“I’m sorry love, I’m going to have to leave it. It isn’t for me.”
She had to be kidding. This woman had wasted her afternoon, when she could have been happily – to a degree – ferrying rubbish to the tip instead of waiting in for the buyer to arrive to dismantle the shed. But what would come out of having an argument at the back door with this woman, who she would never see again anyway? Some might say that was a good enough reason to have an argument, but it was too hot for that.
“You’re kidding.” It had to be said.
“It’s nailed together; I don’t think I can get it dismantled without it falling to pieces. I’m ever so sorry.”
“Just leave it.” Just get out of my back yard, she thought, but her face must have said it as well.
“You’re not going to leave bad feedback for me, are you?”
Once the van had gone, she went into the cursed shed with a cup of tea and sat on the folding chair. So much for ebay. This shed didn’t want to go anywhere. So much for the studio. So much for making money for the van hire. Might as well drink the tea and get your money’s worth of shed ownership. She did.
At last, there had arrived those golden summer days that the Weald of Kent does so well, and it would be a crime to waste this one, even getting one’s money’s worth from a white elephant shed; the only thing to do was to walk. The footpaths radiated out of the village via the churchyard, and making a quick decision, she climbed the stone steps, walked past the graves and tombs, through the shade of the beech trees and the metal kissing gate into the waiting field. Why this way? She had thought of going to the woods. But of course, she knew why. They had gone to the woods together, and in a way, the woods, that footpath and that field would belong to him. It would be good to go to London now.
This field, this one that she was now crossing, was no one’s but hers, anyway. Once at the top, in the middle of the beech avenue, she looked back and wondered how much she would miss this. Her vista was once the flat blue Caribbean horizon, and now it was Kentish fields and trees… would buildings ever fit in to this mental picture? And why, if she was so attached to this, did she find it impossible to produce anything vaguely like a landscape?
Thinking about this, she climbed over the stile and headed out along the lane. Umbellifers growing in the ditch and cryptic rustlings in the hedge caught her eyes and ears, and then, the smell of the sheep caught her nose. It was definitely dead – its abdomen fell sharply to nothing after its round ribcage and flies buzzed about it hopefully – but for some unexplained reason she had to stop and stare through the gap in the hedge, just in the hope of a twitching ear. The other sheep in the field were alive and well, which made this sheep seem somehow… extra dead. The unseen dog, now growling loudly on the sheep’s side of the hedge, became for a moment a mythical beast, slavering and guarding his kill, until the incredulously cheerful whistling of the man approaching with the wheelbarrow brought her back around, and told her to move on. There’s death all over my idyll. So much for being a country girl, she thought, and carried on.
The sun was low, but still heavy-handed. She would have to decide which way to take to get back into the village. The line of treetops on her left, across the field, called her – come here. It won’t be that bad. It will probably be the last time, too. And it does belong to you, for now. The stile was overgrown, so she carried on, but further on the gate was opened. Take it. She headed for the woods.
