wanted her close.
Chapter 21
I woke up early next morning. It was still pitch-black and silent outside. After a few sleepy and blissfully ignorant moments had passed I quickly remembered all that had happened yesterday. I was immediately consumed by a heavy melancholy and bitter, desperate sadness again. The night just ending had been long, dark and lonely. I could still smell Siobhan's perfume on the bedclothes and that added to my wanting. Maybe I would try and phone her later. Perhaps I'd even pluck up the courage to go round and see her. But then again perhaps I wouldn't bother. It hurt not being with her but I knew it would hurt much, much more if she rejected me again.
For a while I lay in my bed and stared out at the sleeping world through a narrow gap in the curtains. The sky was dark - a deep, ruddy purple - but the darkness was very gradually being eaten away by the first distant glow of the orange light of dawn. The tops of the trees I could see were perfectly still. The only movement was that of an occasional bird darting across the morning sky in silhouette.
I dragged myself out of bed a little after half-past five. There didn't seem to be any point in lying there and festering when there was virtually no chance of being able to get back to sleep again. Dark, depressing thoughts were already beginning to run around my mind at a thousand miles a second and I stumbled into the living room in search of distractions. I collapsed on the sofa and reached for the remote control. I hadn't been up at this hour of the day for a long, long time. I sat down and watched few seconds of a ridiculously bright breakfast television programme on the TV. The pictures on the screen provided a stark contrast to the cold, grey shadows in the gloom all around me.
I didn't want to be without Siobhan.
***
I ended up at the farm. In the car on the way there I had been looking forward to some company and conversation. Within minutes of arriving there, however, I found that I wanted to be alone. I had a quiet word with Joe Porter and he seemed to understand. He found me a job in one of the fields furthest from the farm house. Something that would last for a while and keep my mind and body fully occupied.
And the therapy seemed to work. After venting my anger and taking out my frustration on a stretch of weather-beaten fence which Joe wanted replaced, I began to feel slightly better. Even though nothing made any more sense than it had done last night, I had at least managed to put everything into some kind of perspective. I gradually managed to convince myself that I had been right all along and that it was Siobhan who had the problem. I hadn't done anything wrong. I didn't have to take the kind of crap that she'd hurled in my direction. I loved her and I was there for her and, as far as I was concerned, that would always be the case. So what had happened in her life to change things? Why had her opinion of me suddenly changed so drastically?
The dilapidated fence that I was replacing separated a recently ploughed field from a rough pasture where Joe's sheep often grazed. As I worked the sheep became used to my presence and slowly got closer. I found that the harder I concentrated on the job, the easier it was for me to switch off from my problems, but I was distracted when the nearby sheep suddenly scattered.
There was a tractor approaching.
I thought at first that there was an emergency, such was the speed that it came towards me. The huge, heavy wheels churned up the pasture and sent the sheep running in all directions, many into the ploughed field through gaps where the fence was still down. I stared at the driver and saw that it was Joe Porter himself. I immediately knew that something was wrong. He would never normally have driven with such disregard for his land or his livestock.
He stopped the tractor alongside me.
'What the hell you doing?' he yelled over the deafening din of the engine.
'Fixing the fence,' was my obvious reply. 'Just doing what you asked me to do.'
For a second I wondered whether I was fixing the right fence. Joe looked ready to