‘You won’t believe this,’ Penny said, reaching for her lemonade. ‘But I’m feeling rather peckish again, despite that whopping great lunch.’
‘It’s the air,’ he said, breathing in dramatically and imagining his lungs no longer blackened and polluted, but lovingly restored like some long-forgotten treasure salvaged from the rubbish heap. He hadn’t had a cigarette for six weeks and a day; no longer even bothered to suck sweets. ‘Do you want some fruit?’ he offered. ‘There’s a good two ton of apples in the back.’
‘Yes, to last us the whole month,’ grinned Penny. ‘Though at this rate we’ll be running short on supplies before we even pitch the tents. D’you realize, Daniel, I’ve never pitched a tent in my life? I’m a complete novice at this camping lark!’
‘It’ll take me back to my youth,’ said Daniel, nibbling on the clover-head. ‘Except there won’t be any hyenas prowling round the campsite, like we had in Lupande.’
‘Hyenas?’ Pippa exclaimed.
He and Penny both looked at her incredulously. She had reacted with genuine interest, spoken almost eagerly for the first time in weeks. He willingly recounted his hyena story, adding a giraffe or two, a wildebeest – anything to extend this marvellous moment: his once indifferent daughter listening and involved. She had even taken off her funereal black sweatshirt, revealing, a sleeveless top in an upbeat shade of blue. He refilled her cup, wanting to rival Nature and heap her with largesse. He contented himself with passing her a harebell, a frail and faded specimen he’d found trembling in the hedge, and was gratified when she stuck it in her hair.
‘Let’s push on,’ said Penny. ‘We’ve still got quite a way to go.’
Daniel got up reluctantly. For once he was the layabout, content to sit and stare. Hyenas notwithstanding, the problems of suffering Africa had mercifully receded, now he was away from the pressures of work. He tightened the straps on the roof rack; rearranged some of the bulging boxes in the boot. When they went on holidays abroad, they usually restricted themselves to one small suitcase each, but for this trip they seemed to have accumulated trunkloads. Camping sounded marvellously simple – just a matter of a tent, some bedding and a few rudimentary utensils – but he and Penny had kept envisaging new contingencies which made it absolutely vital to pack a hacksaw or a double-boiler or his entire collection of nature books. Yet he had to admit he was secretly excited at the thought of camping again, returning to his early boyhood – sleeping under the stars, perhaps, if this kind-hearted weather held.
‘Are you sure you’ve got enough room, Pippa?’ He watched his daughter clamber into the back and squeeze herself between the various bags and cartons on the seat. Despite the obvious improvement in her spirits, she was still looking pale and drawn, but then he knew she had her period. It had been something of a shock to him to discover just last night that she had actually started menstruating way back in April – the same month he’d met Juliet. What a fool he must have seemed, sitting in the surgery with Penny, playing the role of caring parent, yet ignorant of such a crucial fact. Penny had explained to him that Pippa had sworn her to secrecy, so upset by her first painful monthly bleed that she couldn’t bear anyone discussing it. He was hurt at being excluded: he wasn’t ‘anyone’, for heaven’s sake, but the second closest person in her life. And if only he’d known earlier, it would have spared him all those weeks of racking guilt. Her introverted silence was not, as he’d feared, the result of his affair, but due simply to her own resistance to becoming officially a woman. He wasn’t exactly an expert on the female reproductive process, but he had heard it was not uncommon for girls to find their periods distasteful, and to want to retreat into a state of perpetual childhood.
He glanced in the rear mirror at his newly adult daughter with something approaching awe. Being female seemed a daunting responsibility – nurturing life for nine demanding months, then giving birth, giving suck. He looked out at the sheep again, their uncomplaining patience as they were butted in the stomach by dirty strapping offspring, jostling for the teats. His eyes strayed back to Pippa. Only a blurred strip of her face was visible in the mirror, but he was picturing her body, and particularly her breasts – more conspicuous than usual beneath the lightweight cotton top. He imagined himself a grandfather – some tiny, helpless infant latched on to those breasts; a child he’d be involved with and who would look to him for love. He felt the old familiar terror clutch briefly at his gut. He sympathized with Pippa. If he’d been born a girl, he was sure he would have panicked at the onset of his periods, and would have loathed the whole idea of giving birth.
‘Gosh! Look at those fields of rape,’ said Penny, grimacing at the expanse of strident yellow which greeted them as they turned the corner. ‘It’s such an acrid colour it sets my teeth on edge.’
And an acrid word, thought Daniel. If his daughter were raped, she would be capable of conceiving, bearing some vile yobbo’s child. He felt an urge to protect her, to build a powerful barrier around her, an electric fence like the one enclosing the sheep.
He accelerated up the hill, leaving his dark thoughts behind. This was his long-awaited summer break, not a time to brood on rapists, or indulge in his own idiotic fears. He must look outwards, not inwards; make the most of the month that lay ahead. It was just as well they hadn’t gone to Rome. They were all in need of an undemanding holiday, after the last few pressured weeks. He’d been sweating in his office up to eleven hours a day, trying to catch up with the backlog and also cover for a colleague in the throes of a divorce. And Penny too had been working all out, tackling a spate of commissions for a new mail-order catalogue.
He gazed at the play of light and shadow on a cornfield; the sudden jolting scarlet of ripe berries on a bush; the contrast of black rooks against white clouds. He had forgotten the simple pleasures of the countryside, the sense of things being firmly rooted and beyond mere human time-scales, like the ancient oak they were passing, or the squat stone church which grew like a natural outcrop from the hillside. The peace was like a tranquillizing drug, which had calmed them all already, even Pippa. Admittedly she wasn’t saying very much, but the change was still impressive, and she would probably return to her old self again once she’d got more used to having periods, and had accepted them as an inevitable fact of life. It was a definite advance that she’d allowed Penny to confide in him, though he did feel rather awkward knowing how she felt, and he had found himself reacting with the same embarrassed shyness. But now even that was subsiding, as if the nature-drug was taking effect, flowing through their bloodstreams and removing the constraints.
‘Anyone object to Brahms?’ he asked, rooting for the First Piano Concerto and slotting it into the tape-player. The first movement in particular was wonderfully exhilarating, and he wanted the sound to soar across the countryside, to match his exuberant mood.
‘No, fine,’ said Penny, ‘but not too loud. You know what you’re like with your music. You expect me and Pippa to put up with it full blast, and then get huffy when we listen to our own stuff at anything above the merest whisper.’
‘I don’t!’
‘You do!’ Penny and Pippa chanted in one breath.
‘Okay, I do,’ he admitted. He’d gladly be accused of anything and everything for the sheer joy of having Pippa chiming in like that, following the conversation, rather than locking herself away in a mute world of her own. He switched on the cassette and savoured the titanic opening: a thunderous roll from the tympani, answered by impassioned strings. The heady combination of the music and the open road had affected his usually cautious style of driving, and he noticed that his speed was creeping up. He longed to swap his overloaded Vauxhall for a powerful Maserati, so he could really put his foot down and let rip; make the most of the intoxicating sense of space after the stop-start-stop of congested London streets. Everything seemed larger – the sky expanding to infinity, the horizon reeling back, the hills rising more majestically, and a giant pylon stretching strong steel arms across the wideni
ng shining landscape.
Penny was humming to the music – a habit he normally detested, though in his present genial humour it didn’t bother him at all. He used one hand to conduct, urging on the woodwind, restraining the fierce brass. He’d love to be in charge of a huge orchestra, sweeping on to the podium to a tumult of applause. He and Juliet had often argued about this particular recording: she preferring the Ashkenazy version, while he championed Arrau for his well-nigh perfect balance of lyricism and bravura. No! He jabbed the stop button; the vigorous crescendo skidding abruptly to a halt.
‘Hey!’ protested Penny. ‘I was just enjoying that.’
He mumbled some excuse about the tape being scratchy, then changed Brahms for Richard Strauss – the Symphonia Domestica. Juliet detested Strauss, but Juliet was history. He had received two letters from her in reply to his own, one blistering, one hurt, and though their astringent prose was etched into his brain, he had refused to write again.
‘Daniel, watch the road! You’re driving like a maniac! What on earth’s got into you?’
He slowed reluctantly, making a conscious effort to leave Juliet in London and focus on the scenery in Powys. He admired a clump of newly-planted conifers, their soft, young, springy green contrasting with the darker green of an ivy-clotted wall. There was no trace of brown or yellow in any of the trees. Summer was at its height – prolific, overflowing, blithely unconcerned with autumn’s bleak decay, which seemed light years off, almost inconceivable. He felt rejuvenated himself; instinctively put his hand to his head, imagining his thin patch sprouting like ripe corn.
‘I wouldn’t fancy living here!’ Penny was saying with an exaggerated shudder. ‘These farms are so remote.’
He glanced at the grey-stone farmhouse they were approaching on the right. Its roof was furred with moss, and dilapidated outbuildings clustered closely round it, like nervous hangers-on seeking reassurance. It seemed quite untouched by the frenetic twentieth century; a self-sufficient bastion constructed in an earlier age which stressed hardiness, endurance.
‘Oh, look!’ Pippa shouted. ‘A Shetland pony! The smallest one I’ve ever seen.’
‘Where?’ Penny swivelled round in her seat.
‘In that field beside the farm. And there’s a goat as well – no, two! Stop, Daddy, quick! Can I go and see them?’
Daniel stopped, so amazed by Pippa’s eager shout that he scrambled out of the car with as much alacrity as she did. They all three stood by the fence, he and Penny exchanging delighted glances over Pippa’s head, while she sweet-talked the animals, trying to cajole them to move nearer. The goats only looked up briefly and gave a baleful stare, but the pony seemed more friendly, trotted over inquisitively and blew warm velvet breath on Pippa’s outstretched hand. They marvelled at its size. It was hardly bigger than a large Alsatian, yet perfectly in proportion, with a flowing mane and tail. Its piebald coat looked polished, its belly tautly swollen, like a stuffed toy stitched too tight; its ears flicking back and forth as if responding to the endearments.
‘Oh, isn’t he gorgeous! Can we give him an apple?’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Daniel found it difficult to keep his own voice nonchalant, so immense was his relief. This was the old Pippa – enthusiastic, spirited. She had dashed back to raid the fruit box, and was now holding out an apple on her palm. The pony crunched it greedily, showing well-worn yellow teeth.
‘He’s getting on a bit,’ said Daniel. ‘A fair old age, I’d guess.’
‘But he looks so tiny – just a foal.’
‘No, he’s fully grown all right. They’ve got one like that as a mascot in the Horse Guards – Toby, I think he’s called. Funnily enough, I saw his photo in the Guardian just a week or two ago. He was standing beside the biggest horse in the troop, and the pair of them looked like completely different species. Talk about Little and Large!’
‘I wonder what this one’s called?’ Pippa glanced around her, as if searching for the owner. She looked galvanized, dynamic: released at last from her straitjacket of sullen, brooding silence.
‘There’s a sign over there saying “Bed and Breakfast”,’ Daniel pointed out. ‘Which probably means they do teas as well. How about stopping for a bun or something, then you could find out.’
‘Oh, yes!’
Penny looked more dubious. ‘Well, we mustn’t be long. That guy I spoke to on the phone said we could have trouble finding the camp. There aren’t any signposts – not even the name of a village. We don’t want to arrive too late. I don’t fancy struggling with guy-ropes in the middle of the night.’
‘But it’s only four o’ clock, Mum, and it doesn’t get dark for ages. Come on, you two.’ She took her parents by the arm and steered them towards the farmhouse. ‘I’ll pay for tea, so long as you don’t eat too much!’
Daniel and Penny caught each other’s eyes again. This was resurrection on a grand scale.
The door was opened by a short and stocky woman in an apron. Her eyes were washy blue; her ruddy face crinkled into tiny lines, as if it had cracked in the firing and was hot and brittle still. She greeted them with an anxious smile, which deepened the pattern of cracks, revealed china-smooth false teeth. ‘If you’ve come to buy eggs,’ she flurried, ‘I’m afraid the hens aren’t laying.’
‘No,’ Penny interrupted. ‘We were just wondering if we could have some tea.’
‘Oh, that’s no trouble. Come on in. When I heard the bell, I thought it was the vet. Or the man come to mend the boiler. I don’t get much trade, to tell the truth. I’m rather off the beaten track. But I’m sure I can rustle up a pot of tea and something to go with it.’
They followed her into a gloomy hallway which smelt of old wet dog, and along into a parlour overstuffed with heavy dark-oak furniture. Photographs were everywhere – brightly coloured snapshots of family groups, or children riding ponies, interspersed with faded sepia studies of stiff Victorian couples, or men with waxed moustaches posing with their gun-dogs. Nothing was too clean; a film of dust veneered the dresser, and a large irregular stain obscured some of the red squiggles on the carpet.
‘Make yourselves at home in here, and I’ll go and put the kettle on.’
‘Excuse me,’ Pippa asked before she could depart, ‘but is that your Shetland pony in the field?’
The woman’s face brightened at the prospect of a chat. ‘Yes, Hannibal. He’s twenty-three years old. We rescued him from a circus when he was barely more than a foal. My children used to ride him, but …’
They were treated to the saga, which encompassed three more ponies (two decrepit and one dead); two daughters and a son (all married and moved north); a husband (passed away last year); a pair of Nubian goats (kept for milk and cheese); half a dozen cats (to exterminate the mice); and the whole protracted chronicle finally trundled up to the present with the collie’s seven puppies, born a fortnight ago.
‘Puppies!’ Pippa exclaimed, breaking into the monologue. ‘Could I see them, d’you think?’
‘’Course you can.’ She swept out to the kitchen, ushering Pippa in front of her and still prattling as she went.
Penny raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Gosh! She does go on. D’ you think her husband died of ear-strain?’
‘No – overwork, more likely. I can’t say I envy the poor chap.
Even cleaning out our one disgusting hamster seems to take for ever.’
‘I doubt if they do much cleaning here. It looks as if …’
‘Shh!’ he warned. ‘She’s coming back.’
‘I’ve brought you some Welsh currant cake – bara brith, we call it.’
The woman set down a chunk of leathery-looking cake, badly burnt on top. ‘I’ll just go and make the tea. You try the cake and tell me if you like it.’
‘Well,’ said Daniel, once she’d disappeared again, ‘Fergus said we ought to take Pippa to a farm, and here we are knee-deep in goats and ponies.’ He helped himself to a slice of cake, discarded the burnt currants, then sat back with it content
edly.
‘Yes, but Fergus’s farm would have roses round the door and hot scones dripping butter. This stuff’s terribly stale. It’s probably as old as Hannibal!’
Daniel laughed. ‘Okay, the cake’s not up to much, but I must admit I like the place. At least it’s genuine. Those chocolate-box cottages are usually horribly bogus, full of horse brasses and potpourri.’
‘They’d need more than pot pourri to douse the smell of dog. D’you think she notices?’
‘I doubt it. People never think their dogs smell.’
Penny flicked a crumb from her mouth. ‘Well, I only hope Pippa doesn’t catch something. Those cats are probably covered in fleas.’
‘You’re beginning to sound worse than me.’
‘I suppose we’re growing like each other. I always had loads of animals before I married you, but now I’m getting all worked up about a few common or garden cat-fleas.’
He leaned forward and kissed her neck. ‘Don’t grow too like me, darling. I rather like the differences.’ He slipped his hand inside her dress, cupped her heavy breast. He had been tantalizingly aware of those breasts during a good part of the journey, especially as she wasn’t wearing a bra. If Pippa hadn’t been around, he would have touched them long ago. The sun had been working on him like a powerful aphrodisiac, rousing all his senses, so that now he was aching to make love to her. He knew she would respond. He could feel her nipples already taut as he gently kneaded them with his thumb.
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