At Hawthorn Time (27 page)

‘And I’ve meant it, Kitty. Why is it never enough?’

‘Because . . . I needed you
then
, and you weren’t there. How can you make it up to me
now
?’

Kitty was aware that her hold on the moral high ground was tenuous, but the fact of her unfaithfulness seemed somehow irrelevant; after all, she had ended the affair with Richard, she had done the right thing – despite how unhappy it had made her. And it would never detract from how awful Howard had been.

‘And what about now, Kitty? Do you need me now?’ he asked.

They held one another’s gaze for a long moment; then Kitty let out a breath and turned away. Did she? She hadn’t thought so, but perhaps she was wrong.

‘Howard, I –’

‘Actually, don’t say it. Let’s – let’s leave this for now. Have a think, eh?’

Kitty nodded, slowly. ‘All right.’

He reached over and touched her arm where she sat: lightly, hesitantly. ‘Come on. I’ll pour you another, shall I?’

And she nodded again and handed him her glass. ‘Please.’

24

Stitchwort, cow parsley, wood sorrel (oxalis). Maybugs. Nightjars churring on Babb Hill. No breeze.

Jamie was at the bungalow, picking up some things for his mother. The police had said that they would send out a team, and that someone should remain at his grandfather’s house in case he came back.

‘Any signs of dementia?’ the officer had asked; the other one was upstairs, and they could hear him pacing around the empty rooms.

‘He’s – he’s been a bit confused recently,’ his mum had said. ‘Just once or twice. Who people are, that kind of thing.’

‘He’s been sad too, Mum,’ Jamie had chipped in. The officer had turned to look at him.

‘What kind of sad?’

‘Just . . . I don’t know. Quiet.’

‘Are you close to Mr Hirons?’

Jamie had shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Thick as thieves, them two,’ his mother had said. ‘Go on, ask him what my father’s like. He’s the expert.’

Jamie had turned away from her then. Staring out of the window, he’d listened to but had not been part of the rest of the conversation, which was about sniffer dogs, about helicopters, about night-time temperatures. It was insane, it wasn’t real. It was fucking unbelievable.

‘Try not to worry too much,’ the officer had told them at the door. ‘Elderly people do sometimes wander, and we usually get them back safe and well.’

After they’d left his mum had properly fallen apart, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap as she cried, tears and snot coursing down her mottled face and into the creases at her neck. His dad had steered him into the hallway and asked him to go home and pick up some things, said he’d sit with her and calm her down. Jamie had gone outside without speaking, but his dad had followed him out and put an awkward hand on his shoulder as he’d lifted his helmet from the bike’s handlebar. He’d turned, his shoulders up; his face had felt fixed, somehow, and he couldn’t quite meet his father’s eyes. It wasn’t anger, though, because who was there to be angry with?

‘She doesn’t mean it, son,’ his dad had said. ‘She just wants to be close to him, like you are. But he won’t let her.’

‘Well, maybe this is her chance,’ he’d found himself replying. ‘If he really is sick in the head like she says, if he needs looking after. Has she ever thought of that?’

Back at home he fetched his rucksack from his bedroom and went around filling it with the things his father had asked for, flinching inwardly a little as he chose some grey, faded underwear from his mother’s bedside drawers. He wondered for a second if he should take her one of the dolls, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick any of them up.

Racing the bike back to Ardleton through the dim, narrow lanes, he tried to think what else he could do. Fuck what the police had said about waiting: he’d head out and start looking. None of them knew the countryside around there anything like as well as he did, or the places his grandfather might go. And witnessing his mother’s grief and fear all night was beyond him.

Half an hour later he headed back out on foot, this time into the fields, leaving his mother whey-faced at the kitchen table with Mrs Dudeney from the corner shop. His dad had gone out again to search the surrounding streets with some of the neighbours, including Mr Dudeney and the couple who lived next door; they planned to go house-to-house, asking people to look in their sheds. Jamie knew somehow that it was a waste of time.

The spring night was still, the air smelling faintly of cow parsley and dung. Warm currents rose from the fields and stirred the leaves of the trees, and little rustles spoke of the hidden lives of voles and rabbits. From somewhere off to Jamie’s left a tawny owl asked a shrill question of the night.

He was glad, now, of all the times he’d spent with Harry Maddock; he felt at home in the dark landscape, he moved quietly and didn’t startle easily. More importantly, he had a sense of what should be there and what shouldn’t; he felt he would spot a lost or injured man more easily than the police would – although that could be wishful thinking, he knew.

After an hour or so he ran into a police search team on the outskirts of Copping Wood; one of their dogs had alerted there, they told him, but they had quartered the wood and found nothing. ‘Probably a poacher,’ Jamie said. He watched as they moved on, their high-powered torches criss-crossing the fields; Jamie had only his eyes and ears, but there was a moon, and more than that he wondered whether it might be more important to come to his granddad gently, calmly, than with torches and dogs. He called his name now and again, but softly, and tried to keep the desperation from his voice.

Harry would have been useful now, he thought. He didn’t have his number any more, but he wasn’t that far from Lodeshill so he decided to head across-country to the Green Man and get Harry and whoever else was in to come out and help him look. He wished he’d thought of it before.

The village, when he got there, was still quiet. Clearly the police didn’t think the old man could have made it out this far; they hadn’t been knocking on doors from the looks of things, and there were no flashing lights that Jamie could see. The church was dark, the houses lit but silent, as though nothing at all had happened. It made the fact that his granddad was out there somewhere in the dark seem even more surreal.

As he opened the door of the Green Man and stepped into its warm, beery smell he realised how tired he was, how much he would have liked to just sit, for an hour, with a pint. The lure of normality was so strong for a moment that he almost gave in; it was Jim, ringing the bell and shouting ‘Time!’, who refocused his mind.

‘Where’s Harry, Jim?’ he asked, his hands urgently tapping the bar.

‘He’s not been in, lad. Did he not catch up with you earlier? Think he had a bit of an offer for you.’

‘Can you call him? I need him. I need everyone –’ and Jamie looked round at the tables and snugs. There were only half a dozen in.

‘What’s the matter, lad?’

But Jamie was addressing the whole bar. ‘Everyone, my granddad’s gone missing. You all know him: James Hirons. He was born here, in the village. Now he’s disappeared, and I need you to help me find him.’

The cow parsley along the field margin was ghostly in the deepening dusk, and Jamie followed it to where a couple of planks wrapped in chicken wire made a rough ford over a stream. The bank was churned up where the cows had until recently come to drink, and he stepped carefully, noting almost without thinking the dog’s mercury dying back under the trees and the last shrivelled curl of a bluebell in the moonlight. The sound of running water as he crossed was faint, but deeply familiar.

The narrow footpath on the other side was little used and edged by stinging nettles; he was glad of the thick denim of his jeans. From the uppermost wire of the fence a row of dark shapes was suspended above the nettles’ dim leaves: two dozen moles, each one caught by its nose on a twist of barbed wire, their bodies desiccated, their spade-like paws spread in mute supplication to the stars. At the end of the line hung two longer shapes: mink, Jamie guessed, given the stream nearby. It wasn’t Harry’s work; Philip must have had the mole-catcher in before he died. He stood for a moment by the pitiful fencework gibbet, listening, then called out ‘Granddad?’ – but there was no reply.

After he had been to the pub Jamie had gone home briefly to pick up a jacket and torch. Coming back out of the house he’d seen Jim knocking on doors at the top of Hill View; he wondered now how many people would come out to help look. Bill had gone home to see if he could get Harry Maddock on the phone; ‘That’s who we need, lad,’ he’d said. ‘Harry’ll find him, don’t worry.’

Howard and Kitty lay next to one another in the dark listening to the voices fade away outside. Their doorbell had rung a little while before, but by unspoken agreement neither of them had got up to answer it.

‘What do you think it is?’ Kitty had whispered after a few moments.

‘I really don’t know. Probably someone’s lost their dog. It can’t be that important or they’d have rung again.’

‘They must know we’re in.’

‘Yes, but we’re in bed, for goodness’ sake. It’s nearly one in the morning.’

Kitty was silent for a while.

‘Do you think it’s an emergency?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m sure we’ll hear all about it tomorrow,’ said Howard, turning over. ‘I’m going to try and sleep, Kitty. I have to get up in a few hours.’

There had been some delicacy about bedtime; Howard had fiddled about downstairs for a while, waiting, she knew, until she was safely in her nightdress and in bed. She’d kept her eyes fixed on her book as he came in and got into bed beside her. The tact on both sides, after so many years together, was almost too much to bear.

And then someone at the door, so late at night. Somehow, strangely, it had made her feel as though they were a couple again – though why that should be so she couldn’t have said.

She could see, now, that there had been more to her decision not to tell Howard about her doctor’s appointment than fear that he’d fail her; keeping it a secret had been a kind of punishment, too. He was right: it was no good. And with this new honesty she dared to asked herself: could she really bear to be without him now – for ever? And if not, didn’t he have a right to know there was a chance that she was ill?

‘Howard,’ she whispered. ‘There’s something I want to tell you.’

By his utter motionlessness she knew he was listening, could tell, in fact, that his eyes were wide open.

‘What?’

‘Howard, I should have told you before. I –’

‘Kitty, please –’ He rolled back over towards her. She could feel the mattress shift beneath her as he moved, knew that he was being careful that their bodies did not accidentally touch, and somehow it was that rather than anything else that finally made her start to cry.

‘Something – happened . . .’

‘Kitty, please don’t tell me. Please.’ His voice was strained, as though the muscles of his throat were not working properly.

She felt herself go very still, felt the rising sobs stifle in her chest.

‘No, Howard, I –’

‘
For God’s sake
, Kitty, it was such a long time ago. I can’t – please, whoever he was, whatever you did, it doesn’t matter any more.’

25

Poppies, deadly nightshade (‘dwale’ here?), goat’s beard seed-heads.Tawny owls calling, calling.