At Hawthorn Time (24 page)

‘I just want it to be nice. A nice weekend.’

‘I know. I do too.’

‘And for them to have somewhere to come. You know: home. I mean, I know it’s not their home, but I want the kids to feel welcome.’

‘They
do
, Howard. But they’ve got their own lives now.’ She cut the florets neatly off a head of broccoli and put them in a saucepan to boil.

‘I know that.’

‘Do you?’ Kitty replied, suddenly irritated, suddenly wanting to resist, for some reason, the rosy picture he was painting of the coming weekend. ‘Well, you need to actually accept it, Howard. The kids may visit, and it’s lovely when they do, but it’s just us now.’

22

Mallow, pineapple weed, goosegrass (‘cleavers’?). Weather set fair. Swifts, swallows, house martins.

Spring was at its most fervid and riotous. The grass was lush and high, the cows sleek and giving good milk, and the narrow lanes around Lodeshill were hemmed with goosegrass and umbellifers. They stroked the sides of cars when they pulled over to pass each other, whispering along their hot flanks and striating the dust accumulated there from faraway city streets and motorways.

Ahead beckoned the summer, with its as-yet-unreckonable weather.
Please God
, muttered the farmers, checking and rechecking the long-term forecast.
Not like last year
.

There was still no word on what was to happen to Culverkeys, and as spring drove on it felt as though the village was held back, waiting. All day the swallows swung around the empty farmhouse, looping up to the eaves like stitches pulled tight; but in the evenings no light shone out from the windows into the silent yard where a century ago a steam-driven thresher had roared and clanked and where, before that, long-dead men had beaten the grain free from the husks with wood and leather flails. Now, with every night that passed, the shrieks of tawny owls pressed closer and closer around the dark barns.

It wasn’t much discussed in the Green Man any more – there was no point speculating, they all knew the possible outcomes – but it lay somewhere behind the farmers’ conversations, although an outsider wouldn’t have been able to tell. The other thing they talked about of an evening was Jack.

‘That Talling chap – you know, Kitty’s other half, who moved into the Graingers’ old place – he saw him snooping round the Manor House the other day,’ said Jim the landlord, resting his meaty forearms on the bar. He’d heard it from Jean Drew.

‘Did he call the police?’ asked Harry Maddock, one boot on the bar rail, his Jack Russell asleep and twitching by his feet.

‘No point. Anyway, there’d’ve been hell to pay from his wife, I reckon. From what Jean said.’

‘How’d you mean?’ – that was Charlie the cabbie, nursing a pint at his table. Apart from the three of them, the pub was empty.

‘Well, just that she didn’t want Jean telling anyone. She thinks he wants help, not the police involved.’

‘He wants moving on, is what he wants. Before someone does it for him. And anyway, she’s told the wrong person if she wanted it kept quiet.’

‘Well, there is that,’ said Harry, with a grin. ‘I’ll ask at the farms. Maybe they’ll know something.’

‘Funny you should say that,’ said Jim. ‘Nigel Gaster’s got an older chap on the asparagus; he said something about him the other night, about how he hadn’t turned up for a shift. But I got the impression it was a regular – someone who came every year. And I’m sure he wouldn’t take anyone on who was, you know . . . deranged.’

‘Thought pickers was all Eastern Europeans these days?’ said Charlie.

‘And students,’ said Harry, with a nod to Jim. The nod was because of Jim’s girlfriend, although she’d never shown the slightest interest in studying, even when she’d been at school – which wasn’t that long ago. ‘Where is she, anyway? In town with her mates tonight?’

Jim began unloading the glass washer. ‘No, that’s Fridays. The Vault, it’s called. I’m not going to stop her, am I?’

‘Never been tempted?’

‘I’m too old for all that.’

‘Not too old for everything, though, eh?’ Harry winked at Charlie, who grinned down at his pint. It was a complex mixture of envy and ridicule, and Jim understood it perfectly.

‘Speaking of kids, what’s the story with your trainee?’ Jim asked Harry. ‘He quit, has he?’

‘Didn’t even have the decency to tell me,’ replied Harry. ‘No word for three days – I had to stop round at his parents’ house.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Doesn’t want to get up early, doesn’t want to work at night. He’s got a job in a computer-game shop in Connorville. A shop. I ask you.’

‘They don’t want to be outdoors these days, I saw it with my two,’ said Charlie. ‘They want to be inside, in an office or whatever. Why? It was good enough for me, more than good enough. I’d still be driving a tractor now if there was the work, not sat in a bloody taxi ferrying people around like a chauffeur.’

‘What I want to know is this,’ said Harry, standing back from the bar and folding his arms. ‘Who’s going to be left on the land in thirty, forty years?’

‘Never mind that,’ said Jim, hanging up the last tankard and slamming the glass washer shut. ‘What about your assistant? Who the hell are you going to train up now?’

The night was soft and clear and brief; it seemed as though the village blackbirds had barely stopped singing before the dawn shift took over and chorused the next day in.

Jack was halfway up to the top field when Joanne Gaster hurried up behind him.

‘Jack – sorry –’ she said, touching his arm. As he turned he knew instantly what she was about to say.

‘We – we don’t need you today, Jack.’

He looked at her, a feeling of despair coming over him. It wasn’t the fact that he’d missed a day; they must have found out that he’d skipped probation. Somehow, his past had followed him north. There was no point asking Joanne how she’d found out; she’d only stutter something about the asparagus slowing, or having enough pickers, when they both knew that wasn’t true.

‘Not tomorrow either?’ he asked, just to be sure.

‘I’m sorry.’ She had flushed bright red, but to her credit she didn’t look away. ‘If there was anything I could do . . .’

‘It’s all right.’

He turned and began walking back the way he’d come, wondering if the other pickers knew, and whether they were watching. He felt ashamed, although there was no reason for it. He wondered if there was anywhere left for him to go.

At the pack house he handed Joanne his asparagus knife.

‘I should give you this.’

For a second she looked as though she was going to tell him to keep it – as what? Some kind of compensation? – but she took it, her forefinger absent-mindedly tracing the back of its curved blade.

‘Jack, look. Before you go . . .’

‘It’s OK.’

‘A cup of tea. Please.’

And so he followed her out of the morning sun into the bungalow’s kitchen, where an old collie in a basket thumped its tail in greeting and then settled back to sleep. Jack pulled out a chair and sat at the table with its bright vinyl cloth, clasping his hands in his lap, as Joanne busied herself with the kettle.

‘Milk and sugar?’

‘Please.’

She brought the mugs over and sat down across from him, shifting a pile of laundry from the chair first.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘Course.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Oh . . . I’ll find something,’ he said, looking down at his mug. ‘Or perhaps I’ll move on. I suppose the other farms here won’t have me either.’

‘You don’t seem to have too much luck round here any more, Jack.’

‘You know about Culverkeys, then?’

‘No – did something happen? Is that why you’ve not been back for so long?’

Now it was Jack’s turn to flush. ‘No, that was – well, we had an argument. It wasn’t my fault. Philip Harland, he –’

‘I never liked him. I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but . . .’ Suddenly she was confidential, keen to take his side. Guilt, Jack supposed.

‘He tried to cheat me. My wages. I was helping with the milking – a couple of years ago now. At the end of the first week he held it over, said they weren’t paying weekly any more – but he hadn’t told me that when he took me on. And then at the end of the month it wasn’t all there.’

She shook her head. ‘I know they had money trouble over at Culverkeys, but that’s no excuse. How much was it short?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I told him he’d made a mistake, but he wouldn’t have it. I – I don’t cheat people, ever. But he said I was lying.’

‘Between you and me, Jack, I’m not sorry he’s gone,’ said Joanne. ‘He’d borrowed money off us for some cock and bull story – well, off of Nigel, I didn’t find out ’til after – and he never paid us back; and we weren’t the only ones. Given everything . . . well. The only surprise was it took him that long to do it.’

Jack felt everything go still. ‘Do you mean he – did Philip kill himself?’

‘Thought you knew. Awful, when you think about it. That poor boy, and his little sister.’

‘His – weren’t there two sons?’

‘No, one of each. They live with their mother in Doncaster now, best place for them. And the farm’s been put up for sale, so it doesn’t look like they’ll be back.’

Jack wanted her to stop, wanted to get up and escape into the sunshine and spring air, but at the same time he had to know the rest – and Joanne was clearly enjoying having an audience.

‘It was Nigel who went over and found him,’ she continued. ‘He’d taken rat bait, you know, up in his son’s room. Nigel said the kitchen table was covered in unpaid bills, final demands, letters from the bank, from Tesco, DEFRA, you name it.’

Rat bait. Jack felt sick. ‘And Philip had – how long had he . . .?’

‘Oh, not long, they said, a day or so. It was the sound of the cows, you see – they hadn’t been milked. I’ll never forget it to my dying day.’

In Lodeshill the front gardens were bright with aubretia and forget-me-nots, and woodpigeons clattered in rage or lust in the yew beside the church. As the day warmed, clouds of greenflies rose, and swifts screamed high across the blue skies overhead. Half a mile north a tractor and harrow moved across the slope of a distant field, attended by two bounding dogs; the clank and hum of the engine and the occasional shout of the driver drifted into the village, as he warned the animals away at each turn.

Jamie was in the middle of his shift at Mytton Park when the foreman came to tell him there was a phone call for him. He set the box he was carrying down, took his mobile out of his pocket and looked at it blankly. There were three missed calls.

‘In the office, Dicko,’ said Andy, strolling off.

Jamie pocketed his phone and made for the glass-walled office in the corner of the shed. The grey receiver lay on its side on a slew of stock-control sheets, its cord in tight, overwound curls. He picked it up, gingerly.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me. I’ve been trying to call your mobile.’

‘Mum? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s your granddad. He’s gone missing.’

Howard and Kitty took the Audi to the big supermarket in Connorville and brought it back laden with food and booze. Opening the boot on the drive, Howard noticed how hot the bodywork was.

‘First real day of summer!’ he remarked, passing an orange bag to Kitty and taking two himself. From Hill View came the insistent sound of a door knocker; Harry Maddock was banging on the Dixons’ door, but it didn’t look as though anybody was in. ‘Jamie?’ they could hear him call through the letter box. ‘You in there? I’ve got a proposal for you.’

‘It’s not summer yet, it’s only May,’ Kitty said, from the porch.

‘May’s summer, isn’t it? Anyway, looks like it’ll be nice for the weekend.’

‘No need for those wellies, then.’

‘They were only a tenner. They can live in the shed, it hardly matters. She’ll wear them next time.’

Kitty let herself in the front door and set her plastic bag down in the hall; Howard passed her, taking his two bags into the pantry.