Alison Giles - Meadowland

‘No …’ Andrew spoke slowly. ‘I don’t imagine it does.’ He reached up and took a considering swipe at a trailing branch. Changing patterns of sunlight waved across his arm and face. ‘I hadn’t realised how angry you were with him,’ he said.

‘Are you surprised?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t know. I take people at face value. If they’re pleasant to me, I’m pleasant back.’

‘And if they’re not?’ I made the effort to calm down.

He grinned. ‘I walk away.’

‘Does that apply to your clients?’

He considered. ‘No. But that’s different. I’m talking socially. Bit of an emotional coward, I expect that makes me.’ He eased forward and cupped the teapot in both hands. ‘Stone cold. Is it too early for a drink, do you think?’

‘I won’t, thanks.’ Suddenly restless, I rose to my feet. ‘I know what I should like to do.’

‘Go up to the meadow?’ Andrew leaned back and regarded me lazily. ‘Shall I come with you?’

I wandered across to the flower-bed, ostensibly inspecting a clump of marigolds. I’d rather he didn’t. One of the heads came off in my hand as I stroked it. Guiltily I leaned down and placed the circle of orange petals carefully on the earth. ‘Sorry,’ I said. The apology dissipated among the scents rising from the border. I turned. ‘What about your paperwork?’

He waved it away.

Squeezed into a pair of the older boy’s rubber boots – Ginny’s flatties had turned out to be even smaller – I clumped after him up a narrow path behind the house.

‘Watch the nettles,’ he called, too late, as I sucked my wrist. At the top he waited, holding out a hand to steady me over the stile. We skirted the upper part of a crop field. ‘Oats,’ he announced over his shoulder.

I feigned interest. But as we approached the ridge, I felt my spirits lifting. Up here the as-yet-green heads swayed delicately and a light gust lifted my hair almost imperceptibly from my scalp. As I straightened up from a stumble across a crumbling clod of grey-brown earth I instinctively halted, raising my face to the sun and breathing in – and in some more, until my rib cage felt it would burst.

‘Are you all right?’ Andrew was silhouetted twenty yards further on, staring back at me.

I let the air go. ‘Fine.’ I hurried to catch up. ‘You forget …’

‘Forget what?’

We’d reached the gate. Ahead a broad swathe through trees led to the road.

‘Now I recognise where we are,’ I said.

The hardness of the tarmac under my feet, as we strode left along it, restored a sense of reality. I clung on to it as we turned off along the track I’d walked before. The primroses were long over, their leaves, together with last year’s mulch, buried under a tangle of fresh greenery. Further into the wood, in the shade of branches locked overhead, bluebells sheltered from the sky, radiating their own deep indigo.

‘Forget what?’ Andrew and I had been walking side by side in companionable silence.

I blinked. ‘Oh … I don’t know. Everything I suppose.’

I was aware of his glancing at me. Then, as though having considered, he said, ‘I love this part of England.’

‘Have you always lived here?’

‘Basically, yes. Did a bit of travelling and was at law school in London. Then articles there. Didn’t need my arm twisting to leave it, though. I just don’t seem to be the ambitious type.’ Again he turned his head to look at me. ‘Are you?’

I considered. ‘Well, yes … Reasonably so, anyway.’

We strolled on. My foot scuffed the ground sending a flurry of dust and small stones billowing ahead of us. A sudden commotion erupted in the undergrowth and a squirrel leapt towards a tree trunk and up it, bounding away through the branches.

We reached the end of the track. The gate, now, was shut. I leaned up against it, staring into the meadow.

‘It’s OK. Only horses. No bulls.’

‘What makes you think I’d be worried?’

Andrew laughed, steering me through and across to the base of a large oak standing on its own. I perched myself on a root, facing away from the rooftops of Cotterly. Andrew sank to the ground beside me.

I slid my legs out of the borrowed boots and wriggled my toes, relishing the coolness around my ankles. Picking nodules of dried-out earth from around the base of the tree, I crumbled them between my fingers. Two horses, one a deep brown, the other a mottled grey, cropped peacefully in a lower corner of the field. Every now and again they swished their tails at flies. At one point, the grey abruptly cantered forward a few paces, then stopped and dropped his head again to continue grazing. It was as though the moment of activity had never been.

I broke the silence. ‘Do you ride?’

‘Not any more.’ The answer rose lazily. ‘We had ponies as children. Mine was a skewbald. Stubborn as hell except when she was pointing for home.’ He laughed, and rose on one elbow. ‘Do you?’

‘Me? No. Unless you count donkeys on the beach.’ I remembered the occasions – two of them; Father hoisting me up …

‘I suppose we were pretty spoiled. Lots of freedom. We used to go off all day with a packet of sandwiches, build dens in the wood, fish a bit …’

‘My father fished.’

‘Not that sort of fishing. The trout stretches are all heavily controlled. Apart from anything else our pocket money wouldn’t have stretched to the fees. No, worms on bent pins, that sort of thing. Kept the cat supplied with minnows – and the occasional roach. I sometimes wonder about all those kids trudging along pavements …’

‘I was one of those kids “trudging the pavements”, as you put it.’

‘So is my sympathy wasted?’

I had to laugh. ‘Not entirely. But it wasn’t as dreary as you make it sound.’

I didn’t feel inclined to elaborate. Andrew lay back and closed his eyes. I hugged my knees and stared over the hedges towards the horizon. This was where Father had painted me, or rather his image of me. Sitting like this. But a little further over. I estimated the spot, then rose and padded across to it, the grass coarse against the soles of my feet. I squatted down, surveying the scene.

My nose twitched at the sickly-sweet odour of horse dung, a large dollop of which, disturbed by buzzing flies, steamed gently close by. The smell mingled with the scent of baked earth and grass, fine dust from which hovered in the air, tickling the back of my throat. A plane, jetting towards London, scored the sky, its slipstream flaking out into a cotton-wool trail. I could just make out the tiny silver shape at the head, winking the sun’s reflection. In less than half an hour its passengers would be disembarking at Heathrow; real people again with lives to lead, no longer cocooned in a sliver of metal suspended in mid-air.

I straightened up and strode back towards Andrew. ‘I really should be making a move,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry.’ He bounded to his feet. ‘I’ve kept you too long.’

‘It’s only that I’m planning to stop off overnight at my mother’s –’ I looked up from pulling on a boot – ‘and it’s a good hour and a half’s drive.’

‘Of course.’ He steadied me as I pushed my foot into the second one.

‘Pity you haven’t seen Flora,’ he said as we wandered back.

‘Why?’

‘Because you ought to talk to her, get to know her.’

‘How so?’

‘You tell me.’ He turned and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re kidding yourself, you know, if you pretend you don’t want to.’

I released myself and walked on quickly.

When he caught up, I said, ‘Will Ginny be back?’

‘Possibly. And the boys. Why?’

‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘She’d like to meet you.’ I felt him looking at me. ‘You’re changing the subject.’