The Long Walk Home

by Will North

  “Bread and butter would be okay.”

  As the three of them ate and Gerald moved things around on his plate, the conversation returned to David. Meaghan wanted to see her father immediately. Fiona said it would be pointless until David was conscious. As the two of them went back and forth, Alec was struck by how similar they were. Meaghan had her mother’s tendency to cock her head to one side when she was thinking. They had similar hand gestures and turns of phrase. Alec looked at Gerald, who appeared hypnotized with boredom. He wondered what Meaghan saw in the boy. A veneer of urban savvy, perhaps, that she hadn’t experienced here in the valley. A certain cockiness. But Alec suspected Gerald Wilson was more style than substance.

  Meaghan finished eating, pushed back her chair, and stood.

  “Well, if we’re not going to the hospital tonight, I think we’ll change and stop down at the pub.”

  At this announcement, Gerald appeared to regain consciousness, and he stood as well. As Meaghan led the way, Gerald grabbed their single suitcase, and Fiona followed them out and through the house.

  “Where would you like us?” Alec heard Meaghan ask.

  “You’re in the big room but the other two are both available,” Fiona answered.

  Now Meaghan was laughing, “Oh, Mother, we don’t need two rooms, we’re lovers!”

  Alec was clearing the table, privately wondering why Meaghan hadn’t volunteered to do the washing up, when Fiona returned and slumped into a chair.

  “My God,” she said. “She’s having sex with that weasel.”

  Alec chuckled.

  “It’s not funny!”

  “I know it’s not, Fi. I was just thinking about what I’d do if she were my daughter. I don’t think I could be shocked. Not if she were Meaghan’s age. I was thinking I’d want to talk to her about being a little choosier. I mean, really, an earring.”

  “I think it’s the style now,” Fiona said gloomily. “It’s just that she seems so shameless about it,” she added, shaking her head.

  “Should she be ashamed, Fi?”

  “Well, she certainly could have been a bit more circumspect.”

  “Circumspect. Hmm. As in lie to you? As in tiptoe from room to room in the middle of the night?”

  Fiona glared at him. “You don’t understand at all.”

  Alec dried his hands, walked to where Fiona sat, and kissed the top of her head. She hugged one of his long legs, then slapped his rear and said, “You’d have made a terrible parent, although you make a pretty good lover.”

  “There’s that word again,” Alec said.

  Suddenly, she sat upright, her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God; I just figured out what you’ve been hinting.”

  “A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, you mean?”

  She nodded, then found herself giggling. “A fine one I am to talk!”

  Alec hugged her shoulder. “The situation’s not exactly comparable, though. They’re just having sex; we’re in a lot more trouble than that.”

  Fiona cocked her head again and seemed about to say something, but they heard Meaghan and Gerald coming through the dining room.

  “Where are the car keys, Mum?” Meaghan asked as she breezed into the kitchen.

  “Darling, the pub isn’t even half a mile away; you never needed a car to get there before.”

  Meaghan made a face.

  “If the hospital calls,” Alec interjected, “your mother may need to move pretty quickly. Perhaps I could drop you two off down there instead, and then you could walk back under the stars?”

  This only seemed to irritate Meaghan more. “Forget it,” she snapped, turning on her heel. “Come, Gerald.”

  Gerald was looking down at what were obviously his best shoes, as if considering the prospect of manure-splattered farm lanes, but he followed her dutifully out the door.

  Fiona was fuming. “That girl is so willful!”

  “That woman,” Alec corrected. “And I wonder if I might make an observation or two?

  Fiona looked at him.

  “First, Gerald and Meaghan won’t last more than a couple of months; they’re too busy vying for control. Second, it would appear to me that Meaghan comes by her spirit naturally. Is she another Sagittarius?”

  Fiona moved to punch Alec in the arm but he dodged her, laughing.

  “Now,” he said, “how about we go for a walk as well; I could use the air.”

  “But the phone ...”

  “You’ve got an answering machine. And I think it’s fair to say the crisis is over.”

  “Which one?”

  He didn’t respond. He just reached out his hand and she took it. They walked through the boot room, took their jackets off the hooks there, and stepped outside. The weather had continued to moderate and the night was soft and fragrant with warming earth and fresh blossoms. The sky was ablaze with starlight; the Milky Way looked practically fluorescent. Alec had always been a city person, but looking at the night sky here, where there was no ambient urban light to obscure the celestial show, he decided he could be very happy in the Welsh countryside, and not just because of Fiona.

  They had just reached the main road and started back up the lane when headlights turned in after them.

  “That’ll be Owen,” Fiona said. She waved at him as he approached and he stopped. The windows were open.

  “Evening, Fiona. Alec. Just heading up to check the ewes one last time.”

  “I’m sorry about how things turned out, Owen,” Fiona said.

  “Bloody shame it is, Mrs. Edwards; David’s a good soul deep down; just ill and troubled.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Owen.”

  “Oh, that. Well, yes. Bit of a surprise, that was, but never mind. Anyway, best be off before it gets much later. I’m behind as it is.”

  Fiona slapped the side of the fender. “Off you go then.”

  “Good man, that one,” Alec said as the Land Rover roared up the hill.

  “The best. Make someone a wonderful husband, if that someone has half a brain.”

  “Patience, Fi.”

  Fiona turned to him and gave his hand a squeeze. “Thank you.”

  They turned and headed back up toward the house.

  “I’ll just check the answering machine,” Fiona said as they took off their jackets.

  He was easing himself into a kitchen chair when Fiona called from the hall.

  “Alec?”

  He didn’t like the quaver in her voice. He hurried to her.

  A green light blinked on the answering machine. There was a pause between each blink. One message.

  He pushed the message button. It was Dr. Pryce. He was calling to say David had opened his eyes. Her husband was confused and did not understand where he was. He’d said her name. They were sedating him again slightly to ensure that he slept and that his brain recovered slowly. It was too early to say whether there was any impairment. The doctor was pleased with this development. The message ended.

  Fiona sat in the chair in the hall and began crying quietly. Alec knelt in front of her and held her knees. She put her hands on his.

  After a few moments, she heaved a sigh and scrubbed the tears off her face.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

  Alec said nothing for a few moments. Then he said, “Maybe you’re crying, Fi, because you’re lost.”

  “You’re right: I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to hope for.”

  “Let me see if I can help,” he said, pulling her to her feet and wrapping her in his arms. “I love you beyond measure. I want to spend every minute of every day of the rest of my life with you. I want to be absolutely clear about that. I will move here. I will take you away from here, if you want that. Whatever is necessary.”

  He held her shoulders a little away from him. “Do you understand?”

  She nodded, smiling. “I do.”

  “But the decision is yours to make. I have no right to insist. If I tried, it would poison what
we have. I will stay here as long as you want. I will leave the moment you ask me to. But no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I will love you utterly.”

  Fiona’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I don’t know how to decide,” she said.

  “You won’t have to; life will decide.”

  Fiona clutched Alec tightly and neither of them said anything for a few moments.

  “Meaghan and that boy will be home in a few minutes. It’s almost closing time,” she said finally.

  “Well, they better not find us like this, I suppose.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they should. But I wish I could just crawl into bed with you and hold on tight; I just never knew a love like this was possible.”

  “Me, neither.”

  She stood on tiptoes and kissed him quickly. “Good night, my love; I need to leave Meaghan a note about the call.”

  “Good night, Fi.”

  He climbed the stairs, went to his room, left his clothes where they fell, and lay in bed. Moonlight pooled on the carpet by the French doors. Despite the morning nap, he felt exhausted. He couldn’t tell if he was still physically tired or simply anxious. He was still staring at the ceiling when he heard Meaghan and her boyfriend stumbling up the stairs, trying to stifle laughter. They were obviously tipsy. Later still he heard a sharp cry from the room behind his, followed by a soft mewing sound. Meaghan made the same sound after lovemaking that her mother did.

  April 16, 1999

  fourteen

  OWEN LEWIS ARRIVED AT TAN Y GADAIR before dawn, still trying to come to terms with Fiona’s instructions the afternoon before. “I’d like you to take control,” she had said. It wasn’t that he doubted his ability to do so; by now he’d come to think of the farm as a living, breathing entity he understood. He’d mastered its rhythms, got used to its surprises. He supposed he’d just received some sort of promotion; it would still be David and Fiona’s farm, but apparently he was to manage it. And yet, there had been such affection in Fiona’s voice, as if she were in some fashion making the farm a gift to him. But of course that was impossible. It was a puzzle.

  He headed uphill to the meadows. He was especially fond of the farm in the wee hours. The night sky began to soften and a faint light etched the rim of the summit plateau. The birds awakened and began to call to one another. The mist still clung to the grass like a wispy white angora blanket. He walked through the ground fog and watched as it swirled around his wet green rubber wellies. Apart from the bleating of the sheep and, just now, the higher-pitched cries of the newborn lambs, the sounds of the land seemed dampened, muffled, the hills almost in slumber.

  A farmer’s hours were long and hard, yes, but there were gifts you could not measure in time or money, gifts the land gave you every day. You got rich on a farm from those gifts, not from the money you made; hill farms seldom did more than break even. If that. When he thought about his school chums and their headlong rush to leave the valley for a “real” job in London or Cardiff, he felt like something of a throwback. But he felt sorry for them, too: as far as “riches” were concerned, he reckoned he’d come out ahead. It was all down to how you defined “rich.”

  Jack appeared from somewhere and loped beside him. Owen moved among the sheep, murmuring to the ewes and checking on the progress of the lambs. He could see only one lamb in danger of being ignored by its mother, one he might have to add to the orphans’ pen in the barn. The rest of the lambs and ewes that had been in Alec’s stalls he’d released to the lush lower pastures yesterday.

  As the sky brightened, the English daisies scattered across the grass beneath his feet shone like fallen stars. His preliminary rounds done, he leaned against a stone wall, Jack curled at his feet. Owen drank some of the sweet, milky tea his mother put in a thermos for him every morning, getting up before him and then returning to bed when he left.

  He thought about meeting Meaghan at the train station in Barmouth, the way his heart soared when he saw her wind-whipped black hair as she stepped down from the train to the platform, and then sank when he saw her turn to address the fellow in the suit who joined her and carried her bag. She had climbed into the front passenger seat next to him and grilled him about her father. Assured that he was recovering, she pumped Owen for news of the valley. Every once in a while she’d remember her boyfriend in the back and try to draw him in to the conversation, but he seemed uninterested.

  Owen had known Meaghan for years. She was four years younger than he, and for the longest time that had seemed a vast gap. First, she was a child, he a teenager. Then she was a teenager, he a young adult going off to college. But the older they became, the less significant the years between them seemed to be. Last year, when he came to work on the farm and she was entering university, they had spent more time together—or at least in each other’s presence—than ever before. What she did not know, what he would not let on, was that he was in love with her. Since she was going off to Leeds, there seemed no point in telling her.

  But the longer she’d been away, the stronger his feelings for her had grown. A ruggedly handsome and well-built young man with a gentle soul, Owen had no shortage of admirers among the young women of Dolgellau. His easy smile and green-gold eyes seemed to mesmerize them. But with the women who were drawn to him, and whom he sometimes dated, there was always something missing. He didn’t have to tell them; they worked it out for themselves. There was something he was holding back, something they could not reach, and eventually they let him go—not in anger, but in disappointment and, truth be told, with a lasting affection. Several young women in Dolgellau held a special place in their hearts for Owen Lewis, but there was only one who held that same place in his.

  He looked downhill to the farmhouse and thought about Meaghan there with her boyfriend. He couldn’t for the life of him understand the attraction. The fellow had sat stiffly on the jump seat in the rear of the Land Rover, in his fancy suit, and hadn’t said a word all the way back to the farm. Owen had a sense that he feigned boredom but was busily taking everything in, as if calculating something in his head. Given her father’s condition, he couldn’t understand why she’d brought the boyfriend at all. It was as if she wanted to flaunt him, maybe to show her mother how worldly she’d become while away at university. Still, Owen knew Meaghan was cut from the same good cloth as her mother, and Fiona had none of the attitude Meaghan currently displayed. Fiona managed to be a perfect lady and a friend all at once, and he had enormous respect for her. He had no doubt Meaghan had the same qualities. He’d seen them; he knew who she really was. And he wondered how he might win her love.

  He closed the thermos, roused Jack, and headed back to the barn. He had record keeping to do in the tiny office in the back of the barn, and his rattletrap old Land Rover needed an oil change.

  ***

  MEAGHAN AWAKENED EARLY, as she always did on the farm, and dragged her unwilling beau out of bed to show him around. She dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater, told him to get a move on, and went downstairs to get them both coffee. Fiona was already in the kitchen, making tea, but she set that task aside to make her daughter the coffee she apparently required now that she was a city girl. Meaghan sat at the kitchen table and rattled on about college and about the brilliant Gerald while Fiona waited on her.

  Fiona only half listened, still struggling with the image of her daughter sharing a bed with her weedy boyfriend. She wondered where Alec was, longing for his company, and decided he was giving her a chance to reconnect with Meaghan. All hope of that was quashed when the boy shuffled into the kitchen a few minutes later and sat at the table. He was dressed in the suit in which he’d arrived, as if it was all he’d brought, although this morning the tie was gone. As he sat blinking in the sunny kitchen, she wondered whether Gerald had ever been up this early in his entire life. It didn’t look like it. She pushed a cup of fresh coffee across the table to him. He wrapped his hands around it and lowered his head as if the steaming cup were a religious relic over w
hich he was about to pray.

  “And what are your plans this morning?” Fiona asked Meaghan.

  “I thought we were going to see Daddy.”

  “Not this early, dear; we need to wait till we hear from the hospital.”

  “Well, I think I’ll show Gerald around the farm.”

  “I’m sure Gerald will be fascinated,” Fiona said, glancing at the nearly catatonic boy. “Would either of you like something to eat first?”

  Gerald looked up from his devotions.

  She was sure Gerald was about to say yes, but Meaghan cut him off. “Oh no, we only ever just have coffee in the morning, don’t we, Gerald?”

  Meaghan stood and Gerald, as if on a wire, did the same. The two of them took their coffee cups out through the boot room to the farmyard.

  “You might want to see if any of the wellies out there fit you, Gerald,” Fiona called after them.

  A few minutes later, the phone rang. She dashed into the front hall and met Alec as he descended the stairs.

  “Tan y Gadair Farm. Yes, this is she. Oh, wonderful; that is very good news indeed.” She smiled at Alec, then her face darkened. “He does? Yes, certainly we can. Ten o’clock? Yes, we’ll be there. Thank you.”

  Fiona rang off. “That was the nurse. David’s awake and we can visit him. But Dr. Pryce wants to see me first. I don’t think that bodes well.”

  “Perhaps, Fi, but you don’t know yet, do you?”

  “No, you’re right, I don’t. I’ll just get my things. There’s tea in the kitchen. I’d like you to come with me this time, but if you come Meaghan will want that odious boy to come, too, and I won’t stand for it. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand. I’ll try to keep him entertained. Any suggestions?”

  She laughed. “Walk him off a cliff? No, that’s a bit extreme. How about having him clean out the pens you made for the newborns?”