TILL DEATH

Episode Two

DAY 4

The chickens aren't laying. On a normal day we'd have four, maybe five eggs waiting for us in the dewy morning, all covered in blood and down, but for the last three days there hasn't been a single one. They don't seem sick, but they're definitely quiet. Quieter than I've ever heard them in fact. They huddle together in the back of the coop like it is already the middle of winter. Maybe they're spent, but they're not that old. Three, maybe four years. If they don't start laying soon I'll have to ring their necks. I tell them this, but they don't react. They just stare at me with those beady little eyes. Still, we have enough eggs for the week at least and back in the house she cracks two into a spitting pan and we both stare hypnotised as life's ingredients coagulate in hot fat. The low sun shines through the square window and lands on the back wall, framing a nail at the top of a patch of pale paper that forms the faint shape of a cross. The absence of a symbol of hope. "Have you finished a picture lately?" I ask, filling the silence. She stops her busy work and looks at me hard.

"Have you been in there?" she asks back, her voice full of accusation.

"No, I haven't, I wouldn't. I don't... I just wondered if you had something we could put there." I point to the nail and the wall and the missing crucifix. "Would be nice to hang something there again perhaps?"

"No." she shuts me down. "Leave it like that."

In the afternoon, I pull carrots. It's surprisingly warm in the bright sun and the movement heats me up fast. I roll up my sleeves to work harder, and to look keener. I know she watches me from behind the canvas and glass of the sunroom. Why can she only look at me with those intense eyes when there is something between us, even if it is just glass and space? I roll my sleeves up still further and feel the rough skin sting on my forearm. My hand goes to it. I look down. It's red. Scarred. Cut in hatches and crosses. I look back up at her as if to say, look at what we've done, but she's gone.

That night we sit apart and eat a rich stew, a family recipe handed down to her through generations of ice cold women. It's a dish full of warm spice, reassuring roots and embracing depths, ladled out for generations in place of affection. It's how I know she still loves me. Because no one could cook so well for someone they feel nothing for.

DAY 8

Under her secret but watchful gaze, I harvest the land. The low sun catches what gilt leaves haven't already fallen to the ground and the blue sky looks as fragile as a finch egg. In the distance, over the dour sea, winter lurches ever nearer. Yes, I think, now is the time to reap what we have sown. This used to be my favourite time of year. I remember the smell of chutneys bubbling and spices drying, life abundant, the three of us thanking the spirits for all we had. We had so much... I'm pulled out of bliss by a screech and a boom overhead, the sky being split by a harrier jet, scrambling low. It screams out to sea before curving back in toward the land in a giant sweep of the sky, heading in the direction of town, and perhaps the capital far beyond it. Another follows, doubling the screech and doubling the boom. I run up the field after them but they're gone in an instant. I feel her behind me. The strange sound brought her out of the house. We look at each other, puzzled. "Practice?" I ask in the torn air.

"Hmm." She says. "Must be." We stand side by side looking down the ragged and windswept coast. When the boom eventually leaves the air her eyes grow critical and wander the land till they find the dry stone wall that ambles across the horizon. "It's too low," she says, after a moment's consideration. I look at it. The short, squat wall has stood there an age, collecting moss and lichen. Two small sections are missing their top stones and sheep pock the landscape beyond it. "You should build a fence," she says, and she's right. The wall is good enough to keep the sheep at bay, but a person could straddle it easily. The man that walked through here last week likely came over it, and we both know it. Apart from the gated entrance to the driveway, it's the only way anyone could get onto our property.