Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

come in the night for her hens. She hates the hens that get themselves caught, that pick up infections, that peck their own eggs to a gritty pulp before she gets a chance to collect them. She hates the cows that stand there all day looking at her with those blank, accusatory eyes, or that moan into the night after she slaughters their calves. She hates the flies and the wasps and the aphids and the bees and the beetles and the birds and the rats and the mice and all the dirt that won’t come out.

She repeats these sentiments to Agatha every time they meet, like a veteran soldier reliving the trauma of war. And she does all she can to destroy the land. Pesticides are her friends. She embraces toxins. If she had her way the whole estate would be concrete and animal traps and barbed wire fences.

She makes Agatha laugh. Last time Agatha was up at Bythwaite Hall, the two sisters walked the perimeter of the estate. Valerie has been doing this every year since before Agatha was born, and now that Agatha owns the property, they do it together. It is the closest thing Agatha has to a family tradition. The walk is just under fifteen miles and it takes the whole day, over moors clad with heather, through copses of oak and ash and hazel. In places, the scent of wild garlic is so strong Agatha has to cover her mouth and nose with her sleeve. In other places, the air is so fresh, she feels as if she could live off just one breath for the rest of her life.

They take lunch with them. Valerie prepares a selection of old-fashioned sandwiches, with fillings like corned beef or salmon paste and cucumber, which Agatha finds herself enjoying despite herself. They eat them while sitting on a dry-stone wall or a tree stump. Valerie calls this walk The Beating of the Bounds. Last time they did it Agatha asked Valerie where the phrase came from, and Valerie simply took hold of her long walking stick, made from a branch of yew with a cleft at the top for her to rest her thumb in, and started thrashing at the vegetation at each side of the path.

Valerie walks with her ancient bitch Border terrier, Bunny, and last time, Agatha was able to introduce her to Fedor, who was at that point still quite puppyish. The old bitch will now be able to walk clean underneath the body of the long dog without so much as bowing her grizzled head. Last time, she spent a couple of minutes humoring the puppy’s playful advances, then spent the rest of the fifteen miles entirely ignoring him. Fedor kept bending his front legs and lowering his head to the ground, wagging his tail, then letting out a couple of plaintive, high-pitched yelps. After a while he gave up, and while his old cousin trotted after her mistress, tucking herself into the path, nose almost pressed against Valerie’s rubber boots, Fedor bounded off, ranging across the heather, jogging between tussocks and shrubs, jumping over muddy puddles, then stooping to bury his nose in interesting scents.

Agatha led the way. The path was thin and the grasses on either side were high and uneven, and rigid with frost. The sisters could only walk in single file. Valerie was slower than she had been before.

“Valerie, how old are you?” Agatha asked.

“It’s rude to ask a lady her age. Didn’t your mother teach you that?”

Instead, Agatha did the calculations in her head. “You must be at least eighty.”

“I suppose I must be.”

“You are very fit for someone of that age.”

“I suppose I am.”

They continued to walk. Valerie then asked Agatha if she was still embroiled in “that spot of bother with the mucky lasses”.

Agatha explained that she was, but that she was working with the police to sort something out. They would probably make some arrests soon.

Valerie dug her stick into the ground and leant down on it, then turned round to face her young sister. “There were once an infestation up at big house. Bees, it were. You were still a baby and without father, I was only one around to look after place. I saw them coming in and out through eves so I went in to have a look. There were thousands of them. Do you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I got one of them smoke canisters they put in hulls of warships to clear rats off. I put it in hall and pulled out pin, then legged it. There were so much smoke. You’ve never seen like. Thick clouds of smoke. Gray, but so gray it were almost blue. It came pouring out of everywhere. It came out through gaps in window frames, out from cracks beneath doors. It came pouring out through tiny holes in brick and plasterwork. Out through chimneys. Out through roof. It was like big house were bleeding. Bleeding its guts out like a pig. It were a sight to see. And it did for the bees. I used to go in to sweep place every spring, and I were still finding them carcasses ten years later”

Valerie pulled her stick out of the ground and continued to walk, beating at the debris around the path as she went.

Of all the sisters, Valerie is the one who most resembles Agatha, even though she is now old. None of the other sisters look like her at all. In Agatha’s opinion, at least.

Agatha cannot know how much she looks like her father. She never met him. People say she looks like her mother. It is a compliment: her mother is an exceptionally beautiful woman. Agatha is beautiful too, but not as breathtakingly beautiful as Anastasia, and whatever it is in her that has diminished her mother’s perfection must come from her father. She isn’t sure what this essence of him is, but it is certainly something that Agatha and Valerie share.

The only