‘They’ve been very kind to me,’ Annie May said.
‘What good did it do them? What good?’ he said angrily. ‘They’re there with one arm as long as the other. Useless to themselves or anybody else. They’ll be on the road before long, mark my words, and we’ll be with them if we are not careful.’
They had come to the big iron gates of the yard. The gates were chained, and they crossed by the stone stile. The back of the huge house stood away to the left at the head of the yard, and in the darkness, all around them in the yard, were the old stone outhouses. The herdsman’s house was some distance beyond the hayshed at the far end of the yard, towards the fields. They stood for a split moment apart on the yard’s uneven surface. His natural cunning and vanity still held him back: it was too dangerous, she lived too close to his own doorstep, it could change his life — but his need was too strong.
After that night, around nine every evening, when she had finished the chores, and old William was in bed and Master William reading in the library in the front of the house or out in the fields with his telescope, she would go to the herdsman’s house. Too timid to knock, she would make a small scraping sound on the loose door, and sometimes she would have to call. They stayed within the house those first weeks, but after a while he seemed not to want her there. On fine nights, he would take her into the fields. ‘We have our own telescope!’ And when it rained he still preferred to have her out of the house, though she would have loved to sit with him in the darkness listening to the rain beat on the iron. He would take her across to the dry-stone barn where the fruit was stored, the air sticky sweet with the odour of fermenting apples.
‘We can listen to the rain far better here. There’s less of roof.’
He kept an old, heavy blanket there above the apple shelves, and he could end the evening whenever he wished. He could not get her out of his own house as easily. The old laws of hospitality were too strong even for him. When he wanted to be rid of her from this neutral storehouse, he could walk her to the corner of the yard across from the big house. Sometimes it seemed to her that the evenings were ending now almost before they began, but she was too ill with desire and fear to complain. A hot Sunday in the middle of June she made her one faint plea for openness or decency.
‘Wouldn’t it be a good day to take the boat and go on the river?’ She was amazed by her own effrontery as soon as the words were spoken. The Kirkwoods had a boathouse on the river and a solid rowboat that was kept in repair but seldom used. To go together on the river would bring what had been furtive and hidden into some small light. It would show that he was not ashamed of her. All courting couples went on Sundays to the river in this kind of weather. Even those who couldn’t get boats strolled the riverbank towards the Oakport Woods. Some of her early admirers had been proud to take her. There were soft bluebells under the trees, a hidden spring with water so pure it made the teeth chatter even in the heat, and she had drunk it laughing through a stem.
‘No. Not today,’ he answered slowly, looking down. A yellow dandelion was growing between the yard stones. He kept moving it forwards and back with his boot.
‘Wouldn’t it make a change?’
‘Not today.’ He was still searching for the cover of an acceptable lie. ‘There’s an animal sick. I wouldn’t like to be caught that far from the house if it took a turn for the worse. Anyhow, aren’t we as well off round the house here? Maybe later we can ramble down by the orchard. It’ll be as cool there as on any river.’
At midday she made a meal that was much liked in this weather — smoked haddock in a cream sauce with cauliflower and young peas and small early potatoes. It must have been all of fourteen years since Mrs Kirkwood had taught her how to bring the sauce to a light consistency, to flavour it with chives and parsley. If Mrs Kirkwood was here on this hot Sunday, William and her son would not be dining with Eddie Mac in the kitchen. The linen and silver would be set in the front room, the front door open, the faded canvas deck-chairs stretched under the walnut tree on the front lawn for coffee and newspapers.
The big kitchen, though, was pleasant enough — a fresh coolness from the brown flagstones she had washed in the morning, the door open on the steps down to the yard, a shimmer of heat above the iron roofs, and the dark green of the trees beyond. The house was too big for all of them. The men did not speak as they ate, and she winced as she listened to the thin clink of knife and fork on the bone china.
‘I have to say that was a superb meal, Annie,’ William volunteered as they rose.
‘I can heartily second that,’ his son added.
‘I’ll be around the yard today,’ Eddie Mac said to Master William as he lifted his cap. ‘I don’t like the look of the blue heifer.’
‘If you need help, you’ll find me in the library.’
She had not eaten, but even after she had cleared the table and washed and put away the dishes she still had little appetite. She drank a mug of coffee with a slice of fruit cake as she stared out on the empty yard. It was already late in the afternoon when she rose, washed the mug, closed the door, and went heavily down the steps into the dull heat of the yard.
She found him at the corner of the stables waiting with an eagerness he hadn’t shown for weeks, a blue cloth coat he sometimes wore to the fair on his arm. They went silently into the orchard, picking a place in the high grass away from the beaten path that ran from the gate to the pale row of beehives facing south under the far ivy-covered wall. A clump of wild raspberries that had spread right up to the outer branches of the russet trees gave added cover, though no one in the world would find them there this blessed day.
‘You see, it’s washed.’ He offered her the blue coat to feel with about as much tenderness as it was ever possible for him to show before he spread it on the ground.
‘It’s as cool here as on any river,’ he said as he reached for her. ‘As cool as on any river. They can have the fields and anything they want. This is happiness,’ he said in a heavy, hoarsely rhythmic tone as he moved above her. ‘This is the centre, centre of everything, they can have all else they want.’
‘Then I must be part of that centre too,’ she said quietly out of the same dull defeat she had felt alone in the big kitchen, not caring about the words she had said.
He stopped in pure amazement. He could not have looked more taken aback if the deep earth itself had stirred and spoken. For a moment, she thought he was about to strike her, but all he did was quickly straighten his clothes and turn his back to her in the long grass. The oppressive silence was at length broken by the sound of the small orchard gate being opened and closed. Old William came slowly down the worn path between the trees. He was going to the hives, dressed all in white, his white beard tucked beneath the suit, the frame of the veil resting on an old straw hat, the long gloves tied with twine below the elbow. He carried a hive tool and smoker, pausing now and then to fan the smoker as he walked slowly along.
From the shelter of the grass and wild canes they watched him go through the hives. His slow care somehow took away some of the oppression. Each time he lifted a roof, a thin stream of bees would move towards the veil. He paid them no attention, working methodically through the hives, sometimes having to use the tool to prise the frames apart, now and again turning his back to the sun to hold up the frames to the light. When he had gone through all the hives, and the bees were quietly working again, he lifted an old wooden chair out of the grass and sat to one side, staring directly into the flight path, the way people lean on bridges to watch water flow below.
‘What’s he doing?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. Just watching. He could sit that way for hours. Once I asked him what they were doing. “They’re killing off the drones today, Edward,” he said. You’d think he was talking about the weather.’