At Hawthorn Time

by Melissa Harrison

  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.

  Up on the hill’s broad and treeless back Howard made for the toposcope where he sat gingerly on its low concrete plinth. It seemed less dark up there than it had done down in the car park, as though, with so much sky in every direction, the summit could gather in all the available light. Much of the landscape before him was indistinct and unrecognisable, Lodeshill’s church spire lost in black trees, but he could see the lights of the distant motorway and Connorville like a twinkling constellation beyond.

  An hour or so before he had to set off for the airport. He unscrewed the top of the Thermos and poured himself some coffee, hot and black and sweet. At the back of his mind, like a body in a sack, was the row with Kitty, and what was to happen next. But he didn’t want to look at it just yet.

  Among the stars a light moved steadily; a plane coming in. Howard tried to work out which way the airport was and which direction Jenny’s flight would arrive from, but gave up. Maybe it would be better to be honest with her when she arrived, and with Chris: just tell them they were having some problems. The kids were adults now, it’s not like their childhoods were at stake.

  All those years of not arguing in front of them. Had it really been for their good? He’d thought so at the time, but looking back it wasn’t as though he and Kitty had had it out properly when they weren’t around. They had just tacitly agreed to leave some things be; things that were too damaging, potentially, to discuss. His drinking, for one thing. Her affair.

  Howard closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the concrete pillar. His back ached and the ground felt cold through his cords.

  It was so quiet up here, so still. He pictured people sleeping, below him, in their thousands: safely tucked up in bed, sunk in their ordinary lives. Families in groups, like little planetary systems, bound to one another for life. He thought about Jenny and Chris, being pulled back even now by the gravity of his and Kitty’s marriage. They were still a family; they always would be, whatever happened. Wouldn’t they?

  He took another sip of coffee, then reached for the Dansette. The radio felt comforting in his hands; it was the way the knob clicked on and the dial glowed, the way it immediately began to whine and babble softly, surrounding him with familiar noise. It reeled his thoughts back in.

  Slowly he began to scan through the frequencies, adjusting the dial minutely, listening, waiting, listening again. Pops and crackles, garbled speech, snatches of music, and between it all the otherworldly heterodyne wails. The Dansette wasn’t a shortwave set, but Radio Moscow, or whatever it was called these days, was supposed to bounce off the big mast somehow and piggyback in on medium wave and even TV signals, so it could be anywhere on the dial – if the rumour about it was even true.

  He gave it half an hour, the black sky around him becoming deep blue, the stars slowly fading in the east. He’d no idea, really, why he wanted to pick up the signal; it was probably a myth anyway. But to have heard it would have been . . . what? A little victory; a moment of connection. But there was nothing that sounded like it could be from Russia, nothing at all; just the usual chatter and interference he knew so well.

  It was nearly time to go and collect Jenny. He wondered if Kitty was awake yet, and whether she’d be angry that he had left without her. He pictured her moving around in the rooms of the house by herself; pictured her living there, alone and unobserved, for good. If this was it, if he were to move out, she’d be a separate human being once again, with her own plans and thoughts and desires. It made him feel utterly desolate.

  And what of him, who would he be without Kitty? He tried to see himself as others doubtless would, without her making up a part of him, or making up for parts of him, perhaps: just a sad retiree in a crappy flat somewhere with a load of old radios and cirrhosis of the liver, most likely. After all, he was nearly a pensioner; it was surely all downhill from here.

  The fact was, he couldn’t imagine life without her, not after all this time. They had their problems, he knew that. They had got into some bad habits – not talking about things probably being one of them. But no marriage was perfect. He didn’t always understand her, but he loved her, and surely that was all that mattered?

  Even when he was drinking he’d never slept around: not once, not even after that awful evening when he’d seen her getting out of another man’s car, had understood instantly the eloquence of her expression as he’d driven away; not even when they’d finally stopped touching each other. He just hadn’t wanted anyone else.

  Howard clicked the radio off and let the hill’s silence rush back. After a few moments he got up, stiffly, picked the radio up and began making his way down to the waiting Audi. He’d meet Jenny off her flight and they could listen to his Simon & Garfunkel CD in the car on the way back. And then, as soon as Jenny had settled in, he’d take Kitty up to the radio room, close the door and ask her if she wanted to talk.

  Four thirty on a May morning: a long, straight road between fields. Jack was on the Boundway as dawn gathered in the east and the air around him filled slowly with song: blackbirds; thrushes; wren after wren.

  He walked on the verge with his usual loping stride. Just to be by myself, he thought. Just to live out the rest of my days as I see fit. I don’t mean anyone any harm, God knows.

  Crows began to call from the woods and spinneys, and beyond the hawthorn hedges that flanked the Roman road the still-dim fields were dotted with early rabbits. The daisies on the verge were closed, the thick grass heavy with dew and clotted with fallen may blossom. It stuck to Jack’s boots like confetti as he walked.

  Raising his eyes from his feet Jack saw there was something on the carriageway fifty yards or so away. He stopped and peered ahead. In the low dawn light, looking east, it was hard to see exactly what it was; a struck deer? A feed sack? Whatever it was, it was motionless.

  Jack stood and listened carefully. Apart from the waking birds and the distant hum of the motorway there was nothing; no traffic approaching from either direction, no voices, no human sounds. He took a few paces forward and stopped again, keeping his eyes on the shape on the road. It didn’t move.

  A few more paces and it resolved itself into the shape of an old man, his white hair thin on his liver-spotted and undefended head. He was sitting on the road, facing away from Jack, and he wore an old worsted jacket. Trailing behind him, from one pocket, was what looked like a washing line. Jack approached to the very end of it and stopped.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  There was no response. Jack wondered how the man’s old bones could stand it, sitting on the cold road surface like that.

  He tried again, louder. ‘Are you all right?’

  Still nothing. Jack shifted his boots on the tarmac; coughed; waited. Then he walked around the still shape to crouch down facing him, swinging his pack down to the road beside him.

  The man’s eyes were open, but he was looking past Jack. His hands rested awkwardly and uselessly in his lap.

  ‘Is it here?’ he asked, shifting his milky eyes at last to Jack. ‘I’ve been waiting ever so long.’

  Jack felt his hands. They were icy cold. ‘Is what here? What’s your name?’

  ‘I need to get back for Edith, she’ll be worried. I always get this bus. I don’t know where it’s got to.’

  Jack closed his eyes for a moment. ‘How long have you been here, Mr . . .?’

  ‘Hirons. James Albert Hirons. Where’s Edith, do you know?’

  Jack tried to think. If only he had a mobile phone.

  ‘Where have you come from, Mr Hirons? From home?’

  ‘Home? Where’s that?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you. Where do you live? Do you live in Lodeshill?
’

  ‘I was born in Lodeshill. 1919.’

  Jack stood up and scanned the road in each direction, then crouched down again and took the old man’s chill hands in each of his. There were no bruises or abrasions on them, at least; it didn’t look as though he had fallen. He tried to think. He’d have to stand him up, see if he could walk. At least get him off the carriageway.

  ‘Are you injured anywhere, Mr Hirons? Does anything hurt?’

  ‘Hurt?’

  ‘Have you got any aches and pains?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Good. Do you think you can stand up for me, if I help you?’

  ‘Stand up? Course I can, lad. Here, give us your hand. Old bones.’

  Jack reached his arms around the old man’s ribs and hauled him gently up. He weighed nothing; it was like embracing a bird.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ the old man scolded; but he held on to Jack tightly as they shuffled slowly to the side of the road.

  ‘Can you stand? Are you OK there for a moment? Look –’ and Jack guided his hand to a hawthorn branch in the hedge. ‘Let me just get my pack.’

  The old man smiled. ‘Did you ever collect that deer, lad?’

  Jack shrugged his pack onto his shoulders and adjusted the straps. Then he gently took the old man’s hand from the hawthorn and slipped an arm around his shoulder. Together they began, very slowly, to walk back the way Jack had come. Towards Lodeshill.

  ‘What deer was that?’

  ‘You know, on the road. Not far off here, was it?’

  If he could just get him home he could hand him over to his wife. Then he could get back on his way; then he could disappear.

  ‘No, not far off.’

  ‘Hundreds of deer in Ocket Wood, always was. We used to go in there, you know, when we were courting.’