Of Love and Slaughter

by Angela Huth

  Anyhow: that terrible day. I was riding with Nell, whom I’ve grown to love. Although we never talked about what has led up to this, I think she had some inkling. I think, if you try to explain to her, she will understand. We were riding along High Ridge, looking down into the valley, and it had just stopped raining. Light April rain. The sun came out. We both looked for a rainbow. Unsurprisingly, we found one. You know me: very Wordsworthian on such occasions – heart leaping up and all that. But my heart didn’t leap up: it didn’t stir. The rainbow didn’t touch me. Nor did the thought of being home within the hour, reading a chapter of my book before you came in for supper. I was stone within: stone, stone, stone. I remember Nell said I had suddenly gone very pale. Was I all right? she asked. Of course I assured her I was.

  For me it was the most weird and horrible evening, though I don’t think you noticed anything was amiss. I assumed I was coming down with some strange virus, and would be all right in the morning, or in a few days. But that was not the case. The stone stayed within me. Intellectually I could see with absolute clarity, still, all the myriad things that used to make my heart race with wild joy – but all I could now feel was how they didn’t any more. You, material things, landscape, anticipation of exciting future plans – nothing, nothing touched me any more. At times I thought I was going mad. At times I thought, well, this is the result of being so over-the-top happy for so long: my turn to be drained of any kind of sensation – including happiness. I was just a walking zombie: still am.

  I tried all sorts of remedies. I returned to look at pictures that used to make me cry – Van Gogh’s windblown cypresses. I returned to all the poetry I loved, I went for endless walks, as you know, hoping some wildflower or the song of a meadow pipit would stir something within me. But nothing, nothing, nothing. I just looked, listened, read – and nothing. Then I thought that working really hard, physically, might help, and I began on the garden. And that’s why you caught me sometimes lugging pitchforks of manure, or heaving bales of straw, ‘helping’ Saul and Ben when there was no need. I thought physical exhaustion might induce sensation to trickle back. But it didn’t. The terrifying stone within remains unmovable, and I hope you will understand, and forgive, if I try the last solution I believe is left to me: going away from all I know. I’m sure, at the very least, that I will feel homesick. Longing to be with you at home will course through my veins, and that could be the beginning of the melting of the stone.

  You will think my decision is the most selfish, unkind and unreasonable act, and I don’t blame you. You will blame yourself for not having observed the torment going on within me, though I did my best to disguise it. You will be rightly angry with me for not having at least tried to explain. You may never forgive me, never want me back. If you stop loving me – God forbid that that will ever happen – then that is a risk I must take. I ask only that you don’t try to find me, or get in touch – let me do it my own strange way, which will be as hard for me as it is for you. I promise to keep you posted from time to time, and please try to understand. It will only be for a while, God willing.

  My love to Nell and Prodge. My love to you, always.

  Your wife, Lily.

  George had to read many of the sentences several times to attempt to understand their meaning. The whole letter seemed to him to be a hopeless knitting together of thoughts which, in his shocked state, he could not begin to unravel. He let the pages fall to the ground when he had finished reading them over and over – so often that he knew them almost by heart – but still it all made no sense. He continued to sit in his chair, unaware of the passing of the hours, till dawn lighted the windows.

  Then George got up and made himself a pot of strong coffee. Strangely, he felt physically buoyant. The adrenalin that comes from a sleepless night, provoking false energy for the first few hours of the new day, was upon him. Even his mind, battered by a night of remembrance, confusion and self-recrimination, was far from flayed: the incredulity he felt must be nature’s protection for a while, he thought, just as a man gunned down does not immediately feel the agony of his wound. In a strange way, ironically, he knew now what Lily meant by numbness, the stone of unfeeling, though he knew that in his own case it would not last for long.

  He returned to his chair with his coffee, picked up the scattered sheets of the letter and read it yet again. This time it made even less sense than before, but he had not the heart to keep trying to understand. Only one thing was clear in his mind: he would, for the love of her, do what Lily asked. He would not try to pursue her, find her. He would try to believe that she was safe, as she promised she would be. He would pray for patience. He would pray for her to return, restored, very soon, he would wait.

  When the sun had risen George telephoned the Prodgers. Nell answered.

  ‘Oh, George,’ she said at once. ‘It’s over: she’s gone.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘What do you mean, how did I know?’ She sounded confused. ‘You were here. You saw … When you left the Ministry vet arrived. Instant verdict. And Prodge was right. They’re going to cut off her head—’

  ‘Oh, you mean Bessie.’ George drew himself back from some quite different place. Fragments of yesterday returned: Prodge, Bessie, BSE. ‘I’m sorry’

  ‘What did you think I meant? You sound very odd, George.’

  ‘No. It’s just that… Lily’s gone too.’

  ‘Lily?’

  ‘When I got back from you I found this long rambling letter. Can’t make much sense of it.’

  ‘Christ. I had a feeling. I thought one day she just might—’

  ‘What made you think that? What, what—? Tell me, what, please—’

  ‘George, stay where you are. I’m coming over. With you in five minutes.’

  ‘Why?’ George said out loud as he put down the telephone. The sun was now so bright that he had to screw up his eyes as he looked out at Lily’s garden. He remembered she had mentioned she was going to weed the border today. Perhaps that was still so. Perhaps he would come back at lunchtime and find her crouched over the weeds having thought better about leaving. It would be so unlike her to abandon her garden.

  11

  Five minutes later George heard a car draw up in the yard. In his state of shock he was not thinking clearly, but it did occur to him that Nell had come unusually fast for so notoriously slow a driver.

  It was not Nell but a small white Ford. Beside it stood a thin man of uncertain age whose pallor suggested he spent much of his time in the car. He wore a cheap grey suit and the kind of so-called ‘fashion’ shoes that would have earned Lily’s deepest scorn. A man whose idea of the country was plainly a theme park twenty miles from London, there was no doubt that he found the Elkin farm, so far from civilisation, an alien place. He took a file from the car and undipped a biro from his top pocket. This was also inhabited by a blazing yellow handkerchief folded into a lethal point. He looked up at the sky, frowned, opened the file and read. Or pretended to read. From his hidden view George guessed the visitor might be playing for time. Steadying himself before the journey across the treacheries of the yard to the house.

  What right had this man, a born double-glazing salesman if ever there was one, to appear at this terrible moment? Irrational rage rose within George, almost choking him. He moved outside the door. The visitor looked up from the notes he was studying and gave a stiff little wave. His hand was a solid piece of inhuman material, like the hand of an Action Man doll.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, and looked down at the ground he would have to negotiate to reach his target. The yard, George was pleased to see, had not been scraped today. There were stretches of mud and slurry, not yet dried out by the sun, of menacing glitter. The cobbles looked slippery. There was a pile of horse shit from Nell’s last visit which Lily must have intended for her roses. Looking at the stranger (darling Lily, I’m looking) George saw that through his eyes the yard was a plain of terrible hazards.

  ‘Boots?’ he said.
r />   The man shrugged. He had not come equipped with boots. Boots were not required on his suburban patio. He had never been advised by the Ministry that boots were a necessity. The Prime Minister himself (very occasionally, very briefly and for public relations reasons only) visited farms without boots. No farmer was rude enough to suggest to him that a pair of boots would facilitate his way over to the cowshed. In fact rumour round the office said the PM never went within twenty yards of an actual cow, pig or sheep. And on a sunny day like this, in any case, you’d expect farm muck would have dried up. Any farmer worth his salt would have cleaned his yard, not caused all this hassle, all this dilemma when an official – only doing his duty, mind – came to call. The man hated the country, farms, animals, animal shit, the smell of dung and silage with his whole being – George could see all that, and smiled.

  I’m from the Ministry’ The man looked down at his shoes again, reckoning they’d have to be sacrificed.

  Something to do with TB registration? BSE? The reason for his visit held no interest for George. The very sight of the country-hating MAFF representative further enraged him almost to the point of incoherence. He heard himself bellowing.

  ‘I don’t care who the fuck you are – you can’t just turn up unannounced and expect attention. My neighbour’s cow has just been slaughtered, my wife has just left and I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of here as quickly as possible. Save your shoes!’

  George watched the MAFF man’s struggle with his conscience slink across his unmemorable features. But he was not one for a confrontation.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Understood. Another time. Cheers.’ Speeded by relief, he got back into the car and drove away.

  Ten minutes later Nell found George sitting at the kitchen table staring out of the window. For two or three minutes the appearance of the absurd man from the Ministry had deflected the pain of Lily’s departure. Now here it was again: raw, tangible, activating the loathsome magic of making unrecognisable all that was familiar.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Nell.

  ‘Don’t ask me to try to explain Lily’s reasons,’ said George, ‘because I can’t. Maybe she’s having some sort of breakdown. Maybe I should have seen it coming. Did she say nothing to you that gave some clue as to what was on her mind?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Nell sat down. ‘As I said yesterday afternoon, I had the impression she wasn’t her usual self, recently. Vivacity gone. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Just a general sort of lowering of spirits, perhaps. Naturally I didn’t ask her if anything was the matter. That wasn’t our way, really. We talked about horses and farming things. She liked to learn about things that are second nature to me – harvesting, sowing, silage baling, everything. She said her grandmother had been a land girl not far from here in the war – a funny name, she had: Ag, or something. Anyhow, she’d loved her time working on the farm with two other girls, and told wonderful stories about what went on. Lily felt she’d missed out on country life, and now she was married to you she wanted to catch up. She seemed to feel very passionately about the erosion of the country, the plans for millions of new houses to be built in the south and so on, and she was obviously affected deeply by the landscape. Sometimes, on our rides, she’d pull up and say, “Look, Nell.” I’d look, and see some stretch of land I’ve known and loved all my life. But I could see that for her the view wasn’t just a good place for a postcard, it produced something spiritual, something elevating, like music does for some people. I suppose you could say that she’s sentimental about the country in a way that those of us who’ve lived close to the land all our lives are not. I think she was aware of that herself – one of the reasons she was so keen to learn the hard facts, see how farming works, experience at least some of the hardships.’

  Nell paused to smile.

  ‘And then she used to love stories about our childhood, about what the three of us got up to. “What was George like as a boy?” she was always asking. God knows if I gave an accurate picture. I think she has learnt far more about us than I ever did about her. She rarely talked about herself, except to say that she’d found it very hard to work out what exactly she’d like to do in the art world. But she also said that since your marriage, and coming here, she thought about it less and less. Being a farmer’s wife was all she wanted, she said.’

  ‘It’s beyond me,’ said George. ‘Maybe I’ll wake up one morning and it’ll all be clear. Why did she want to leave just because … ? Surely the best place to be, when darkness strikes … I don’t know, Nell. We never quarrelled. We were so happy, I thought. I feel completely—’

  ‘Prodge is pretty low, too,’ Nell interrupted. ‘Not just Bessie. The whole future. Just as everything was going so well.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been … all this. I’ll ring him.’

  ‘You know what he said last night? He said: d’you remember when our bull calves fetched £150 each? They’re worth nothing, now. So his idea of buying the bike will have to go. He’s been saving for years. We need those savings. It’s the end of the good times for farming, he said. I pointed out to him that after the ‘67 outbreak of foot and mouth things got going again, did well, didn’t they? Look at you, at us. We can’t complain. But this time – this time it isn’t just BSE that’ll finish us. There’s so much else that’s been creeping up to the detriment of farmers and country life in general.’

  ‘I fear you’re right,’ said George.

  ‘Poor Prodge. He was so pleased, getting the jacket. He’ll never get his bike now.’

  They smiled wanly at each other – two people in desperate want of something to smile at – and then Nell left, promising she would return as often as she was wanted.

  But the days of real smiling were over. ‘“As high as we have risen in delight, in our dejection do we sink as low.” That’s the bugger of it,’ George said to himself. To fight his dejection, he worked harder than he ever had before, pushing himself to extremes of fatigue. He was forced to spend much longer hours at his desk, giving precious time, when he should have been helping on the farm, to studying reports written by bureaucrats who sledge-hammered language into near incomprehensible demands. A dozen times a day George was frustrated and enraged by their ungrammatical verbiage. Why was it not imperative for officials, whose job it was to compose instructions, to be compelled to take a course in concise and simple English? Maddened by the anguish they caused, when at last he could leave his desk George found the physical acts of heaving, scraping, weighing lambs, shovelling slurry, the never-ending job of feeding the animals went some way towards dulling the emptiness for as long as the job took. Then the sensation of burning ice within him would flare up again. Much of the time he felt faintly nauseous, had no appetite. He was conscious of losing weight.

  What George most dreaded was being in the house alone. Before the arrival of Lily, before he loved her, he had enjoyed its emptiness. The pleasures of solitude increased. But when Lily had come into his life, she had transformed the house. She brought life to it, reminding him how it had been when he was a child – his mother had had the same talent for enlivening a place. Without her presence to fire them, its delights were as nothing. He was grateful only for its familiarity. To maintain that small comfort, George left everything exactly as Lily had arranged it. He left her papers on the desk, a forgotten hairbrush on the dressing-table. He did not remove the few clothes still hanging in the spare-room cupboard. When he had first opened the door, expecting to find nothing, the faded-rose smell of her – the scent that lived on the skin of her neck – swung out at him from three light dresses. He remembered their skirts dancing about as she hurried across the lawn, or the kitchen. Now they hung dead. Unnerved by their stillness, wondering whether to interpret them as a sign of intended return, George took up a bunch of flowered voile between his thumb and finger, felt it. It did not occur to him to move them.

  His wish to keep everything precisely as Lily had left it was not just for his own benefit. Shou
ld she come back, he wanted her to find everything untouched. That would convey what her absence had meant – not that he wanted ever to burden her with guilt about his misery. Flowers on the kitchen table were the only change he could allow – or rather, no flowers. George was not a man who could contemplate plucking tulips or roses, plumping them into a jug to lean on the fan-leaves of alchemilla mollis. So once Lily’s last jug of late tulips had died – their petals scrolled back, their remembrance of pink so faded it might never have been – the table remained without flowers. And fearful of resuming the pattern of life before marriage, George refused Dusty’s offer to cook for him on a regular basis. After Lily’s magically light food, he had no heart for Dusty’s solid pies. He fended for himself, in the way that men alone often do. He would grill a pork or lamb chop, eat it with a baked potato (if he remembered to put one in the oven in time) and frozen peas whose brilliant green hurt his eyes. Picking at his food, he would eat his supper listening to the fat tick of the kitchen clock, willing the telephone to ring, willing the sound of Lily’s car drawing up in the yard. But the silence persisted. Night after night it spread through the house, chased him upstairs, along the passage past the bad pictures that made Lily laugh and scoff – and into their aching bedroom. Physically as exhausted as he could ever remember, he would quickly fall into sleep shredded with nightmares, and awake unrestored.

  The length of Lily’s absence was imprecise in George’s mind. He knew it was stretching on, but unless he sat down with his diary he could not be certain how many days and weeks she had been away. All he knew for sure was that summer was closing in. The silage had been baled: it was time now to cut the grass. George fastened the mower to the tractor and set off for the first of the hay fields.