She shook her head. ‘He’d probably say I look fifty now.’ She was as strong-willed as the schoolteacher mother she disliked, and I did not press. She was with child and looked calm and lovely.
‘What’ll they do about the hay when they no longer have you to help them?’ she said.
‘What does anybody do? Do without me. Stop. Get it done by contract. They have plenty of money. It’ll just be the end of something that has gone on for a very long time.’
‘That it certainly has.’
I came by train at the same time in July as I’d come every summer, the excitement tainted with melancholy that it’d probably be the last summer I would come. I had not even a wish to see it to its natural end any more. I had come because it seemed less violent to come than to stay away, and I had the good new modern watch to hand over in place of the old gold. The night before, at dinner, we had talked about buying a house with a garden out near the strand in Sandymount. Any melancholy I was feeling lasted only until I came in sight of the house.
All the meadows had been cut and saved, the bales stacked in groups of five or six and roofed with green grass. The Big Meadow beyond the beeches was completely clean, the bales having been taken in. Though I had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay, I now felt a keen outrage that it had been ended without me. Rose and my father were nowhere to be seen.
‘What happened?’ I asked when I found them at last, weeding the potato ridge one side of the orchard.
‘The winter feeding got too much for us,’ my father said. ‘We decided to let the meadows. Gillespie took them. He cut early — two weeks ago.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
My father and Rose exchanged looks, and my father spoke as if he was delivering a prepared statement.
‘We didn’t like to. And anyhow we thought you’d want to come, hay or no hay. It’s more normal to come for a rest instead of just to kill yourself at the old hay. And indeed there’s plenty else for you to do if you have a mind to do it. I’ve taken up the garden again myself.’
‘Anyhow, I’ve brought these.’ I handed Rose the box of chocolates and bottle of scent, and gave my father the watch.
‘What’s this for?’
‘It’s the watch I told you I’d get in place of the old watch.’
‘I don’t need a watch.’
‘I got it anyhow. What do you think of it?’
‘It’s ugly,’ he said, turning it over.
‘It was expensive enough.’ I named the price. ‘And that was duty free.’
‘They must have seen you coming, then.’
‘No. It’s guaranteed for five years. It’s dustproof, shockproof, waterproof.’
‘The old gold watch — do you still have that?’ He changed after silence.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you ever get it working?’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘But it’s sort of nice to have.’
‘That doesn’t make much sense to me.’
‘Well, you’ll find that the new watch is working well anyway.’
‘What use have I for time here any more?’ he said, but I saw him start to wind and examine the new watch, and he was wearing it at breakfast the next morning. He seemed to want it to be seen as he buttered toast and reached across for milk and sugar.
‘What did you want to get up so early for?’ he said to me. ‘You should have lain in and taken a good rest when you had the chance.’
‘What will you be doing today?’ I asked.
‘Not much. A bit of fooling around. I might get spray ready for the potatoes.’
‘It’d be an ideal day for hay,’ I said, looking out the window on the fields. The morning was as blue and cool as the plums still touched with dew down by the hayshed. There was a white spider webbing over the grass. I took a book and headed towards the shelter of the beeches in the Big Meadow, for, when the sun would eventually beat through, the day would be uncomfortably hot.
It was a poor attempt at reading. Halfway down each page I’d find I had lost every thread and was staring blankly at the words. I thought at first that the trees and green and those few wisps of cloud, hazy and calm in the emerging blue, brought the tension of past exams and summers too close to the book I held in my hand, but then I found myself stirring uncomfortably in my suit — missing my old loose clothes, the smell of diesel in the meadow, the blades of grass shivering as they fell, the long teeth of the raker kicking the hay into rows, all the jangle and bustle and busyness of the meadows.
I heard the clear blows of a hammer on stone. My father was sledging stones that had fallen from the archway where once the workmen’s bell had hung. Some of the stones had been part of the arch and were quite beautiful. There seemed no point in breaking them up. I moved closer, taking care to stay hidden in the shade of the beeches.
As the sledge rose, the watch glittered on my father’s wrist. I followed it down, saw the shudder that ran through his arms as the metal met the stone. A watch was always removed from the wrist before such violent work. I waited. In this heat he could not keep up such work for long. He brought the sledge down again and again, the watch glittering, the shock shuddering through his arms. When he stopped, before he wiped the sweat away, he put the watch to his ear and listened intently. What I’d guessed was certain now. From the irritable way he threw the sledge aside, it was clear that the watch was still running.
That afternoon I helped him fill the tar barrel with water for spraying the potatoes, though he made it clear he didn’t want help. When he put the bag of blue stone into the barrel to steep, he thrust the watch deep into the water before my eyes.
‘I’m going back to Dublin tomorrow,’ I said.
‘I thought you were coming for two weeks. You always stayed two weeks before.’
‘There’s no need for me now.’
‘It’s your holiday. You’re as well off here as by the sea. It’s as much of a change and far cheaper.’
‘I meant to tell you before, and should have but didn’t. I am married now.’
‘Tell me more news,’ he said with an attempt at cool surprise, but I saw by his eyes that he already knew. ‘We heard but we didn’t like to believe it. It’s a bit late in the day for formal engagements, never mind invitations. I suppose we weren’t important enough to be invited.’
‘There was no one at the wedding but ourselves. We invited no one, neither her people nor mine.’
‘Well, I suppose it was cheaper that way,’ he agreed.
‘When will you spray?’
‘I’ll spray tomorrow,’ he said, and we left the blue stone to steep in the barrel of water.
With relief, I noticed he was no longer wearing the watch, but the feeling of unease was so great in the house that after dinner I went outside. It was a perfect moonlit night, the empty fields and beech trees and walls in clear yellow outline. The night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm, but I knew too well it neither was nor could be. It was a dream of death.
I went idly towards the orchard, and as I passed the tar barrel I saw a thin fishing line hanging from a part of the low yew branch down into the barrel. I heard the ticking even before the wrist watch came up tied to the end of the line. What shocked me was that I felt neither surprise nor shock.
I felt the bag that we’d left to steep earlier in the water. The blue stone had all melted down. It was a barrel of pure poison, ready for spraying.
I listened to the ticking of the watch on the end of the line in silence before letting it drop back into the barrel. The poison had already eaten into the casing of the watch. The shining rim and back were no longer smooth. It could hardly run much past morning.