Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

‘I told you in the woolshed that someone’s been killing my sheep,’ I said with my back to him.

‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, last night’s a bit patchy.’ I turned around to look at him. He smiled. ‘Er, do you think they’re doing it on purpose?’ I held his gaze.

‘Yes.’

He didn’t turn away, but after a while, when I suppose it got awkward, he smiled and cleared his throat. I handed him the paracetamol, more to break the stillness than anything else.

‘This is so kind of you,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He popped out four of the pills and chewed them, with a long gulp of water afterwards.

‘How many sheep do you have?’ he asked, and looked pleased to have thought of a question.

‘Fifty. But I lost two this month, so less.’

‘What’s getting them? A fox?’

‘Maybe. Might be kids. Might be someone else.’ He looked relaxed like he’d always been sitting there, like we were old friends, like he knew what would happen next and nothing was out of the ordinary.

‘Kids? Jesus.’ He smiled. ‘When I was a kid the worst we got up to was stealing cigarettes and liquorice.’

‘Well.’

‘You really think kids would be capable of something like that?’

I picked up my mug of water and drank but didn’t answer. Lloyd stopped talking. The wind screamed down the pipe of the Rayburn and soot scuttled down the chimney.

‘I’ll give you a lift into town,’ I said, and Lloyd looked up. He glanced out the window.

‘Oh, right. Sure — that’s good of you.’ He made no move to get up, so I picked my keys out of my pocket and shook them to make the sound of leaving. Even Dog remained sitting. Lightning flash with thunder dead on top.

‘If we go now, I’ll be able to…’ I trailed off, not quick enough to think of a reason, but holding my keys out.

‘Oh, sure, now?’ He looked out the window again. ‘Is it safe you think? To drive in?’

‘It’s just weather.’

‘Sure, sure.’ He stood, creaking under his breath. He patted Dog on the head. ‘No hard feelings, eh?’ he said to him and Dog narrowed his eyes in a friendly way. I wondered a moment what he planned on doing that would give Dog hard feelings.

‘He’s coming with us,’ I said.

‘Righto.’

Rain blasted against the window. I struggled to open the front door, the wind was now possibly a gale.

‘Hoo!’ said Lloyd, and the three of us ran to the truck.

In the driver’s door was the short metal spirit level I’d found in the shed — sharp edges, heavy, and I knew it fit closely in the palm of my hand. When Lloyd closed the door on the passenger side, the truck felt smaller, like he’d used up all the air. My left side burnt with being close to him. I would drive with one eye on him and if he reached out I could brake suddenly — the seatbelt on his passenger side had lost its retractor, and so it just hung there loosely. He would be catapulted into the dashboard. And then I’d have the spirit level. I looked at Dog in the back seat — I’d just have to hope he was lying down at the time.

With the wipers on full, I could catch glimpses of the track, between the rain and dead leaves and twigs. As we came over the crest of the hill, the truck shook as the wind hit us side on.

‘Oooh,’ said Lloyd and his arm came up and I jumped and looked at him. He jumped too, but he was only bracing himself against the ceiling. He craned to look out of his window.

‘What did you see?’

‘Nothing.’

A beech had fallen over the track which would lead us to the woods and out onto the road. Lloyd sucked air through his teeth. I didn’t slow down, we would go around it, because this was exactly the kind of thing a four-wheel-drive vehicle was built for.

‘Gosh,’ said Lloyd and looped his other hand through the door handle. I stopped and clunked the gear stick into four-wheel drive and the engine took on its deeper growl and I ground us off the road and into the field with the truck bouncing from side to side and Lloyd saying over and over, ‘Gosh’ and ‘Hoo’ every time the truck rocked. ‘Right!’ he said loudly as we powered at the incline that would get us back up onto the road, and it was then that I knew we wouldn’t make it, the empty sound of the wheels spinning without purchase, of the truck sinking deeper into its hole, digging itself in, relaxing and staying put. I revved the engine until the air stank. The windows fogged. I hit the steering wheel and closed my eyes and shouted, ‘Shit and fuck and balls,’ and in the silence afterwards, Lloyd said,

‘Whoops. Stuck in the mud. Been a lot of that today.’

The water still ran, and steam made it out from under the door while Lloyd showered in the downstairs bathroom. I scanned the spare room. There were sheets that had been left in the cupboard when I moved in, and I made what I decided was a bed that was not welcoming, but adequate. Good enough for one night but not encouraging a long stopover. The blanket was itchy at any rate. He had helped with the sheep, I reminded myself. He had pushed the truck when I’d asked him too, had taken a face full of mud and had suggested filling the trenches the wheels had dug with sticks for grip, but we had only sunk deeper. It was a job for Don and his towbar, another mark in the incompetency column, but when we’d got back to the house, freezing and soaked, Don hadn’t answered the phone.

I opened the window as an afterthought; the room smelled of damp and dust. Dead moths blew in from the window sill, and I scooped them into my hand, suddenly embarrassed.

When Lloyd came out of the bathroom, he had the towel wrapped around his midriff. I tried not to look at the bare parts of him, but that was the larger part. There was a lot of hair on his chest, some of it grey. He ambled towards me and I felt a horror that the towel might drop.

‘Is there somewhere I could wash these?’ he asked, holding up his mud-soaked clothes. ‘Or even just dry them?’

‘I can put them in the wash,’ I said, but my voice came out in a squeak I wasn’t expecting. I cleared my throat and spoke in a voice that was deeper than my own. ‘And then they can dry on the radiator.’

‘If it’s not too much bother,’ he said, ‘thanks so much. Feeling better already.’ He smiled. I frowned, and turned away.

He sauntered around the room in his towel, looking at the pictures that hung on the walls. ‘These yours?’ he said, pointing at one of a set of men in uniform.

‘Here when I moved in.’

He had an annoying habit of flexing the calf that showed through the gap in the side of the towel.

‘They belong to Don — I bought the place off him.’

Lloyd nodded and made a mooing noise. ‘He left them for you?’

‘I guess.’

‘Huh.’

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it was something annoying. Would we just sit there and wait until his clothes were clean and dry? I tried calling Don again. There was no answer. It was getting late — if he didn’t answer soon, it meant he was staying the night in town. I tried to calculate the time we would spend waiting for the storm to pass, for night to be over, for Don to come home and answer his phone.

‘Would you like something to eat?’

Lloyd looked at me and so did Dog. ‘I–I hate to put you out.’

‘Well,’ I said.

I put the same stew on the stove I’d been heating the night before. Lloyd sighed and sat heavily on the sofa. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, knew that the sigh of comfort was in fact an intake of breath through pain, because he had thrown himself down on the dividing bar of the sofa where it was hard and broken. I turned my back, pretended not to notice him do it, but I could see him in the reflection of the window. He rubbed the sore spot on his lower back and Dog clambered up next to him and Lloyd fondled his ears. I forced my shoulders to drop.