Glasshopper

by Isabel Ashdown

  Afterwards, I dunk my hands in the tin trough beside the shed and look out over the waking fields, letting the water slide off my fingers and into the cracked earth. Far beyond the tree line, I can see the mist rising around the old olive tree.

  “Mum’s dead,” I mouth silently. “Dead.” The word feels alien in my mouth. Dry as the ground under my bare feet. Dead. Last night Andy cried himself to sleep, but I still haven’t shed a tear. I’m not sure I know how to.

  Dad comes out and stands beside me, laying his hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to have to watch what we use over the next week,” he says, his calm gaze on the valley. “I’ve worked out we’re here for another ten days, and we’ve only got twenty nightlights left. We’ll be in darkness by Wednesday if we don’t ration them out now.”

  I turn to him, aghast. Mum’s just driven off a cliff, and he’s worried about the candles running out?

  “Tell you what,” he goes on, “if it was my place, I’d get some of the lads over to put electricity in, and running water. It’d be a whole lot easier with lights and a fridge. And I’d cut that path back too, save scratching up the paintwork every time you drive through.”

  I run my hands through my hair. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. How great that would be, if it was all just a weird, horrible dream. “But, Dad, won’t we have to go home early now? You know, because of the accident. Doesn’t anyone need to talk to us? About Mum?” Even I know there are things you need to do when someone dies. Official things.

  Dad rubs my back, and shakes his head. “Jake, I told you, it’s all sorted. The holiday won’t last for ever, mate, so let’s just make the most of the time we’ve got left.”

  I’m frowning at him, and I don’t know what to say.

  He smiles gently. “Look, we’ve got to be strong for Andy. OK? I think we can get by on what we’ve got, so long as we’re careful. If we really have to, I can walk to the nearest town. Rachel put something about it in her instructions; Beauville’s forty minutes away on foot, so it’s not out of the question.”

  He slaps me hard on the back and picks up the poo shovel that’s leaning up against the trough.

  “I’m off to dig the hole. I’ll need a hand, so you and Andy grab a spade from the shed and come and help me. I’ll be up behind those sloe bushes.”

  Andy comes to the doorway, rubbing his nose. His eyes are all puffed up like slugs. “Help with what?” he says.

  I stare at Dad’s bare, brown back, the way it muscles as he walks. “Why are you doing the shit hole? Can’t it wait?” I shout after him.

  “Jobs to be done, Jakey,” he replies, his voice normal and even.

  “Oh,” I mutter, not knowing what to do next. Andy runs after him in his bare feet, and I fetch the spade from the shed.

  Dad picks a spot away from the house, under some old orange trees. They’re not in fruit, and I’m not even sure they’re still alive. The ground is so hard that Dad has to break up the top layers with a pickaxe he found in the shed. He’s hammering it down into the dry grass, levering up great big clods of earth, as his back sweats into the waistband of his shorts. When he decides that the hole is big enough, the three of us go back to the shed to fetch the slurry. It’s so disgusting that Dad has to carry it on his own, as we run ahead of him gagging and retching. It’s foul, and Andy can’t even look at it without sounding like he’s really vomiting. At the dug edge, Dad plants his feet wide apart, cautiously tipping the filth into the gaping hole.

  “Urghh, look, Andy. Look at the size of that one. That’s got to be one of yours,” I say, sniggering.

  Andy gags and walks away with his hand over his mouth.

  Dad stands up straight and rubs the small of his back as he puts the empty barrel to one side. He picks up a spade and starts to fill the hole with the old soil. I just stand and watch, enjoying the sound of the earth covering up the filthy soup.

  “Go and rinse the barrel out, Jake,” Dad says over his shoulder.

  “Why can’t Andy do it?” I ask, annoyed that it’s always me.

  “I’m not doing it,” Andy shouts over from his safe distance. “It’s rank. You do it, Jake. He asked you, not me.”

  He pulls a fist at me, and I go for him, pinning him to the ground and punching his puny arm.

  “Get off me, you bloody psycho!” he shouts, and he brings his knee up, right between my knackers.

  Andy jumps up, and for a moment I’m floored, but I grab him by the calf and pull him back down and twist the hair behind his ears until he screams.

  “Mum!” he shouts. “Get him off me.”

  We all stop still, our silence made louder by the constant click of the cicadas. Andy’s face is ashen, and his lips tremble as his chest rises and falls rapidly. Dad leans on to his spade, with his head hung low, and doesn’t move. Andy turns to me, horrified, then back to Dad.

  “Dad?” I say, standing beside him at the poo pit. I touch his shoulder blade with the tip of my finger.

  A single sob empties out of him, like a moan. He pushes the spade over and strides off down the garden, before breaking into a run over the shimmering fields below. We watch him till he disappears from view. Andy’s twisting his thumb this way and that, like he does when he’s worried, his gaze still on the valley. When Dad doesn’t come back, I pick up the two shovels, and together we finish the job in silence. We flatten the mound of earth with the back of the spades, pounding it as level as we can. Afterwards, Andy doesn’t speak; he just wanders off alone, to pick around in the grass for wildlife. I go round to the front of the barn, and scan the valley, but I can’t see Dad at all. Maybe he’s found the old olive tree, like I did. I carry the poo bucket into the cool woods and rinse it from the standpipe. He’ll be back, when he’s feeling better.

  That night, as I struggle to sleep in the humid darkness, I can hear Dad behind the curtain. He’s crying, but so softly it could be mistaken for deep breathing. Andy won’t hear; he’s asleep, a frown stamped across his tanned forehead. He’s curled towards me on his bed, naked in the awful heat, and in the candlelight his body looks too long for his baby face. After a while, the only sound from the other side of the curtain is Dad’s gentle snoring. The wax nightlight flickers on my bedside table, and I watch as the moths fly to their deaths, one after another. The night goes on and on, unchanging, until the owl glides in through my open window, lighting up the walls with her shadow. In the silent dark of the night, I blink to prove she’s real. On the third blink, I feel the breeze of her wing beat, and she’s gone.

  After a few days, we get into a sort of rhythm. Every morning, I’m up first and I go down to the standpipe to fetch water for the kitchen. I go round opening up shutters as the water pan comes to the boil on the hob, and I sweep out the insects that have crept under the door in the night. All my clatter usually brings Andy out, and he gets to work making a pot of tea. The milk is UHT, so it tastes a bit weird, but if you put in extra sugar it’s passable. Without fail, Andy goes out the front in his bare feet and treads on something on the way to the loo; a slug or a prickle or a mound of rabbit droppings. He’ll scream theatrically, and I know he does it on purpose to get Dad up, because it always works.

  This morning, Dad seems pretty chipper, and he’s full of plans. “Righto, boys,” he says with his mug in one hand, running the other across the dusty window sill. “Think we need to clean up a bit today. The place is looking shoddy.” He walks us round the rooms, pointing out what needs doing. “Jake, you can run a broom through the house, and dust every surface. Andy, you can clean the gas hob and polish the kitchen windows. I’ll clear out the fireplace and fix up the hole in the back door for Rachel. We can’t leave it like that till she next comes. She’ll have a colony of wildlife in here before she knows it.”

  We all laugh. Last night, as we sat at the table eating some cheese and crackers, a toad as big as a dinner plate squeezed through the hole in the bottom corner of the back door. We all stared as it lolloped a few paces across the floor, before a
second one squeezed its way in too. Andy cried out and jumped up on the table. “They’re monsters!” he yelped. Dad opened the door and shooed them out with the gas lamp, then propped a stack of logs up against the hole. “I bet they’ve been living in here all the time it’s been empty,” said Dad, and he shuddered, “urghh!”

  We get to work on our various jobs. Dad looks content to be doing something useful, and he strides about with a pencil behind his ear. It feels good to get the place in order. I’ve been keeping the area round my bed in pretty good shape, but the mess of the rest of the house has been niggling me more and more. As I sweep through our shuttered-up bedroom, the dust rises in billows, catching the light from between the slats. Just like you see in the old gangster movies. I push the broom far into the corners under mine and Andy’s beds, straightening the bedclothes as I go. I fold all my clothes into a neat pile on the bedside table, and chuck the dirty ones into a heap on the floor. I’ll do a wash later. I watched Aunt Rachel doing her washing in the two metal tubs, so I know what to do, more or less. Andy’s corner is a dump. I tell him to sort out his dirty laundry once he’s done the kitchen. Pushing the shutters back against the outside wall, I stop for a minute to look out across the view. The dull glare of sunshine makes my eyeballs ache briefly. Far off in the distance, I can see the small figure of a man herding his cows from one field into the next. You can see the farmhouse from here, but I’ve never seen anyone in the valley before. I feel a little stab of disappointment, that we’re not really all alone in this corner of the world.

  “Boo!” says Dad, his head popping up outside the window in front of me.

  “Oh! Bloody hell, Dad!” I gasp, clutching my chest. “You nearly frightened me to death.”

  He smiles and carries on past the window to do whatever he was doing. I scoop up all the used nightlight cases and take them through to the bin in Mum and Dad’s room. I push back the yellow curtain and tie it against the wall. The air in here feels suddenly still. Dad has slept with the window closed tight, and the stifling smell of warm bodies is heavy. All the items that litter the dressing table are in shadow, and I’m almost afraid to open the shutters for fear of what I might find. In this light it looks as though someone’s still sleeping in the bed. I bundle over to the window and throw the shutters wide, breathing deeply from the outside air. My heart hammers away as I turn back to the room to find it normal in daylight. I dust the surfaces carefully, setting down Mum’s things exactly where she left them after Rachel had gone. I smell her perfume bottle, and run my fingers down the decorated glass edges. It smells of her hair, when she’s just washed it and it’s clean and shining. I sweep far beneath the double bed, and all sorts of dead insects and dust balls come out with the broom. There’s even a tiny dried up frog corpse. I put it to one side to show Andy later, and empty the rest of the sweepings into the bedroom bin. Mum’s clothes are draped over the back of a wicker chair in the corner. Her shorts are in the same place that she took them off on that last day, and they lie like two small hoops on the floor. Her bra dangles off the bed knob. It’s salmon coloured. I hear Dad whistling round by the back door, as he starts to bang about mending the hole, and I lean out of the window to see him bent close to the ground, sorting through a small tub of nails and screws.

  “I’m going to wash our clothes,” I call over.

  “Good plan,” he says, not looking up. His arms look dark and strong as he pushes himself to standing. “Mine are all on the floor in there.”

  “I know,” I say.

  Dad carries on measuring and marking up a piece of wood. He looks up at me, where I’m still leaning out of the window. “What?” he says.

  I look away, then back at him. “What about Mum’s stuff?”

  He doesn’t answer, and he starts to saw away at the piece of wood, holding it steady across an old stool. “Whatever you think, Jakey,” he says when the cut wood drops to the ground. He disappears round the corner to fix the door.

  The next afternoon, I’m out fetching the washing off the line when the first drop of rain hits my cheek. At first I think it’s bird poo, it’s been that long since I felt rain on my face. I look up, and see that one half of the vast skyline is black and threatening, whilst the other half remains in bright sunshine.

  “You’d better get that lot in!” Dad shouts over from the shed roof, pointing out the sudden fork of lightning in the distance. He climbs down the ladder, and puts the tools back in the shed. He’s been replacing the broken tiles for Aunt Rachel, ready for the winter.

  I run down the long line of washing grabbing it down in big bundles and dumping it into the tin tubs. Most of it is Mum’s; I decided it would be best to wash it all in the end. A deafening crack of thunder smashes through the air, and I run clutching the first tub and dropping it on to the stone floor of the kitchen. I sprint back for the second one just as the rain comes down, and in the few seconds it takes to get back to the house, I’m drenched. Andy and Dad stand in the doorway cheering me on.

  “You dropped your kecks!” laughs Dad, and I look back to see a trail of smalls that have fallen off the pile as I ran. “Might as well go back for them, as you’re already wet,” he grins.

  I shrug and run back along the length of washing line to the furthest sock, scooting round as I pick it up. The water sits on top of the ground like a big puddle, unable to soak into the baked earth, and as I run back towards the house I lose my footing and land flat on my back with a thud.

  Andy whoops hysterically, and Dad is bent double slapping his thighs. When I get to the door, I grab at them both, pressing my wet body up against them to soak their clothes.

  “Go and get changed,” says Dad, pushing my hair off my face.

  In Dad’s bedroom, I peel off my wet clothes and they drop to the floor with a slap. I wrap myself in a bath towel, and go back through to the kitchen where Dad and Andy are watching the storm from the window. It’s as dark as dusk outside, and the storm must be right above us, because the thunder and lightning are constant. Like the world’s splitting open. I stand next to Dad and shiver.

  “You alright, son?” he asks, putting his arm round my shoulder. He stoops slightly to see through the window.

  Suddenly, I’m so cold I can’t even answer him. My shivering grows and travels through me until my legs are shuddering and my teeth chatter.

  Andy leans past Dad to look at me with a frown.

  “You don’t look good, mate,” says Dad. “You’re freezing.” He wraps his arms round me, and rubs my back dry through the towel, like he used to when I was little.

  The tubs of washing sit on the floor beside the table, with Mum’s clean clothes spilling out all over the place. One of her stripy socks lies in a ball under the bench where it rolled out of the washing tub, still turned inside out from the last time she wore it. My body swells up as I sob into Dad’s shoulder, my cries coming loud and harsh. Dad holds me tight, my arms pinned beneath the towel, and the thunder crashes down all around us, drowning me out.

  “You’re alright, boy,” Dad whispers into the top of my head. “I’ll make a nice fire, and you’ll be alright.” He smooths back my hair again, and kisses me on the forehead, and I realise that he’s never done that before.

  After five days, we’re sick of instant mash and tinned frankfurters every night. For lunch today, we had crackers with Marmite, and I’m still starving. I poke about the dark kitchen, looking for something else to eat, while Dad lies on the picnic blanket at the back of the house. All the fresh food ran out days ago, and I’m desperate for some bread, some of that lovely, warm baguette, all crunchy on the outside and soft and doughy in the middle. One of the best things about France is the boulangeries that we stopped in en route to La Font. The smell as you walk into one is like nothing I’ve smelt before, not even in an English bakery back home. It’s warm and bready, but with a layer of sweetness, like icing sugar dust that billows up when you put it through a sieve. There are always piles of French sticks and big flat loaves behi
nd the counter, and glass display cabinets filled with strawberry tarts and intricately decorated gâteaux. At the first one, we all crowded into the shop together and Dad asked for “Deux baguettes, madame”, and the old woman behind the counter smiled at him like he was a film star and she asked, “Anglais?” and he smiled back and said, “Oui, madame.” She handed him the bread then put two little custard tarts in a paper bag and said, “Pour les garçons,” and pointed to us. “You’ve got the charm of the devil,” Mum said, rubbing his shoulder as we walked back to the car. He looked chuffed to bits with himself. I thought about how Dad’s been practising his French on us, and I realised that he’d had this trip in mind for months.

  On the shelf in the kitchen are several jars of framboise jam that Aunt Rachel left for us. Strawberry jam and warm baguette would be heaven. There are stock cubes, salt, sugar and flour, but other than a few more cans of sausages and beans, there’s nothing else. The worst thing is that we’re on to our last two bottles of mineral water, and Aunt Rachel said that under no circumstances were we to drink from the taps over here. Katy got gastroenteritis one year, and she nearly died, she said. I expect she was exaggerating, but the screaming runs is not something I really want to risk.

  Outside, Dad is still lying on his front on the blanket, wearing his denim shorts and sunglasses. His back is a deep red-brown now. The sun’s blistering today, and all the rain from the thunderstorm has dried up as if the storm was never really real. He’s reading one of the books that Mum had packed, Cold Comfort Farm. Dad never reads books. I kneel down on the warm blanket beside him.

  “Any good?” I ask.

  “Not bad,” he replies, pushing his sunglasses up his nose.