by Sarah Hilary

Just after noon, we take the foot-path up into the fields. The day is hot, the village frowsy with hollyhocks and bunting.

The corn isn’t ripe, not quite. The ears look fit to burst though and the stalks are a startling shade of blue. We negotiate the narrow path to the right of the field. It’s overgrown with grasses and bindweed, perfidious with nettles.

Blue stalks, I say, pointing at the corn.

My walking companion tells me the story of Joe Orton visiting a Soho chemist in the swinging Sixties, asking for Gentian Blue as a cure for crabs. In France, he had to mime the ailment for the pharmacist.

We walk on.

A breeze gusts up from nowhere. The field shifts like a sea. I feel a little queasy. It’s in the periphery of my vision, off to the left. I’m watching where I put my feet. This time last week, on the same walk, we smelled lilac and wild garlic. That’s gone now. The oily, dusty stench of rape-seed is riding in, heralding summer and farm subsidies.

The hedge to the right is taller than the two of us and top-heavy, inclining under its own weight. A slumberous green thatch nodding assent as we pick our way past; we’re tolerated, for now. If someone doesn’t cut it back soon, the footpath will be impassable.

We reach a stretch which has been razed to roots. The carnage is the colour of ripe willow and husky underfoot.

Around a corner and down, back into the village. Chicken-wire fences and four-by-fours. Someone’s run a flag up his pole. St George’s. The gravel drive’s been tortured by a rake. Shepherdess roses guard the gate, tight-lipped and lemony.

I check the underside of my shoes for dog crap and rabbit droppings. There’s nettle-rash right around both ankles.

How did I not feel it?

 

 

Sarah Hilary won the Fish Historical-Crime Contest with Fall River, August 1892. Her story, The Eyam Stones, was runner-up in the Historical Contest. Both stories will be published in the Fish anthology 2008. MO: Crimes of Practice, the new Crime Writers’ Association anthology, features Sarah's story, One Last Pick-Up. Her work has appeared in Literary Fever, Every Day Fiction, Ranfurly Review and Zygote in my Coffee.