Of Love and Slaughter

by Angela Huth

  ‘Not a success,’ she said. ‘A huge, huge failure. Where did we go wrong, George.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ George sat down beside her. ‘Disaster. After all your effort. I don’t know what got into them – drink. But the reason was the truthful reason they gave. Change. I suppose although they honestly are glad for me, all this takes a bit of getting used to.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about any of it,’ said Lily, airily. ‘It’s not important. I like Nell, I like Prodge. I’m the intruder, but I don’t think they dislike me. It’s just that I’m still new. I upset the old balance. It’s all completely understandable.’

  ‘You were brilliant this evening,’ said George. ‘And they behaved like louts, my old friends. Though of course that doesn’t make one jot of difference to my love of them.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Lily pushed her chair away from the table, stood up. She held up her glass, looked down at George a little uncertainly.

  ‘I want to drink a toast to you, George,’ she said. ‘I want to make you a little speech. If I was completely sober I could never do this. But I’ve had more than I’m used to tonight, so it’s not so hard.’

  She paused, giggled. George folded his arms, sat back to watch her, enchanted.

  ‘I want to tell you, George Elkin, that I’ve never been so happy in all my life. Now happiness is very difficult – impossible – to describe, as you probably know. All you can do is say the word and hope the other person believes you, and can imagine how you feel. So I won’t try to be more explicit.’ She giggled again, paused to let smiles chase smiles. ‘But I want you to know that it’s a lovely jumble of sensations going on all the time, every moment of the day. I wake up with you every morning feeling so excited about being alive – I think that’s it – and great gusts of exuberance sweep me about. I don’t know how better to describe it, the utter joy of every day with you. I don’t know where it comes from, or why it came to me. But I’ve a funny feeling it’s something to do with a kind of love that’s quite new to me.’

  ‘Could be,’ said George, smiling.

  ‘What d’you think, George? Am I right? And I tell you another thing, quite certain. I love this place, this house, your animals, this corner of England, your land. I’ve explored every inch of it – the old ash coppice, the oaks. I’ve lain among the bluebells and the betony and the meadowsweet and the cow parsley: I’ve listened to the stonechats and warblers and skylarks – at least I think they were skylarks. I couldn’t actually see them. And one day by the river a kingfisher flashed by me – I forgot to tell you. Oh, George, I love it all.’

  She stopped. Her voice had run almost to nothing. She sat down again, rested her chin in her hands. A seriousness was gathering in her face. George’s heart missed a beat. ‘But you know what? This is all the stuff of dreams. It’s not real life, not for me. I’m used to independence, to working, to earning my own living. I hate to admit this, but I’m running out of money. Much though I love it here, much though I’ve loved doing a bit to the whole place for you, it’s time for me to go back to work, earn my way.’

  George was silent for a minute. ‘No,’ he said at last.

  ‘But I must. Be practical.’

  ‘Would there not be a solution …’ George hesitated, at a loss as to how to put the idea that had struck him blindingly. ‘Would there not be a solution if we could formalise things a little?’

  ‘How do you mean, formalise? That’s a civic word I’ve never heard you use.’ She laughed.

  ‘I mean …’ George pulled one of her hands away from her cheek and held it. He needed time, but there was no time. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t have to worry about earning money, working, if you stayed here for ever. I’ve plenty for the two of us.’

  ‘Is that your meaning of formalise?’

  ‘It could be, yes.’ George nodded, smiling. ‘Is it becoming clear to you, what I’m trying to say? That I don’t want you ever to go? I want you to stay here always, as my wife.’

  He saw that this suggestion had the effect of sobering Lily astonishingly fast. His proposal acted as powerfully as black coffee on the alcohol in her blood. First she cradled her head in her hands, tossing it about so that sparks of candlelight swarmed over her hair. Then she looked up, her eyes shut, with the kind of half smile that suggested that, if she gave it full rein, her total happiness would escape.

  ‘Me? A farmer’s wife?’

  For a terrible moment George did not know whether this question meant the absolute impossibility of such a state. Quickly he countered, ‘In a sense. But of course it wouldn’t mean your giving up all the reviewing and writing and teaching and looking’ – they both smiled – ‘that you wanted. Once you were my wife I could let you go for a few days. It wouldn’t be so hard, knowing you were coming back—’

  ‘Oh, George,’ she interrupted, ‘don’t let’s be practical. There’s all the time in the world to arrange that sort of thing. Besides, I love work on the farm. I could do more. I only suggested going back to my kind of work because I was worried—’

  ‘But you’re not any more?’

  ‘No, no. I daresay I could get used to being supported, at least for a while, so long as I was making some useful contribution to your life.’

  ‘So, is that – well, settled?’

  ‘Of course it is. But let’s make it soon. No hanging about. Harvest Festival. What about then?’

  ‘Oh God, I love you, Lily Crichton,’ said George, pulling her towards him.

  For two days George and Lily kept the news of their intended marriage to themselves. Telling Nell, George knew, would not be easy. She would be pleased for him, of course, as would Prodge. But it would change things, and they had already seen, that night at supper, that the Prodgers were shaken by change.

  Procrastination does not make for ease of mind, and after two days of fretting about what words to employ, George set off on foot for the Prodgers’ farm. He calculated that he would arrive at the time Nell normally groomed her horses, and thought that a horse between them might make things easier.

  It was a warm summer’s morning, though drifts of rain, thin as vapour, billowed through the air and touched his clothes with a light sheen, but did not wet them. George strode fast along the edges of several of his own fields until he crossed a stile on to Prodge’s land, every inch of the way so familiar it was burned into his inner eye. He could have walked the whole way in his imagination, never missing a tree, a bush, a length of fencing and its history. This was the short-cut between the farms that he and Prodge and Nell had used as children. This morning, the old feeling of joy, knowing he would see their farm just over the ridge, did not come to him.

  In the yard, he found Nell’s bay gelding looking over the stable door. The door of the second stable was open and Nell, as he knew she would be, was grooming the grey inside. She was a large, dappled mare with a gentle eye. Nell, back to the door, whistling to herself as she ran the dandy brush over the horse’s withers, was unaware of George’s presence for a moment. He stood looking at her: the strong weatherbeaten arms beneath the rolled-up sleeves of her shirt, the powerful shoulders, the uncared for blonde curls snapped back from her face in a rubber band. His heart went into overdrive: he dreaded speaking.

  ‘Nell.’

  She turned her head. Her powerful brush strokes did not stop. ‘George! What’re you doing here so early?’

  ‘I’ve come with news for you.’

  At once she stopped her work, turned to face him. ‘Oh yes? It can only be bad, a voice like that.’

  ‘No. It’s good.’ He gave a half-laugh which, when he met her enquiring eye, petered out. ‘Lily and I are going to be married.’

  As, wretchedly, he looked at her, the solidity of Nell became transparent: he could see a hundred reactions within her, clouding her, confusing, clashing. But she tossed her head brightly.

  ‘When?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Harvest Festival, thereabouts.’

  ‘Well, that’s very, very
good news. Lily’s wonderful. You know how much I like her.’ Her long smile conveyed the real pleasure George’s news gave her. Relief, though not pure, surged through him.

  ‘It’s vital to me that whoever I marry has your approval.’ He tried for lightness. ‘You know how much that means to me.’

  Nell, with a flash of defiance that George found almost unbearably moving, looked him straight in the eye. ‘Do you love her absolutely? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure, yes. I’ve never known anything remotely like this. So I take it to be the real thing.’

  ‘I expect it is. You’re a good judge. You’d know.’

  Nell took a few steps forward, plunging through the bed of straw that came up to her knees. She lifted her arms. George clasped her to him: her head just reached his chest. His chin lay on top of it: they always hugged like this. Her hair smelt of oats and horses. He could feel her inwardly quivering.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she whispered after their long, entwined silence. ‘I’m so glad it’s turned out like this for you.’ She pulled away from him. ‘Would Prodge could be so lucky.’

  ‘He’ll find someone, in that jacket.’

  Nell gave the faintest smile, moved back to her grooming. ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’s over on Mawkin’s Field.’

  ‘I’ll go over there now.’

  ‘And I’d best be getting on. Lot to do before I meet Lily to ride this afternoon – I mean, do you think she’ll still want to?’

  ‘I’m sure she will.’

  ‘Good. And at least as your wife she won’t suddenly disappear. She’ll be here. I’ll have a friend to ride with, a permanent friend.’ She sounded more cheerful.

  ‘Quite,’ said George. ‘I’ll go and find Prodge.’

  Nell nodded at him then turned back to the mare. She began her long brush strokes over the dappled shoulder. Although her gestures – calm, strong, rhythmic – were the same as when George had arrived, there was a hint of disorder now. She moved from the horse’s withers to its hocks, then back again to its neck. George walked away. From a few yards off he turned and glanced back into the stable again. He saw Nell was still brushing, hard.

  George had no time to reflect on their encounter. He found Prodge in the high, narrow pasture that ran from the top of a hill down to the river – Mawkin’s Field, so named because Prodge’s father had once owned an outstanding sheepdog named Mawkin, much loved by the children. The field was where his talents had been discovered as a young dog. When he died, he was buried there in a ceremony of elaborate solemnity devised by the three of them. George remembered it as he hurried towards Prodge. At the burial Nell had brought a wreath of cowslips while Prodge put a bone on the grave. The headstone was financed by both sets of parents. George’s own contribution had been a poem which came to him from nowhere, which he read with unfaltering voice at the end of the service over the small mound of newly dug earth.

  Prodge was standing by a tall hedge running from north to south that divided Mawkin’s from the adjoining pasture. His father had planted it many years ago to provide a windbreak for ewes and lambs. It was a magnificent hedge, dense and strong, towering above the other three boundaries which were purposely kept short to reduce shadow at haymaking.

  ‘I was just wondering,’ he said, ‘when I’ll be able to afford another one of these. I’d like to plant one along Ridge Hill. But to lay it like this one, fence it each side and that – well, you could be looking at near a thousand pounds for a hundred metres. How’m I going to find money like that?’

  George’s mind raced happily from the matter he had come to discuss.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘a good place for another of these would be between Hemp Hill and Lark’s Meadow …’ These two fields were the only ones where George’s land, and Prodge’s rented land, joined. At the suggestion Prodge tossed back his head, a movement so like his sister’s moments ago. He was a proud man. He wanted no help from George nor anyone.

  ‘We could talk about it,’ he said, forced to acknowledge the sense of the idea. ‘Come to think of it, it could be of benefit to both of us. Perhaps we’d find some compromise, the money side of things. What are you doing up here so early?’

  ‘I dropped in on Nell. Had some news for her – for you both.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Lily and I are getting married.’

  Prodge gave a sharp swing of the small scythe he was holding.

  ‘You and Lily are getting married,’ he repeated flatly. ‘Well, what a thing. I suppose not a surprise. That’s good, George. That’ll be good for you. She’s a rare girl.’

  ‘I’m bloody lucky,’ George agreed.

  ‘How did Nell take it?’

  ‘She seemed pleased.’

  ‘Daresay that’s the case. Daresay she is. Though in her heart… Well, you know Nell. All of us brought up together, used to our threesome. Must be a bit of a shock for her. Besides … and she’s never said a word of this to me, but I’ve always imagined, and you know I’m not overburdened when it comes to imagination – that she might have had a secret hope … I mean, she loves you. She’s always loved you.’

  ‘And I love her. Always have, too. Always will. Nothing’ll change, really. Except she’ll have a friend near by – she likes Lily.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s good.’ Prodge screwed up his eyes against a brightening sun. The rain had stopped. The grass was sparkling. ‘Wouldn’t want anything to change too much.’

  ‘It won’t. And you like her?’

  Prodge looked him full in the eye. ‘What I’ve seen of her, she’s a good ‘un. She won me over that day she caught me out in my jacket down by river. She didn’t laugh. Seemed to be all sympathy. Reckon you’ve got a proper one there, George. Sort of thing I’d like to find myself. Not much chance. My congratulations.’

  He moved the short distance between himself and George, held out his hand. The two men shook, something they had never done in their lives before. But it seemed appropriate to both of them. It covered the spell of silence, rampant with different imagings of the future, that fell upon them. Then George said it was high time he got back to work, and Prodge agreed.

  ‘Let’s think about that hedge,’ he said.

  George turned back towards home, his step lighter than it had been on his outward journey. Despite their years of close friendship, there were some things about Prodge and Nell’s hopes and fears that he had never known, and he judged it best to continue in his innocence.

  Prodge stood looking at his friend move quickly into the distance. The scythe hung slack in his hand.

  In accordance with both their wishes, Lily and George’s wedding was a very quiet affair. Lily’s mother and brother were to come, but only two of her oldest friends. The others were scattered too far away. George invited the local farmers, old Mr Anderson and Miss Hollow, and various villagers he had known all his life.

  They were married on a hot day soon after the harvest had been gathered. In the church, where George’s parents were buried, stooks of corn, bunched in the old-fashioned way before combine harvesters changed their shape, were propped up on the altar. The only flowers were poppies. Lily had organised them, in dozens of jam jars and vases, on every available ledge – scarlet, pink, orange against whitewashed stone. On their short honeymoon in the Shetland Isles she confessed her choice of flowers had been a mistake. Unable to withstand the heat, their fragile petals had fallen to the ground, crumpled, making natural confetti on the stone floor. They should have had roses and daisies, Lily said.

  As they walked across the northern treeless hills, wiry with heather, they enjoyed reliving moments of their wedding day, reminding each other of details that had alighted, then flown, at the time. George confessed that in his daze he had scarcely noticed the flowers. His entire concentration, he said, had been on his wife, and the promises he made to her.

  Part Two

  9

  ‘George,’ said Lily, o
ne evening in June, ‘look. Please look.’

  George looked. He saw the transformation she had made in the four years they had been married and stood in silent wonder. Preoccupied with developing the farm, he remembered he had given Lily permission to do what she liked within reason, but had been only half-conscious of diggers and rotavators and vans bearing dozens of plants and young trees. Now, walking behind her through the orchard that long ago had mouldered into a tangle of dead and dying trees, he observed new cherry, apple and plum. In the orderly grass that had replaced muddled undergrowth he saw that buttercups were rampant again, as they had been in his childhood.

  George followed Lily into the garden. There, in what he remembered were previously dark corners, irises flared against the first pale roses. On the south side of the house wistaria that had languished for years had responded to Lily’s severe pruning: now its sweet-smelling mauve pods turned to shift in the slightest breeze, sashayed against the grey stone walls. The lawn was mown, box hedges trimmed, brick paths weeded. Yes, he had seen Lily mowing, trimming and weeding from time to time. He had been aware of gradual change. But no, he had not really looked as she now required him to do.

  ‘Astonishing,’ he said. They sat on the bench beneath the sitting-room window. Before them the garden stretched as far as a beautifully laid hawthorn hedge (Ben, of late, had become a keen and skilled hedger). Beyond that, fields rose up the hill where a flock of sheep were grazing.

  ‘A garden’s never finished, of course,’ said Lily. ‘But I think the major part of the work’s complete – the clearing, the structure. But there’s plenty still to be done. You should see my planting list for this autumn.’ She paused. ‘I’m glad I’ve got you to take it all in at last,’ she added. An almost imperceptible accusation tightened her comment.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been aware … of course I’ve been aware.’ George put a hand on her knee. ‘I’ve been so totally taken up with the farm. But that’s no excuse. I should have told you a thousand times how much I love all you’ve done to this place. Absolute wonders, really.’