ALEC WATCHED THE CAR DISAPPEAR down the lane. It would take them an hour to reach Aberystwyth and an hour to drive back. In between there would be dressing David in the fresh clothes Fiona had taken him, handling his discharge paperwork, and maneuvering him to the car. After what he’d been through and the days he’d spent in bed, David would be weak. However long all these steps took, Alec knew that in a matter of a few hours their lives would be changed. Precisely how remained to be seen. But Alec felt hollow in the pit of his stomach and he knew it wasn’t hunger. It was fear. There had never been much Alec feared, whether due to confidence or foolishness he’d never quite known. Perhaps both. But ever since Gwynne had died so suddenly, there was something he was afraid of. He was afraid of loss. And he was afraid of it now.
He’d just entered the kitchen when the crunch of tires on gravel brought him out of his fear. He walked through the house and opened the front door just as a plump woman of indeterminate age with short salt-and-pepper hair was about to knock.
“Good afternoon. You’d be the home care assessor, I imagine?”
“I would be. Emma Jones,” she said, thrusting out her hand. “And you would be ... ?”
“Alec Hudson, friend of the family. They’ve gone to collect David—Mr. Edwards—from the hospital in Aberystwyth. Mrs. Edwards asked me to show you around.”
He stepped out of the front door, and Miss Jones seemed confused.
“Oh, I guess you don’t know. David doesn’t live here at the house.”
“Ah yes,” Miss Jones said, bending over to rummage about in an overstuffed briefcase. She pulled out a thick file folder. “I seem to remember: chemical sensitivity or something, right?”
“Right. David has his own quarters. I’ll show you the way.”
As they bumped up the farm lane, Miss Jones nodded to herself and mumbled, “Yes, now I see the difficulty.”
“Difficulty?”
“Oh, sorry. You see, we don’t usually get requests for intensive home care unless the patient is quite elderly. I was confused when I saw how young Mr. Edwards is—well, not confused, you understand, but surprised. But now it’s beginning to make sense. His wife couldn’t possibly keep an eye on him all the time way out here, now could she?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Alec agreed as they pulled up before the renovated hay barn.
It was a simple and very old stone-built, gable-roofed outbuilding, but Alec noticed that the oak windows and roofing slates were new. When he and Miss Jones stepped inside, both were surprised at how modern the interior was and how comfortable the space seemed. Miss Jones set her briefcase down on the kitchen table and surveyed the space approvingly. “Wouldn’t mind living here myself,” she said.
There was a stainless steel galley kitchen against the wall to the right and a pine table and two chairs just inside the door. To the left was the sitting area, with two leather easy chairs set before a new-looking stone hearth. One of the chairs was turned to face a television. At the back of the cottage, in what seemed to Alec to be a new shed addition, were David’s bedroom and bathroom. The floors were bare wood, but two washable throw rugs softened the austerity. The stripped-down, almost Scandinavian simplicity of the decorating was all, of course, on account of David’s chemical sensitivities. And the place was spotless.
“Before this accident,” Alec explained, “David could still do some of the farm work. Fiona brought him his meals. Now, well, I don’t think we know exactly what David will be capable of doing.”
“I take it there has been some brain damage,” she said, looking at her file folder.
“So I gather. My understanding is that David has trouble figuring out where things are, even though he knows where he wants to go. It’s also my understanding that he has become somewhat ... um ...”
“Childlike,” Miss Jones said, filling in the blank. “At least that’s what it says here. I suppose that means he’s become unreliable, or perhaps impulsive. Combine that with the directional problems and Mrs. Edwards might well have a handful, especially with him being up here alone.”
“Well, I think that’s what Mrs. Edwards is trying to avoid.” Alec felt strange acting as David’s advocate.
“That’s what home care is all about,” she responded, slapping the folder closed. She pushed the file back into her briefcase, walked quickly through David’s rooms, and paid particular attention to the drawers in the kitchen, opening each of them and inspecting the contents. Alec realized that the hospital record must, of course, have mentioned his suicide attempt; she was looking for things David might use to hurt himself.
At last she peered up at Alec and said, “Well, I think we’re done here!”
On the way back to the house, she told Alec that she would make a written report but saw no reason why someone couldn’t begin looking after David immediately.
“Of course, it will take a day to get someone assigned and it isn’t round-the-clock care; the council couldn’t afford that. As it is, Mrs. Edwards will be paying for what care we can provide, although the cost is based upon ability to pay. She could, of course, add private caretakers as well, and I’ll leave her a list of providers. This would be so much easier if it weren’t for these chemical sensitivities.”
“I’m sure David would agree.”
“Oh dear,” she said quickly, “that sounded awful, didn’t it? I’m so sorry; it’s not what I meant to say, of course ...”
Alec smiled at her. “I know that, Miss Jones. I expect it will be a while before anyone in the valley knows exactly what to say. It’s a difficult situation for the entire family.”
As he stepped out of her car, Miss Jones, apparently still embarrassed, said, “I promise I’ll do everything I can.”
Alec bent down. “I’m sure you will.”
Back in the kitchen, he found an apple in the refrigerator. He was munching it when an idea occurred to him. He walked across the kitchen to the small desk Fiona used as her office and found fresh paper, tape, and a felt-tipped pen. Then he hiked back up the lane to David’s cottage.
***
FIONA WAS GLAD she’d asked Owen to come. David had needed Owen’s support as he walked uncertainly through the corridors of the hospital and out to the car. He was cheerful and happy to be going home but still confused about how he’d ended up in hospital in the first place. It was clear to Fiona that he had absolutely no memory of the events that brought him close to death on the mountain. That, she decided, was a great mercy. He was cogent enough to ask Meaghan why she wasn’t at university, but had asked the question three times, as if he could not hold on to her explanation. In the same fashion, he had asked Owen several times how the lambing was going. It was as if in the chambered villa of his mind, some of the rooms had open windows and information just blew through.
***
WHEN ALEC WAS done at David’s cottage, he decided to go for a walk. The sky was bright out over the Irish Sea, and the air was warm. He crossed from meadow to meadow, through a confetti of yellow buttercups and pink-edged English daisies. After passing through several rusted iron farm gates, he reached the rougher slopes of Cadair Idris and walked east along the base of its precipitous flanks, eventually reaching Llyn y Gadair, its placid waters reflecting the pewter of the sky above. He sat on a rock by the shore and thought about his first climb past the lake, carrying the physical and emotional burden of Gwynne’s ashes on his back. And the second, scrambling up the treacherous slope to save David. He was not a superstitious man, but some part of him wondered whether Gwynne’s mischievous spirit hadn’t engineered these events to shake up his life. Well, if that was the case, she’d succeeded: his heart was in turmoil.
Eventually, he rose and began walking back toward the farm. The light was fading. It would be dark in another hour.
***
FIONA OPENED THE door of David’s cottage as Meaghan and Owen helped David out of the car. When the trio entered, Fiona was at the sink, her arms braced on its edge, her head tilted down. Meaghan saw her mother’s back shudder and knew she was sobbing. Then she looked around the cottage and understood. There was a fire burning in the grate and taped to the walls at strategic locations there were simple block-lettered signs with directional arrows: toilet, and kitchen, and bedroom and front door. Meaghan went to her mother and Owen took over.
“Well, here we are, home at last, eh, David? Bet it feels good to be back. Here’s your favorite chair, right here by the fire. Why don’t you rest here a moment?”
David dropped into the chair as if he were made of lead. He’d been exhausted by the journey and yet was elated to find himself in familiar surroundings. He saw the signs taped to the walls and read the messages but couldn’t quite figure out why they were there. Perhaps he would later. Or tomorrow. He was so tired.
Owen walked over to Fiona, put a hand on her shoulder, bent his head toward her ear, and whispered, “It’s going to be all right, Fi. We’ll all do our part. He won’t be a prisoner here.”
But of course that wasn’t it at all. What had broken through the protective wall Fiona had erected to make it possible for her to deal calmly and capably with hospital officials during the transfer of her husband was the sheer kindness inherent in these simple directional signs. That, and the fact that she recognized the handwriting, the same hand that had penned the poem she so cherished. Alec’s hand.
David seemed happily mesmerized by the flames dancing in the fire grate. Meaghan said, “How about if I stay here with Daddy until dinner, Mum? We’ll watch the telly. Why don’t you take a break?”
“Yes. Perhaps that would be a good idea. Owen, would you be so kind as to drive?”
Owen nodded to Meaghan, put his arm around her mother’s shoulders, and guided her out of the cottage. Fiona leaned into him gratefully.
“I don’t know what I would do without you, Owen,” Fiona said as he drove carefully back to the house down the long, grassy lane. “And I’m not sure I can express what you mean to me, what you mean to us, without embarrassing you.”
Owen turned to her, and for the first time in her memory, there was no shyness in his face. “You don’t need to, Mrs. Edwards; I understand. I’ll take care of you and Meaghan and this farm as long as you’ll let me.”
“That might be forever, Owen.”
“I’m not going anywhere else, ma’am.”
“Fiona.”
“Fiona.”
“Owen?”
“Yes, ma’am ... Fiona?”
“Do you love Meaghan?”
“I do.”
Fiona sighed and smiled.
“I thought so. Let’s hope she arrives at the same conclusion.”
“She’s got a ways to go yet, I think.”
“Perhaps she does. But don’t give up, Owen. Don’t ever give up on love.”
Owen pulled the car into the barn next to his Land Rover. “Shall I stay with David tonight, Fiona?”
“No, dear, you go home to your mam. I’ll take care of him tonight. It would be lovely, though, if you’d come by first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be there—and call me if anything comes up.”
“Thank you, Owen; I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Fiona crossed the farmyard toward the house.
Don’t ever give up on love, she’d told Owen. She wondered whether she could heed her own advice. Even more, she wondered whether that advice held any meaning for her at all. Which was the love she should not give up on? Was her comment advice about fidelity, or passion, or patience? Her fidelity lived in one part of her heart, her passion in another. Which of them required her patience? She realized she’d considered the matter of fidelity to be about David, but what about fidelity to her love for Alec? And passion? All her life she’d been taught—by her grandfather the rector, by her mother the seaman’s wife—that passion was transitory, that true love was about patience and constancy in adversity, about the comforts of dailiness. Yet for all their dailiness—nearly a quarter century’s worth—she had never thought of David as her companion, much less her lover. They cohabited. They were partners in an enterprise. Occasionally—very occasionally—they copulated, but that was long ago. The comforts of the relationship, such as they were, had mostly to do with routine, child rearing, and this achingly beautiful valley.
And here was her husband, now an invalid twice over—not just shackled by the effects of the poisoning, but also by a subtly scrambled brain. During their ride home, he sometimes seemed completely normal. And then she’d see a smile cross his face and freeze there, as if someone—David himself?—had pressed the “pause” button. Then, sometime later, it would release and he’d be animated again.
She entered the kitchen, expecting to find Alec there. That was the vision she had of her home now: Alec in the kitchen whipping up something delicious. Her kitchen seemed his natural habitat.
But he wasn’t there.
“Alec?!”
“Right here,” he said from behind her, kicking mud off his boots. She flung herself at him. He felt her trembling and held her close.
“Fi? Is everything okay?”
“I was just ... yes, everything’s fine. I just ... I just love you.”
The two of them entered the kitchen, awkwardly, two bodies trying to move as one. There was a big pot on the Aga, and there were two polyethylene bags on the kitchen table. Alec went to the cooker and lifted the lid on the pot.
“Soup. Vegetable and bean; very chunky.”
“Bread,” Fiona said, rummaging in one of the bags, “fresh from the bakery. And a wedge of cheese.
“Also,” she said, looking into the other bag, “a cake—from Brandith, unless I miss my guess.”
“Yes, Brandith said she’d put the word out.”
He turned to her. “These people love you, Fi, you and David. They’d do anything for you.” Again, the family, the community.
“At a minimum,” he continued, forcing a smile, “you won’t starve.”
Fiona hadn’t missed the “you and David,” but she didn’t know how to respond. Instead, she walked across the kitchen, lifted the lid on the soup pot, leaned into Alec, and said, “Umm.” It was ambiguous, she knew, but it was the best she could do.
Fiona sprinkled a few drops of water on the top of the rotund loaf of granary bread that had been left and slipped it into one of the Aga’s ovens to crisp. Then she went into the dining room, opened a door in the credenza by the breakfast table, and brought out one of the bottles of sherry she normally decanted into small carafes for her guest rooms. She poured generously into two wineglasses and sat at the kitchen table. Sensing he was being summoned, Alec joined her.
“In a little while, sweetheart,” she began, “I’m going to take most of that pot of soup and the other food up to David’s cottage.”
Alec nodded.
“Meaghan and I will have dinner there, and we’ll see how David does. Then I’m going to send Meaghan back here to bed, and I will stay tonight with David. There’s a fold-up bed in his closet. I don’t want to, Alec, but I must. Do you understand?”
Alec nodded again.
The two of them sat quietly, sipping sherry. Alec wanted to ask her about David. He wanted to hold her hand. But he did neither.
Fiona was staring dully at her glass, her shoulders slumped forward, her hair nearly obscuring her face.
“Miss Jones, the home care assessor, said someone would be here perhaps as soon as tomorrow,” Alec said. “It won’t be round-the-clock, but she also left a list of private care services.”
Fiona nodded. “Thank you for sorting that for me.” Now she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “And thank you for making the signs. It was such a sweet and thoughtful thing to do.”
“Just thinking ahead. Bad habit I have.”
“Ahead,” Fiona repeated. “I don’t know what’s ahead. I can barely comprehend right now.”
She looked at Alec with a face so bleak that it reminded him of old pictures of World War I battlefields—shattered, barren.
“Twenty-two years ago, I vowed ‘to have and to hold’ David ‘in sickness and in health.’ I may not love my husband—I don’t know—but he needs me now even more than before. I have a duty to care for him. I must. I promised. Before God.”
“I’ve known that from the moment I found him on the mountain, Fi.”
“But I don’t want to lose you, Alec. I don’t want to lose us. We can keep that, can’t we? We can protect it? Please, sweetheart, tell me we can! We’ll figure something out?”
There was desperation in her voice. Now Alec took her hand and held it.
“It’s what I want, too; I’m just not sure how.”
She was crying now, silently, her head bowed.
Alec kneeled beside her and brushed her tears away with his fingertips, caressing her cheeks as he did.
After a while, he said, “Come on, love; I’ll help you take the food to the car.” She nodded, rose, and ladled some of the soup into a small pot for Alec, setting aside some of the bread and cheese as well.
Night had come, and as the two of them walked out through the darkened farmyard to the car, the sky was awash in stars. He settled the big soup pot on the floor in front of the passenger seat, then walked around to the driver’s side and took Fiona in his arms, holding her tenderly, stroking her hair.
Fiona pulled him close, pressing her body against his, as if trying to merge their two envelopes of skin to become one being, complete. Finally, she pulled away and sat in the car.
“Will you be okay?” he asked.
Fiona nodded. “Yes. He’s fine. Docile. Rather sweet, actually.”
“Off you go then. Call if you need me.”
“I always need you, Alec.”
He bent to kiss her, then straightened and closed the car door.
Alec stood in the dark a long time after she left. Jack appeared from somewhere and sat beside him, panting. A sliver of moon had risen, brightening the sky further. The great bulk of Cadair Idris loomed, silent and black, to the south. He thought again of Gwynne, of love and of loss. Finally, he leaned down and patted the dog’s head.
“What do you say, Jackie; let’s get us something to eat.”