The Long Dry Read Free

and fight them furiously. Depending on her mood, she will either laugh or shout at the cat.
    She leaves the brush by the doorway and takes the bacon out of the pan and puts it in the oven on the plate. The doorway goes out of the kitchen onto the back yard of the house and it’s where the family and good friends mainly come in and out, during the day. Below the units are sacks of potatoes and tubs and bowls of cleaning things stacked up. The front of the fridge is rusted and pocked but the fridge works. Old and out of place, a chest of drawers fits beside the fridge and holds knives and forks and things.
    As she cuts the bread thickly to put in the pan she wishes for a new kitchen. A kitchen gleaming and clean; but mainly she wants cohesion. She is tired of mixed up things.
    Behind the house, across the small back yard of broken concrete, the land slopes up. For a while there is bracken, dead and dry now from the long summer, and then the slope sharpens and the forest starts. The leaves are very heavy this year. To the side of the house, where the ground is even, more or less, there is a lawn of sorts and a small rockery made with stones from some of the out-buildings they never rebuilt. The lawn goes along the big edge of the barn and loses itself where the bramble starts before the forest. She opens the door to let the house breathe and looks out at the lawn.
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the Vegetable Patch
    Where the bracken is now, on the slope, they worked hard when they were younger to take this for themselves. First they cleared a break, so the fire could not spread into the trees, then they burned the bracken and bramble and the thin shoots of hazel that had come out of the forest. They did this at the end of summer. Then when the ash and the broken wood had been driven into the earth by the thick rains of Autumn, they began to dig the ground. They dug for a day, and hurt themselves. The next day he hired a rotovator and they cut up the half-acre patch of ground which was still tough work. The smell of the rotovatorreminded him of boat engines. The robins were the first to come and take the grubs and worms, and worked around them. Then, when they were inside taking a cup of tea and talking gently together, the bigger more cowardly birds came. The earth was full and hungry.
    The frosts fell and nothing grew in the earth. Then, when the winter loosened, they dug the broken soil over to give it air and make it ready for the seeds.
    They planted seed potatoes, and cabbages and long rows of onions and beetroot and radishes. They had carrots and parsnips, which needed to be thinned constantly and were a lot of trouble, and pea canes and lettuces. Even with the failures, they had a lot of vegetables. Too many for themselves. They also put in raspberries, still there now, but you had to fight your way to them. Then at some point, and she tries to think quite when, they didn’t plant things anymore and the woods took back the land. It was after the second miscarriage, but she does not remember that.
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the Finger
    Inside she sets the table. The knives and forks and plates in piles on the vinyl cloth. She starts to read her catalogue of supplements; things she hopes will stop her ageing, help her hold less water, help her be less tired and make her want sex more. For her age, she is a very beautiful woman, but she does not see it. It is beginning to go from her. She knows it.
    He comes in, scraping his feet on the metal grill outside the back door, not because he needs to, but from habit. Or perhaps it is his announcement – a signal they have always had but never spoken of. They had many of these when they were younger.
    She rinses the cafetière and warms the cup with water from the kettle which she’s boiled several times while she has waited for him. She does not make the coffee. Some things she mustn’t do. She’s threatened by the coffee; about how strong to make it, how it tastes when it is made. He makes coffee every day, just for himself