Who Do You Think You Are

said. “I came here with some ideas about how I would live. I thought I would go for long walks on the deserted country roads. And the first time I did, I heard a car coming tearing along on the gravel behind me. I got well off. Then I heard shots. I was terrified. I hid in the bushes and a car came roaring past, weaving all over the road—and they were shooting out of the windows. I cut back through the fields and told the woman at the store I thought we should call the police. She said oh, yes, weekends the boys get a case of beer in the car and they go out shooting groundhogs. Then she said, what were you doing up that road anyway? I could see she thought going for walks by yourself was a lot more suspicious than shooting groundhogs. There were lots of things like that. I don’t think I’d stay, but the job’s here and the rent’s cheap. Not that she isn’t nice, the woman in the store. She tells fortunes. Cards and teacups.”
    Simon said that he had been sent from Lyons to work on a farm in the mountains of Provence. The people there lived and farmed very much as in the Middle Ages. They could not read or write or speak French. When they got sick they waited either to die or to get better. They had never seen a doctor, though a veterinarian came once a year to inspect the cows. Simon ran a pitchfork into his foot, the wound became infected, he was feverish and had the greatest difficulty in persuading them to send for the veterinarian, who was then in the next village. At last they did, and the veterinarian came and gave Simon a shot with a great horse needle, and he got better. The household was bewildered and amused to see such measures taken on behalf of human life.
    “Country life.”
    “But here it is not so bad. This house could be made very comfort able,” said Simon, musing. “You should have a garden.”
    “That was another idea I had, I tried to have a garden. Nothing did very well. I was looking forward to the cabbages, I think cabbages are beautiful, but some worm got into them. It ate up the leaves till they looked like lace, and then they all turned yellow and lay on the ground.”
    “Cabbages are a very hard thing to grow. You should try with something easier.” Simon left the table and went to the window. “Point me out where you had your garden.”
    “Along the fence. That’s where they had it before.”
    “That is no good, it’s too close to the walnut tree. Walnut trees are bad for the soil.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Well, it’s true. You should have it nearer the house. Tomorrow I will dig up a garden for you. You’ll need a lot of fertilizer. Now. Sheep manure is the very best fertilizer. Do you know anyone around here who has sheep? We will get several sacks of sheep manure and draw up a plan of what to plant, though it’s too early yet, there could still be frost. You can start some things indoors, from seed. Tomatoes.”
    “I thought you had to go back on the morning bus,” Rose said. They had driven up in her car.
    “Monday is a light day. I will phone up and cancel. I’ll tell the girls in the office to say I have a sore throat.”
    “Sore throat?”
    “Something like that.”
    “It’s good that you’re here,” said Rose truthfully. “Otherwise I’d be spending my time thinking about that boy. I’d be trying not to, but it would keep coming at me. In unprotected moments. I would have been in a state of humiliation.”
    “That’s a pretty small thing to get into a state of humiliation about.” “So I see. It doesn’t take much with me.”
    “Learn not to be so thin-skinned,” said Simon, as if he were taking her over, in a sensible way, along with the house and garden. “Radishes. Leaf lettuce. Onions. Potatoes. Do you eat potatoes?”
    Before he left they drew up a plan of the garden. He dug and worked the soil for her, though he had to content himself with cow manure. Rose had to go to work, on Monday, but kept him in her mind all day. She saw him digging in the garden. She saw him naked peering down the cellarway. A short, thick man, hairy, warm, with a crumpled comedian’s face. She knew what he would say when she got home. He would say, “I hope I done it to your satisfaction, mum,” and yank a forelock.
    That was what he did, and she was so delighted she cried out, “Oh Simon, you idiot, you’re the man for my life!” Such was the privilege, the widespread sunlight of the moment, that she did not reflect that saying this