Page 1 of Broken Country

Part OneGabriel

The farmer is dead, he is dead and all anyone wants to know is who killed him. Was it an accident or was it murder? It looks like murder, they say, with that gunshot wound to the heart, so precise it must have been intended.

They are waiting for me to speak. Two pairs of eyes relentless in their stares. But how can I tell them what he wants me to say, the words we have practiced over and over in the minutes before the police arrive?

I shake my head, I need more time.

It’s true what they say: You can live a whole lifetime in a final moment. We are that boy and girl again with all of it ahead, a glory-stretch of light and wondrous beauty, of nights beneath the stars.

He is waiting for me to look at him and, when I do, he smiles to show me he is fine, the briefest nod of his head.

Say it, Beth. Say it now.

I look at his face again, beautiful to me then and now and always, one final glance between us before everything changes.

1968Hemston, North Dorset

“Gabriel Wolfe is back living in Meadowlands,” Frank says, the name exploding at me over breakfast. “Divorced now. Just him and his boy rattling around in that huge place.”

“Oh.”

It seems to be the only word I have.

“That’s what I thought,” Frank says. He gets up from his side of the table and walks around to mine, takes my face in his hands, kisses me. “We won’t let that pillock cause us any grief. We’ll have nothing to do with him.”

“Who told you?”

“It was the talk of the pub last night. Took two huge great lorries to bring all their stuff from London, apparently.”

“Gabriel hated it here. Why would he come back?”

His name feels strange on my tongue, the first time I’ve spoken it aloud in years.

“There’s no one else to look after the place. His father long gone, his mother on the other side of the world. Up to her neck in dingo shit, with any luck.”

Frank always manages to make me laugh.

“What’s here for him, anyway?” Frank says, casually, but I see it, the unsaid thought that flits across his mind.Aside from you.“He’s bound to sell up and move to Las Vegas or Monte Carlo or wherever it is these…”—he grapples for the word, looks pleased with himself when he finds it—“celebritieshang out.”

Frank spends all the daylight hours and a fair few at nighttime out on the farm, caring for our animals and tending the land. He works harder than anyone I know butalways takes time to notice the beauty of a spring sunset or the sudden, dizzying soar of a skylark, his attunement to weather and wildlife set deep in his bones. One of many things I love about him. Frank doesn’t have time to read novels or go to the theater. He wouldn’t know a dry martini if someone chucked one in his face. He’s the very antithesis of Gabriel Wolfe, or at least, the one we read about in the papers.

I watch my husband leaning against the door to pull on his boots. In twenty minutes’ time his skin will be permeated three layers deep with the stench of cow dung.

The door, rapped hard from the other side, makes Frank start. “Bloody hell,” he says, yanking it open so quickly his brother falls into the room.

Our mornings invariably start this way.

Jimmy, still ruddy from last night’s beer, eyes screwed half shut, one strand of hair sticking straight up as if it’s gelled, says: “Aspirin, Beth? Got a banger.”

I take down the medicine box from the dresser where it lives primarily in use for Jimmy’s hangovers. Once upon a time it was full of infant paracetamol and emergency plasters.

There are five years between them but Frank and Jimmy look so similar that, from a distance, even I struggle to tell them apart. They are well over six foot with dark, almost black hair and eyes so blue people often do a double take. Their mother’s eyes, I’m told, though I never had the chance to meet her. They are both wearing shabby corduroys and thick shirts, soon to be covered in the navy overalls that are their daily uniform. In the village they are sometimes called “the twins,” but only in jest; Frank is very much the older brother.

“What happened to ‘just going to finish this pint and call it a night’?” Frank says, grinning at Jimmy.

“Beer is God’s reward for an honest day’s toil.”

“That from the Bible?”

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