by Jennie Finch
Alex had been up for several hours, showering and spending an inordinate amount of time wondering what she should wear. Normally immune to such trivialities, her bed was strewn with outfits once considered and then cast aside as too casual, too smart or just plain wrong. She hadn’t realised she had so many clothes and after finally settling on new black jeans, a silk shirt and her favourite jumper (thank goodness it was clean, for once) began clearing up and hanging garments in the cupboard before abandoning the mess in favour of coffee and a quiet sit at the dining table. The house was quiet as she shuffling around the kitchen, moving carefully to avoid waking the others as she prepared to enjoy having the downstairs to herself for a while.
She drank her coffee standing at the back door, watching the morning light wash across the jumble of plants, soil and rubble that comprised her tiny back garden. Sue had dug over one of the beds by the gate during the last summer and the display of colourful annuals had attracted bees and butterflies as well as lifting her mood every time she looked out of the window. As she watched, several small birds swooped down and began to peck at the head of Sue’s now-fallen giant sunflower. Under her amused gaze, they flew off with a seed in their beak, only to return a few moments later. Or perhaps it was a couple of different birds, Alex thought idly. Either way, it was nice to see them.
Her peace was disturbed by the sound of a door slamming next door and her neighbour, a retired man who lived a quiet life with his wife and maintained his garden perfectly all year round, hurried down the path, waving his hands at the feeding sparrows.
‘Get off now,’ he called. ‘Out of it yer greedy little …’
‘Good morning Mr Pond,’ said Alex stepping out of the door.
Her neighbour swung round, startled by her sudden appearance. ‘Oh, yes – good morning. Didn’t see you there.’ He rubbed his hands together nervously. ‘You’s up early this morning.’
‘It’s a lovely day,’ said Alex. ‘I thought I’d go out and enjoy it’ – for once, added a voice in her head. She changed the subject abruptly. ‘You’re not a fan of sparrows, I take it?’
Next door, her neighbour shifted from one foot to another, looking round the garden before answering.
‘This time of year, they’s a menace,’ he said finally. ‘Pull up seedlings and such and eating all the berries.’
Alex blinked at him, taken aback by his vehemence. ‘I’m not sure sparrows eat seedlings,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘And there aren’t any berries in your garden. I think it’s starlings that pull up seedlings.’ She nodded towards Mr Pond’s freshly planted vegetable beds, the earth turning a pale green with the first growth. They were all covered in fine meshed nets, bright strips of plastic and cloth rippling above them in the light breeze. ‘I think it would need to be a sparrow Houdini that managed to get in there.’
The joke fell flat as a squashed rat, her attempt at humour greeted by a basilisk-like stare as the old man stood his ground, presumably waiting for her to go inside so he could continue his harassment of the sparrows.
‘Well,’ said Alex. ‘I’m off out to find a bird table.’ As she closed the door behind her, she almost bumped into her mother who was standing in the kitchen, pretending to rinse out an already clean beaker.
‘That was just naughty, dear’ said Dorothy. ‘The poor man is obviously worried about his garden.’
‘They weren’t in his garden,’ Alex retorted. ‘They were in my garden, eating my sunflower seeds. Honestly, he’s got so much netting and stuff out there on his precious seed beds, anything smaller than a Roc would fly away screaming in terror.’
‘You do exaggerate sometimes,’ murmured her mother. ‘Still, I think he’s mainly concerned about your raspberries.’
Alex put down the cup she had been clutching and looked at her mother. ‘What raspberries? I don’t have any raspberries,’ she said. ‘It’s a wilderness out there. I’m surprised I don’t come across Stig of the Dump.’
‘Which raspberries, dear. And you do, actually, in the bed just outside the bathroom window, between the path and your neighbour’s garden fence. They are in need of a prune, of course, but the flowers are out so you might get a decent crop this year.’
Alex opened the back door again, setting the sparrows whirring off into the trees behind her back wall where they rustled and agitated, uttering annoyed chirps at this second disturbance. Dorothy followed her out into the back garden and pulled aside a thick growth of weeds growing so tall they threatened to cover the bathroom window entirely.
‘There,’ she said, pointing, and Alex found herself confronted by a bed of raspberry canes. A tangle, certainly, and rather neglected, but still, there were almost two dozen plants, all with a scattering of creamy white blossom.
‘Of course, they are planted much too close together,’ Dorothy continued. ‘Or perhaps they are spreading. They do that, you know. That’s why it is so important to prune them every winter.’
As far as Alex was concerned, her mother might as well have lapsed into Cantonese, for all the sense she was making. She was still staring in astonishment at this unexpected bounty.
‘So there will be fruit here?’ she said finally.
‘Oh yes,’ said Dorothy absently picking some stray greenfly off the nearest plant. ‘These horrid little things need to be controlled though. Pour some soapy water over the plants and that should get rid of them. Your washing-up water will do. And when they do fruit, make sure you harvest every couple of days. That helps bring more berries on.’ She leaned over the raspberry canes and examined the plants, turning them carefully to peer at the blossom.
‘That’s interesting,’ she added.
‘What?’ asked Alex. She looked at the plants her mother was examining but could find nothing at all different about them. They all looked the same to her untrained eyes.
‘The plants here are much more productive,’ Dorothy continued. ‘Look, they’ve got more flowers and they look much healthier. Almost as if this part of the bed has been cared for by someone.’
Mother and daughter looked at one another for a moment and then Alex grinned broadly.
‘About an arm’s length in from next door,’ she said. ‘Well, that explains why old Mr Pond is so annoyed about the sparrows, the cunning old ….’
A loud knock on the front door cut across this rare moment of shared humour.
‘That is probably your friend,’ said Dorothy. ‘Now, you go and have a nice day out and don’t worry about me. I might go up into town later. Would you mind if I did a bit of gardening this afternoon?’
It was the first time Alex could recall her mother ever asking her permission for anything. ‘Please, help yourself,’ she said.
‘Thank you,’ said Dorothy and she turned her attention back to the jungle surrounding the raspberry bed.
Weekends were supposed to be restful, an opportunity to rest and recover from the stresses of daily life. This was not, however, the case for the staff at Highpoint probation hostel. Weekends were an endurance test. Shift patterns were different, with staff working up to twenty-eight hours without a break. The worst stint began on Saturday at 1pm and finished on Sunday at 5 in the afternoon. To make matters worse, it was a solo shift from 9 on Saturday evening. Every two weeks the residents received their benefit cheques on the Friday and most of them spent a good part of the following weekend ensuring the local publicans could continue to thrive in what was turning into an endless and brutal financial recession. The hostel, always a volatile environment, could be a dangerous place at weekends.
Despite this, it had become customary to allocate the long weekend session to a female member of staff. The reason for this had little to do with the skills and experience of the staff nominated for this deeply unpopular shift. It was based solely on the fact there were no kitchen staff over the weekend. This meant that after working for almost 24 hours with very little sleep, the weekend warden was expected to produce a decent Sunday dinner for up to twenty hungry re
sidents at midday. Women, of course, could all cook and so were much better suited to the task. Well, that was the theory and none of the men were going to contradict it.
Samuel Burton rose early on Saturday mornings and signed out of the hostel as soon as the doors were unlocked. He did not wait for breakfast, a meal he scorned as fit only for weaklings. He also escaped before he could be roped in to any of the unofficial work parties the weekend staff set up. This was one reason he was not progressing as rapidly as some of the more indolent but easily manipulated residents. ‘Being a team player’, was seen as a sign of improving social skills and if there was one thing Samuel was not, it was a team player.
His sole concession to social norms was a curt nod in the direction of Bennie Sands, the deputy warden, on the way out of the front door. Bennie raised her hand in greeting but Samuel was gone before he could be engaged in conversation. Sighing with frustration, Bennie opened the day book, a log of all events and activity in the hostel, and noted the departure. Flipping back through the pages, she saw the pattern repeated every morning since Samuel’s arrival. He had tried the breakfast just once, on his first day, and not given it a second chance.
Samuel remained rooted to the lowest rung of the warden’s ‘Ladder of Achievement’, his silent refusal to engage with any of the hostel’s activities and neglect of the housekeeping chores allocated to him condemning him to a continued existence in the four-bedded room designed for new arrivals. Samuel’s only achievement, Bennie reflected as she closed the office door and hurried off to start preparing breakfast prior to the handover to the weekend staff, was he had not yet re-offended. Or at least, he had not yet been caught.
Samuel stood for a moment on the pavement outside the hostel, breathing in the fresh air and feeling the familiar thrill that came with anticipation. His moment of calm was broken by the first of what would be many cars rushing past, the roof-rack loaded with cases, sleepy children’s faces peering at him from steamed-up windows. The half-term holiday was in full swing, bringing the first early influx of tourists.
Samuel glared at the vehicle as it swept along the road and passed from view around a bend. Unlike a lot of the locals, he had nothing personal against the many, many tourists flooding through the county from late spring to mid-autumn. He just found the noise, the dust and the sight of pale, grubby children crammed into the back of cars offensive. It wasn’t as if he felt sorry for them either. He didn’t like children. Or animals. If the truth were told, most people left Samuel cold – and they were the lucky ones.
Pushing the irritation from his thoughts, he cut around behind the hostel and scrambled down a steep grassy bank to the remains of the old tow-path. This particular route was a favourite of his, crossing the countryside that surrounded Highpoint and following the disused canal that ran straight and true towards the edge of the Somerset Levels. When it turned to head towards Taunton there were a number of different paths and tracks snaking off into the undergrowth or running parallel with the narrow strips of gritted tarmac that passed for roads around the empty, open water meadows.
Samuel had already spent many hours out on the Levels, ferreting out the shortest and safest routes from the town to a number of the surrounding villages and hamlets. He had discovered that shortest was not always safest early on in his exploration, a plunge up to crotch level into stagnant, icy water teaching him a valuable lesson. Now he checked the smaller, more obscure paths with a stick, testing the ground beneath the surface, for out on the Levels nothing seemed to stay the same for long. A good downpour and the safe route from one road to another could become muddy, slippery or even deadly if the surrounding marsh seeped too close to the surface. Today it was sunny and the paths seemed firm, but he proceeded with caution, eyes fixed to the ground, ever alert to darker patches or the glint of water that might suggest a new danger.
Around him the grasses whispered in a light breeze and in the distance a lark shot out of the undergrowth, flinging itself skyward with a burst of song. The high trills of its call floated around Samuel as he walked on through the long grasses, oblivious to the beauty that surrounded him. His only acknowledgement of his surroundings was an irritated wave of his left hand as he batted at a cloud of insects buzzing around his face. Samuel hated insects, especially midges – though they seemed to love him.
As a child he had suffered through the summer as midges, mosquitoes and wasps flocked to surround him, feasting on his sweet blood and rewarding his frantic flapping with bites and stings. One particularly humid year he had spent most of the school holiday curled up on his bed reading a book, his arms and face a mass of red blotches and dry, itchy patches of camomile lotion. Already vain about his appearance, he had refused to go outside until every pink spot had faded. His strength of will was already apparent as his parents discovered when all their blandishments, bribes and attempts to order him out into the fresh air were met with hard stares and silence.
Since that miserable summer, he had avoided anywhere that could be considered the insects’ natural habitat, but that was difficult around Highpoint, surrounded as it was by open countryside that was crossed by rivers and streams and nestling up against the great marshy expanse of the Levels. Samuel had little choice but to venture out into the midges’ home ground, but that didn’t mean he had to enjoy it and the first mile or so was covered at a brisk pace, dodging the damp areas and ducking around fine clouds of insects as he cut across the edge of the marsh towards the firmer ground of Kings Sedgemoor and its small villages.
Emerging from the surrounding brush and reeds, he set off at a trot, following the narrow path that ran next to the great drainage ditch, his feet kicking up small clouds of white dust from the chalky gravel surface. It felt good to be running again, to feel the rush of air past his face and the prickle of sweat break out along his back and Samuel began to run faster, falling into the familiar and seductive trance induced by the exercise. Reaching the footbridge over the canal, he swung to the right and continued down the ancient track marking Sedgemoor Drove. New leaves rustled on the branches overhanging the path and there was a fine line of grass growing down the centre, a sure sign few, if any, motor vehicles used this route.
At the next sharp bend he skirted the boundaries to a disused farmhouse and hopped over a tiny feeder drain. Pushing through the hedge that barred his way, he stepped out onto a large, open strip of concrete, cracked in places with more grass pushing up between the crumbling slabs. Off to the right were several grassy humps, the overgrown remnants of bunkers left behind when the military withdrew from the airfield at the end of the Second World War, finally abandoning it completely in the 1960s. With no-one guarding the remains of the runways and surrounding land, it was the haunt of BMX riders and underage drivers during the school holidays but this early in the morning it was still deserted, just another noisy skylark disturbing his peace with its shrill, mindless warbling.
Glancing around to make sure he was completely alone, Samuel headed for the overgrown bunkers where the remains of a rotting door hung away from the frame. Sliding in through the narrow gap, he waited for a minute, allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The smell told him he was not the first person to find the way in but an earlier examination of the floor had suggested the room had not been used for a long time. Stepping carefully around the edge of the low walls to minimise his footprints, Samuel moved further into the remains of the shelter.
Once beyond the outer walls, he could use the torch he carried in his pocket without risking unwanted attention. The pale yellow beam flickered over the dust covering most surfaces. The interior of the shelter had been stripped of anything useful a long time ago and only a scattering of broken furniture and rotting wood remained. Samuel repeated his crab-like sidle around the walls, trying to keep as close as possible without brushing against decades of grime and accumulated filth. Everything he was wearing was going in the wash tonight, he vowed as he reached the back of the room. Hidden under a new groundsheet was a backp
ack containing a complete change of clothes, a trenching spade folded up and fastened to the back and, off to one side, a large round tin with a tight fitting lid.
Samuel was pleased with the tin. It had taken a lot of searching to find something air-tight, big enough but still easily carried. In the end he had spotted it on a pile of scrap metal waiting for the recycling lorry next to the old quay. The inside had been slightly sticky and smelt of fruit – pineapple, he thought. It had taken a lot of scrubbing but now it gleamed inside, though the fruit trace still lingered, especially when first opened. It couldn’t be helped, he decided. He was unlikely to find anything as good in the time he had and anyway, the smell was so faint it would soon fade completely. He had been tempted to leave the tin open to speed up the airing process but the thought of mice or rats crawling around inside made him shudder. Better pineapple than rat piss, in his opinion.
After checking everything was still in place and undisturbed by human or animal, he pulled a second torch from his pocket, a smaller, rubber covered model in a plastic bag. He unwrapped it, checked it was working and then turned it off and placed the package in the rucksack with the clothes. Nearly there, he thought and his eyes glinted in the light from the torch he propped up against the wall, its dim light reflecting feebly from the ceiling, fading to grey as it was absorbed by the thick cobwebs strung around the roof. When he was satisfied all was secure, he edged back to the doorway, torch in hand. As he emerged into the open air he blinked, blinded for a second by the bright sunlight. That momentary loss of concentration meant he missed the lanky figure of Brian Morris slipping out of sight amongst the trees at the far side of the runway.