A hole in the air-inlet pipe had caused most of the damage. She’d already had to scrap the cylinder, the camshaft bearings and the pistons. Finding the replacement parts had been a feat of correspondence, but she’d done it, sending letters, making calls, driving the wagon halfway round the country to acquire what she needed, arriving in the yards of working men who advertised their spares in Farmers Weekly. They’d all asked her the same question when negotiations started: ‘Did your husband not come with you?’ But she’d been steadfast to her valuations. Sellers always buckled when she showed her readiness to leave without a deal. The kindliest of all the men she’d bartered with, a snub-nosed fellow who had teeth like sweetcorn, claimed that it was dirt that wrecked most tractor engines: if there was the slightest hole in the air-inlet system, so he’d told her, muck got drawn into the cylinder. Arriving home, she’d re-examined the old Fordson and discovered a small fissure in the pipe. Well, that explained it. She’d been hopeful for a while that she could get the damned thing operational before the end of summer. But although she’d patched the hole, replaced the parts and got the motor running with the crank – rumbling sweetly, with a force that rattled through her bones when she climbed up and took the wheel – the gears would not engage, no matter what she tried.
A transmission problem: that had been her educated guess. To check, she’d siphoned off the gear oil, mixing up a sample with some paraffin, dunking in a horseshoe magnet. When she’d pulled it out, there’d been a layer of metal shavings at the poles, thick enough to spread on toast, and she’d concluded that the bearing was abraded; probably, the worm gear had been sheared down, too.
Every day since then, she’d thanked the Lord for Charlie Savigear’s arrival, because having one more pair of hands and someone to confer with made the problems easier to solve. Dropping by the garage late on his first afternoon, he’d said, ‘Did you get the housing off it yet, miss? I can do it, if you like.’ She’d given him a set of overalls – they were Arthur’s size, so rather swamped him – and, working in the shade of the garage together, hunched beside the rusty chassis, they’d found an easy synchronicity. He’d proved that he could handle a rachet set as well as he could use a pencil. And he seemed to have a knack for following the terse articulations of the owner’s manual, whose vagueness often mystified her. Once the gearbox was dismantled, they’d surveyed the ruins inside: every bit as bad as they’d anticipated. ‘What now?’ he’d said. ‘Where d’you even find stuff for these old machines?’ She’d shown him the back section of the latest Farmers Weekly and they’d composed their own ‘Parts Wanted’ ad to run in the next issue, walking to the Alms Heath post office together to dispatch it.
For a while after this, she’d seen much less of Charlie. They’d had their routine hours in the draughting room, of course, with Arthur overseeing matters from his station by the window, going to and from the Savigears’ tables to scrutinize their work or offer his advice. Sometimes, she would demonstrate a technical concern to Charlie or his sister – how to vary line weights to suggest a difference of material, say – and they’d be effusively apologetic, as though it wasn’t every trainee architect’s experience to fail a little less with each attempt.
Charlie had submitted a design for renovations to his bedroom after only a few days and she couldn’t help but think he’d rushed it. The drawing showed a raised bed with a ladder and a small desk in the hollow underneath, plus a built-in wardrobe unit: it was a clever use of space, rather like a sailing boat’s interior. Functional, discreet, overtly boyish, and drawn with a nice looseness of expression. Her husband had been most impressed when they’d reviewed it: ‘See the rungs there, on the ladder, how he’s thought to make them thicker at the base and thinner at the top – I like that sense of detail. But it should be ash, not oak … I’ve got to say, I’m glad to see so much restraint, aren’t you? It bodes well for the future.’ Compared to the extravaganza Joyce had put together, it was practically monastic: Arthur had instructed her to scale down her ideas. ‘That big four-poster bed is an indulgence,’ he’d said. ‘And how exactly do you plan to make that stained-glass window? I don’t know a glazier who could do it to those specs – at least, not for the amount of peanuts we could pay him.’ Since then, Charlie’s doorway had been covered with a tarp – the carpentry was under way inside and he’d been making furtive progress every day with Arthur’s help, while Joyce was left amending her initial plans. ‘A good lesson to learn early,’ Florence had maintained to both of them. ‘Compose within your means.’ But, quite honestly, she felt that Joyce’s rather clumsy drawing showed the most imaginative range. And though she’d grown accustomed to the din of hammering and sawing inside Charlie’s room each afternoon, she missed his company in the garage.
Eventually, there came a phone call from a dairy farmer near Worcester, claiming that he had the tractor parts she needed. The only problem was the price: a whole pound steeper than her husband was prepared to entertain. She enlisted Mr Hollis to her cause, suggesting, ‘Please could you remind him how expensive it’ll be to keep a horse in food and shelter through the year instead. We’ve no room for a working animal. It’s looking like we’ll have to drag that plough on someone’s shoulders – are you going to volunteer for that?’ Her husband listened better to the old man’s supplications, it transpired.
This morning, she agreed a deal with the dairy farmer on the phone. After breakfast, she got straight into the wagon and drove there without stopping – three hours on the outbound leg, the loose boards of the flatbed clanking all the way. She took a flask of sweet tea with her and some home-made biscuits in a napkin, nothing else. The farmer let her give the parts a long inspection and then made her count the money on the still-warm bonnet of the wagon. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said, ‘I’ve had the wool pulled over me before. Don’t take it personal.’ On the way back, near Burford, she parked up on the verge of a through road to relieve herself behind a tree. Her stomach started whining for a feed. She wanted fish and chips with reams of bread and butter, but no shop was open on a Sunday.
Arriving home, she stepped out of the wagon at the front gate, leaving the engine running, as she always did. The latch was slightly rusted and there was a certain knack to lifting it. She was pushing back the gate, facing all the hedges and the bracken on the neighbour’s side, when she saw movement in the copse. It wasn’t rare to spot a fox stalking the woods this time of day, and roe deer had been known to spring on to the track, so she didn’t find it too perturbing. But then she noticed how the bracken quivered, splayed, and she was sure, when she glanced into the copse again, that a man was squatting there amid the tangle of the ferns and bushes. A rather large man, was her sense of it. The bald cap of his head was poking out above the greenery.
‘Who’s there?’ she said. ‘Come out, please, or I’m phoning the police.’
She paced backwards to the wagon. A spike of trepidation scratched along her spine. As she got behind the wheel, the man skulked from the bushes with both hands in the air. He was thick around the middle, hunched and bearded. And the buckle of his belt hung down.
‘Don’t bother the police,’ he called. There was no panic to him, which she thought surprising. Not a blink or twitch. ‘I was only – look, you’ve caught me short, that’s all.’ He steered his eyes down to his trousers. ‘Could I make myself presentable again?’ Lowering his hands, he tightened up his belt and clasped it shut. ‘I was about to wet myself. I’m dreadful sorry. There was nowhere else with any sort of coverage – I thought it’d be private. More fool me.’ The face he gave her then was childlike, fraught with shame. ‘If it’s all the same with you, I’ll just be on my way, dear. That all right?’
Well, she could hardly punish him for doing exactly what she’d done herself ten minutes out of Burford. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘be off with you. Don’t ever let me see you on my land again, you hear? Or the police will know about it.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Much obliged.’
She slammed her door closed, trying to make a point, to shoo him off.
He grabbed his belt and started walking, stepping round the wagon’s flank. She eyed the mirror till he passed behind her and then drove on a few yards. Getting out to shut the gate, she was disappointed with herself for being so uncharitable, so protective of her property – it undermined the spirit they were trying to foster round the place. She hadn’t meant to sound so scathing, but that scratch along her spine had caused it: she’d felt vulnerable before the stranger in a way she hadn’t with the farmers she bought parts from. Why? The man had seemed no more suspicious than the rest of them, just larger. She decided it was best to leave these details out when she reported the encounter to her husband later on; he’d only rant and rave about her lack of caution.
Coming down the drive, she spotted Charlie at his bedroom window, and he waved back when she tapped the horn. By the time she’d slow-reversed the wagon into the garage and climbed out, he was standing in his overalls by the workbench, ready to begin.
‘I was thinking you were lost somewhere,’ he said. ‘Did everything turn out all right?’
‘I think so. Had to pay a few more bob than I was hoping. Plus a tank of diesel.’ She retrieved the box from the front seat. ‘Mr Mayhood won’t be pleased.’
‘Ah, he’ll make it back in time saved, won’t he?’ Charlie lifted up the clump of straw the farmer had put in the box for cushioning. Underneath: a new thrust bearing and a worm gear, used. ‘These are in good nick.’
‘We’ll see. The proof is in the pudding.’
He looked up with a face of mock alarm. ‘Don’t remind me – Joy’s in charge of supper.’
‘What time do you make it now?’
‘It’s nearly five.’
‘We have at least an hour, then. Good.’ Her overalls were hanging on a peg in the dim recess by the doorway. She buttoned herself into them and pinned her fringe back with the kirby grips she kept inside the pockets. ‘What’s your sister cooking?’
‘I dunno. But don’t expect a feast.’
‘If it’s warm, I’ll eat it. All I’ve had today is toast and biscuits – gave the last fried egg to Mr Hollis when he came this morning.’
‘That old man can look after himself, if you ask me.’
‘I owed him one this time.’
‘Is that why he’s been coming round to use our bath and all?’
‘That’s not my doing. But yes.’ The procedure to attach the parts was fiddly and she wanted to review the manufacturer’s diagrams before they started. ‘Where’s the manual got to? It was here on the seat.’
‘Sorry, miss, I moved it,’ Charlie said. He went over to the bench where all her tools were spread out in a neat arrangement and then ambled back, the grease-stained Fordson booklet scrolled up in his fist.
‘Does it say what grade of oil the gearbox needs? We’ll have to top it up again.’
‘Yeah, hold on a sec.’ He turned the pages. ‘Ninety viscosity.’
‘All right. We’ve got a can of that, I think.’
‘What does “SAE” mean?’
In the past few weeks, she’d learned that Charlie was the sort of boy who never asked a question twice. As soon as he received the information he required, it filled a little vacancy inside his brain for ever. ‘Society of Auto something,’ she said. ‘Engineering, maybe. Not important.’ She rubbed her hands, examining the disconnected parts that sat upon a sheet beside the two back wheels. Every last component had been cleaned and polished to the best of her ability. Between them, they’d plotted out the disassembly in her notebook, accounting for each tiny step and measure. All they had to do was trace back through the sequence and swap in the new parts; but no machine was ever so amenable to her intentions. ‘I suppose it shouldn’t take us long, in theory.’
‘A few parts and a bit of grease – ta-da – it’s up and running.’
‘Simple as that.’ She smiled.
‘Simple as that,’ he said.
It was curious how young she felt sometimes in Charlie’s presence. There were moments when she caught herself adopting the complaining attitude she used to have when she was seventeen: ‘This old pile of rubbish better be worth it … Makes no difference, anyway: something else is bound to break before too long …’ At other times, she felt so elevated by her sense of duty that she began intoning like a reverend at the pulpit, stressing the importance of old tractors like the Fordson (‘the majestic Model N’, she called it) and even veering into stories about girls she knew who’d served in the Land Army. She couldn’t understand why she was stumbling so much in pursuit of his respect. Had she always been this eager to be liked?
That hour seemed to stretch and slide away. They stood together at the workbench reassembling the entire transmission, talking only in relation to the job at hand. Charlie passed her tools when she requested them, applied his brute strength to the worm gear with a mallet when she asked him to, but mostly he stayed next to her, recounting the procedure from her notebook, squinting when he couldn’t read her cursive. ‘What does that say – level or bevel?’ At a certain point, he put the book down on the bench, and she could feel the sudden press of his attention. ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘there’s something I’ve been wanting to bring up with you.’
She kept her eyes on the components. ‘Oh?’
‘It’s just that … look, d’you remember when you picked us up that morning from the train? My sister had a dig at me for – well, she said that I could get an engine running even if I wasn’t meant to.’
‘I remember.’
He was playing with the lever on the vice, making it clink up and down. ‘I didn’t want you wondering about her meaning on that front. It only happened once.’
‘All right.’ She wiped her brow upon her sleeve. ‘Which part goes next? This little one?’
‘Miss, do you understand what I’ve been trying to –’
‘I just said it was all right.’ She always seemed to sweat more at the peak of concentration than she ever did when scrubbing floors, or chasing hens around the yard, or scraping paint off walls. It was peculiar. The hair beneath her kirby grips was wet and frazzled, and she felt the need to reposition them, but her hands were black with oil. Charlie went on clattering the vice, until she reached to grab the lever and he stepped away. ‘You needn’t fret,’ she said. ‘We know what you did wrong and, frankly, it’s of no concern to us.’ She couldn’t tell from his long exhalation whether he was troubled or relieved.
‘How? I mean, who told you?’
‘Well, for a start, we asked for copies of your borstal records and they sent us what they could. Then Mr Mayhood spoke with all the officers who knew you, and both your old housemasters – even had the top brass calling him. The governors. So, if you’re looking to feel guilty about something, you should see our phone bills.’ This almost brought a flicker of a smile to Charlie’s face. She went on: ‘Honestly, we’ve never worried about what happened in the past. The only thing we care about is what’s ahead of you.’
For a moment, he was quiet. His Adam’s apple climbed and dived inside his throat. Then he said, ‘The coppers reckoned we were on a joyride when they pulled us over. That’s not true. I never even knew that car was stolen. It was all a big mistake, and Joy, she wasn’t really –’ He trailed off, in search of the vocabulary. ‘All I really mean to say is that we’ve put those days behind us, miss. I swear to God we have. We’ve never been more grateful in our lives for where we are.’
‘I know that, too,’ she said. ‘And so does Mr Mayhood. There’s no need to second-guess the rest of it.’
She didn’t want to prise open the subject of his past and stir it. No one had a right to wallow in another person’s pain. What she knew of Charlie Savigear’s life had been condensed into summations on thin sheets of paper, refracted through the phone calls Arthur had held with borstal personnel and then recapped for her. But certain details were immutable. And how could they not shape her attitude to Charlie and his sister? Surely she could recognize their hardships without lapsing into pity.
The fact was they were children when they lost their parents, and that was tragedy enough. She thought about this often, knowing how she’d mourned her mother’s passing, how that grief had spread throughout the fabric of the everyday. It must’ve left them feeling anchorless. The records said a single German plane had emptied out its payload over their home town of Gillingham one night – this was summer 1940 – and a bomb had struck the back end of the Savigears’ house. Their father (a sign painter whose deaf ear kept him from enlisting) and their mother (whose occupation was not cited, so a housewife) were sheltering beneath the stairs, and that was that. Either it was good luck or misfortune, depending on which angle she regarded it from, that Joyce and Charlie had been sent away to live with distant relatives six months before – maybe they were spared the bombs, she thought, but not the damage. It explained the troubles they got into later, even if it didn’t excuse them. Skirmishes with other kids, at first. Some petty thefts (apples from the greengrocer’s, cigarettes from a machine, a teacher’s bike). Receiving stolen goods (a petrol mower lifted from a garden shed). And then that joyride through the streets of Maidstone in a stolen car, which landed them in borstal. When she compared their history to hers, she felt something like vertigo.
Now Charlie pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned hard against the bench. ‘I can’t tell if Mr Mayhood likes us yet.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea? He thinks the world of you. He told me.’
‘Well,’ said Charlie, ‘we get on all right. But I’m not sure about it.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t know how to put it. Our chances, I suppose.’
She noticed he’d been speaking in the plural. ‘Is it your relationship with him that you’re concerned about or Joyce’s?’
He went quiet again. Then he admitted, ‘It’s just hard to know how well she’s doing. In Mr Mayhood’s eyes.’
‘Well, I’m afraid my husband’s very hard to read sometimes,’ she said, by way of reassurance, though it didn’t quite come out as she intended. ‘But if he isn’t happy with the job you’re doing, trust me, he won’t spare your feelings. Anyway –’ she smeared more grease into the housing – ‘at this point, you’re just here to watch and learn. We want you both to listen and get used to how we work. And, while you’re doing that, you’ll need to muck in on the farm as much as possible. Did you read the lectures Mr Mayhood gave you – in the pamphlet?’
‘Yeah. A few times, actually.’
‘There you are, then. Our ideas are the same as Wright’s. We’re trying to give you both a real grounding. Not just in our practice. Life in general.’
Charlie angled his head until she was compelled to look at him. ‘Do you believe in all that stuff?’ he asked. ‘Organic architecture?’
‘You make it sound like a religion. It’s just a way of thinking.’
‘That’s a shifty answer, miss, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Is it?’ She was forced into a shrug. ‘All right. Ask me that again in a few years.’
Charlie nodded, grinned. He diverted his attention to the notebook. ‘Three-inch seal’s the one you’re looking for,’ he said. ‘I’m guessing that small squiggle is a three.’
She checked. It was. ‘Smart alec.’
In an hour, they had the new parts fitted and the housing back together. There were four bolts left to tighten when she heard Joyce calling, ‘Supper’s on!’ and clattering a saucepan with what sounded like a ladle. ‘Supper’s on!’
Charlie wiped his hands on his lapels. ‘I think supper might be on, don’t you?’
She laughed. ‘I’ll just tighten these last few.’
They hung up their overalls and went inside to wash: Charlie to his bathroom halfway down the hall and Florence to her en suite in the bedroom. She fetched the Epsom salts from her side of the cabinet and filled the basin to a froth, scrubbing the dark oil from her fingernails until the water turned a sooty shade. In the mirror was a tired version of herself she hardly recognized, with soft grey crescents underneath her eyes that looked like bruises and a gungy sheen about her nose and forehead. There never seemed to be enough time to attend to her appearance. It was a quick spritz here, a dash of make-up there – repairs she fitted in between her main priorities. It had been years since she’d put on a dress and gone out dancing, though she’d never much enjoyed it when she had.
The clamour had begun downstairs already – Joyce’s thumping strides along the hallway as she carried in the serving dishes, the water jug’s dull chink against the glasses, murmured voices. They’d started to acquire the rhythms of a family. Comfort was beginning to breed habit. It was all that she could ask for. She scrubbed her arms up to the elbows till the skin was ruddy, rinsed them under the cold tap. She cleaned her face and brushed her hair. She changed into a skirt and blouse, even though she knew another hour in the garage would be needed after supper.
Coming out on to the landing, she noticed that the blue tarpaulin outside Charlie’s room was gone. He’d painted his door white – a high-gloss finish – and now the purpling daylight took to it so readily it almost seemed like a French window. She’d been smelling paint fumes for the past few days and suddenly she had the explanation. The far end of the corridor was brighter, but its symmetry was lost. She had a foot on the top stair when she heard a handle turning. Charlie backed out of his door and shut it. Clean blue T-shirt. Hair slicked back. His face freshened with soap.
She cleared her throat and it startled him slightly. ‘I thought you were already down there.’
He spun round, amused. ‘No, miss. I just needed a quick smoke.’
‘The tarp is gone, I see.’
‘It is.’
‘So when’s the grand unveiling?’
He waved her over. ‘Right now, if you like.’
Behind him, in the window, afternoon was waning into evening. What was it about him that was different from the boy in baggy overalls who’d left her in the garage? Perhaps a new-found peace within himself, an inner confidence restored. She didn’t know. But as he stood there by his doorway, thick-browed, restful, waiting for an answer to his invitation, he looked so much like Arthur in his youth that she could feel the strangest dislocation from herself. He had the same involuntary pout, the same relentless motion to his eyes, as though observant of particulars that only he could see. And his carriage: borstal-trained into uprightness, yet so languid and serene.
From down below, the clank of cutlery, the smell of stewing apples. ‘Your sister’s gone to so much trouble,’ she said, remembering where she was again. ‘We don’t want it to get cold.’
*
It was only Joyce’s second try at making supper since she’d been with them; the first had been a small catastrophe of burnt Welsh rarebit and split custard. Tonight, there’d been tinned-salmon rissoles with mashed potatoes, swede and carrots, followed by stewed apples drowning in Carnation. It was clear that certain aspects of the recipes had been ignored, and the whole week’s butter ration had been squandered in the mash alone; but Florence knew that to complain about a person’s efforts in the kitchen was the most ungrateful sort of whinging. Her husband was uninterested in the artistry of food. It was fuel to him and nothing more. He’d shovelled in great forkfuls, making noises of encouragement, saying how well Joyce had done ‘to give us such a spread’, and Charlie had seemed pleased to find him so expansive in his praise. ‘Yeah, well done,’ he’d chimed in, ‘not half bad.’
Joyce had gazed at her across the table. ‘Was it up to snuff then, miss, or what?’ It was clear that her opinion was the only one she cared to hear. There was such a hopeful tone about her voice, a brittleness.
Arthur had said, ‘Let’s not leave the poor girl in suspense, Flo. Tell her.’
She’d tried to find a way to moderate her answer. ‘The rissoles were a touch too sloppy and a little bland,’ was how she’d phrased it. ‘But, besides all that, you did extremely well. The pudding was especially nice, I thought.’
‘Oh well, there you are, then.’ Joyce had rocked back in her chair. ‘I can still make it as a housewife, after all. I knew it.’
Charlie had said, ‘Now you’ve got to find a bloke who’ll marry you. Good luck.’
She’d been quite dismayed to hear him talk that way to his own sister. But, then again, she’d never had a brother. Maybe this was how it was supposed to be.
‘Stranger things have happened, mouse.’
‘Yeah? Like what?’
‘Well, take a look around you,’ Joyce had said. ‘Who’d have thought we’d end up here?’
‘True.’ Charlie had gulped down the water in his glass. ‘But there are miracles and there are miracles.’
‘Will you shut up now, please?’ his sister had replied, with so much fury bottled up inside her that it gave her a red tint from nose to neck. ‘Perhaps I’ll have a wander into town and see who takes my fancy. Bound to be someone whose eye I’d catch.’
At this, Arthur had stood up. ‘I should think we’ve all got better things to do this evening, no?’ He’d started gathering their plates. ‘Thank you very much for supper.’
When he’d left the room, Florence had regarded both the Savigears and sighed. She’d made the widest, most beseeching eyes that she could make. ‘You two need to settle down, and quickly.’
‘Sorry, Florence.’
‘Sorry, miss.’
While washing up the dishes – it was Arthur’s turn to scrub, her turn to dry – she told him that the tractor would be up and running by tomorrow. He didn’t seem too cheered at first, picking at the crusted bottom of a saucepan with his thumbnail, saying nothing. Then: ‘Running, as in moving?’
‘Yes, with a bit of luck.’
‘Well, that’s terrific.’ He rinsed the pan under the tap until the suds ran clear. ‘I’ll let Hollis know, first thing. How certain are you?’
‘I’ve only got to reconnect the gearbox, fill the oil again. If I manage that tonight, you might be ploughing by Tuesday. How soon can they deliver the manure?’
‘I’ll find out.’ Arthur leaned to kiss her cheek. ‘You cracked it, Flo. Well done, my love.’
‘Oh, don’t get too excited till you’re doing circuits in the fields.’
‘Straight lines up and down – that’s all we need.’
That night, she worked alone in the garage, because the Savigears were needed in the draughting room: Charlie had been given elevations from old projects to redraw and his sister had to finish off her bedroom sketches. Crouching underneath the tractor with the floodlight shining harshly into all its cavities, she refitted the gear housing, bolted it in place. She fetched the oil from the cupboard, checked the grade and funnelled in a fraction more than strictly recommended in the manual. It seemed to take no time at all, but when she looked up at the clock, an hour had passed already and she was much too tired – and much too wary of another failure – to crank the engine. In the morning, she would have more strength and more resolve. She pulled a sheet over the Fordson, shut the lights off and went inside to take a long soak in the tub.
When she emerged from the bathroom in her nightie, hair all clean and coiled in a towel, she felt revived. Arthur came in as she sat applying her cream before the mirror at her dressing table. He unbuttoned his shirt and drew its tails from his trousers. ‘You smell fresh,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to catch you for a change, before you’ve made it into bed.’ He smelled of brandy and stale perspiration, but she didn’t tell him so. She watched his quiet reflection as he loosened all the straps of his prosthetic arm. It was in his hand as he came over to her, stooping down to kiss her neck. ‘Did you manage it?’ he asked. ‘Dear God, you smell nice.’
She hummed. ‘It’s done.’
‘So that’s the glint I’m seeing in your eyes, is it? You’re demob happy.’
‘You could say that, yes. The next time it breaks down, you’re fixing it.’
‘Come on, have some faith in your own handiwork, my love. That tractor will outlast us all.’ He stroked her shoulder.
On his way into the bathroom, he stopped to drape his limp prostethic on the towel rail.
‘I meant to tell you,’ she called in to him. ‘There was a funny thing that happened when I got home earlier, with the parts.’ The taps went on and she could hear the gentle thunder of the basin being filled.
‘Oh really?’ he called back.
‘Somebody was walking in the copse. A man. Only a few feet or so inside the gate. I saw the bushes moving. Anyway, it turned out he was trying to spend a penny, but I don’t know – I didn’t like the look of him.’
After a moment, he appeared back in the doorway, rubbing a white flannel on his face. ‘I hope you told him to clear off,’ he said. ‘But nicely.’
‘Of course.’ She began to towel the damp out of her hair. ‘And he did. But I just got a funny feeling from him.’
‘Did he threaten you?’
‘No. Nothing like that. He seemed quite embarrassed by it all.’
Arthur’s skin was shining wetly now and mottled underneath the eyes. ‘What did he look like?’
‘He was, well, quite fat. And tall. With a beard.’
‘Hang on.’ Arthur threw the flannel and she heard it splash into the basin. ‘I think I know him. Well, I’ve met him. He just came along the drive, about a month or two ago. Hollis saw him, too. Baldy fella with a clump of hair here in the middle. Patchy sort of beard up to his eyes, like this.’
‘Yes. Yes. That’s him. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know. He’s odd, though.’
‘Well, I mentioned the police and he came out of the bushes in a hurry.’
‘Did he now?’
‘I thought I was a bit abrupt with him. But now I think I handled it quite well.’
‘Sounds as if you did.’ And Arthur came across to grip her fingers lightly. ‘Has this been on your mind all day?’
‘A little bit.’
‘You should’ve said.’
‘Other things got in the way. I’m sorry.’
‘Did you see this fella go?’
‘Yes. At least, I think I did.’
‘I’d better take a look.’
‘Right now?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But it’s dark.’
‘I’ll just drive down there and shine the headlights. Bring my torch along.’
‘No. It’s late now. What if he’s still there?’
‘I’ll chase him off again.’
‘No, Arthur, please don’t bother. Wait until the morning.’
‘I won’t sleep unless I check.’
‘He’s gone now. And, besides, he wasn’t dangerous.’
‘You can’t be sure of that.’
‘He wasn’t, just a little strange. I watched him walk away. Don’t bother going out there now. Take Hollis in the morning.’
But he was readying the straps of his prosthetic. ‘No, this fella’s come back once already. Who’s to say he won’t again? Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of his type before. You’ve got to drive them off with sticks or they’ll keep showing up.’ With that, he put his shirt and pullover back on, and hastened down the stairs.
From a gap between the curtains at the landing window, she watched the wagon’s headlamps brightening the yard and arcing round the driveway. Soon, all that she could see were brake lights jerking in the distance, and then nothing whatsoever. She thought about the times she’d stood in this position as a girl, dreading the arrival of her parents’ dinner guests on Saturdays, listening to their drunken conversations as they came out to their cars long after dark. And she remembered all those nights she’d waited quietly outside her father’s door, a numbness in her legs, while Dr Pask had run his checks. Most of all, she thought about the final afternoon, when Dr Pask had stepped out with his leather bag and pulled the door shut with great care – out of habit, she supposed – to say, ‘I’m sorry, but it won’t be long for him now, dear. All there’s left to do is hold his hand on the way out.’ So that’s what she had done – and, afterwards, the purity of the relief she’d felt had horrified her. That week, she’d scrubbed the walls with soapy water. She’d dusted down and polished every stick of furniture. She’d hung all of their rugs up on the washing line and cricket-batted them. She’d scoured every fireplace in the house with Vim and a stiff brush. Until, eventually, she’d given up on punishing herself with mindless chores and let herself feel glad to have her life back.
Now, at last, the wagon was returning to the yard. Arthur left it parked across the face of the garage and climbed out. She went and tucked herself under the bedcovers, if only so that he would come upstairs and find her lying there, unworried by the situation she had caused. He walked in, turned off the bedside lamp and whispered, ‘Nothing out there I could see. I’ll check again tomorrow.’
So she opened her eyes and gave her best impression of a yawn. ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘I really wish I hadn’t brought it up. A silly thing to land on you so late at night.’
But when she turned the covers back, he said, ‘I’ll be up soon. I’m wide awake now, so I might as well do something useful,’ and she knew that she would find him passed out in the wing chair come the morning with a book still open on his chest.
The north field. Barren in the light of dawn. Crows skip in the mud. Suddenly, the tractor rolls into the frame. The driver slumps. It’s Mr Hollis in his sunhat. Coming back round with the plough. A second row. The blades carve up the earth and darken it. A seam of soil and manure expands into the distance. Soon, the tractor turns to start another furrow. It’s coming back, towards the camera. Mr Hollis twists his body, one hand on the wheel, to check the straightness of his work. Meaty chunks of dirt spit up behind him. He gets closer, closer, closer, till the white roll of his cigarette is visible, clamped in the flat pocket of his mouth, the lit end bobbing. A slow pan left, towards the copse, the boundary fence, the driveway and the yard. There’s Joyce, blowing on a mug of tea. How young she looks. She gives a thumbs up to the lens and grins. Pan to the right. The tractor stands at rest, its engine throbbing. Mr Hollis climbs down from the driver’s seat and trudges over to assess the plough. He beckons to the camera. Cut this.