4. Martin
MARTIN
Martin had stayed in the kitchen because the accounts needed doing.
That was the explanation he gave himself while he checked the same column twice, corrected a figure that had been right the first time, and listened to the faint movement of guitar strings travelling across the hard standing from Galen's van.
The cottage walls were thick, the windows shut against the cold, and Nina was parked far enough away that the music reached him softened at the edges. It still found its way in.
Galen was not playing a song from beginning to end.
He worked at it in pieces, repeating a run of notes until Martin began to recognise where the hesitation came, then slowing the passage and building it again.
There was no audience to charm and no room to carry.
The music had the private, practical quality of someone repairing something with his hands.
Martin put down his pencil. The same four bars came once, twice, and then a third time with the movement settled cleanly into place. Martin felt the resolution in his chest before he could name what he was hearing. A few moments later, Galen muted the strings.
Martin waited long enough to make switching off the kitchen light appear unrelated. He slept badly and blamed the Suffolk ewe.
By morning, his list had expanded without permission. He needed to check the ewe, speak to Peter, replace the broken hurdle, clear the feed store before Friday's delivery, and make certain Galen reached the farmhouse by seven before Jacks sent someone to collect him.
Condensation clouded Nina's windows. The van remained silent for another minute, then the side door opened and Galen stepped down into the cold, hair loose, jumper pulled on crookedly, and boots unlaced at the top.
He looked less like the striking stranger who had appeared in Martin's field and more like a man who had slept in a cupboard by choice and knew exactly where everything inside it belonged.
Martin found both versions equally unnerving.
Galen shut Nina carefully and fell into step beside him.
He showed no stiffness from the previous afternoon beyond a brief roll of one shoulder and was alert despite the cold and the hour.
Martin had expected some sign that sleeping in the van was an affectation Galen maintained because it suited the rest of him.
Instead, Galen moved through the morning with the ease of someone following a familiar routine in an unfamiliar place.
At the farmhouse, Hazel took one look at him and set coffee at his place before he could sit. Galen thanked her in French, the words easy enough to suggest he had used them more than once to secure breakfast abroad.
"Coward," Martin said.
Galen turned toward him. "You watched that tea attempt to remove my fingerprints."
Jacks came in carrying a folder, heard the end of the exchange, and placed it beside her plate. "If you're discussing my tea, drink faster."
Hazel hid a smile behind her cup. Martin looked down at his toast before Galen could see too much satisfaction on his face, though he suspected the effort had failed. The joke had begun less than a day ago and already possessed the comfortable shape of something repeated.
Galen reached for the marmalade and passed it to Martin without being asked. Martin took it, then noticed he had left the butter within Galen's reach in the same automatic movement. The small exchange should not have registered. It did.
Peter arrived shortly after eight in a van carrying enough tools to suggest he regarded every engine as a personal challenge. He was compact, grey-haired, and sparing with speech, which made Martin trust him more than any mechanic who began a diagnosis by describing his own experience.
Galen met him beside Nina and explained the loss of power, the rising temperature, the smell, and the knock.
He gave the information without embellishment and stopped when Peter began looking.
Martin leaned against the cottage wall and watched Galen follow the inspection with close attention.
He asked sensible questions when Peter invited them and otherwise stayed out of the way.
It was the same pattern Martin had seen in the field. Galen found the person who knew what he was doing, listened, and adjusted himself to the work already underway.
Peter spent twenty minutes inside the engine compartment before straightening with an expression that offered nothing.
"Well?" Galen asked.
"Well, you were right not to start her again."
"I was hoping for something more celebratory."
"You want celebration, buy something built after decimalisation."
Galen glanced toward Martin. "Is everyone here like this?"
"No," Martin said. "Peter's considered friendly."
Peter ignored them. "Could be a valve problem. Could be the start of something dearer. I need her at the workshop where I can open her properly. Trailer can come tomorrow if the axle behaves."
"How long after that?" Galen asked.
"Depends what I find and whether the part exists anywhere this side of Germany."
Peter gave him a preliminary range wide enough to include both inconvenience and financial injury. Galen nodded, thanked him, and asked what he would need to pay for the trailer. His voice stayed level, but his attention fixed on the primer patch beneath Nina's rear window.
Martin knew that look now. Galen was doing sums.
Peter left to arrange the collection. Galen remained beside Nina with one hand against the faded metal, as though the answer might improve if he gave it time.
"You don't have to stand there pretending the estimate changes with reflection," Martin said.
"I'm considering whether music might become more profitable if I stopped doing it professionally."
"Would you stop?"
"No."
"Then that's settled."
Galen looked at him. The corner of his mouth moved, but the worry remained beneath it. "You make complicated things sound annoyingly simple."
"They usually are simple. That doesn't make them easy."
For a moment, Galen said nothing. Then he pushed away from the van and glanced toward the fields. "I can work."
Martin folded his arms. "At what?"
"Anything that doesn't require me to know the breeding history of the sheep involved."
"This isn't a holiday farm."
"I gathered that from the shouting."
"You can't pay Peter by wandering around carrying things."
"I'm asking whether Ashcombe has paid work I can do while I'm here."
"The broken hurdle needs replacing," Martin said. "The north boundary wants checking, and the feed store needs clearing before the next delivery. Jacks handles employment. You agree terms with her before you touch anything."
They returned to the farmhouse. Jacks heard the proposal, named an hourly rate, and opened her ledger before Galen could decide whether to object. When he tried to lower the figure, she looked at him over the top of her glasses until his argument ran out of steam.
"Meals, the shower, the power lead, and the hard standing are ours," she said. "Work is yours. One does not pay for the other."
"I wasn't suggesting they did."
"You were about to."
Hazel placed a wrapped piece of bread beside the ledger and said something in French.
"What did she say?" Galen asked.
"That I enjoy being right," Jacks said.
Hazel corrected her without looking up.
Jacks's mouth tightened at the corners. "That I enjoy being right too much."
Galen signed where she indicated. Jacks wrote down the agreed tasks and told him he would be paid at the end of each working day. The whole exchange took less than five minutes.
Martin watched Galen's shoulders ease when it was done. The reaction told him more than the wage argument had. Galen needed to know the generosity wouldn't return later wearing the shape of a claim. Martin understood that now.
That suited him. It also meant he had no excuse left to pretend he didn't understand the line between wanting Galen and having authority over his day. He could give instructions about the hurdle. He could wait.
The damaged hurdle lay beside the fence in two pieces, its hinge plates twisted but salvageable.
Martin showed Galen which timber to bring from the shed and expected at least one unnecessary question.
Galen asked none. He selected the correct length after checking the old section, carried it back without making a performance of the weight, and held it steady while Martin marked the cut.
They worked side by side through the morning.
Galen swore when a splinter found his palm, wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist, and accepted correction without defensiveness when he set the hinge half an inch too high.
He also handed Martin the right spanner before Martin asked, shifted the timber into position at the exact moment its weight became awkward, and began gathering the discarded nails while Martin checked the post.
He enjoyed Galen's running commentary on the personal failures of the sheep.
He enjoyed the way Galen hummed under his breath when measuring and stopped the instant a number required attention.
He enjoyed the questions, which were never asked merely to fill silence, and the silences, which Galen did not seem frightened to leave alone.
Martin was accustomed to working comfortably beside other people. The unusual part was wanting to know what Galen would say next, then finding he was equally content when Galen said nothing.
As they reset the post, Galen began humming again, the same passage Martin had heard through Nina's windows the night before.
"You mind playing while no one listens?"
"It pays."
"That wasn't what I asked."
Galen's hands slowed on the rope he was coiling. "Sometimes."
Martin did not push. He grasped the difference between being valued for a thing and being noticed while doing it, and let the silence do the rest of the asking. He wondered, not for the first time, how often Galen worked that hard for rooms that remembered only the atmosphere.
"You were practising last night," Martin said.