Tommy’s rage in the field

Tommy’s rage in the field is a remembered nighttime episode in which Tommy gets out of Kathy H.’s car and gives way to an intense, physical outburst. Kathy follows his screams through darkness and mud, reaches him as he struggles in the field, and holds him until he stops fighting. His brief apology and joke afterward do not explain the rage, but show the scene turning from frightening isolation toward renewed closeness between them.

Background and Immediate Circumstances

The episode follows Tommy’s remark that Miss Lucy had been right, not Miss Emily. Kathy cannot remember whether she answered; what she does remember is that something in Tommy’s voice or manner set off distant alarm bells. He sits quietly, looking straight ahead as she drives along a twisting road through the night. The recollection links his unsettling manner and his sudden need to leave the car, but does not give a definitive explanation for what follows.

A few minutes later, Tommy asks Kathy to stop because he needs to get out for a minute. She thinks he may be feeling sick again and pulls over hard against a hedge. The place is completely unlit; even with the headlights on, she worries another vehicle might come around the curve and hit them. Tommy gets out with a purposeful air that makes Kathy think he would rather cope alone if he is ill. She stays in the car, wondering whether to move it farther up the hill, when she hears the first scream.

The Outburst in the Field

At first Kathy does not think the scream came from Tommy; she imagines a man lurking in the bushes. By the second and third screams, she knows it is him and is already out of the car. Unable to see clearly, she tries to reach the sound but meets an impenetrable thicket. She finds an opening, steps through a ditch, climbs a fence, and lands in soft mud. Her route to Tommy is not direct: the darkness and tangled ground delay her even as the screams make the need to find him urgent.

Beyond the fence she can see a steeply sloping field and the lights of a village far below in the valley. The wind is strong enough to pull her toward a fence post for support; the moon, though not quite full, gives enough light for her to make out Tommy in the middle distance. He is raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking. When Kathy tries to run to him, the mud sucks at her feet. It impedes Tommy as well: he slips and falls out of view after kicking, while his jumble of swear-words continues without interruption.

Kathy’s Intervention

Kathy reaches Tommy just as he is getting back to his feet. She catches a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then grabs his flailing arms and holds on tightly. He tries to shake her off, but she keeps her grip until he stops shouting and she feels the fight leave him. The action changes the scene without a speech or explanation: Kathy does not discover the cause of his rage, but stays physically with him through it.

Tommy, too, puts his arms around Kathy. They stand holding each other at the top of the field for what seems to her like a long time, without speaking, while the wind tugs at their clothes. The scene’s image of holding on gives the embrace an immediate practical force: for a moment, Kathy feels they are holding each other because it is the only way to keep from being swept away into the night. His earlier departure had suggested that he wanted to manage alone; the episode ends instead with mutual contact.

Aftermath and Significance

When they finally separate, Tommy mutters, “I’m really sorry, Kath.” He gives a shaky laugh and adds, “Good job there weren’t cows in the field. They’d have got a fright.” Kathy can see he is trying to reassure her that everything is all right, although his chest is still heaving and his legs are shaking. The apology and joke mark an effort to return to ordinary conversation, not proof that the force of the outburst has vanished. They walk back to the car together, trying not to slip, and Kathy ends the exchange by telling him, “You stink of cow poo.”

The episode is significant for the contrast between Tommy’s fury and the quiet, wordless closeness that follows it. Its details resist a neat explanation: Kathy registers the alarm in his manner before he leaves the car, but the remembered scene gives no explicit account of the rage’s cause. Instead, it follows what the outburst does between them. Tommy first withdraws into darkness; Kathy risks the muddy field to reach him; he resists her hold, then embraces her; and the pair return to the car with an apology, a shaky joke, and a teasing remark. The change is not a solution to whatever troubles him, but a movement from separation to shared presence.