Gerbrand Bakker: Ten White Geese

She turned to look at what would be the garden. I can’t do this, she thought. I don’t even know what those shrubs are called. I don’t know who Rhys Jones is. How can I protect seven geese from a fox? She dropped the secateurs and the bundle of grass. The sun was already low. Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn, / Indicative that suns go down; / The notice to the startled grass / That darkness is about to pass. Dickinson had seen what she saw now. The homesickness had ebbed. She walked into the living room, poured a glass of red wine, fluffed up some cushions and sat down close to the wood-burning stove. The cigarette she lit tasted like a first cigarette. It grew dark very slowly, as if the light was being sucked out of the window like fine dust. It made her feel a little dizzy. She lit a couple of candles and put three logs in the stove. She had left everything behind, everything except the poems. They would have to see her through. She forgot to eat.

The next morning she stumbled over the bundle of grass. Swearing, she put it in a big glass vase she found in a kitchen cupboard. She left the secateurs lying on the ground. Then she hitched the trailer to the back of the car and drove off in a random direction. This was the UK, she’d be bound to run into a garden centre sooner or later. After about an hour she found herself in a village called Waunfawr. There was no garden centre, but there was a bakery. She bought bread, biscuits and a cream cake. She didn’t have a clue where she was, even though the mountain she saw in the distance when she entered the shop looked familiar. To be on the safe side, she told the baker the name of her house.

‘Don’t you know where you are?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she answered.

The baker didn’t say anything, he just shook his head gently.

‘I have a poor sense of direction.’

The baker looked out at the car parked directly in front of the shop. ‘Start the car, drive straight ahead, follow the road, turn left after a mile, then left again.’

‘So close?’

‘So close. And from now on buy bread here.’

‘Pardon?’

‘From now on buy bread here. Now that you know where we are.’

‘Of course.’

‘We’re open Sunday mornings too.’ He turned to an open door. ‘Awen!’

The baker’s wife stuck her head round the corner.

‘A new customer. She lives in old Mrs Evans’s house.’

‘Oh, nice,’ said the baker’s wife. ‘Hello, love.’ She disappeared again.

‘Thanks.’ She walked to the shop door. ‘Do you also know of a garden centre in the area perhaps?’

‘Bangor. Know where that is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’

‘See you later.’

‘When you run out of bread.’

‘Yes.’

‘German?’

‘No, not at all.’ She walked out of the shop and put her purchases on the back seat of the car. She looked around. A few houses, hills, a crossroads. Not even Mount Snowdon was enough for her to get her bearings. ‘ Godverdomme ,’ she said to the mountain. ‘I’ll have to go home first.’ The baker had taken up position at his shop window and was standing with one arm stretched out like a signpost. The only part of him moving was his hand which, with a pointing index finger, was jerking up and down like a wind-up toy. She nodded, turned her collar up a little to conceal the hot patches on her throat and quickly climbed into the car.

*

She turned onto the drive and noticed immediately that the field was empty. It was only after taking the sharp curve that she saw the black sheep a good deal nearer the house. The seven geese were gabbling close together. She braked and got out. Six. She counted them again, even though they were close to the fence, and again she got no further than six. If it carries on at this rate, she thought, there’ll be none left by Christmas.

The piece of paper was gone from the front door, replaced with a new message. Called again. I moved my sheep. I’ll try again. Tomorrow morning at 9. Rhys Jones. Fine, she thought bravely. A sheep farmer and a time. I’ve got a cake.

She picked up the secateurs and went into the kitchen. The map was still spread out on the table; she no longer folded it up. She located Waunfawr. Incredibly close by. She stood there like that for a moment with her back bent, both hands flat on the map. After a while, the green dotted lines showing the walking paths all seemed to converge on her drive, on her land. That mountain, she thought, I have to keep an eye on Mount Snowdon, then I’ll know where I am.

That afternoon she didn’t just buy a wheelbarrow, cord and garden clogs. She also loaded a roll of chicken wire, a hammer and nails onto her trailer. There weren’t any students at Dickson’s Garden Centre, but there were elderly women and retired men with happy grandchildren, customers clutching long scrawled lists, who left nothing to chance. Soft classical music led them down the aisles. Babbling fountains and water features were equally soothing. She stayed longer than necessary, ordering a cup of coffee at the Coffee Corner, taking a second look at the roses and buying three flowering indoor plants, the kind her grandparents had on their windowsill thirty years earlier. She also bought a better pair of secateurs; the ones from the hardware shop were already loose and blunt. A gawky kid with red curls helped her hoist the wheelbarrow up onto the trailer. When she was about to get into the car, he held out a hand for her to shake. She couldn’t think of anything better to say than, ‘Thank you. That was very friendly of you.’ The boy didn’t say a word, he just grinned and shut the car door. In the wing mirror she saw him watching attentively as she drove off.

*

That afternoon she let the new garden rest, using the wheelbarrow to transport the chicken wire to the three ponds instead. The six geese were standing waiting for her. When she walked through the gate and into the field, they ran off. As if they’re expecting something from me, she thought. But what? She used one foot — the injured one, to test it — to push against different parts of the collapsed hut. After she had pulled away a few planks, the roof, which was covered with tarred sheets, rested on the ground as a triangle. More than enough room for the geese. She unrolled the chicken wire and realised that she would need something to cut it. As before, she found useful tools in the old pigsty. She walked back up the drive with a saw, a large pair of pincers and a roll of thin wire. First she closed off the back of the triangular shelter, fixing the chicken wire in place by nailing it tight under planks that weren’t completely rotten. Look carefully and think it through, she thought. If I do that, I could even put together a wall unit. Clucking quietly, the geese watched her. In the next field the black sheep had come closer and most of them were now lined up at the fence. She pulled the packet of cigarettes out of her coat pocket and lit one. A big bird, brownish red, swooped down into the boggy copse and landed on a branch of an oak, facing towards her. ‘Is it you?’ she called out in English, as if a bird wouldn’t understand her if she spoke Dutch. It stared at her unmoved. She threw the half-smoked cigarette into one of the ponds.

She did the front differently, first cutting planks to size, then using them to close off the top of the triangle. She left wide gaps between the planks; there wasn’t enough solid wood. The chicken wire was 120 centimetres wide. Again she walked back to the pigsty, this time to look for staples. She found them too. She lined the wire up along the ground, folded the superfluous triangle down over one side of the roof, then attached it by pounding staples in with the hammer. Then she didn’t have a clue. She took a few steps back and considered the shelter. She looked at it and thought deeply. She felt like giving up. Everything in her body said: Stop it. Leave it. Go inside, have a drink, smoke a cigarette, lower your body into a bath full of hot water. There were two good planks left. The short one standing up and the long one on the ground, she thought, and after that I can work out how to close off that last bit of chicken wire, which has to serve as a kind of door. Just keep at it. After nailing the two planks to each other at right angles with another piece of wood at an angle as a brace, she put the structure up against the front of the shelter, then crawled inside to staple the wire to the wood. With nothing to hold the horizontal plank in place, it was very difficult to get them in. ‘ Godverdomme ,’ she said. She had to put something behind the plank. She crept back out of the shelter and looked around. There were large rocks by the ponds. Much too heavy. The wheelbarrow, upside down. She pushed it up hard against the plank and tried again. The wheelbarrow started to slide away, but by hammering as lightly as she could, she managed to get the staples into the wood anyway. Her arm hurt, she could feel her foot. Cursing, she crawled back out of the shelter, wondering what in the name of God she was doing. She pulled the wheelbarrow out of the way, turned it upright and checked her handiwork. It seemed reasonably solid. Solid enough, she thought, to keep out a fox. A big bird definitely couldn’t get in. Now she just had to figure out how to close off the last bit without nailing it shut permanently. She had about ten large nails left and pounded six into the roof at intervals of about twenty centimetres, exactly opposite the triangle she’d stapled down on the other side of the roof. She cut lengths of wire and twisted them to attach them to the chicken wire, also at twenty-centimetre intervals. She made sure the lengths of wire were more or less aligned with the six nails and only then did she trim off the excess chicken wire. ‘ Godverdomme! ’ she said again. She stank of goose shit and her hands were bleeding.