Our Picnics in the Sun (5 page)

I took the toast and wiped his hand clean. I stroked his head and said I was sorry. His shoulders shuddered for a while and after a time were rigid and still, and then they softened under my hands. His hair was still damp from the shower, and I finger-combed its thin snakes of white through the rest of it, still a lion’s mane, abundant and long and backward-sweeping, though the dark gold color was faded. Oh, Howard’s hair, and his bronze, curling beard—he was more than
handsome, he inspired confidence. It didn’t cross my mind that his flamboyant looks might not signify a character of far greater dimension and dynamism than mine. My conviction that he was infallible seemed established in those pale green eyes, set deep under his brow, so hawklike it was some time before I saw gentleness in the light they cast upon me.

“You need a trim,” I said, pulling his hair out along his shoulders. I drew my fingers down through his beard. “You’ll be a bit cooler after a trim. I’ll do it for you later.” I leaned over and kissed the top of his head, and he managed to lift and place his hand on my breast, round and loose under my dressing gown. He made his fingertips perform a fluttery, circular caress, and then he dropped the exhausted arm. He tipped his head and looked up at me, his lids half-closed. That day the veins in the whites of his eyes were a tracery of tiny pink tributaries under the gluey surface, and I knew he could barely see me. “I have to get dressed,” I said, and moved gently away.

Just then Digger’s pickup came into the yard, the dog barking in the back. There was no time to disappear upstairs. Digger jumped down and came straight into the kitchen with the dog at his heels, and even though it was early they brought more of the day’s heat in with them, trapped in Digger’s rank sweat and the yellow light on his skin, and in the baked, wiry hair and meaty tongue of his dog. They stood there, both restless; the dog’s saliva dripped on the floor. It hung in the air unsaid that I was annoyed he hadn’t left the dog outside, where all working dogs belonged, and that Digger knew it and couldn’t care less. I was also furious that my dressing gown was so old. I bought from charity shops so everything I owned was old, even before it became mine.

Digger sat down and winked at Howard. “How-do,” he said. “Lie-in, did we? Had a lie-in, then? All right for some!”

“He’s just having his breakfast,” I said.

Digger picked up the piece of toast and waggled it close to Howard’s mouth. “Here you are, then,” he said. “Here.”

Howard glared and turned his head away. But he let Digger place the toast in his good hand, and he lifted it to his mouth and began to chew.

“He’s fine,” I said. “Aren’t you, Howard? He can manage fine. I’ll be back down in a minute. I have to get dressed.”

“Shame. Looking good as you are,” Digger said, winking again. “Eh, looking good, isn’t she, eh?”

Howard thumped his good arm in his lap and reared back in his chair, coughing, and spat out his mouthful of toast. He hadn’t the strength to send it far enough to hit Digger, and most of it got stuck in his beard. Digger yelped. “Oy, stop that now! Don’t you give me none of your old cud!”

I got the sink cloth and wiped Howard’s beard clean. He was rocking back and forth, his mouth bubbling with saliva and mashed toast, a varnish of tears over his eyes. “It’s all right, Howard,” I said. “It’s all right. No need to fuss. He didn’t mean any offense.”

I turned to go, but Howard snarled again. “Digger’s here to help,” I told him. “He’s here to do the shearing.”

“Not before time, neither,” Digger said. “In a right old state, they are, this weather. Should’ve got me sooner.”

I didn’t rise to that. I’d pestered him as much as I could and I didn’t want him to say anything in front of Howard about the dead ewe.

“Adam’s due back for a visit soon,” I said. “That’s probably why Howard’s a bit restless. We’re waiting to hear when he’s arriving.”

“That right? I’ll tell Kevin and Kyle. They ain’t seen ’im for a while. ’E don’t keep in touch much.”

“Oh, he keeps in touch with us, of course! His visits are always last minute. That’s just the way it is, his office keeps him dangling,” I said. “Never knows where they’re sending him next. But he should know any day. Probably he’ll be here for his birthday. The twenty-eighth.”

Howard nodded and smiled, blinking his sore eyes, and I went to get dressed.

It was one of those warm, sparkling days that comes on Exmoor after a spell of rain; beautiful weather. Digger pulled some bales off the van and we carried them across the yard to the barn at the back.
We set up the two holding pens inside and spread the straw ready for the sheep. As we left the yard I turned to wave to Howard, who I knew would be sitting at the window. He probably wouldn’t be able to see me, so far away and through glass, and even if he did he might not be able to tell it was me, but I waved anyway, in case he could detect the movement of my hand and interpret it as a sign he was not forgotten. But at that time of morning the light fell on the glass in such a way that I was gesturing at a mirror. I was blinded by the eclipse of my own body and its long shadow against the sun’s reflection on the window, sheer and dark as steel, and I couldn’t see Howard at all.

In silence Digger and I walked alongside the hedgebanks between the fields and on toward the flock on the moor, past pale, swaying weed stalks flickering with crickets and little enameled flying insects. It was a glorious day—I couldn’t help saying so and Digger allowed himself to agree, smiling momentarily as if I’d complimented him on something that was his. The dog loped on ahead of us toward the ridge until I couldn’t see him for the glimmering haze on the horizon. Away from the reedy, bright green patches where the bog seldom dried out, the moor was shriveled and dusty, and as we walked our feet sent up from the heather clouds of ragged brown moths like scraps of burnt paper. Once over the ridge, we wound separate ways among the rocks and clumps of gorse until we found and counted the lumbering, dowdy forms of the sheep, grazing in the shade of the combe.

“Eight. One less to bother us,” Digger said, and called, “Come bye!” to the dog, sending him to the back of the flock for the drive off the hill. We got them down in a loose bleating gaggle, through the field gates and into the pen in the barn. Digger looked at his watch.

“Half-eleven. Six hours’ll settle the gas in their stomachs,” he said, above the bleating. “I’ll be back at half-five.”

He must have noticed the way I glanced over at the house. “Got the day to fill, have you?” he said.

“I’m always busy,” I said. “There’s plenty to do.”

“And there’s plenty needs doing,” Digger said. “If it wasn’t for
your situation I’d have more to say, I don’t mind telling you. State of the place.”

“Howard needs a lot of help.”

“Even so. Point is, the rent you’re paying. I could get that ten times over as a holiday let, a place like this. You want to think about that. Lease comes up again Christmastime, don’t it. You want to think about it.”

“It’s a protected tenancy, as you well know. We’re entitled to stay as long as we’re farming.”

“Call that lot farming?” Digger said, snorting in the direction of the sheep. “That ain’t farming. Want putting out of their misery. I’m telling you, clean hole through the head.”

“I’ll see you at half-past five,” I said, and then I thanked him again for the favor and returned to the house.

T
he sun beat down all day on the barn roof. When I went in at half-past five, the air was thick with the smell of warm hay and urine and vibrated with the cries of the ewes; I was sweating and feeling sick even before Digger arrived, late. He rigged up sacks for the fleeces and I unrolled the extension cable for the electric cutters across the yard to the socket in Howard’s old pottery shed. Digger had brought blowfly treatment and said we should dose the rest of the flock. He told me to get some gloves and then showed me how to work the spray. He set planks on the floor where he would do the work and started the generator; we had to shout above its drone and the bleating. As I went into the first holding pen I reminded Digger that since I broke my shoulder I could only work from one side, and he nodded, either bored or skeptical. He didn’t seem to remember it at all, my fall from the ladder, although at the time he’d been scathing about Howard letting his wife do a man’s work. Together, taking a horn each, we hauled the nearest ewe away from the others, got her out of the pen, and dragged her on her skidding hooves across the floor. Digger tipped her off-balance and held her down on her back, between his legs. The clippers began to buzz. He wasn’t an expert shearer—his father had stopped farming sheep when Digger was in his teens—and he struggled to keep her feet from kicking against the floor. By the time he had her done she was wild-eyed, and thick strings of spittle hung from her mouth. I already had the gloves on, and while he held her I sprayed her with the insecticide. She bucked at the feel of it on her newly exposed skin but I kept going until Digger, swearing and spitting, said it was enough. He swung her over
and back on her feet; I got the gate of the second holding pen open and he shoved her in. She skittered around for a while as if startled to find herself suddenly skinny and white. It’s not true that shorn sheep look like the lambs they once were. She looked impossibly small, but old.

I did my best to roll and tie the tattered cloak of her fleece, hiding my disgust, while Digger watched. My hands shook, and they were greasy and stinking with the lanolin off the wool. The air was sharp with insecticide. We brought out the next ewe from the others and went through the same procedure with her, and with the next two. After nearly an hour we were only half-way done, and I was drenched in sweat and my shoulder ached. I made Digger stop. I brought a jug of cold water from the house, and although he paused and drank, he made it clear he resented the delay. On the fifth sheep he found maggots. She was not nearly as badly infested as the sheep that died; it was nothing, he told me, that a good drenching wouldn’t deal with. I watched the maggots writhe faster under the shower of insecticide. They dropped off dead on to his feet, and I was almost sick.

It was after seven-thirty before we’d finished and driven the sheep back on to the moor. Digger returned to the shed to pack up the generator and clippers and other bits of equipment while I went on into the house. When I stepped into the kitchen I heard faint drifting voices from the television and through the glass panel of the door to the sitting room I could see the top of Howard’s head silhouetted against the screen. He didn’t turn round.

I didn’t want him to know I’d come in. The kitchen smelled almost pleasantly of summer damp, a sharp smell like milk curds or wet chalk, and my face and arms were prickling from the sudden coolness. My skin still crawled; I shivered, remembering the foamy jaws of the sheep and their jutting yellow teeth, the lousy fleeces. From the sitting room came the sound of a commercial break; jittery music gave way to an excited, high-pitched voice. Howard switched channels, slicing from the advert to fluttery studio laughter, and then he brought the volume down so that over it I could hear the kitchen clock tapping out the seconds in low, tinny pulses. The old freezer in the scullery across the passage at the back of the kitchen let out a
tired, electrical grunt. It was the first time all day I’d had a moment to realize how close to tears I was, how completely I would give up and sob with self-pity if this patch of solitude were not so obviously finite, so frail against certain interruption. All I could do was guard it for as long as it lasted and use every moment of it to keep very still, the way a cat uses a square of sunlight on a stone floor. I stood motionless, my fingertips arched on the tabletop, and closed my eyes, afraid that my breathing would give away my whereabouts. I wondered if Adam had read my email yet.
I hope you have told them how much leave you’re owed, it must be weeks and weeks now!
However desperate that sounded to him it was far, far less desperate than I felt.