An indistinct Old Susan bustles across the Hierde Farm yard like a busy hen. A second after each step comes the faint clack, clack of her pattens. She disappears into the dairy.
Is he the same person who teased Old Susan, scoffing a handful of stolen curds as she chased him from the farmyard—Hoy, Master Rochdale! Stop there, you young scoundrel!—the fierceness undercut by the smile in her voice? Is he still that boy who fled through the gorse spinney to Hierde House? Who ran, giggling, between the lavender beds, through the garden entrance, across the lower hall and into the morning room where Mother sat sewing? Who knocked Bea sideways on the rug and slid on her jigsaw—whoosh!—into his mother’s lap? Is he the boy who was scolded by Mother, then held in a laughing embrace as she wiped his grubby mouth? Who she held …
The girls will be in the kitchen now, making the Christmas pudding with Bess and Ellen under Mrs Simpson’s watchful eye, then, when the cook’s back is turned, cramming sticky raisins in their mouths, the air warm and spiced. Father will be addressing Christmas correspondence and planning the next year—parliamentary hijinks, he used to wink, once, and, my man, Gladstone, he would smile—maybe in the library, rather than shut away in his little study. It is almost Christmas, after all: village carols and the annual Herdley pantomime; the yule log burning in the open hearth.
But Arthur wants no part of such rituals now. No role in this hollowness he feels at their heart. Family lost its claim on him four years ago at his father’s, We’ll jog along comfortably enough together, eh, old chap? The sole reference. Grief measured by the new lines on Father’s face and the silent spaces in their home.
Damp has seeped into his boots.
“Taffy!” The terrier is nosing busily at the stone wall over which they’ve just clambered. “Come on, then.”
Arthur’s legs swish through the wet heather. His feet are chilled and his calves ache; he is used to the gentle undulations of Rugby, not the dips and highs of the Peak District. As he nears the gritstone outcrops of the Naze, the slope becomes steep and slippery. He takes his time skirting the rocks on the kinder south side, Taffy at his heels, and comes out on the ridge that runs east, above the Naze. The mist lies heavy on the village of Herdley, but he looks over it, north to Kettle Peak and its surrounding knolls: Wight Hill, where he climbed with Taffy last year; lofty Dungast; and Crag End, grim and grey.
An uplift of air hits the ridge and nudges Arthur. He sucks it in and feels the bite in his throat and chest. Looking to his left he can see the top of the Naze and, to the right, much higher, the crest of Hierde Hill. Father traced the giant form for Arthur when he was a boy, as they climbed south together to the Naze, the son straining to match his father’s stride.
It is Old English for guardian, or shepherd, “hierde”, Father had said. Then he ’d pointed to the guardian’s nose, There’s the naze and above that—see?—the top of his head.
When they ’d reached the Naze, they had stood, hands on hips, and he ’d felt as if he could scoop up the world around him and hold it to his chest.
A baronet is a little like a guardian, Mother said once, when he ’d asked what his father did. She told him that, along with the squire in Herdley Hall, Father looked after everyone in Herdley, just like his father, and his father before him. They owned Hierde House, she explained, and Hierde Farm, and a little more property that was rented from them. Then she went on to tell him more: that Father stood for the people in the House of Commons and that was why he was so busy, why they could not be more in their beloved Herdley. And though they weren’t quite aristocrats, she said, nevertheless, as a politician and a baronet, your father serves his country and its people with unswerving dedication. She ’d swept her hand through his hair and smiled down at him. And you, Arthur, are the heir to the baronetcy. What do you think of that? She wrote the strange words—baronet, estate, tenant, constituent, Parliament, heir—and tried to make sense of them for him.
Arthur looks back at the proud and craggy nose, then trains his gaze along the ridge, up, up, to the rounded lift of the skull.
How had their guardian slept as the world turned upside down?
On the moorland plateau just below, a grass owl swoops, claws outstretched. A vole? Hard to tell from here, but the bird has something in its grasp as it flies north. Arthur pictures pink bodies, pulsing in the dark, waiting for their mother. How is this different from egg-collecting? Are the mother birds ever puzzled at their empty nests? Other lads at Rugby leave only one or two eggs, but he only ever takes one, telling himself it won’t be noticed; reassuring himself it won’t be missed.
He gathers the eggs alone, blows each until his cheeks are sore, and nestles the emptied shells in straw. His remaining schoolfriends think he collects them to compete with other students, or to admire his bounty. And it’s true he finds the eggs beautiful. He likes to take them from the shelves of his tiny study to cradle them, his breath slow, feeling their curve soft against his skin: smooth olive-toned nightingale eggs, the brown-spotted kestrel egg found in an abandoned crow’s nest, lustrous white kingfisher eggs, sedge bird eggs, pale brown, mottled darker. And his prize, the rook egg. When he holds it, that egg, marvelling at its glossy green-blue wash, the dark tracings like a language he cannot quite understand, he is again in the elm thicket against the path to Herdley, digging irons into bark, clinging to the giant tree’s branches as if he were a rook himself.
One day returns to him now: a day that was different to the rest, a day when he ’d had to think things through. He ’d hoisted himself past clusters of crimson flowers, he remembers, lifting his head above a branch, coming suddenly face to face with something he could not make sense of. It took a full moment to understand it as the eye of a rook, and in it the reflection of his fragmentary form. He ’d backed away from the bird as she hunkered down on her eggs and made his way down the trunk, vowing he ’d leave this family, at least, alone.
It was deference he ’d felt then. The sense of an abiding love and dependence. An intimation that it was more, much more, than contesting or possessing, this climbing of trees, this immersion in a world without people: it is something he must have. The buds swelling on dog roses. Tiny golden-crested wrens nesting in a stand of firs, their multitude of even tinier eggs. Wild hedges, with their unkempt tangle. Soft catkins, drooping gently. All these would go on, if he did not.
No, nature does not ask of him all that people do—all that everyone did, more than four long years ago. He pulled away from the village lads then, their holiday scraps and antics. His school results dropped and he slid into the background of big-side football matches. Old Ghoul wrote, Arthur must apply himself, and his form master, gently, Arthur seems lost. But Arthur cared for neither sternness nor compassion, as long as everyone left him alone. And yet, strangely, the boys still looked to him for leadership.
Since autumn, their respect seems to teeter on fear.
He remembers September, when the weather was hot and clammy, thunderheads swelling in the sky. Day after day, Arthur and Rattlin Rowlands—uneasy pals now—and their friends in School House making their way to the lazy Avon, over the Planks and past the holes where the smaller boys sported: Sleath’s, the beginner’s pool; and Anstey’s, deep but small. Then Wratislaw’s, the first of the larger holes, and older lads pitting themselves against each other, faces sly, and finally Swift’s, where only the sixth and fifth forms were allowed to swim. Shining bodies writhing and splashing and duck-diving, down to where the warm pool shifted into depth.
Then the sight of Fish. Edward Harris, who ’d earned the ironic moniker because of his ineptness in the water. Arthur remembers wishing the lad back to Wratislaw’s that day—even Anstey’s, where the weaker swimmers in the fifth flailed about, convincing each other of their prowess. But Harris was stubborn. The lingering summer had seen him at Swift’s in every spare moment, struggling with the water and the taunts of housemates, paddling the thirty-odd yards over and over, eyes glazed. Arthur had found himself admiring the
scrawny lad.
On this day, though, the thunderheads had clustered and the air was electric. Ominous. Almost-men jabbered at each other and jeered viciously at Fish.
He remembers shutting out the cruel voices. Swimming back and forth, back and forth, in long, slow strokes that drew him under the surface, then up for air. Back and forth, back and forth. Trees and boys fading. The chattering in his head slowing, stilling, absorbed by the rhythm in his arms and legs and the power running through his torso. Back and forth, back and forth. Finally he ’d stopped at the centre of the swimming hole and looked around. Harris was still paddling laps nearby, though he was low in the water, his face tilted skyward, gasping quick breaths. Other lads were noisy around the springboard, waiting to bellow and leap.
Then, his favourite time, repeated on each visit to Swift’s. Drawing air and diving deep into the cold. Relaxing. Hanging, a suspended moment. Unburdened. Water a cocoon, muffled voices tuneful. Soft, soft, the waving motion over his skin, the liquid press and embrace. Still. Still.
Finally, the need for air pulling him to the surface. His return to the world—swimming to the bank and climbing, feet slipping on the muddied steps, onto the grass.
But then, the shouted alarm: Where’s Fish?
He remembers the lads at the board, still and tense, their bodies turned to the ruffled surface at the deep heart of Swift’s. Then, himself, arrowing into the water and towards the telltale ripple. Diving, fingertips piercing the cool, groping through the murk that pressed his open eyes like a bandage. Nothing. Swiftly up again. Gulping at air. Voices a babble.
Is he—
—his hands—
Fish ain’t—
No! No—
Down, down. Silty mud through fingers. Chest bursting. To the left. Nothing. Right. Nothing. Around, around, limbs sweeping. Nothing. Nothing. To air! But wait. Something there. What? An arm! Quick. Grasp and pull. Quick! Solid from liquid, embraced. Up. Quick. Up. Up.
Hard light. Air, sucked hard.
Harris’s form had been quiescent against him, eyes shut, face bluish-white and inscrutable, like a creature from the deep. Boys tugged at the body and Arthur surrendered his light burden. Reluctant. Relieved. He ’d swum alongside them to the water’s edge, where Harris sputtered, then spewed a thin brown mess, his inert body coming to life in a sudden rosy flush.
In the twenty minutes it had taken them to walk back to School House—Harris stumbling at first, then coming slowly back to himself—the group had recovered their cruelty.
Trying to be a fish, Fish?
No, he’s pretending to be a mermaid! Ain’t that right, Fish? A wee mermaid! The boys jostling Harris, jabbing at him with sharp fingers. Hot drops of rain spattering against them all. Harris dazed—almost … absent.
Got to move those arms, Fish. Here, I’ll show you how. Rattlin. Arthur remembers feeling drained yet alert. Sensing the old queasiness rising up his throat. What now?
What now? Why, Rattlin grabbing Harris’s arms and pumping them up and down. See? Like a dog, not a fish! Harris trying to pull his arms from Rattlin’s great paws. Rattlin snapping, Hold him, lads. Hodge and Greenwood moving towards Harris, the others looking down—save for Lawler, who ’d stood next to Arthur, shoulder to shoulder.
For goodness sake, Rattlin. Leave over.
Arthur knew his weary tone would irritate Rattlin even as he spoke, but he was sick of his old friend’s petty meanness. Worried, too, as he watched Rattlin become the bully they had both once despised.
Drops of rain struck heavily at the group.
What are you going to do about it then, Rochdale? Rattlin had pumped Harris’s arms. Harder, this time.
He couldn’t ignore it. Why, stop you, of course.
Arthur returns to himself. Crouches at Taffy’s head, tugs his ears and cradles the eager snout. Taffy gazes at him hopefully.
“Come on, Taff. Let’s take on the Hierde.”
Up the ridge he strides, Taffy busily scouting the way ahead and racing back to him. Then, off again. It is open moorland along the pitched ridge, save for a short gritstone edge and a solitary stack of stone that squats like a mushroom. Elf Tor, they ’d named the miniature crag, he and Beatrice, years before. When faerie rings were as real to them as their Hierde House dinner.
His feet move steadily up the incline until, near the summit, the ground shifts to an outcrop of gritstone. He has to work to gain the crest, clambering over and through the rocky tumble, while Taffy squeezes through gaps and crannies, panting happily up at him. Arthur smiles at the dog’s pleasure and the honest ache of his own muscles.
Then, the summit. The skull. He turns a circle for the familiar view of distant hills and shires—even North Wales. Below, Herdley is a mist-scattered play-time village with Herdley Hall and the church sitting prettily at its eastern edge. To the west, cotton mills are plonked like toy blocks on the silver ribbon of the river. He rubs his chilled leather-clad hands together and stamps his feet to bring feeling to the numb toes.
Taffy hears the guttural buck buck buck first. The terrier’s keen snout whips towards the slanting south face of Hierde Hill, then he circles Arthur, barking sharply.
“Aye. It’s not views you’re wanting, is it, my boy?”
Taffy yaps, expectant, then leads the way towards the stone wall that marks the edge of Farmer Hayes’s property. Arthur’s feet run away with him down the slope.
They stop, panting. On the other side of the wall, the ground is thick with heather; Arthur scans the moorland and the pasture that lies beyond another stone line, further down the hill.
“Where is it then, lad?”
Taffy follows his nose along the ground. Ten yards or so into the property, Arthur glimpses movement. He carries the muscular little terrier over the wall and puts him down with a calming stroke. Taffy stills obediently, small ears raised.
Red-brown colour shifts through a curtain of heather and coarse grass. Arthur treads carefully with Taffy at his side, the dog quivering but quiet. There: a plump red grouse. It scratches at the ground with its pale-feathered feet and struts around a shallow scrape, giving an important buck buck now and then. A male. Arthur wonders whether Taffy could take it, if they drew close enough. After several days hanging, it would make a tasty roast. “Red game”, he’s heard the hunters call it when they descend on Hierde House for grouse season, their voices greedy with blood.
Taffy whines softly. “Taffy!” he whispers. They are within striking distance now and the grouse could lift out of reach quickly, if alarmed. Yards. Now feet.
Wait. It has seen them.
He expects a sudden whirr of wings, but the moorcock surprises him. It puffs its feathers and bobs its head. Steps from side to side, giving its guttural bark and eyeing them all the while, combs bright red. Then, a sudden rush at them, the buck buck shifting to a loud yow r-yow r-yow. Taffy’s thighs flex, but Arthur quickly grabs at his terrier. He squats, hesitating. Watching.
Plucky little cock.
And it comes to him again, that sultry day at Rugby. The fight that had begun in a civilised enough fashion. Removing their jackets and waistcoats and placing them, folded, under the chapel railing. Rolling up shirtsleeves. Shaking hands. School House students—and students from other houses now too—forming a large circle around them, and a School House fifth-former keeping a lookout from behind the chapel. For masters, but also for fellows in the sixth form, who might halt the fight.
Arthur had been determined to give his old friend a beating. Not just to revenge Harris and to stop Rattlin’s bullying ways, but also for some other inchoate reason that beat at his mind.
He remembers looking at the looming sky, the clouds a heavy mass that irregularly shook the air and earth with thunder. Large raindrops hitting the group, stopping, then starting again, a solid downpour surely near. His gut churning and bubbling as he drew deep breaths and sized up his opponent. Other fellows doing the same, pointing at Rattlin’s bulky shoulders. Peels well, from one. An
other’s appraisal, Aye, but a tad too much tuck.
Arthur can still see Rattlin’s thickset body—the same height as him but much heavier. The boy’s belly slinging downward, and solid thighs and legs rooting him to the ground, while he, Arthur, had felt lithe, hard and fit. All that swimming and tree-climbing. Still, though, his legs had quaked at his opponent’s presence. How had Rattlin become his enemy?
Then that blast of white hair—Lawler stepping up to be his second. He wasn’t sure why; he hadn’t been much of a friend to anyone in recent years. But there was Lawler, armed with wet sponges and advice—Use your speed … Save your punches till he’s lost his wind—and Smyth hovering, with a few other School House fellows backing him up. And, across from them, Rattlin standing, legs wide apart, chest thrust forward and arms crossed, conferring with Hodge and Greenwood. Several other School House students giving him their tuppence worth, the rest uncommitted. Keen for entertainment, perhaps.
The details hold a crystalline clarity: a timekeeper volunteering—Foster puffed up with importance—round times decided, thirty-odd lads encircling them—he can remember each excited face. No Edward Harris, though, for he himself had already sent the lad to Matron, worried about the effects of the near-drowning. They might have scuttled away from the word, but that’s what it was, in truth. And Rattlin wanted to keep needling the poor boy? Well, he ’d have to think twice.
Then a rush of energy surprising him, bouncing him to his feet, moving him around and through the blasts of rain, his steps loose and springy. Like at Herdley dances when he was a boy. Rowlands was up, too, his step menacing, and Arthur raised his fists, felt readiness sweep through his body.
Rattlin’s first jab had been ill-timed and Arthur skipped around it with ease, smiling at his old friend.
Eye of a Rook Page 4