Free The Kindness by Polly Samson Page A

when he said he’d be happy to walk?
    He briefly considered kicking the package but settled instead for speaking sternly to it as he trudged from the station. Would his mother even like it? It was a bit fancy: ‘Rococo’, according to Julia. Mist rose through the village and the sweet smell of silage and manure reminded him he was home. A dog howled across the valley and was answered with a chorus of barks. The wrapping tore a little more: at one corner the wing of an angel was trying to escape. He marched on, clutching it like an unwilling dance partner, trying not to bump it with his knees, avoiding the ruts in the road that suggested he trip and earn himself seven years’ bad luck into the bargain.
    His conscience loomed out of the mist, keeping pace beside him, sneering at the gift whose very expensiveness now seemed tawdry. Think that’ll absolve you for ruining the whole day? Fancy not making it home for her birthday. You promised. She even sent you the fare . . .
    He adjusted his grip on the mirror. In the darkness there was a sudden screech and his scalp tightened. The bobbing lights and the distinctive rattle of his mother’s ancient Land Rover had never been more welcome.
    ‘Hang on, Mum, I need to stash this in the back,’ he said as she cranked open the door. She hopped out into the road, exclaiming about his lateness, the length of his hair. He batted her off, scooting round for the dog blankets to wrap around the mirror.
    ‘Go away, nosey, it’s your present.’ He blocked her with his shoulder as she reached up and tried to part the hair that had taken to falling across his eyes.
    She ground through the gears as they headed for home and he sensed her stifling a sob. ‘What is it, Mum?’
    ‘Something. Later . . .’ Again the choked sound.
    ‘I’m sorry I didn’t make it for your birthday.’ The road was bumpy, the smell of the dogs all-pervading as always.
    She shushed him. ‘Oh, that. You’re not to worry about it, not at all.’ But he couldn’t make out her face in the dark.
    He began telling her about Julia – the hawk, her startling beauty, the luck of finding her again – but it was all sounding too fanciful and all she said was: ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’
    Arriving at Firdaws the smell of home turned him tender: wet earth and roses, honeysuckle, farmyards, cows as before, newly cut hay and fruit on the trees burnished by the summer he’d all but missed. He took several deep breaths, each as satisfying as the air gulped down after crying.
    He gave in then to Jenna’s hugs, a long sigh: ‘It’s so lovely to be here.’ Some geese started up on the banks of the river. The earth and stones crunched beneath his feet and skittering terriers leapt at him, nipping at his pockets.
    Inside Firdaws, woodsmoke and chintz, the familiar welcome. Bowls of roses dropping petals to the floor. He propped the mirror carefully against the wall in the kitchen and thought: I’ll tell her everything.
    ‘. . . So, there she was, this beautiful woman I’d only just met, waiting for me to finish my shift, sitting on the bonnet of her little Fiat reading her book by streetlamp. And that’ – he nodded to the package – ‘all wrapped up and waiting for me on the back seat.’ Julia had promised to deliver from the shop, and she was true to her word. It was ready for him in layers of shiny red paper, even a bow.
    ‘All part of the service,’ she said, and when she jumped down from the car he found himself lifting the fingers of her left hand to his lips and kissing them. She made a joke of his courtly behaviour and smiled and curtsied but didn’t pull her hand away. On her fingers he could smell the leather of the gauntlet she wore to fly the hawk.
    ‘Oh, shush.’ Why wouldn’t his mother listen properly? She was all but drowning him out clattering about: filling the kettle, water from the tap thumping, interrupting him to offer stew, a sandwich.
    ‘Or would you prefer a gin?’ She gestured