Molly’ on my own. He returned beaming and rubbing some earth off his hands.
‘Everything done,’ he said. ‘Molly not appeared yet? Well, come on, she’s over there.’ And he pointed to a greenhouse a couple of hundred yards to the right.
‘Who’s Molly?’
‘There she is!’ And the woman I had seen earlier hurried towards us carrying a large pink geranium.
‘I had to plant it up,’ she said somewhat breathlessly. ‘It’s called “Florentine”.’ She held it out to me. ‘Might take a day or two to settle. You can keep it in the pot or put it in the ground. Whatever you want. But give it a drop more water when you get back.’
‘For me or…?’ I looked from the geranium in the woman’s hands to Guy, but he had turned away and was stroking one of the farm cats as it lay in the grass that bordered the path.
‘You can choose another colour if you prefer, but I thought you would like this best.’ She spoke with familiarity, as if she’d known and liked me for years, as if I belonged quite naturally, like everything else in her life. There was a selflessness about her, a practical, useful energy. I couldn’t imagine her worrying about tomorrow. She would be too busy just living life as it came. No amount of philosophy or introspection would alter, after all, the movement of the sun, of night or day, the seasons in their time. One was part of it and that was all. Take no thought for tomorrow, or yesterday. Sufficient unto today. Perhaps that’s what we should always do. Live today as if there had been no yesterday and will be no tomorrow. Memory’s the problem.
‘It’s really lovely. Thank you. It will look beautiful in one of the pots outside my house.’
‘Well, there you are then.’ Still holding it, she led the way back to the car, turning all the time to talk.
She handed the pot to me once I’d settled back into the car – there was no room anywhere else – and then stood for a moment speaking to Guy before he, too, got in. She waved goodbye before hurrying behind the house. He hooted goodbye as we drove away.
‘Right! Now let’s find that river, shall we?’