A Dangerous Act of Kindness

by A Dangerous Act of Kindness (retail) (epub)

  She began filling the byres for the morning milking. Lifting down the brass weight, she took the lid off the feed bin and pushed the tin pitcher into the rolled oats. The centre shifted as she withdrew the scoop but when she prepared to plunge into the oats again, the grain exploded towards her.

  A large grey rat shot up her arm and bounded off her shoulder, launching itself at the ground and setting out across the concrete.

  The shock almost unbalanced her mind and she let out a terrible cry.

  Gyp was there, fast as lightening, a blonde blur of spinning back legs and white fangs. He swerved once, then a second time, grabbing the rat behind its neck. With a savage flick of his head, he dispatched it.

  She leant both hands on the top of the bin and let her head hang. It was almost too much. She could still feel the ghost of the rat’s nails on the skin at the base of her neck and she clutched at it with a shudder, then stood, taking deep breaths. Gyp was tossing the body around the shed.

  ‘Leave it,’ she growled. The dog dropped the rat, lowered his ears and gazed up at her. As she bent to pick it up by the tail, she put her hand on his head and said gently, ‘That’s the last time I leave the weight off the lid, eh, Gyp?’

  By the time the milking was finished, the snow was glowing in the light of a weak dawn. She could see an unusual shape at the top of the lane leading down to her farm. She tented her hand over her eyes and stared across the snowfields. It was the Fordson, cranked over to one side and shrouded in fresh snow.

  All was quiet in the house. She longed to open the door into the cellar but she knew it would be madness. He may think the coast was clear and call out; Hugh may be awake and come down. Another hour, little more, and they would be safe again.

  As she climbed the stairs, she could hear rattling snores coming from the spare room. She opened the door a crack and said, ‘Hugh. Wake up. It’s dawn.’

  The snoring stopped abruptly, the bed creaked and springs twanged as a body plunged around. A voice, thick with sleep said, ‘I’ll help you with the milking.’

  ‘It’s done. All done. It’s time for you to go,’ she said and she went immediately downstairs. As she waited, listening to his heavy footsteps overhead, she felt, if anything, more exposed and anxious, increasingly horrified by the proximity of both these men.

  She could feel sweat building between her shoulder blades, pinching the follicles under her arms. She wondered if Hugh would be able to smell the fear on her, like a dog.

  He appeared, his hair sticking up in all directions, his eyes watery with sleep. He looked across at the range.

  ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ he said.

  ‘The Fordson’s just up the lane. You can see it from the yard. I’ll help you dig it out.’

  ‘Tea first?’

  ‘No.’

  Hugh frowned and his lower lip weakened like a child’s.

  ‘Have I done something to make you cross, Mills?’ he said.

  She gave a great sigh and said, ‘I’ve told you a hundred times, I can manage, perfectly well.’

  ‘I know you can. Absolutely.’

  ‘And I don’t appreciate you breathing down my neck all the time.’

  ‘I just wanted to see if you were all right.’

  He looked so pathetic that she relented and said, ‘I know you did, but look at the trouble it’s caused. We’ve got to dig the tractor out, try and get it going again, all at a time when both of us have got a huge amount of other work to do.’

  He stared at her, slack jawed and she began to feel weak-kneed at the wrongness of what she was about to say but she had to stop him coming again. She had to.

  ‘And really, Hugh,’ she continued, feeling wooden and unnatural, ‘it wasn’t right for you to stay here with me, on your own, so soon after Jack’s death. Can you imagine what would happen if someone like Mrs Wilson found out about that?’

  ‘No one’s going to find out about it, Mills.’

  ‘Your mother will know.’

  ‘Well, yes – but she’s no blabbermouth. I’ll tell her exactly what happened, I promise,’ but his eyes slid away from hers, his mouth forming the hint of a sly smile.

  ‘And don’t you go pretending there was more to this than there really was,’ Millie snapped.

  He put his hands up in mock surrender.

  ‘As if,’ he said.

  * * *

  He plodded out into the freezing morning behind her, dragging the shovel in his hand. He was feeling utterly dreadful; he had a pounding head, a raging thirst and his mouth felt like the bottom of a budgie’s cage.

  He stared at her shoulders, hunched into the wind, and felt bloody cross. The least she could have done was made him breakfast, a cup of tea even. Anyone would think he’d blotted his copybook, the way she was carrying on.

  Had he? He couldn’t completely remember. The notion was never far from his mind but she kept her distance all evening, skittering away if he came too close. The trouble with taking a bit too much strong drink was that it can make one a bit rash. He’d certainly thought about trying her door later in the night. He hoped to hell he didn’t. Perhaps he did. Maybe that was why she was in such a mood with him.

  It took them well over an hour to dig out the tractor. She went back to the house and returned with hot water to help thaw the oil pipes and crank housing. He pumped away at the crank handle and eventually, with a disgruntled splutter of foul exhaust, the tractor made a couple of languorous rumbles and rattled into action.

  ‘All good then?’ Millie shouted over the noise.

  ‘I’ll take her down into the yard and turn the tractor round.’ He was sure she rolled her eyes. ‘Sorry to be such a pest,’ he said, his tone heavy with sarcasm. She didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘You’d better get going. There’s more snow on the way,’ she said pointing at the clouds gathering beyond the escarpment. ‘Say hello to your mum. See you after the thaw,’ and she turned round to walk back before he’d even climbed up onto the seat.

  He didn’t bother to wave when he overtook her, or when he passed her again on his way out of the yard.

  Chapter Twenty

  Millie opened the door of the cellar. She was about to call out his name but the intimacy that had pulled them so closely together at the point of discovery the night before was unravelling, leaving her with the cold clutch of despair that she was doing something very wrong indeed.

  ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Are you there?’

  She heard a rustling movement deep in the bowels of the cellar and he emerged from the shadows, moving stiffly. He paused at the foot of the steps, the whites of his eyes iridescent in the gloom.

  ‘You can come up now,’ she said. He placed his feet on each step with unnatural caution and she wondered if he imagined it was a trap. ‘It’s quite safe,’ she said.

  His hands were filthy and his face smeared with black dust.

  ‘You’ll find some old stuff of my husband’s in the bathroom upstairs,’ she said. ‘You can use it to clean up. You probably need something to eat,’ and she walked away from him towards the kitchen, feeling unmoored.

  When he eventually came in, he didn’t sit at the table. He leant his back against the wall, away from the muted light of the windows, his arms folded across his chest. The silence between them seemed to expand until it filled the room and Millie had no idea how to break it.

  She cracked eggs into a hissing pan, cursing loudly when the yolks split. Then she applied her fevered industry to the bread, carving it with a hectic urgency, her back towards him. It wasn’t until she put the plate on the table that she looked at him.

  His expression was very grave.

  ‘I must not eat,’ he said. ‘I must leave.’

  ‘My neighbour won’t come back.’

  ‘This neighbour. He is your man?’

  ‘Hugh? Good God, no.’

  ‘He’d like to be?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he’s gone now. He has work on his farm.’

&nb
sp; Lukas remained motionless. She glanced over at the window. The snow was falling again.

  ‘He barely made it over last night,’ she said.

  ‘He may not make it back today. He turns round perhaps and comes back here.’

  Millie nodded. That was a possible.

  ‘This blizzard will make your journey very difficult,’ she said.

  ‘When I am here, your life is very difficult. I have a duty to leave.’

  She put a fork onto the plate and carried it across the room.

  ‘Eat first,’ she said. ‘I must get on. Find what you need. Leave when you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the plate and holding her gaze.

  She nodded. There seemed nothing else to say.

  As she walked out into the blizzard, she wondered if she could only judge her sins by their consequences. She’d thought her irritation with Jack little more than the natural bind of marriage; overnight, his suicide changed it to a campaign of incredible cruelty. She must not make the same mistake again.

  This compassionate act was a crime. She mustn’t let their narrow escape convince her otherwise. But as she knocked the underside of the iron roofs to make the snow slip down and off, she wished she felt that same cold, clear feeling that had overwhelmed her the day before.

  Instead she felt adrift, suspended between ease and despair. Buffeted by the wind, the snowflakes pinching at her cheeks, she looked across the yard towards the house which stood grey and silent, the tempest raging around it and she sighed. Had he gone yet? Was it once again that empty, lonely shell or did another human heart still beat within?

  Inside the sheds she did the rounds of the rat traps with a stout stick in her hand, Gyp at her heels, sashaying around her, excited by the plump little corpses. She levered up the hinges of the traps with the stick and shook the bodies free.

  Twilight came early as the snow, grey against the paler sky, scudded high overhead and whirled down around the yard. The drifts of the night before had barely thawed, smoothing the sharp corners of the building, decorating everything with soft caps.

  Millie started moving the cows across to the milking shed, thumb stick in one hand to increase the span of her arms. They dropped their heads away from the blizzard and became disorientated, some of them leaching away from the herd and moving out across the yard. Horns pushed past her, huge brown eyes loomed out of the snow and she slapped their rumps and pushed at them. The wet tassel at the end of a tail smacked her across the face, filling her eyes with grit – or worse. Spluttering and momentarily blinded, she searched her pockets and found a rag, spitting into it and wiping the dirt from her face.

  When she looked up, she realised the herd had scattered even further, two of the cows little more than a blur in the thick snow as they headed for the opening of the yard. She hurried after them, her boots slipping on the ice, but then she saw, over to the left, three more lumbering down towards the granary, one turning, her neck stretched out as she called a loud um-er of distress.

  Millie didn’t know which to stop first and she twisted round too quickly and slipped, landing heavily on the ground.

  The herd weaved around her, udders bumping against legs, cloven hooves crunching around her head. She felt mud and snow splash across her face, tried to get up and slipped again, down into the muck and the slush.

  Gyp was trying to get through to her but he was making the cows more afraid and sensing in the split of a second what was about to come, she covered her head with her arms and rolled as a kick landed on her side, knocking the wind out of her.

  Someone shouted her name.

  A hand grabbed the crook of her elbow and as she struggled to get to her feet, another came around her waist to steady her.

  Hugh. He’d bloody well come back.

  Her nerves were almost too overwrought to register whether it was safe or not. In her anger she shoved him away, thumping him roughly on the shoulder.

  She slipped again and grasped his forearm. It was only then that she pushed back enough to see his face.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Lukas held her until she was steady, gave her a nod and set off into the blizzard, a grey shape hunched against the wind. He disappeared into the snow towards the granary and when he reappeared, his arm was raised, his other hand slapping at his thigh, chiding the cows in his own language, shooing back the first three renegades before breaking off to round up the others.

  Millie moved towards the rest of the herd and, as they headed over to the milking parlour, she stopped, stared out into the blizzard and wondered, who was this man? Where on earth did a German pilot learn to handle cows?

  Once inside the shelter of the shed, she looked down and saw that her clothes were plastered. She made a feeble effort to brush off some of the muck but it was all down one side; over her back too, she wouldn’t be surprised. She reached up and felt her headscarf. It was gritty and sodden. What a mess!

  With an irritable sigh, she went through to the dairy and flung her gloves onto the counter where they landed with a slap. She rinsed her hands underneath the tap and went back into the shed. She worked along the byres fixing the chains around the cows’ necks, looking around for Lukas. The cows settled down and began contentedly chewing at the feed and then she saw him, pushing out between two cows in a double byre.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said, ‘I thought you’d gone. It’s not safe for you to be out here.’

  ‘And it is not safe for you to lie on the earth when the cows walk,’ he said and she smiled. ‘Anyway’ – he pointed at his headgear – ‘I am hidden and now,’ he said holding up a stool, ‘I milk with one hand.’

  ‘You don’t know how to milk a cow.’

  ‘I do.’

  Millie pulled a face at him. ‘When did you learn?’

  ‘In France,’ he called over his shoulder as he headed towards the dairy, ‘when we arrive, out in the country, the farmers, they go. It is foolish. We are military, there is no danger but they go.’

  She heard the tap running as he cleaned his hands, then the clanking of a bucket, and he reappeared and leaned against the edge of the door.

  ‘They leave the cows in a bad way,’ he said. ‘You hear them all day and all night, they are in pain. I have a friend – we tease him because he is a farm boy – he knows how to milk and he shows me. But the work is too large so when the Junkers fly the wounded home they bring back with them the men from the milking units.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Completely. But it is not possible to visit all the farms. We lose many cows but others we make good. Sometimes we let the milk go into the ground so they are no longer in pain but we also have milk and butter and cheese. So – I start, yes?’

  He disappeared behind the first cow and she heard the clatter of the metal bucket onto the concrete and the whirr of the milk. The rhythm he set had a strange tempo and she thought, ah, he doesn’t know how to do it, but then she realised he was milking in perfect rhythm but with only one hand. Millie shook her head in disbelief and sat down to begin work.

  The gale raged and bumped as the milk filled the pail. That helpless, electric feeling of danger had passed and she felt safe, protected by the storm, soothed by the rhythm of the milking, happy to have him here.

  They didn’t speak again, they worked until she eventually left him milking the last cow and went to get the sheds ready for the night. As she pushed the steaming straw and muck out into the open, she paused again, looking over towards the milking parlour, her breath forming a cloud in front of her face. What an extraordinary man this pilot was and how sad that… She shook herself and set to work relittering the sheds.

  By the time they finished and the cows were settled for the night, it was pitch black. Millie braced herself on the shed door to swing it shut, pushing hard against the wind. When it closed with a rattling bang, Lukas was next to her with the other door. He secured it and, raising his voice over the wind, he said, ‘Now, I promise you, I am ready
to leave.’

  Millie nodded and headed out towards the coops to secure them for the night. She heard Lukas call to Gyp and saw the dog lolloping over to him, following him into the house.

  ‘You and Gyp have made friends,’ she called through as she peeled off her coat in the passageway. She chucked it onto the floor of the boot room and her body gave a great shiver. She could feel the heat from the kitchen making her fingertips tingle, knew the range had spent the day heating the back-boiler, filling the hot-water tank upstairs with scalding water.

  She wanted to wash her hands, her face, then soak her body in the bathtub until she was warm again, right down to her core, climb between the sheets before she cooled and sleep. She could see Lukas in the kitchen at the end of the corridor, lighting the Tilly lamps.

  ‘Before,’ he said, ‘the dog is correct to be fierce but now he knows…’ he paused as if he was searching for a phrase, blew out the match and pushed down the globe of the lamp. Standing in the shadows she watched him look down and stroke his hand across the top of Gyp’s head, lingering and pulling gently at the animal’s ears. Then he added quietly, ‘He knows that I am not your enemy.’

  She stepped into the lighted kitchen, acutely aware that her coat wasn’t the only part of her covered with mud. Her trousers were soaked below the knee, the cuffs of her jumper sodden. Lukas looked up at her with an expression of surprise and amusement. Yes, thought Millie, I look a fright all right.

  ‘I need to get out of these horrible clothes,’ she said.

  ‘Then I say goodbye now.’ He made a small bow towards her and clicked his heels.

  She felt dashed. He’d said he’d leave many times before – she knew he had to leave – but somehow this goodbye was too real.

  They were plunged into silence, the stillness tempered by the musical ring of the tap dripping onto a pan lid in the sink.

  She thought, this then is the moment, and she couldn’t bear it, she wouldn’t bear it. She felt a kind of fury building inside her, as if he’d spurned her, rejected her. She knew it was foolish – recognised, even in her distress, that it was some sort of indefinable pain she was feeling and that, as long as he stood before her, the agony could only increase. She wanted it over and done with, the clean cut, the sharp rip of the plaster. She felt her mouth compress and took a step forward.