Homecoming by Susie Steiner Read Free Book Online

bracing.’ He remembered Maud’s supermarket own-brand face cream and shower gel. ‘It’s all the same stuff,’ she’d lectured. ‘You just pay for the packaging.’
    Ruby, though, was all for warmth and pretty packaging. ‘Ooh look,’ she’d cry, pulling him back as they strolled past a department-store window, her happy face reflected among pink and gold lettering and stripes. ‘Lovely! I’m just going to nip in.’
    In the heat of his new feelings, when they had been together about three months, he took her out to dinner and over the poppadoms said, ‘Rube, I think we should move in together,’ and she had clapped her hands and stroked his face with her palm.
    Meeting Ruby, it had provoked life’s force in him. There were suddenly no limits to his potential. He wanted to see exhibitions, new films, to try new foods. He found himself loving her with every fibre that he had, like he’d been dunked in it and it was like a pulse, or the rolling forward of an ocean wave.
    They visited her family in Leeds, and his school friend Alan, who’d moved there with his new wife Bridget. ‘Blimey, you’re a changed man,’ Al had said, lying on the sofa with his arms behind his head. ‘It’s the real thing, in’t it?’ In Winstanton, he and Ruby clung to each other, their social lives embryonic. She had her book group, he joined the squash club at the leisure centre; all of it, at times, a strain. Their intimacy became a lifeboat and even this he came to resent, as if his dependency were some fault of hers.
    The moving in had never happened. She’d been so excited, she’d started slowing in front of estate agents’ windows, her arm looped through his. Talking about where they’d put the Christmas tree. Maybe it was her enthusiasm that made him pull back, as if someone had to stop them both. Gradually, it became part of the dynamic between them, flaring up at every turn, when she would say ‘When?’ and ‘I might not wait for ye, ye know’ and ‘Who d’ye think ye are, George Clooney?’ in a mock-teasing way. Or else she’d look really sad and he felt he was failing her. He would say ‘Soon’ and ‘When things are more settled’ or ‘One day’. Occasionally, they really fought about it. He would find himself shouting, ‘Stop pushing. You’re always pushing!’ And he could see he was breaking her heart.
    At any rate, after that first forward impulse, something had simply stopped. His caution returned, like the desire to stay in a small room because the big room’s just too big.
    She has been snoring for half an hour. He lets himself out of her flat and walks back to his.
    *
    That could be me, thinks Max, watching the auction hands hefting sheep into pens. Sweating it for tuppence, or breaking my back on another man’s land. But instead here he is, flat-capped like Joe, stood next to him at the Slingsby fence, with one foot on the lower rung. He can’t stop smiling on the inside. Because everything’s set to change. The prospect of telling Joe his news is all before him, that sweetness undented. He can hardly hold himself back, but he’s also savouring the anticipation of it. He tries to pull the corner of his mouth down, but it seems to make the smile more purposeful. The cap shields him at least.
    ‘Here, what are you so pleased about?’ Joe asks. ‘These prices aren’t funny.’
    ‘Not funny at all,’ says Max.
    ‘Tell us now,’ says Joe. ‘If you’ve won the lottery, I’d like my share.’
    ‘You’ll know soon enough. I promised Prim.’
    Joe rubs Max’s back. ‘You’re a good lad,’ he says, and he doesn’t ask more.
    Up and down the pens, men stand talking, looking down at the lots. And beyond them, the fields roll away, the mustard- yellow leaves on the trees now starting to shed.
    Max and Joe stand together in the circle of men surrounding the auctioneer, and he thinks he can see the other farmers regarding them. Father and son. It was a rare thing to see these days,