И чувства и мечты свои—
Пускай в душевной глубине
Встают и заходят оне
Безмолвно, как звезды в ночи—
Любуйся ими—и молчи.
She read the poem again, feeling herself sinking slightly in the warm, cozy haven of the great oak tree. She warned herself not to fall asleep and topple off, but it was so quiet, merely the hum of the bees in the bluebells below, the occasional call of a tern high above the trees, and she felt the most remarkable sense of inner peace.
HONK!
The sound of a car horn startled Nina and very nearly did make her topple off the branch.
HONK!
Below her was a big, arrogant-looking Land Rover taking up more than half the road. She’d left enough space for it to get through, hadn’t she? So what was the problem?
“It’s fine!” she yelled down, to no avail. The Land Rover honked again. Furious now, Nina was tempted to throw something down on top of it—an acorn, perhaps, although it wasn’t the right season. The birds stuttered and flew away at the ugly noise of the horn, the utter peace and calm of the setting disrupted because some stupid driver thought she might clip their expensive side mirror.
She shinnied down crossly.
“It’s fine,” she repeated loudly to the open window. “Just drive past it! It’s not that big!”
The face greeting her was stern.
“Well, first, it is that big. It’s huge.”
Nina realized belatedly that it was Lennox the farmer—her new landlord—in the Land Rover, which paradoxically made her angrier. This was his countryside, after all; why was he determined to ruin it?
“And second, that branch you were so languidly relaxing on is actually rotten right through, couldn’t you see?”
Nina glanced upward to where there were flaking bits of bark and green spores blooming in the bare wood beneath the branch.
“It’s dying,” said Lennox, his face still set.
“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize.”
“Obviously,” sniffed Lennox. “If you fall off that and land on the railway line again, you get special marks for carelessness. What the hell were you doing up there anyway?”
Nina shrugged and held the book close. “No reason,” she said.
“I mean, there’s no shortage of trees.”
“Well, maybe this was just the one I liked.”
There was a short silence and Lennox looked awkward. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
“So, you settling in all right?”
Nina looked down at the book in her hand. “Oh,” she said awkwardly. “I should be working harder. I mean, I can afford my rent!”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Lennox, going pink at the tops of his ears. “I heard the women in the village are all a-flutter about you coming. It’s just me that thinks it’s a stupid idea.”
“Do you think reading is only for girls, then?” said Nina, still cross. “You know, women find men who read really frightfully attractive.”
She instantly worried that she’d gone too far, as he got out of the Land Rover and stood beside her, not looking at her. Then he heaved a sigh, and clicked his fingers. Instantly, a black and white dog leaped out of the back of the Land Rover and whizzed to his side, and he put his hand down and automatically caressed its ears. Nina found herself thinking how useful that would be, to have an automatic comforting device. The dog looked nice.
“Do they?” said Lennox gruffly.
“I like your dog,” said Nina. “He’s very cute.”
The dog wandered up to her and sniffed her hand.
“And clever,” she said. “Oh, you’re a lovely boy, aren’t you! You’re a lovely boy.”
“He’s a working dog,” said Lennox shortly. “He isn’t a lovely boy. And he and I have to get back to work.”
Nina watched the Land Rover take off, mud splattering from under its tires as it made its way into the distance. She sighed. Pissing off her landlord hadn’t exactly been at the top of her to-do list. She glanced back down at the book and the scrap of paper she was still holding. On the other hand, the day had hardly been a write-off.
As she drove back to the farm, she sank into a reverie: the handsome, sad-eyed foreign gentleman with the deeply romantic heart racing through the night on a dashing charger—well, a big train. She knew she shouldn’t think this way, but she couldn’t help it. It was just how she was built. And now she had an e-mail address she could actually read.
Chapter Thirteen
It was exciting staying up until midnight to go and meet the night train.
Jim had pointed out in an e-mail several times that what they were doing was completely against regulations and also illegal to boot, so she couldn’t tell anyone about it, and she had promised faithfully, feeling rather thrillingly that she was inside a spy novel as she did so.
She was to be at the train crossing at 12:10 precisely. Jim was going to drive too fast—which he never did, he had said solemnly—to begin with, then tell signal control that they needed to stop to delay the timetable. But she would have to be quick.
Feeling the part, Nina dressed entirely in black, including a wide scarf, and tweeted a picture of herself to Surinder, feeling slightly regretful that her friend wasn’t there to share the adventure. Surinder didn’t even get back to her, which she found rather hurtful. Plus, Griffin’s Facebook page had been absolutely chock-full of what a jolly time he was having at his amazing new media center; Nina wasn’t sure whether this was actually true or in fact meant that his new bosses monitored all his social media accounts, so it was pretty difficult to figure out what he was trying to say. And her other friends said hi, of course, but that was about their limit. Everyone was busy, she told herself. Everyone’s life went on. And this was definitely something new.
She marched to the door and turned out the lights. In the farmhouse, which she could see down the slope, a lamp was still burning. Nina didn’t think farmers stayed up late in general. Perhaps Lennox was the exception. Maybe that was why he was so grumpy all the time. Maybe he was looking through his wedding album, getting maudlin with a glass of whiskey. A shot of pity went through her. She didn’t want to think of him like that, think of anyone like that. It was hard. She crept past the farmhouse quietly, even though of course as soon as she started the van, it made enough noise to wake the dead.