*
He didn’t recognise the doctor when he went in, a woman, when he’d been almost certain his doctor was a man. She shook his hand firmly, told him her name and sat down, half hidden by a computer screen.
‘Fertility test,’ she said. ‘Requested November last year.’
‘Um, yes,’ he said.
‘Carried out at the VU hospital.’
‘Is this an exam?’ he asked.
‘Sorry?’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m familiarising myself with your history.’
‘A box landed on my foot. A very heavy box.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I mean…’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘I just told you my name.’
‘Yes, I heard you, but my doctor has a different name.’
‘Since 1 January this has been a group practice. That means that several –’
‘I know what a group practice is.’
‘Your foot, you said.’
‘Yes.’ He pulled off his shoe and sock.
‘Could you come over here and sit on the bed, please?’
While the doctor examined his foot, and none too gently, he tried to read the computer screen over her head. The bed was too far from the desk. I must be less irritable, he thought. Minutes later he was sitting opposite her again. She wrote a referral.
‘Back to the VU?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s easiest.’
‘I think it’s just severe bruising, but I don’t have X-ray eyes.’
‘No,’ he said.
She handed him the letter. ‘You can go straight there.’
‘That information,’ he said.
‘Yes?’
‘Is that just mine or is it ours…together?’
The doctor peered at the screen. ‘Everyone living at your address. For instance, it says here that your wife – or girlfriend – also had a fertility test.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said.
She stared at the screen and either typed something or used the arrow keys; he couldn’t see. ‘July.’ She read something, then met his gaze directly. ‘How is she now? In the middle of treatment?’
‘It’s going OK,’ he said.
‘It’s not often that something else shows up during a fertility test. They’re not looking for that kind of thing.’
‘No,’ he said. Keep talking, he thought. Please, keep talking.
She was still staring straight at him. ‘You don’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, do you?’
‘No. Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t say anything else. I’m afraid I’ve said too much already.’
‘She’s my wife!’ he said.
‘Yes. That’s what makes it so peculiar. Your not knowing.’
28
Mist. The world stood still. There was hardly any noise, even the stream sounded as if the water was being sieved through gauze. She was working in the garden all the same. The first alder was now cut back completely and she had already lopped a couple of thick branches off the second. She set about it very calmly. When she felt that she was tiring, she carefully climbed down off the kitchen chair and went inside to sit for a while in front of the cooker. It was only after drinking a cup of tea, having a snack and smoking a cigarette that she went out again. She stripped the side twigs off the branches and stacked them against the garden wall on the short side of the lawn. In weather like this, Dickinson would have sat inside coughing and sighing, she thought, writing about bright spring days and the first bee. The sawing was easier now she’d learnt to let the saw do the work. The light was on in the pigsty, the door open; it looked warm in there. The diffuse glow in the mist made her think of donkeys and oxen standing round a crib. Keep sawing like that, she thought. Very calmly, in a small world, all sound muffled. Working outside, she imagined the kitchen table with the map on it and a new attempt at a garden design, which made her think of Monday and driving to Caernarfon, where she could buy coloured pencils. And another shop where she planned to buy a TV: the nights really were getting very long now and she wanted to be able to empty her mind watching a gardening or an antiques programme, or that BBC series about people who want to move from the city to the country and call in the presenters’ help.
*
As she was carrying the umpteenth branch over to the garden wall, someone vaulted it in a swirl of wet air. It was like the jump happened in slow motion, perhaps because of the large rucksack the man was carrying. He landed on the pile of branches, lost his balance and slid sideways. That too seemed slower than normal, reminding her of a gymnast doing a floor exercise. He struggled to right himself, clutching his left wrist. She stopped where she was.
‘Oh,’ he said. It wasn’t a man, more a boy.
‘Have you hurt yourself?’ she asked.
‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘At least…’
She dropped the branch and walked up to him.
‘Bradwen,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘That’s my name.’ He held out a hand.
She put her hand in his and said, ‘Emilie,’ pronouncing it the Dutch way.
‘Is this your garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you German?’
‘What is it with you people? Can’t anyone here tell the difference between Dutch and German?’
‘Sorry.’ He rolled his Rs.
‘It doesn’t matter. But it is peculiar.’ She was still holding his hand. He was wearing a woolly hat and he squinted. Only slightly, but enough to be confusing. ‘Have you hurt your wrist?’
‘Yes.’
She removed her hand. ‘Would you like to sit down for a minute?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Come inside then. I’ll make some coffee.’
‘Sam!’ the boy shouted.
A dog jumped over the low wall. Like its master it landed on the branches, and like its master’s, its feet slid out from under it. It scrambled back up.
‘A dog,’ she said.
‘Sam,’ the boy said. ‘That’s my mate.’
‘Hello, Sam,’ she said.
The dog sniffed her outstretched hand and licked it.
‘He likes you,’ the boy said.
She gripped the animal under its chin and looked into its eyes. ‘I like him too.’ The dog pulled his head free.
‘Nice,’ said the boy.
‘Coffee,’ she said.
*
The boy had put his rucksack under the clock and taken off his hat, revealing thick black hair. He didn’t run his fingers through it. The dog lay on the floor against the cooker and let out the occasional, contented sigh. She had made some coffee and lit a couple of candles on the windowsill above the sink. The sun was already low. She had cut some bread and made a cheese sandwich for the boy. ‘Thank you, Emily,’ he said when she put the plate down on the table in front of him, pronouncing it the English way. What difference does it make? she thought. He’ll be gone again soon. Now he’d finished the sandwich and drunk a second cup of coffee. He hadn’t spoken while eating and drinking. He’d taken his hiking boots off at the front door; there was a sweet smell in the kitchen.
‘I’d better be off,’ he said. ‘It’s getting dark.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘There’s a bed and breakfast a bit further along.’
‘How much further?’
He reached over to his rucksack and pulled out a map. The very same map she’d taken off the table earlier, folded and laid on the worktop, though his had been used a lot more. The stiff paper had already turned soft. He unfolded it and ran his index finger over it. He had sinewy hands with broad thumbs, a little dirty.
‘Two or three miles.’
‘It will be pitch black by that time,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Do they know you’re coming?’
&
nbsp; ‘No, I haven’t rung yet.’ He thought about it. ‘Usually I ring up around twelve, after I’ve walked a couple of hours. Not today. I don’t know why.’
‘If necessary, you can sleep here,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to. There’s a divan in the study.’
The dog yawned.
‘Sam thinks it’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘He’s nice and warm there.’
‘It’s settled then.’
‘Do you live here alone?’
‘Yes.’
*
The boy had a bath while she cooked a meal. The dog had slipped away from his warm spot in front of the cooker and when she quietly climbed the first half of the staircase she saw him lying in front of the closed bathroom door. He raised his head and watched her attentively. She shook her head and went downstairs again and the dog followed her. Strange, how easily the boy and the dog adjusted to this house. She put a few more logs in the stove in the living room. She stirred the soup. The dog lay down with its back against the cooker. She opened a bottle of red wine. The clock ticked sharply, the geese clucked softly.
29
‘I’m mapping a new long-distance path,’ he said. ‘Planning it, actually. In the south they’ve got the Pembrokeshire Coast path. Now they want a path up here too.’ He had taken a notebook out of his rucksack. ‘I write everything down, all the things I see, landmarks. Sometimes a whole day’s work is wasted because I come to a dead end.’ He had washed his hair and looked very different from earlier. As if there were a glow around his head.
‘How long will it take you?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I dropped out of uni. I couldn’t be bothered any more.’
‘How long have you been at it so far?’
‘A week and a half.’
He had tipped dry food from a plastic bag into a bowl for Sam, who finished it in no time. There was a pan of soup on the table. Bread, beetroot salad, cheese and butter.
‘I have to talk to farmers too. Ask permission. Farmers and homeowners. So I’m actually working as we speak.’
‘The path follows my drive for almost half a mile.’
‘Exactly.’
She poured him another glass of wine. He’d gulped down the first two and now he started to tip this one back as well. ‘Are you scared someone else will drink it?’ she asked.
‘You pour it, I’ll drink it.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’
‘What were you studying?’
‘I’ve forgotten. It was boring.’
‘You don’t want to say.’
He rushed through his soup. Instead of bringing the spoon up to his mouth, he brought his head down to the bowl. ‘Nice.’
‘How’s your wrist?’
‘No problem.’
‘Would you like some more?’
‘No, I’ve had enough, thanks.’ He leant back, raised both arms and stretched by pulling one wrist with the other hand. His faded T-shirt crept up, there was a hole in the left armpit. ‘Not that you can say no anyway,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You can’t actually refuse. Right of way. That’s what it’s called. The path I took today already exists. It’s on the map. You can’t stop people using it.’
‘I’ve never seen any walkers here at all. I’m the only one who uses that path.’
‘Yeah, it was funny today. At a certain point the path suddenly appeared and was easy to follow, but before that I kept losing my way.’
‘I walk on it to the stone circle.’
‘The stone circle?’
‘Yes, you walked right through it.’
‘Didn’t notice a thing.’
‘It was misty.’
‘I wouldn’t mind another glass of wine.’
She had to stand up to fetch another bottle. The dog was immediately alert. It was warm in the kitchen, the window had misted over. She smelt the old-woman smell again and shook her head to get rid of it. The boy and the dog had their own smells, especially the dog, and she hadn’t put the lid back on the soup pan. A pan which, by the way, had belonged to Mrs Evans. She opened the bottle. ‘Where do you come from?’
‘I was born in Llanberis. You?’
‘Rotterdam.’
‘Never been there.’
‘I haven’t been to Llanberis either.’ She tried to make her LL sound just like his.
*
After they’d drunk the second bottle, she’d had enough. She was exhausted, she needed some paracetamol and she wanted a bath. While he’d been sitting at the table freshly washed and wearing clean clothes, she’d been in her gardening clothes. She had deliberately called him Bradwen a few times to get used to the name and, as if in response, he’d kept calling her Emily. Or was it the other way round? Had she started calling him by name because he kept ending sentences with hers? She had a constant feeling he was about to say something important, even after he’d started on his concluding ‘Emily’, perhaps because he kept looking at her with that squint, behind which she also suspected more than if he’d looked at her normally.
‘I’ll light the fire in your room. Then I’ll have a bath and go to bed.’
‘Fine,’ he said.
‘There are books there. Mostly English.’
‘I’ve got my own book with me. Can Sam sleep there too?’
‘That’s fine by me. I’ll lay a rug on the floor for him.’
The dog was already heading through to the living room.
‘I’ll let him out first.’
‘See you in the morning.’
‘Goodnight,’ he said. He put on his coat and followed the dog, closing the front door behind him. Sam barked angrily a couple of times.
She went upstairs and laid a fire in the grate, looked around to see if there was anything she should put away, and fetched a duvet cover from her bedroom. ‘Yes,’ she said to Dickinson’s portrait after making up a bed on the divan. ‘Yes, this is a different kettle of fish. See you later.’ Then she went into the bathroom and pushed two paracetamol out of a strip. In a fortnight or so she’d almost finished all five boxes. Taking a painkiller was the first thing she did in the morning. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror, which wasn’t difficult with it steamed over from running the bath. A little later she was lying in the warm water, her mind a blank. She heard the boy and the dog come upstairs. He pulled the door to the study shut behind him. The dog barked and stopped almost immediately when the boy warned him to be quiet. ‘Not again,’ she said quietly to her toes. ‘And definitely not now, Emilie from Rotterdam.’ She rubbed her belly with both hands, keeping it up for several minutes, then ran her fingers, almost surprised, through her hair, which was very short.
30
The next morning she got up fairly early. The door to the study was closed and the house was silent. She made some coffee and set the table, putting a tablecloth on it for the first time. The mist had cleared in the night, a dull sun was shining. The sight of the one and a half unpollarded alders immediately drained her. He would leave; she would have to do it alone. She sat down with her hands next to her empty plate. Instead of coming down from upstairs, he came in from outside, bringing the bitter smell of fallen leaves into the house with him. The dog was overjoyed to see her. She could still see the boy as a gymnast: not a brawny one on the rings, but the slender kind whose best event is the floor exercise. He took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair he was about to sit down on, opposite her.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘Good morning,’ she said.
‘I was at the stone circle. It’s a real one. This bit will definitely go in the route.’
‘Are some of them unreal then?’
‘Sure. Even farmers have time on their hands sometimes.’
‘See any badgers?’
‘No. You only see them at night. Sam didn’t smell anything either.’
&nb
sp; She pulled off a sock and stuck her foot out towards him under the table.
‘What’s that?’
‘A scar.’
‘Yes, I can see that. What from?’ He reached out to her foot and for the first time since the bite she felt the teeth penetrating her flesh. Just before he was about to touch her skin, he pulled back his hand.
‘A badger. In the daytime.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
He stared at her with his strange, slightly evasive eyes. Last night it had been worse. His squint. Probably because of the wine. ‘No,’ he said.
Her thigh muscle started to quiver so she put her foot down on the floor, then pulled the sock back on. She poured the coffee. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes. With the sound of the stream.’ He started to eat. The dog sat next to his chair and kept its eyes on him, head slightly crooked. ‘You’ll get yours, Sam.’
She buttered a slice of bread, put some cheese on it and looked at it. She swallowed. ‘Heading off soon?’
‘Yes.’
A bit of coffee then, she could always manage that. The boy ate in silence, the dog following every piece into his mouth. Bradwen looked in turn at his plate, out the window and at the dog. He glanced once at the clock. ‘I want to go to Snowdon today,’ he said. ‘Have you got a suggestion?’
‘A suggestion?’
‘The most beautiful way to get there.’
‘Can you walk it in one day?’
‘Easy. I’m not going up, just to the foot of the mountain.’
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