Robbie turned to see his dad blocking the way. He stopped singing.
‘I’m going out, Dad,’ he said. ‘’Scuse me.’ He went to push past and they scuffled, because his dad was trying not to unfold his arms and lose his dignity. His dad let his body sway to one side to narrow the gap, and, too late, realized that wasn’t going to be enough and had to make a lunge at the last moment. But then Sheila sailed out of the kitchen where she had been listening and Robbie was outnumbered.
He knew what was coming next. A round-the-kitchen-table-what-shall-we-do-about-Robbie session. He pushed back a lock of black curling hair and narrowed his eyes, running his tongue over his lips. For all his misgivings, there was a determined look about him, a wiliness, almost a slyness. He had dark eyes, good cheekbones and a chin that didn’t look as if he would take no for an answer. He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, planted his feet in their mud-caked blue-and-white Air Max trainers well apart, and waited.
‘We just don’t know what we’re going to do with you.’
‘Frankly, I’m nearing the end of my tether.’
‘Personally, I’ve reached the end of mine.’
‘We thought that bringing you here would help you, but it doesn’t seem to be having much effect. We only came for your sake.’
That’s a lie, Dad, thought Robbie. You grew up here and Sheila wanted to start over.
‘Maybe the new school is the problem.’
Of course it is, he thought. It’s full of kids I don’t know and I don’t understand a word they’re saying. I don’t understand their accents and I don’t get their world.
‘I thought the countryside would have a calming effect.’
‘Half the time we just don’t know where you are.’
‘Out till all hours,’ said Sheila. ‘And we know where that kind of behaviour leads.’
‘We just can’t go on like this.’
‘We get nothing back from you, despite everything we’ve done.’
‘You don’t seem to care about other people, especially your family.’
‘Arrogance, that’s all it is. Pure and simple.’
‘And immaturity.’
‘And immaturity.’
He had been convicted of arson and sentenced to a Youth Rehabilitation Order, he deserved better than this.
Sheila was the choker in everything. She filled the house like a cloud, pressing against the walls, clogging the stairs, rubbing against the ceilings, curling down pipes, seeping under the beds and coiling round his throat. She made him feel breathless. Lots of things can make you feel breathless: excitement, terror, unhappy situations. Sheila was an unhappy situation. Sheila was an unhappy situation that wanted him out, out of this house, out of her life.
She got up and put her hand on her hip and arched slightly, grimacing with pain. His dad gave her a worried look, then his face softened and he tilted his head as if to ask if she was all right. To Robbie’s disgust she stood behind his dad and placed both hands on his shoulders to take the weight off her feet, then stroked his head and hobbled over to the kettle.
‘This sort of thing’s no good for my back,’ she said.
‘Hypochondriac,’ said Robbie, going too far and conjuring a firestorm of angry retribution. The result was predictable, in fact, inevitable. It had been coming all along. Not allowed to leave the house without telling them where he was going. Curfew at six etc.
‘The garden?’ he asked wearily.
‘What about it?’ said his dad.
‘Can I go into the garden?’ He couldn’t stand the house, he couldn’t stand the fields; he had to go somewhere.
His dad said yes before Sheila could intervene. Robbie leaped from his chair and ran to the back door.
5
DESPITE HIMSELF, Robbie liked the garden and how tumbled it was because Sheila and his dad hadn’t got round to doing anything to it yet. It was large enough to lose himself in, and there were apple trees and plum trees, their fruit good enough to eat, not that anyone picked it. The previous autumn the apples and plums had lain in the long grass and rotted, tunnelled and feasted upon by thousands of wasps.
Soon he was among the trees clustered at the end of the garden and he went through them to the wall at the end, where he could hardly see the house. There was a field beyond the boundary wall, and an old tree stump, where he could sit down and have a cigarette. The smell would hang about his clothes, and his dad and Sheila would notice but pretend not to.
He texted Mags to see if she was around, though she left her phone off a lot of the time and he wasn’t surprised he didn’t get a reply. So he texted some friends back home and a girl in his class called Alice, the only one he talked to, but everyone seemed to be asleep.
There was a movement in the next-door garden, and he could just see a slight shape, Mrs Allardyce, doing something to her compost heap. Mr Allardyce had a telescope and studied the stars at night, and sometimes he let Robbie look. A week ago they had studied the rings of Saturn for an hour, clear and beautiful, very small and very far away.
Mags didn’t seem to be sure about the Allardyces, though they were friendly to Robbie. She told him to be careful when he was talking to them. ‘They’re not quite the way they seem,’ she had said.
So he was sitting watching Mrs Allardyce and then looking way up the field over the wall where the grass was cropped so close that it felt soft, almost comforting to walk on, but he could feel the anger welling up. He never used to listen to his social worker, though one thing he remembered was that she had said it would all get better in time. How long is time? he thought to himself. Long, maybe forever. As long as it takes to get to Saturn?
She’d also told him that his anger was his way of trying to deal with all the sadness and loss.
He thought, where does that get you?
Of course he was sad his mum died, and she took so long to do it, until he thought maybe he would die first. And then she did, and he hadn’t been there, and the feeling that because of that he had failed her tore him apart. He thought maybe he did die for a bit then. Perhaps it was only anger that had kept him alive. He supposed he must have wanted to be alive, because the anger never left him. It just eventually went somewhere else, like when they have a fire at a coal mine and they put it out, but it goes on burning along the seam.
His phone went. Mags.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m grounded,’ he said.
Mags said she wasn’t surprised and she was sorry, which was fair enough, because it was kind of her fault. And Robbie said don’t worry about it, and she asked what he was going to do, and he said he thought he’d better just stay where he was for a while.
‘There’s something I want you to see,’ she said.
‘Don’t think I can, Mags.’
‘It’s important. Come on, we don’t have much time.’
‘What is it? It’d better be good.’
‘I don’t know why they’re doing this to you, anyway.’
‘It’s Sheila. She’s a witch.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Well, she is.’
‘You don’t know what you’re saying. I mean, you really don’t. Trust me. I’ll be there in five.’
So they ended up half-walking, half-running down the road to a turning where the road rose steeply under high hedgerows to the top where there was a field and then another field, ploughed, the earth covered with the prickle of a new crop. Robbie felt a rush of exhilaration. He could see the buds chasing along the branches of the trees. He could feel life coming back. The fields and the hills glimmered green, and there was birdsong, and Robbie thought, this is all so new, and still so new to me.
Mags leaned against the gate and they watched. The field sloped down to some trees on the far side, and on this side of them was a ring of hares, about ten of them. Some were sitting on their haunches, some were lying down, not paying attention, but two or three were inside the circle, thumping the ground with their
back feet. He could hear it faintly but clearly. It must have been something to do with the acoustics; the field had a wide, shallow dip like a saucer, which seemed to amplify every sound. Every now and then two of the hares reared on their hind legs and punched at each other. Soon more arrived, making new circles full of lunging, jumping, kicking hares, and they started running after each other, round and round.
‘Do they always do this?’ Robbie asked Mags, and she shook her head.
‘Loners from the day they’re born,’ she said. ‘And they’re mostly nocturnal. They make these circles, but they’re not common, and I’ve never seen anything like this many.’
‘So why’s it happening?’
‘It must be because she’s here.’
‘Where? I can’t see her,’ he said, but Mags didn’t answer.
‘Are they waiting for her?’ he went on, and Mags said she didn’t know, she didn’t know everything. Then she said, ‘They’re running against the sun.’
‘Meaning being?’
‘Widdershins. Anti-clockwise. Trouble’s coming. It always does.’
There was something in the tone of her voice, as if maybe she wanted it.
What was going through that head of hers? he wondered.
He needed to get back.
‘Don’t tell anyone you saw this,’ Mags said to him, holding him by his jacket as he tried to run. ‘It’s important. You don’t know how important. Swear.’
Robbie thought, that’s the second time she’s asked me to do that.
When he got back there was a text from her that said, ‘Meet at beacon when free.’
*
He went to see his dad.
‘I can’t do this any more,’ he said. The feeling had been building up inside him for weeks, and that morning’s tussle with Dad and Sheila had made it almost unbearable.
They were standing together outside the back of the house, where the thatching hung over the kitchen door. Side by side, they looked more alike than Robbie would have wanted to believe, though where Robbie let his hair run long, his father’s was more conventional, if a little prone to untidiness, and its darkness was turning white at the temples.
It was quiet there, away from the road. They could see all the way down the garden, down the wide path through the orchard to the wall and the field beyond. His dad was looking along it and hadn’t seemed to hear him, so Robbie said it again. His dad turned.
Robbie had never seen this expression on his dad’s face before. He looked scared, as if he’d heard bad news, or remembered something he didn’t want to.
And he said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you.’
Robbie walked down the path to the end of the garden, thinking, he’ll call me back. Maybe I’ll go. Why am I being like this? Maybe I won’t go. This time I won’t. Why should I?
His dad didn’t call.
Come on, Dad. I need you now.
Beyond the wall, there was a flicker of white chasing across the field.
Robbie blinked. It was still there.
He blinked again. It had gone.
Was it chasing, or was it being chased?
Perhaps that was what his dad had seen. He tried to think what his expression had reminded him of. Then he got it.
It was as if he’d seen a ghost.
*
There’d been a time when they used to do lots of great things together, he and his dad. They used to go swimming in a huge open-air lido, one where the queue seemed endless on days when it was hot. When you got in, the water seemed to go on for miles and was crowded but cold and felt amazing, and just what you needed. Then you warmed up and it was even better.
They used to go to films too, at the local cinema, doing the whole Coke and popcorn thing, sitting in the darkness, waiting for happiness to begin.
The other thing his dad loved was going fishing, something he’d learned in the rivers and pools where they lived now. He was a natural, whatever the water, whatever the method. Flies or floats or leger, he was expert at them all. There are places in London you can fish – they’re hard to find but they’re there – and they tend to be packed as full as the lidos. But usually they would drive out to somewhere, and if it was a river, his dad got out all these beautiful flies with names like Tupp’s Indefensible or Parachute Adams. He kept them in little plastic boxes, and then he’d head off along the bank, crouching down and feeding the line out over the water. It was like what Mags said about hares: he was graceful, beautiful to watch, and he could land a fly just where he wanted it, even when they were surrounded by trees and bushes.
His dad had just been beginning to teach him how to tie on flies and floats and weights and hooks, and how to use ground-bait, and where fish like to lie, and how to go for the fat bottom-feeders like carp, and where to find the big roach rather than those scrappy little ones that take your bait if you’re not careful, when his mum got ill. And Sheila came along, and they’d ended up down here, and blah, blah. Sheila wanted the country life with her daughters, Jess and Lucy, and they wanted to get Robbie away from a place that was obviously not doing him much good. Also, Sheila had been a teacher at Robbie’s school, and when he thought about it he was never quite sure when her relationship with his father had begun. Perhaps Sheila was more than happy to leave such mysteries behind.
Now, he and his dad never went fishing.
6
‘WHAT’S THAT bubbling sound?’ He could just hear it in spite of the wind.
‘Larks. Two of them. Look, one’s falling.’ Mags was happy. ‘Up here you can see everything.’
‘Why’s it called the beacon, then?’
‘In the old days, when England was being invaded, they’d light fires on all the high hills. This is one of them.’
Fires burning everywhere. Robbie liked the sound of that.
‘Couldn’t’ve happened very often.’
‘When the Spanish came.’
‘You learned something in school, then, Mags.’
‘1588. The Armada. Only date I can remember.’
‘1066?’
‘Isn’t that Kronenbourg?’
They were sitting on grass that was short and springy because of the sheep, backs to a big grey rock. The wind was in Mags’s hair, and she kept trying to stop it flying out in front of her, pushing it behind her ears and constantly readjusting the light blue band that was keeping most of it bunched together. The rock was cold against Robbie’s shoulders. He scrunched up his long eyelashes and his thick eyebrows against the sunshine.
The old beacon was on a hill that jutted out from a long line, an escarpment overlooking the Levels towards the Tor. There were woods on top of the scarp, punctuated by white flowering blackthorn, that looked as if they had been striding towards the edge and had just stopped in time. Some had spilled over and littered the drop. There were none on the beacon hill itself, though its slopes were spangled with daisies and dandelions. In front of them the land flattened until it reached another line of hills, miles and miles away, small and grey and misty. From the fields below came the anxious yelling of lambs, and not far away a kestrel hovered. Up here on the beacon the wind was chilly and unpredictable. Mags didn’t seem to notice it as much as Robbie, not because of her clothes, he found himself thinking, but just because she was Mags. She was hard stone.
There were lots of hollows all around them. The hill was pitted like an enormous green golf ball. When Robbie asked about them, Mags said they were old mine-workings.
‘People used to dig stuff out of the ground. They used to live up here too.’
‘What, recently?’
‘Muppet. Thousands of years ago.’
‘Stone Age people?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll show you one of their houses.’
She started telling him about the things they could see below them. Robbie didn’t particularly mind getting a geography lesson from Mags. As the junior partner in the relationship he got a lot of this.
‘See that big hill with the flat
top and hardly any trees and all those earthworks on it? That’s Cadbury Castle, King Arthur’s Camelot, and inside the hill King Arthur and his knights are sleeping. Every Midsummer Eve and Christmas Eve they ride out through the golden gates along the old track to the well in the woods where their horses can drink. People have heard them riding by. I’ve heard them myself. The Atwells own all the fields between there and us. And the road that runs beyond it is Dancing Lane.’
‘Why’s it called that?’
‘’Cos that’s where they hung people, and when you get hung and you die your legs start to go everywhere and it looks like you’re dancing.’
‘Nice.’
‘Then those fields down there are owned by the Grants, well, used to be, he’s the only one left now, lives on his own and he’s completely mental. That’s what living on your own does to you.’
Robbie guessed she might have her dad in mind.
‘Where’s our village from here?’
‘Way over there towards Cary.’
He thought for a bit.
‘Mags?’
‘Uh huh?’
‘That poem. The one about the hares. What did all those names mean?’
A doting look came into her eyes. For once he’d asked the right question.
‘You mean?’
And she began to chant, in a voice that half-spoke, half-sang:
‘The hare-ling, the frisky one,
Old Turpin, the fast traveller,
The way-beater, the white-spotted one.’
Once again, the words seemed to work on Robbie like a spell. A feeling of peace spread through his body and he could feel the tension go. The world felt calmer. He could even have sworn the wind was gentler. Less bullying, less harsh.
‘I don’t know all of it,’ said Mags, ‘and there’s loads more:
‘The wild animal, the jumper,
The short animal, the lurker,
The swift-as-wind, the skulker,
The dew-beater, the dew-hopper.’
‘Dew-hopper is ’cos they feed in the early morning and late evening, and you can see their tracks in the dew. Skulking is what they do when they’re frightened, their ears go flat against their heads and they crouch low to the ground.’
The White Hare Page 2