Gerbrand Bakker - Ten White Geese

Sam lifted his head from his paws and looked at the door. The next thing she heard the car, then the door slamming, footsteps on the crushed slate. I don’t understand, she thought. How I was able to bear it here alone for weeks on end?

‘You in here smoking again?’ Bradwen nudged the dog out of the way with his knee.

‘Yes,’ she answered. The sight of the open door made her shiver.

‘It’s bad for you.’

‘I know.’

‘Fish,’ he said. ‘I bought fish and I’m going to cook up a storm.’

Fish, she thought. I’ll have to switch to white.

*

Bradwen was stirring something in a saucepan on the cooker. Sam had been fed and had called it a day; he was snoring softly on the rug in front of the stove in the living room. She looked at the boy’s back while absent-mindedly drawing circles on the piece of paper he had drawn circles on earlier. With a blue felt tip. She had already set the table. ‘What’s your surname?’ she asked.

‘Jones.’

‘Is everybody here called Jones?’

‘Yep. What’s yours?’

‘I’m not telling,’ she said.

He turned round, smiling.

‘What difference does it make?’ she asked.

‘None.’ He went back to his calm stirring. She got up and walked round the table to stand next to him. He looked up, stuck an index finger in the sauce and held it out to her, and without thinking she licked it. She nodded. He nodded too and continued stirring. It was as if he had been cooking here for weeks. She took the box of matches from the windowsill and lit the two candles. She fetched a candlestick from the sideboard, put it on the table and lit that too. When she sat down again she heard the sharp ticking of the clock.

‘A man called Rhys Jones came here one day,’ she said.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘The sheep in the field by the road are his.’

‘Are you renting this house?’

‘Yes. He had all kinds of arrangements with the former resident. He scoffed almost half a cake and he had holes in his socks.’

The boy looked at her blankly.

‘I detest him. He’s coming back with a lamb.’

‘I’m here now,’ he said.

Yes, she thought. You’re here now.

Bradwen put the saucepans on the table and pulled a dish out of the oven. ‘Haddock.’

She had no idea what kind of fish that was and didn’t care. It smelt good and she would do her best to eat as much as she possibly could. Lured by the smell, Sam came and sat next to her , not his master. ‘Why do dogs do that?’ she asked.

‘He knows I won’t give him any. You’re a kind of alpha female now.’

‘An alpha female?’

‘Dogs think we’re dogs too.’

‘I’m a person,’ she told the dog. ‘A female person.’

Sam tilted his head to one side, doing his best to look sad.

Bradwen dished up: potatoes, broccoli, fish and sauce. He poured wine too. White wine. He raised his glass. ‘To Rhys Jones,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘He’s going to bring us a lamb. It’s December.’

A cramp twisted her belly, she couldn’t look him in the eye. She stabbed at the fish and took a bite. It was as soft as butter. She chewed and swallowed. She took another bite.

‘Is it good?’ he asked.

‘Delicious,’ she said, bowing her head.

‘What is it?’

‘ Ach .’

She heard him stand up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him push the dog aside with one knee. She felt a hand, a whole forearm on her back and smelt his breath. She pressed her head against his stomach. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said. She looked down past his trouser legs at the neatly swept kitchen floor. A sock with an L and a sock with an R. Broad feet.

‘I’m here,’ he said.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

‘ Ach ,’ he said, or tried to say. His Welsh CH wasn’t the same as her Dutch CH.

She straightened her neck and reached over her shoulder to take his hand. ‘Eat,’ she said. ‘It will get cold.’

Bradwen padded around her and back to his chair, setting her hand down next to her plate on the way. Sam turned from one to the other with a slightly wild look. The boy sat, picked up his wine glass and raised it. ‘December,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘December.’ She ate everything on her plate and drank another glass of wine to go with it. Now that he was pouring, he didn’t drink so greedily.

‘I’m going to start on Emily Dickinson tonight,’ he said, drawing out his pronunciation of her first name.

It didn’t matter. It was all right if he saw through her. Maybe he wasn’t called Jones either. Maybe a time would come when she would ask him, would want to ask him. I don’t think I want to know anything about him at all, she thought. He just has to be here.

Two days later the sun was shining. After standing with her back against the pigsty, feeling how the pale bricks had soaked up the warmth, she said, ‘Come.’ The smoke from her cigarette rose straight up into the air. Mist hung between the trunks of the trees along the stream. The boy lowered the wheelbarrow full of crushed slate. He had already removed the grass from the rectangle in the lawn and lined it with alder branches.

‘Coffee?’ he asked. He had pulled his hat up so it was perched on the back of his head, sweat gleaming on his forehead.

‘No, we’re going for a walk.’

He looked around. ‘Sam!’

‘He can’t come. We have to lock him in the house.’

‘I’ll put him in the shed. He’d tear the place apart. He can’t stand being alone.’ The dog came running up past the oil tank. Bradwen grabbed him by the collar and dragged him into the pigsty. ‘Let’s go, quick.’

They followed the garden wall to the kissing gate.

‘Why don’t we just climb over the wall?’

‘I can’t.’

‘You’re not that old.’

‘No, I’m not that old. Do you have any idea how old?’

‘I don’t care.’

They went through the kissing gate and followed the garden wall to the beams over the stream. The light brown cows were grazing at the other end of the field, a good bit lower down. They could hear howling from the pigsty. Bradwen stayed behind her, even where the path was wide enough to walk side by side. There was a car driving somewhere; she couldn’t work out where the sound was coming from, which reminded her of the steam train and made her imagine the boy sitting next to her on a wooden bench in the train. She climbed the stile, expecting at any moment to feel a hand on her hand or a knee against her calf. At the stone circle she caught a smell of coconut again. She wondered if it was the gorse flowers. She sat down on the largest stone and gestured for the boy to come and sit next to her. He did. ‘This is where I was lying,’ she said, ‘when the badger bit me.’

He sniffed a little and slid back and forth.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Sit still.’

She pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one.

‘What are we doing?’ he asked.

‘Don’t talk.’

*

After smoking a second cigarette she gave up. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘What didn’t happen?’ he asked.

‘Every time I sit here, a badger sticks its head out from under those bushes.’

‘In the daytime?’

‘Yes, of course. Or do you think I come and sit here in the middle of the night?’

‘I’ve never seen a badger. Not a live one.’

‘I have. I’ve seen it three times.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said the boy.

‘Come.’

*

At the stile, things went fuzzy. Then everything turned dark purple and when she came to her senses again she was leaning on a crosspiece, the boy pressed up against her back with his arms wrapped around her. She saw thick grass, a rusty barbed-wire fence, tree trunks and rotting posts, mud. She heard Sam whimpering, realised vaguely that he was probably howling very loudly a long way away, and she heard agitated chirping. What kind of bird is that? she thought. I want to know. No time, no time. She smelt something sour, a smell she had until recently taken for the smell of fallen leaves or wood, the plank her hands were resting on. She felt the boy’s body, which felt stuck to hers along the entire length of her trunk. He was breathing on the back of her neck, his forearms clamped around her belly as if he were scared something would fall out of her. ‘There, there,’ he said, encouraging her to stay calm. Like her ‘ ach ’ had been for him, it was a kind of English without a Dutch equivalent. She didn’t know if he’d realised that she’d already come to. I have to eat, she thought. I have to eat more. Something moved in a tree, sliding down a trunk. A grey squirrel ran across the path. It stopped, sitting up straight with its tiny front paws crossed discreetly across its chest. It seemed to look at her, then scampered off. Would a little creature like that think that I’m a slightly oversized squirrel with a second squirrel on my back? Does a squirrel see people the way a dog does? She didn’t straighten up, she wanted the boy to hold her like this a little longer. She watched the squirrel until it ran up a tree just down the path. It all happened without a sound. The bird had fallen silent. I have to send him away, she realised suddenly. He has to leave. I can’t have this. ‘I’m not going to fall over,’ she said.