The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  As Alec looked on, Fiona loaded a large syringe with some of the collected milk and then attached a slender rubber tube. She laid one of the lambs over her lap, lifted its head so the neck was straight, and slid the tube down the lamb’s throat all the way to its stomach. Then, gently, she pushed in the plunger and emptied the syringe. She refilled and emptied the syringe a couple of times, then repeated the process with the other lamb. Alec was amazed at how quickly the lambs’ little bellies filled out.

  ***

  AS THE AFTERNOON wore on, Owen called on Alec three times for help with difficult births. But by the time the light began to fail, Alec had managed to cobble together nearly twenty pens. Fiona had returned to the house hours earlier to attend to her guests, but Owen kept bringing lambs and ewes. In the cavernous stone barn, the noise of their bleating was deafening.

  At last, Owen returned from the field empty-handed. He stood quietly for a moment behind Alec, who was still hammering hurdles together.

  He rested a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “Enough, my friend; this will do us for a while.”

  Alec put his hammer down and rose stiffly.

  “You sure?”

  “For now, certainly. Not many ewes left to lamb. We’ll cycle these lambs out to the field in a day or so, assuming it warms up, and use the pens for any others that need special handling.”

  The two of them walked from pen to pen. Owen checked the water buckets, tossed a scoop of food pellets into each stall, then examined the lambs. The orphan stall now had three lambs, and here he gave each a bottle equipped with a rubber teat and taught them to nurse. He gave one bottle to Alec and brought him a lamb. It took awhile, but eventually, Alec’s lamb grasped the concept and was attacking the teat vigorously, emptying the bottle in no time and bleating for more.

  Tired as he was, it felt wonderful to do something so tangible and real—and so unlike writing. And then there were all these pitifully tiny, newly living things all around him, each one a minor miracle. Maybe this is a little like having a child, he mused, and suddenly the fact that he and Gwynne had never had children opened like a wound. What kind of father would he have made? Probably more a teacher than a playmate; he’d never had the knack for playing games. His natural response to children was to stand back and watch them with awe, amazed at their energetic, spongelike brains, their miniature limbs, their fragility, their promise.

  Fiona was waiting for them at the back door when they reached the house. It was nearly eight o’clock, and she had changed into a skirt and blouse. She had a pint glass of foamy brown ale in each hand.

  “As sweatshops go, I guess this ain’t half bad,” Alec cracked.

  Without skipping a beat, Fiona extended one glass to Owen, then took a sip from the other and held on to it.

  “Okay, okay,” Alec said, his hands in the air in surrender, “you win.”

  She winked at Owen. “It’s so hard to get good help these days, isn’t it?” Then she gave Alec the glass.

  “While you two have been larking about,” she continued, “I’ve made supper—shepherd’s pie. Owen, will you stay?”

  “Thank you kindly, Mrs. Edwards, but I need to look in on my mam.”

  Fiona’s faced turned serious in an instant. “How is she, then?”

  “New hip’s mending well, ma’am; she’ll be her usual troublemaking self in no time.”

  “Owen Lewis! That’s a fine thing to be saying about your mother ... even if she is a bit, well, feisty,” Fiona said with a wink.

  Owen smiled. “People in town have been good to her since Da died; made her feel at home. Lots of new friends to look in on her.”

  “Owen, if your mam’s recovering well, it’ll be your doing. A good son you are to her. Go on then, and give her my best.”

  Owen seemed genuinely embarrassed by the compliment. “Thanks, Mrs. Edwards, I’ll do that. And by the way, this new farmhand we’ve got,” he said, nodding toward Alec. “Reckon he’ll do.”

  He extended his hand and Alec took it.

  “My pleasure,” Alec said, grinning.

  “Best be off now,” Owen said, draining his glass. “’Night, Mrs. Edwards; ’night, Alec.”

  Alec was staring after Owen. Fiona patted the small of his back gently.

  “How you doing?”

  Alec turned to her and smiled. “Pretty good, for an older guy. Tired in the body, but invigorated in the brain. Also very hungry and wondering what a shepherd’s pie is and how many shepherds you had to grind up to make it.”

  She gave him a playful slap. “Minced lamb and onions and gravy and other good things with a mashed potato crust and it’ll soon be ready to come out of the oven, so I suggest you go clean yourself up. You’ll not be dining with me in the condition you’re in!”

  ***

  THE EVENING WAS a quiet one, the two of them eating slowly, pouring more of the amber ale, talking easily, laughing often, revisiting the little epiphanies of the day. As they were cleaning up, together this time, Fiona washing, Alec drying, he asked about the one thing they hadn’t discussed.

  “How was David this evening?”

  Fiona stopped washing and stared out the window.

  “I haven’t spoken to him. He didn’t answer the door when I brought him his supper.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “I suppose so; I peeked in the kitchen window and saw him in his chair, staring at the telly. I left the food outside. I expect he’s angry and upset with himself about what happened last night.”

  “How do you feel about what happened last night?”

  Fiona thought for a moment.

  “Cold. Distant. Cut off, in fact. That’s the thing: he seems to be wallowing in his illness. He won’t see the doctor about his moods and the whisky only makes them worse.”

  “I’m so sorry, Fi.”

  She turned to him, placed her hands on his chest, and looked up.

  “Don’t be. It’s not your responsibility. It’s not even mine. I’ve done everything I can. Sooner or later he has to take charge of himself.”

  She smiled thinly and changed the subject.

  “Now, I have some of that tart left over; how about it?”

  “Love some. But I’d like to check the lambs in the barn first.”

  Fiona started to tell him they’d be fine, but held back. He had a proprietary interest in them now, it was clear, and his worry about them was sweet.

  “You do that. But take a coat; it’s getting colder. I’ll be in my sitting room.”

  When he returned, she was in her chair, her legs tucked under her, a book in her hand. Sooty was curled up on his bit of carpet, basking in the heat of the fire. Alec sat in the chair opposite and she put the book down.

  “They’re quite miraculous, those little balls of fluff,” he said, referring to the lambs.

  She looked at the bemused smile on his face as he stared at the glowing coal in the grate.

  “I think you would have made a very good father; I can see you raising a good and caring son.”

  Alec thought about this for a moment, then said, “I’m not at all sure that’s true; I’m not the ball-tossing type.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “Do you really think that matters? Don’t you think that any son of yours—any daughter, for that matter—would have absorbed your kindness, your passion, your spirit? Men,” she continued, teasing him now. “They’re so dim!”

  “Women,” Alec countered. “They’re so mysterious.”

  Fiona lifted an eyebrow.

  “I always thought,” she said softly, “we women wore our passions on our sleeves.”

  Alec rose and added more coal to the fire. He stood there for a few moments, hands shoved in his pockets, listening to the damp coal hiss, watching the fire glow.

  “You kissed me this afternoon,” he whispered. “I can still feel it. It’s as if one of these coals still smoldered on the nape of my neck.”

  He turned to where she sat, then looked back
at the fire. A moment later, very quietly, almost as if he were talking to himself, he said, “I am afraid I am very much in love with you ... and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  He heard a rustling and then felt her arms around his waist, her body pressed against his back.

  “Me, too,” she said, “and I don’t know, either. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  He turned to face her. She looked up at his eyes and was surprised to see they were glistening. She’d never known a man whose feelings were so close to the surface and who struggled so mightily to hide them. She stretched up on tiptoes and kissed him hard, pulled back, then kissed him again, repeatedly, gripping her hands behind his neck, pulling him closer. His lips parted and her tongue searched for his.

  They separated and caught their breath, never once looking away from each other’s eyes—his clear blue, hers gray-green with the strange sliver of brown.

  She took his hand. “Come,” she said, tugging him gently toward her bedroom.

  “Wait,” he said, turning to the fire and setting up the screen to protect against sparks.

  “Are you always so careful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be.”

  Fiona switched on the light by the tall antique four-poster and began unbuttoning her blouse.

  “No,” he said, and she stopped, confused.

  He smiled. “Please, not so quickly.”

  He approached and placed his warm hands, hands that felt like he’d brought the fire from the sitting room with him, on her shoulders, then slid them ever so gently down her arms to her waist, coming back up again along the sides of her torso, inside her blouse, then curving slowly around to her shoulder blades. He unhooked her bra, then traced his fingers down the length of her spine, lightly, pausing briefly at each vertebra, as if to send the warmth through his fingers and deep into her. At the base of her spine the hands spread out, his palms slipping over the waistband of her skirt, then parting to caress each cheek of her rear. She arched toward him, involuntarily, making a low, hungry sound in her throat.

  He slid his hands along the smooth wool challis of the fitted skirt, following the curve of the back of her thighs, then her calves, slowly kneeling before her in the process. Then he ran them up again beneath the skirt along the outside of her legs. He looked up at her, but Fiona’s eyes were closed, her teeth clenched. He reached up to unzip the skirt and slowly let it fall to her feet. His warm hands again cupped her rear and he pulled her gently toward him. Still kneeling, he brought his face toward her belly and kissed it, running the tip of his tongue around and into her belly button.

  Fiona had lost touch with the room. Her skin felt electrified; the air around her vibrated. Eyes wide open now, she stared off to another world, a foreign territory, a land of exquisite desire. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. Her fingers dug into Alec’s long hair, pressing his face harder against her abdomen.

  Then he was lifting her high, placing her on the edge of her bed. He ran his hands up along her sides and slipped her blouse and bra above her head in one fluid motion. She expected to feel his hands on her breasts, ached for the warmth and pressure of his hands on her breasts, but instead he pressed a kiss between and slightly above them, in the shallow hollow of her breastbone. It made her shiver. He put one hand behind her neck and with the other gently pressed her down onto the coverlet. She floated on the mattress as if upon a cloud, her legs still dangling over the edge.

  He slipped off her panties and, moments later, lightning flashed: his tongue traced a line of electricity along the inside of her left thigh to the place where the fine hair curled. Her hips rose to meet him but the tongue skipped away and slipped down again, burning a path all the way down the inside of the other thigh, this time continuing to her foot, pausing there to caress each toe. His tongue was like a slender, wet finger, curling into every line and crease, then rising again, slowly—achingly slowly, maddeningly slowly—until it reached the dark arch between her legs. His tongue explored the landscape there, following the contours, savoring her earthiness.

  “Oh ... oh God,” Fiona whispered to the sky that seemed to arch above her. She did not know what he was doing but she never wanted it to end. Gently, gently she rose up into that sky, higher and higher, opening to it, reaching for it, until she convulsed and the world as she knew it burst into shards of light, into shudders of joy.

  Not long after, as if from a long distance, she heard him take off his clothes and pull down the coverlet. Then she felt herself being lifted again, so very gently, until she was stretched out on her bed, a pillow slipped beneath her head.

  “Alec?”

  “I’m here, Fi.”

  “Oh, sweetheart ... that was ... that was ...”

  “Shhh.”

  “No, please; I want more. I want you ...”

  She felt him slide into bed next to her, felt his long arms encircle her and hold her close.

  “In time, Fi, in time.”

  “No, now. Now.”

  She felt him move. She opened her eyes and saw his lanky frame suspended above her, his sweet face searching hers.

  “Are you sure?” she heard him ask.

  “Yes, darling man, please!” she whispered, amazed at her certainty.

  Alec rose up on his arms.

  “But gently, sweetheart; it’s been a very long time.”

  “I’ll be careful,” his sweet voice soothed.

  And he was. He entered her wetness slowly, teasing her with his tip. Slowly, she opened to him, in a way she had not thought possible. He hovered there, moving gently, until she cried out for him. Then he slid into her, deep, so deep. Her eyes flew open and she gasped.

  “Oh ... my ... sweet ... man.”

  She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, her hips rising to meet him. They moved smoothly and rhythmically. She began to crest again. Her eyes grew wider and as he looked into them it was as if she had opened a window to her most secret place, a place of fear and vulnerability.

  Then a sound rose from someplace deep inside her, a growl she did not recognize. She bucked up against him, again and again. Her hands curled into fists, and she pounded his back. On and on the pleasure flowed, wave upon wave. And then at last she felt him shudder, felt him filling her with himself, heard him groan, watched his eyes glaze over with the release and, to her astonishment, saw tears in his eyes. She pulled him down onto her breasts.

  “Alec, my dear man ...”

  He tucked her head into the curve of his neck and they rolled onto their sides, with him still inside her. He hugged her with a fierceness that surprised her.

  “I have been searching for you for so long ... so very long.”

  She pulled him closer. “I’ve been waiting here all the time.”

  They were locked together like that when, after an interval that could have been either long or short, for time had ceased to have meaning, they fell asleep.

  April 14, 1999

  ten

  ALEC AWOKE TO FIND HIMSELF ALONE. For the merest fraction of a second he wondered whether he’d dreamed the night before, but the covers on the other side of the bed had been folded back carefully and the slight depression on the mattress where Fiona had slept was still visible.

  Sun flooded the airy bedroom. He looked at the bedside clock and sighed. What he wanted was for her to still be at his side. What he wanted was to scatter kisses across her body like confetti. What he wanted was to make love with her all morning, and all afternoon if they had it in them. But love was one thing, business another; Fiona would be downstairs getting breakfast ready for her guests. He checked the sky, decided this was the day to try the mountain again, and dressed quickly. On his way to the kitchen, he noticed the dining room table had been set for three people.

  He stepped into the kitchen just as Fiona was filling a large teapot with boiling water. He slipped behind and wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her silky hair. She turned to face him.

  “Sleep
well, did you?” she said, as if purring.

  “Umm. Better than I have in years.”

  “It’s probably that expensive mattress I bought.”

  “Yes. No doubt that’s it.”

  They stood awkwardly for a moment.

  “I love you, Fiona. Beyond measure. But I don’t know how—”

  “Shh,” she interrupted. “Let’s not think about that now. Can’t we just have this magic for a while?”

  “Of course we can. For as long as you like.”

  Quietly, with his arms still around her, he asked, “Have you taken David his breakfast yet?”

  He felt Fiona slump.

  “Yes.”

  “How was he this morning?”

  “Fine, I suppose. I don’t know. I didn’t see him. There was a note at the door apologizing for the night before last. I went in and left the food, but he wasn’t there. Off helping Owen, I imagine. He hardly touched what I left last night. Honestly, I don’t know what keeps him going. Sometimes, I think it’s rage.”

  Alec felt suddenly helpless. He wanted to ease Fiona’s anguish but knew it rose from a place, a world, a life of which he was not a part. At the same time, he confronted—not for the first time this morning—the fact that he was in love with, and had made love to, this troubled man’s wife. He’d never done anything like that before; it violated the most basic standards by which he’d tried to live. And yet, at the same time that he knew it was wrong, he knew at the very foundation of his being that it was right and good. Alec realized he lived in one reality and David lived in another. Fiona was the one who moved between them, and he suddenly felt enormous sympathy for her.

  Fiona changed the subject. “Will you go up the mountain again today?”

  “Yes; it’s clear.”

  “It is, for now at least, but it’s very cold.”

  “My God, we’re reduced to talking about the weather.”

  This, at least, brought the smile back to her face. She pushed him away playfully.

  “I have guests to serve breakfast to, I’ll have you know. I can’t be standing here fending off your advances.”