18
Later, driving to Barnsley with Riley, Annie found that something had cleared in her mind, and not gradually but all of a sudden, like the screen used to do on their old television set in Coventry, when she thumped the top with the side of her balled-up fist. Now, she could see Finn racing through the waves on Formby sands: could picture him tearing up and down the hollows of the dunes. If he stayed here, with her, he would be always on a lead, with the occasional meagre five minutes’ freedom in the shallows of the reservoir. His life would be all constraint and frustrated longing. It wouldn’t do, she thought: it wasn’t fair. Yes, she loved him completely. But might it also be an act of love to let him go? And might it not be so bad, to say goodbye if she knew who had him and where he was? She could visit, even. Walk with him on the sands, maybe. Whereas poor old Fritz …
‘Grandma?’
Riley had negotiated his way into the front seat. He only wanted Finn’s head on his shoulder when the dog was dry, he told Annie. ‘He smells gross when he’s wet, like Blake’s old joggers,’ he said, so Annie took pity on the child and let him clamber forwards and settle next to her in the front. Personally she couldn’t see the problem with it anyway – it was Bailey’s rule, not her own – and it was nice to have him beside her: more companionable. But she knew Bailey wouldn’t like it so he was tightly strapped in and she flung her left arm across him each time she braked. Her anxiety was infectious so Riley had his hands on either side of the seat, gripping on for dear life. He looked as if he was mid-ride on a roller coaster.
‘Grandma?’ he said again, because Annie, lost in Finn’s new life on Formby sands, hadn’t answered.
‘Yes, pet?’
‘Where are we going now?’
‘To the Halifax.’
‘For lunch?’
‘No, it’s a building society, a kind of bank. Are you hungry though?’
‘No.’
‘Well that’s a pity, because next to the bank, there’s a baker’s called Fletcher’s, where they sell the best cakes in the world.’
She felt Riley look at her so she glanced across and nodded at him. ‘It’s true. So we can get you something there. You don’t need to be hungry to eat a cake.’
‘Okay,’ he said, then, ‘Grandma?’
‘Yes?’
‘Were you sad when Finn ate the sheep?’
‘He didn’t eat them,’ she said, a little sharply, although Riley didn’t seem to notice.
‘Wasn’t he hungry?’
‘He attacked the sheep. He didn’t eat them.’
‘Yeah, but why didn’t he eat them?’
‘Because … oh, I don’t know,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe he didn’t get the chance. Sandra fetched him off, you see.’
The image of Sandra, bloodied and furious, rose briefly before her eyes. Annie blinked, and it was gone.
‘Oh,’ Riley said. ‘I bet Finn was cross.’
Annie chuckled. ‘I bet he was, too.’
It wasn’t funny, of course, but the child’s frank acceptance of the facts, his unruffled curiosity for more detail, had helped to heal her tormented soul by somehow relocating the incident to a more manageable realm in her mind. Well, what was so calamitous about it anyway? Wasn’t it really quite ordinary for a dog to set upon sheep? Wasn’t it almost humdrum? In this new spirit of cheerful defiance she withdrew the cash from her building-society savings account and then, having wedged the bundle of notes into the very bottom of her handbag, she took Riley into Fletcher’s where, to her undisguised disappointment, he chose a gingerbread man over a vanilla slice or an éclair.
‘But it’s so plain!’ she said to him. ‘Have something with cream.’
‘I like his face,’ Riley said. ‘And his buttons.’
So Annie had no choice but to buy it for him, and they sat in the car to eat with a modicum of privacy. It was cosy, side by side in the Nissan, the windows steamed up by Finn’s damp fur and hot breath, so that they remained unobserved by passing shoppers. Riley nibbled with delicate respect on one of the gingerbread feet while Annie battled valiantly with a custard slice.
‘Yours is really big, Grandma,’ Riley said, watching her over his biscuit.
‘Not really, not when you think about it,’ she said. ‘It’s only a bit of pastry with a filling.’ Her voice was clotted with custard, which made both of them laugh.
‘What are you going to buy now?’ Riley asked. He’d eaten the foot, and was sliding the gingerbread man back into his paper bag. Annie looked at him quizzically. ‘Buy?’ she said.
‘With all those dollars.’ Riley nodded down at the handbag, which sat in the footwell of the passenger seat with the shoulder strap hooked twice round the gearstick to foil a snatch-and-grab attempt.
‘They’re English pounds,’ Annie said. ‘Two hundred and forty of them. They’re for a man called Mr Wright.’
‘Mr Wright,’ Riley said, trying out the name. ‘It’s a heck of a lot of money.’
She laughed. ‘It is. He’s the farmer, y’see, the one whose sheep died.’ She heard her own words and felt as if she was slipping back into her old evasive ways so she added, ‘Were killed, I mean.’
Riley thought for a moment then said, ‘Can I come too, to pay the farmer?’
‘Oh, well …’ Annie said. She certainly intended to visit Mr Wright today but it didn’t seem quite proper, somehow, to take the child.
‘Ple-ease,’ Riley said. ‘I want to see the farm.’
‘It isn’t very interesting. Just buildings and a muddy yard.’
‘I’d like that. I like buildings and mud.’
She considered him for a moment. ‘Well …’ she said again.
‘Thanks, Grandma,’ he said, and he gave her a cheeky grin, which reminded her so powerfully of the infant Andrew that she gasped and laid a hand on her heart, as if to steady its wild beating.
Instead of driving into the farmyard as she had last time, Annie parked in the lane. Finn was still in the car, after all: it wouldn’t do to flaunt him under the farmer’s nose. She tucked in so close to the hedgerow that spindly fingers of hawthorn pressed against the windows and Riley had to get out of the car on her side. Then they walked hand in hand up into the yard where the sounds from an outbuilding – bleating and quite audible cursing – hinted at the whereabouts of Mr Wright. Riley’s face lit with excitement and he shucked off Annie’s hand and barrelled off towards the noise, sploshing through thick brown puddles, sending a trail of who-knew-what up his trouser legs. Annie opened her mouth to protest, but then simply followed in his wake, grateful for her sturdy walking boots.
The barn into which Riley had now vanished was long and low, and patently lopsided; the roof had slumped at one end, as if from fatigue or disappointment. The open doors hung askew too, listing away from their moorings where the old hinges clung on to softly splintering timber. Annie peered into the gloaming of the interior. There was a fetid stink, as thick in the air as a solid wall. The farmer seemed to be straddling a sheep, which bucked and tossed between his legs. She stepped further inside and saw that Riley was already positioned on the edge of the action, his arms folded as he watched with cool concentration. Annie couldn’t tell from here whether Mr Wright – wrapped up as he was in the task in hand – had seen the boy so she ventured further still and coughed, but no one seemed to hear. The sheep, mad with panic, tossed and thrashed then let forth a stream of urine, which gushed around the farmer’s leather boots and splashed into the matted straw of the barn floor.
‘Foot rot,’ Mr Wright said, and he seemed to be answering a question. ‘Spreads through a bloody flock like bastard wildfire.’
‘Mr Wright!’ Annie trotted closer to Riley, gravely alarmed.
The farmer shot her the briefest glance but the sheep, sensing a chance, struggled with new violence inside the brace of his legs, which only made the farmer swear again, a base, barrack-room curse that sent a jolt of shock down Annie’s spine. She wanted to seize Riley and run away, but she was
immobilised by the grotesque novelty of this situation and anyway, the little boy – whose face registered no distress, only lively interest – had stepped sideways, out of reach.
‘Op’n that gate, lad,’ Mr Wright said, nodding at a metal pen ahead of him.
Riley sprang into action and slung open the gate. The farmer hauled the sheep out from between his legs, one hand gripping its neck, the other clutching a woolly rump. He launched it with all his grim strength so that the momentum left the afflicted creature with little option but to bundle forwards into the pen, whereupon Riley swung the gate shut, smart as a regular farm hand, and with a mighty two-handed effort slid the metal bolt across to secure it. The sheep lowered itself tenderly onto its front knees and glowered at him through slitted eyes.
‘Grand job, lad,’ Mr Wright said, in the pleasant tone of voice that Annie remembered from their previous encounter. ‘Nah then, who are you?’
‘Riley Doyle,’ Riley said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He held out his hand and the farmer shook it.
‘Grand job,’ he said again. ‘Shut that gate like lightning.’ He ruffled Riley’s hair with a large, grimy hand and smiled at Annie, who wasn’t remotely ready to smile back. Instead she stood in a stupor and stared at him. She couldn’t bear bad language, had no defence against its strange and sinister power. She thought of the thug in the white van, days and days ago. She thought of Vince, in a temper. Mr Wright, oblivious to his offence, studied Riley and wagged a finger at him thoughtfully. ‘Nah then,’ he said, ‘that’s nivver a Barnsley accent, so wheer’s tha from, lad?’
Riley looked at Annie, and for his sake she managed to say, ‘Australia.’
The farmer whistled through his teeth and Riley, understanding through his grandma’s answer the question that’d been asked, dived in with details of exactly where in that vast and far-away land he came from. ‘And I’m staying at Grandma’s because Grandpa’s nearly dead so we needed to see him,’ concluded the boy, with piping cheerfulness. ‘But today we took Finn for a walk and now we’ve come to pay you for the killed sheep.’
‘Oh Riley, shush,’ Annie said, stung into speech by the boy’s carefree indiscretion, and the farmer, meaning to reassure, gave her an understanding wink, which made her purse her lips in annoyance. ‘You want to mind your language,’ she said. ‘The words you used in front of this child!’
‘Beg pardon,’ he said, unabashed. He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his brown corduroys and grinned at Riley. ‘Lad can’t foller what am sayin’ anyroad.’
‘Well, I can,’ Annie said. ‘It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t right.’ The smell inside the barn was oppressive and she wondered if it would cling to her clothes, like cigarette smoke.
‘Aye well, beg pardon,’ he said again. ‘Not used to comp’ny except for sheep, an’ they dunt mind a bit o’ swearin’.’ This made him laugh, so Riley laughed too, although at what he had no idea. Mr Wright took a shapeless tweed jacket from a hook in a beam and shrugged himself into it. ‘Nah then, follow me, I’ve summat to show you.’ He set off out of the barn and Riley skipped after him. Annie said, ‘No, no, we can’t stay,’ but only the sheep in its pen remained to hear her, so she followed her grandson and the farmer out of the gloom and into the cleaner, colder air of the yard.
They ended up, to Annie’s agitation, in the farmhouse kitchen but there was no sign of the rabbit-skinning crone, only a litter of brand-new Jack Russell puppies to look at, six of them in a companionable heap, blunt-nosed and blind in their basket. The mother, a weary-looking white-and-tan terrier, sprawled in their midst and regarded Riley with a sort of resigned mistrust when he knelt on the floor and hung over her brood.
‘Don’t touch,’ Annie said, because she’d always thought this was an absolute and unbending rule, but Mr Wright said, ‘Nay, it’s all reight,’ and he scooped up a pup in his big hand so that it lay upside down in his palm, then tipped it onto Riley’s lap. Only the boy’s quick reaction stopped it from rolling clear onto the stone floor.
‘Oh!’ Annie said. ‘Be careful!’ but the farmer only chuckled. Tenderly, Riley lifted the little creature, cupping it in two hands. He sniffed its head and nuzzled his nose into its yeasty warm fur then laid it down again with infinite care among its tangle of siblings.
‘Pick up another one, lad,’ Mr Wright said. ‘She’ll not mind. She’s not keeping ’em, anyroad.’ The terrier matriarch, surrounded by her young, looked away from them with steady indifference, as if to prove his point.
‘Cool,’ Riley said, lifting another warm body from the basket. It lay on its back in the hammock of his hand. ‘They’re so cool, aren’t they, Grandma?’
‘If you say so,’ Annie said tightly, but then she gave a little laugh, because her heart was thoroughly melted at the sight. It cast her back three years, when she’d driven all the way to Huddersfield to view a litter of retriever puppies. She’d imagined going home with a little female, whom she planned to call Lottie, but in the event she’d asked the breeder for help; left to herself, she’d have taken all of them, just to avoid having to pick only one. The breeder, a brisk, sharp-nosed woman named Mrs Purley, had immediately hauled out Finn from the confines of an open-topped metal cage, picking him up by the loose skin of his neck so that he hung there, as slack and unformed as a string bag of groceries. Annie snatched him to safety and held him tight to her breast. He looked much like the rest, she thought, but Mrs Purley told her she’d seen something in this one; a loyal heart, she said; he’d love her till the end of his days. As well, she pointed out his broad head and fine, pale colouring, and showed her his parents’ excellent hip scores, which Annie didn’t care about, although she’d nodded her approval. He came with a Kennel Club certificate and a long family tree of dams and sires, and his pedigree name was Finnberg Myttendale Moorquest, but from the moment Annie held him, he was simply her own dear Finn. Thinking of him now, with the beginnings of fond tears in her eyes, she remembered the twenty-pound notes at the bottom of her handbag and the purpose of their visit.
‘Oh!’ she said, and she rifled through the contents of her bag until her fingers settled on the wad of money. ‘Here!’ She thrust it at Mr Wright, who looked startled, and then acutely embarrassed as he realised what it was. He pushed the notes into the pocket of his trousers with bungling haste and looked everywhere but at her as he did so. Well, good, thought Annie. Nice to know she wasn’t the only one prone to the blushes.
When they got home, Andrew opened the door before they were even halfway up the path. He looked different, Annie thought at once: a little serious, a little guarded. He looked like a man with something significant to say, something uncomfortable perhaps, something that had to be aired, whatever the consequences. He let Finn through into the house, and then Riley, waiting for the boy to pass before speaking, and Annie knew then that Vince had died; she was certain of it. She prepared herself to receive the news soberly, appropriately, without betraying so much as a grain of relief.
‘What is it, love?’ she said, and her heart beat faster with rising hope. In response he held out a small, square black and white photograph, irreparably creased from a long-ago fold across its centre. It had been shot in sunshine and overexposed, and Annie had to squint at it to make out the image. A young woman smiled shyly at her from down the years, holding in her arms a baby, loosely wrapped in a trailing blanket.
‘I started on the loft,’ Andrew said. ‘We need to talk.’
19
For a while after turning up with baby Robert, Vince hung about the house as if he was trying to live there, giving it a go. Annie knew that the unremarkable routines of family life were a privilege to which he was no longer entitled, but even so each time she saw him – on the stairs, in the bathroom, at the table – she felt a jolt of surprise, followed by an undeniable stirring of satisfaction that her husband was home. Anyone might have thought his flagrant and unapologetic infidelity would be too much to bear, but even at the very beginning, when they were first mar
ried – no, before then – she’d known he’d look elsewhere: identified his roving eye, his restless spirit, his selfish vanity and knew, too, from her own face in the mirror, that she was no match for him. Still though, she’d been able to peep shyly at his handsome features and take some pleasure and pride in his belonging, in some small way, to her.
It was the same now. He was older, of course, just as she was, but he was handsome still, in the right light, at the right angle, if those louche Lothario looks were to your taste. She didn’t like him much, mind you. She treated him as coldly as she dared, punishing him for his sins. But she took secret pleasure in his maleness, the layered smells of aftershave, cigarettes and beer. She appreciated the space he took up in the house, his long legs folded awkwardly under the kitchen table, or stretched out too far across the hearth rug in the poky sitting room, which she wouldn’t use if he was positioned there, recumbent on the sofa like a semi-domesticated old wolf.
For his part, Vince had no real intention of sticking around for long. He was biding his time, waiting for the next adventure to present itself. This little terraced house in Coventry, no longer his home in any meaningful sense, was a refuge, a place to lick his wounds and regroup. Of course, little Robert was his trump card; his wife had wanted another baby, so back he had come, carrying one. She could be as pious as she liked, but when he caught her with the baby in her arms, waltzing him through the narrow hallway, crooning a love song, Vince knew his own position was unassailable. Even so, he was truly wrong-footed when one day, perhaps two weeks into his uncomfortable residency in Sydney Road, he said, ‘Morning, Robert,’ to his younger child and Annie said, ‘His name’s Andrew.’
This Much is True: How far will a mother go to protect her shocking secret? Page 16