At Hawthorn Time (28 page)

In Connorville that night a farmer’s son was punched to the ground outside a bar for reasons none of his friends could afterwards recall. His head struck a green electricity box a glancing blow as he fell; although he didn’t lose consciousness he was taken to Queen Elizabeth’s as a precaution, where his speech suddenly became slurred. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage at two in the morning, as the ambulance crew smoked outside and waited for their next callout. By 2 a.m. the blood and hair on the electricity box was tacky and dark. It would not be washed away by rain for another nine days.

All night, lorries thundered along the motorway’s bright seam and cars circled Connorville’s roundabouts under flat, orange light. Further out, though, the Boundway was silent, a straight line between sleeping fields. At around 3.30 the sky in the east began to lighten, but almost imperceptibly. It was still night, but dawn would not be long now.

Out in the dark landscape Jamie stood just inside the gate at Culverkeys and watched as two cats shot from the barn into the moon-shadows at the back of the house. There had always been farm cats on Culverkeys and he wondered if anyone had thought to feed them after Philip had died, and how long it had taken them to give up on humans and go back to nature.

In front of him stood the farmhouse, silent and empty. It had the strange quality of a dream: the way it both was, and wasn’t, Alex’s home, the house he had half lived in himself until six years ago and that had been nearly as familiar to him as his own. Looking at it now it seemed stupid to think that his grandfather could be inside, but he knew he couldn’t leave without being sure.

The front door was locked, of course, but Jamie rattled the iron latch anyway, just in case. The sound of it rang out like a challenge across the yard, making his heart kick in his chest. As it faded away, Jamie saw that there on the dining-room window ledge was all their old treasure: the muddy potsherds and beads, the marbles and coins and bits of rusted iron. Even in the dark he could see how commonplace it was, how pitiful; and yet Alex’s father had left it there all this time. He picked up a fragment of plate for the way the moon gleamed off its pale glaze and considered putting it in his pocket; but after a moment laid it carefully back on the sill.

At the back of the house he found that the kitchen window was broken, and he stood still for a long while, looking at the missing pane. His grandfather had worked on the farm when he was Jamie’s age; maybe he’d wanted to come and see it before it was sold – or maybe his mum was right and he had got confused and thought that he was a young man again.

Jamie opened the casement and climbed awkwardly into the kitchen, his breath coming shallow and fast. Once inside he reached for the torch in his back pocket and switched it on. How many times had he eaten his tea in this room? Hundreds, must be. The kitchen table and chairs were gone, and the room itself seemed bigger – but smaller too somehow. Perhaps it was because it was so empty and still. He couldn’t remember ever being in Alex’s house by himself before.

‘Granddad?’ he called out tentatively – but the word returned flatly to his ears, as though the house itself had rejected it.

At the doorway into the hall his left hand felt automatically for the light switch, but of course it produced only a click. Looking back at the half-open kitchen window, though, he could see the sky was a very deep blue rather than black, and from somewhere outside came the distant but unmistakable notes of a song thrush.

Jamie turned back to the dreamlike rooms. The torch beam illuminated things abstractly, out of context: a section of skirting board and a corner of peeling wallpaper, a newel post casting a swinging shadow into the hallway behind. It made the dark seem darker, made being there again, after all this time, feel even stranger, like trying to see down, past your familiar reflection, into black and unfathomable water.

The dining room was completely empty, the oval table and chairs sold, even the old piano that nobody ever played gone. He had sometimes sat in here to do his homework with Alex, less often as they had got older and Alex was allowed a computer in his room. Jamie tried to picture the family sitting down in here to eat together, perhaps when visitors came, but found he could not.

There was so much he hadn’t known about the Harlands. He’d felt like one of them for most of his childhood, but he hadn’t been, not really. When the family broke apart he’d realised that.

Upstairs all the doors were closed apart from Alex’s, which stood ajar. There on the landing, in the dark, Jamie felt a sudden hysteria rising, an urge to shout, or laugh. His arm, when he reached out to touch the cold door handle, felt weak. Yet how familiar was the shape of the metalwork under his fingers, subtly different from the handles at home; how well his muscles recalled the door’s precise weight and resistance as it swung open to let him in.

He stepped into Alex’s room and raised the torch beam. The bed was gone but there was the wardrobe, the pine desk and swivel chair with the broken seat. In the corner was a cache of empty bottles: mostly vodka, some miniatures and wine. On the walls faded posters remained in silent testament to the boy Jamie had known six years before: an obsolete pop star, a blue Ford Mustang GT, Ronaldo celebrating a goal.

And below them, Blu-tacked to the wall beside where the head of the bed had been, were a dozen or so photos that Jamie was certain had not been there before. He crossed the room, adjusting the torch to a gentler beam, and crouched to look.

The Harland family smiled out at him in miniature from the wall. There was Alex’s mother holding a baby; Alex and Laura in the kitchen with a bottle-fed calf; Mr and Mrs Harland, young and tanned and looking not much older than Jamie was now, on a beach somewhere; and older, in party hats at Christmas. There was Alex, a toddler, on his father’s lap on the tractor, the dead man’s arms around the little boy a lost artefact from another time. Jamie recognised himself in one, holding the stock bull with Alex; they could only have been seven or eight, and his eyes filled with sudden, stupid tears for everything that had been lost.

He blinked them away. There he was again, even younger, at a picnic he couldn’t remember; he took the photo off the wall, stood up so he could examine it more closely. He and Alex, just toddlers, were on a bright rug eating what looked like sausage rolls; their mothers were behind them, Jamie’s dad half cut off to the right, his hand resting on his mother’s shoulder.

But it was his mum who Jamie couldn’t stop looking at. She was slim and laughing in a light summer dress and sunglasses, she looked like a totally different person. And she was heartbreakingly, unmistakably pregnant.

He caught the rat’s movement from the corner of his eye. The hatch in the corner of Alex’s room that let into the eaves was ajar, and it flashed in there, his lunging torch beam trailing hopelessly behind. ‘Jesus
Christ
,’ he said, his palms slick with sudden sweat.

Sitting against the bedroom wall, the photo in his lap, Jamie tried to get his head around what it meant. He felt blank inside, somehow; he knew he should be feeling something momentous, but it wouldn’t come. Alex was still gone, he was still an only child, his mother was still the way she was – nothing had actually changed. And he felt like he’d always known she’d lost a baby, anyway; it fitted, it made sense. He just wished someone had told him – Alex, maybe, or his grandfather. He deserved that.

He would speak to his parents about it, ask what had happened. He would show them the photo so they could explain. He tried to think what voice he’d use, and how he’d start. It was OK for him to ask, surely; he’d nearly had a sister or a brother, after all. Maybe they could tell him which it had been and what had happened, maybe even tell him its name – if it’d had one. None of this would be easy, but he knew inside that it was the right thing to do.

His mum would get upset, and that would be bad. But she was an adult, wasn’t she? And she had his dad to look after her. No, even if it made them angry he would ask what he needed to, he would make them say what had happened out loud.

And then, once that was done, he’d tell them he was moving out, and that Granddad could have his room. He didn’t yet know where he’d go – maybe someone at work’s floor for the time being – but he’d be all right. It was what had to happen now.

But all that was for the future, once his grandfather had been found, once things were back to normal. He checked his phone again, just in case, but there were no missed calls. He’d search the barns and the outbuildings; after that, he wasn’t sure.

At the bedroom door he turned back to bolt the hatch. There wasn’t that much harm a rat could do in an empty house, but still, they were dirty, his granddad had always said. He hated rats, for some reason, the only living thing Jamie knew of that he truly couldn’t abide. Once, one had run down the towpath when they were out dipping at the canal, its fur wet and spiky, its muscular tail held stiffly out behind. The old man had hurled the big disc magnet at it, though of course he’d been far too slow. That’s when he’d told Jamie about the rat-catcher who came round to all the farms twice a year with his terrier and sack of ferrets, of the vast hauls of vermin from the barns and stackyard. And – something Jamie had always remembered with horror – he had described how, in summer, the men would cut the fields from the outside in, so that the last stand of wheat, or hay, was full of frightened animals facing their death – not just rats but rabbits, even hares – while the grinning farmhands with their guns and dogs waited for them to bolt.

Fuck.
That was it. Suddenly Jamie knew where his grandfather was. He clattered back down the stairs, the photo in his back pocket, pitched himself through the kitchen window and out of the yard, not bothering even to latch the gate behind him. He knew, with absolute and perfect clarity, where he was going. But first, he needed to get the car.

26

A bad night broken by dreams of the sea. The morning warm and cloudless. Lad’s love, wayfaring tree, hawthorn blossom almost over. Just after dawn I heard a cuckoo again.

It was just after three when Howard finally gave up on sleep. There had been voices from the road a few times, a distant siren, but it was too warm a night to shut the window – and in any case, it wasn’t really the noise that was keeping him awake.

Kitty lay on her back, her face towards the window, the sheet and the old silk counterpane her mother had left her tangled around her legs. The room was dim, but Howard could see her white nightdress and the pale, familiar shape of her face. He sat on the edge of the bed for a long while.

Downstairs, he made himself a strong coffee and poured another into a Thermos for the car. Before leaving the house he fetched the Simon & Garfunkel CD he had bought, then went quietly back upstairs to the radio room for some batteries and the Dansette Gem. The Audi barely seemed to make a sound as he eased it slowly off the drive and headed out of Lodeshill.

The little car park on the flank of Babb Hill was deserted. Howard took the radio and the Thermos from the passenger seat, locked the car and began to climb. It was a warm night with hardly any breeze, although above him the new leaves at the tops of the trees whispered slightly to one another in the dark. The track to the summit was well used and fairly smooth underfoot, and once his eyes adjusted Howard found he could see the way ahead well enough.

It was only the second or third time he’d ever been to the top. The first was when they came to view Manor Lodge; the estate agent had mentioned it, had told them they could see nine counties, and so after they had been round the house they had come up Babb Hill to see. They hadn’t talked about the house in the car, not until they’d got up here. They had looked out at the view as they spoke.

He’d been able to tell, of course, how much she liked it. He’d known that she was holding back – not just in front of the estate agent but in front of him, too, because she knew he didn’t really want to move, not deep down, and that too much enthusiasm, now she was getting her way, would be ungracious, and would leave him no room to come on board. Oh, they may not have been close, exactly; they may not have thrashed everything out in words like some couples did, but how well they knew one another.

And yet, sitting up on Babb Hill in the dark, he wondered if it might have been better to have told the truth that day, to have said that he wasn’t sure and that he couldn’t quite picture himself living in a place like Lodeshill. Except that was just it: he hadn’t been sure. It might have been fine, so there hadn’t seemed any point – not when Kitty wanted it so much. In the end, he’d let her sureness stand in for both of them; but it had not proved enough to carry them all the way.