Drove Road, by Constance Ferrier

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

The snow had been falling on the Fen since Tuesday, and by Thursday the dyke at the bottom of the field had vanished under it, so that the land ran flat and white all the way to the sky. Edith Fensome had not seen another living soul for three days. She fed the hens, she banked the range, and in the evenings she sat with the wireless turned low, listening to the announcer list the roads that were closed.

The knock came a little after nine. It was not loud. It was three slow taps, evenly spaced, the way a careful man knocks on a door he is not sure of.

She took the lamp to the passage. Through the frosted glass she could see a shape, tall and very still. ‘Who is it?’

‘I’m looking for Arnold Fensome,’ said a voice. ‘I was told this was his house.’

Edith’s hand tightened on the bolt. Arnold had been dead eleven years. He had gone out on a February night to see to a ewe and had been found in the morning in the drain beyond the spinney, face down in eight inches of water. The coroner had called it misadventure. The village had called it other things.

She opened the door. The man on the step wore an army greatcoat without badges, and his face, under the brim of his hat, was thin and unremarkable. There was no snow on his shoulders. She noticed that later, when it was too late to ask about it.

‘Arnold is dead,’ she said.

‘Ah.’ He did not seem surprised. He looked past her at the passage, at the coats on their pegs, at Arnold’s stick still standing in the corner where she had never moved it. ‘Then I am sorry to have troubled you. I owed him something, that’s all. I meant to bring it back a long time ago.’

He held out his hand. In the palm lay a pocket watch on a broken chain, its case dented on one side. Edith knew it before she touched it. She had bought it for Arnold in Ely the summer they were married, and she had last seen it on the morning he died, because he had asked her the time and then laughed and taken it out to check her.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘He lent it me,’ the man said. ‘I needed to know the time, and he was kind enough.’ He touched the brim of his hat. ‘Good night, Mrs Fensome.’

She watched him walk down the path to the gate and turn towards the drove road. The lamp threw his shadow long across the snow. Then she shut the door and stood in the passage with the watch cold in her hand, and only after a full minute did she think to open the door again.

The drove road was empty in both directions, a mile of white under the moon, and there was nowhere on it that a man could have gone.

In the kitchen she turned the watch over. The hands had stopped at twenty past four. She wound it, carefully, and held it to her ear, and for the first time in eleven years it began to tick.

“The visitor is presented as a frightening threat to Edith.”

To what extent do you agree with this view?

You should write about:

• your thoughts and feelings about how the visitor is presented in the extract
• how the writer has created these thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.