Signs for Lost Children Sarah Moss (best way to read books .TXT) 📖

And she would, he thinks, she would happily have carried it from the well herself twice a day, as if she were a medieval peasant. The stone flags continue across the kitchen, where there is an oak dresser against one wall, an old wooden table with a bench at each side, an iron stove and a white sink with one brass tap.

‘No bathroom,’ he says.

She looks up from the range. ‘Most people manage without, you know.’

He hears what she is not saying: most of the population is without bathrooms and apparently capable of happiness. But in Japan, he thinks, in Japan there were bathtubs made of polished wood filled every day and bags of bran to scrub away the dirt, all poured away in daily absolution. De Rivers’ payment has been generous, beyond the terms agreed, but if he ever finds himself truly rich he will bring the carpenter from Makoto’s village and have a Japanese house built in England. Or perhaps simply move to Japan. If Ally will come too.

She comes to him, raises her arms as if to put them around his neck and then pauses and lets her hands return to her sides. She does sometimes want to touch him.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Don’t stop. You can hold me, Al. I’ve come back.’

He has come back. Here he is. He waits for her to move, to embrace him. Penvenick was right, he thinks, here, here in this house, they will surely find their way back to each other as they have not, so far, been able to do at home. She is still standing there, as if she can’t decide what to do.

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Ally is unpacking the box of food provided by Penvenick, or, more probably, by Penvenick’s housekeeper. Such a woman, she fears, will not have imagined Ally’s incompetence in the kitchen, will have ordered on the assumption that cooking is a universal feminine skill. There may be rabbits to be skinned or flour and yeast to be turned into bread. She kneels at the dresser and moves the two pans, the four plates and four bowls, to one side. From the other room she hears Tom rustle and cough. She is beginning to think that the—the awkwardness, the constraint—between them is not going to clear like a morning mist, that time itself will not heal their harm. Good: on the top of the crate there is a large loaf of brown bread and box containing a dozen eggs. A pound of butter and, thank you, Mr. Penvenick, a boiled ham. Ham and eggs, ham sandwiches. Milk, tea, sugar. A bunch of leeks, easy enough to cook. Potatoes, onions. A whole plum cake! And at the bottom, a china jar of potted shrimps. She will need to buy some more bread from somewhere during the week. Probably one of the farms will sell milk. Fruit, she thinks, we should have some fruit, but at least fruit is not an omission she can be expected to repair by kitchen work. She sits back on her heels. There must be more to do in the kitchen, there is always more to do in a kitchen. She closes the cupboard and stands up. She could wash and chop some leeks, ready to cook later. It is past teatime; perhaps Tom would like a cup of tea and a slice of the cake. She hasn’t found a teapot. She moves towards the sink and touches its cold white edge, briefly reminded of laboratories and the dissection room at the Women’s Hospital. Outside the window, a hawk hangs in the sky over the gorse. In ten days, she will be back at Rose Tree House, where there is real work for her.

‘Ally? Would you like to take a walk?’

The shadows out there are long and the light pink.

‘Of course. Unless you would like me to make tea? There is a cake.’

‘It’s nearly sunset. Let’s go out.’

He helps her into her coat, holds the door for her and locks it behind them. The grass bows as the wind off the sea flaps her skirts and tugs at her hat. The field between the cottages and the sea has been ploughed and lines of green are forming on the dark earth. Behind it is the silver sea, and then the reddening sky. West, America. There are no ships.

Tom offers his arm and she takes it, a sign of willingness. She should say something about the house, about Penvenick’s kindness.

‘There is a boiled ham,’ she says. ‘It will make the cooking much easier.’

He nods. ‘I like ham.’

They walk back down to the road, which appears to run over the edge of the rocks into the sea. She steals a glance at him, at the line of his jaw and the red hair under his hat.

‘And potted shrimps.’

He is looking at the horizon, at the waves in the gap where the road falls onto the beach. ‘That’s good. Here, let me help you.’

The rocks are partly worn and partly cut into steps leading down to a mass of grey boulders. I will never be able to climb over those, she thinks, not in this skirt and these shoes, but beyond them waves are curling onto the sand. There is sand on the steps and she slips and grabs his arm, feeling the popping of stitches in her skirt.

‘Careful,’ he says. ‘Would you rather go back?’

No, she thinks, she would rather stop and kilt up this ridiculous tight skirt, and there is nobody but him to see if she did and even if there were it is not as if farm labourers are likely to faint at the sight of a woman’s ankle.

‘I can manage,’ she says. ‘Thank you.’

But she almost falls twice before they reach the sand. Hobbling yourself in the name of vanity, Mamma would say, trussing up your limbs at the dictate of fashion. Are you quite lost to all sense? She imagines Mamma and May coming back across the sea, finding