Krystyna knew that she would either have to tell Jack about the baby or stop seeing him altogether. They could not go on as they were.
Travelling on the bus to see him once more, she thought back to when she was little: mushroom picking with her father in the woods and forests outside Kraków. It was one of the few things they had done together, seeking out special places that the family had passed on for years, gathering supplies of czubajki kanie, bringing them home and frying them up for breakfast.
She tried to think how different her life would have been if she had had no father; if her mother had had to do it all on her own.
When she arrived at the house she could see that Jack had not been out for days. There were piles of washing up in the sink, dirty coffee cups on his desk, overflowing waste-paper baskets.
‘I’ve been very busy,’ he explained.
‘Perhaps I should not have come.’
‘You’re always welcome, Krystyna, you know that.’
‘I’d like to take you out. We should go for a walk.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I thought we could find some mushrooms.’
‘I don’t know if there are any round here.’
‘I have seen the woods close to your house. There must be some there.’
Jack stopped his work.
‘The girls used to gather them but I was always scared they might be poisonous. Maggie was the one that knew. After she left, of course…’
Krystyna was not going to let him talk about his wife.
‘Did you never go out with the children yourself?’
‘Of course. But I was always busy. I suppose the word is preoccupied.’
‘You didn’t like spending time with them?’
‘Of course I did. But I never realised how quickly their childhood would disappear.’
‘And what about when you were young? Did your parents take you out?’
‘Yes, but I always preferred reading.’ He gestured to the desk. ‘I’m always with my books and papers.’
Krystyna did not believe him. Jack couldn’t have been reading Latin from the age of five.
‘Are there mushrooms in your work?’ she asked. ‘Does your poet talk about them?’
‘I don’t think so, although Lucretius likes the bark and roots of trees, the woodland floor, nature dispersing itself…’
Krystyna wondered how long Jack could speak before realising that he was sounding ridiculous.
‘Really?’
‘And I think the Emperor Claudius was killed by mushroom poisoning. It’s in Tacitus.’
‘What kind?’
‘A death cap, I think…’
‘Amanita phalloides. Don’t worry. It’s too early in the year for them. I think you will live.’
‘Are you teasing me?’ Jack asked. He had never seen her so – what was the word – larky?
‘Of course. Didn’t you notice?’
‘I’m not sure I notice anything these days.’
Krystyna pulled open the kitchen drawer and picked out two knives.
‘I think we should take the pastry brush, too. What do you think?’
‘I don’t make pastry.’ Jack tried to sound helpful. ‘I’m sorry. I know I should…’
‘We can use it to take off the soil. Don’t look so anxious.’
Krystyna picked up a basket.
‘There’s nothing to worry about. I think you might be more worried if you could see yourself sitting at your desk all day.’
‘But I like my books. I’m happy doing what I do.’
‘Are you really?’ Krystyna asked. ‘You don’t think you could be happier? You can’t see your life differently?’
‘Believe me. I like solitude.’
‘I don’t think people are supposed to live on their own.’
‘I used to think it was the only way I could get any work done. And after everyone had left I was used to it. Then, of course, when all this happened…’
‘What?’
‘I realised…’
‘What?’ Krystyna smiled.
‘That I’m even happier when I am with you.’
‘Then I am pleased.’
‘I’m sorry if that’s too much.’
‘Of course it’s not. But perhaps you overestimate me. I can be quite boring…’
‘I mean it.’
Krystyna was almost amused by his intensity.
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do. I promise…’
She stretched out her arm and pulled Jack out of his chair.
‘Come on. Let’s go out. We can’t stay inside on a day like today.’
They left the house, crossed the main road, and headed past a disused airfield into the hills. Jack was sure they were not going to find many mushrooms. It wasn’t the season but Krystyna kept encouraging him to crouch down at the base of birch trees to look for chanterelles lodged under leaves or clustered amongst moss. She taught him to recognise the safe from the dangerous, talking of blushers and grisettes, pieprznik jadalny and podgrzybek brunatny.
‘You’re making these names up, knowing that I can’t possibly understand you,’ said Jack.
‘I’m not, I promise.’
They spent an hour stooping down amidst the damp resinous smell of the woodland (’Is this poisonous?’ ‘No, it’s a brown birch.’ ‘How am I supposed to know?’)
Working low, at the base of the trees, Jack was a small boy again, searching amidst worms and earwigs, surprised by the minutiae of ants and spiders, delighting in the unseen activity of natural life: beetles in rivulets of bark, a woodlouse in the crevice of a broken branch.
The earth was alternately hard and spongy underfoot, broken up by roots and fallen branches. The rotting stumps of dying trees gave life to fungus and lichen, grub and fern. Looking at the woodland floor, Jack was forced to slow his life down. When he stood up, he even saw the sky differently. He had a dizzying, vertiginous sense of his own place in the world, caught between the overarching blue above him and a woodland floor whose roots travelled as deep into the earth as their growth climbed into the air.
‘How are you managing?’ Krystyna asked.
‘Better than I thought.’
‘You see. It is good for you. I am sure you will work better after you have done this.’
‘I’ll certainly be keen to get on with it,’ said Jack.
At the edge of the wood he could see a white fog approaching, the haar off the sea, shrouding the distant fields and heading towards them. He had known this mist since childhood and yet it always surprised him, filling the valleys and the woodlands with its speed and thickness.
‘We should get back,’ he said.
‘I am not ready,’ said Krystyna. ‘We haven’t enough.’
Jack pointed to the advancing haar.
‘Soon we’ll hardly be able to see our hands, never mind the mushrooms.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s the east coast of the North Sea, the fastest fog you’ll ever have known.’
‘Do you know the way home?’
‘You may have to hold my hand.’
‘Let me finish with this tree.’
Krystyna stooped down, brushed aside some leaves and made a firm incision in the base of a young cep.
The sky had already darkened; the light in the clearings had faded.
‘We must get to the main path before we can’t see.’
‘It’s so bad?’
‘Trust me.’
The air filled with storm. Jack was becoming impatient. He held out his hand.
Krystyna swung her basket over her shoulder and looked down her muddied arm.
‘I should not have worn a white blouse.’ She took his hand.
They reached the path just as the fog closed around the trees. Jack insisted they walk slowly, looking down at the uneven track and then ahead to check the way forward. There were steep ditches on either side.
‘You are very tense,’ said Krystyna. ‘I can feel it in your hand.’
‘I don’t want you to stumble or fall.’
‘I will be all right. I am quite strong,’ she said.
‘It always takes people by surprise,’ said Jack, ‘this haar.’
The ash and birch by the roadside disappeared into a mist which was thick and bright, more luminous than the day had been, with dusk behind it. It was like the ground of a painting. Darkness would fall as soon as the layer of light had been stripped away. A wood pigeon flew out of the hedgerow directly in front of them.
‘It’s like being in a horror film,’ Krystyna said. ‘I never know what is going to happen next.’
‘Stay with me,’ said Jack.
They kept to the margins between road and ditch, following the lines of hedge and fence through the enveloping whiteness. They could hear traffic but could not tell how close or far it was. Then they saw the lights of a Land-Rover, crossing their path, distant in the fog.
‘Perhaps we can get a ride,’ Krystyna said.
‘They won’t see us. Keep to the edge of the track…’
‘Are you frightened?’ Krystyna asked.
‘Of course not.’
‘I think you are.’
‘I’m used to the countryside.’
Krystyna thought back to the dark mornings when she had risen with her father, putting on as many clothes as possible and setting off in the Fiat 126, going into the woods with torches so that they could be sure of being the first to find the best of the mushrooms as dawn broke. It was so cold and her father was always determined, involved in a personal battle with nature itself; angry and cheated when they failed, victorious and loving when they were successful.
Now she worried about twisting her ankle and did not know how she would be able to help Jack if he fell himself. The wind in the mist was colder than anything she had anticipated. It brought with it a relentless dampness. Krystyna could feel her hair matted against her head, the cold and the wet in her face, and swore that she would never go for a walk in Scotland again. It was July and here she was, lost and freezing with a middle-aged man in the middle of nowhere.
‘Nearly there,’ said Jack.
The white light was passing beyond them, leaving a clouded darkness that was almost transparent. Krystyna sensed that the haar was easing; but in the distance, she could see a further band of whiteness unfurling towards them.
They waited until there was no sound of traffic and crossed the road. Two sheep skittered away in front of them.
‘They are so stupid,’ Jack said.
‘Almost as stupid as us,’ said Krystyna.
It had been so long since Jack had walked out into the woods that he had become confused on their return, taking the long way round through the whiteness. Only when he saw the farm buildings with the grain store beyond did he know that they were almost home.
‘It must be this way,’ Krystyna said as they neared the house. ‘We were lost. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I knew we’d find our way in the end,’ said Jack.
Krystyna sat down on the bench in the porch and took off her shoes. She was relieved to be back in the warmth.
‘I’ll fetch you a towel,’ Jack said. ‘I hope you weren’t too afraid.’
‘You were the one that was afraid.’
‘Not of the mist. Of me.’
‘Nonsense.’
Krystyna turned on the shower. She felt the water soak into her skin and washed her hair free of its cloying dampness.
Jack set out warm towels and waited for her while pretending that he was working.
Half an hour later Krystyna walked into the kitchen and turned the hob on low. She began to melt butter and crush some garlic ready for the mushrooms.
‘We can have mushrooms and toast,’ she said. ‘Andyou can have wine…’
‘I thought you had to be careful with alcohol and mushrooms.’
‘I won’t be having any…’
‘Nothing?’
‘Just the mushrooms. If your brother Douglas was here…’
‘There’s no need to bring him into it.’
‘I like him.’
‘Don’t tell me you prefer him to me?’
‘It’s not a competition, I think?’
Krystyna dropped the mushrooms into the saucepan and began to coat them with the butter and garlic.
Jack poured Krystyna a glass of water. Then he opened the red wine.
‘How much garlic are you using?’
‘A lot. You like garlic?’
‘I only worry about bad breath.’
Krystyna picked up her water and teased the glass below her lower lip.
‘We are not going to be kissing.’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think? You mean it’s possible?’
‘I didn’t say that, Krystyna.’
‘I am joking. There is no need to be scared. I’m just going to make the mushrooms.’
‘Good.’
Krystyna gave them a final stir.
‘Don’t sound relieved.’
Krystyna poured the mushrooms on to the toast.
‘I think you are supposed to be disappointed. It would be polite.’
Jack pulled out his chair and sat down.
‘I don’t know what I sound like.’
Jack added black pepper to his mushrooms and drank the red wine. Before Krystyna arrived he had always eaten his meals too quickly. Now he took his time, enjoying the silences between them.
When Krystyna had finished she looked up and smiled. Jack wondered if she had been waiting to say something but had then thought better.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing…’
‘No. Go on…’
‘You are good-looking. In your own way. If you tried harder.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I am sure that if you wanted you could find a very nice woman.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Don’t you ever want to? You are free, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
‘Then what would be the harm?’
‘I can’t,’Jack said. ‘I just can’t.’
‘Then that’s a shame.’
Jack couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be in love again; the desperation and the need: how much he would have to risk and how it would unsettle his life.
He thought of their return from the walk, and seeing Krystyna’s cold red hands taking off her shoes, the dark hair falling in front of the pale face, and then her looking up at him:
You were the one that was afraid.
Never.
Not of the mist. Of me.