on the far side of the copse a woodpecker drilled holes into the silence. My feet slapped loudly on the muddy path as I ran back hastily before they saw that I was gone. This year the pig is smaller; a spayed sow with a black patch at the back of her head. Her eyes are very small, as though she were willing to let enough light in but will give nothing away through her stiff, pale lashes.
I shall hold the pot up to catch the bright burst of blood rushing crimson from the slit. Steam will rise from the warmth of it as it pours into the cold earthenware. It will be a slow thickness, cooling and darkening as I stir and stir, lifting out the threads and clots, tipping the cooked barley in to make up the puddings. Later we will pour scalding water over the pig’s coat and take turns to pull the candlestick hard over it the wrong way to take the bristles off without breaking the skin. There is always a strange smell, and rooks and other scavenger birds hang around the orchard. William scares them off, running on his short legs waving the broom that is almost as big as him over his head, and they fly heavily above, circling the chimney with their black wings fanned out like leather gloves. Lil says they are the kind of birds that give you bad dreams.
She knows nothing of the sense in my belly, none of them do.
It is a small fat heat that began to grow two months ago, after the last of the beans were down. That last quick crop had been a good one, all the others previous were blighted with mould, June and July having been so damp and wet. Our hair smelt good in the late sunshine as we split the fresh pods open with our nails until our hands were green, spreading the tender beans out on the mats to dry. Our hands smelt of broken leaves. It was warm for September, almost like a St John’s summer. We rested at the edge of the field upon the bank. I remember that Ann stood up and moved her shadow so that it fell across my face as she took the empty buckets back to the outhouse. The last drops of the midday ale were gone and my mother was way back at the house where the weaving was behind for the week, bulky hanks of unwoven yarn piling up by the loom. There was so much work to do; I cannot truly say why I was so lazy on that afternoon. There were no clouds in the dusty sky, just a milky blue space stretching up and up. A long way above the beech trees, black specks of swifts and martins were moving about, almost invisible. It was still. I can remember the flighty look of the seeds at the top of the grasses, and the tiny purple vetch twisting in the hedge beside me. The sun beat down. I heard the squeak of wattle as Ann closed the gate, and fell asleep.
I don’t like to remember most of what came next. His face was up close above me and blocked out the sky, his neck smelt like a warm stone. I remember the feel of him as he rubbed his hands about like he sometimes did if he could catch me. His fingers inside me felt like a goat kicking out. At first it almost felt good. I opened myself wider and shut my eyelids red against the sun. The weight of the sun on me was like a blessing. Then he pushed my knees apart wider under my skirts and put his length on me. I had to bite into his hand as it pressed my mouth. His hand was salty and full of muscle. I was blinded by the sun, my head pressed into the soft bank. It was intolerable. The discomfort made me choke out loud. Then it was finished and he rolled off me and sat there with his eyes narrowed in the sun like a man leaning against Chantry Post up on the hill, taking in the view.
And then he’d just said, ‘See you Tuesday, then,’ whistled for his grubby dog to come and leave the rabbit holes alone, and sauntered up the lane. It was as if I was not there at all. My legs shook under me as I stood up, and I spat into the hedge to get the feel of him away from me.
Did I cause that to happen? Surely it was something that I did. I’d thought he liked me.
I waited for an hour or more, until the signs of tears were gone from my face, and then left the field for home, closing the gate behind me as I went.
I was sure that they would see my guiltiness and shame, somehow smell my difference or see some sign of it. I was too afraid to go inside. I kicked my heels against the granite of the trough by the back door until the last of the sky was slipping down all brightly concentrated behind the thorns in the field below the house. Bats flew overhead. Inside the cottage Lil and Ab were bickering between the hall and parlour. I saw Ann walk into the back room and put a flame to the rushlights, her face lit from beneath with a wobbling glow as she came close to the window. A chill grew out there and settled in me as the darkness seeped into the valley, and I waited, shivery, for my father to come home. Then I could see his bulk approaching through the half-light in the lane. He was made taller by the sticks strapped to his back and the sticks were the clearest part of his shape against the white walls as he rounded the corner towards me. I held my breath that he was sober.
‘Ag, your mother back?’ was all that he said when he saw me there, knocking the clay from his great boots against the step and lowering his bundle to the ground. Then he ducked under the lintel before I could answer and I followed him in.
My mother put down the baby and stood up to serve the supper as he entered. She was tired of mending and her mouth made a hard line when she saw that my skirt was torn at the side.
It was September, the busiest time of the year.
‘Agnes!’ she is shouting. I forget myself, am nearly spilling the blood out on to the stones in the yard. I level the pot. There is so much pig’s blood, perhaps eight full pints of it. There are red splashes all over the ground, and my feet ache with the cold.
‘What is the matter with you, dreamy girl?’ my mother scolds. Her breath is white all round her in the cold air, so that I can hardly see her mouth.
My uncle slits and empties the pig in a rush of dark bowels. It is washed. We are all there watching when he pulls out the heart. It is marbled with a fan of yellow fat, like veins over a leaf.
Then he hangs the pig from her back legs, big in the outhouse, and two days pass for the flesh to become firm.
Its presence is everywhere; a twelve-score weight pulling at the hooks between the tendon and the ankle. The head hangs straight under the spine although the throat is cut, and pink fluid runs down the snout and drips into a pot upon the ground.
When I go to the outhouse to fetch soap for the laundry, William is there scolding the cats away from the bucket of soft parts that we have not yet eaten. He picks up a twig and pokes in amongst the wetness.
‘What is that?’ he asks. I look, and tell him that it is the stomach.
‘The slippery stomach, the slippery stomach, shall we tickle it, shall we?’ he says, and shrieks in horror at his own joke and runs away.
I take my turn at the loom.
It is a quietly complicated object, causing nothing but a runnel of thoughts to slide evenly through my mind as my hands follow their task at the shuttle and threads, in the same way as a horse will step along a familiar route without heed or guidance. When my hands are engaged in this way, the thoughts of trouble that rankle inside do not take me over. It is when the racket of the loom ceases abruptly that the twisting panic returns and plunges a kind of darkness through my head, as though a sharp wind had gone through a house snuffing out candles and leaving space for fear. I arrive at that point early in the day when I have sat out one hour at the loom.
‘Agnes!’ my mother shouts suddenly into the back chamber, making me jump. ‘We are short of a skillet!’
So I leave the house to get the pot, my ears buzzing with the silence of my stopped work, and head out on the lane as I am bidden. My mother’s voice, muttering instructions out to Lil as they prepare the stew, dwindles and then vanishes as I walk. The sun is out, and sparrows flit and whirr between the hedges.
Mrs Mellin is our closest neighbour and her house lies in the opposite direction to the village, along the muddy white road that leads to the chalk-pit. She lives declining and alone; her son was taken away by the press-gang in a port on the coast three years ago, and was said to have died of drink or bullying. Her husband has been dead for as long as any of us can remember. He died on a Sunday; Mother said he was a thoughtless man who had left his wife little but bad habits.
It is a pleasant day, and for all our troubles perhaps the winter may not be so bad. There is a blue sky above the top of the ridge of the Downs, and sunshine is shivering patches of brightness through the trees by the