by Angela Huth
George remembered that a year after their wedding the thought had come to him – he remembered exactly the moment: he was shoving a bull calf up the ramp of the trailer – that perhaps what Lily wanted, needed, was a child. He had put this to her, excited by the idea. But no, she said: she wanted to keep to their previous agreement – no children for five years so that they could have a period of married life to themselves. He had understood, and said no more about it.
He remembered, too, one fine summer day when, eating his lunch in silent haste, he had suddenly paused and asked if there was anything she would like. Surprised by the question, Lily assumed a look of mock seriousness.
‘I think I’m almost perfectly provided for,’ she said, ‘but I could do with a deckchair.’
‘A deckchair?’
‘I have this fantasy, sometimes: at the end of an afternoon’s gardening I’d like to sit under the apple tree with my book. But there’s nothing to sit on.’
‘A very modest fantasy,’ said George, getting up to leave, his moment of acute consideration over. ‘We used to have plenty of deckchairs. All rotted and thrown out, I suppose. I’ll see what I can do.’
Although several weeks went by and no deckchairs appeared, Lily did not mention the matter again. George had more pressing matters to deal with than garden furniture. But she did observe that more frequently than usual he disappeared in the car, sometimes for two or three hours at a time, leaving Saul and Ben to manage without him. He never said where he had been.
‘Where do you keep going?’ Lily asked at last, ‘not on market day? A mistress on the moor? It’s so unlike you to abandon your share of the work.’
George smiled. ‘Skiving for a good cause,’ he said. ‘You might be surprised to hear this, but I’m looking.’
A few days later he hitched the trailer to the jeep and returned with a large, covered object. He told Lily to stay in the house till he called. She saw Saul and Ben, faces tight with conspiracy, hurry to help him unload.
In the evening George suggested they should make their way to the apple tree. There, positioned precisely so that from its seat was a view of both the house and the fields beyond, was an old rattan swinging garden seat for two. Both its awning and its cushions were faded blue stripes, so pale they were no more than ghost stripes. Lily, enchanted, flung herself down on one end, pushed off with her foot and set it moving. George sat beside her.
‘I really looked,’ he said. ‘That’s why it’s taken so long. Catalogues, auctions, antique shops. I was about to despair when an old girl in Somerset answered my plea in one of the local papers. Seemed she’d lived in India at the time of the Raj. Brought back tons of her stuff when she came home in the forties. It was made out there. Like it? You could always have new cushions.’
‘Never,’ said Lily. ‘It’s perfect. Thank you for taking so much trouble to find the perfect thing.’
On summer evenings, they often swung together on the Raj seat after supper till it was dark. At other times, when George was busy, Lily would swing alone, back and forth, while George, in his study working on the papers, would move a little from side to side in his father’s old office chair – both, in their separate ways, lulled by the rhythm.
Now, as he sat at the kitchen table, eyes on the silent figure of his wife, George could feel the emptiness in his hand where she had snatched her own away from him at supper. The echoes of that emptiness still ran along his fingers, chilling, like snow. Lily’s movement had been swift and firm, a matter of a moment, and possibly for practical purposes – she had then lifted a jug of water. But George thought not. It had been an almost imperceptible rejection, but firm of purpose. Of that he was certain.
In the second two years of their marriage the acute happiness that Lily had at first flaunted with such fervour, appeared very slightly to be on the wane. There were days when she laughed a little less, was briefly irritated by a domestic problem, declared an unusual tiredness and slept for an hour in the afternoon. On occasion, when George came into the kitchen in the evening and, as always, drew her to him, her response was dulled: she would kiss him quickly and push him away as if their contact was of no consequence and she wanted to be getting on with something else. Sometimes, when he was explaining a farming matter to her or describing childhood experiences with Prodge and Nell, she would turn her head away, the customary light of interest gone from her eyes. Even in bed, from time to time, her eagerness seemed subdued. These small changes now made pinpricks in George’s heart, but he made no mention of them. His belief was not to ask questions if there was any risk of unearthing things that might unsettle their life. Besides, he reckoned, most of Lily’s cool gestures were probably not caused by anything he had done (surely his uxoriousness was almost faultless) but the result of the general fluctuations of mood that beset most women.
At some point – it must have been winter: he remembered he was scraping mud from his boots – it occurred to him to ask Lily again if there was anything she would like. Once more, she was puzzled.
‘No, why?’ she said.
‘Anything to ease the winter months, to entertain you apart from books and music, the long evenings?’
‘I suppose a colour television would be an asset,’ she answered, having thought for a while. ‘I’d like occasionally to watch the news and the odd play. Our set only provides pictures of fog.’
‘Good idea.’ George cursed himself for not having thought of this before.
Some days later he came in with a small but modern television and a video. He also brought home a hand-made reed basket which some weeks before Lily had admired in the farmers’ market, filled with videos of the sort of films that were never shown outside London.
‘And,’ he said, ‘here’s a catalogue with a huge list of French and Italian films I know you like, so you can send off for them whenever you want.’
Lily picked up a card that George had stuck among the videos. I hereunto declare, he had written, that, whenever possible, Farmer Elkin will join his wife viewing films at least once a week. The whole idea comes with all my love. Lily laughed, hugged him.
‘If I asked for a puppy you’d bring back an elephant,’ she said. ‘Your imaginings always go further than mine. I love your surprises.’
George had continued to surprise Lily from time to time: not through expensive purchases, but with unexpected treats or presents that had taken him a long time to plan. Her reactions reminded him of his mother’s delight when his father would come home with a hideous old teapot, or a threadbare Eastern carpet that had taken his fancy. He reckoned surprising must be in his genes, but he was better at it than his father, and Lily’s pleasure was always genuine. His mother’s had been no more than a convincing act. All the same, George remained concerned that there was nothing he could do to recapture the old constancy of Lily’s apparent contentedness. She seemed to have slipped down a few notches in the scale of happiness and George was loath to enquire why.
Trouble was, he supposed, he was so busy with the farm and the ever-increasing paperwork that he was not the ideal husband. But he had not been too worried: after all, the exuberant heights of a honeymoon were bound not to last. For a while their own rapture had far exceeded any expectations. It was hardly surprising their life had settled down, now, into the duller hum of daily life, with all the external forces that daily rasp. For the majority of time there was so little reason to fear all was not well with Lily that George’s occasional suspicions were eradicated. In the last three months, since she had turned her attentions to the garden, a project so wholly engaging that nothing had diverted her, she had been shimmering with energy, plans, laughter. Keeping him awake far into the night.
So it was all the more a shock, her small withdrawal tonight. George’s conscience, already battered by his reflections in the orchard, was in no state to accommodate more regrets. And yet there they were, pressing upon him: perhaps he should ask what was assailing her, what was the reason for the dimming of her joy. But
even as he tried to persuade himself, he could hear her scoffing laugh, her insistence that he was imagining things. Occasionally, she would say, she had every right to be out of sorts, and she was fine, happy as ever. That was it: her voice in his head spoke strongly. She was fine, Lily. His concerns were surely unfounded. Any form of change was too appalling to contemplate. Tides in the affairs of married couples constantly shifted: he knew that, and could accept it. What he could not conceive of was any change in the depth of their love, or the extraordinary joy of their life on the farm.
Late, Lily put down her book. She smiled, held out a hand, but George thought he saw an emptiness behind her eyes that alarmed him. He saw that she was heavy with sadness that she did not want questioned.
‘I’d like to come to the market with you in the morning,’ she said, ‘see the bull calves go.’
George was aware that he looked surprised. He could not believe that calves were uppermost in her mind. But then how wrong we are, over and over again, in guessing the thoughts of those nearest to us.
‘Of course.’ George smiled. ‘Though you know what market day is – a lot of hanging about.’
‘I’d just like to be with you.’
So it wasn’t only the calves. George, encouraged, put out the lights. Arm in arm they made their way through the shallow darkness to the stairs. Not for a long time had George been so eager for a day to end, or so impatient for the morning.
10
‘Happiness is so difficult,’ said George at breakfast next morning. ‘Difficult to convey, difficult to contain, difficult to preserve, isn’t it?’ He’d been thinking about it for many hours of the night. But as he saw the expression of normal joy in Lily’s eyes shrink to nothing, he realised he’d begun the day with a mistake. He should not have mentioned so delicate a subject at this time of the morning. New regret added to old.
‘It is,’ said Lily, tightly. ‘What time are we leaving?’
‘Soon as we’ve finished.’ His foolishness had probably spoilt the day.
They drove to the market in silence. Fierce summer rain fell from muddied skies. Clouds fretted this way and that, constantly changing direction, their course confused by cross-winds. When they arrived, Lily changed her mind about wanting to see the bull calves sold. She picked up her basket and said she was off to shop. George suggested they should meet at the Farmers’ Rest for lunch. What was the matter with her? He felt queasy with alarm.
He went to find Saul, who had transported the calves earlier. As he made his way through the pens it seemed to him that the place was unusually lacking in cheer this morning. Maybe it was the rain, darkening battered jackets and dripping from sodden hats, that gave this impression. But no: farmers this dry summer would welcome a shower. Maybe it was his imagination. In his anxiety about Lily’s strange mood George could not be sure of his judgement. But he was pretty certain the melancholy air was real. Men’s faces were closed, their eyes hard with the kind of anxiety that has not yet turned to resignation. Greetings between them were curt, gruff. There was none of the usual banter. What was it all about?
George came to the pen where his own calves innocently awaited their future, their dark eyes more curious than anxious. A man was leaning on the rails. He appeared to be studying them, though his frown indicated that his mind was not entirely on the animals before him. It was Prodge.
‘Fine lot: what d’you think?’ asked George. In the noise of lowing cattle he could not be sure his question was heard. Prodge rose from his leaning position, faced George.
‘Magnificent,’ he said.
Prodge, like so many others, was bleak of expression. Raindrops stuttered down the cracked wax of his jacket. Hatless, his blond hair was clamped darkly to his skull.
‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong with everyone?’ George asked.
‘You mean you didn’t seen the telly last night?’
‘No:
‘God Almighty. First pictures of a cow skittering all over the place, legs crumpling beneath it, falling.’ He shook his head. ‘Never seen anything like it. This BSE business is going to slaughter the lot of us, mark my words.’
‘Christ,’ said George. A picture of a mass cull of cattle, and the effect this would have on thousands of livelihoods, on the future of farming itself, notched through his mind. He felt the skin of his face tightening on the bones, and knew then that his expression was now identical to that of his comrades: fear and dread united them.
‘You’ve heard?’ At lunchtime Lily was waiting for George in the bar of the pub. She could tell at once from his face that he had. ‘We should have been watching the news.’
‘I daresay the pictures will be repeated a good many times,’ said George.
‘What do we do?’
‘Not much we can do.’ George sat down beside her. ‘Just pray.’
‘But it’s inconceivable that after years and years of hard work whole herds of cattle could be wiped out, isn’t it?’
‘I hope to God it won’t come to that.’ In his heart George thought that it probably would. He reflected how swiftly the difficulties of happiness, idly dwelt on just hours ago, were now replaced by misgivings of a quite different and more terrifying order. He also noted that Lily, despite her concern, was still cool, and mysteriously aloof. He was reminded of that first long-ago picnic, when neither of them meant anything to the other. Fear for their own future suddenly added to his fear for British farmers. He bowed his head, silent.
Three days later Prodge rang and asked George to come over as soon as possible. He would not say why.
George arrived just after the afternoon milking. The cows were in the yard waiting to go back to their pasture. Prodge, head on his arms, which were folded on the top rail, was studying them with such intense concentration that he did not hear George approach. George touched him on the shoulder. Prodge turned slowly He was pale. He was fighting off a bad dream.
‘So what’s up?’
‘Thanks for coming. I want you to look at Bessie.’ He pointed to a large cow near to them, one of the largest in the herd. George studied the animal as carefully as he could. She turned her great head towards the two men, perhaps aware of the acute observation. Her navy eyes, spiked with reflections from her pale lashes, regarded them patiently. She swished her tail: gave a slow, milky sigh. George smelt her breath, carried to him on the air of the sigh. Then she turned away, the jigsaw pattern of her black and white hide merging into the op-art confusion of the rest of the herd.
‘What seems to be the trouble? She looks all right to me.’
‘I don’t know. Can’t put my finger on it. Just have a feeling.’
‘What are the signs?’
‘Nothing very specific. She seemed a bit restless last night. Bit agitated.’
‘With this scare, it’s easy to imagine signs when you’re half expecting the worst.’
‘Perhaps that’s it. But Bessie’s a calm bugger. Dozy, even. My best milker. So – I don’t know. Maybe it’s all in my mind, like you say’
‘I’m no judge, Prodge. You know much more about cows than me. As far as I can see, she’s fine.’
Nell appeared on the far side of the pen, opened the gate. The cows hustled out, eager to return to grass. Their huge udders now relieved of milk, there was a lightness of being among them as some of them broke into a few trotting steps. On their way in to be milked the general air was quite different: slow, heavy, sloomy. While George contemplated their general mood of post-milking gaiety, Prodge’s eyes anxiously roved over every cow as they filed through the gate.
‘I can’t be sure,’ he said again, when the last one was gone. ‘But I’ve heard say there are some farmers see a few bad signs and quickly sell the animal. I don’t want to be accused of anything like that. If one of my animals goes down, I want it slaughtered straight away’
‘Of course. Just keep a close eye on them. Any more worries, call the vet.’
‘That I will,’ said Prodge. ‘Thanks for coming up
. I better go and give Nell a hand.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Lily all right?’
‘Lily’s fine.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw her and Nell on a hay bale the other day, jabbering sixteen to the dozen. Long faces, I thought. But then all this worry colours everything. Every day, there’s this cloud.’
George clenched his fist and tapped Prodge on the forearm – a gesture he had inherited from his father that was designed to comfort without words. But Prodge could not smile. He turned away to follow his cows.
Halfway up the hill, on his way back home, George stopped the car and got out. He leaned over a gate and looked down on the meadow where Prodge’s cows were now grazing, spaces between them. Later, lying down to chew the cud, they would close ranks, move nearer to each other. The rhythm of their day, only briefly stirred by calving, made a discipline that all farmers had to abide by. For it suddenly to be snatched away would be unthinkable.
George could see the tiny figures of Prodge and Nell making their way back to the farm. Prodge had his arm round Nell’s shoulder, a gesture so unusual it could only have been inspired by the worry they both felt. And Prodge’s apprehension had affected George, though he tried to fight it, tried to tell himself there was nothing whatsoever the matter with Bessie. Thousands of farmers round the country must be going through the same thing – anxiously seeing signs that were not there. George looked from the cows to the landscape: Prodge’s rented land, cultivated with such pride and skill by one so young. God forbid that his friend’s life-work should be threatened. Renewing his efforts to shake off such morbid thoughts, he drove quickly home. There, he went straight to the field where his own cattle grazed. He began slowly to look over the entire hulk of each animal – though he knew Saul and Ben, with eyes far more expert than his own, had been doing this every day since the BSE scare began. As far as he could see, they were fine. His worry was for Prodge and, behind that, for Lily. Quiet, pale, strange Lily.