At Hawthorn Time (25 page)

‘Let’s get these unpacked, then I thought I might make up Jenny’s bed,’ she said over her shoulder as she went back to the car. ‘You can hoover.’

‘All right.’ Howard fetched another two bags from the boot as the gamekeeper’s buggy reversed out of Hill View and drove away.

‘Are those two booze as well?’ Kitty asked, indicating the bags he was carrying. Howard was aware how heavy they looked, and had purposefully taken them himself. ‘How much are you planning to drink?’

‘Not for me, Kitty, the kids,’ Howard shouted from the pantry. ‘And you saw them in the bloody trolley.’

‘There’s no need to swear, Howard. For goodness’ sake.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, Kitty, but you can be an awful prig sometimes.’

Kitty turned to him, her face flushed. ‘A . . .
prig
. I can be a prig, can I? Thank you, Howard. Thank you for that.’

‘Well, I hardly bloody drink any more. You know that. But you never let an opportunity go by to remind me of my past sins.’

‘Hardly drink? That’s a good one. You can barely go a day without one.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘It is, yes.’

‘And why should that bother you, exactly?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t care less what you do, actually. I’m just setting you straight, when you say that you hardly drink. At least get your facts right.’

Howard’s heart was thumping. They stood and looked at one another across the kitchen worktop, both shocked at what had erupted so suddenly.

Howard passed a hand across his face. The kids would be with them tomorrow; he’d arranged to pick Jenny up from the airport at the crack of dawn. They couldn’t afford this; not today. If they ever could.

‘Look, Kitty. I don’t want to argue. Not now.’

‘Do you think I do?’

‘Well, it seems like it, actually. Whatever’s got into you?’

‘Nothing has got into me, Howard. Just . . . oh, just go and do the bloody hoovering, will you? I’ll unpack the rest of these.’

Howard hesitated, his face clouded.

‘
Go on!
For God’s sake.’

When he had gone she leaned on the counter and wept.

Jamie took the bike straight onto the motorway, gunning it into the slow lane amid the belching lorries and turning off at the first junction. Fuck not being allowed. And fuck work, too: Megan had wanted him to go and see HR, fill out some form about not completing his shift. Let them sack him. He didn’t care. He’d slung his lanyard on the desk and walked out.

‘Dicko! Don’t be an idiot!’ she’d called after him.

Dicko.
‘Stupid fucking bitch,’ he’d whispered under his breath as he jogged away.

At his grandfather’s house Jamie parked the bike on the drive and hung his helmet on the handlebar. The front door was open; his mum was in the kitchen on the phone, a blue school tabard on over her T-shirt and leggings. It was odd to see her there.

‘I’ve asked,’ she was saying. ‘They say he never came in this morning . . . I know, but the front door was stood wide open.’

She mouthed at Jamie, ‘Your dad.’ He nodded, and went to look around the house.

Upstairs the bedroom and bathroom seemed absolutely normal, the bed made, the faded old bathmat draped neatly on the side of the bath. Jamie wandered into the smallest of the spare rooms. Crowded with old furniture and boxes now, it was almost impossible to picture his mother sleeping in it as a little girl. And yet, when he stood at the window, the view down into the back garden was the same one she must have looked at all through her childhood: the apple tree a little bigger now, the shed a bit shabbier, but in most respects the same.

He came back down the stairs just as his mother was getting off the phone.

‘Your dad’s on his way,’ she said. Her voice was clipped, but her face looked grey.

‘Are you sure he’s not just at the shop, Mum?’

‘I’ve been – they said he’s not been in today.’

‘But – he always goes, he goes every morning.’

‘I
know
, Jamie. But – something bad’s happened, I can feel it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jamie knew he was being obtuse, but he couldn’t help himself; he didn’t want any of this to be happening.

‘He knows there’s something wrong with him, Jamie, but he won’t bloody admit it. It’s selfish, is what it is. Just like when I was a little girl: everyone having to worry about him all the time, everyone having to dance around him, but is he grateful? No. Now tell me this. Who’s going to have to spoon-feed him if he goes gaga? Who’s going to have to take him in? Because it won’t be any of your uncles, I can tell you that.’

‘But you said it was just old age! Look, Mum, I reckon he’s just gone for a walk.’

‘You know what he’s like about routines, Jamie. He’s been like it as long as I can remember. He doesn’t just . . . go off somewhere on a whim.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t a whim, maybe he’s gone to visit someone.’

‘
Who?
He hasn’t got any proper friends in Ardleton – who’s he going to suddenly pop in on? Anyway, he knew I was coming over, I was going to take him to the doctor’s. I reminded him the other day.’

Jamie’s dad appeared at the open front door, still in his work overalls. ‘You’ve checked the house?’ he said as he came in. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary?’

‘No,’ said Jamie’s mother, her hands jammed into the front pocket of her tabard. Jamie shook his head.

‘Let’s not panic yet,’ he said. ‘Gill, I’d give you a hug, but –’ and he gestured at his clothes.

‘Should we call the police?’ she said.

‘Not just yet. Let’s have a proper look for him first. Silly bugger’s probably not far away. Son, why don’t you hop in the car and have a quick drive around town? Take your mum with you – you can look on both sides of the road that way. I’ll head out across country in case he’s gone for a walk or something. OK?’

Culverkeys farmhouse had an unmistakable atmosphere of abandonment, and Jack could see that it was empty from quite some distance off; there was a kind of blankness to it that told him that nobody had passed through the yard or any of the outbuildings for some time. He’d known the animals would all be gone, and hadn’t expected to find anyone there, but still, to see it so utterly silent was a shock. It seemed impossible, as though so many centuries of productivity, so many hopes, should leave an echo; as though a working farm could not so quickly die.

And yet it had. He leaned on the farm gate, idly twisting a maythorn switch into a rough circle and wondering why he had come. He could have been miles away by now.

He had been the last of the hired hands to quit. He had left Philip alone on the farm – abandoned him to his eventual suicide. Of course, he wasn’t to know what would happen; but nonetheless it weighed heavily on him. He should have seen the man was in trouble, should have thought about the reason his wages were short. He hadn’t even bothered to ask; he’d just assumed that Harland was a crook. It was a failure of imagination, of compassion, and Jack condemned himself for it utterly.

He’d half expected that local kids might have broken into the farmhouse already, claiming the empty rooms with little fires or tagging the walls with cans of auto spray. But it was clear even from the gate that the house was untouched, and he was glad of it.

He knew he had to go inside, though he couldn’t have said why. It was far too late to atone for anything now. At the back of the house he broke a pane on the kitchen window with his elbow, reached in and unlatched the casement. It was the first time in his life that he had ever broken into a building.

In the kitchen he stood for a moment with his eyes shut, braced for whatever the house had to tell him about what had happened there – but nothing came. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, uselessly, into its motionless and unechoing air.

Back at the gate Jack stopped and took a last look at the farmhouse, as though it could still tell him something. But it remained mute, and he knew that he was running out of time.

He wondered how bad it was – whether they had called the police, whether they were actually going to try and have him arrested. Not Joanne Gaster, perhaps, but one of the village busybodies. He pictured it: a police van, a custody desk, his full name, his prison record; then a duty solicitor who would barely look at him, a police cell. He would be in the system again. A vision of his last stretch inside broke over him like a wave: a vast cage for men, loud and strip-lit, the air fetid.
Just to be able to go where I like
, he thought.
Just to live how I see fit. I don’t do any harm.
He felt his guts contract and a sob heave its way up his throat. ‘I can’t,’ he said.

He knew what it meant: that his time with people was over now. No more farm jobs, fieldwork or pot-washing; no more winters in borrowed vans or bunkhouses. No more shops; no more money. He would disappear into the woods and fields – for good this time.

Standing by the gate, his eyes squeezed shut, he began to whisper to himself an old song; and as he sang he imagined that the wood of the gate grew warm under his hands, and that near the latch there appeared an impossible, brand-new shoot:

I dream of a mask that hangs from a tree

(All along, down along, out along lee)

I dream of a road that runs to the sea

(All along, down along, out along lee)

When the song was over Jack stood for a moment with his eyes closed, feeling the precious spring twilight press close around him; and then, shouldering his pack, he took an old field path towards Copping Wood as somewhere in the dim distance a faint siren sounded and grew, hastening his steps. He would sleep in the wood for one more night, and at dawn he would be gone: a shadow moving quietly along a hedgeline like something half remembered, and vanishing like a dream.

23

Elderflowers, bittercress, dog roses. Dead nuthatch chick on a bridleway. Sunny and warm.

Both cars were on the drive at Manor Lodge, Kitty’s tucked in at the side of the house, the Audi reversed in ready for the trip to the airport in the morning. Looking down at them from her bedroom window as dusk fell, Kitty knew that Howard wanted to go and pick Jenny up by himself – and given the row earlier perhaps she should let him have his way. It would take an hour to get to the airport and she could already picture how claustrophobic the car might seem at dawn, the two of them barely speaking and hardly anyone else on the road. It was all so painful, so very painful, she thought: the gap between how things were and how they should be. And impossible to bridge.

She and Howard had avoided each other carefully for most of the afternoon, Howard hoovering downstairs while she got her daughter’s room ready. Because she’d already been at university when they moved to Lodeshill Jenny’s room had the provisional feeling of territory which had never been fully claimed. She had slept there in the holidays, and her old clothes and books were there, but she had never really made it hers in the way that her Finchley bedroom had been. Because she had gone straight into the internship in Hong Kong her things remained there, and would do, Kitty supposed, until she came back to the UK for good and got a place of her own. She had tried to persuade Howard that they should at least box it all up and put it into the attic, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

‘But that way we’ll have a proper spare room,’ she’d said, ‘not just the sofa bed downstairs.’

‘The sofa bed’s fine. Just leave Jenny’s room as it is,’ he’d replied tersely. It was one of the conversations they had without looking at one another.

Perhaps she should go to the airport after all, Kitty thought, so that the two of them wouldn’t already be locked into some kind of conspiracy by the time they got home. It would mean making the sofa bed up for Chris tonight, though; if she did go with Howard they would need to leave the house before dawn.

Sighing, she went down to the study and began to strip the sheets. They smelled familiar, human; Howard didn’t change them as often as she changed hers. She could hear him in the living room, flicking through the channels on the television; most likely he was having a drink, she thought.

There had been a long period after Jenny’s birth when his drinking had got really bad: every lunchtime, every evening, and more or less all day at weekends. He’d grown paunchy and pallid, the whites of his eyes like dirty laundry; when questioned he began to lie about it, lies that hurt her because they were so transparent, because they showed her so little respect.