Shelter

by Dave Hutchinson

  There was a fire burning in the grate in the study, as ever, and two comfy armchairs pulled up to it, facing each other across a little table.

  “You’re looking well,” Frank said as they sat.

  “Thank you.” Frank actually had very few conversational gambits; Adam thought he would have been perfectly happy not to say anything at all, just point at things he wanted or at things he wanted done or at people he wanted hurt or killed. But Frank had some strange body-image of himself as a prosperous man of civic probity, all hail-fellow-well-met, and this meant having to come up with small talk which his brain seemed unable to cope with, so he just had a few phrases memorised.

  Adam picked up the book and opened it to the bookmark. They were barely a hundred pages into it, the rest of the novel a desolate path leading away into the distance. He pictured himself still sitting here months from now, finally closing the book, Frank producing another one and saying, “How about this, old son...?”

  He was about to begin when Rhoda came in carrying a tray on which were a teapot, two cups and saucers, a milk jug, and a sugar bowl. Sugar was rare, even in Guz, but down the years Frank’s family had rationed the supplies they had found in Margate and the big shopping centre outside town, and for tobacco and alcohol they had control of the old ferry terminal at Dover and its bonded warehouses and their contents. Adam looked down at the page.

  Perhaps Rhoda caught her toe in a little ruck in the carpet; more likely she was just exhausted, but she stumbled and the tray and its contents went flying, spraying milk and hot tea and sugar cubes everywhere.

  The girl gave a little cry that was half anger, half despair, and immediately went to clean up the mess. Adam sat where he was, feeling himself tense up, ready for the inevitable loss of control from Frank and this time ready to do something about it.

  But to his surprise, Frank just shot him a long-suffering look and went to help Rhoda clean up. When they had all the bits of broken teapot and shattered cups on the tray again, and had blotted up the worst of the tea and milk stains with damp cloths, Frank helped Rhoda carry everything back to the kitchen. He was gone some time, and when he came back, he seemed to have been exercising hard.

  “Sorry about that, old son,” he said, settling himself back into his armchair. “Do you want to start?”

  So Adam read the next chapter, but Frank’s mind wasn’t on it. He kept asking Adam to go back and read paragraphs again.

  Eventually, he sighed and said, “Tell you what, let me introduce you to Gussie.”

  He led the way out of the study and up the stairs, and as he followed, Adam heard a single choking sob from the direction of the kitchen, saw Rhoda, her face covered with blood, closing the door so that no one would see or hear her.

  ONE NIGHT A couple of weeks later, Albie took him back to The Sands as usual, waited until he had walked up the steps and gone inside, then drove off. Adam plodded tiredly up the stairs, hearing Mr Harper locking the front door behind him.

  Up in his room, he took off his coat and sat on one of the beds and took off his boots. But he didn’t undress and climb under the covers. He sat there, in the dark, for over an hour, thinking. Then he got up, put his coat on again, and with his boots in one hand he went to the door and quietly let himself out.

  In one direction, the corridor led to the stairs down to the lobby. In the other, they led to a heavy wooden door. Adam opened the door and stepped out onto a darkened landing, pulling the door shut behind him and listening for a telltale scrape of boots on concrete or a quiet cough which would signal that the stairwell was guarded. Once upon a time, this had been an escape route in case of fire, but the hotel was so damp these days that there was nothing in here which would burn.

  He felt his way down the stairs, counting flights, until he came to a landing with another heavy door, this one locked. He picked the lock with a bit of wire and the tip of a penknife he’d found in one of the houses he’d worked in, and slipped out into the yard behind the hotel, pausing only to put his boots on.

  It took him the best part of an hour to walk to Cliftonville. There was no street lighting, but the rain had abated and a half-moon shone weakly down on the town through rushing, broken cloud. Once or twice, he heard enforcer patrols, but it was easy enough to hide in overgrown gardens or down alleyways until they passed. Enforcers made up in muscle what they lacked in professionalism.

  Cliftonville was an area of vaguely genteel housing to the east of Margate proper, a place most of the population could aspire to but never attain. The houses were in good repair because Frank’s extended family – which numbered well over a hundred – and his trusted favourites lived here. Frank’s house had a stone with MON REPOS carved into it set into the wall beside the front door, and the garden was as well-maintained as any garden could be considering the weather.

  Here, the enforcer patrols were thicker on the ground, and more careful, and Adam took a long time working his way through various back gardens before he reached Frank’s house, where he sat behind a huge old rhododendron bush for some while. The back of the house was dark, no sign of any movement, and he moved up onto the patio. Examining the back door in the fitful moonlight, he took off his boots, picked the lock as quietly as he could, slowly opened the door, and slipped inside.

  It opened onto a little vestibule containing an old washing machine and drier, neither of which could have worked for almost a hundred years, piled high with bits of assorted rubbish. On the other side of the room, another door led into the kitchen. Adam left his boots in the vestibule and stepped inside the house.

  Moonlight picked out the kitchen furniture, the sinks, the huge range which had been retrofitted in by Frank’s parents or grandparents. Adam started to move towards the door to the hallway.

  “Have you come to kill him?” asked a voice from a corner of the kitchen.

  He whirled around, biting back a cry of surprise, ready to fight and then flee, but he saw, in the fitful moonlight, a little old woman sitting on a kitchen chair. She was wearing an old parka over a thin cotton nightdress.

  “Have you come to kill him?” she asked again, and for a moment he thought he was going to have to kill her, to prevent her bringing someone to check what was going on in the kitchen. But she said, “He won’t hear us. He’s upstairs, stinking drunk with one of his whores.” She brushed her long brown hair back from her face, and he realised she wasn’t old at all. No older than Frank, anyway. He started to move towards the hallway.

  “I tried to kill him once, myself,” she said, and he paused and looked back at her. “I put a knife under the bed and when he was asleep, I stabbed him.” She turned her head back and forth as if looking for something, and he realised she was blind. “I didn’t stab him hard enough. All I did was wake him up and then he took me to see Albie.” She shivered. “I hope you’ve come to kill him. I can’t do it myself.”

  He stood where he was for a few moments, quite still, breathing slowly through his mouth, deciding what to do next. Scrubbing it and coming back another night was a real possibility, but he didn’t know if he’d have the nerve to do it again. He walked slowly out of the kitchen, down the hall, and up the stairs. When he came back down, the woman was gone.

  HE HAD NO idea what time it was when he got back to The Sands, weary, footsore and soaked through. The moon had long since set, and the sound of waves crashing against the seafront was audible all over town. He let himself in through the back door and locked it behind him, made his way up the stairs until he reached his landing, opened the fire door a fraction, and looked down the hallway. It was only lit by a single oil lantern at the far end, but to his night-adapted eyes it seemed almost too bright.

  Boots in hand, he padded slowly down the corridor, feeling slugs burst under his feet. What the fuck was it about this place and slugs?

  He reached his door and slipped the padlock silently out of the hasp, turned the handle, and stepped inside, and suddenly the adrenaline of the night drained out of him and
he was exhausted. He dropped his boots on the floor and flopped onto the bed fully-clothed and closed his eyes.

  Some time later – he hoped it was at least an hour but suspected it was more like five minutes – one of the hotel workers came down the corridor beating a large saucepan with a ladle to summon everyone to breakfast.

  Chapter Eleven

  MAX DID NOT die. Or as Faye put it, “The operation was a success but the patient survived. Sorry. Doctor humour.”

  They were walking across the compound towards Faye’s horse. It was the first time Rose had been out of the house since Max came back from Blandings.

  “We still need those antibiotics or he’s not going to make it,” Faye said.

  Rose glowered across the yard, where John Race was supervising a wagon wheel repair and intently pretending she wasn’t there.

  “Did your hand give you any idea when they’d be here?” Faye asked. “Rose? Rose.”

  Rose looked at her, a little bemused. “No. A few days is all he said.”

  “Don’t you dare blame John for this, Rose,” Faye told her. “I made him do it. When Max is well again, you can be as angry as you want with me, but John did the right thing.”

  Rose stared at her.

  “You’re not thinking straight, Rose. You’re so worried about Max that you can’t make proper decisions. And I’m worried you’re going to get sick, in a way that I can’t treat.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Faye gave her a long-suffering look.

  “When will you be back?”

  Faye turned and started to pack her medical gear into the horse’s saddlebags. “Tomorrow morning, if all goes well. Keep him warm and comfortable and make sure he takes some water.” She swung herself up into the saddle and looked down at Rose. “And for Christ’s sake try to get some sleep. You’re no good to anyone like this.”

  Rose watched her ride away across the compound and pause in front of the gate. One of the hands cranked the handle and the gate slid aside, and suddenly Rose was running, shouting, “Shut it! Shut it! Shut it!” Faye, the hand, everyone in the yard, turned to look at her. She was the only one who saw the figure outside the gate step forward, raise a shotgun to its shoulder, and fire, and then Faye was tumbling from the horse and the figure was gone and the hand by the gate was running to catch the bridle of the startled horse, Faye still dangling from it by one foot caught in a stirrup.

  “WE SHOULD GO over there right now and torch their fucking house,” said Patrick.

  “No one’s doing any torching,” Rose said. “And don’t swear in front of the children.”

  “We don’t know who did it,” said John Race. The hands patrolling the wall hadn’t seen anyone approaching the compound, but after the shooting they had seen a figure running away into the screen of trees a hundred yards or so away. They’d fired on it, but failed to hit it.

  “It’s obvious,” Patrick told him. “Who else would be waiting out there to shoot someone coming out of our gate?”

  Rose felt utterly calm. It was as if she was watching the world from the other side of a window, warm and safe. Nothing could hurt her in here, nothing was real. She said, “I want everyone armed when they go outside. No exceptions.”

  John looked at her.

  “Someone should go and tell Faye’s family what’s happened, take her body back to them,” she went on. “Would you do that please, Patrick? Don’t go alone; take some hands with you. Show Faye some respect; she was always a friend to us.”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  John leaned forward across the kitchen table. “This is going to get out of control.”

  She looked him in the eye. “It was out of control the moment Max left for Blandings,” she told him calmly.

  He sat back, staring at her.

  “Who was supposed to be on watch?” she asked Patrick.

  “Jim and Andrea.”

  She nodded. “I want them gone. Give them some clothes and a couple of days’ food, but I want them out of here before sundown and I want them shot if they ever come back round here.”

  “Jesus...” said John.

  “No more mistakes, John,” she said. “No more sloppiness.” She turned to Patrick. “And no torching. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  LATE IN THE afternoon, as the light was starting to fail, a group of hands came back to the farm. They had a boy with them, his arms bound behind him and his face bloodied and bruised. Rose went out to meet them.

  “Found him a couple of miles away, missus,” said one of them. He held out a rather shabby twelve-bore. “He had this with him.”

  She walked up to the boy and put her hands on her pockets. “What’s your name, son?”

  The blood on the boy’s face was streaked with tears and snot. “Walter, missus,” he sniffled.

  “Do you know what happened here today?”

  “No, missus.”

  She took the shotgun, broke it, extracted the cartridges and sniffed the breech. “Have you been out shooting, Walter?” she asked, not unkindly.

  “There’s a wolf, missus,” he blurted. “It got in our henhouse and killed our chickens. I’ve been out looking for it.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “Thought I saw it, over to Pennywise Wood.”

  Rose looked at the boy for a while. Then she turned to the hands. “Hang him,” she said. “Then take him and dump him at the Lyalls’.”

  The boy started to sob uncontrollably.

  Chapter Twelve

  HE DIDN’T SEE a lot of Karen. She stayed at the Mercer farm while he worked to get their place fit for human habitation again. “I’m working,” she said when he mentioned that he seemed to be doing everything on his own. “I’m planning for our future. It’s not easy, you know, Morty.”

  So he did it himself, mostly. Some of the Mercer hands came over, from time to time, to help out, but he kept seeing them exchanging knowing smirks and he was glad when they left and he could get on with it on his own.

  It took him over a year to get the house ready, but Karen refused to move in. She was busy planning, she needed to be close to the Mercers, she’d be there soon. “You understand, don’t you, Morty,” she said, giving him the little arm hug, and for the first time he found himself putting on the Morty Face and saying that, yes, he did understand and it was okay.

  She did turn up, eventually, and gave the house a critical once-over before listing all the things he’d done wrong and would have to do again. He nodded and weathered it and did the things again.

  AND SO HERE they were, five years later. Karen was mostly at home, although she spent a lot of time over at the Mercer compound, discussing things with old Kate. Morty tried and could not make the farm work, but it wouldn’t quite fail either. There was some livestock and somehow enough of that survived to sustain them, and a few vegetables he managed to grow in the chalky soil. For the first few months here, he had been constantly alert for signs that his family or hers had come looking for the runaways. When those signs failed to materialise, he started to relax. Clearly, the folks back home had accepted that he and Karen loved each other and wanted to start a new life together. Although a tiny little doubt kept running back and forth through his mind that, actually, their families were simply happy to be rid of the pair of them.

  “Keith says something’s going on between the Taylors and the Lyalls,” she said one morning, putting on her coat to go out. “You should go and find out what it is.”

  “One of the Taylors got hurt,” he said. “One of the Lyalls got killed. It’s none of our business. Where are you going?”

  “Keith says people have started fighting,” she said. “It might start being our business.”

  “The Lyalls and the Taylors are miles away.” And really, if they wanted to knock seven bells out of each other that was fine by him; they’d never lifted a finger to help him.

  “I want you to go over and see the Lyalls or the Taylors, one or the other,” she told him
, her hand on the handle of the front door. “Find out what’s going on.”

  “If they’re having a scrap, they won’t take kindly to strangers rocking up at their front gate,” he pointed out.

  Karen came over and gave him the old arm-hug. “I’m just thinking of you,” she said. “You’ve put so much work into this place, almost killed yourself, and you’ve made it really nice for us. I don’t want someone coming here and ruining all that if a quiet word somewhere could avoid it.”

  It was the kind of suggestion which was not, of course, a suggestion. So later, after she’d taken the wagon and gone wherever it was she was going, he saddled up their remaining horse and went for a ride.

  Apart from the visits by the Lyall and Taylor hands a couple of days ago, he had never had any contact with the Parish’s two largest families. Their farms were quite some distance from his, and apart from Market Day he rarely strayed far. The Mercers excepted, he barely knew his closest neighbours. Even the Wrens didn’t want to have much to do with him if they could help it.

  So he was left with something of a dilemma, as he rode along through the drizzle. Who should he visit? Taylors or Lyalls? As he passed the nearest farms, he saw armed people patrolling on top of their walls. At the Wrens’ compound, he stopped at the gate and waited until someone noticed him.

  “What do you want?” they called down from the wall.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Morty Roberts.”

  The figure on top of the wall seemed to think about it. “Oh, right. What do you want, Monty?”

  “I heard about the Taylors and the Lyalls.”

  “What about it?”

  “Wanted to know what’s going on.”