Harvest Georgina Harding (the gingerbread man read aloud .TXT) 📖

what difference it made. He already knew that a steady man was not steady. He had known that since he was a boy. A big steady man could disappear in a puff of smoke. Ever since he’d known that, his father’s death had been more important than his father’s life, than whoever, whatever, his father had been. So, if the manner of his death was different, what had changed? If the past changed, did that change the present? There was the smell of mown grass, a path between dark yews that stood like raised hands against the sky. The name on the stone was the same name. He thought there was a rule in the church that suicides might not be buried on consecrated ground. Then there had been a lie here also – or a kind blind eye.

He remembered how they had come to the door, Billy with the dog, the policeman, the other men. They knew because they had found him. There was old Billy’s grave, over in the corner. He had come to Billy’s funeral if not his father’s. He remembered Billy’s pals all around him, old men with weathered faces standing there beside him singing ‘The Old Rugged Cross’. Did they all know? He thought they did. They must have known. And Billy was buried here in the churchyard, and his father was. Rosie they buried in the spinney where his father might have been buried, in the leaf mould where the nettles grew up, so green when the leaves caught the sunlight. That had been his idea, to bury Rosie there, not Billy’s. Perhaps he had sensed there was some meaning in the place, and Billy went along with it, knowing what the meaning was. Yes, boy, that’ll be a good spot for her, she’ll like that, you know we used to go shooting there, when your father was alive, it was a good spot, your father was fond of that spot, you’ll remember that. To Billy it might have made some kind of memorial.

He thought of that first time Billy took him out shooting. How he shot the hare – so great it had been to get a hare his first time out with Billy – and how Billy did not congratulate him but only said, That’s it, boy, now carry it home and you’ll see what hares are made of. He carried the hare all the way from Hewitt’s Field, and learned how heavy it was, the dead weight of it that he could feel again, pulling down his arms.

At last he turned away and drove the mile back to the farm. He went up the drive and parked the Land Rover in the yard. They would all be having lunch by now. They would be waiting for him. When he came in they would see him and, whatever they thought had gone on this morning – unless the girl had told all of it, and he thought that surely she could not have said it all – they would think they knew who he was. They would be sure of him as he had been sure of the memory of his father. Only he couldn’t be sure of any of them any more, of his mother, or Jonny, or old Billy whom he had trusted so completely. Good shot, boy, you’ll be growing up like your father, you will. You’ll be running that there farm in no time.

Claire saw her come in. She walked past her. She did not tell her anything. She went straight upstairs, and Jonathan followed her up and she told him that she had to go. Go where? he said. I don’t know, she said. London, for a start. She was packing already, taking things out from the drawers and the wardrobe. He said, It’s Richard, isn’t it, and she said, No, yes, but it’s not what you think, it’s not just that, although that was a part of it, it was something else, something I said that I should not have said, you will never forgive me. I told him, Jonathan, I did not know that he did not know.

That was not quite true. And Jonathan knew it was not true. He did not say. He only looked at her. She was taking her clothes from the wardrobe and folding them and putting them in her case. He left the room.

She packed everything. All her clothes, folded in the case, except for the clean ones she would wear. Then she went to the bathroom and washed, and gathered up her bottles and things, and brushed her hair, hard, and even put on some make-up, though she didn’t usually do that in the mornings. She took her case downstairs. She wanted to be gone before Richard returned, persuading Jonathan to take her to the station, saying that she would talk to him later, in London, in a day or two when he came, if he came, to see her.

When she got to London it was raining. She realised she had left her raincoat hanging by the back door. It did not matter. She could buy an umbrella easily enough.

She had taken a liking to the girl. But she was a foreign girl, from a long way off; from Japan, after all. She had been bound to leave, sooner or later. And now she had. That was what visitors did. Visitors came and stayed awhile, and then they left. The girl had come in flustered this morning and run upstairs, and when she came down again she looked very neat and clean, contained and Japanese once more, her suitcase packed and placed beside her. She noticed too late that the girl had left her red raincoat behind. She ran out with it just as the car turned away down the drive, hoping Jonny might see in his mirror and stop. Not to worry, she thought. He could take it to her sometime, couldn’t