Rachel was proud of her flat. More aptly, she was proud of owning it. Owning anything was an achievement. Your own place, with your own door, that was the goal. It was the promised land, her father swore, the only honourable debt, the passport to safety, but then, the repossession of his own had been a nightmare never forgotten, not even when they struggled back into the gentler waters of being able to manage in a place improved within an inch of its life. They never thought it was a false dream to aspire to a lifetime of debt, or that there were others worth pursuing. Their daughter would do better. Their daughter did. Ivy didn’t get it at all.
‘I think he might be envious of me sometimes,’ Rachel explained to Ivy. ‘As well as terrified that someone will take it away. First flat at twenty-five? Beyond his dreams. His generation began with rationing, saved up to get married. Then he saved up to have me. Couldn’t afford another.’
‘What a pity,’ Ivy said. ‘There should have been more of us. Mine tried and couldn’t. I suppose I couldn’t give a toss about owning anything because it was always there. Dad’s farm was Dad’s farm and his dad’s farm; our house was our house, never a landlord’s. It didn’t make them free, because they’re bound by it. They’ve had to fight tooth and nail to keep it, no question they could ever leave it. Dad’s in debt to his ears, but he couldn’t do anything else. There’s never been a bean to spend and they could no more sell it than fly to the moon. It owns them.’
They were curled in armchairs, as comfortable as cats, barefoot and warm. The window was open to the sound of rain.
‘Who’s going to take over when they get too old?’
‘No one.’
‘You could.’
Ivy shook her head. ‘No, I’d never be strong enough for that. It’s not in my blood, and he couldn’t bear it. It’s just not the natural order of things, you see. It simply has to go to a man. He doesn’t talk about it, but I know what he dreams of. A son to take over, or a grandson now. Or if not to take over, at least to admire, understand, appreciate. To see. To share, or mourn, something like. Poor man. I’ve let him down.’
Rachel focused on her glass. ‘You never know. Maybe Sam’s out there, yearning for real country life. Wanting a grandfather.’
Ivy laughed. ‘Wouldn’t that be nice? Carl would have to be dead before Sam would ever be allowed to go back there, even just to see.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Rachel was uncomfortable. It was the wrong time for the conversation. Ivy thought so too.
‘Yes I do. Believe me, I do. He’d do anything to prevent it. Where does this wine come from? It’s a lovely piss-coloured yellow. I’d rather talk about that than talk about parents. Why do we always do it?’
‘Because you invited my father to supper, and we were talking about him. Because we’re attached to them by that blasted umbilical cord no one ever severs. They have their hypodermics into our veins. We want them happy; they want us happy. They’re the only people who remain the subject of mutual fascination. Oh God, look at the time. Again. What time are you starting in the morning?’
‘It is the morning. I start at five. I’ll have plenty of time to go to Berwick Street after I’ve finished the shift. It’s my old stomping ground. There’s a bit of this lovely stuff left.’
‘Wish you didn’t work such crazy hours,’ Rachel grumbled. ‘Don’t know how you do it. Three hours’ sleep and you’re raring to go.’
She was drowsy. Well past midnight. They could talk for hours; it was easier than breathing; they were pleasantly, indolently drunk. She had come home to home-cooked food: Ivy could cook like her mother. The flat was still full of flowers, smelled of herbs and perfume and coffee and home, like a lived-in lair. Ivy had that knack, without changing a thing. It was a strange talent for someone who also relished homelessness.
‘I’ll do better with the grub when you father comes. What time did you say that was?’
‘Tomorrow. About six thirty. He won’t have anything with garlic. How much did you use? Oh, I shall be sweet in the morning. Mustn’t breathe on anyone.’ Rachel burped, discreetly.
‘Will he be safe to get home if we give him wine like this?’ Ivy asked.
‘Oh yes. He’ll go like a homing pigeon, soon as he can. He’s only sixty-eight. One stroke, plenty of anxiety, bit of arthritis, asthma, controlled as long as he’s got his inhaler and his calming pills. He’s short of breath and timid. Doesn’t like the dark. Lonely and refuses to admit it. God know what he’s inhaled from DIY. More than the forty fags a day which were mandatory in his youth, he says. Gave them up when they got pricey, mourned them ever since. I never know where real illness ends and hypochondria begins, he won’t tell me. And he won’t drink wine unless I tell him it’s cheap. The cheaper the better.’
‘Speaking as one weaned on the homemade variety,’ Ivy said, ‘I think anything else is wonderful.’
The flat was on the fringes of the City, where Gray’s Inn Road met Theobald’s Road in a welter of multipurpose streets. It had been bought for investment, rather than beauty. Rachel had not cared. She could walk or bus to work.
Not a thing of beauty in its own right, a series of four featureless rooms in an old house, with no hint of what it might have been. The advent of Ivy, the presence of the flowers and the contrast of Midwinter Farm made Rachel notice how bland her own home was. That was going to change too. There was a single wall in her bedroom she had begun to paint and never finished. She was going to be late for work tomorrow, again, and she didn’t care.
‘I swear there’s an old fireplace behind that wall,’ Ivy said, pointing vaguely. ‘Should be, anyway. We could make this place really cool, you know. Don’t ever ask Grace to visit. She’d rip the wall down as soon as look at it. Forgot to ask. How was the life class? Did you miss me?’
‘We certainly did. Absentee model. We did heads. The Plonker was there, asking after you.’
‘Was he now? He was at my Saturday class too. I reckon he goes to them all. It’s me next week, I think. I’ll certainly turn up.’
It was so easy, being with Ivy, having Ivy there and a bottle of wine between them. A full stomach. No need for the conversation to make much sense. No need to be clever, or witty, or even talk in a straight line. Nothing to prove.
‘My father will ask you lots of questions,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s like that. Critical and suspicious.’
‘’S only natural. Wants you safe and well with suitable friends, preferably male. No debts or debtors, get the picture. No probs. That’s a parent for you. Oh God, we should be asleep. Honestly, what are we like? I’m bad for you.’
‘No you aren’t. You’re good for me.’
Rachel stood up, uncertainly, sat down again. Surely there was no real urgency about going to bed. It was nicer here.
‘Did you hear about that man who got murdered in the ambulance? They said it was done by garrotte. Who the hell goes round with a garrotte in his pocket?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Ivy said. ‘People who sell cheese.’
It seemed, at the time, inordinately funny. The best thing about Ivy was the giggling.
The fourth image had been sent to the judge the evening before. He had e-mailed it on, as instructed. A printed copy was folded into Donald’s pocket.
Another old woodcut, from a book maybe. It showed Eve being banished from the Garden of Eden. God stood by an apple tree, waving a sword, with his foot upon the head of a serpent, directing Eve from the safety of the wood towards a wilderness containing nothing but water. She covered her face with her hands, begging for mercy. Even with the large foot of God standing on its head, the conquered serpent he trod into the ground squirmed with delight at its own success. Donald thought it was amazing how many messages could be shown in a few lines.
It was embellished with the legend, The worm has turned. You will die soon.
Donald loved a good misty morning. Especially if it obscured traffic in the mean end of the city, round about City Road, Whitechapel, Commercial Road, where all was ugliness. He could concede the hinterland was rich in exotic markets, sweat shops, Asian and African endeavours, but all he could think of was the solid identity and history it had lost, and he could not love it. The high rise of the City, the gherkin tower and all the landmarks were behind, while in front was early-morning, heavy-duty traffic on the way to the Blackwall Tunnel, that sinister, curving, underground conduit which snuck under the river Thames and connected the east of London to the east of Kent on the other side, without ever affording a view of either. Slower by car than by water. It would have been better to take the monorail train which sailed above and over, and made the sweating developments and distinctly old-fashioned poverty beneath look glamorous in sunlight, even better in mist. You could live by the river on the south side and commute into the centre without your feet ever touching the ground, without ever seeing how all those who crowded on and off came to reach their point. It was the same, less picturesque, but equally removed experience by car. Eyes straight ahead, looking for the chance to overtake, avoiding the humiliating prospect of getting lost.
He found the complex, got rid of the car, and cursed the fact that he would, at some point, possibly sooner rather than later, have to come back and find it and do the route back all over again. Never mind, it clocked up the hours. No one ever could ever deny or disbelieve the amount of time it might take to get to anywhere in London.
The judge’s apartment was part of a complex, where residents parked cars underground and visitors reported to a gate for instructions from a man in a booth, who looked as if he was rooted to the spot, in command of two syllables, yes and no. The man in the booth seemed to be dealing with another man, both of them debating methods of pest control. Twenty apartments here, all turned outwards, so nobody faced the hinterland, only the water. He found his way.
It was always a gamble to imagine a nineteen-year-old would keep an appointment, or return a phone call, but less of a one to calculate that a student would still be asleep at ten in the morning, even in his father’s house. Donald kept his finger on the buzzer, and turned his harmless profile to the small screen which would show his face inside. Video entry. Localised to this flat. Appropriate for a judge, perhaps. Not, as far as he knew, for a student of the wider world.
He was right in his assumption, based on his own experience, that Sam would not have left the house; Donald’s wife would have said the same, and both of them would be wrong in assuming he would be asleep. The boy who flung open the door, without giving himself time to look at the screen within, was wide awake, as if waiting to present himself and knowing he was a pleasure to behold, as if dressed in new clothes he wanted to show. His face fell, then he lifted his shoulders in exaggerated acceptance as he glanced at the ID card.
‘Oh, shit. I thought you were the man about the rats. Or my friend.’
‘I’m everyone’s friend,’ Donald said. ‘Can I come in?’
Sam turned from the door, leaving Donald to close it behind him and follow him into the living room he recognised from before, with a balcony facing the river, easy seating, comfortable enough, unnaturally, office-like tidy and as much dominated by a desk as another kind of room would be by an overlarge piano. Donald was grateful to turn his back on the boy in order to compose his face for the second view. The judge was right: the photo of the teenage child did not help. This was a vision of loveliness, moving like a dancer interrupted in the middle of a rehearsal, midway between a change of scene and certainly a change of clothes, possibly awaiting a second opinion. The outfit for Scene Two included voluminous white trousers, spilling over bare brown feet, a sleeveless top of orange linen, a small row of delicate beads round a slender neck, and studs for ear and nose which, in the light of the room, flashed purple, discordant with the red streak in his short, dark, spiked hair.
‘Do you like it?’ he said, rubbing one hand through. ‘It takes ages.’
‘Prefer long hair on a bloke myself,’ Donald said. ‘Hate this short stuff. I love a good curly perm myself. Least you don’t have a buzz cut, like all the gays. Is that you, by the way? Or are you just camp?’
Sam shrugged.
‘Both,’ he said. ‘Been this way since twelve. Coffee or tea? You must be the copper dealing with Dad’s bugbears, right? OK, OK. I’ll own up. I did it. ’Twas I brought in the rat. On my coat tails. So to speak.’
‘Oh? Why was that?’
‘There’s a woman lives downstairs, keeps her precious car in the basement. Afraid I scratched it, parking ours. I forgot to mention it. She might have left the rat as a message. There’s always a problem with rats. Tee hee hee. Terrible people live here.’
‘Coffee, please,’ Donald said.
The peacock son disappeared, with waggling hips. The trousers did not fit. Thinking as a father, Donald hoped they had not cost a lot of money. Not for the first time, he was grateful for the experience of being a parent, had a fleeting memory of trying to control his own sense of shock and outrage the first time one of his daughters had appeared with a belly button stud. If this father’s son thought he had the capacity to shock with his peacock display, he had chosen the wrong type of person, although Donald did have to admit to surprise. A judge’s son? Dressed like that and as camp as a tent? Why not? Look how judges had to dress, for God’s sake. Red robes and ermine for special occasions. Maybe it was catching. From the sad vantage point of impending middle age, Donald wished he had once had the nerve to dress like that.
He followed the boy’s flowing progress into the kitchen. The room was small and spotless, utterly functional, devoid of any decorative touch. There were no residual cooking smells. The kitchen was not the heart of the house in this place; it did not seem to have any heart. Framed by the window, the sun striking though the thin fabric of his shirt to reveal a thin body as he filled the kettle from the tap, Sam looked suddenly vulnerable. He was just another kid, with kid’s problems and a hell of a lot more thrown in, poor sod. No wonder his father wanted to protect him. He had a lifetime of trouble ahead already. What a boy like that needed was a mother. Donald was more at home with a boy he could think of as a girl than he would have been with some sporty, macho, more typical public school youth. He perched himself on a high stool, next to the kitchen counter. There was another stool on the far side, which would leave a comfortable gap between them.
‘Your dad tells me you’re studying economics. Shouldn’t it be fashion design?’
Sam spoke over his shoulder, spooning ground coffee into a cafetiere. No simple instant here.
‘Politics and economics. No, I find it fascinating. Sometimes. Besides, it’s a safer option, and whatever my father thinks, I do want to earn a living some day. Milk?’
‘Please. Isn’t it a bit restricting, living with your father? Wouldn’t you be better off in digs or something?’
Especially if you crash cars and go out dressed like a tart.
‘For the good of my soul, yes. For the good of my pocket, no. I don’t study economics for nothing. He’s always trying to get me to go, especially now. Says all this is too overprivileged for words, unsuitable for my age, blah blah blah, but why should I? Why should I rough it in some dump when I can smooth it here?’
His voice was shrill with almost childish indignation.
‘He’s always going on about it. How a generation of peace and prosperity has spoiled us. Why not? Isn’t that progress? Why should I have to live in squalor and work every hour just because he did as his father did? Honestly. He wants me to go back to his ghastly roots. No way.’
‘His German roots?’
‘No, the other ones.’
Donald found all this slightly amusing and kept quiet until the coffee was poured. Sam sat across from him, challenging him to say something. Donald was wondering if the tan was fake, then sighed and shook himself. He found the young desperately fascinating, but there was the matter in hand.
‘You know why I’m here. Someone’s threatening your dad. It happens with judges. They aren’t popular people.’
Sam snorted. ‘I think it’s all bollocks. I think he’s exaggerating. He’s trying to get me to leave …’
Think of him as a daughter. Make yourself at home. Risk having an argument.
‘Oh, come on. You really think he’d tell lies, just to make you go? Draw attention to himself like this? He could just put your stuff in the street and change the locks, if that’s what he wanted.’
He wants to protect you. I can quite see why.
Sam slumped. Then he shrugged and smiled. It was a great relief to find a kid without an in-built attitude problem to the filth. Maybe it was just his own face. Maybe the boy was lonely.
‘No, to be honest. But he wouldn’t actually throw me out either. He can’t make things up, he’s too literal. But he might want to make me feel sorry for him, so I’ll do what he wants. You know, poor me, someone’s after me, just do this little thing to please me, like, leave. He’s always going on at me …’
Probably frightened of leaving. Donald sighed.
‘Parents do that, Sam. That’s what we’re paid for. What I wanted to know from you was whether you had any idea of who might be doing it. Such as, was it yourself? Or might this little campaign have been aimed at you, rather than him?’
He waited for an explosion of offence at the very outrageous suggestion, but there was none. Sam seemed mildly amused, even flattered, fluttered his eyelashes and placed his hand over his heart.
‘Me? What a thought. Some poor broken-hearted rejected, spiteful boyfriend of mine? Puleese! No, Mr Cousins sweetie, despite what I say, I’m quite fond of the old bugger, except when he nags me and bangs on about the past. I don’t want to leave him alone, and I don’t want him dead until I’m ready to inherit. He hasn’t done too badly by me, really, and I haven’t made it easy. At least he didn’t drag me in front of a shrink when I showed all the signs and got expelled from the first school. But he isn’t consistent. First he keeps me away from my mother, now he wants me to get in touch with her. He nags and nags.’
The self-absorption was fascinating, but children were irritating when they whined. How many times had he told his own it was the worst thing they could ever do, especially when they wanted their own way. Hysteria was more effective. Donald did not need family confidences; he simply wanted to be seen to be thorough. Of course he had to interview the son, but he did not really need adolescent angst, even if he was interested. It wasn’t as if a missing mother/wife could come into this equation. She and the judge had parted years ago, amicably, the judge said. There was a daughter who had died in a drowning accident. The marriage never recovered; they went their separate ways, and he brought up the boy. Donald had not, so far, investigated mummy at all, except to see, from her sheet, that she was a bit of a raver. He wished the records would show who had paid her fines, but they didn’t. Odd that she wanted no contact with her boy, but then maybe he wasn’t her type. Not everyone would cherish a son like this. What he really needed to ask was had sonny boy seen anyone hanging around, in a real or metaphorical sense? Did Carly baby have a jealous girlfriend, was there another, obvious suspect?
He had already put aside the notion that Sammy was either the target or the perpetrator. He was far too ineffectual for that, and there was something about the boy which shrieked of virginity. Not literally, perhaps, no one ever knew about that, but he did seem to have an innocence of subterfuge. Too innocent by far, too self-absorbed for any criminal enterprise, way too concerned about what had been done to him. There was always the circuitous route to information, such as let them blather on and pick up a clue. Make them think they were witty and wise beyond their years. Really, he had learned more about interviewing technique from being a father than he had from any other training course. His wife said so.
‘I expect your mother’s worried about you,’ he said. ‘They never stop, you know. Worrying.’
The result of these remarks was dramatic, as if he had placed a syringe into a major vein, or given the kid an electric shock. Sam picked up the empty cafetiere and flung it against the wall of stainless steel units to his left. It thumped, intact, fell to the floor, and smashed into pieces. The result was a mess of coffee on the pristine floor, and a shower of black liquid over Donald’s trousers, below knee level. They were dark blue jeans; he didn’t care and stayed still, aware the boy was watching him.
‘My mother,’ Sam said dramatically, ‘did not give a shit about me. OK, so she was fucked up when my sister died. I can get that. She was awful. She pinched me, she tormented me, she was fucking dangerous, and then she went. When I was a kid, I was dragged to this farm, chucked in the sea, dunked in a pond, because that’s what my sister wanted. I hated that stuff. My mother hated me because I hated that stuff. I hate her. So when my grandmother writes, I get to the letters first and send them back. Dad doesn’t know. Why the hell should I ever have to go back to that awful place? Why should I ever see her? He thinks I should. Oh, fuck.’
He got up, and with scrupulous, speedy care wiped up the mess with a wodge of paper towels, using a fistful to clutch at the glass remnants. He ignored the impact on Donald’s ankles, blue denim not worth preserving. Donald stayed fairly still, merely extending his ankle to survey the damage. It would look as if he had been wading in liquid shit. In pursuit of rats on a riverbank. Never mind.
‘Go through many of those, do you? Like, one a day, or what?’
There was a rattle from the area round a corner as Sam tipped the rubbish into a bin. He came back, visibly refreshed; sat on the opposite stool.
‘Only when you mention my mother. You won’t tell Dad about the letters? I mean, they’re written to him, from my grandmother, but I see them first ’cos I’m always here when the post comes. Then I send them back. And it would be nice if he were to know about the rat from someone else. I can’t tell him.’
‘When I was a boy,’ Donald said, ‘you got a man with a ferret in to deal with rats.’
‘So did they, on the farm,’ Sam said dreamily. ‘My father is always reminding me that his father was a farm labourer. He thinks that’s part of my heritage, and he thinks I ought to rediscover it. They want to drag me back there. Into that lake. My mother would drown me. She tried hard enough. Why should I want to know her?’
This really was getting off the point. Or maybe not. The lad smelt clean, no dope, just kind of volatile. Donald cleared his throat.
‘We might have found someone with the right kind of grudge against your father,’ he said. ‘Someone he sent to prison. Can you think of anyone else who might hate him? After all, you know him best.’
Sam was making more coffee. Donald reflected that it was his own, desperate ordinariness which was the talent most overlooked by his employers. People told him things because he was indistinguishable from the man who came to read the gas meter. And because, after all, he looked like everyone’s dad. Not everyone’s dad, to be fair. Sam continued the process of making the coffee.
‘Know him? I doubt if anyone does. He’s a hard bastard who drives himself hard and thinks everyone else should do the same. Work, work, work. He doesn’t need anyone threatening to kill him to make him miserable. He can’t even get himself a woman. Wish he would.’
There was a quick grin in Donald’s direction.
‘He moans at me, you know? Like you all do, right? Other days, I tell you, he’s a laugh a minute, a fucking gem. He needs a bit of teasing, know what I mean? It’s just sometimes I wish I wasn’t the only one loves the silly sod. He deserves better than me, really. A real woman. Have you ever seen him laugh? It’s a treat, I tell you.’
No.
‘Has he ever done anything he’s ashamed of? As far as you know?’
Sam shook his head, then reconsidered.
‘No. I very much doubt it. Unless you include shooting the swans.’
There were great advantages to a big, blank face.
‘Oh, he can shoot, can he?’
Sam poured water into the new jug, releasing the coffee smell to which Donald remained addicted, even when he shook with caffeine shock.
Sam’s hands were steady. Donald admired anyone who could move from temper tantrum to calm as if cleansed by it.
‘My father can bring in the harvest, pick apples, climb trees and shoot,’ Sam said proudly, counting off these talents by clapping his hands together in slow applause. ‘Which gifts he would like me to share. But …’ He moved across to the countertop, depositing the coffee before going back to wash his hands beneath the tap. No way this boy ever handled a dead rat. ‘That was a long time ago. He was taught by his father, liebling, and his father was a soldier. So, copper, don’t go looking for guns around here. All that was down on that bloody farm. Where Mummy came from. I can hardly blame my father for learning about murder. Animal farming’s all about killing things. And shooting the swans was a terrible thing, because his father had done the same. Blah, blah, blah.’
‘Do you think,’ Donald said, ‘we could go back to the beginning?’
Grace took the gun in both hands and shot into the wall. The sound always surprised her. The blind cow which was never going to have a calf skittered at the sound of the shot, but without spirit. They were in the far barn, away from the others. The cow, which was smaller than the rest, was tethered to the wall with a rope halter, and it was not the rope which steadied her. She knew. Grace was talking to her. Your daddy bought you without a passport, silly sod, because he thought he could see promise in you. Do you wonder no one ever gave him the money to buy a racehorse? And you have to go, because the others shun you. They know you’re never going to come on heat. You are causing ripples of discontent. Cows have feelings; they are capable of bearing grudges, fearing for the future, knowing one of them is under a death sentence and wanting it to be over.
There was something horribly moving about an unseeing head, swaying, ears twitching away flies, tongue working, digestion rumbling, all of that muscle supporting that flesh and mammoth quantity of weight, even her shrivelled udders. This one was so small, she was no bigger than three large men welded together. She allowed herself to be led. She would not eat, she would not grow, she would not reproduce. Her infertility rendered her undesirable even to those dumb females, herded together, mounting the one in heat in order to satisfy some primeval itch, mimicking the bull. No heat, no insemination, no pregnancy, no calf, no milk. That was that. If only she did not look so ashamed. She reeked of the sweet, bad breath of unproductivity. At least she was blind.
Grace raised the gun, steadied it. The shot made less sound than the practice shot which had hit the wall. Guns like these were only useful at close range, about three feet. Better this way, darling, than being herded on to the lorry with everyone else. So much more distinctive, and quick.
Grace was angry with Ernest. Ernest should be doing this. Ernest had agonised about the beast, as Ernest did, and she was sick of it. Ernest could not kill anything. He had bought the animal out of sentiment, and he could not even kill her. They could buy cattle and raise them, but not kill them, unless they had slipped the bureaucratic net, as she had. They could nurture but they could not kill humanely; they must pinion a bovine beast in terror and make it wait its turn for transport and ignominy. They could not kill, or bury decently, their own stock, raised on their own hay, on their own land. Piglets, yes, cattle, no.
The cow had buckled, gracefully, like a performer taking a drunken bow, collapsing on stage with a little elegance and scarcely a tremor. Grace eyed the size of her. Too big for the incinerator. Too much for the freezer.
She wandered off for a minute, smoked a cigarette; leave it a minute or two, let the blood settle. Tried not to get cross with Ernest for leaving her to do this. It was always her, or Ivy. Woman’s work. Ernest could use the guns to scare rooks from trees, was all. He could use his knife to slit the twine on bales. Grace stubbed out her cigarette, grinding the stub into the mud.
She found the axe and swung it down. If she could take off that great big head, and sever the legs at the knees, the torso would fit, although it would take a long time to burn the bone. Hack it and make it manageable. He could do the rest. He was the butcher. Once a thing was dead, Ernest ceased to mourn. He could not kill, but he could pick up pieces. He was still as strong as the ox he would refuse to slaughter, with the memory of the elephants he had never seen in reality. If ever he watched TV, it was wildlife programmes.
She had stood to one side to sever the head with the long-handled axe, and still got splattered. It took practice. You could not kill things without practice; it was a skill, slow in the learning.
She put the head inside the incinerator, temperature at max, left the rest for him, and took the tether she had rescued first back to the house.
They knew: the cattle knew, the Polish herdsman knew what she had done. Beasts and humans. They were all in there, straight after milking. Looking at her as she went into the barn under the scrutiny of all those bovine eyes. Huge eyes, above slow-moving, chewing mandibles, staring as if fixated with accusation. Instead of ignoring her, letting her walk through, they turned on her and moved towards her, as they did with someone new, frightening in their fresh, accusatory curiosity. A hundred tons of flesh and bone, barring her path. She shouted at them: they stood back a step, and then came forward. Grace ignored them.
She peeled off the oversized, splattered overall outside the kitchen door, carried it in with her at arm’s length and stuffed it into the washing machine in the alcove. Licence to kill meant licence to wash. Kill, wash, kill, wash. She hummed over the preparation of the late breakfast. Omelettes today; toast; cereal. No bacon, although, as she thought, she had never had the least sentiment about pigs. She hummed as she worked.
My young love said to me, your mother won’t mind.
And my father won’t mind you for your lack of kind,
And she stepped away from me, and this did she say,
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day …
Ernest came in, shyly.
‘You’ve got to cut her up,’ Grace said gently. ‘You should have cleaned the gun. Oh darling, what are we going to do?’
‘Wait for Ivy,’ he said, then corrected himself, in the face of her stare.
‘Wait for him?’
His eyes were still the same, pellucid, far-seeing blue. Paler now.
The guests trooped in for breakfast.
Ernest told them about the lake. He had told them about the lake yesterday.
They looked around for the cat and the dog they considered mandatory in a farmhouse kitchen.
Grace missed them too. And the chickens they had had when Ivy was small.