Page 64 of Broken Country

So much has changed since that fateful day. We havepassed through autumn, once, twice, and now almost three times. I have picked fruit and turned it into jam and crumbles and pies, just as I always did, before Bobby, with Bobby, without him. He wasn’t there when our lambs were born, he did not hear the nightingales sing or the cuckoo that always marks the arrival of spring. We brought in the harvest without him. We plowed, we scattered, we sowed. For Frank and me everything changed when Bobby died but the farm stayed the same, season by season. And through all of it, through snow, through rain and scorching sun, the stump remained to remind us.

I have reached Frank now. My eyes sting, the smoke is bitter in the back of my throat. “What about the birds, Frank? He loved the birds.”

How many times did we bring the binoculars to this field to see which birds we could spot? Buzzards and sparrow hawks and blackbirds. Woodpeckers, great tits. Robins and wagtails and the rooks that circled their nests at dusk, cawing at one another like socialites at a drinks party. He loved them all.

“His birds are long gone.”

Frank still hasn’t looked at me.

“There might be some nesting. The smoke will kill them.”

“It’ll burn itself out soon enough. Wood’s damp.”

“You can’t just set fire to things.”

“Why not? It’s my land. I own it. I can kill it if I want to.”

“Why, though?”

Frank does turn to look at me then. “It’s over.”

His voice is flat, face expressionless. There’s so little of the man I know, no way to reach him.

“What’s over, Frank? The tree? Bobby? You and me?”

“All of it.”

I’m crying now. “I’m sorry—”

He raises a hand to silence me. “It was always him.”

“That’s not true.”

“I was your second best.”

“No. You were different. You were better. You rescued me, remember?”

“None of that matters anymore. It’s too late.”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve known since the wedding. It was the way you looked at him. Like you wanted him. People are talking. It’ll be all over the village soon enough.”

“I still love you.”

“And him. Do you love him?”

I hesitate a moment too long. I want to lie, to protect Frank, to save us if that’s possible, or at least have a chance of saving us. But the one thing we have always had between us is the truth.

“Yes.”

Even now, his face doesn’t change but I know him, I see the air go out of him—or perhaps the fight.

“Then you can have this. I won’t stand in your way. Or his. You know why.”

Frank picks up the paraffin cans and starts to walk off across the field, and I stare after him until he is a small mark on the horizon.

Friday Night

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