‘Oh, probably not. I moved to Los Angeles when I was still a teenager.’
‘Really? That’s quite a move.’
I nodded.
‘Did one of your parents take a job out there? ’
‘Something like that.’
‘And are they still out there?’
‘No. They live near here. Over towards Stroud.’
I angled my face away, as if that excused me skirting the edge of a lie. ‘So. Eddie. Tell me what you were doing on Sapperton Green on a weekday afternoon.’
He leaned down to stroke the walkers’ dog. ‘Visiting my mum. She lives up near the school.’ A tiny hairline fracture passed through his voice. ‘What were you doing?’ he asked.
‘I walked from Frampton Mansell.’ I nodded in the direction of my parents’ village.
He frowned. ‘But you didn’t come along the valley – you came from up the hill.’
‘Well . . . I wanted to get some proper exercise, so I hiked up the hill and walked along the top. Along Broad Ride, in fact – it’s changed a lot,’ I added quickly. This is becoming a minefield. ‘So overgrown! It used to be so wide and stately; people would bring their horses from all over for a gallop. Now it’s little more than a pathway.’
He nodded. ‘They do still gallop up and down it, even though it’s been banned. One of them came very close to mowing me down earlier.’
I smiled at the thought of anyone being able to mow down this big mass of man, horse or otherwise. It pleased me that he, too, liked to walk along that secret green corridor.
‘I was like Moses of Sapperton,’ he said. ‘Parting a Red Sea of cow parsley.’
We both sipped our drinks.
‘So do you live round here?’
‘Yeah,’ Eddie said, ‘although I get a lot of commissions from London, so I’m there a fair bit.’ He slapped me suddenly on the calf .
‘Horsefly,’ he said softly, flicking the dead insect off his palm. ‘Eating your leg. Sorry.’
I took a long draw on the cider and felt the heady, sensual purr of alcohol and mild shock. ‘They’re bastards here in June,’ he said. ‘They’re bastards all year, but especially in June.’
He showed me two angry bumps on his forearm. ‘One of them got me this morning.’
‘I hope you bit it back.’
Eddie smiled. ‘I didn’t. They spend quite a lot of time sitting on horses’ private parts.’
‘Of course. Yes.’
Before I’d asked permission of myself, I touched the bites on his skin. ‘Poor arm,’ I said, although in a very matter-of-fact tone, because I was already embarrassed.
Eddie stopped laughing and turned to look at me. He met my gaze, a question in his eyes.
It was me who looked away first.
Sometime later I was comfortably drunk. Eddie was inside getting our third, or maybe fourth pint. I heard the beep-beep of the till as the landlord rang up his order, the crackle of something I hoped might be crisps and the lazy whine of a plane dragging across the sky.
The lichened surface of our old picnic table had begun to feel like sandpaper on the soft backs of my thighs. I looked around for another, less abrasive table, but found none, so I flopped down in the grass like the ramblers’ dog from earlier on. I smiled, happy and intoxicated. Grass tickled my ear. I wanted never to leave. I wanted simply to be here; no phone, no responsibilities. Just Eddie David and me.
As I gazed up at the sky, the earth warm underneath me, I caught an old ripple of memory. This , I thought lazily. The smell of warm grass, the soft patter and rustle of it, layered with buzzing insects and snatches of hummed songs. This had been me once. Before Tommy had moved to America and adolescence had exploded under my feet like a landmine, this had been enough .
‘Man down,’ Eddie said, coming down the steps with a beer, a cider and – worshipful praises! – crisps! ‘You claimed to be a hard drinker.’
‘I forgot about cider,’ I admitted. ‘But it should be noted that I haven’t passed out. I just got fed up with that prickly bench.’ I hauled myself up on my elbows. ‘Anyway, you must open those crisps straight away.’
Eddie sat on the grass next to me, removing from his pocket what looked like an uncomfortable bunch of keys. They were held together by a little wooden key ring in the shape of a mouse.
‘Who’s that guy?’ I asked, as Eddie handed me a pint. ‘I like him.’
Eddie turned to look at the key ring. After a little pause he smiled. ‘She’s called Mouse. I made her when I was nine.’
‘You made her? Out of wood?’
‘I did.’
‘Oh! Gosh, how lovely.’
Eddie ran a finger along Mouse. ‘She’s been with me through a lot,’ he smiled. ‘She’s my taliswoman. Anyway. Cheers.’ He leaned back on his elbows, turning his face to the sun.
‘So we’re just drinking in the middle of the day,’ I surmised happily. ‘While everyone else is working. We’re just sitting here, drinking.’
‘I’d say so.’
‘We’re drinking in the middle of the day and now we are quite drunk. And we are having a nice time, I think. ’
‘Will we resume conversation, or are you going to spend the afternoon making statements?’
I laughed. ‘As I said earlier, Eddie: clarity. It keeps me on the straight and narrow.’
‘OK. Well, I’m going to just eat some crisps and drink my beer. Let me know when you’re done.’
He opened the crisps and passed them over.
I like him , I thought.
Since arriving in this secret garden, Eddie and I had sifted through our childhood memories and discovered hundreds of historical intersections. We’d walked the same hills, been to the same sweaty nightclubs; we’d sat on the same towpath at sunset and counted dragonflies dancing above the reed beds in the old Stroudwater canal.
All of this had been separated only by a couple of years. I imagined sixteen-year-old me meeting eighteen-year-old Eddie, and wondered if he would have liked me then. I wondered if he liked me now.
Earlier on I had told him about my non-profit organization and he’d been delighted, had asked me endless questions. He understood straight away the difference between our Clowndoctors and the regular entertainers who’d visit a children’s hospital. And he understood that I did it because I couldn’t not, no matter how many funding cuts we suffered, no matter how frequently our guys were treated as mere party clowns. ‘Wow,’ he’d said, after I’d showed him a clip of two of our Clowndoctors working with a child who’d been too afraid to go into surgery. He looked actually quite emotional. ‘That’s incredible. I . . . Good for you, Sarah.’
He had shown me pictures of the furniture and cabinetry that he made in a workshop on the edge of Siccaridge Wood. That was his job – people commissioned him to make beautiful things out of wood for their homes: kitchens, cabinets, tables, chairs. He loved wood. He loved furniture. He loved the smell of timber wax and the crack of a biscuit joint tightening in a clamp, he told me; had given up trying to force himself to do something more profitable.
He showed me a picture of an old barn: small, stone, with a gently pitched roof, sitting in the sort of forest clearing that’d be right at home in a Hans Christian Andersen tale.
‘That’s my workshop. It’s also my home. I’m a real-life hermit; I live in a barn in a wood.’
‘Oh good! I’ve always wanted to meet a hermit! Am I the first human you’ve talked to in weeks?’
‘Yes!’ Then: ‘No,’ he added quickly. In his eyes I caught the edge of something I couldn’t grasp. ‘I’m not actually a hermit. I have friends and family and a busy life.’
After a pause he smiled. ‘I didn’t need to say that, did I?’
‘Probably not.’
He cleared the picture of the barn from his phone, just as it started ringing. This time he switched it off, although without any visible irritation. ‘Well, that’s my job, anyway. I love it. Although there have been years when I’ve earned almost nothing. They’ve been less fun.’ A tiny spider crawled up one of his arms and he watched it, pushing it gently away when it tried to enter the sleeve of his T-shirt. ‘A few years back I even thought about getting a proper job, something with a guaranteed pay packet. But I can’t do a nine-to-five. I’d . . . Well, I suspect I’d struggle. Maybe die. Something bad would happen; I wouldn’t survive it.’