Al this was like some glorious net—a freeing net—flung out from her racing mind. She’d scoop up anyone who was game for it. Boys too, yes, any boys. But at some point in the great rush of her thoughts—she was actual y swooping down Polstowe Hil —she calmed down (relatively) and knew what she had to do.
Could it real y be anything else? And it wouldn’t be just an act of liberation. It would be a test. A test of herself. Could she? Would she? She stopped and reversed, swiftly, with a pleasing belch of exhaust smoke, at a farm gate. Al the farm gates, al the bloody farm gates. Someone blared a horn at her. She blared back. She raced again through Polstowe. People couldn’t have helped noticing by now.
This was at least the third time. That was Jimmy Merrick’s Land Rover, wasn’t it? But that wasn’t Jimmy, surely, at the wheel.
She sped back towards Marleston. Could she real y do it? She certainly saw herself doing it. She sees herself doing it now, as if there’s stil somehow a need. She sees herself stopping by the Jebb gate and opening it. Sees herself driving through and not bothering to do any closing.
My God, this is a first. She sees herself roaring into the Jebb yard and lurching to a halt, hand slammed on the horn.
No guessing where Jack might be on the farm at this time of day, but in the scene in her head Jack is somewhere conveniently near the yard. And he’s heard this meteor coming down the track.
She sees the family turning out to confront her amazing arrival. Michael. Vera. There’s a difficulty there, she knows it—to tear Jack from his mum. And standing beside Vera is little Tom, aged seven. A difficulty there too—and there always wil be. There’s a difficulty now. But it’s only Jack she cares about. My Jack.
And there he is. She looks at him and he looks at her, astonishment denting his not often dentable face. A test for her. A test for him. But she’s already passed hers, by being there—it was always like this, her making the first move—
and by sticking her head now out of the window and yel ing,
“Come on, Jacko! Now or never. Quick! Jump in!”
. . .
BUT SHE DOESN’T go through the Jebb gate. She doesn’t even stop by it. And Jack wil never know that he was once part of that never-enacted scene. She thinks of her dad who, even now, in his sozzled state, is perhaps unaware of her flight. How can she do it? Ensure that in the course of three days the only two women in his life wil have deserted him, and stolen his Land Rover. She thinks of her abandoned dad who, when he hears her driving back down the Westcott track, wil surely think, in his half-stupor, that it must be his wife coming home. Coming back! Al ie and El ie and Jimmy, al together at Westcott again.
She drives along the Marleston road. There’s a straight, clear stretch after the Jebb bend, but she’s lost now al the thril of speed. In any case, she slows for the Westcott gate.
She can see the square tower of Marleston church poking up ahead. She gives a strange, pained cry (she gave the same cry again, exactly the same, today) and runs a forearm over her slippery face. She stops, gets out to close the gate dutiful y behind her—having left it defiantly open on her way out. She hears its familiar clang.
The twin hedges take her in their grasp, the golden sunshine mocks her. She drives on down, along the dry ruts, to her father, who, indeed, since he’s been seeking oblivion anyway, wil never know, any more than Jack wil , what El ie has done today. The things we never know. She drives back into Westcott Farm, to her mother’s absence, to her sleeping father (who when she wakes him with a mug of tea, doesn’t want to be woken) and to the mooing, snorting, pissing, shitting fact of cows to be milked.
6
IT WAS DEEP, steep, difficult but good-looking land, with smal patchy fields that funnel ed or bulged down to the woods in the val ey. They had one field up on the ridge where they grew occasional wheat and autumn feed, otherwise it was down to grass and like almost every farm for miles around: sheep or dairy, and they’d always been dairy—beef calves for sale, and dairy. It was hard work for the softest, mildest thing in the world. It was al about turning the land into good white gal ons, as many as possible. And it was al about men being slaves to the female of the species, so Michael Luxton had liked to say, with a sideways crack of his face, when Vera had stil been around, especial y in her hearing. They were al bloody milksops real y.
Each one of those carcasses that were carted off after the cow disease came was a potential hand- out from the Ministry. But that didn’t al ow for the slowness or downright shiftiness of the bureaucracy, or for the simple fact that there was nothing much to bridge the gap. Not a single one of their herd had ever been confirmed. The words were
“suspect” and “contiguous risk.” They just couldn’t be moved, that’s al , though they had to be fed. Nor, at first, could their milk be moved, though they had to be milked.
And then they’d nearly al (except for the new calves) been moved anyway—as carcasses. The farm like a ghost farm, the loss of al that penned-up company strangely bereaving.
No milk flow, no cash flow, and precious little in the bank.
He and Tom got the impression, from their dad’s silences, that the precious little wasn’t even theirs. Meanwhile, when were they supposed to start restocking again and know it wouldn’t be cost and effort for nothing?
Tom hadn’t waited for the final reckoning. Though you couldn’t say it was a sudden move either. He waited til his eighteenth birthday—til he’d be his own man. And you couldn’t say it was a bad move. He’d seen the way the wind was blowing.
And why hadn’t he, Jack, thought of it first? Just to clear off out of it. But it had never occurred to him. And why hadn’t he minded when Tom said that it had been occurring to him al right, for more than a year? “This is just for your ears, Jack.” As if then it became a pact that they’d both entered into, and it was down to Jack, while Tom made the actual move, to cover up for him. And to take it, of course, from Dad afterwards, take al the stick for it, but not say anything for weeks, months, feigning dumb ignorance, buttoning his lip, like some good soldier himself, and only speaking, final y, because he thought his dad must surely have guessed anyway—what else does a boy do?—and because there was no real chance of his father’s getting Tom back.
No, he didn’t know where Tom was. Which was only the truth. Because Tom was in the army and who could say where the army was? Catterick? Salisbury Plain?
