Read Spilt Milk for Free Online Page B

grinning.
    She was quicker than Joe in the water. She knew she would be, but still he tried to race her. From the weeping willow upstream to the row of elders at the widening bend of the river, they swam together. Nellie dived underwater, air bubbles bursting from her lips, a sense of daring enveloping her. After the long winter and the flood and losing Rose, an awful sadness had weighed her down for months. She could feel the water washing it away. The sun threw its dazzling white light across the water, and Nellie turned and twisted in its warmth. This moment, the river, this man. They seemed to belong just to her.
    A Sunday evening in June, Nellie sat beside Joe, unlacing her boots. Behind them in the meadow, brown cows gathered like an audience, heads low, watching them with mild eyes.
    ‘I have something for you,’ she said. She took a stone from her pocket. Vivian had found it when she was weeding Langham’s fields. Her sister always found things. Toffee-coloured flintsshaped like arrow heads, black stones she called devil’s toenails. She had a sharp eye and a collector’s desire to hoard. She kept empty birds’ nests and discarded eggshells. She pressed wild flowers and knew the names of every orchid, admiring them all, even the ones which stank like billy goats.
    ‘It’s a hagstone,’ Nellie said. She was not in the habit of giving gifts, and felt foolish. ‘You can thread a string through the hole in it and wear it on your belt. It brings good luck.’
    ‘I’ll need a bit of luck,’ said Joe, holding the stone up to the light and squinting at it. ‘I’ll be leaving soon.’
    She looked over her shoulder at him, trying to keep her voice light.
    ‘Leaving?’
    He showed her an advertisement for the America Line sailing company. A picture of a big steamship in still waters with a blue sky and lots of white clouds puffing around the ship’s tall smokestacks. Joe was going to sail to America. He set up a fishing rod and settled himself on the bank. He was sure he could be a serious artist in America. A painter. No master to work for but himself.
    Nellie watched the reeds moving back and forth at the water’s edge. She had not thought of him leaving.
    The fishing line twitched and wriggled, and Joe reeled in a small trout. He whooped and yelled and stamped his feet in triumph. Nellie leapt up too, caught in his good humour, stamping her bare feet, pointing her toes, doing a step back and forth, a jig she and Vivian had made up.
    Joe grabbed her by the hand and swung her round in a waltz.
    ‘You dance like a man, Nellie. I bet you’ve only ever danced with other women.’
    ‘With my sister, yes.’
    ‘You have to let me lead. Follow me. There you are. You see?’
    He waltzed her round and round, and she let herself drift in his arms until she felt dizzy. Then suddenly he kissed her hard on the mouth, pressing his body against her, his hands holding hertightly. She pushed him away in horror and he let go, an amused look on his face.
    ‘Will you build the fire or gut the fish?’ he asked, stepping away from her as if nothing had happened. She said she’d build the fire, hurrying to gather wood, her fingers touching her mouth where her lips felt bruised, tears of confusion pricking her eyes.
    They cooked the trout and ate the moist pink flesh with their fingers. Fish scales glittered on Joe’s bare arms and several stuck to his face, small winking discs of light on his stubbled chin. He was talking, full of opinions about the world. She and Joe were the same age, and yet she felt like a child in his presence. She knew so little. He talked politics. Farmers were not taking on union men, so they could avoid the minimum wages recently set for workers. There were strikes in the north of England. Nellie knew nothing of any of it. He read to her a book of poetry by someone called Pound. She didn’t like the verses at all and only pretended to listen, sucking fish juices from her fingers, imagining herself