‘I see,’ Edward repeated. ‘Maybe we can do something about that.’
‘Could you, Edward?’
‘I think so.’
They reached the end of the garden and collected the rake and wheelbarrow from the woodshed.
The fowlyard smelt warm and dusty and feathery. A few blowflies buzzed over the kitchen scraps. Half a dozen fowls strutted up and down like parodies of Egyptian dancers, heads poking forward and then retracting like fingers outstretched and withdrawn, outstretched and withdrawn, in constant repetition and rhythm. They lifted their toes in delicate precision and stabbed the ground with quick, bright pecks. Matthew liked their warm, throaty calls. Even outside their cage, when they might fly, they seemed earth-hugging birds, their fat, white, feathery bodies comfortable and motherly.
He felt inside one of the nesting boxes and his fingers touched the cool, rounded surface of an egg. It fitted his hand. Objects like eggs and round pebbles and oranges all gave him this sense of satisfying completeness. When he was tired or sad he would take a round stone from his box of treasures and hold it until it grew warm in his hand.
He showed the egg to Edward who grinned. ‘Breakfast?’
‘Yes.’ But he cupped his second hand over the first so that the enclosed egg nestled safely. It must be nice for the hen to feel these round, warm shapes under her. He slipped the egg inside his shirt and it slid against his stomach and rested on the tight band of his pants. He turned it so that the shell smoothed across his skin. He felt sorry for the hen. Edward was not looking. He was raking the sand, straw and manure from the corners of the yard. Deftly Matthew replaced the egg in the nest. He would have to collect it eventually but it could stay whole a little longer.
The lettuces were beginning to heart, outer leaves crusty green, inner leaves paler, delicate, folded in on themselves like eyelids. Beside them tomato bushes slumped and twined on the ground pregnant with green fruit thick-skinned, hard and heavy. Gran was busy. She had a pile of stakes, each she had trimmed to a spike. Now she hammered one into the ground. Whack. She tested its firmness. Whack. Whack. She tested it again. Satisfied, she disentangled a tomato plant, lifted its ungainly branches, searched for and found the central stalk and with a strip of cloth bound it upright to the stake. Loose branches still lolled, bowed by the green tomatoes.
‘Help your gran hold the stake, Matthew.’ And Edward took a spade and began alternately spreading the manure between the lettuces and working it in with a hoe.
Margaret came down the path. ‘Here I am. Here I am. What can the milkmaid do?’
They all looked up. She wore a gown of dimity cotton, a washed blue with tiny, faded yellow roses sprayed across it. On her head perched an old straw bonnet with a strip of golden ribbon twisted about its crown and under her chin in a huge bow.
‘You haven’t worn that since you were eighteen,’ Gran laughed.
‘I feel eighteen. Every day was a party day then. What can I do?’
Edward had stopped hoeing. Matthew holding the stake for Gran saw his smile stretch and tauten as if it might spring off his face. Mother, with mouth slightly open, looked about to swallow it. She tasted her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I’ll bring the watering can. If it’s not too heavy for me.’ She turned away but her glance sidled towards Edward. ‘You are my honey, honey suckle, I am the bee,’ she sang.
‘Gran, should I help Mother?’
‘If you like.’ Matthew ran after her. Together they filled the can.
‘One, two, three—lift,’ Margaret ordered.
They heaved, giggling and straining as the water swam over the lip of the can and spurted from the spout, wetting the hem of Margaret’s dress and Matthew’s feet.
‘We could empty some out,’ Matthew gasped, his hands purple with the strain.
‘Edward, Edward, it’s too heavy for us. Help us, Edward,’ shouted Margaret.
Gran looked up. ‘Empty some out.’
‘I’ll come.’ Edward bounded across the garden, lettuce and tomato beds straddled in one leap. He stood close to Margaret as he reached for the can. Matthew let go the handle but she kept her hand there, Edward’s large hand touching it.
‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,’ he said softly, ‘how does your garden grow?’
‘With silver bells and cockleshells, kind sir,’ she replied, tilting her eyes at him. ‘But you know I am Margaret.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Perhaps today, as I’m the farmer’s maid,’ she tipped the straw of her bonnet over her cheek so that golden arrows shot through the brim and danced on her face, ‘perhaps today I’ll be Meg. You can all call me Meg.’
‘Meg it will be.’ Edward lifted the can. She gripped the handle with him and together they strode back to the lettuce patch. His feet spattered with tiny red stains from the earth and water, Matthew trotted after them.
Gran was still at work, her movements precise and rhythmical. But as Matthew grasped the stake she muttered, ‘Meg, indeed. Milkmaid. What next? Farmer’s help.’ She glanced at Edward now spreading manure while Margaret followed behind him, watering it into the ground. Her mouth puckered and she sighed.
‘Did the hens lay any eggs, Matthew?’
He hesitated, peeked at his mother and Edward, felt again the egg grow warm against his skin. ‘I didn’t look, Gran,’ he lied, and to avoid her eyes took one of the smooth, green tomatoes and let his hand circle its roundness.
Early that morning Gran had prepared cold meats and salad for lunch. Margaret had cooked a chocolate cake and iced it. She took it out of the safe, put it in the middle of the table, rummaged in the back of a drawer, produced four blue candles and stuck them squarely in the centre of the cake.
‘One for each of us—a party day.’
She reached into the dried fruit jar and took out a dark cherry. She toyed with it a moment, eyes downcast, then
