Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

I leave a message for Karen, because she’s out when I run home to pack a bag. It’ll probably just be a week, Just a short break to see if I like the idea . I leave Karen money for the rent for the next month just in case — that’s Otto’s idea and he gives the money to me in twenties. He insists on leaving more than the rent costs, ‘So she knows I’m for real,’ he says. I tell Karen in the note that I’ll call the phone in the hall if I stay longer, and she can come and visit. I know she’ll understand, it’s what she’s after herself — to be out.

When I stopped at the top field on the way back home, I was missing a sheep. I counted and recounted five times and came up short. I searched the perimeter fence and the drainage ditch and there was no sign. The fence was solid. It was like something had swooped down and lifted her off.

I cut at a section of bramble that had got tangled around the nose and upper jaw of an old ewe. She was from my first lot, mature when she came to me. I was surprised the last time she managed a pregnancy, but this year she remained uninflated.

I forced open her jaw and cut the bramble out. It had made deep welts around her snout and done who knows what inside her mouth. She rolled her eyes away from me and towards the rest of the flock, struggling between my thighs until I let her go. The mud had made it in through the holes in my boots, and the old ewe bustled off without a glance behind her, without even the slightest air of being grateful that I had taken the thorns out of her face.

‘Screw you then!’ I shouted at her, and she stopped walking but didn’t turn back to look at me. I kicked the gate closed behind me and took a short cut up through the row of blackthorn and came out at the foot of the downs with the wind at my back. It pushed behind me and I ran in my clunking boots up the slope with flint and chalk loosening under my steps and with rabbits darting in and out of the brambles to my side. At the top I sweated and caught my breath while I inspected the southern sweep of the fields. Nothing moved other than the treetops. I turned to look out at the mainland and sat down to light a cigarette. I watched the car ferry crossing the water, a small white shoebox, and beyond that, the mainland waiting like a crocodile with all those people on its back.

To the west, the concrete wall of the island’s prison came out of the woods, and in a few places the Military Road was visible. Soon, once spring came in, the road would be invisible, the prison gone.

A movement caught my eye past the blackthorn at the foot of the slope. I stood up hoping to see my lost sheep, but it was Lloyd, digging. I watched for a while, his great sweeping movements, letting the spade take its own weight as it cut through the heavy wet ground. Dog lay next to him, watching, his head on his paws. Lloyd had his back to me. He was singing something, I caught a note on the wind. He looked right with a shovel, alone in the pit of the hill.

A light spit came on, or it could have been sea spray, lifted over the cliffs by the wind. Dog described a circle around the spot Lloyd worked on, smelling and nosing the things that were unearthed. I walked down towards them, not sure what I would say when I reached them. Lloyd squatted and pulled something from the hole which caught Dog’s attention. He trotted over and smelled it for Lloyd, who touched Dog’s head in acknowledgement. Dog returned to his business, and Lloyd weighed whatever it was in his hands like a fillet of beef and then threw it to the side. His shoulders tensed. I stopped and followed his gaze up into the white sky, where a merlin hovered. They eyeballed each other. Lloyd started to sing at the bird, but all that reached me on the breeze was a murmur. He dropped his shovel and flung both arms out, the wind blew his hair so that it stood straight up at the back, wild and grey. He did a little dance and the bird dropped down lower to watch. He sang louder, he howled, ‘I wish that every kiss was never-ending!’ and a bellow of wind came up behind me and blew my hair over my face. A second later it hit Lloyd and he wobbled in his dance, patted his hair back onto his head and turned towards me. The human eye senses movement before all else . Lloyd raised his hand at me and I raised mine at him. He looked up for his bird, which had let itself be blown away by the wind. He scanned the empty sky a moment longer, then sat down with his back to me, next to the hole he’d dug. Dog stood and barked once, and I made my way down to them.

‘Digging a hole?’ I asked.

‘Is it okay?’ said Lloyd.

‘What are you burying?’

‘I’m just digging.’ He kept staring up at the spot where the bird had been. There was silence, and I sat down next to him.

Dog tried to lick my face but I pushed him away.

‘Seeds,’ he said.

‘What are?’

‘I was going to plant some apple seeds.’ There was silence again.

‘Okay.’

To prove himself, Lloyd took an apple out of his pocket and turned it in his hand in front of me. ‘Ha!’ he said, then flung the apple as far as he could into the blackthorns. There was more silence and then he said, ‘When I was a kid I was into reincarnation.’

I caught the smell of whisky. ‘Seems like a comforting thing to think,’ I said, for something to say.

‘I’m not sure I believe in it now. But I like to pretend I do.’

He was really going to get in the way once the lambs started coming.

‘Do you believe in an after-life?’ he asked with another gust of his whisky breath.

‘No I don’t.’

‘Then what are you so frightened of?’

I stared at him. His eyes were glassy.

‘So the seeds?’ I said. ‘Tell me about the seeds.’

He leant back and breathed in harshly through his nose and closed his eyes. ‘In remembrance.’

‘Of what?’

‘The Jews do it. The tree of life; they call it something, the holiday. The Queen does it too — she plants a tree.’

Dog whined. I fidgeted. Lloyd closed his eyes. The wind dropped and the whole place slowed down.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not making the best sense.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘It was nothing special,’ he said, his eyes popping open. ‘He was alive in the morning and then by the afternoon he was suddenly dead.’

‘Who?’

He pointed to the empty space where the bird had hovered.

I twisted a blade of grass until it produced juice. Lloyd took from his carrier bag a quarter-empty bottle of whisky. He took a swallow that was longer than would have been comfortable in the throat. He wiped the top off with the underside of his wrist and offered it to me. I nearly said no, but I didn’t.

‘Look — I’ve got the last of his ashes in an envelope.’ He took from his breast pocket a small packet that looked badly weathered. ‘But they got wet. He’s more mud now than ash.’ Lloyd looked inside the packet and then refolded it and sighed. He sat himself up straight, and spoke with a new authority. ‘The idea was I’d go to the furthest points of Britain. This was my last stop. I do a little ceremony at each place — the first three were okay. I went to Suffolk and I had a little toy wooden sailboat, and I set it on fire with a little bit of him on board. It was dark and the sea was flat and nobody was there, and it went so well.’ He smiled and closed his eyes again. ‘I watched until he was out of sight and I thought, when this is done, I will feel better.’

A large moth wobbled between us. I watched it settle for a moment in Lloyd’s beard and then take off again in the direction of the sun.

‘John O’Groats!’ Lloyd barked, opened his eyes and gave me a look like I was arguing with him. I picked up the bottle from where it sat next to him and drank a little more. It was smokier than I liked.