Crook's Hollow

by Rob Parker

  ‘I think someone tried to kill me in that particular field because it’s

  my field. The one I own.’

  Rue leaned back, the implications suddenly clear. Any one of their siblings, and their parents, had real reason to be upset with Thor because of how he had handled his inheritance—the field.

  Eight generations earlier, the first Wilkes Loxley had decided to take an active hand in the lives of his children and involve them in the running of the family farm, by giving them an incentive. He gave each of his offspring, when they came of age (deemed oddly by the first Wilkes to be age twenty-three), a piece of the farm’s land. He signed the deeds over to them on the assumption that they would be bequeathed at the end to the next Wilkes for the next Loxley generation, and so the cycle would continue.

  It was expected that the recipient could decide roughly what direction to take his or her land in, but importantly, within the limits of the prosperity of the farm as a whole. You could decide to put potatoes in it for example, and you’d get a carefully worked out cut of the farm’s profits according to how well it did.

  The system was designed to give responsibility to the next generation of Loxleys, as well as to promote teamwork and unity among the siblings, who often teamed up. The competitive atmosphere often enhanced the strength of the farm, and prosperity ensued.

  Thor didn’t see it like that, and had always dreaded the moment he was to be given his allocated piece of land.

  He had felt like an afterthought all his life. And his own piece of land had been hacked out accordingly—a field on the margins, and of lesser worth than others. That had left Thor feeling lost, and, paradoxically, personally misused. The name Loxley was bandied about like a golden ticket at home, not to mention in Crook’s Hollow itself, but as he reached the age of eligibility, Thor felt the family more and more as a ball and chain. He felt shackled to a life and legacy he felt no part of, and then the piece of land came along and he was expected to follow obediently.

  The problem with the land gift was that, in Thor’s mind, it was self- serving. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with charity or even with family wealth. It seemed to be designed to do nothing more than consolidate the farm while appearing to be progressive, generous, and pro-family.

  So when the time came for Thor to receive the land gift, and put his land back into the family pot, he voted with his feet: he didn’t do anything with it. He had a plan—a long game. The field was on the edge of the Loxley land, pushed out to the edges and framed by hedges and a main road. He liked the access. He wanted to build a home on it, and try to work as much of it as he could by himself. It became a dream, a chance to finagle a silver lining from what he’d always felt was his low ranking in the family.

  But when his father heard his plan, he hit the roof. It didn’t fit in with the purpose of the tradition, nor unify the family’s wealth. They fell out in grand terms. So, Thor let the field go fallow, then wild, and stubbornly refused to allow it to be used for anything. It became a dead spot of land, a stubborn statement of his refusal to participate in his own family’s prosperity.

  He knew it was immature. He knew it was stupid. But Thor’s name was on the deeds, and the field was his—his family couldn’t touch it. And so began the standoff between Thor and his father, two years festering and counting.

  Rue knew the history, and needed no introduction to it.

  ‘Thor, what happened is unfortunate, and in so many ways still is; but do you really think any Loxley would lay a finger on you? I know you’re not dead keen on the Loxley name, but we Loxley’s don’t have a habit of harming our own—and we all know how much sway family history has around here.’

  Thor could see the point, but he had finally established a possible motive for the attack, and it was impossible to ignore.

  ‘I just don’t know, Rue. I’m beginning to realise that digging my heels in and behaving like a bit of a snotty little shit wasn’t the smartest move.’

  ‘Well, any one of us could have told you that ages ago, you bleeding retard.’

  Rue put her arm on her younger brother’s shoulder. ‘The best you can do now, in all seriousness, is to get Mum and Dad involved. There are differences between you, of course, but if there’s anything that Loxleys are especially good at, it’s going off all us against the world. They’ll know what to do and how to handle it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Thor conceded. He didn’t really want to have to go cap in hand to his parents, and admit that maybe he had been a bit silly about the whole land thing and that maybe he should have been a good boy—even if it was just a means to an end. But if it kept him safe and well, and helped him find out who attacked him, then maybe it was the only sensible course of action.

  ‘Have you involved the police?’ asked Rue.

  ‘Not yet. I’m hoping I won’t have to. In house, remember.’

  ‘Forgive me Thor, but sod all that. Someone tried to kill you, for crying out loud.’ Rue’s voice rose just enough to upset little Andrew, who was confused at his mother’s change in tone. He reached for her and Thor handed him over, while thinking to himself that maybe Rue was right and getting justice officially was a much better tactic.

  But was that what Thor wanted? Justice? How was he going to deliver that without involving the police? In house was one thing, but escalating what had happened would quickly become an eye for an eye—and he didn’t want that either. Like the stubborn mule he was, he had gone headlong into finding out who wanted to hurt him without thinking about what he’d do when he eventually did.

  The atmosphere in the small, dark kitchen began to close in on Thor. He had never liked being forced to make a choice which he had been corralled towards; that wasn’t the point of a decision. But it was exactly the problem which had started this whole escapade, and it could be the very thing that had a chance of ending it. He had, however, one last question.

  ‘What do you think? Who do you think did it?’

  Rue, without blinking, began to undo her top. Thor knew it was only natural and normal, but it still caught him off guard whenever she did it in his presence. He turned respectfully to one side, and fixed his eyes out of the window. A slurp and a gurgle later, and Andrew was latched onto Rue and feeding greedily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But there is one family who have always gone to great pains to make life difficult for us.’

  Thor met her gaze. He knew who she was referring to without even giving voice to their name. And silently, there was the added complication that Roisin, the wonderful, down-to-earth girl he was falling for, carried that exact same name.

  But then Thor remembered what Wendell had said earlier that day, when he bragged that they had done something that would really piss Thor’s dad off. Those were his words, and Thor couldn’t ignore them, nor the timing of the claim.

  ‘Wendell Crook said he and Ward had done something that would really upset Dad.’

  This raised Rue’s hackles to the point where Andrew lost his feeding rhythm. Noticing, she settled him back down immediately.

  ‘Well, that would give me all the suggestion I’d need to look to them for answers.’ Rage seemed to make her cheeks glow.

  The battle between the Loxleys and the Crooks dated back to the very beginning of Crook’s Hollow. The original Crook’s Farm was established just one year before the first Loxley settlement, in 1751. A solitary year might mean nothing to damn near everyone else, but to the Loxleys and the Crooks it was everything. Both farms were prosperous and, both being arable farms, competitive, and it didn’t help things that their properties abutted: at the north end of the village, the two dynasties were separated by nothing more than a long hedge full of appropriately sour gooseberries.

  That one year was a constant sticking point. The Crooks felt the Hollow was theirs in more than just name, but the fact that the Loxleys had just that tiny bit more square acreage gave them all the fuel they needed to claim preeminence. And thus a grudge was borne which came to
characterise not just each and every member of the two families through the generations, but the village of Crook’s Hollow as well.

  Somewhere else in the bungalow, an old cuckoo clock croaked what might once have been a jaunty morning song.

  ‘What time is it?’ Thor asked.

  Rue checked her watch. ‘One thirty.’

  Thor got up. He needed to get a bit of perspective on the conclusions they had reached, but he also felt a nagging need to find out what Lionel Clyne had been harping on about in the field earlier. That ‘meeting’ at the parish hall was fast approaching.

  ‘You couldn’t give me a ride into the Hollow shortly, could you?’ ‘Safer than letting you go anywhere alone, it seems,’ Rue said.

  Again she reached out and took Thor’s hand. It felt weird, with her so exposed by feeding Andrew. ‘Promise me you’ll not do anything stupid,’ Rue said.

  Thor forgot about his awkwardness and looked at his sister, and felt a resurgence of the love and admiration for her he had always carried. He felt like shit for being distant for nearly two years—Rue deserved better.

  ‘I will,’ he replied, ‘but please keep this to yourself.’

  Rue nodded once, and squeezed his hand so hard that Thor felt for the first time since last night that things might just turn out OK after all.

  13

  Rue’s blue minivan pulled into the parish hall car park just as the first drops of rain began to patter the windshield. The car park was half full, with people still arriving behind them. In the parking bay nearest the front door stood, sure enough, the black Range Rover Thor saw after he and Roisin had encountered Lionel Clyne and his friends.

  ‘You have any idea what this is about?’ asked Rue. ‘Sunday afternoons, the hall’s usually reserved for Bitch ’n’ Stitch.’

  Thor glanced at Rue in surprise, and she smiled and explained: ‘It’s the nickname they gave the weekly knitting-slash-gossip meeting.’

  ‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid, but I was asked by the owner of that big carbon footprint to attend.’ Thor gestured to the Range.

  ‘You sure that’s wise?’ Rue asked. ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘Oh, there she is…’ said Rue, looking towards the churchyard at the right of the hall. Weaving between the headstones was the bobbing dark hair of Roisin. ‘I think I’ll leave you to it.’

  ‘You don’t have to go,’ Thor said. ‘You’d like her, I’d bet the farm on

  it.’

  Rue smiled. ‘Sure you would. I’m more progressive than most

  Loxleys… but I need to get back. The rest of the kids will be home soon and I need to get ready for the next round of parental chaos.’

  Thor nodded, thanked her, and got out. He had texted Roisin to ask her to be there, but to defuse any gossip they had agreed to sit apart before convening afterwards to swap their thoughts.

  Roisin saw him, gave a smile and a wink, and Thor wanted for all the world to hold her hand and walk in with her. Forget what anyone else thinks. Get on with living their lives and let things play out naturally, without pressure. Instead he watched her enter alone and shamelessly eyed her denim-clad backside as it disappeared into the hall.

  He waited a full minute in the rain before following her.

  The hall had changed not at all since Thor’s youth. Even the chairs were the same: chipped pine with a faded floral vinyl seat cushion. The floor would once have been a fairly ornate parquet, but it was now so scuffed and scarred that it looked more like set mud than anything resembling wood. Overhead was a whitewashed convex roof that Thor knew was stuffed to the brim with asbestos, but funding simply didn’t exist to do anything about it. Thor had been to the hall many times as a youth, for the quick-fix birthday parties of his friends, indoor football training, karate for a short while, and Cubs, but those did literally nothing but scratch the surface of just how many groups and activities had graced the hall over the years.

  Today at the front stood a tall easel with a huge piece of card on it, blank. A table stood to the side, entrenched by a set of chairs. Before them were set out rows and rows of seating in two columns, right to the back. As before, he recognised many of the people milling around waiting for things to start. Ties had been taken off from the earlier visit to church, and raincoats had been added.

  Roisin had picked a row on the front right, so Thor picked one in the middle on the far left. He sat down and listened to the murmur of voices around him. He had never once craved gossip, but he felt from the murmur that he had missed a trick by keeping out of it, because from what he could hear, everyone seemed to have a nervous idea of what was going on. And the word on everyone’s lips seemed to be ‘development.’ The old couple in front of him who he recognised from the pub (he appearing on Friday afternoons after work, she appearing at half six to drag him halfheartedly home) were leaning into each other but Thor could hear their conversation, thanks to the fact that neither of them could evidently hear properly, so their words weren’t exactly whispered.

  ‘Have they started yet?’ he said to her.

  ‘The papers said they needed permission first,’ she answered. ‘But they said the council were in favour of it so they shouldn’t find it hard to get that.’

  ‘I hope they don’t bloody do it.’

  ‘If they do, we’ll need a bigger Sainsburys.’

  Thor had a feeling in his gut that he couldn’t place, but if the couple were on the right lines, he certainly didn’t like what he was hearing. Developments had sprung up in nearer villages, and he was not the only one who had been relieved that it hadn’t happened in the Hollow. Maybe that was about to change.

  At the side of the room was a hatch for a strip-lit, dank kitchen, with an adjoining, half open door—and looking over, Thor nearly did a double take. The small group of people drinking tea in the kitchen were the three from the field, and they had been joined by others. There must have been five or six of them.

  Someone cleared his throat, and the crowd quieted all at once, as crowds do. At the front stood the well-known figure of David Campbell, committee leader for the parish, and he was raising a hand.

  Campbell was average in every possible way: average height, average build, noncommittal brown hair, and non-offensive average features—neither a catalogue model, nor a troll. He just… was. And he’d been a feature of village life for all of his fifty-five years. His brother Martin was the pub landlord and Thor’s boss, and Thor had seen him many times in his youth at Loxley Farm, on matters both business and social.

  ‘OK, ladies and gentlemen, I know we all want to get home to our Sunday roasts but it’s important we give our visitors our ears. Please can I welcome to Crook’s Hollow, Lionel Clyne and the team from COMUDEV.’ He pronounced the team name com-you-dev, in such a way that it sounded strangely like the name of a Soviet video-game developer.

  Campbell clapped, but only a couple of other people did. Thor looked across the hall to see that the rows had filled out. It was well attended.

  The door to the kitchen opened fully, and out came Clyne, taking the lead. There was laughter amongst the small party as they filed out, which served to establish a feeling of disconnect between the two groups. It felt as though a group of the high and mighty gentry were in town to take a gander at the serfs.

  ‘Thank you, David, thank you!’ said Clyne with the delivery of a travelling ringmaster, as he arrived at the front and his companions took the seats around him. ‘Can I introduce you to the team at COMUDEV, who have been working with me tirelessly to bring good things to the region - your region.’ Clyne introduced each one of them in turn, but Thor didn’t hear a word. He was transfixed by what was on the easel card one of the suits had reached over and turned around.

  It was a map of the Hollow, which Thor recognised immediately. But in the middle, a garish red shape appeared. It looked like a new border. A border within the outline. Around the edges of the map were artists’ renderings of small domiciles, each one roughly quaint but tiny. It
was a plan for a housing development, right in the middle of

  Crook’s Hollow.

  Thor was stunned. He followed the outline of the red border. He saw the centre of the village at the bottom of the map, safely away from the main, red shape. He saw his family’s land on the top right, and the Crook’s land on the upper left. The red shape was in the space in between. It overlapped quite a bit on the Crook side, but only one bit on the Loxley side. And the bit that it overlay was clearly the field in which Thor was attacked last night. Thor’s parcel of land. It was Thor’s field.

  Clyne and COMUDEV wanted to build on his land.

  Thor looked over for Roisin. This development would affect both their families in a huge way, and his mind was swimming. Sure enough, Roisin was staring at the image, her own eyes wide with shock and confusion. Their worlds had just been turned upside down, and Thor wanted more than anything to reach out to her, to touch her.

  He looked back to the front. The development would double the population of the village, easily. It would change everybody’s lives. It would change Crook’s Hollow forever.

  He noticed that Clyne was frequently making eye contact with him, and it dawned on Thor that it was no wonder Clyne had wanted him to attend. He wanted Thor’s land, and this was a sales pitch, just for him.

  Thor wracked his brain to work out how Clyne would know that that parcel on the map on the Loxley side was his. Not that Thor was particularly au fait with legal matters such as these, but he reasoned that his ownership must be a matter of public record. Thor himself had told nobody, the whole subject still very sore and private to him, but he couldn’t guarantee that his siblings hadn’t done the same. There were four of them, not counting Rue, and he was on poor terms with all of them. Could one of them have spilled the beans to these developers?

  In fact, thought Thor, where in God’s name were they? Surely plans for a development could have a huge bearing on the Loxleys’ lives. And yet none of them were here to hear the proposal.