Part 6 (1/2)

'My father, you know.' He laughed. 'You have heard, haven't you?'

'People tell a story.'

'It's true. If he had remembered the soldiers were still in the house he'd have tried to sell them too. I wish I'd known him.'

He explained that at the time when he'd ceased to come to school it hadn't been because he was weaker than usual, but because his mother couldn't any longer spare the time to drive there and back twice a day. She couldn't afford help in the vegetable garden they made their living from: every hour was precious.

'She taught me in the evenings. Not that I know much.'

'Actually, you seem to know a lot.'

'Certain subjects we didn't bother with at all. I can hardly count, for instance.' He lifted the binoculars from around his neck and handed them to her. She focused them and searched the undergrowth, upstream and down. He took them from her, then shook his head.

'We're out of luck today.'

But at least they saw the trout going by, a couple at a time. You could catch them with a net, he said.

'Poor little things. I wouldn't want to.'

He laughed. He pushed the shock of hair back from his forehead, which was his most familiar gesture. The smaller the trout were, he said, the better they tasted. Then he said: 'They're an intimidating pair, aren't they, your husband's sisters?'

'A bit, I suppose.'

'You live in the same house as them?'

'Oh, yes. Above the shop.'

'I'm not so sure I'd entirely care for that.'

They walked back the way they'd come. He said: 'At your wedding my mother and I were in the second pew. I kept wondering what you'd look like. You pa.s.sed up the aisle with your father but I only saw your back.'

'I turned round when the whole thing was over.'

'You were Mrs Quarry then.'

'Yes, I was.'

'I hadn't seen you before that for ages.' He paused. 'Actually, you were beautiful that day. If you want to know, that's what I thought.'

The flush came into her face. She looked away.

'To tell you the truth, I've always thought you were a beauty.'

'A beauty! Oh, go away with you, Robert!'

'I always thought that,' he repeated evenly.

He didn't look at her; he wasn't watching her, as he had on the previous Sunday. He stooped to pick a dandelion.

'But I'm not in the least '

'You are, Mary Louise.'

She wanted him to go on, to say it again, to go into detail. But about to speak, he hesitated and then was silent.

'I'm not beautiful in the least.'

'Doesn't Elmer Quarry think you are?'

'I don't know.'

'Ask him and he'll tell you. Of course he does.'

They were not walking in the direction of the house any more. He had veered off to the left, crossing the slope of a field.

'Do you ever read Russian novels?' he suddenly asked, disappointing her with this change of subject.

She shook her head.

'I have a favourite Russian novelist,' he said.

He continued on the subject as they walked. He spoke of people with difficult Russian names. He described a man with a long thin face and a tapering, flat-topped nose.

'Where're we going?'

'There's a graveyard. A most peculiar place.'

He related the plot of a story, so meticulously describing a hero and a heroine that they formed in her mind, their features like features seen on the screen of the Electric, a little more shadowy at first, but then acquiring clarity.

'I used to think once,' he confessed, 'that I might try to write stuff like that.'

'And did you try?'

'I wasn't any good at it.'

'Oh, I'm sure '

'No, I wasn't any good at it.'

They reached the graveyard, by the side of a lane that appeared to be no longer used. Its small iron gate could not be moved, he said, but the wall was not difficult to clamber over. He took her hand to help her.

'I'd love to be buried here,' he said. 'It isn't full but no one bothers with it now.'

It was hot among the headstones. The gra.s.s was long between the graves, like hay waiting to be cut even though it was spring.

'A secret place,' he said.

'Yes, it is.'