by Lee Markham
The city is only a few hours distant across the land to our backs, but it might as well be as far away as that ice. That’s how distant it is now from our lives. I’ve not been back since it all was done. Since that life ended and this new one started. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss anything.
The boy takes my hand and allows me to lead him down through the garden to the path. His hair has grown back darker. It is still fair, but not as fair as in the photographs I have seen in the newspapers. There hasn’t been much in the press. Not as much as one might have expected. The occasional melancholic piece by journalists with aspirations to find poetry in the inexplicable urban flare-up that now resides so comfortably in the past for most. The world has faltered on and found new crises to obsess over, greater institutional failings to condemn and deeper existential shortfalls over which to lie awake at night praying for forgiveness. Life moves so fast for them. They always forget. As has the boy now, at last, forgotten.
In those first few weeks after the fire he would not even look at me. His loathing for me was plain. He would not leave Anna’s side and he would frequently act out and smash things around the house. It was a hard time for all of us. Not least because the other children had to find their feet too. Space had been tight in the house, but that in turn had given us a focus – something to work towards, something with which to work away from the past.
On the estate there are two large flint-walled outbuildings that had housed decades of junk. The previous owners of the farm had abandoned the accumulated detritus of their lives in these buildings. I hadn’t insisted that they clear them when I took on the farm. I saw no reason to. I had been feeling extravagant when I’d bought the place. Extravagant, and flighty – this was between ten and fifteen years ago now, back when the plan to escape him was in its infancy. I couldn’t see what I’d need the buildings for and so had shrugged and said no worries.
And so, after everything was done, I had set the flock to work. Clearing the buildings out, and then remodelling them, making them their own.
They’d needed help, of course. Most of them were unskilled – certainly all of the new flock were unskilled – but they were keen to learn. Keen to get busy. Get their hands dirty. It was as if they’d been waiting their whole lives for something to do. The day-crew helped find the right people, with the right skills, who would work through the night with us. That was in fact the biggest challenge. People can be funny about working with the afflicted. Especially those with skin conditions. It’s not like there was a sign at the gate, but when the population density is so low whispers have so much more volume. We knew we were ‘the leper farm’. It tickled us a little. Better that they dismissed us with that traditional word from the Good Book than know anything closer to the truth. It was convenient. Perhaps more for them (not that they would know it) than for us. But there were plenty out there with minds broad enough to not fear us. To not fear contagion. To want to work with us. Who were happy and decent enough to care.
And besides, we paid well.
So the day-crew expanded to include an architect who worked with the flock to outline the changes needed to the outbuildings. A site manager, and some head labourers to oversee the work. With the flock themselves doing most of the heavy lifting. It took about six months before they could move into the first building. The second was ready three months after that. And then they could spread their wings, and each had their own space.
Of course by the time they’d made space for themselves, the boy had long since settled in. Perhaps the way things had developed between myself and Anna had been a catalyst for that change. At the beginning we both shared our loss of him, the old-one. We had both escaped the same oppressive relationship. We both missed him, in a way – in that we both didn’t miss him – we shared the same ridiculous guilt. We were both elated to be free of him. But terrified that we didn’t know how to fly without him. And so we flew together into these new lives. Tentatively. Excitedly.
She took to the boy, and at the beginning was the only one who could calm his rages. Always with love. Her love was the only thing that could cool the fire of his furies. Her patience. Her understanding. It was hard not to love her. And there was no reason I could think of to try and resist. So, I started to love her.
I think for her it happened differently. I think for her I was more complicated. She had more reason for caution. For her, the first small steps towards a relationship were fuelled by a physical hunger. For my male form. Which is funny for us, now, when we talk of it. Of how unusual we are. And nothing to do with our ‘leprosy’. More to do with the complexities of our gender. My gender. Now. In the sense that for me I grew to love her as a sister. As her sister. But to her I was a man. And so she saw me differently. Wanted me differently. And there was plenty of awkwardness. At the start. But it quickly evaporated beneath the heat of our passion. Our hunger.
And soon enough, we became parents to Peter. And he forgave me. And then he forgot that there was anything to forgive. The flock made their nests, feathered them and bedded in. The farm, and the family, flourished.
Which brings us to now.
Heading down through the garden, my arm round her, Peter holding my hand. Through the gate and out onto the track that leads down towards the fork in the path. As we descend, Peter lets go of my hand, pulls the hood of his coat up against the chill and skips on ahead, humming a song to himself: Oompa Loompa, do-pi-dee-do! He has become quite the Dahl fan of late. Which is fitting. I can’t help feeling that we have become something that Dahl might once have written a story about. Had the idea occurred to him. Perhaps I’ll do it myself. It would be a better tale than the one that brought us here.
I’m lost in these thoughts when Anna freezes. ‘Oh my god… it’s Tom.’
I look down the path and there, at the fork, heading back from the direction of The White Hart, is a man. He raises his hand and I raise mine in return. I don’t think he recognises her. He’s too far away. She only recognises him because she is gifted. She hasn’t got used to it yet. The man lowers his hand and continues on his way.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Anna asks, her voice gilt-edged with mild panic.
I shrug. ‘Probably getting away from the city. Half the village is owned by folk from the city who rent their places out when they’re not here. That’s why it’s usually half deserted.’
‘But what if he does see me. What if…’
I swing her round to face me, put my hand on the bump of her belly and smile down into her worried face. ‘I doubt he’d recognise you even if he did. You’ve changed. And even if he did… you’d think of something to say. And I think he’d probably understand. Don’t you?’
She considers it, and then weaves her head side to side somewhere between a nod and shaking it. The gesture says I guess so, maybe. The baby in her tummy kicks then and both our eyes widen, ‘See. Baby says so too.’
She laughs at that and takes my hand and we amble on down to the fork, where we head east, following in the same direction as the man, but comfortably behind him, and moving at a slower pace.
Every evening we take these walks, just before breakfast. The perfect start to our busy nights. There is still some finishing work to be done on the two boarding houses. There are lessons for the kids to be taught – generally reading, writing and numbers. I won’t have them being illiterate or innumerate. It simply wouldn’t do. I won’t have them wasting their time – of which they’ve now been gifted with such a longer stretch to govern – and I won’t stand for them losing sight of themselves, and the world around them: not as he did. I need to find a way for us to not punish those that inherit the this earth with hatred. I’m not yet convinced that it’s possible. But that is their challenge, our challenge. That is the research their current schooling is preparing them for. Lives of grace and mercy. It won’t be easy for them. It won’t be easy for any of us.
A small group of the younger ones hurtle past us then, charging down the path towards the swings
on the green that nestles in the gorse fields ahead. They chatter and laugh distractedly. ‘Careful of people walking!’ I call after them.
They’ll be careful when they nearly crash into him.
Kids are as kids do. They’ll be fine.
John is with them. He still hasn’t taken the gift. Other than becoming nocturnal. A contact high. But blood still pumps in his veins. And good for him. He has come along very well. Especially given the loss of his mother. She had been beyond repair and had insisted on skulking back to the city. Back to her old habits. She’d lasted a week. Anna had worried that she might somehow bring us unwanted attention. And so I had threatened the woman as much as was necessary to ensure her silence. It hadn’t taken much. She feared us plenty. And I think she wanted nothing more than to forget all about us, whatever it took. Which was fine by me. And fine by John, too, it seemed. But I was glad we’d at least tried. It strengthened John’s trust in us, if nothing else. He’d settled, and thrived, ever since. Which made me happy. Makes me happy.
Anna squeezes my hand.
Peter sings.
Oompa Loompa…
A thick, low-slung ground mist greets us at the green. The bigger kids are leaving curlicued jet streams in their wake as they chase each other through it. Peter runs across to join them, and one of them, Megan, drops out from their game to lift him onto a swing. Anna and I sit on the bench silently and watch them. With the mist on the ground and the gorse pluming in black shadows beyond them, they look as if they are running across a cloudscape in the sky. My heart soars, even if it doesn’t beat.
I sit there, with my wife, with our child growing in her womb, and our family all about us, hurtling and laughing across the roof of the world, and I know that the past is done, and the future is all to be built. I look at them and bestow the universe to them, because it is not mine to cling on to. It is theirs. It is theirs.
Peter swings and swoops and trills, ‘Higher! Higher!’
And I second that motion.
Second, third and fourth it. Ad infinitum.
Fly, my pretties! Fly!
For thine is the kingdom.
The power and the glory.
For ever and ever.
Amen.
To those who know, but most especially to Jeanette Adams
for teaching me how, thank you, and madlove, always.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Markham spent his childhood between school on the south coast of England, and summers in his maternal homeland in south-west Ireland. A passionate storyteller, he has developed narrative architecture and content for some of the biggest brands in the world, including Disney and Playstation, and written for a variety of periodicals in the field. Markham has written and published stories for all ages, and is the founder of the charitable children’s publishing house Chestnut Tree Tales in Eastbourne. The Truants is his first novel.
COPYRIGHT
First published in the United Kingdom and the
United States by Duckworth Overlook in 2017
This ebook published in 2017
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Copyright © 2017 Lee Markham
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The right of Lee Markham to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
9780715651773