Ten White Geese (9 page)

*

As she was carrying the umpteenth branch over to the garden wall, someone vaulted it in a swirl of wet air. It was like the jump happened in slow motion, perhaps because of the large rucksack the man was carrying. He landed on the pile of branches, lost his balance and slid sideways. That too seemed slower than normal, reminding her of a gymnast doing a floor exercise. He struggled to right himself, clutching his left wrist. She stopped where she was.

‘Oh,’ he said. It wasn’t a man, more a boy.

‘Have you hurt yourself?’ she asked.

‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘At least…’

She dropped the branch and walked up to him.

‘Bradwen,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘That’s my name.’ He held out a hand.

She put her hand in his and said, ‘Emilie,’ pronouncing it the Dutch way.

‘Is this your garden?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you German?’

‘What is it with you people? Can’t anyone here tell the difference between Dutch and German?’

‘Sorry.’ He rolled his Rs.

‘It doesn’t matter. But it is peculiar.’ She was still holding his hand. He was wearing a woolly hat and he squinted.
Only slightly, but enough to be confusing. ‘Have you hurt your wrist?’

‘Yes.’

She removed her hand. ‘Would you like to sit down for a minute?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Come inside then. I’ll make some coffee.’

‘Sam!’ the boy shouted.

A dog jumped over the low wall. Like its master it landed on the branches, and like its master’s, its feet slid out from under it. It scrambled back up.

‘A dog,’ she said.

‘Sam,’ the boy said. ‘That’s my mate.’

‘Hello, Sam,’ she said.

The dog sniffed her outstretched hand and licked it.

‘He likes you,’ the boy said.

She gripped the animal under its chin and looked into its eyes. ‘I like him too.’ The dog pulled his head free.

‘Nice,’ said the boy.

‘Coffee,’ she said.

*

The boy had put his rucksack under the clock and taken off his hat, revealing thick black hair. He didn’t run his fingers through it. The dog lay on the floor against the cooker and let out the occasional, contented sigh. She had made some coffee and lit a couple of candles on the windowsill above the sink. The sun was already low. She had cut some bread and made a cheese sandwich for the boy. ‘Thank you, Emily,’ he said when she put the plate down on the table in front of him, pronouncing it the English way. What difference does it make?
she thought. He’ll be gone again soon. Now he’d finished the sandwich and drunk a second cup of coffee. He hadn’t spoken while eating and drinking. He’d taken his hiking boots off at the front door; there was a sweet smell in the kitchen.

‘I’d better be off,’ he said. ‘It’s getting dark.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘There’s a bed and breakfast a bit further along.’

‘How much further?’

He reached over to his rucksack and pulled out a map. The very same map she’d taken off the table earlier, folded and laid on the worktop, though his had been used a lot more. The stiff paper had already turned soft. He unfolded it and ran his index finger over it. He had sinewy hands with broad thumbs, a little dirty.

‘Two or three miles.’

‘It will be pitch black by that time,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Do they know you’re coming?’

‘No, I haven’t rung yet.’ He thought about it. ‘Usually I ring up around twelve, after I’ve walked a couple of hours. Not today. I don’t know why.’

‘If necessary, you can sleep here,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to. There’s a divan in the study.’

The dog yawned.

‘Sam thinks it’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘He’s nice and warm there.’

‘It’s settled then.’

‘Do you live here alone?’

‘Yes.’

*

The boy had a bath while she cooked a meal. The dog had slipped away from his warm spot in front of the cooker and when she quietly climbed the first half of the staircase she saw him lying in front of the closed bathroom door. He raised his head and watched her attentively. She shook her head and went downstairs again and the dog followed her. Strange, how easily the boy and the dog adjusted to this house. She put a few more logs in the stove in the living room. She stirred the soup. The dog lay down with its back against the cooker. She opened a bottle of red wine. The clock ticked sharply, the geese clucked softly.

‘I’m mapping a new long-distance path,’ he said. ‘Planning it, actually. In the south they’ve got the Pembrokeshire Coast path. Now they want a path up here too.’ He had taken a notebook out of his rucksack. ‘I write everything down, all the things I see, landmarks. Sometimes a whole day’s work is wasted because I come to a dead end.’ He had washed his hair and looked very different from earlier. As if there were a glow around his head.

‘How long will it take you?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I dropped out of uni. I couldn’t be bothered any more.’

‘How long have you been at it so far?’

‘A week and a half.’

He had tipped dry food from a plastic bag into a bowl for Sam, who finished it in no time. There was a pan of soup on the table. Bread, beetroot salad, cheese and butter.

‘I have to talk to farmers too. Ask permission. Farmers and homeowners. So I’m actually working as we speak.’

‘The path follows my drive for almost half a mile.’

‘Exactly.’

She poured him another glass of wine. He’d gulped down the first two and now he started to tip this one back as well. ‘Are you scared someone else will drink it?’ she asked.

‘You pour it, I’ll drink it.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty.’

‘What were you studying?’

‘I’ve forgotten. It was boring.’

‘You don’t want to say.’

He rushed through his soup. Instead of bringing the spoon up to his mouth, he brought his head down to the bowl. ‘Nice.’

‘How’s your wrist?’

‘No problem.’

‘Would you like some more?’

‘No, I’ve had enough, thanks.’ He leant back, raised both arms and stretched by pulling one wrist with the other hand. His faded T-shirt crept up, there was a hole in the left armpit. ‘Not that you can say no anyway,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘You can’t actually refuse. Right of way. That’s what it’s called. The path I took today already exists. It’s on the map. You can’t stop people using it.’

‘I’ve never seen any walkers here at all. I’m the only one who uses that path.’

‘Yeah, it was funny today. At a certain point the path suddenly appeared and was easy to follow, but before that I kept losing my way.’

‘I walk on it to the stone circle.’

‘The stone circle?’

‘Yes, you walked right through it.’

‘Didn’t notice a thing.’

‘It was misty.’

‘I wouldn’t mind another glass of wine.’

She had to stand up to fetch another bottle. The dog was immediately alert. It was warm in the kitchen, the window had misted over. She smelt the old-woman smell again and shook her head to get rid of it. The boy and the dog had their own smells, especially the dog, and she hadn’t put the lid back on the soup pan. A pan which, by the way, had belonged to Mrs Evans. She opened the bottle. ‘Where do you come from?’

‘I was born in Llanberis. You?’

‘Rotterdam.’

‘Never been there.’

‘I haven’t been to Llanberis either.’ She tried to make her LL sound just like his.

*

After they’d drunk the second bottle, she’d had enough. She was exhausted, she needed some paracetamol and she wanted a bath. While he’d been sitting at the table freshly washed and wearing clean clothes, she’d been in her gardening clothes. She had deliberately called him Bradwen a few times
to get used to the name and, as if in response, he’d kept calling her Emily. Or was it the other way round? Had she started calling him by name because he kept ending sentences with hers? She had a constant feeling he was about to say something important, even after he’d started on his concluding ‘Emily’, perhaps because he kept looking at her with that squint, behind which she also suspected more than if he’d looked at her normally.

‘I’ll light the fire in your room. Then I’ll have a bath and go to bed.’

‘Fine,’ he said.

‘There are books there. Mostly English.’

‘I’ve got my own book with me. Can Sam sleep there too?’

‘That’s fine by me. I’ll lay a rug on the floor for him.’

The dog was already heading through to the living room.

‘I’ll let him out first.’

‘See you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight,’ he said. He put on his coat and followed the dog, closing the front door behind him. Sam barked angrily a couple of times.

She went upstairs and laid a fire in the grate, looked around to see if there was anything she should put away, and fetched a duvet cover from her bedroom. ‘Yes,’ she said to Dickinson’s portrait after making up a bed on the divan. ‘Yes, this is a different kettle of fish. See you later.’ Then she went into the bathroom and pushed two paracetamol out of a strip. In a fortnight or so she’d almost finished all five boxes. Taking a painkiller was the first thing she did in the morning. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror,
which wasn’t difficult with it steamed over from running the bath. A little later she was lying in the warm water, her mind a blank. She heard the boy and the dog come upstairs. He pulled the door to the study shut behind him. The dog barked and stopped almost immediately when the boy warned him to be quiet. ‘Not again,’ she said quietly to her toes. ‘And definitely not now, Emilie from Rotterdam.’ She rubbed her belly with both hands, keeping it up for several minutes, then ran her fingers, almost surprised, through her hair, which was very short.

The next morning she got up fairly early. The door to the study was closed and the house was silent. She made some coffee and set the table, putting a tablecloth on it for the first time. The mist had cleared in the night, a dull sun was shining. The sight of the one and a half unpollarded alders immediately drained her. He would leave; she would have to do it alone. She sat down with her hands next to her empty plate. Instead of coming down from upstairs, he came in from outside, bringing the bitter smell of fallen leaves into the house with him. The dog was overjoyed to see her. She could still see the boy as a gymnast: not a brawny one on the rings, but the slender kind whose best event is the floor exercise. He took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair he was about to sit down on, opposite her.

‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Good morning,’ she said.

‘I was at the stone circle. It’s a real one. This bit will definitely go in the route.’

‘Are some of them unreal then?’

‘Sure. Even farmers have time on their hands sometimes.’

‘See any badgers?’

‘No. You only see them at night. Sam didn’t smell anything either.’

She pulled off a sock and stuck her foot out towards him under the table.

‘What’s that?’

‘A scar.’

‘Yes, I can see that. What from?’ He reached out to her foot and for the first time since the bite she felt the teeth penetrating her flesh. Just before he was about to touch her skin, he pulled back his hand.

‘A badger. In the daytime.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’

He stared at her with his strange, slightly evasive eyes. Last night it had been worse. His squint. Probably because of the wine. ‘No,’ he said.

Her thigh muscle started to quiver so she put her foot down on the floor, then pulled the sock back on. She poured the coffee. ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Yes. With the sound of the stream.’ He started to eat. The dog sat next to his chair and kept its eyes on him, head slightly crooked. ‘You’ll get yours, Sam.’

She buttered a slice of bread, put some cheese on it and looked at it. She swallowed. ‘Heading off soon?’

‘Yes.’

A bit of coffee then, she could always manage that. The boy ate in silence, the dog following every piece into his mouth. Bradwen looked in turn at his plate, out the window and at the dog. He glanced once at the clock. ‘I want to go to Snowdon today,’ he said. ‘Have you got a suggestion?’

‘A suggestion?’

‘The most beautiful way to get there.’

‘Can you walk it in one day?’

‘Easy. I’m not going up, just to the foot of the mountain.’

‘I haven’t gone in that direction yet.’

‘How long you been living here?’

‘A month or two.’

‘Is it temporary?’

‘No. Permanent.’

‘Wow.’ He’d finished eating and rubbed his hands which, despite last night’s bath, were still a little dirty. ‘Your turn, Sam.’ He tipped some dog food into the bowl in front of the cooker. ‘I’ll get my stuff from upstairs and then I’ll be off.’

‘OK,’ she said.

*

Ten minutes later they were standing at the corner of the house. The grass was wet, the door of the pigsty open. The alder branches lay gleaming against the garden wall. The boy shook her hand. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. The dog followed the barbed-wire fence, sniffing and barking. The geese were in the far corner of the field.

‘You’re welcome.’ She waited before letting go of his hand.
It wouldn’t be strange to say something else now, but she didn’t know what. He’d put on his woolly hat, though it wasn’t cold. ‘I’d better get Sam away from those geese.’

‘You go straight ahead at that bend. I oiled the kissing gate a while ago.’

He carefully pulled back his hand. ‘See you,’ he said. He walked off, whistling the dog, which was now running back and forth along the fence. She could only see his legs, an elbow now and then. Man and dog: man with restless legs, kicking a chunk of slate along in front of him. Just before he went through the kissing gate, Sam ran up to him. There was no squeak, she’d oiled the hinges well. He was gone. The dog barked one last time.

*

She walked over to the goose field. The birds came up to her. Four. It must have happened the night she’d knelt there naked, gazing up at the stars. A whole week had passed without her giving the geese a second glance. She ran into the house, grabbed the chunk of bread off the worktop, ran back, pulled off little pieces of bread and threw them over the barbed-wire fence. She looked at the shelter she’d made. The chicken wire that was supposed to cover the entrance was still folded back. Maybe they crept in at night and weren’t safe even then. Now that she was standing with bread in her hands and had the geese’s attention, she remembered the day she’d tried to herd the birds into the shelter. Lying wet and exhausted on her side in the grass, she had thought of luring them with bread. The next day Rhys Jones showed up and it was his fault she’d forgotten about the geese. How could I have let that happen? she asked herself. Neglecting animals
I’m responsible for because I think someone’s a bastard? Where’s he got to anyway? It’s already December and November is the month for slaughtering animals. What’s keeping him? She moved along to the gate and went into the goose field. The birds followed her. She scattered some bread in front of the shelter. They weren’t having it. As if knowing she was trying to trick them, they kept a good distance. She sighed and went back to the gate. After she had tied it up again with the piece of rope, the geese ran to the shelter and started gulping down the bread. ‘
Godverdomme
,’ she said quietly. ‘Pig-headed, stupid creatures.’ She looked at the kissing gate and the gap in the row of oaks. Slowly, she walked back to the house. In the kitchen the breakfast things were still on the table. She picked up his plate and smelt it, then put his mug to her lips. The house had never been this empty. She didn’t think twice, but grabbed her bag and ran to the car.