Five minutes later George heard a car draw up in the yard. In his state of shock he was not thinking clearly, but it did occur to him that Nell had come unusually fast for so notoriously slow a driver.
It was not Nell but a small white Ford. Beside it stood a thin man of uncertain age whose pallor suggested he spent much of his time in the car. He wore a cheap grey suit and the kind of so-called ‘fashion’ shoes that would have earned Lily’s deepest scorn. A man whose idea of the country was plainly a theme park twenty miles from London, there was no doubt that he found the Elkin farm, so far from civilisation, an alien place. He took a file from the car and undipped a biro from his top pocket. This was also inhabited by a blazing yellow handkerchief folded into a lethal point. He looked up at the sky, frowned, opened the file and read. Or pretended to read. From his hidden view George guessed the visitor might be playing for time. Steadying himself before the journey across the treacheries of the yard to the house.
What right had this man, a born double-glazing salesman if ever there was one, to appear at this terrible moment? Irrational rage rose within George, almost choking him. He moved outside the door. The visitor looked up from the notes he was studying and gave a stiff little wave. His hand was a solid piece of inhuman material, like the hand of an Action Man doll.
‘Hi,’ he said, and looked down at the ground he would have to negotiate to reach his target. The yard, George was pleased to see, had not been scraped today. There were stretches of mud and slurry, not yet dried out by the sun, of menacing glitter. The cobbles looked slippery. There was a pile of horse shit from Nell’s last visit which Lily must have intended for her roses. Looking at the stranger (darling Lily, I’m looking) George saw that through his eyes the yard was a plain of terrible hazards.
‘Boots?’ he said.
The man shrugged. He had not come equipped with boots. Boots were not required on his suburban patio. He had never been advised by the Ministry that boots were a necessity. The Prime Minister himself (very occasionally, very briefly and for public relations reasons only) visited farms without boots. No farmer was rude enough to suggest to him that a pair of boots would facilitate his way over to the cowshed. In fact rumour round the office said the PM never went within twenty yards of an actual cow, pig or sheep. And on a sunny day like this, in any case, you’d expect farm muck would have dried up. Any farmer worth his salt would have cleaned his yard, not caused all this hassle, all this dilemma when an official – only doing his duty, mind – came to call. The man hated the country, farms, animals, animal shit, the smell of dung and silage with his whole being – George could see all that, and smiled.
I’m from the Ministry’ The man looked down at his shoes again, reckoning they’d have to be sacrificed.
Something to do with TB registration? BSE? The reason for his visit held no interest for George. The very sight of the country-hating MAFF representative further enraged him almost to the point of incoherence. He heard himself bellowing.
‘I don’t care who the fuck you are – you can’t just turn up unannounced and expect attention. My neighbour’s cow has just been slaughtered, my wife has just left and I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of here as quickly as possible. Save your shoes!’
George watched the MAFF man’s struggle with his conscience slink across his unmemorable features. But he was not one for a confrontation.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Understood. Another time. Cheers.’ Speeded by relief, he got back into the car and drove away.
Ten minutes later Nell found George sitting at the kitchen table staring out of the window. For two or three minutes the appearance of the absurd man from the Ministry had deflected the pain of Lily’s departure. Now here it was again: raw, tangible, activating the loathsome magic of making unrecognisable all that was familiar.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Nell.
‘Don’t ask me to try to explain Lily’s reasons,’ said George, ‘because I can’t. Maybe she’s having some sort of breakdown. Maybe I should have seen it coming. Did she say nothing to you that gave some clue as to what was on her mind?’
‘Nothing.’ Nell sat down. ‘As I said yesterday afternoon, I had the impression she wasn’t her usual self, recently. Vivacity gone. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Just a general sort of lowering of spirits, perhaps. Naturally I didn’t ask her if anything was the matter. That wasn’t our way, really. We talked about horses and farming things. She liked to learn about things that are second nature to me – harvesting, sowing, silage baling, everything. She said her grandmother had been a land girl not far from here in the war – a funny name, she had: Ag, or something. Anyhow, she’d loved her time working on the farm with two other girls, and told wonderful stories about what went on. Lily felt she’d missed out on country life, and now she was married to you she wanted to catch up. She seemed to feel very passionately about the erosion of the country, the plans for millions of new houses to be built in the south and so on, and she was obviously affected deeply by the landscape. Sometimes, on our rides, she’d pull up and say, “Look, Nell.” I’d look, and see some stretch of land I’ve known and loved all my life. But I could see that for her the view wasn’t just a good place for a postcard, it produced something spiritual, something elevating, like music does for some people. I suppose you could say that she’s sentimental about the country in a way that those of us who’ve lived close to the land all our lives are not. I think she was aware of that herself – one of the reasons she was so keen to learn the hard facts, see how farming works, experience at least some of the hardships.’
Nell paused to smile.
‘And then she used to love stories about our childhood, about what the three of us got up to. “What was George like as a boy?” she was always asking. God knows if I gave an accurate picture. I think she has learnt far more about us than I ever did about her. She rarely talked about herself, except to say that she’d found it very hard to work out what exactly she’d like to do in the art world. But she also said that since your marriage, and coming here, she thought about it less and less. Being a farmer’s wife was all she wanted, she said.’
‘It’s beyond me,’ said George. ‘Maybe I’ll wake up one morning and it’ll all be clear. Why did she want to leave just because … ? Surely the best place to be, when darkness strikes … I don’t know, Nell. We never quarrelled. We were so happy, I thought. I feel completely—’
‘Prodge is pretty low, too,’ Nell interrupted. ‘Not just Bessie. The whole future. Just as everything was going so well.’
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been … all this. I’ll ring him.’
‘You know what he said last night? He said: d’you remember when our bull calves fetched £150 each? They’re worth nothing, now. So his idea of buying the bike will have to go. He’s been saving for years. We need those savings. It’s the end of the good times for farming, he said. I pointed out to him that after the ‘67 outbreak of foot and mouth things got going again, did well, didn’t they? Look at you, at us. We can’t complain. But this time – this time it isn’t just BSE that’ll finish us. There’s so much else that’s been creeping up to the detriment of farmers and country life in general.’
‘I fear you’re right,’ said George.
‘Poor Prodge. He was so pleased, getting the jacket. He’ll never get his bike now.’
They smiled wanly at each other – two people in desperate want of something to smile at – and then Nell left, promising she would return as often as she was wanted.
But the days of real smiling were over. ‘“As high as we have risen in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low.” That’s the bugger of it,’ George said to himself. To fight his dejection, he worked harder than he ever had before, pushing himself to extremes of fatigue. He was forced to spend much longer hours at his desk, giving precious time, when he should have been helping on the farm, to studying reports written by bureaucrats who sledge-hammered language into near incomprehensible demands. A dozen times a day George was frustrated and enraged by their ungrammatical verbiage. Why was it not imperative for officials, whose job it was to compose instructions, to be compelled to take a course in concise and simple English? Maddened by the anguish they caused, when at last he could leave his desk George found the physical acts of heaving, scraping, weighing lambs, shovelling slurry, the never-ending job of feeding the animals went some way towards dulling the emptiness for as long as the job took. Then the sensation of burning ice within him would flare up again. Much of the time he felt faintly nauseous, had no appetite. He was conscious of losing weight.
What George most dreaded was being in the house alone. Before the arrival of Lily, before he loved her, he had enjoyed its emptiness. The pleasures of solitude increased. But when Lily had come into his life, she had transformed the house. She brought life to it, reminding him how it had been when he was a child – his mother had had the same talent for enlivening a place. Without her presence to fire them, its delights were as nothing. He was grateful only for its familiarity. To maintain that small comfort, George left everything exactly as Lily had arranged it. He left her papers on the desk, a forgotten hairbrush on the dressing-table. He did not remove the few clothes still hanging in the spare-room cupboard. When he had first opened the door, expecting to find nothing, the faded-rose smell of her – the scent that lived on the skin of her neck – swung out at him from three light dresses. He remembered their skirts dancing about as she hurried across the lawn, or the kitchen. Now they hung dead. Unnerved by their stillness, wondering whether to interpret them as a sign of intended return, George took up a bunch of flowered voile between his thumb and finger, felt it. It did not occur to him to move them.
His wish to keep everything precisely as Lily had left it was not just for his own benefit. Should she come back, he wanted her to find everything untouched. That would convey what her absence had meant – not that he wanted ever to burden her with guilt about his misery. Flowers on the kitchen table were the only change he could allow – or rather, no flowers. George was not a man who could contemplate plucking tulips or roses, plumping them into a jug to lean on the fan-leaves of alchemilla mollis. So once Lily’s last jug of late tulips had died – their petals scrolled back, their remembrance of pink so faded it might never have been – the table remained without flowers. And fearful of resuming the pattern of life before marriage, George refused Dusty’s offer to cook for him on a regular basis. After Lily’s magically light food, he had no heart for Dusty’s solid pies. He fended for himself, in the way that men alone often do. He would grill a pork or lamb chop, eat it with a baked potato (if he remembered to put one in the oven in time) and frozen peas whose brilliant green hurt his eyes. Picking at his food, he would eat his supper listening to the fat tick of the kitchen clock, willing the telephone to ring, willing the sound of Lily’s car drawing up in the yard. But the silence persisted. Night after night it spread through the house, chased him upstairs, along the passage past the bad pictures that made Lily laugh and scoff – and into their aching bedroom. Physically as exhausted as he could ever remember, he would quickly fall into sleep shredded with nightmares, and awake unrestored.
The length of Lily’s absence was imprecise in George’s mind. He knew it was stretching on, but unless he sat down with his diary he could not be certain how many days and weeks she had been away. All he knew for sure was that summer was closing in. The silage had been baled: it was time now to cut the grass. George fastened the mower to the tractor and set off for the first of the hay fields.
It was a morning of clammy and oppressive heat. The sky was a flat colourless wash: the light it gave veiled the landscape, robbing shadows of their depth. George, jolted in the seat of the old Massey Fergusson tractor, was soon sweating heavily. As he drove back and forth, with the sweet smell of the grass and the chugging of the engine to drowse his head, he watched the arrival of a cloud that darkened as it spread. Soon the small coin of sun was obliterated. The air was gravid with the promise of rain, but no drops fell. The fretwork of trees against the sky, as if caught in freeze-frame, was absolutely still. There was an eeriness, more usually felt at dusk or nightfall, in the weight of the morning.
To George, in his state of misery and exhaustion, the cloud was an omen which added to the doom in his heart. This, he said to himself, was the cloud that was sweeping across British farming, and God knows if there would be any sun to follow it.
When he had finished the first field George stopped the tractor. He jumped down from the seat, shirt clinging to his body, legs damp and itching beneath his jeans. Feeling dizzy and unsteady, he began to walk back to the farmhouse. He had arranged to meet Prodge for a lunchtime drink in the Bell – a rare occurrence, but they had both agreed on the telephone the night before that they needed a short break from their farms. George was glad the arrangement had been for today, when he could not have borne his normal bread and cheese in the silent kitchen. And he could not cut another acre of hay: he would do the next field this afternoon.
Although he arrived early at the pub, Prodge was there before him – the mirror-image of himself, thought George: the wretched Prodge was sweating, tired, worried. His friend was suddenly no longer the young farmer – never carefree, exactly – no farmer could ever afford to be carefree – but full of hope, ambition, optimism. Here was an older-looking Prodge, shocked by the loss of his cow to BSE, fearful for the rest of his herd, alarmed by the financial implications as the disease gradually gripped the country.
George carried two tankards of beer over to the table in the pub’s small back garden. He was grateful for the stinging cold of pewter in his hands. As he slumped down into the slatted wooden chair, it tottered, then recovered. Prodge nodded at him. Both men sipped their beer. George shut his eyes. The merciless buzz of flies worked against his brain like the drill of machinery. When he opened them, rather than look at Prodge again he let them follow the flies’ spasmodic journeys through the thunderous air. He and Prodge were the only drinkers in the garden.
‘How’s things?’ asked George, eventually.
‘Not brilliant. I find myself going back to the cows every twenty minutes, looking for signs. Interrupts baling. I’m behind with the baling. Got to get a grip.’
‘Quite. I quit after just cutting Top Meadow this morning. Suddenly couldn’t face any more. This bloody weather doesn’t help.’ George swiped at a fly.
‘And I’ve a great afternoon to look forward to – the bank. Got to ask for a top-up on the loan.’
‘Loan? I didn’t know you had one.’
‘Nothing very much. But it’s not going to last long, is it? This new situation. I’ve practically given away six bull calves.’
‘Nell said you’d saved a bit… for the bike.’
‘So I had.’ Prodge laughed. ‘That’ll be gone in a trice. I’m telling you, George, it’s all going to overwhelm us. Everything’s gathering together to do us down. It’s been building up – lots of signs. Now BSE’s taken a hold, exports all gone to hell, everything – we’ll be lucky if we survive. There’s a hell of a lot round here – I know more of them than you do – fear they’ll go under. And I daresay they’re right. Farmers’ll soon be a dying breed, a rare species.’
He took a deep gulp of his beer.
‘You’ve heard about Dave Goring?’
‘No?’
‘Dave’s packing it in. These new rules for slaughterhouses – extra veterinary inspections, vets on tap all the time and all that – who can afford that in an outfit the size of Dave’s? Course he could never manage that. So what now? We’ll have to send stock God knows how many miles away to some bloody great abattoir where they don’t give a fuck for animals except as meat. Doesn’t occur to them it might be worth trying to make their last moments on earth easy as possible. What’s more, they’re bringing in foreign vets. I ask you: will a foreign vet know what a fluke looks like?’ Prodge gave a grim laugh.
‘And how are we going to afford to transport them, anyhow?’ he went on. ‘Petrol prices rising again. My great uncle Matt – you remember, blacksmith in Adlesham for fifty years – he’s just had to give up his old Morris Minor. Only used it to take my aunt Sal to the supermarket, now the village store’s closed. But he says he can’t afford the petrol any more. If it wasn’t for a neighbour they’d be left with nothing but the weekly bus to get about. It makes you sick, what’s happening.’ He was silent for a long time, then he said: ‘Nell reckons we should take guests in. That’s what several are doing round here. Diversifying.’ He sniffed. ‘Apparently that’s what the government advises. What the hell do they know about diversifying in a place like this? Farming’s what this part of the country’s made for. So there we are. I’d better talk to the bank about the possibility … I don’t see what else—’
‘No, no,’ said George. ‘Don’t do that. It would add to all your work, put far too much on you and Nell.’
‘It would. But what’s to do? You have to spend, of course, to set up in the B&B business. Can’t just advertise a nice farmhouse. Oh no: tourist officials demand certain standards. En suites, waitresses in frilly aprons, I don’t doubt – tourists want the works in their B&Bs. We’d have to paint the kitchen, stop the damp everywhere. Can’t imagine it, but we’ve not decided yet. If the bank manager goes along with the idea …’
George ran his hands through his hair: thunderflies pricked at his scalp.
‘Why don’t I lend you the money?’ he asked carefully. ‘No interest?’
Prodge shook his head.
George was feeling stronger. The beer had revived him. Prodge got up and took the empty tankards to the bar without asking. When he came back with them, refilled, George took his time. He had to go gently if he was to persuade Prodge of his plan.
‘Look,’ he began, ‘you know I’m not a rich man by today’s standards. I invested quite a bit of capital in the farm when I sold the firm, but I’ve also got a fair bit just sitting there. I’d like to put it to a good use. Far as I can see, there’d be no better way than helping a friend.’
‘No, George.’ Prodge shook his head again, moved. ‘Thanks all the same.’
‘Money’s only important if you haven’t got it: that’s my way of seeing it. I’ve got enough for my own needs, some to spare. You’ve done wonders since you took over your farm, and rightly made a fair bit from your efforts. But as you say, the good times are coming to an end, if they’re not already over. It’s only sense for me to tide you over.’
‘I can see your argument,’ said Prodge, ‘but I couldn’t find it in myself to agree. I don’t think Nell could, either. We’ll manage, somehow. She mentioned selling the horses—’
‘She can’t do that.’
‘Up against it, she can bring herself to do anything, Nell. And it’s fair to say a B&B would be a bloody nuisance, having to tidy up and that. But it could bring in the necessary. Dave Goring’s sister just registered with the Tourist Board, done her back room up like the Ritz. She’s had a few to stay, quite enjoys it. But then she hasn’t got a farm to run.’
‘You talk to the bank: let me know what they say. My offer’s always on the table, should you change your mind. Any time.’
‘Thanks.’ A look of harrowed reluctance crossed Prodge’s face. ‘And you?’ he said after a while, jerking his thoughts from the grim alternatives that crowded his mind. ‘You, George? Any news from Lily?’
‘None.’ George sighed.
‘She’ll be in touch.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Perhaps you should contact her. Women often say what they don’t mean, try to provoke you.’
‘Not Lily’ George gave a wry smile. ‘She asked me not to try to get hold of her. If that’s what she wants, that’s what I must do. I’d never take the risk of going against her wishes.’
‘Huh! You’re too much the gentleman, sometimes. That’s what I think. If it was me, and a wife like Lily had just buggered off, no proper explanation, I’d be after her in a flash. Search the whole country till I found her.’
‘Wish I could be more like you, then. But I can’t.’
‘I’ll tell you something funny’ said Prodge. He frowned. The humour of what he was about to reveal did not seem to have a happy effect on him. ‘Your Lily is something special. Fancy her rotten myself. In fact I told her that. One afternoon down by the river I ran into her and I told her. Course, all she did was laugh.’
George looked at his friend enquiringly. He remembered the day. Both Lily and Prodge had briefly reported the meeting.
‘Don’t look so worried! I’m only joking. But I’m the first to see you’ve got yourself a good woman there. Terrific looker, kindest heart in the world, lively, serious, but funny, too: loving … the sort of woman, if I had an imagination, I would imagine … You’re bloody lucky, there, George, and don’t you forget it. Don’t you let her slip through your fingers. She’s at risk from Christ knows what dangers on her own. Men after her, that sort of thing. You mind my words. Do something before it’s too late.’
George nodded. This was probably the longest speech Prodge had ever made to him. He scratched his scalp again – damn flies.
For a few moments, deflected from his own problems by thinking of George’s, Prodge had looked more cheerful. But now the earlier shadow recrossed his face.
‘I must be off,’ he said. ‘Bank manager awaits, prepared to hand over thousands.’
‘Well, don’t forget my offer.’
Prodge nodded. George knew the matter was unlikely to be mentioned again.
By mid-afternoon a breeze had come from the south, dissipating the cloud and lightening the air. George, on his tractor, no longer uncomfortably hot, looked about the rise and fall of his own fields and woods – neat, ordered, productive – and felt something near to contentment. Grief, like happiness, is hard to sustain in its deepest form without a break. While he was conscious that in an hour or so, back in the empty kitchen, the misery would return, for a while this time on the tractor, this sense of achievement at cutting a field of hay, gave relief.
When he had finished his task, he walked up to the parlour. Milking over, Saul had taken the cows back to the pasture. Ben, having meticulously scraped the gutters and hosed them down, was sweeping away the water. The sweet, warm, furry smell of milk and cow shit that had become a part of his life struck George as he entered the building. Recently there had been a letter in the local paper from a man from Birmingham who had bought a farm not two miles from here, not to farm, naturally, but for the occasional weekend’s sunbathing on a hastily installed terrace which he referred to as his patio.
While sunbathing on our patio, he wrote, the revolting smell from a nearby cowshed assaults our noses. You can’t walk down the lane without running into mud and cowpats, and a neighbour’s cockerel wakes us at dawn every morning. Is it any wonder that the divide between urban and rural communities is ever-increasing? Those of us who appreciate the niceties of life fail to see the joys of so-called real country life. I for one am reselling my farm as soon as possible.
There were several acerbic letters, the following week, from locals speeding him on his way. George smiled at the thought.
Ben paused in his sweeping, looked up at his boss. Since Lily’s departure both he and his father, in their efforts to offer sympathy without sentiment, had become grim-faced in George’s presence.
‘Finished the hay,’ said George.
‘I was planning on that, when I’m through here. Dad said you’d got more than enough on your shoulders.’
‘Thanks,’ said George. ‘But I enjoyed it. All well?’ He meant: any signs of BSE?
‘Touch wood.’ Ben patted his head, then resumed sweeping.
George stood looking at the young farmhand, wondering about him. He was an exceptionally strong youth, all muscle and bone: a man of few words and occasional bad jokes. Few of his contemporaries, George appreciated, could work with Ben’s continual energy and zest. Few would want to. A farmer’s life had little appeal to the young these days: relentless hard work, little time off, decreasing financial rewards. It was only for those with a passion for animals and the land – and that was something inherited in families, not a subject you learnt at school. Ben had few friends, went out with them rarely. Those he did see were now so far removed in a different life, working in mechanics or computers, earning a decent salary, that they had little left in common with Ben. On one occasion, Saul had admitted, his son had been pitied, scoffed at, by a few of his contemporaries who had once been friends.
What would happen to him? George wondered. When Saul retired – though George could not imagine him ever wanting to retire – would Ben want to continue working here? Or would he want to join a more mainstream way of life with all its more obvious rewards? Ben had given no hint of ever wanting to leave, but the greater world must surely hold its temptations. Should he go, George knew it would be impossible to find an equal replacement. He resolved one day soon to talk to the lad, see if there was anything he could do to make his life here more appealing.
George returned to the house. The kitchen was warm, stuffy, but clean and tidy – Dusty still attended to domestic matters three days a week. In fact, thought George, as the clock greeted him with its incessant, menacing tick, should Lily walk through the door at this very minute, she would be pleased.
As he had been out at lunchtime, he had not seen the post, which arrived at midday. The bundle of letters and magazines had been piled on the table by Dusty. George sighed. He could see he would have to spend a long evening dealing with it all. Best to do it straight away, was his theory. If you left it a few days it became unmanageable.
He began to sort through the gloomy mass of official envelopes, dreading the moment he must turn to the milk quota forms. A postcard fell from between two envelopes – a photograph of a Norfolk windmill. Scarcely daring to hope, he turned it over.
Oh, George, there are great PRAIRIES here, he read. So many hedges gone, combine harvesters the size of houses racing over the corn, scarcely a human being in sight Dehumanised farming personified. I thought how shocked you’d be. It’s so sad. Yes, I came home. Horses still on the marsh. My boat leaking. Am off to Norwich to teach for a bit, H of A. Don’t worry – if you were worrying – about our joint account. I promise not to touch it. I can manage perfectly OK on the rent from my flat. I expect you’re busy with the harvest. Please keep my roses watered. Love to Nell and Prodge and you, L.
George sat down. The card shook in his hands. He read it again. In his ungrounded state the words were flung about, confusing: he had to go over them several times to still them. They left him mystified. What was she doing, sending this jaunty little message after weeks of silence? Was it just a signal of reassurance that she was all right? Or did it mean there was some melting of the inner stone, and soon she would be back? Water the roses. … That could mean she wanted to see them well cared for on her return before the last petal had fallen – which would be any day now. George’s heart beat faster.
He spent the evening attaching meanings to phrases innocent of meaning, but the process gave him comfort. It renewed his hope, filled him with new expectation. That she was all right was the most important thing. That she even mentioned money was very odd – surely she must know she was welcome to every penny he owned? That she mentioned the horses signified she remembered conversations … Oh God, what was she up to, Lily?
George struggled to decide whether to do as she bade him, and not attempt to contact her, or whether – as every instinct now urged him – to try to persuade her to return. He was convinced he could assure her that whatever she felt – or didn’t feel – home was the best place for her to be. He knew he could not fully understand her mysterious trauma, but he knew also that it would be best if she tried to solve it with his help.
George opened the desk drawer where there was a pile of postcards of some of her favourite paintings he had collected from time to time. He chose Van Gogh’s chair: solid, calm, the magic of familiarity its only message. He picked up his pen and rejected the elaborate phrases that swarmed into his mind (he sometimes felt he was cursed for ever with a sonorous, legal style of writing). Constraint, he told himself. So: Darling Lily, he began, we’re keeping the roses watered. The Norwich plan sounds good. All well here. You’re much missed. Please come home soon. I love you, G.
After long contemplation of this brief missive he realised that, for all its stringency, it might well frighten her off. In her present state, the merest gesture could be counterproductive. George put the card back in the drawer. He might change his mind, he thought. But, more likely, he would never post it.
It was late by now, but he continued to sit at his desk thinking about his wife, and the loss of her. At least this Norfolk card showed that her husband and her home had not been entirely obliterated from her mind. For that, he was grateful. He could feel a rising of his natural optimism. Eventually he propped up the card on the dresser, only to take it down a moment later. He read it once more, put it in his shirt pocket. Then he took it out again to study its words one last time. By now he knew its message, so simple and yet so incomprehensible, by heart.