The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  Alec watched, mesmerized, at the interplay of instincts as the ewe and its lambs bonded—the nursing, the licking, the learning of one another’s scent.

  Alec looked at the exhausted ewe. “What about the placenta?”

  “She’ll expel it in an hour or so. Most ewes will eat it immediately. It’s instinctive. There are hormones in it that will help the uterus shrink back to normal size. And if they don’t, we collect them and bury them to keep away the predators.”

  “Predators?”

  “Foxes. Plenty of them. They can smell the placenta and come after the newborns. They like lamb as much as we do.”

  Alec nodded. “What now?”

  “Nothing. We’re done here for the time being. Probably be a few more ewes to lamb in the other lower pasture later on, but for now I need a bite to eat.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  They cleaned up in a water bucket. The sun had nearly set and the sky over the Irish Sea looked aflame.

  “Red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning,” Owen said, “red sky at night, shepherds’ delight.” Then he turned to Alec, laughing. “Of course, around here you never know!”

  Alec gathered the equipment while Owen made a final check of the lambs and ewes. Then the two of them strode downhill through the rich spring grass.

  six

  WITH ONLY ONE OF HER THREE GUEST ROOMS occupied, Fiona had spent the day catching up on baking. It was a point of pride that she baked her own pastries for her guests’ afternoon tea—currant scones, saffron buns with sultanas, lardy bread, and Welsh cakes, a kind of mini-pancake fragrant with allspice and studded with currants that she learned to make when she moved to Wales.

  But though mixing the ingredients was almost second nature to her by now, she was struggling to concentrate. Her mind kept drifting off to the American. Ever since he’d arrived she’d felt as if the ground beneath her was shifting. The certainties of her life, the patterns and routines that had given it dimension and definition, had subtly altered. There was a thrumming, a kind of background harmonic, that hadn’t been there before. It was in the air around her. She could sense it the same way animals could sense earthquakes before they happen.

  When Alec had tea in her kitchen last night, when she’d seen him in the guests’ sitting room this morning, he seemed as appropriate to those places as the furniture itself. Except, she admitted to herself guiltily, furniture isn’t exciting. There was no denying it: he excited her.

  He wasn’t like other Americans she’d met: loud, demanding, and overfamiliar, telling you their entire life stories over breakfast. No, Alec was more reserved. Careful. She didn’t think he was hiding anything; he was simply controlled. What, she wondered, needed controlling? Not others, certainly; he seemed very easygoing. Something in himself? Was it anger? No, there was only gentleness in those brilliant blue eyes. His smile, though shy, was genuinely warm and held a hint of mischief, also restrained. At the same time, he had an odd way of being very much with you one moment and gone the next. She’d noticed that last night when she asked how he’d come to be here. Something he’d promised to do on Cadair, he’d said. And then it was as if he’d vanished; his body was right there in his chair, but his essence was elsewhere. It was like a light bulb turning off: the bulb was still there but the illumination was gone. You noticed instantly, because the light had been so intense. Yes, maybe that was what he was controlling, that intensity. If he were an artist rather than a writer, she could see him painting great swirling landscapes, like Turner’s, light and dark and color wheeling around a still center. That’s it, she decided; that’s what he’s bundling up—it’s the same imaginative flame that led him to suggest the preposterous “tent-and-breakfast.” She chuckled again at the memory of him standing in her doorway with his proposal. Anyone else would have accepted that she had no vacancies and moved on. But the intensity, the certainty had brought him back, and now, as then, she was happy it had. But why did he keep himself so bundled up?

  She realized she hadn’t a clue how old he was. He could be her age. Probably not younger, but possibly older, maybe much older—it was impossible to tell. If older, though, he neither looked nor acted like it.

  And as to the way he looked, well, that was easy: lithe, taut, handsome, powerful in a contained sort of way. There was something about him that made her feel like a sea being pulled by the gravity of the moon; it was tidal. She took a baking sheet full of golden scones from the oven and began stacking them on a cooling rack by the sink. She saw her reflection in the window above the sink and wondered whether she truly recognized it.

  Sometime around three o’clock, Fiona went out to her garden to cut fresh flowers for the house. It was something she always did for her guests, but she was aware of taking special care this time. The garden basked in the afternoon sun and smelled fertile and earthy, as if it were breathing. Small bouquet in hand, she turned back toward the house, glanced up at the mountain, and stopped in her tracks. The top five hundred feet were encased in cloud so dark it was nearly charcoal. Worry rose like a bird in her throat, but she willed it down again: at this hour Alec would already be descending. He’d be on the lower slopes, well beneath the cloud. Nearly home.

  Home. Why not just “back”? Why did she think of him, this near stranger, as belonging here? Home to the farm? Home to her?

  By five, she’d finished the baking and he still hadn’t returned. She knew how long it took to climb Cadair Idris: up and down in four hours; five, tops. And he was no amateur. It had already been six hours. Where was he? She drifted around the house aimlessly for a while and finally did what many people do in a crisis: she cooked. Alec would be exhausted when he returned, she reasoned, and in no shape to go to town for supper. She’d make a meal for them both. She’d never done this for a guest before, but somehow it felt perfectly natural to do it for Alec. And it calmed her. She dusted two lamb shanks with flour, browned them in butter, laid them in an earthenware casserole, added stock, herbs, chopped leeks, and sliced carrots and parsnips, and put them in the oven to braise. It was the kind of thing that would only get better the longer it cooked.

  At six thirty, after the BBC Radio Four news, she took David his dinner. On her way back, she saw Owen in the darkening farmyard walking toward his Land Rover.

  “Owen! One of my guests has gone missing; have you seen anyone on the mountain?”

  “I haven’t, Mrs. Edwards, but if it’s that Alec fellow you’re looking for, I reckon he’ll be in the house. Been helping me birth twin lambs, he has.”

  Fiona wanted to hug Owen. Instead, she blurted, “Do you mean to tell me it didn’t occur to either one of you to come and tell me you were working together?!”

  “No, ma’am, I guess it didn’t. It was a tricky birth and he asked if he could help. I was glad to have him. We’d have lost the lambs and the ewe if he hadn’t shown up.”

  She looked at him for a moment, shook her head in disbelief, then turned toward the house.

  “Good with the animals, he is,” Owen called after her.

  Back in the kitchen she could hear the tub filling upstairs in Alec’s room. She resolved to say nothing to him when he came down. What could she say? That she’d been terrified he’d been hurt? That she feared he might disappear from her life as abruptly as he’d appeared?

  She was adding red wine to the roasting shanks a half hour later when he came down, knocked on the kitchen doorjamb, and stuck his head in.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She straightened and faced him. She couldn’t stop herself: “Three hours late and all you have to say for yourself is ‘hi’?”

  Alec stepped into the kitchen and blinked a couple of times. “Um ...”

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” she said, waving her hands dismissively. “It’s just my nature to worry when my guests disappear into thin air.”

  “You were worried?”

  “Worried?! I was about to call out the Mountain Rescue!”

  “I’m s
orry, Fiona; I got ... delayed.” He didn’t want to tell her he’d been in trouble. It embarrassed him. And he wasn’t used to having someone worry about him; that was his job, worrying about people. It was a little unnerving.

  She was about to unload on him when she noticed he had his jacket on.

  “And where do you think you’re off to this time of night?”

  “I thought I’d walk down to that pub we passed this morning, just along the road, and have dinner. The one by the lake.”

  “The Griffin? You must be daft! Good cask-conditioned ale, mind you, but the food’s unspeakable. Can’t even do a proper pickled egg.”

  Alec tried to comprehend a pickled egg, proper or otherwise.

  “I’ve braised some lamb shanks for supper,” she continued. “Unless lambing with Owen’s put you off.”

  Alec laughed. “I’m so hungry after that climb I’d eat damn near anything. But no, Fiona, I won’t impose upon you and David.”

  “No imposition at all; David’s already eaten.”

  Once again, the invisible David.

  “But I’m going to make you work for your supper. When these potatoes are just barely tender,” she said, pointing to a pot bubbling on the cooker, “drain them, toss them in this flour, then put them in this roasting pan with some butter, and pop them in the oven. I’m off to take a bath myself. Think you can handle that?”

  “Yes, ma’am; I think I can,” Alec said, smiling.

  “And don’t let the shanks dry out, either; use this red wine,” she said as she poured herself a glass.

  Then she was gone. He wasn’t used to being directed about but, as with telling him where to pitch his tent the night before, he found he felt perfectly happy having Fiona tell him what to do. It was somehow deeply comforting. He turned toward the cooker wearing an idiot’s grin.

  ***

  FIONA RAN WATER in the claw-foot tub and stepped out of her clothes. She stood before the tiny window set deep into the bathroom’s thick outer wall and looked absently across the darkening meadows toward the mountain, sipping her wine. Three hours late, then there he was, calm as could be. She added some bath oil and swirled it around with her hands. Then she slipped into the hot, silky water and closed her eyes. She lay there for some time, letting the heat seep into her bones. Had it really only been a day since he walked up the lane with that bloody great pack on his back? She smiled. He’d been sweaty and unshaven, but her heart had leaped just the same.

  Did she believe in love at first sight? She didn’t know. How could you know? Maybe it was like great art: you knew it when you saw it. All she knew was that she felt exhilarated when he was around, and slightly out of control, like when she drove too fast: scary, but thrilling.

  It certainly hadn’t been that way with David. She’d been a scrawny twenty-two-year-old at university in Liverpool when David appeared in her life, a friend of a friend. He was handsome in a rugged sort of way, quiet, and polite. No one else had shown much interest in her in those days. But David would drive his battered old Land Rover the sixty or so miles across Wales to England to visit her, then turn around and drive back the same night. One day he told her he loved her. No man had ever said that to her before. She decided she must be in love with him, too. Then one weekend he took her back to Dolgellau, to see Tan y Gadair. She had been awed by its raw beauty. That very weekend David asked her to marry him, and she accepted.

  “And here we are,” she said to herself aloud, sitting up in the tub and reaching for the wine. She drained the glass and felt the alcohol warming her belly. Or perhaps it was the thought that Alec had been in this tub just last night that made her warm. Soaping herself, she imagined that the soap was Alec’s hands slipping smoothly across her skin and breasts. She wondered what sort of lover he was. Attentive, she guessed. Did he ever let that reserve down? It occurred to her that she should be shocked at having such thoughts, but she persuaded herself that it was only curiosity. Harmless really.

  She rose and toweled herself down, enjoying the slight roughness of the linen-cotton blend towel that was her favorite. It made her skin feel alive. She padded into the bedroom and stood for a moment before the long oval standing mirror near the window.

  “Not so scrawny anymore, are we, Fiona?” she said to her reflection. She’d put on some weight over the years. Not a great deal—what with running the bed-and-breakfast and helping out on the farm, she got plenty of exercise—but it was still more than she liked. On the other hand, despite nursing Meaghan some twenty years ago, her breasts, broad and shapely if not especially full, were still firm and had so far resisted the pull of gravity. But her belly and hips had lost some definition. There was the faintest hint of dimpling on the back of her thighs, but for the most part her legs had kept their shape. She thought about the other farm wives in the valley and decided she was doing pretty well. And, much as she disliked it, she had to admit David’s vegetarian diet was helping.

  The problem now was what to wear. She opened the wardrobe in her bedroom and surveyed the contents with dismay: the clothes of a farmer’s wife. She thought she should wear something nice ... but not too nice. Not suggestive, either. She laughed—as if she owned such things! She took hangers out and rejected outfits one by one: too formal, too frumpy, wrong season.

  In the end, she just pulled on her jeans and slipped on a black merino wool V-necked pullover with just enough angora to look feminine, pushing the sleeves halfway up her forearms. Then she slid her feet into simple black flats. She added black onyx stud earrings. Back in the bathroom, she brushed out her hair so that it framed her face and put on the slightest hint of pale pink lipstick. Her skin was too fair for anything bolder. As she turned to leave she stopped and put a tiny dab of Rain perfume behind each ear.

  Ready, she said to herself, hearing a little voice inside that asked, For what?

  ***

  ALEC STOOD IN the kitchen fascinated by the enormous stove that dominated the room. Ever since he and Gwynne had divorced, cooking had become a passion—sometimes, he thought, the only passion left to him. The massive Aga—Fiona called it the “cooker”—was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. It was a good five feet wide, made of what looked like cast iron, and finished in shiny ivory enamel. There were four oven doors in the stove’s face and the top had a large iron warming surface and two round cooking elements with heavy hinged stainless-steel covers, presumably to hold in the heat. The rest of the room was equally impressive. The kitchen cabinets and counters looked handmade and were painted ivory like the stove. The countertops were a mix of charcoal gray slate and oak butcher’s block. The walls were painted the color of Dijon mustard. The ceiling was open to the oak beams and cross members supporting the slanting shed roof. They were stained a dark brown and matched a large antique oak sideboard with shelves to display decorative platters. Above the Aga, a cast-iron rack held a collection of well-used copper and stainless-steel pots and pans. It was the kitchen of a serious cook. It was also toasty warm, and Alec realized the heat was coming from the Aga, which seemed designed to act like a radiant heater for the entire room. He was bent over trying to figure out the mechanics of the thing when he heard Fiona enter the kitchen.

  He stood up and turned.

  “Wow!” he blurted. It was involuntary, and utterly inappropriate. Then, remembering her own words the night before, he added quickly, “You certainly do clean up nicely!”

  “That’s my line. And ‘wow,’ though much appreciated, suggests that you, sir, have been walking alone through the countryside too long.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “You needn’t have agreed so quickly,” she said, smiling. “Hungry?”

  He paused as the ambiguity hung in the air between them, then said, “Famished. What can I do to help?”

  “Set the table?”

  “Sure. In the dining room or here in the kitchen?”

  She looked around the room.

  “Here, I think. It’s my favorite place in t
he house.”

  While Alec set out silverware, Fiona pulled the lamb and vegetables and the roast potatoes from the ovens and turned them out onto platters. They had no sooner sat down when she popped back up again.

  “This isn’t right.” She dashed out of the room and returned a few moments later with a candlestick in each hand, purloined from one of the guest rooms. Fishing a box of matches from a drawer, she lit the tapers and flicked off the overhead light.

  “There, that’s better.”

  The kitchen was suddenly transformed into an intimate dining room.

  Alec caught a scent in the air.

  “Is that the Rain?”

  Fiona glanced at the kitchen window. “Yes, I guess it’s started again.”

  “I was referring to the perfume.”

  “Oh! Yes, it is; I didn’t think you’d notice,” she lied.

  They sat motionless for a moment, saying nothing, their eyes exchanging messages: amusement, affection, trust, nervousness, desire. Fiona smiled. Alec reached for his wineglass. They began to eat. The wine was velvety and dense with dark fruit. The lamb was perfect, pink and falling off the bone. The roast potatoes were golden and crusty on the outside and fluffy inside; the braised carrots and parsnips, earthy and sweet.

  Alec made appreciative noises and said, “You should have a restaurant.”

  Fiona laughed. “Nonsense! Far too much work for a woman my age.”

  Alec looked at her, smiled, and shook his head. “‘Your age’? Now that’s nonsense.”

  He changed the subject. “You said you were English, not Welsh. Where from?”

  She paused. It might have been an intrusive question from someone else, but Americans were like that: naively direct. And, anyway, with Alec she felt at ease.

  She’d been born and raised in a village called Nantwich, in Cheshire, she said between bites, just southeast of the old Roman fortified town of Chester. Her mother’s family was from there and her father, a sailor, decided it was as good a place as any to settle. Arthur Armstrong had joined the Royal Navy during the war, as an engineer, and had somehow survived despite being assigned to ships protecting the Atlantic shipping lanes, which crawled with German U-boats. After the war he’d signed on with one of the major freighter companies sailing out of Liverpool and had traveled the world.