you they’d be back,’ said Mabs.
And Mabs and Tucker had a discussion as to whether it was in their best interests to have Richard and Liffey renting the cottage, and decided that it was, so long as they rented, and didn’t buy. An outright purchaser would soon discover that the two-acre field, on the far side of the stream, belonged to the cottage, and not, as Tucker pretended, to Cadbury Farm. Tucker found it convenient to graze his cows there; but would not find it convenient to pay for grazing rights. ‘You tell your sister to tell Dick Hubbard to keep his mouth shut about the stream field,’ said Tucker.
Dick Hubbard was the estate agent responsible for Honeycomb Cottage, with whom Mabs’ sister Carol was having an affair. Dick Hubbard was not married, but Carol was. Mabs disapproved of the relationship, and did not like Tucker mentioning it. Many things, these days, Mabs did not like. She did not like being forty any more than the next woman did; she was beginning to fear, for one reason and another, that she was infertile. She was, in general, suffering from a feeling she could only describe as upset—a wavering of purpose from day to day. And she did not like it.
‘He’ll keep it shut of his own accord,’ said Mabs.
Something about Liffey upset her even more: the arrogant turn of her head as she sat in the car waiting for Tucker’s cows to pass; the slight condescension in the smile; the way she leaned against Richard as if she owned him; the way she coupled with him, as she was doing now, in the open air, like an animal. Mabs felt that Liffey had everything too easy. Mabs felt that, rightly, Liffey had nothing to do in the world but enjoy herself, and that Liffey should be taken down a peg or two.
‘Nice to have a new neighbour,’ said Mabs, comfortingly, and Tucker looked at her suspiciously.
‘I wouldn’t fancy it down in the grass,’ said Mabs. ‘That stream’s downright unhealthy, and nasty things grow there at this time of year.’
‘You won’t mind when I swell up like a balloon?’ Liffey was saying to Richard.
‘I’ll love you all the more,’ said Richard. ‘I think pregnant women are beautiful. Soft and rounded and female.’ She lay on his chest, her bare breasts cool to his skin. He felt her limbs stiffen and grow tense before she cried out, her voice sharp with horror.
‘Look! What are they? Richard!’
Giant puffballs had pushed up out of the ground a yard or so from where they lay. How could she not have noticed them before? Three white globes, giant mushroom balls, each the size and shape of a human skull, thinned in yellowy white, stood blindly sentinel. Liffey was on her feet, shuddering and aghast.
‘They’re only puffballs,’ said Richard. ‘Nature’s bounty.
They come up overnight. What’s the matter with you?’
The matter was that the smooth round swelling of the fungus made Liffey think of a belly swollen by pregnancy, and she said so. Richard found another one, but its growth had been stunted by tangled conch-grass, and its surface was convoluted, brownish and rubbery.
‘This one looks like a brain in some laboratory jar,’ said Richard.
Him and me, thought Liffey, trembling as if aware that the invisible bird of disaster, flying by, had glanced with its wings. Him and me.
Bella and Ray came round from the back of the house.
‘We knew we’d find you round here,’ said Ray. ‘Bella took a bet on it. They’ll be at it again, she said. I think she’s jealous. What have you found?’
‘Puffballs,’ said Richard.
‘Puffballs!’
‘Puffballs!’
Ray and Bella, animated, ran forward to see.
Liffey saw them all of a sudden with cold eyes, in clear sunlight, and knew that they were grotesque. Bella’s lank hair was tightly pulled back, and her nose was bulbous and her long neck was scrawny and her eyes popped as if the dollmaker had failed to press them properly into the mould. Her tired breasts pushed sadly into her white T-shirt: the skin on her arms was coarse and slack. Ray was white in the bright sunlight, pale and puffy and rheumy. He wore jeans and an open shirt as if he were a young man, but he wasn’t. A pendant hung round his neck and nestled in grey, wiry, unhuman hairs. In the city, running across busy streets, jumping in and out of taxis, opening food from the Take Away, they seemed ordinary enough. Put them against a background of growing green, under a clear sky, and you could see how strange they were.
‘You simply have to take the cottage,’ said Bella, ‘if only to bring us puffballs. Have you any idea how rare they are?’
‘What do you do with them?’ asked Liffey.
‘Eat them,’ said Ray. ‘Slice them, grill them, stuff them: they have a wonderful creamy texture—like just ripe Camembert. We’ll do some tonight under the roast beef.’ ‘I don’t like Camembert,’ was all Liffey could think of to say.
Ray bent and plucked one of the puffballs from its base, fingers gently cupping its globe from beneath, careful not to break the taut, stretched skin. He handed it to Bella and picked a second.
Tucker came along the other side of the stream. Cows followed him: black and white Friesians, full bumping bellies swaying from side to side. A dog brought up the rear. It was a quiet, orderly procession.
‘Oh my God,’ said Bella. ‘Cows!’
‘They won’t hurt you,’ said Liffey.
‘Cows kill four people a year in this country,’ said Bella, who always had a statistic to back up a fear.
‘Afternoon,’ said Tucker, amiably across the stream.
‘We’re not on your land?’ enquired Ray.
‘Not mine,’ said Tucker. ‘That’s no one’s you’re on, that’s waiting for an owner.’
He was splashing through the water towards them. ‘You thinking of taking it? Good piece of land, your side of the stream, better than mine this side.’
He was across. He saw the remaining puffball. He drew back his leg and kicked it, and it burst, as if it had been under amazing tension, into myriad pieces which buzzed through the air like a maddened insect crowd, and then settled on the ground and were still.
‘Him or me,’ thought Liffey. But just at the moment Tucker kicked she felt a pain in her middle, so she knew it was her, and was glad, in her nice way, that Richard was saved. Her tummy: his brain. Well, better kicked to death by a farmer than sliced and cooked under roast
