The Hired Man

13

The restoration of the mosaic and the fountain caused a great deal of excitement in Gost. If you’re new to Gost you might not know that we are people of muted emotions, unless we’re drunk. Then of course, anything might happen. But that’s as true everywhere. Monday, midday, in the queue at the post office where I waited to pay my electricity bill, a man in a blue boiler suit turned and asked me if I’d seen it for myself. He was a builder’s foreman I had worked for occasionally and stank of cigarettes. He didn’t wait for me to answer but went on, ‘I drove past this morning and I saw it with my own eyes. That great big bird is back on the wall. It was gone and now it’s back.’ He shrugged.

Nobody in the bakery except the woman who had been married to my cousin behind the counter, who on this day looked unusually pleased to see me. As she served me she said, ‘So, Duro, tell me about the house.’

I replied that I had nothing to tell. For this my cousin’s ex-wife withheld my loaf, passing it from hand to hand like a thug wielding a baseball bat. She tilted her head to one side and gave me a malevolent little smile. ‘I thought she was your friend.’

‘I helped her.’ I shrugged. ‘If that makes us friends.’

‘You’re the nearest neighbour.’

‘OK, so I lied. We’re the best of friends. What do you want me to tell you?’

‘What’s she doing?’

‘Nothing. They’re English. They like old houses.’

My cousin’s ex-wife raised her eyebrows. Then she repeated her chilly little smile and passed over my loaf. I left the bakery. I felt sorry for my cousin: no wonder he’d divorced her.

More talk in the Zodijak an hour later where I stopped for a coffee. Two guys, one I had seen there before, the one who worked in the municipal offices: the guy with the jug ears who’d been the one to confirm the sale of the house here in the Zodijak only weeks ago, a pen pusher who enjoyed the authority it gave him. He said, ‘No planning permission would be necessary, you see. Now, if they wanted to build an extension, but even then. a lot of people don’t bother. That’s when the problems start.’

His companion interrupted him. ‘Where did you say they are from?’

‘England.’

‘They say there are a lot of our people in England,’ said the other man, more or less to himself because his companion was still talking permissions.

I looked for Fabjan’s reaction, but there was none. You had to give it to him. He must have felt like somebody was walking on his grave. A few weeks ago Fabjan had been suffering from toothache. He has terrible teeth, I told you that already, I think. I’d kept forgetting to ask how he was feeling. Now I said, ‘How’s your tooth? Been to the dentist?’

‘Piss off,’ said Fabjan. He cracked his knuckles. Bad habit. Carry on like that and he’d end up with arthritis. Briefly I imagined Fabjan old, failing, being pushed around by his sons whom he had raised to be men as merciless as himself. The thought gave me a tiny twang of glee.

Laura and I were in the old courtyard of the house. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other shielding the sun from her eyes. She had been to the hairdresser’s and now she looked different. Her hair was much shorter and curled under her ears and it was several shades darker too, something like the colour of good earth. The biggest change was that she had a fringe, which made her look a great deal younger. I’d helped her carry things from the car. Laura checked her reflection in the car window. Grace, who was sitting at the kitchen table examining the detached wing of a dragonfly, looked up. ‘Wow, Mum!’

‘Is it all right?’

I said, ‘I think it suits you very well.’

Matthew came down the stairs, he raised a thumb. ‘Duro’s right. Looking good, Ma. What do you call that?’

‘A bob,’ said Grace.

Laura smoothed hair down on either side of her face and tugged lightly at the fringe. ‘You don’t think it’s too young?’

‘You look lovely, Mum,’ said Grace.

‘Well thank you all!’ Laura gave a small curtsey.

That was two hours ago. Now we were discussing the future of the outbuildings. Laura had had some ideas while she was under the dryer at the hairdresser’s. She said it was a good place to think. ‘One could be a place for guests to stay. Or we could put Matt in there. He’d love his own space. He’s old enough,’ she said. ‘We could have a den, or a studio of some kind. Turn this space into a courtyard garden.’ She showed me a magazine, full of pictures. Tall windows. Brick-laid floors and wooden beams. The kind of cushions on the floor Laura liked. ‘There’s a lot to think about. Obviously we can’t get it all done straight away. I wanted to ask — I was thinking, say we set up some sort of system of payments — would you manage the work for us? I mean you’ll do as much as you can yourself, but some of this is going to need extra labour.’

‘I thought you had planned to sell it.’ As I spoke I looked at Laura. The afternoon was still new and in the bright sun her hair looked even darker than it had in the house. Strange how a change of hairstyle can make such a difference to some people and none at all to others. An uncle of mine once shaved off his moustache after many years and nobody noticed, not even his wife, or so it was said anyway. With Laura it was more than just the hair. She looked completely different; in the light and with the blue sky reflected in them, her eyes glittered and she seemed to shine. With her tanned skin she could pass for a local.

Laura carried on. ‘I’ve been thinking. we use this as a base and choose the projects we do. There are plenty around here. So many houses, so many gorgeous villages, and of course, so many summers. People are looking for just this kind of thing. I was going to wait to talk to you about it, but since we’re on the subject, I was wondering what you thought about the idea of working together. We’d have to sit down and talk about it properly, thrash out the details, but I thought I’d raise it in principle.’

This came as a complete surprise. I’d no idea what to say, of what it meant. To take over houses in other villages and change them, sell them to people from outside to come here for their holidays. People with money they were so anxious to spend they scoured the whole of Europe looking for houses, who would come here and be overwhelmed by the beauty of our mountains and rivers, who would drive into a town like Gost and think the fields around had always been full of wild flowers. People like Laura. I liked Laura, yet I couldn’t stomach the idea.

Laura was waiting for an answer. I looked up but the sun struck my eyes, I couldn’t meet her gaze. Blood pounded in my temples. The conversation bothered me. The heat bothered me. Laura’s new hairstyle. Everything bothered me. Something said in the Zodijak, it had bothered me too, ever since I got back from town. The jug-eared man — I don’t mean him — the man he was talking to, his words whirled around the back of my brain, like a tune half remembered that you can’t quite catch. It happened every time I looked at Laura. And now, in that moment I remembered what it was he’d said. He said something like, ‘There are lots of our people living there.’ He’d been talking about England.

‘Even after last night? You still like it here? You still like Gost?’ I asked Laura.

‘I’m certain you’re right. They were just drunks.’

I didn’t know what else to say. What I really wanted to do was go away and think. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I said, ‘Okay.’

Laura put out her hand. I shook it.

Time spent working on the blue house meant I was behind with my tasks at home. In the afternoon, after my conversation with Laura, I went home and freed Kos and Zeka from their pen. After greeting me they ran into the road and began their routine of sniffing around the hedgerow and pissing on parts of it. Normally I am very clear-thinking, but that day I felt very far away from my usual self. Hard to describe it. I think I was unused to so much company, so much talking. I often went days without speaking to anyone. I’d gone on the same way for years. So had Gost. There had been few changes. People went about their lives, did up their houses and planted their window boxes; this was how we had learnt to live, you understand, had kept on living. We made sure we were left alone.

If I could go hunting it would clear my mind, as it always had done. I could take a problem out hunting and by the time I came home it would have been resolved. But it was still too early in the day, so I unravelled the hose and watered the vegetable bed. I’d taken some of the young chard from the blue house and replanted it here. I thought about the plant, how it had self-seeded year after year; this plant was the offspring of the plants that grew there sixteen years ago. Next I cleared out the dogs’ pen and after that I finished turning over the soil in the last bed. Later as I stood in the kitchen peeling onions for my supper, parts of the conversation with Laura replayed in my mind. Looked at in another way, of course, her suggestion presented opportunities anyone else would have been grateful for. I could make money, become as rich as the people who came to buy houses. How did people make money anyway? The only person I knew who’d done so was Fabjan. Laura and Conor had money obviously, and this was their plan to make more. I tried to think what I was feeling, became confused, struggled and gave up.

The edge of the woods up by the ravine. A silver light cast doubt on the shape of things. All was quiet. No wind. No sign of the roe buck, which at this time of the day were usually to be seen grazing beyond the tree line. Even the birds were still, silence except the smoker’s cough of a single woodpigeon. Zeka stood a few metres ahead, his nose in the air. Kos, by my side, stared sightlessly into the trees. None of us moved. We were waiting, though I cannot say what it was we were waiting for. Without warning an owl flew overhead, pursued by a flock of pigeons. The owl swooped and dived, turning its great head to one side and then to the other, mobbed by the pigeons, who took turns at it, but lacked the courage to strike, like dogs baiting an oxen. They were driving it away from their nests. Kos trailed the arc of sound with her nose.

We moved into the woods. Neither Kos nor Zeka had yet picked up a scent. Every thirty paces I stopped and looked around. In time we reached a small clearing where I expected to see the herd, but it was empty. No flash of movement between the trees. There were still one or two places where they liked to gather: the opposite side of the trees, where the ground dipped and where there was a small pond. I kept the dogs close. Zeka moved forward at a steady pace, Kos kept her nose close to the ground, practically touching the leaf bed. At a certain moment she sniffed rapidly several times, darted forward only to turn back on herself. Then she moved forward in tight zigzags over the same ground. Zeka ran towards her excitedly, practically prancing. Kos ignored him. Now she had the scent she started to trot and Zeka and I fell in behind her. The herd must have been in the trees, where they went if they felt threatened. Possibly another hunter had been this way. I kept close watch for any sign of movement. Now Zeka had caught the scent too and he rushed ahead of Kos, only to lose it and circle back behind her. Kos trudged on, never raising her muzzle from the ground. She stumbled on a tree root, kept going. We were moving faster, both dogs had the scent again. All at once Kos stopped dead. She raised her head and scented the air, then she stood quiet and still. Ahead Zeka braced his legs and barked. He began kicking up a fuss, bouncing on his paws, tail stiff, barking warnings. By now it was nearly dark. I quieted him, I searched through the darkness. I hadn’t yet raised my rifle. My eyes are good, I told you. If they weren’t I doubt I would have seen him, because he stood without moving, his head held low, he didn’t stamp or huff, as though he had no intention of dignifying our presence with a charge or even the threat of one. Great pale tusks grew from his bottom jaw. Zeka whinnied and retreated by several steps. Kos stood her ground. Then came the gleam of an eye as the great beast turned.

Together we walked back through the trees, towards the ravine, down the valley to the road. In the years since I returned to Gost I had scarcely seen a boar. Once they were quite common, but then the animals had been hunted to near extinction. Men from Zagreb. Men from overseas. Men with pale hands and expensive rifles. Then came the chaos, when men turned to hunting each other.

Now, like the wild flowers, the boar had returned.

The boar’s flight had carried with it the mood to hunt and besides too much of the light had gone. As we rounded the last bend towards the blue house I saw Krešimir’s car, a black Saab a few years old, parked with two wheels on the grass verge. As we passed it Krešimir himself came walking back towards his vehicle, keys in hand. He had come to look at the fountain for himself, no doubt. I remembered him coming by here when the mosaic was first uncovered, waving his arms at Laura, and Laura, oblivious to his outrage, imagining he’d come to exchange pleasantries. The thought brought a smile to my face. And now here he was again. He didn’t acknowledge me, but lowered his head and with his next step placed his foot forcefully on the ground as though bracing himself to knock me down. I said, ‘Good evening, Krešimir.’ He raised his chin as if surprised to be addressed, pretending he hadn’t noticed me there.

‘Good evening,’ he muttered. He glanced at the rifle in my hand. Kos, having scented him, arced around him, a low rumble deep in her throat. Zeka, missing the point as ever, excited after the sighting of the boar, bounded towards Krešimir. Krešimir took a step back.

I could have called Zeka off, but I didn’t feel like it. Under his breath Krešimir cursed. ‘He likes you,’ I said.

Krešimir sucked his teeth.

‘How are your new people settling in?’

‘What do you know about it?’

I replied, ‘I pass from time to time, much as I see you do.’

If I haven’t told you, I should mention Zeka has a habit, like others of his species, of taking the hands of certain people into his mouth. He does this gently and his teeth have never so much as dented the flesh of anyone, let alone broken the skin. He took Krešimir’s hand and held onto it as we spoke. I’ve always read this behaviour in dogs as friendliness, though of course there are those people who are less comfortable with it. Now it was my turn to pretend I hadn’t noticed. ‘How are your plans coming along?’

‘What plans?’

‘To move to the coast. I hear the property down that way is very expensive now, even more than before. Very popular.’

Krešimir snatched his hand away from Zeka and folded both hands out of reach over his chest. ‘Yes, well, I’ll worry about that.’

‘What about your own house? Are you selling that, too? Where will your mother go? How is she, by the way?’ I was annoying him. When we were young I would find I’d suddenly stepped over some invisible line between his good humour and anger, without knowing what I’d done. Then he might sulk or even hit me. Don’t forget how much taller he was than me. These days it pleased me to push Krešimir’s buttons. I am still a great deal smaller than him, but he doesn’t dare raise a hand to me. Krešimir looked at me. Though he’d crossed his arms to free himself of Zeka’s attentions, he somehow managed to convert the pose into one of superiority; his face wore a sneer and he lifted his chin, exaggerating his need to look down on me. He was clean-shaven. Dark smudges on each cheek just below the bone. Lines travelled a curve from his nose to the sides of his mouth. He gave a phoney laugh. ‘Very funny, Duro.’

I’d been wrong if I thought Krešimir could no longer get to me. I felt a trickle of anger between my shoulder blades. I shook my head and shrugged, whistled to the dogs and walked away from him. After a few seconds I heard the sound of his car door, the engine starting.

We were sixty, seventy metres or more ahead. Zeka had crossed into the field for one last rabbit run. We reached the gravel, just a few metres from the house, and Kos began to drift across the road towards the house, ready for her supper. As soon as I heard the speed of the car’s approach I called Kos back. She hesitated, confused by a command that didn’t make sense. As far as she was concerned we were home. Her hearing was going, she didn’t trust it. Instead she obeyed her instincts and turned back towards the house. And Krešimir, approaching, didn’t brake. Kos’s hip was struck by the Saab’s front bumper. She was knocked up and sideways by the impact. For a moment she hung in the air, head skewed, then she dropped to the road.