“Or more than friends. When we know each other better.”
It seems so simple and innocent, his sudden laughter.So this is Frank Johnson, I think, a little wistfully,with his wholesome, uncomplicated life.
Frank calls for me at the cottage when he’s finished on the farm. First, we inspect my nestlings, who are thriving; every day they gain weight and a few more feathers. Then we drive around the country lanes in the thick winter dark, talking. We talk about our families, the friends we like from school, the ones we don’t. Music, our favorite records, surprised to discover we have similar tastes. Frank doesn’t ask me about Gabriel or why I have left the convent, or whether I still plan on going to Oxford. I don’t ask Frank why he didn’t stay on to finish his A levels.
I notice he is most animated when he talks about the farm, even boring things like the stray sheep that took him hours to find or how he is so used to the stink of slurry he doesn’t notice it anymore. I see how this is his world, his oxygen, and when he’s outside it he struggles to feel like himself.
“Show me,” I say to him one evening.
“Show you what?”
“Your favorite place on the farm.”
This smile of his, so broad and comforting, like a shot ofeuphoria. It makes me feel happy just seeing it, and I want to keep flicking the switch.
“I have Sunday afternoon off,” he says. “You need to see it in daylight.”
I should have known he would bring me back to the oak tree.
We stand beneath it looking out at a stripped landscape that seems rigid with cold. But I see how the field slopes gently downhill, offering a view of beyond, a patchwork of brown-and-ochre squares bound by hedgerows, the rise of a hill in the distance, a feeling of infinity. I see why he loves it.
“Does all that land belong to the farm?” I ask, but Frank doesn’t answer me.
He says my name. Softly.
I know instantly from the way Frank is looking at me what is about to happen. My whole body is alert to it, even the air feels dense with expectation.
Frank steps closer until we are only inches apart. He is going to kiss me.
“Wait.” I hold up a palm. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I say quickly, when his face falls. “I do want to. But there’s something I need to tell you first.”
“All right.”
He stands there, calmly waiting. Unconcerned.
“I’m pregnant. I’m keeping it.”
Frank’s face does not change. He nods, considering what I have told him. Takes his time. Seconds pass, perhaps a whole minute.
“And the other fella. Doesn’t want to know, I suppose?”
“Doesn’t know. And never will. We broke up so…”
“Ah. I see. Well, in that case…” He smiles at me until I find myself smiling back. The two of us grinning like idiotswhen I thought I had nothing to grin about, beneath an ancient oak tree on a wintry afternoon. “Isn’t that something to celebrate?”
Frank opens his arms wide, an invitation. And laughs as I step into them.
Part FiveGrace
1975
Grace is weaving down Top Field with two ewes and a cluster of newborn lambs. She knows how to tack back and forth across our field in a slow zigzag, making sure her babies walk in the right direction. She knows when to stop and wait so the lambs stay close to their mothers. She chats to them incessantly, just like her uncle used to, and her brother, Bobby. She is five years old.
One of these lambs is more special to Grace than the others because yesterday she birthed it by herself. When its legs began to appear she knelt beside the ewe, grabbed the ankles in her small hands, and tugged, waiting for each contraction to ease it out a little farther each time.
“Pull hard now, Gracie. Give it everything you’ve got,” my father said, when the lamb’s little black nose first appeared.
I knew he was fighting the urge to help her. I was too.