Such Visitors (13 page)

‘If my plans had worked out, and you hadn't wanted to be
alone, we would have been dancing together at the Christmas Ball.'

‘Likely story! So who's been teaching you to dance?'

‘Come on. Give it a try.'

Joan stood, half reluctant, half intrigued. She stood with hands at her side, grasping bunches of sequins on her skirt.

‘Not much room in here, is there? –'

‘The heater's off in the front room.'

‘ – For you to show your paces.'

They were suddenly shy of each other.

‘You could make allowances,' said Henry. He stepped towards her, nervous. Held her stiff arms. He waited for a bar or two, counting under his breath. Then they began to waltz, moving cautiously round the kitchen table.

‘How'm I doing?' he asked after a while.

‘Amazing.' Though Joan's feet responded naturally to the rhythm, her voice was flat. ‘I would never have believed it.'

Henry laughed, tightening his grip on her golden waist.

‘Thought I'd surprise you. I'll tell you all about it, one day. Those traffic jams.' More confident now, he twirled his wife more firmly. ‘Dance with anyone special tonight, did you?'

‘No. Well, the usuals.'

‘Jock included?'

‘One or two with him.'

‘He's a lovely dancer, Jock. Brought you home, did he?'

‘He lives this way,' said Joan.

‘The very thought of you,' murmured the singer, making Joan shut her eyes with a small wince of pain that Henry did not see. Then the music changed to a quickstep. Henry was all delight.

‘Hey! I can do this too, you know. I can do all sorts.'

But Joan was pulling away from him.

‘Come on, Henry. That's enough. Tea's getting cold.'

‘Just a minute more. I'm beginning to get the feel of it. Come on, Joanie, be a sport.' She ceased to struggle against him. They moved round the kitchen table once more. ‘Tell me, honestly – am I any good as a dancer?'

‘You're a lovely dancer.'

In his exuberance, Henry did not notice that Joan's voice was weary, and that her dancing, for all its accuracy, was
uninspired, automatic. Turns out, though, it isn't just the dancing that counts. Not just the dancing,' she sighed.

Henry, his head pressed excitingly close to her myriad curls, could not be sure what she said.

‘What's that?'

‘I said you're a lovely dancer, Henry. A lovely dancer.'

‘Just think … years ahead. What you've always wanted. Me to dance with. How about that?'

With unbounded happiness, Henry twirled even faster, undaunted by the surprising heaviness of his wife in his arms. He tripped slightly in a reverse turn, but no matter. They both recovered together, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, whirling through timeless space between kitchen table and stove.

‘How about that, indeed,' answered Joan, seeing a grey dawn through the window.

Despite this sudden dancing, she was feeling the cold. She hoped to goodness Henry would soon be finished with his quickstepping, and let her have her cup of tea.

The bull had spent a restless night. Through the shallows of her sleep Rachel had heard him snarling and groaning, sometimes angry, sometimes sad. Now at dawn she peered through the curtain of the small window to look at him: he stood knee-high in mud, curly forehead stiffly silvered with frost, furious pink-lashed eyes staring at the cows on the far side of the field. Maddened by the way they ignored him, he roared again, a sound that ended in a high-pitched whine: a sound pathetically thin from so large an animal.

Rachel shivered and got back into bed. She wished Jack was there. But he was away on one of his conference trips, the Canary Isles this time. She had had a postcard saying wonderful sun for the time of year, and too much wine. He always sent her postcards but never said he missed her. Sometimes Rachel wondered how the evenings on such trips were spent. Jack often said they were very boring, endless talking shop at the bar with the boys, and Rachel liked to believe him. But occasionally the nastier part of her imagination activated itself, and she imagined her husband slapping his thigh in delight at strip shows, or flirting with a passing air hostess. She never, of course, spoke of her suspicions: they only came to her because her days were too empty. In their idyllic cottage, a mile from the nearest village, there was little for her to do: no defences with which to keep lurid thoughts from an empty mind. Every day she wished she had never agreed to leave London. But it was too late now. Nothing on earth would make Jack return.

The last time he had been home, ten days ago, Rachel had mentioned the bull's restlessness, wondering what it meant. Jack had laughed at her, seeing the unease in her face. He often scoffed at her for her lack of understanding of the
countryside. When she could tell an elm from an ash, he said, he would take her fears seriously. As it was, the bull was like a frustrated old man – feeling sexy, but overweight and not up to it. No wonder he bellowed all night. Wouldn't anyone?

Rachel managed to laugh. Standing in the kitchen in his vast gumboots, Jack seemed very wise. When he was at home there was no worry that the bull, suddenly enraged, might trample over the flimsy fence that divided their garden from the field, and storm the cottage. When Jack was there, throwing huge logs with one hand into the fire, or tapping his pipe on the hearth, any such thoughts seemed absurd. When he had gone for a while, they came back to haunt her, and she made sure she never went into the garden wearing her red skirt.

Back in bed Rachel knew she would not be able to go to sleep again. She stretched a foot into Jack's cold part of the sheet, and wondered how she would pass the day. Squirrels in the roof scurried about: she tried to imagine the dark warmth of their nest, and felt grateful for their invisible companionship. At first, thinking they were rats, their noises had alarmed her. But now she was used to all the sounds of the cottage, the creaks when the central heating came on, the gurgle of pipes, the flutter of birds nesting in the eaves. Now, none of them alarmed her. Even on stormy nights alone, rain pelleting the windows, wind keening down the chimney, she was not afraid. She was only afraid of the bull.

Smiling at her own stupidity, Rachel got up and put on her dressing-gown. She went down to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. Outside, the morning was pale. A yellowy light, reflected in the water-logged field, meant a weak sun was rising. The distant cows, lying down, were almost submerged by mist. The bull stood up at the fence, chest rubbing against it. The wire bent beneath his weight. Rachel could hear the animal's soft, patient lowing. Hand curiously unsteady, she cut herself a piece of bread and put it in the toaster.

Then she looked at the bull, eye to eye. It jerked its head back, increasing the large folds of reddish skin round its neck. Its dilated nostrils smoked streams of warm breath. The small mean eyes remained on her face.

‘Bugger you, bull,' said Rachel out loud.

There was a loud roar. Rachel jumped back from the
window. The bull moved away from the fence. Turning its back on the cottage it rumbled towards the cows, hunch-shouldered, long scrotum swinging undignified as a bag of laundry against its muddy hocks.

Rachel heard a click behind her. In her nervous state, she jumped again. It was the toast, blackened. Smoke filled the room. She opened the back door, felt a blast of cold air, watched the blue smoke seep on to the terrace. The bull had almost reached the cows by now. So far away, Rachel felt quite safe. The pomposity of his shape reassured her. If that bull had been a man, he would have been a chairman – a stumpy-legged, huge-bellied chairman, rolling down executive corridors chewing on a fat cigar. He would have been disliked, not trusted, but respected for his power. At office dances he would nudge secretaries with plump knee or elbow – even as now the bull nudged one of the cows which, in awe, heaved itself to its feet.

Rachel ate her breakfast at the kitchen table. She would begin the day, she decided, with a long bath. Then, in preparation for Jack's return at the weekend, she would defrost the fridge. The igloo appearance of the freezer, which somehow she never noticed, annoyed him on many occasions. He said she took no care of possessions. Their attitude to possessions was very different. Their attitude to most things, in fact, was rarely similar. For the hundredth time, that winter morning, Rachel wondered why she had married Jack. Strange how you sometimes make major decisions without meaning to, she thought: strange how you bury your real will beneath a floss of superficial good reasons and act against your instinct. She had met Jack not long after her turbulent affair with the irresponsible David had ended. Exhausted by months of alternating hope and despair, she had in her weakened state settled for the promise of peace and security. They were assets she now regretted. It was danger, she had been forced to admit to herself, that she most relished. Without the possibility of danger her life lacked an element necessary to maintain her spirits. Often, these last, lonely months in the cottage, she found herself wishing for a fire, a burglary, a local drama – anything to menace the dull rhythm of her life.

Upstairs, after her bath, Rachel sat at her dressing-table
carefully making up her eyes in the way that had always pleased David. Sometimes she imagined that one day he would arrive, unannounced, to rescue her. She would not want to be caught looking less than her best. And so most days she made an effort with her appearance, in weary expectation.

She was thinking of David – the funny way his left cheek crinkled when he smiled – when she heard a crash downstairs. Then an almighty roar. Her skin shrank icily, pressing tightly over a wild heart. Glancing out of the window she saw the useless wire fence was flattened on the grass. She remembered she had not shut the back door.

With the speed of terror she ran downstairs and into the kitchen. The bull stood by the sink, its huge form blocking the door to the terrace. Beside it on the floor lay the smashed crockery it must have knocked off the draining board. Steam rose from its back, clouding a shaft of pale sunlight. It took a step forward, mud squelching from its hooves on the tiled floor. Then it raised its head to meet Rachel's look, and gave a deep noisy sigh.

For a moment Rachel was hypnotised into silence. For a moment incredulity overcame her: perhaps this monster in her kitchen was but an hallucination sprung from a despairing mind. The whole room caved about her, the thick stone walls suddenly no protection. All the familiar objects – china, dried flowers, candlesticks, basket of eggs – cracked in their vulnerability. The bull growled. It was no illusion. Rachel screamed.

She fled, slamming the door behind her. But even as she ran to the telephone in the hall she knew it had not closed. With useless fingers she stumbled through the telephone book for the farmer's number. When the ringing was answered by an unknown voice she shouted an almost incoherent message. She could hear the bull whining and snorting in the kitchen. With great effort of will, as she slammed down the receiver, she forced herself to turn round. The bull had nudged open the kitchen door, was surveying her with malicious intent. It stamped a fore-foot. Mud on the pale carpet. Rachel screamed again.

She ran to the sitting-room, snatched up the poker. While one part of her terrified mind told her to run up the back stairs and lock herself in the safety of the bathroom, another, more
reckless part urged her to fight the bull, to protect her possessions. Suddenly, for the first time, they seemed important.

Waving the poker she now approached the animal, shouting obscene threats. Confused, it backed away from her, until it was wholly in the kitchen once more. Rachel was sparked with the adrenalin of courage: with no thought for the foolishness of the action, she struck the bull on the nose. It gave an agonised roar and lowered its swinging head. One of its horns hit the television on the dresser. The screen splintered, cracking the small reflections of the quiet day outside. Further angered, the bull moaned again, prepared to charge. But its muddy hooves skidded on the polished tiles. Its knees buckled. It fell.