Homecoming (19 page)

After a minute or two, she hears him shout from the kitchen. ‘Jesus Prim, you could’ve cleaned the place up a bit.’ He’s agitated. She can hear it in his voice. True, the kitchen was a mess. She’d had no energy to wash the plates or clear the crumbs, the apple cores, the bits of toast. They mingled with her tools on the table, from earlier when she’d taken apart a lamp.

She can hear him clattering about in there, can hear he’s cross from the way he’s throwing crockery into the sink. But through the fog of her lethargy and the dull ache in her belly, she couldn’t give a —

‘Could ye not have washed up at least?’ he says, behind her in the doorway.

She continues to watch the television.

He walks out again.

Joe steps outside and smells the air suddenly full of spring. It is so warm, the atmosphere appearing to carry currents from some tropical zone. The smell is of drying grass and plant sap rising.

He stands in the yard out back and takes a deep breath, his chest opening, and he feels some of the tension of winter begin to evaporate. His limbs, for the first time, do not feel cold or damp – he can move them freely. The barn is there, still a charred silhouette, but neat and swept up in its destitution at least.

‘Fine day,’ he says to Max, who is fixing a nut on one of the tractor attachments. Joe sees his reddened face and eyes, small and deep-set. He’s smelt the drink on him, this last week, but doesn’t like to mention it. Thinks it must be the pressure of the baby coming – all men feel it – and then the farm coming to him, and Joe thinks perhaps they should hold off on that last thing. Give it another year, until Max is more ready. But he doesn’t say anything about this either, not yet.

‘Let’s move the stores over to some fresh grazing – they’ve stripped that field bare on the east side,’ Joe says. They are fattening lambs on the in-bye, ready to sell at auction the following month: the males, the females not good enough for breeding and the draft ewes that have lost their teeth with age and so can’t pull at the rougher upland turf.

‘Right you are,’ says Max, and he calls to the dogs.

‘I’ll get my stick,’ says Joe.

They walk together across the in-bye – thirty acres that have emerged muddy green since the snows went. Joe looks forward to when they’ll drive the ewes down off the ridge for lambing, end of the month or early next. He loves that job – the sense of anticipation of what the ewes might produce (because you never know, not until the lambs actually come), the fell dancing its different browns and the trees in leaf and if you’ve decent dogs and the job’s done right, it’s a skill to be proud of. His father would’ve been pleased to see him do it, with his son alongside him and the next generation on the way.

‘Have you finished the fences like I asked ye?’ Joe says to Max, who is tramping silently, the dogs running alongside him.

‘Not altogether,’ Max says. He doesn’t meet Joe’s eye.

What
is
wrong with the boy?

The sheep fill the lane like a white woollen river.

Max and Joe walk with them and with the dogs and they call out during their slow march. They keep the sheep moving and stop them from straying or nipping at the grass on the verge with strong mouths. Cars idle behind them and the sun flashes off their windscreens and when Joe finally nods them past, the drivers wave and Max can see how proud his father is to be seen doing this work.

Max’s mind is fogged with sleep and worry. He’s got to knock things on the head with Sheryl, but she’s only becoming more insistent. Last night – that text – with Primrose in the room. That’d unsettled him. Like Sheryl had barged into his house.

He frowns.

‘Primrose must be getting a bump,’ shouts Joe, over the wool. ‘When are we going to see her?’

Max calls to the dogs. Pretends he hasn’t heard. Walks up ahead planting his stick on the verge where the grasses are coming up new. The season’s turning. Usually it gives him pleasure, but not this time. He’s engulfed in shame – lying to his father about the baby because it was easier. If he tells him, that makes it true, and all the other things that went with it a lie. Max can’t bear that. And he’s been wanting a drink so badly that it eclipsed all other wants; and this ugly thing with Sheryl. His phone
vibrates
in his pocket.

‘Did ye move the flock over alright?’ Ann says to him as he takes off his Barbour in the kitchen. He is ruddy with the walking, his hair all blown about.

‘Yes,’ says Joe and he slumps down in a chair. ‘Right warm it is.’

‘I know. Tropical. You must be pooped. Bacon sandwich?’

‘Oh yes, that’s what I need.’

She begins rummaging in the pantry, which is usually frigid with its wire-meshed window to the outdoors. She finds the
bacon
on the sill, folded in a brown paper bag, some tomatoes in there too. She hears his voice in the room behind her, saying, ‘Max looks bloody awful. Hasn’t even started on the fences I asked him to do, would you believe it?’

‘Really?’ she says, and she keeps herself hidden in the pantry for a moment, trying to keep her voice light even with all the lying she’s been doing this past fortnight, since Max had told her about the baby. He’d called the evening it happened. ‘Primrose lost the baby,’ he’d said and it reminded her of when he was little and he’d come running into the kitchen saying ‘Barty broke my truck.’

‘Oh love,’ she’d said, but softly and with her hand cupping the receiver. Her eyes were on the door to the lounge where the sound of the television news was drifting out. Joe was in there. They hadn’t discussed it explicitly, she and Max, but there grew a tacit understanding that it was best not to burden Joe with the loss of the baby. They each had their reasons, telling themselves it was for his good, though she sensed the truth of it was that telling Joe was the thing that made it real. As if telling him would somehow force up their own bad feelings, especially when it came to Primrose.

‘Maybe he’s tired,’ she says now, backing out all blustery and breezy, saying into the clear room: ‘No one likes February, do they? Boring old month.’

She sets the pan on the stove and the bacon in it, which starts sizzling quick enough, while Joe says, ‘What’s wrong with that boy, Ann? What’s happened to him?’ and she’s jiggling the bacon but she can hear how bewildered he is by it. ‘I can smell the drink on ’im. His face is all messed up with it. Why would he be drinking now, when there’s so much to look forward to, with the baby? I’ll tell you something, I’m not handing my farm to some good-for-nothing who’s not responsible.’

She stops jiggling. ‘Don’t be hard on him, Joe,’ she says.

‘Well, it’s not good enough, Ann. I’ve said I’ll give him everything and this is how he answers it – with drinking and not doing the work.’

‘There’s more to it than that,’ and she turns the heat off on the stove. She can’t keep going with this. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you,’ she says. She is standing over him, clutching a tea towel in tight fists. She smooths his hair down.

‘Joe, love,’ she says. ‘Primrose lost the baby.’

She looks at him and he closes his eyes.

‘Ah no,’ he says quietly. ‘No.’

‘Yes, love,’ she says, sitting down beside him. ‘A while ago now. I didn’t like to tell you because . . .’ Joe is not saying anything. But he has opened his eyes. She continues, ‘Well, I didn’t want you carrying more bad news, worrying more. I think that’s why he’s been drinking. You know Max. He’s not one to talk about it.’

‘Ah no,’ says Joe and it’s soft, like the saddest exhaling. ‘No, no, no.’

She takes his hand on the table and they look at each other.

‘Poor Max,’ says Joe. ‘Poor Primrose.’

She nods. Rubs his hand. Then he makes to get up but she grips his hand. She knew this would come – him wanting to fix it all for Max. Take it all over and make it good for him again.

‘No you don’t,’ she says.

‘I’ve got to go to him, Annie. Talk to him. He’s gone up the fell on the quad bike all by himself. I didn’t know . . .’

‘He’s a grown man, Joe. And look at you, you’re exhausted. You’ve been working hard, Joe. Not now.’

Joe doesn’t resist her too much. ‘When did it happen?’ he says.

‘End o’ January,’ she says.

‘Two weeks ago? A full two bloody weeks? All this time and nobody thought to tell me? Like I’m some idiot child – not you, not Max.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .’ she starts.

‘Anything else you’re not telling me, Ann?’ he says. ‘Any other little secrets you’re keeping?’

‘Oh don’t start,’ she says. And she gets up to go back to the pan of bacon.

‘Well it begs the question,’ he is saying, loud now. ‘If you kept something as big as that to yourself all this time, what else is there?’

‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you upsetting yourself. I was trying to protect you.’

‘Like I’m some senile old fart! You had no business deciding for me, Ann. That was my bairn, as much as yours.’

‘It wasn’t either of ours,’ she says. She hasn’t relit the stove, doesn’t want the sizzling over the top of all this noise. ‘It were Max and Primrose’s. It’s their loss to get over, not ours, and we should give them the space to do it.’

‘Oh aye, that’s you all over – let them go hang,’ Joe says.

‘That’s not fair.’

‘You never want to help them. Didn’t even want to give Max the farm.’

‘What is there to give, Joe? A bunch of debts, some ewes that are worth next to nowt? A clapped-out tractor we can’t afford to replace? What’s this great gift you’re giving him, Joe?’

‘He wants it. He wants to stand among men, have a place in the world. I can give ’im that at least.’

‘If that’s what you want, Joe,’ she says. ‘If that’s what would make you happy. But it gives me no pleasure to see Max hang on your every word and do everything to please you. It’s like he’s got no backbone.’

Joe sits quietly at the table, one elbow resting on it. She turns away and lights the gas under the frying pan and the bacon starts sizzling. The maple smell and the warming sound seem to relieve them both.

‘Is Primrose alright?’ Joe says.

‘I’ve not seen her,’ says Ann, and she keeps her face on the pan, not wanting him to examine her on it.

‘What? All this time and you’ve not seen her? Why’ve ye not taken care of her? You know she’s not got her own mother to rely on.’

She flares round fast and sudden. ‘She doesn’t want me,
alright
? I’ve tried and she doesn’t want me.’

Primrose walks into the hallway and lifts her cagoule off the finial at the bottom of the stairs – the first time she’s got dressed in a long time – then she stops and grips the banister, feeling her head swim. She is all tender and weak, but she pushes herself on. She puts the cagoule on, remembering, as she does it, all the bicycle rides across the moor with her little squatter, the friend in her belly, and the feeling she’d had of not being alone. And she remembers the way just the idea of the baby changed everything about the bicycle rides into Lipton because in her imagination she was a kangaroo with a bean in her pouch. And now she is empty of it and the bicycle ride is returned to what it was. Unspecial. She feels the elastic on the wrists of her coat scratching and even this reminds her of the body that failed.

She pushes hard across the moor and the wind pushes back in an argument with her. The ache in her belly is powerful, like a stitch, as if bits inside are knitting together, but she pushes on, pedals hard. Punishing her body or showing it who’s boss. Or showing it her hatred for the way it failed her. She’s no sympathy for it now.

But she needs some help, she knows that, after all that time in the house. She doesn’t want her mother – there were seven at home and her mother had made no secret of being pleased to be shot of Primrose. And she doesn’t want Ann, with her critical face on, putting up with her out of the goodness of her heart but all the while blaming her for it, and why did she need that when she blamed herself anyway?

By the time she arrives at Lauren’s door, the ache has become a sharp, stabbing pain. She props her bicycle and leans one hand high on the brick wall while she stoops to recover.

She rings the bell and the sing-songy chime is muffled within. She has her head bent low with the pain as she feels a warm gust from the door opening and the smell of polish. She hears Lauren gasp, ‘Dear sweet girl, whatever’s wrong with you? Come on love, get yourself inside,’ and she is ushered into the maternal warmth of Lauren’s house.

‘I’m sorry,’ Primrose says, out of breath with the cycling and with the pain, ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ says Lauren. ‘Are you in pain? You look like you’re in pain.’

Primrose is at once glad she has come. Lauren has a hand on her back and she is brisk and it seems to Primrose as if she might be alright. She bursts into tears.

‘I lost the baby,’ she says, between gulps, ‘and now it hurts.’

‘Come here,’ says Lauren and she takes Primrose in her arms, though she is tiny and Primrose towers over her. Primrose rests her head awkwardly on Lauren’s shoulder, against a hard string of pearls, and there’s so much perfume there that it makes Primrose want to cough.

‘You poor dear,’ says Lauren. ‘Rotten,’ she says then, rubbing her back. ‘Rotten, rotten, rotten.’ And this makes Primrose cry some more. But it feels like a good sort of crying. ‘Come on lovey, you need some sugary tea and a biscuit. Have you been seen by a doctor? We need to sort you out.’

In the kitchen, at a bar stool and with her cagoule off and a biscuit in hand, Primrose exhales and the pain subsides a little.

‘So you haven’t been to the doctors?’

‘No,’ she says.

‘So you’ve not been checked over? It were two weeks ago, Primrose!’ Lauren is mock-angry but it’s full of affection and like she’s going to take over, which is what Primrose wants. ‘You might have an infection. Might need a D&C.’ Lauren is looking down through half-moon glasses at an address book open on the worktop. ‘I’ll try my doctor but I’ll happen I should get you over to Malton General sharpish.’ She takes off her glasses and looks at Primrose. ‘Is there still bleeding?’