Ten White Geese (8 page)

The trees here were almost completely leafless, the grass yellow and grazed close to the ground, here and there a clump of thistles. On the bank was an upright stone, the kind they called standing stones on the map, but this one looked like the work of a farmer with heavy machinery. Walking around the large pond, she saw concrete banks and a small brick building; inside, she could hear water flowing but couldn’t see where it came out. That confirmed her idea that the pond was man-made, some kind of reservoir. An asphalt road came to a dead end behind the building. The water before her was so smooth and motionless it made her
think of a freshly polished silver tray. It was clear and viscous, but didn’t look cold. She undressed next to a big rock she could lay her clothes on, then broke the water by dipping the foot with the scar into it. It was cold, but not cold enough to put her off. The bottom felt rock hard under a thin layer of mud, like an enormous concrete slab that had been cleaned fairly recently. Walking as slowly as possible, she waded out to the middle where – with the water up to her waist – she stayed until the last ripple had died away and it was smooth again. She could see her toes and her knees, minuscule air bubbles on each pubic hair, a strange refraction of the light at her belly and forearms, as if the lower body belonged to someone else and didn’t fit properly. She looked around and, yes, this bank too had neither a beginning nor an end. Like a circle. Maybe she didn’t feel cold because, without the slightest breath of wind, even the weak sun was able to warm her upper body, and because she continued to think of the water as viscous, slow and heavy. She remained standing there and understood perfectly why her uncle had been so indecisive in that hotel pond: the place itself had robbed him of the ability to decide. It was only when she saw goosebumps appearing around her nipples that she waded back to the bank. She had seen time passing in the rotation of the long shadows of the trees, the arrival of a school of tiny fish at her toes and their departure, and the appearance of five sheep next to the standing stone. Was this it, what Emily Dickinson had done for almost her entire adult life? Had she tried to hold back time, making it bearable and less lonely too perhaps, by capturing it in hundreds of poems? And not just TIME but
also LOVE and LIFE and even NATURE. It doesn’t matter, she thought. It’s not important any more, and anyway, those sections weren’t even Dickinson’s idea. She dried herself and put her clothes back on, walking away from the water long before the last ripples had died down.

*

The black cattle were gone, or at least no longer visible from the path along the wooded bank. On the embankment, it occurred to her that this path must have been well used at some stage, otherwise they wouldn’t have put up the signs with the hiker or added kissing gates and stiles. No matter how natural she found its current state of abandonment, walkers must pass by occasionally. Maybe they already had: when she was getting her hair done or shopping at Tesco’s or lying on the divan. She smoked a cigarette on the largest rock in the stone circle and sat waiting until the badger – she always assumed it was the same one, the ‘male’ that had bitten her foot – appeared under the gorse. As before, it looked at her without giving any sign of wanting to leave its hiding place. Maybe it remembered the branch breaking on its back.

After docking at Hull she had visited four different cashpoints with both her credit card and her normal bank card and withdrawn a large amount of money. She was still nauseous – the night boat had pitched and rolled and she had felt so
miserable she had resolved never again to travel on such a huge ship – but clear-headed enough to realise that transactions could be traced and know that was something she didn’t want. She started driving, sticking to main roads. Bradford, Manchester, Chester. She was thinking of Ireland. At a Little Chef she had to pull the tarpaulin tighter over the stuff she had in the trailer. ‘Stuff’, that was how she thought of it. The single mattress, the coffee table, things she’d bundled together. Even before she reached Wales, Holyhead appeared on the signs, straight ahead on the A55. She filled up the car and paid with her credit card before she realised what she was doing. In Bangor it finally stopped raining and when she drove onto the Britannia Bridge for Anglesey, she remembered the crossing. No, not another nightmare like that. The strait between the mainland and Anglesey looked magnificent in the damp sun: the steep wooded shores, the two old bridges, big white birds in briny mud, a small island with a white cottage. She turned back and went looking for a bed and breakfast. The next day she ended up at the estate agent’s run by Rhys Jones’s ‘friend’, who said he had the perfect house for her, almost fully furnished and available to rent quarterly. A grey-stone Welsh farmhouse. They went to have a look in his car. He gave her a tour, pointing out the shed with a throwaway gesture and saying ‘pigsty’. After a second night in the B&B, she moved in. He hadn’t mentioned the geese and she hadn’t noticed them. Rhys Jones’s sheep arrived later. She paid until 31 December and still had more than enough money.

*

She was wheeling half-loads of slate from the mound to the path very calmly. Every time she rounded the corner of
the house with the empty wheelbarrow, the five geese cackled quietly. She could hardly bear it and started shovelling faster and faster to cover the sound. After a few loads she was only quarter filling the wheelbarrow. She had removed the cord and the bamboo posts and tipped the grit between the thick alder branches, using the rusty pitchfork to spread it. When she was finished, she slid a kitchen chair up to the cooker, drank a glass of milk, ate a sandwich, smoked a cigarette and thought that, if she really wanted to feel like a gardener, she should start smoking roll-ups. In the afternoon she used a knife to dig weeds out of the slate grit while kneeling on the doormat. She slid slowly from the corner near the pigsty to the corner with the bamboo and the oil tank and carried on all the way to the stream, where she laid the doormat – which said WELCOME – down as a cushion. While working, she didn’t think consciously, all kinds of things just flitted through her mind. Now she sat with her legs dangling down the steep bank and stared at the fast-flowing stream, which fell quickly here. Growing on the steep bank opposite, little more than a metre away, were various kinds of ferns and many other plants she didn’t know by name. At some point a tree had fallen and come to rest across the stream like a mossy bridge. She found it difficult to tear herself away from the water; its rushing and bubbling were hypnotic, never-ending. Did this stream rise on the mountain?

*

That night she stared at the fire just as she had stared at the water. She had lit candles and put them on the windowsill. Nagging pain in her back. Before getting into the bath,
she had eaten some bread with cheese and a sweet onion. Hot meals were too much trouble. Fruit and vegetables were healthy but, of course, things like that only applied to people who were healthy. She’d always found meat difficult. What, for Christ’s sake, was she going to do with the lamb Rhys Jones had threatened her with? She had thought about it while lying in the hot water, and about the garden. Despite failing to produce a sketch, she had already laid out paths in her imagination: the flower beds were in bloom and she had even built the rose arch. Now she stared at the fire without really seeing it. She had warmth, she had light. With cushions, the divan was a fine place to lie down. She hadn’t dressed again after her bath and had a soft blanket draped over her. A glass of wine on the coffee table next to
The Wind in the Willows
and the unread books.

There was a sweet and spicy quality to the smell of the burning wood that made her think of the home-made
borstplaat
and
speculaas
her grandmother used to make and bring to their flat in the Rustenburgerstraat; her grandparents themselves; the pounding on the door when St Nicholas left a sack of presents; looking out through the misted window at the street – preferably in bad weather – and always amazed to see people walking there, with any luck catching a glimpse of a Black Peter on a bicycle; knowing that it was cold and wet outside and warm inside; chocolate milk and presents; the rustle and special smell of the wrapping paper; the laughter of grown-ups in a dimly lit living room; checking her own wish list, sometimes with a pencil to cross off the presents she’d received; knowing that it would all be over the moment the fluorescent light
in the kitchen flickered and turned on; the thumping on the stairs once she was in bed; the empty feeling of 6 December. That homesickness kept coming back. Maybe there was another word for it, maybe nostalgia was better. It had more to do with a time than a place.

*

The geese started to honk loudly. I need a stereo, she thought, struggling to her feet. She hurried downstairs, flicked on the outside light and ran down the path next to the house. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘Fuck off!’ She grabbed a handful of crushed slate and threw it in the direction of the goose field, which was engulfed in darkness. ‘Go away! Go away!’ Another handful of slate. ‘Hey!’ A single stone rolled out of her hand, but the stream drowned the sound of its falling. The geese were quiet. She sank to her knees and looked up at the sky. Never before had she seen so many stars. Never before had she looked up at them naked on her knees in late November.

Tidying up the garage, the husband dropped a cardboard box on his foot. The box contained books and papers belonging to his wife.
Academic year 2003–2004
was written on the side. He was trying to push it up onto a high shelf when a piece of tape came loose and he lost his grip. The box hit him on the chest and landed corner-first on his left foot. He was wearing flip-flops. He made it through the day – it was Sunday 6 December – by going easy on his foot and calling off the tidy-up, spending the whole afternoon in front of the TV with a glass of red wine: sport and more bloody sport. The next morning his foot was swollen blue and yellow, so swollen the smallest toes were no longer recognisable as separate digits. After looking up the number in his address book, he phoned their GP. They were able to fit him in straight away, but he had to look up the address on the Internet first. He pulled on running shoes without doing up the laces and tried to avoid changing gear as much as possible; depressing the clutch was torture. He wouldn’t be training any time soon. It was no problem to keep the car in third as the route from home to the practice was all within his own neighbourhood. On the way he called work, playing it safe by telling them he was worried it might take all day. He found it hard to believe it wasn’t broken.

*

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.’

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.