bothered? Then her thoughts returned to the safety of Jasper and she wondered what she was doing in this expensive car with him. How was she going to tell to him about her situation? Why was she telling him about it? Was she expecting him to come up with some sort of solution to her problem? Perhaps she was, but it would still be her problem to sort out in the end.
Gradually, in the renewed intimacy of their shared silence, she found some sort of ease from her confusion and, forgetting about herself, began to wonder instead how Jasper felt about returning to his childhood home. She glanced at his face but it was unreadable. She was not to know that to survive in his chosen world he had long since mastered the art of dissembling.
Intrigued, she tried to tune into him, to feel what he was feeling, just as she had done as a child. Here she was more successful. She closed her eyes and could almost feel his heart beat more rapidly as they came to another well-remembered view, another mental milestone in their shared youth.
The countryside around them was changing as they drove from the soft air of the south coast of the peninsula across the high and stony moorland to Jasper’s farm on the harsher north coast. The cliffs on this coastline were high and black and the many coves were armed with unforgiving splinters of rock that had menaced sailors throughout time.
The expansive undergrowth of the southern seaward valleys had gradually given way to stoic, crouching plants and grim, frowning trees that stood with heads defiantly down, their branches streaming like windswept hair behind them as the northern wind blew relentlessly from the sea.
The ruined engine houses of tin mines stood all around, their broken chimneys rearing stark and uncompromising against the sky, silent castles of a long-dead industrial age, reduced now to gaunt ghosts of the past amid the beauty, like beggars at a wedding.
In the folds of land between them tiny hamlets of granite farms and low cottages huddled together like old women gossiping, speaking of hard times and the precarious balance between existence and ruin. Their early sons were all gone now, eaten by the ground or the sea but it was still a land that grew hard sons, like Jasper’s father, like Jasper’s brother Jem … like Jasper.
The car rocked as it splashed through puddled potholes, raising Jenny from her introspection, making her aware the car had turned onto a cart track. At the end of the track, just a hundred yards from the sea, lay the old farmhouse, coiled against the land like a watchful adder. All at once she was jolted back to their childhood and it was a far from pleasant experience. Immediately she could feel again the cold rain dripping onto her hair and running down her forehead as she waited for Jasper under the leaning hawthorns at the entrance to the track.
As a teenager she had long since stopped calling for him at the farm, embarrassed by his father’s sly and suggestive remarks about her presence there. Jasper had usually hurried her away, either to the cave at the foot of the cliff if it was fine weather or to one of the stone barns nearby where, with musty-smelling blankets about their shoulders, they had done their homework and swapped fantasies about their future by the light of an old storm lantern.
She had been his closest friend then, almost his only friend, and she had preferred his company to that of the girls she knew. Their peers had at first regarded this friendship as odd and there had been many jibes but this hadn’t been enough to keep them apart. Eventually their inseparability had just settled down into being just another strange but undisputed fact, no longer worthy of comment.
She smiled to herself now at the memory of the growing awareness of sex that had intruded on their lives when she was sixteen. Like so many times before she had held Jasper tightly, trying to comfort him as he tried not to cry over his father’s latest treatment of
Gradually, in the renewed intimacy of their shared silence, she found some sort of ease from her confusion and, forgetting about herself, began to wonder instead how Jasper felt about returning to his childhood home. She glanced at his face but it was unreadable. She was not to know that to survive in his chosen world he had long since mastered the art of dissembling.
Intrigued, she tried to tune into him, to feel what he was feeling, just as she had done as a child. Here she was more successful. She closed her eyes and could almost feel his heart beat more rapidly as they came to another well-remembered view, another mental milestone in their shared youth.
The countryside around them was changing as they drove from the soft air of the south coast of the peninsula across the high and stony moorland to Jasper’s farm on the harsher north coast. The cliffs on this coastline were high and black and the many coves were armed with unforgiving splinters of rock that had menaced sailors throughout time.
The expansive undergrowth of the southern seaward valleys had gradually given way to stoic, crouching plants and grim, frowning trees that stood with heads defiantly down, their branches streaming like windswept hair behind them as the northern wind blew relentlessly from the sea.
The ruined engine houses of tin mines stood all around, their broken chimneys rearing stark and uncompromising against the sky, silent castles of a long-dead industrial age, reduced now to gaunt ghosts of the past amid the beauty, like beggars at a wedding.
In the folds of land between them tiny hamlets of granite farms and low cottages huddled together like old women gossiping, speaking of hard times and the precarious balance between existence and ruin. Their early sons were all gone now, eaten by the ground or the sea but it was still a land that grew hard sons, like Jasper’s father, like Jasper’s brother Jem … like Jasper.
The car rocked as it splashed through puddled potholes, raising Jenny from her introspection, making her aware the car had turned onto a cart track. At the end of the track, just a hundred yards from the sea, lay the old farmhouse, coiled against the land like a watchful adder. All at once she was jolted back to their childhood and it was a far from pleasant experience. Immediately she could feel again the cold rain dripping onto her hair and running down her forehead as she waited for Jasper under the leaning hawthorns at the entrance to the track.
As a teenager she had long since stopped calling for him at the farm, embarrassed by his father’s sly and suggestive remarks about her presence there. Jasper had usually hurried her away, either to the cave at the foot of the cliff if it was fine weather or to one of the stone barns nearby where, with musty-smelling blankets about their shoulders, they had done their homework and swapped fantasies about their future by the light of an old storm lantern.
She had been his closest friend then, almost his only friend, and she had preferred his company to that of the girls she knew. Their peers had at first regarded this friendship as odd and there had been many jibes but this hadn’t been enough to keep them apart. Eventually their inseparability had just settled down into being just another strange but undisputed fact, no longer worthy of comment.
She smiled to herself now at the memory of the growing awareness of sex that had intruded on their lives when she was sixteen. Like so many times before she had held Jasper tightly, trying to comfort him as he tried not to cry over his father’s latest treatment of
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