Hunger (2 page)

The cottage was quiet, apart from wind in the leaves. Rain on the leaves. Rain on the glass roof of the lean-to. A distant tractor in the fields. The postman’s van. Birdsong.

The days slid into one another and in the afternoons she sometimes felt a mist of tiredness settle on her like a cobweb, and she would sleep, on the couch or the bed, or, now that the days were warmer, on the grass. She woke gently, to lie still, not thinking, listening, watching the shadow of the leaves moving across the bedroom ceiling or the sun’s brightness on a sheet of white paper.

It was on one of the fine, warm afternoons, when she had been sleeping on the grass, that she woke more suddenly than usual, because of a different sound: a shuffle and then a half-stifled murmur. She opened her eyes and saw the children. There were only two of them this time, the tallest and the smallest. The girl was standing under the hanging bird feeder, extracting peanuts one by one and handing them down to the small boy, who put them quickly into his pocket. In between hiding them, both children were eating nuts as well. Occasionally, the girl glanced round quickly, but her hands were deft and swift and as Paula watched the nuts in the feeder went down, until it was empty.

She was going to jump up and challenge them, partly annoyed about the theft, but also with concern. Weren’t peanuts meant for birds ‘unfit for human consumption’? But almost as the thought came into her mind the children were gone, vanishing like shadows when the sun goes in, soft and swift of foot, down the path and out not through the gate but through a neat gap they had made in the hedge. The shrubby branches closed behind them and the garden was empty.

The next thought in her mind seemed urgent. She would not tell Adrian. Must not tell Adrian. Why was that so important?

She got up and re-filled the nut feeder and for the rest of the day was alert for the slightest sound or sight of the children. But they did not come back.

Not that day. Not the next, and then it was the weekend and they went for more energetic walks and still she did not tell him. When they were not walking or grocery shopping, Adrian slept. Paula had started to tackle the jungle that was the garden, slashing back, raking out, digging up, while he slept on. She did not mind. She liked her own company after all.

The fine weather settled in.

‘My mother wants to come,’ Adrian said.

‘She wouldn’t like it here. Yvonne likes the town. Shops. Stuff like that.’

‘
Stuff like that
.’

‘I just meant – what would she do all day? I’ve only done half these illustrations. I can’t leave it.’

‘She’ll come on Tuesday. You can go out with her in the afternoons, can’t you? You don’t work all day, do you?’

‘Well . . . most of it.’

She had not told him about the sleeping.

‘There you are, then. And take her for some walks. Do you both good.’

‘Be part of the natural world.’

‘Exactly! You see?’

His face was an open beam of satisfaction. He had taught her something. He liked to teach people.

‘Tuesday, but she wouldn’t get here till lunchtime. Give you a morning for work, won’t it?’

She was not taking Yvonne to the supermarket. ‘You need this. You don’t tell me you manage without that? You don’t tell me you have never bought . . . ? . . . No, Paula, you shouldn’t ever buy
that
brand, they force-feed Third World babies with bottle milk . . . Put it back, pure waste of money, the own-brand is fine . . . But Adrian doesn’t like sausages . . . ’

She went alone on the Monday morning. It was quiet. A few mothers with babies perched in the trolleys wheeled slowly round in pairs, chatting. Paula shopped without a list, without a system, enjoying the wander from aisle to aisle, looking at books and DVDs and make-up she would never buy, before homing in on all her usual stuff. She had coffee, filled up with petrol, bought a newspaper and chocolate from the kiosk. Sang on the way home.

Yvonne would be here tomorrow, but she had done the shopping without her.

Slowly the cottage had stopped being the cottage and become home. Things had found permanent resting places, the smell of mice had faded, the curtains hung straight. Adrian fell asleep during television programmes. She had begun to tame the garden. But whereas a house stayed as you left it, a garden ran away with you and after a week of hands burning from nettles and thumbs scratched with thorns, Paula lost heart and just mowed enough grass to sleep on. The rest ran riot.

‘That’s a mess,’ Adrian said. ‘When are you going to start on it?’

‘It’s nature.’

He turned away.

Five minutes later he was in bed, asleep.

There was a full moon. She sat out on the grass, looking at the pale, ghostly light on some white phlox which had appeared by the hedge. There was a night scene in the children’s book she was illustrating. She looked carefully at the white petals. Her bloodless white hand. The silver stones on the wall. Something barked. Something rustled low down among the bushes.

She felt happy.

‘I heard something,’ Yvonne said. She wore a black satin dressing gown with a scarlet dragon in raised embroidery on the back.

‘It’s always quiet here at night. Did you sleep well?’

‘Bit too quiet. You get used to traffic noise; I suppose it lulls you to sleep. But whatever it was woke me up and it was barely six o’clock.’

‘Adrian is up at twenty past.’

‘It wasn’t Adrian.’

‘What sort of noise?’

‘I wouldn’t have said it was a noise. A sound. More a sound.’

Paula set the coffee pot down on the kitchen table.

‘But you slept all right on the whole?’

Yvonne reached for the sugar. Her fingernails were painted navy blue, but the edges were chipped. Paula thought that if you wore nail varnish in startling colours you had to maintain them.

‘Adrian looks very washed out.’

‘It’s a long commute.’

‘Up so early, home so late. I don’t understand it.’

‘He loves being in the country.’

Yvonne gave her an unpleasant look.

‘We’ll go for a walk later. I have to finish something off that I left to dry last night.’

‘Oh don’t pay any attention to me. I can amuse myself.’

‘No, but we will. Go for a walk I mean.’

Paula noticed at once, as soon as she walked into the workroom. The drawing board had been moved, only slightly, but she would have noticed even a centimetre. And the side window was slightly ajar.

It was not until later that she noticed that the chocolate had gone. She had eaten two squares and folded the paper over the open end of the bar. It had been on the table, to the right of her pencil pot.

Yvonne wandered in.

‘Oh heavens, sorry, sorry. I always forget that you don’t.’

She dropped the cigarette on the brick floor, crushed it to and fro under her heel and left it there.

Paula said nothing. Adrian would, when he came home and smelled smoke in the house. She would leave it to Adrian. She was his mother.

‘Shall we go out, then?’

Yvonne lit a fresh cigarette the moment the front door closed behind them. Paula said nothing, only picked up the spent match from the path where her mother-in-law had thrown it.

‘We generally go this way – past the houses and down into the wood. Well, not much of a wood but, you know . . . I love trees.’

It was warm, slightly damp. Misty.

‘I’d go mad,’ Yvonne said. ‘Never seeing anybody.’

‘I like it. I like my own company.’

Yvonne looked at her sideways.

‘What do you do at the weekends, when Adrian’s home?’

‘Go for walks. You know.’

‘What will it be like for him in winter? Out of the house in the dark, home in the dark. Not much fun, you know.’

‘Moving here was his idea,’ Paula said.

Yvonne grabbed her arm as the track sloped down between the trees.

‘Where does this lead?’

‘We come out at the bottom into a clearing, then cross the field.’

‘With animals?’

‘With . . . ’

Rabbits, badgers, foxes flitted through her mind.

‘Cows? Bulls?’

‘Oh no. It’s perfectly safe’

Yvonne stopped to light another cigarette.

‘I’m not much of a one for fields. Shall we go back?’

She walked quite smartly once they were on the level again, so that she reached the cottage gate first, just as all four of the children were sneaking round from the back. The eldest, in front, had her hands full of something; the boy behind was cramming a handful of cornflakes into his mouth from the open box he carried. The small ones came up behind. One held a packet of biscuits.

‘Oh my God!’

Paula pushed past Yvonne and put out her arm to catch hold of the girl at the front.

‘It was you,’ she said, without any anger. ‘You came and took the chocolate.’

The eyes were wary and also defiant.

‘Who on earth are these children? Do you know them, Paula? Where are they from? What are they doing coming out of your house? Why aren’t they in school? Have you been stealing? Why aren’t you at school?’ Yvonne spoke loudly, as if the children were deaf. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

‘No.’

‘They’ve been in your house. They’ve been stealing, it’s perfectly clear. Don’t just let it go, Paula. You turn a blind eye and they’ll be back.’

‘Will you please leave me to deal with this, Yvonne? Go into the house.’

The children were now pressed together as a single unit, like small animals. Their hair was matted, their faces dirty.

‘What were you doing?’ Paula said. ‘You took the chocolate, you ate the peanuts from the bird feeder, now you’ve been in and . . . ,’ she gestured at the food. ‘Where do you come from?’

They were mute, staring and still.

‘You shouldn’t just walk into people’s houses. You know that, don’t you?’

The small boy clutched the biscuits to his chest.

‘Those will break,’ Paula said. ‘If you hug them.’

The mist had thickened to a drizzle, muffling the air.

No word was spoken and she did not see any signal pass between them. One minute they were standing together in their hostile silence, the next they were running, down the path and through the open gate, making almost no sound, flashing away like birds between the high hedges. A few cornflakes drifted down in their wake and settled on the ground.

‘They’ll be back, you know.’ Yvonne said. ‘You should call the police.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. Would you like some coffee?’

‘Is it real or instant?’

‘I don’t buy instant. The police are miles away . . .’

‘It’s that sort of inertia they rely on. Nobody being bothered to report them.’

‘Yvonne, they’re children – young children. The last thing they need is the police involved in their lives from the very start.’

The glass of the cafetiere cracked as she banged it down. Yvonne firmed her lips together.

Adrian did not get home until after nine that night. The train line was unreliable; they had been held up by another signalling failure. There were bruise-coloured smears beneath his eyes.

‘Signalling failure. Engine failure. Driver failure – failure to turn up.’

He fell onto the sofa so hard the springs bounced.

‘We had a burglary,’ Yvonne said.

Adrian sat up.

Paula wanted to slap her. ‘Well, hardly.’

‘What else do you call it? They were stealing. They came into this house while we were out and stole things. I call that a burglary.’

‘They only took food.’

‘Oh, so taking food isn’t burglary?’

‘They’re children. They are less than ten years old.’

‘A child can be held morally responsible from the age of seven.’

Her voice was oily with satisfaction.

‘You mean you caught them at it?’

‘Only I wasn’t allowed to phone the police.’

Adrian lay back again and closed his eyes.

‘Paula?’ He sounded infinitely weary.

‘They’re children. You saw them in the wood that day. You know the ones. You said it was wonderful.’

‘What was wonderful?’

‘That they could be roaming about freely, enjoying nature.’

‘Roaming about freely thieving from other people,’ Yvonne said. ‘Where do they live, these children? You’ll need to tell their parents.’

‘We’ll see.’

Paula took the empty mugs into the kitchen, dumped them in the sink and went outside. It had rained again. The air smelled of wet leaves, wet grass, damp earth. A blackbird sang.

She went to the bottom of the garden and stood very still, wondering what she ought to do about the children. Not the police, of course, and she had no idea where they came from. She could follow them, the next time, but they appeared and disappeared like wraiths.

She had no thought of accosting their parents, but she wanted to know what their home was like and why they did what they did. Why they were not at school.

A light went on in the front bedroom, but she knew Yvonne would still be downstairs, waiting. When she had married Adrian her sister Elaine had said, ‘You do know it’s normal for mothers of only sons to hate the women they marry, don’t you? She’ll give you grief.’

Elaine’s own marriage had lasted barely two years, but as Ted’s mother was dead before they met, Paula had not understood how Elaine knew all the things about which she preached with such apparent authority. She had not thought a great deal about Yvonne in advance, but then she sometimes thought that she had not thought a great deal about Adrian, either. He had pursued her – wooed her, Elaine said sarcastically – with such ferocity and determination, such eagerness and puppy-like ardour that she had been unable to put up any resistance, unable to see him clearly, unable to imagine what their future might be like. It had been easy to let herself be swept along. She was by nature quite lazy and a sort of inertia had stifled her, blurring her usually sharp critical sense. She had been very fond of Adrian. Who could not be? He hadn’t a bone of malice in his body, never complained, always enthused, was optimistic to a fault, all of which was refreshing to someone who was inclined to occasional melancholy. Yvonne had existed, vaguely, but lived miles away from them. That her doing so meant she would come to stay for a week or more at a time was another thing Paula had not bargained for.