At Hawthorn Time

by Melissa Harrison

  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.

  She’d tried talking to him about it, but it went nowhere and made her want to scream. She’d written him a letter in the end, telling him that if he didn’t cut down she would leave and take the kids with her. She left it on the kitchen table one evening and then lay in bed, eyes wide, until he let himself in at one in the morning; then, when he eventually came carefully to bed, she’d pretended to be asleep. To give him his due, he had taken it on board – more or less. But you couldn’t just magic up trust again just like that.

  Yet Kitty knew she was far from blameless. At the time she had been distant, getting over her affair with Richard; he was still present to her, still real, and the daily act of keeping him secret meant that part of her had to be shut off from Howard. And far from being the easy s
econd baby that everyone promised, Jenny had been nervy, demanding: she wouldn’t sleep, and cried easily; she seemed to want something from Kitty that Kitty wasn’t able to provide. Later, as a teenager, she had stopped asking Kitty for anything, had become resentful and scornful of her – though, thank goodness, that phase passed once she had left home, and they got on well enough now. But Chris had somehow always been so much easier to love.

  ‘Oh, are you doing that now?’ asked Howard, wandering in from the living room.

  ‘Yes, you’ll need to sleep upstairs tonight,’ she said shortly. ‘We won’t have time in the morning.’

  ‘You’re coming to the airport, then?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Is that OK?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘Here, put these on, will you?’ she said, handing him the bedlinen. ‘Fifty degrees.’

  She fetched clean bedclothes and began to make up the sofa bed. After a few minutes Howard came back in and picked up his bedside book and reading glasses to take upstairs.

  ‘There are your shoes under the bed,’ she called after him. ‘You’d better take those, too – not that we’re fooling anyone,’ she added, under her breath. But Howard stopped on the stairs, and came back down.

  ‘Kitty. What is it? Aren’t you happy the kids are coming?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  He looked at her for a while; she ignored him, but kept on tucking a pillow neatly into a new case.

  ‘Look, perhaps it’s better if I stay down here tonight after all. I’ll get up and fetch Jenny and you can make the bed up for Chris while I’m gone.’

  ‘No, it’s perfectly all right. I’ve nearly finished now.’

  ‘I just want it to be a nice weekend, Kitty, that’s all. For the kids.’

  Without warning Kitty found herself shot through with rage and trembling with what felt as though it could, in a heartbeat, become something close to violence.

  ‘Damn you, Howard,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘You’re not the only one! Why is it that I’m always the one spoiling things, why am I the one who’s being difficult, the bloody – what was it – prig? We all know you want it to be a nice weekend, Howard, but sometimes life’s a bit more complicated, sometimes you can’t just magic up a nice time just like that – especially if you don’t take any blasted responsibility for it, just whinge all the time when it looks like it might not happen!’

  ‘Christ, Kitty, what’s the matter with you?’ Howard had taken a step back, his eyes wide. Kitty found herself trembling; she picked up one of the lumpy pillows, raising it to shoulder height, only to fling it back down again on the bed with all her strength.

  ‘I’ve had enough! I’ve bloody well had enough, Howard! You don’t listen, you just bumble around in your own blameless little world, with your pictures of yourself in your head – first it was mister rock star, then mister life-and-bloody-soul, for years when I was stuck at home with the kids, then you were father of the sodding decade with your daddy’s little girl and now – what is it now? Country ruddy squire, with your tweed jacket, or do you still think you’re too good for life in the sticks? I don’t think you even know yourself, do you?’

  They looked straight at one another, Kitty horrified but somehow exhilarated by what she had said. She let out a long breath and turned back, shaking, to the stripped mattress with its sad marks.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Howard,’ she said, suddenly exhausted. ‘You’re a joke.’

  All over the village the birds were roosting for the night. The jackdaws returned to their chimneypot nests and the swallows to the eaves, and the hedgerows lining the quiet lanes were full of chaffinches. On the Connerville roundabout the rookery in the poplars was filling up with black silhouettes, their gabble quietening as the light faded. In Lodeshill two little owls in an ash tree by the Green Man awoke and began to preen and shake out their feathers, and a roding woodcock circled the edge of the Batch on blunt wings.

  In the village’s back gardens songbirds were brooding warm eggs; here and there, in hedges, half-feathered chicks huddled in nests, their wide gapes closed for the night. Slowly the sun faded in the west, and the moon rose low and bright. It was a windless night, still and peaceful and warm, and the woods and fields were dark.

  Four miles away, in Ardleton, all the lights were on in James Hirons’ house where Jamie and his parents were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the police. His mother sat at the kitchen table, her heavy forearms resting on the patterned yellow Formica, her face drawn. She had cried earlier, when they had first got back from searching, but now she seemed scoured out. Jamie’s father sat in the old man’s usual chair, covering her hand with his own.

  ‘Put the kettle on, will you, son?’ he said. ‘No doubt they’ll be here soon.’

  Jamie filled the kettle at the coughing cold tap and switched it on. ‘Is anyone hungry?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t eat. Not here,’ said his mother.

  ‘You should have something, love. We all should.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You got a pizza number, son?’

  ‘Might do. Hold on.’ Jamie got out his phone and began to scroll. ‘Doesn’t look like it – but there’ll be beans or something I can make.’ He looked in the bread bin, but it was empty and scrupulously free of crumbs. ‘No bread. Hang on –’ and he began to open the cupboards. There was nothing there. ‘There isn’t anything here – they’re just – there’s no food. Nothing.’

  ‘Well, you can nip to the shop, eh?’

  ‘No, I mean, there’s nothing at all. Nothing.’ And he was right: each cupboard, as he opened it, revealed only clean, bare shelves.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Jamie’s mother stumbled up and wrenched open the fridge, but its humming light illuminated only its own arctic interior. Jamie stood on the bin pedal and looked in: only a couple of used tea bags huddled at the bottom.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Jamie said.

  They were still looking at one another as the squad car pulled up outside, its blue revolving light passing across each of their faces. Without speaking, Jamie’s dad got up and went to let the police in.

  Kitty sat at the dining table with two bowls of rapidly cooling linguine and a glass of wine. She’d gone up and knocked on the door of the radio room, but there had been no response.

  She knew she’d behaved appallingly and knew, too, that she would have to say she was sorry. But beyond the territory of this particular argument there lurked a wider landscape, one for which they both had equal responsibility. Whatever their marriage was, they had created it between them: they had colluded in all of its weaknesses, had allowed elisions and half-truths to pass for truth, had failed to ask the right questions, or to listen kindly to the replies; they had set up unspoken rules that were now barely visible, but under which they both chafed. Tonight she might have acted as the catalyst, but they had both brought this about.

  She could apologise, and Howard would doubtless accept her apology so that the weekend with the children would pass off all right; and afterwards there would be another degree of distance between them, a further wariness. Or she could own what she had said to him, and try to explain why.

  ‘You must tell Howard about your appointment, you must,’ Claire had said earlier, on the phone, and perhaps she was right. Yet to tell him her fears now would be a way of getting herself off the hook; and as uncomfortable as it was, she felt stirring in her a grain of courage, a determination to live in the bleak light of her pronouncement, because although parts of it had been cruel and unnecessary, parts of it had been true, too.

  She gave up on the linguine and drank some wine, letting her mind drift from habit to her three new pictures and wondering why she drew such strength from them. It didn’t matter that nobody except Claire had seen them yet; the feeling of having created them was like saying her own name out loud, and she used the image of them to comfort herself now. Even Claire thought they were good, or as close to good as she’d all
ow herself to admit.

  ‘I must say, I think you’ve really got something there, Kitty,’ she’d said, lingering behind her easel. ‘Whether you’d actually want a picture of litter, or a cowpat, on your wall is a different matter, but who knows? They’re certainly unique.’

  Kitty was just about to get up and take the supper things through to the kitchen when she heard Howard’s tread on the stair. She picked up her fork and busied herself with her pasta.

  He came in and sat down, but pushed his bowl away.

  ‘Do you want to talk to me, Kitty?’ he asked.

  It was a far braver start than she would have given him credit for. She looked at him in surprise and found that his face was hurt, but open. She put down her fork and clasped her hands in her lap under the table.

  ‘I’m sorry, Howard. I shouldn’t have said that. You’re not a joke.’

  ‘No. You shouldn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it. Well, I –’

  ‘You did, Kitty. You’ve not thought much of me for a long time.’

  She picked up her fork, wound some pasta around it, then put it down again. ‘There’s so much we’ve never said. Isn’t there?’

  ‘Do you want to say it now?’

  ‘Partly, I suppose. But – the children . . .’

  ‘Sod the children.’

  ‘Howard!’

  ‘I mean it. I’m sick of it, Kitty. I’m sick of the way things are with us. It’s not too late for you to make a new start, you know – if that’s what you want. But we can’t go on like this, picking away at one another. It’s no good.’

  Kitty felt her face go stiff with shock. ‘Is that – is that what you want? To make a new start?’

  Howard shrugged. ‘Do you?’

  ‘I – I haven’t thought –’

  ‘Oh come on, Kitty, of course you have. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered it. You say I never listen, but I’m not a total fool. You wanted a new life away from London for so long, and now you’re here, and the only thing that doesn’t fit is me. Isn’t that right?’