by Laura Beatty
Sandra was kind. She brought Anne an extra Thermos of tea down to the workshop and a plate of sandwiches she’d made herself. To keep her going. That way it saves you having to come up to the bungalow to get them, Sandra said, smiling her shiny smile. There we go, sweetheart, chicken and mayo and a choccy bar. How’s that? She did it every day. Cheese and chutney, ham and pickle, smoked turkey.
Once or twice Anne took the plate back up the path when she’d finished and Sandra came to the door. Bless! Sandra’s roundnesses filled the whole doorway. Like she was a cork. What a gorgeous day, she said, breathing in so she expanded even more. Lucky you to be going back to the wood, not stuck inside like us housewives. Anne couldn’t help craning to see round her. Was Steve in there? she asked herself. Was he inside too?
You didn’t need to bother with the dirties, I would have picked them up for you on my way back. Got nothing else to do, have I? Another swamping smile and Sandra took the plate and Thermos off Anne on the doorstep. Mind how you go then. See you tomorrow.
Anne turned miserably away past the cockeyed gnomes. She couldn’t tell because she hadn’t been in but she thought it looked different.
♦
She sat alone in the workshop eating the piles of sandwiches Sandra made for her, throwing crumbs for the bickering starlings and telling herself it was a sunny day. It would be different in the winter, wouldn’t it? What did Anne want with being inside on a day like this anyway? But all the same, she watched the window of the bungalow in case Steve’s bulk should cross it. When it did, she imagined how it was for the three of them, sitting round the old table, eating, minding Rosie’s manners. She thought of Steve’s forearms and his shoulders, how he chomped his food, head forward, absorbed, and she watched for him coming out again after dinner time. Then, the minute the door opened, she was busy.
Sometimes Steve came and sat with her in the workshop, if Sandra was out and nothing much was happening. In the old days they would have sat in the bungalow. He looked at Anne as if he was going to say something and then thought better of it, or just couldn’t find the words. He looked bothered. So they sat in silence, and Steve massaged his head till his hair stood up, and ran the palms of his hands over his face, till his eyebrows tangled. Or he looked at the bungalow and then back at Anne, who was sometimes working, sometimes just sitting near him. She’s got a kind heart, Sandra, he said. Anne looked at him and nodded. She’s a very kind-hearted person, Steve said again. He sounded puzzled.
Sometimes Steve just stopped at the workshop, stood in the doorway to watch Anne working. How’s it going? Or, Hey up, softly. We don’t see so much of you these days Anne, and Anne looked down at her hands, cradling her tools, confused. She didn’t know what to say except a mumbled, No.
Was it her fault? She couldn’t get into the bungalow with Sandra on the doorstep, could she? She couldn’t just barge in. But she didn’t want to say anything about Sandra to Steve. Are you sorted now, Steve? she wanted to ask him. Is your life together? Because, really, she thought it had been better before.
Piece of work.
♦
The other person Anne didn’t see any more was Rosie. Once or twice, early on, Rosie appeared in the workshop, like she used to before Sandra came and never went. Anne had looked up to see her trotting down the path, with her fountain of hair wobbling on top of her head. ‘Lo, big Nanne. Can I do that, can I? What are you doing that for? Anne had been mending a wardrobe. One of the doors was off its hinges. They’d got happily started together. Rosie made a bed for the screws to keep them safe. You say when you need them and I’ll give them at you. You don’t take them Nanne. Anne had a mouthful of screws to be going on with. Alright Rosie, out of the corner of her mouth so as not to drop any. I won’t.
The screws’ bed was an old rag. Rosie pushed them under with their tops showing, tucked them up. They had names. John and Barry and Ryan and Tod. Naughty boys. Every now and then one of them came out and got smacked with the hammer. I told you.
Sandra came down the path, swish swish swish. Come on, Rosie, leave Anne be. The last thing she wants is you muddling around when she needs to get on. And a smile of course.
No, Anne said much too quickly, I like it. We always played, before, didn’t we, Rosie? She’s no bother.
Rosie banged John or Tod. We always played, she said, squatting on the workshop floor, copying Anne’s intonation.
Sandra sank down to Rosie’s level. She put her hand over the hammer that Rosie was still clutching. Put that down, love. That’s not for you. You’re going to give yourself a nasty bang with that. There was something in her voice that was not so kind, Anne thought.
Rosie set up the beginnings of a wail. I’m doing it hammering, Mum. Nanne said I can do it. I’m doing it.
Rosie, come on now. Leave Anne in peace. What about helping me with the shopping? Sandra made a pretend sad face. I’ll be all on my own.
Rosie didn’t look at her mother. She was rearranging the screws’ bedcover. You’re a big girl now, she told Sandra, still without looking. You won’t cry and I’ll be back soon when I finished hammering with Nanne.
Mummy buy you some sweeties if you come now.
Rosie stood up, kicking the screws as she went. Sandra took her hand, in case she changed her mind probably. They walked out into the sunshine.
Anne picked up her hammer.
John and Ryan and Tod were left scattered anyhow about the floor.
♦
Pride would have helped, if she’d had any. Through the late spring and into summer, which opened its flowers and offered its luxuriance with Anne almost unnoticing. Pride would have stopped her going to the dump day after day, rubbing her own nose in it, to be smacked in the face again. Pride would have stopped her from sitting dumb through tea, with hurt eyes, or through dinner time, mechanically chewing at the sickening sandwiches and watching the bungalow. It would have stopped her from hearing, which she did, when Sandra said, Get a bit of sun for a change. As though the sun hadn’t shone unbroken for a week at least. Viva España. And then, Well – we thought, why not?
These days Sandra talked to the men as though Anne was invisible.
To be so big and so unnoticed. So Anne sat in the shed a witness, just a dumb witness, even to her own life.
What’s here for us? Sandra asked Carl and Sid. You get a lot more for your money out there, believe me. It was a no-brainer. Rosie would be bilingual, she said. Steve could do building, sort them out. They’d have an olive press, maybe do export or something.
Anne went straight up on the gangplank after that. The dread of what Sandra meant had hold of her. What’s here? she repeated, looking down the long lines between the containers, at the geometry of the pylon and the crane, this precious little world. What’s here for us?
The dump’s here, that’s what.
I’ll have it, Anne said. I’ll have it if you don’t want it. Steve was happy with it before. It was enough for him and Mother.
♦
They all joked about it, as though it meant nothing to them, the possible loss of their jobs, the change. That was the effect Sandra had. Every time she came down with the biscuits or filled up the tea caddy, she’d put one hand on her hip, hold the other one stupidly above her head. O lay. And Sid’s eyes popped and so did his trousers.
At tea, while Anne sat like a rabbit in the headlights, they ribbed Steve. You’ll be getting your bikini out then, Steve, giving it a bit of the old castanets. That was Barry. And Sid just licked his lips and sniggered and looked at Sandra again. Steve said, slowly like always, that he wasn’t much for heat himself, but the shooting was good. Shoot anywhere out there. Then he paused for a while. Then he looked at Anne, just in time to see her run over again, eyes wide, immobile against the onrush of disaster.
They might as well give it a go. Sold Sandra’s place in town and got a good price for it. Another pause. Give the Littl’un something better than she’s got here.
♦
Summer h
olidays and the wood blossomed with people. Anne sat dazed in the café and watched them as they walked slowly here and there, in family groups to the picnic tables. Have a sit-down, they said to each other, blowing at the heat. It’s further than you think. And banging their car doors, nut brown with health, the ramblers stepped out at a brisker pace armed with their maps and cutters, conscientiously keeping the footpaths open. She saw them elsewhere in the wood, pushing purposefully through what summer had grown over, snipping back.
Anne put her thumb over one of the cuts after they’d gone, rubbed the weeping sap. Does it hurt? she asked the hazel’s green coins.
But they are nothing, these cuts.
We grow differently, the trees shrug their leaves in the breeze, however you cut us. We think nothing of you, you nibblers, strippers, choppers. We are good at retrenching. A fistful of stems for every trunk lost – coppice; another for every limb – pollard. We produce epicormics and suckers. We grow more. We last longer. We are adaptable in form.
It must be easy being a tree, Anne said, and she rested her head against the bark of the next. She walked up the rides, to take the edge off her own pain, through long lozenges of green light. Tell me how to survive.
We sit on our hands mainly. But Anne couldn’t hear. We are above and below. We hold you in these quiet rides, where the brambles loop over and the clematis hangs down from the canopy in ropes, and the ferns hold up their fronds in fans, like a hand of cards. We balance you, while you don’t think of us. So you don’t need to worry. Just know, when you walk down here, that you walk on our interlaced hands.
But trees were no comfort this time.
♦
The last few days before Steve was leaving, and Anne was in free fall. You can’t shut your eyes when the ground’s coming at you. You can’t sleep, much, or tell sleep from waking, whichever it is. She stared at the eye of her pool, as unblinking as her own, by day and by night. Got out of bed dizzy and went and sat by it, knees to chest, hoping to be soothed. But it didn’t work. She walked vertiginous. Any minute now you’ll smash.
Summer. So the sun got up every day, laced the clearing with shade and died in pink and gold across the woodland rides, whether Anne noticed or not. Trees made minute adjustments to the angle of their leaves, deepened their green to summer’s spinach. Pairs of birds turned into flocks. Swallows came and dipped in her pool and she never saw them. Early morning now, for instance, and the sun angled unnoticed again across the water and the randy cuckoo called. Anne was blind like every day. Deaf, so she didn’t hear, as she would normally have done, the blackbird scold in alarm at approaching footfall. Sitting so motionless that a shrew ran finicky over her foot thinking it just another of the pool stones.
So Steve was almost standing on her before Anne heard him and looked up into the old face.
Surprise.
Anne stopped falling and the wind, as it passed her where she hung in mid-air, roared in her ears, and far away she heard his voice which made her think of moss.
You were miles away there, girl. He was in his old check shirt, carrying a square hamper. Brought you something so you don’t forget us.
Seeing him, real, after so much time in her head. It was too much to adjust to. Illogical hopes flared and died. She hadn’t managed anything, not even a grunt of recognition, hadn’t changed her position, didn’t think to stand, to hold out a hand, couldn’t understand what he was saying. She just sat and stared while her mind caught up with her. So you don’t forget us. Anne went back to falling once more. She couldn’t return his smile. As if.
Is it that bad? he asked her, putting the hamper down beside her. Aye? It was hard for him to sit on the ground but he eased himself down knees bent, arms looped over his knees. Is it?
And at last Anne’s mouth unstuck itself and she managed, Sorry, and, I thought, before tailing off into silence.
If she’d thought about it, as she did afterwards, the last thing she would have wanted was to be surly with him. He didn’t have to explain anything. He didn’t have to apologise. He was just trying to get his life together, and he had to go. I have to do what’s best for the family like, he said. Trying to coax her round. She was behaving like Mother. It’s a good life out there and Sandra was never much for the dump. You know that.
Anne knew. They looked at the water in silence. She would have said, by way of explanation, I’m down there Steve. I’m under all that water, on the bottom, looking up at a world that keeps shaking out of focus. But she didn’t think of it. So instead she struggled up to the surface for his sake. Ten or so pretty little birds swung in acrobatics round the twigs above the pool, their tails out like teaspoons. Bum barrels, Steve called them. Syrup syrup syrup. Steve was happy not saying much. They heard the blackbird somewhere and the cuckoo still in the distance.
Tell you what – Steve looked up through the leaves – it’s right peaceful here. There are worse places. Then he paused and looked again. There are worse places. And Anne nodded. You’ll be alright girl.
At the pool there was a constant flutter of little birds hopping and paddling. A wood pigeon dropped into the clearing, tummy out like Steve, sipped and messed at the water’s edge and breasted up again to cock and preen in one of the ashes. Have him for supper, Steve said, aye? Pity I didn’t bring my gun. And Anne smiled. They’d have him for shooting in the wood, she said.
He’d shoot them and all. Shoot the lot of them.
Families of birds everywhere flying and singing.
Come on then. Have a look inside. Steve got up on his haunches to pick up the hamper and put it on Anne’s lap. Facing her, one knee on the ground, his arm resting over the other, and their eyes were on a level. Anne either made no attempt, or was unable, to hide what hers contained, and Steve never looked away. Like that for a long time, threaded to each other on a look.
How old are you Anne?
So it was Anne who looked down. I was fifteen once, she said in confusion.
I thought so. He said it very quietly, still looking at her. He might have been talking to himself. Then, after a while, Go on then. Louder, Have a look. Don’t open it. Just look through the grille there.
Anne found herself looking into the fury of a black bead eye. A cockerel, his comb and his dignity crushed under a wicker lid. And two hens, Steve added.
White Sussex, nothing fancy, but they were good layers, and in time she’d have a flock, some for eggs and some for meat.
Happy now?
Anne couldn’t find the words.
Keep you going in the winter anyway, Steve said. Only eat the old ones, not the new layers. Unless you’ve got too many. It’s always best to carry a surplus of layers though, in case of mishap.
Only they’d better get a shuffle on, if they were going to get a run made for them. She couldn’t keep them in the open. Bloody old fox would get them.
He had a day spare.
If something like that happened you had to fix everything in your mind, for later. Exactly how the precious day went. How they tramped to and fro, from the truck to the hut, carrying the materials for the run. You had to remember Steve with the big roll of chicken wire, balanced on his shoulder because he was so strong, swaying ahead, wheezing, his trousers low slung. How he used a big steel post rammer, with handles either side, thumping it down in a rhythm, not a mallet like she had. How the hair grew so thick and soft on his forearms, which you could see when you were working close. How they sat with their legs out in the pool at dinner time, halfway through. You had to remember how Steve’s shoulders sloped relaxed, and his ball tummy, which was hard with muscle not soft, and the beads of sweat tracking down his face. His neck, where his shirt was open, slicked. While the sun’s finger that reached down into the clearing all day, pointed out, You have so many hours left, you have so many hours less. Till at last, sloping almost to lying in the woodland rides, it said, Time’s up, and Steve swinging the door to the run on its newly fixed hinges, said, That’s a bloody good job I reckon. Go on then
Anne. Let them out. And the chickens were half tipped, half shaken, discomfited, mardy as Mother, to cluck up and down the run. Anne and Steve leant on their tools to watch. The chickens ran up and back, stiff-legged, hysterical. You couldn’t not laugh.
They’ll sort themselves soon enough, Steve said. The hens talked to each other, turning over the leaves, making little noises of excitement when they found something edible or with legs.
Well, time to go I reckon. Softly.
She never said a word. Just looked at him. Staring eyes she must have had. She couldn’t manage. She wouldn’t cope without him, would she? She couldn’t make it if he went. What about the winter? She had no words, only the one syllable of his name. So she never opened her mouth.
Steve.
She never said anything at all.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t thought about it, how Steve would say goodbye, only that life was so much more matter-of-fact than how you planned it. She never said the things she’d thought, and nor did he. She never made him change his mind.
Just once, gruffly, Come here, and she had to reconstruct it later, it was gone so quick, the once and only time she felt her face in the fuzz of his neck, smelt his thick Steve smell.
He had held her away from him. You’ll be alright girl. You’re a survivor you are. Then looking at her face, he had shaken his head slowly.
And Anne had nodded at him through a world cockeyed and swimming. She wasn’t stopping him.
Look after yourself, mind.
And Barry was going to keep an eye. Tell Barry if you need anything girl, and stay here so when I come back visiting I know where to find you. He looked serious. Alright? Come and wave us off if you feel like it. Have a cuppa and see Rosie. She’d like to say goodbye. Three days’ time, alright?