The Undomestic Goddess

“Naturally.” He nods. “And making ceremonial corn dollies.”

A small animal runs across the road, stops, and regards us with two tiny yellow headlamps, then skitters into the hedgerow.

“How does the lament go, then?” I say.

“It goes something like this.” Nathaniel clears his throat, then sings in a low, mournful monotone. “ ‘Oh, no. He’s gone.’ ”

“What about if it’s a woman?” I match his deadpan manner.

“Good point. Then we sing a different lament.” He draws a deep breath and sings again, on exactly the same tuneless note: “ ‘Oh, no. She’s gone.’ ”

I can’t help but laugh. “Well … we don’t have laments in London. We move on. Big on moving, Londoners. Big on staying ahead.”

“I know about Londoners.” Nathaniel runs his hand along a hedge. “I lived in London for a time.”

Nathaniel lived in London? I try, and fail, to picture him straphanging on the tube, reading Metro.

“When?”

“I was a waiter on my year off before uni. My flat was opposite a twenty-four-hour supermarket. It was lit up all night, with these bright fluorescent strips. And the noise …” He winces. “In ten months of living there, I never had a single moment of total darkness or total quiet. I never heard a bird. I never saw the stars.”

Instinctively I tilt my head back to look up at the clear night sky. Slowly, as my eyes adjust to the blackness, the tiny pinpricks begin to appear, forming whorls and patterns that I can’t begin to decipher. He’s right. I never saw the stars in London either.

“My dad taught me the constellations,” Nathaniel says, looking up too. “He had a telescope up in the attic.”

“Nathaniel … what happened with your dad?” I speak tentatively. “Eamonn told me there was a court case with the council?”

“Yes.” His voice tightens. “There was.”

“Was he suing them? Or … or …” I trail off.

“It was all so bloody pointless.” He exhales. “It started when the council dug up the road outside one of our pubs for eight months. They ruined access to it, and business went down. So Dad sued them. And lost. That’s when he had his first heart attack. That should have been the end of it.”

I bite my lip. “So … what went wrong?”

“Then some other lawyers made contact. More expensive.” I can hear the bitterness in Nathaniel’s voice. “They persuaded Dad he would win on appeal. They kept whipping him up, pressing the right buttons. They knew he was ill. Mum and I tried to talk him out of it … but he just called us negative. Dad always believed he was in the right. He kept saying justice would prevail. He trusted those bastards.” Nathaniel is silent for a moment, then adds, “He had the next heart attack a week after they lost the second appeal. It killed him.”

“Nathaniel … I’m really sorry. That’s awful.”

“Thanks,” he says after a pause. “It was a pretty bad time.”

I feel chastened after hearing his story. This is a side of the law I have no experience of. Genuine concerns and people. At Carter Spink the deals may have been huge—but I was pretty much cushioned from real life.

“How about you?” His voice brings me back to earth. “You were going to tell me how you came to be here.”

“Oh.” I feel a spasm of nerves. “Yes, right. So I was.”

This is impossible. I want to tell him. But … how on earth can I now? How can I admit that I’m a lawyer?

“Well,” I say at last. “I was in London. In this … this …”

“Relationship,” he prompts.

“Er … yes.” I pause, racking my brains for a way to continue. “Well. Things went wrong. I got on a train … and I ended up here.”

There’s an expectant silence. “That’s it,” I add.

“That’s it?” Nathaniel sounds incredulous. “That’s the long story?”

Oh, God.

“Look.” I turn to face him in the moonlight. “I know I was going to tell you more. But are the details really important? Does it matter, what I used to do … or be? The point is, I’m here. And I’ve just had the best evening of my life. Ever.”

I can see he wants to challenge me; he even opens his mouth to speak. Then he relents and turns away.

I feel a plunge of despair. Maybe I’ve ruined everything. Maybe I should have told the truth anyway. Or made up some convoluted story about a nasty boyfriend.