by Roger Wood
surely. He found himself in a midnight world full of squeaks and squeals, grunts, bumps, crashes. He was running, hurtling, through some sort of forest. The trees, if indeed they were trees, were all identical – tall, incredibly slender, radiating or reflecting a faint glimmer of moonlight. The tops were so far above him, he could not make them out.
The banging and crashing was behind him now. He was running from the noise. Not frightened though, but exhilarated. He was tormenting whoever, whatever, was behind him. He wanted to laugh. Instead he snorted, snuffled.
Suddenly he burst from cover. He was in a wide rolling landscape of steel and slate. The moon above was cruelly bright. It revealed his nakedness. His willy, flopping on his belly. He tried to cover it with his hand, but either his hand was too clumsy or his willy too slippery. It kept writhing from his grasp. He heard laughter like the tinkle of frost falling on ice. He looked round in panic, his own breath sawing at his throat. Saw Amelia. Saw Richard. Saw---
He was hanging out the washing when he saw his mother loitering in the kitchen doorway. Olivia was not a loiterer. Stephen interpreted her presence as needing to talk to him but unwilling to do so. So Stephen did something he hadn’t done in years. He made smalltalk.
“Good strong breeze. Have these sheets dry in no time.”
“Oh,” said his mother. “Yes.”
So much for smalltalk.
“Is Dad getting up today?”
“Ah... No. In fact---”
“I heard you talking. In the night. So I thought---”
He thought wrong, evidently. His mother turned and disappeared inside the farmhouse. If he hadn’t known better, Stephen could have sworn she was crying.
Later, when he had skimmed his chores and climbed to the wider world, Stephen had a single fixed purpose, to confront the man and ask him straight out: How do you know my father? But the morning lengthened and passed with no sign of the other. Stephen considered finding the trail the man had shown him yesterday and following it away from the farm. Backtracking was a word that came to him from the depths of his memory. But he couldn’t find the furrow that had been so obvious the day before. The crop must have sprung back, hiding any broken stems. Noon passed. Clouds clustered over the horizon to his left, the side he assumed was seaward. He grew cold. He wished he had brought his jacket. He should go back, probably. Or perhaps just a short while longer...
He sniffed. Scented damp, the mouldy smell of old men’s trousers. He wheeled round, looking across the top of the pit in the landscape which he now knew was called Oughterthwaite. He saw the air shimmer. More importantly he saw a familiar silhouette moving.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Over here!” He jumped and waved. The man did not hear or see. Or perhaps he didn’t want to talk. Not his choice, Stephen concluded, and set off, charging along the lip of the bowl. He ran full pelt, arms and knees pumping. His chest felt heavy, his breath short. But the man stopped. Waited.
“Steady on, lad,” he said, when Stephen finally caught him. “You’ll do yourself a mischief.” This, apparently, was what passed for humour on the Yorkshire Wolds. Stephen was not amused. “My dad!” he gasped. “You said you know my dad!”
“Did I? I don’t recall.”
“You called him Finn. That’s his name.”
“Aye...” The man seemed embarrassed. “I hoped you hadn’t noticed. Didn’t like to let the cat out the bag, like.”
Stephen had no idea what this had to do with cats. Cats, dogs, pigs – the man’s head was a menagerie. “You know his name. You’ve talked to him.”
The man slid the shotgun over his shoulder and hunkered down. Stephen was already bent virtually double, recovering from his mad dash across the monster field. Their eyes and mouths were on a level.
“He said I should say nowt.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. But I got th’ impression---”
“How often?” Stephen demanded. “How often did you talk?”
The man’s eyes slid sideways. “Off and on,” he muttered. “Over the years.” Then he admitted, “Every week, more or less.”
Every--- It was as if someone had thumped Stephen in the chest. His senses swirled. He felt his balance go. Almost fell. The man reached out as if to catch him. The gesture alone stopped his fall. I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction – one of his mother’s favourite phrases whenever anyone argued.
“You all right, lad? Sit thysen down... Catch thy breath...”
Stephen heard the words vaguely, muffled by the pounding inside his head. He saw the man stand, again reach out, but only peripherally. His attention, his entire being, had narrowed down to one unshakeable purpose. He stomped off homeward, trampling the lemon-coloured crop. He lurched down the slope of the bowl. He strode – no, thumped the ground with his feet – between the apple trees in need of picking, the brambles stripped bare. His vision was ringed in red. He burst into the kitchen where Olivia was working on a puzzle with Richard and Amelia, inevitably, was staring out of the window. She must have seen him coming. She must have seen the rage in his face. If so, she was remarkably untroubled. Stephen aimed himself at the stairs.
---Stephen? His mother’s voice. Where do you think you’re---?
By now he was upstairs, barging down the corridor which seemed to have somehow constricted. It felt like his shoulders were brushing the wallpaper on both sides. He thrust open the bedroom door, his parents’ bedroom. Saw his father, pale, unshaven, barely a shadow against the pillow.
“Stephen, old son.” The voice, at least, remained the same, warm and reassuring. “I was hoping you’d visit.”
Now he was here, Stephen found it almost impossible to find words for what he had come to say. “The man with the shotgun,” he began. “Up top. Out there!” He pointed furiously to his right, realising as he did it that it made no difference which way he aimed. In a bowl everywhere was up there.
“Ah,” Finn murmured. “Mr Lumsden ... yes.”
So that was the man’s name. It was only right Finn should know it. After all, Lumsden knew Finn’s. They were friends---
“All these years!” Stephen hissed. “Week after week.”
“Well,” Finn smiled feebly, “someone had to.”
Perhaps it was the smile. Perhaps it was lack of remorse. Stephen could contain himself no longer. The years of being lied to, cut off, ignored, exploited – it all rose up in him like a livid scarlet flood. He screwed his eyes shut, ground his teeth, felt his muscles clench – and found himself looming over his father’s pillow. His hands, right over left, clamped over Finn’s nose and mouth, bearing down, squeezing---
He stepped back. Saw what he had done.
He called “Mum!” He yelled “MUM!!!”
They buried Finn under the compost heap. Or rather they moved the compost heap and buried Finn in the rich wet soil where it had previously stood. It’s what he would have wanted, according to his widow. It’s a colossal waste of effort, Stephen thought; all that goodness going to waste. But he said nothing, another aspect of Finn Webster’s role in life that had passed to his son. Stephen and Richard dug the hole. Richard seemed to enjoy the work, snuffling and sniggering. When the sun came out in the afternoon he stripped off his T-shirt and let the warmth bathe his back. Stephen was startled to see how big his so-called brother had become, how muscular. How old was he now? Thirteen? No, not that old. For an eleven-year-old Richard was downright enormous. Again Stephen noticed the bones in the younger boy’s spine, rippling like a snake as he bent and straightened. The bones seemed so sharp he wondered how they didn’t slice through the skin. He noticed too that dark hairs were sprouting on Richard’s shoulder blades. He’d start shaving soon. Stephen rubbed his own chin. Felt the sharp hairs.
Amelia picked a random selection of flowers for the funeral and bound them together in a half-hearted wreath. That’s lovely, sweetheart, Oliv
ia cooed. Finn adored flowers. No he bloody didn’t, Stephen thought. He only grew them for precious bloody Amelia. Even after two days and nights Stephen’s anger had hardly abated. He still seethed at the idea that his father had communed with the outside world without so much as a word to Stephen, his only real son. Someone had to? What kind of an excuse was that?
He felt no guilt, although he had at first been concerned what Olivia would say. Actually she had taken the discovery remarkably well. The death, that is, not the reason behind the death. Stephen was certain Olivia would have reacted very badly to news of Scarecrow Lumsden. Hence he said nothing. She asked what had happened, of course, naturally. He said, with some truth, I don’t know. Then lied: He had trouble breathing. I tried to give him the kiss of life but I don’t really know how. It sufficed. It satisfied.
They clustered round the grave. Stephen and Richard in dark trousers and grey home-knitted jumpers, Amelia in her pink party frock, Olivia wearing a black headscarf for the occasion. Below, Finn’s corpse was shrouded by a blanket so threadbare that the black earth itself seemed more comfortable.
“Does anyone want to say a few words?” Olivia asked. “Stephen?”
Stephen shook his head emphatically. No fear. It was pointless asking the twins, of course. Olivia pursed her lips. “A few moments silent thought then. Yes...”
The few moments
