Page 10 of Broken Country

“If it matters to you, I will find some.”

We move our chairs beside the fire as the evening begins to cool. Gabriel feeds it with more logs, stirring up the embers with a poker and blowing on the flames until they shoot into the air. The stars seem to blaze more brightly here than they do in our back garden; same stars, set like jewels into a navy sky.

“It’s getting late,” I say. “I’ll have to go home soon.”

“Stay five more minutes. Ten. This evening has gone too fast.”

Something changes in the atmosphere. The look on Gabriel’s face makes my heart begin to race. He leans forward in his chair and presses his mouth to mine. A kiss that is tentative and gentle.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you all evening.”

“What took you so long?”

Gabriel laughs and I love the way it animates him. Mostof the time I get the feeling he’s observing, but when he laughs his guard comes down.

“I was nervous, I suppose. Wasn’t sure if you felt the same.” Gabriel takes hold of my hand and pulls me onto his lap.

We kiss again and this time it is everything, his tongue searching mine, hesitantly, then more confidently. We clamp ourselves together, kiss deeply, our fingers entwining.

I didn’t know a kiss could be like this, that you could lose yourself in it, no thoughts in your head, your whole body alight to the touch and taste of another.

Gabriel walks me home from Meadowlands on the outskirts of the village to our cottage right in its heart. Outside our gate we kiss again, a chaste goodbye on the cheek in case my parents are watching from the upstairs window.

“Is it too soon to say I already like you more than anyone I’ve ever met?” Gabriel says.

I can’t stop smiling as I walk up the path.

At the sound of my key in the front door, my father comes bustling out of the kitchen. He’s clearly been waiting up for me.

“Look at that face,” he says, when he sees me. “Goodness me, I think my baby might be in love.”

“Dad,” I protest, laughing. “Stop.”

But I float up the stairs to bed, holding the thrill of his words to me. Perhaps that’s what it is, this feeling never experienced before, elation, excitement, a furious kind of happiness. Perhaps this is love.

1968

Frank has left me a note telling me to come to the pub.

I put the kettle on to boil and make myself a cup of tea, but I don’t drink it. I’m listless and pacing, churned up with feelings I won’t allow to become thoughts. It’s the boy mostly. The grip of his hand. I’d forgotten how young children, much like animals, can sense your pain without being afraid of it. Frank and I dance around each other’s sadness. Any couple who has lost a child will tell you the same. You see it in the other, of course you do, but it’s like you’re on a seesaw of grief, and all you want is to avoid tipping the other one down.

Sometimes when I’m like this, I’ll give in to it. Sit still and think of Bobby, everything I miss about him, the boy he was. Other times, I get up—as I do now—find my coat, and head out. I need the distraction of others, the softening that only alcohol and conversation can bring.

The Compasses Inn, thatched, dark, and rickety, with uneven slate floors and shadowy corners, is where the village convenes of a Friday. There’s a knackered piano which is always in use at closing time, most often by the people who can neither sing nor play. The pub decor, if such a word can be applied, veers toward grim, with fearsome-looking farming equipment displayed on its walls: a rusting scythe from the eighteenth century, an antique plow, even a gamekeeper’s mantrap. The beer is regularly off, the crisps always run out, the floor is sticky with cider. There is no better place on earth.

Frank and Jimmy are sitting at the bar, half-drunk pintsin front of them. I tap Frank from behind and he grins broadly as he turns to me, as if seeing me is the best thing ever. One time, after my sister, Eleanor, had overheard me talking to Frank on the phone, she said: “You don’t sound married when you talk to Frank. You sound like you’ve just met.”

I am lucky, I do know that.

Jimmy’s girlfriend, Nina, is behind the bar. They have been together since they were nineteen. She is a glorious-looking girl with her reddish-blond hair, back-combed tonight into an immaculate beehive. She loves to dress up. Nina and I often laugh about the so-called Swinging Sixties, how there’s no sign of it around here. Looking at the pub’s regulars—pipe-smoking men wearing corduroys, women in plain sweaters and slacks—you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a time warp. Not so Nina, who shops in London whenever she can, blowing her wages on the latest craze.

I love watching Nina at work. She coasts a perfect line between flirtation and censure. No one messes with her, not even the drunks. Although, to be fair, the drunk she manhandles from the pub most often is Jimmy.

“How was the boy?” Frank says, as soon as I am sitting beside him.

“He was very upset. Probably a bit shocked too, at his dog killing our lambs like that. He’s grown up in the city, hasn’t he?”

“And Wolfe? What was he like?”

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