‘I’m fine,’ said Dadda.
‘You’re not fine,’ said Laurel. ‘You need to get yourself to the doctor’s. Bill will take you in the morning, won’t you, Bill?’
‘For Christ’s sake, stop mithering him,’ said Bill. ‘We’re burying his father tomorrow, we’ve not time to bugger about going to the doctor’s, have we?’
‘But how are you going to carry the Gaffer into church, Tom?’ said Laurel, putting her hand on his arm as he sat down. ‘A virus can make you as weak as a kitten.’
‘Are we going to eat or what?’ said Dadda. ‘I thought you lot were starving?’
Laurel uncovered the goose and it steamed and sweated.
‘Looks good, Bill,’ said Angela.
‘It’s been fattening all summer, this bugger,’ said Bill, standing up to whet the knife on the steel.
Under the table Kat squeezed my hand.
‘Oh, don’t give any to Kat,’ I said.
‘Don’t you like goose, love?’ said Laurel.
‘I don’t eat meat at all,’ said Kat.
‘Didn’t you notice what she had at the reception?’ I said.
‘No, love,’ said Laurel. ‘I can’t say I did.’
‘It were that stuff that looked like the pigs’ porridge, Laurel,’ said Liz, and Angela laughed.
‘Grace tried it, didn’t you?’ said Kat. ‘You liked it.’
Grace glanced up from her plate and nodded as she buttered a slice of bread.
‘You don’t even eat fish then, love?’ said Bill.
‘Nothing that was once alive,’ said Kat.
‘Christ, John, don’t tell her where your dad’s taking the lambs next month, will you?’ said Liz.
‘How long have you been like that, love?’ Laurel said, her face full of concern.
‘A few years,’ said Kat. ‘I watched a documentary. I’ll just have some of the vegetables, it’s fine.’
‘It’s no wonder there’s nowt of you, lady,’ said Angela.
‘I can make you summat else, if you like,’ said Laurel, lifting herself out of her chair. ‘I’m sure Tom will have something in the pantry you can eat, won’t you, Tom?’
‘Really,’ said Kat. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘But I do worry,’ said Laurel. ‘I don’t want you going hungry.’
‘I won’t go hungry,’ said Kat. ‘I had something on the train.’
‘Leave her be,’ said Bill. ‘She knows her own mind, don’t you, love?’
He smiled and poured her a glass of blackberry wine. A larger measure than anyone else’s.
‘No no, not for me,’ Kat said, and I could tell that she was thinking that this was the moment to give everyone the news. But Bill just winked and carried on pouring and then Laurel changed the subject.
‘What will you do about the Wood, Tom?’ she said. ‘Will you have to cut a lot of the trees down?’
‘Let’s not talk about that tonight,’ said Angela. ‘We’re meant to be thinking about the Gaffer.’
‘I were just asking,’ said Laurel. ‘We can’t leave it as it is.’
‘We’re doing nowt, until we’ve heard what Vinny Sturzaker has to say,’ Bill said.
‘I’ve more important things to do than interrogate little lads in the village,’ said Dadda. ‘And I’m not going round accusing folk when I’ve no proof.’
‘Quite right,’ said Angela. ‘You don’t know it were Vinny, Bill.’
‘But Betty swears that she saw him heading off to Sullom Wood yesterday,’ said Laurel.
‘Betty Ward’s full of it,’ said Angela.
‘Look, everyone knows that the Sturzakers don’t teach their kids right from wrong,’ said Bill. ‘They never have done.’
‘Jackie does her best,’ said Laurel.
‘Jackie?’ said Bill. ‘She’s as witless as her bloody husband, that woman.’
‘It can’t be easy for her, though,’ said Laurel. ‘Come on.’
‘I blame the school,’ said Liz. ‘They never do owt about Vinny. You know they tried to make out it were our Grace’s fault that he nearly broke her bloody arm?’
Grace looked at her sharply. She obviously didn’t want to be reminded.
‘When was this?’ said Kat, touching Grace’s hand. ‘What happened?’
‘It were summat and nowt,’ said Angela.
‘Mam, she could barely move for a week,’ said Liz.
‘Her and Vinny were both as bad as each other that day,’ said Angela, giving Grace a look before she could argue.
‘That’s what they said at the school,’ said Liz.
‘They do what they can, I’m sure,’ said Laurel, turning to me. ‘Teachers can’t discipline children like they used to, can they, John?’
‘Have you seen the place where he works?’ said Liz. ‘He doesn’t have to.’
‘We get our share of villains,’ I said. ‘Believe me.’
‘I’d like to have put Vinny Sturzaker in front of Mr Rose,’ said Bill, cutting the first slice off the breast. ‘Remember him?’
‘What were his cane made of?’ said Dadda.
‘It weren’t bamboo, I can tell you that,’ said Angela, showing Grace the scar on her palm.
‘I know it sounds cruel,’ said Laurel, as she took the lid off the potatoes, ‘but I think it does a child good to be frightened sometimes.’
Kat looked at them as they spoke, wanting to say something. She’d told me often enough that the nursery wasn’t without its problems. It wasn’t all singing and painting rainbows. But she believed that children were innocent parrots of their mothers’ and fathers’ prejudices. Wickedness wasn’t innate.
Well, she hadn’t seen what Lennie Sturzaker used to do to me.
No, some children are like pigs in a wood. Weaknesses to them are as pungent as truffles.
∾
He must have sniffed me out at an early age, because I can’t remember a time when Lennie hadn’t cornered me at break or after school. There was, of course, a rivalry between the village kids and the Endlanders that went further back than even the Gaffer could remember, but Lennie didn’t ever pick on Jeff or Liz. Mostly because Jeff had clowned his way into immunity and Liz was a girl—if she were to use her fists on him, he wouldn’t be able to hit her back.
On the other hand, I was fair game. A drip, a poufter, a soft-arse. At playtime, he’d bar my way with a hand against the wall and knock up his chin.
‘All right, Pansycock? Bet I can make you cry.’
Sometimes he tried—a quick knee or knuckle—and sometimes Liz would come and shove him away, and then it was, what? You need a girl to fight for you, Pantycost? Sometimes his brother, Sam, would call him away to play with Mike Moorcroft and Jason Earby instead. They couldn’t understand his fascination with me, not when there was better sport to be had with Davy Wigton, who was permanently on a hair trigger and seemed to cry if they even so much as looked at him. Whereas I did nothing.
Perhaps that was why Lennie wouldn’t leave me alone. Or perhaps he was using me to prove himself to Sam, who called him Thunderbelly or Blubber and pulled his shirt-tails out of his trousers to show everyone the rings of fat. Sometimes Sam would jump out from behind the bins and make everyone laugh by knuckle-scrubbing Lennie’s hair, cropped suede short because of his susceptibility to headlice. Sometimes they’d arm-wrestle in front of the girls. Sometimes they’d fight in the playground and Sam would always win and leave Lennie bent double and gulping for breath. Those were good days, when Sam humiliated his brother. But it didn’t always work in my favour.
One lunchtime, a week or so before the end of the summer term, I’d found myself pushed by Sam to the edge of the field along with Lennie, the whole school behind us shouting, race race race. First to the churchyard wall and back.
I took it at a pace that made it seem as if I were trying but one that was also slow enough to give Lennie a chance to win. But even then he couldn’t keep up, and I’d touched the wall and was on the return leg befo
re he’d even got halfway. When he finally reached the other side, he threw up in the cut grass and everyone laughed.
It was hard not to enjoy the cheers and the hair ruffling that came my way for winning. Hard not to be satisfied in seeing Lennie sitting cross-legged on the field with his back to everyone, picking the heads off the daisies.
After school, he’d waited for me in the gloom of the lych-gate and grabbed me from behind, his thick white forearm around my neck, and his fist finding its way through my scrabbling hands. He might have been fat, but he was strong with it, and his knuckles made my skull ring. When he caught the edge of my brow the skin split instantly and, not expecting so much blood so soon, he loosened his grip a little and I twisted out of his arms and ran through the graves. At the wall I scrambled over the railings, almost impaling my balls on the spikes, and dropped the last few feet on to the concrete of Archangel Back. Looking up, Lennie appeared and I climbed the fence into Sullom Wood, leaving him wheezing and coughing.
It’s odd to think that he only had a few more weeks left to live then. I used to wonder what he would have done if he’d known.
∾
As we ate, the kitchen window became steamed up from the discussions Dadda and the others were having about the Wood and the villagers, the coming weather, the summer’s yield of hay. It was talk that, like them, rarely left the valley, and Kat struggled to follow the conversation as it ricocheted from one side of the table to the other.
Grace hadn’t said much either, apart from one or two thank yous that Liz had prompted in a tone that made Kat feel sorry for the girl.
‘Here,’ she said, reaching over and patting her hand. ‘I’ve got something for you.’
From the pocket of her cardigan, she brought out the locket and held it up by the chain for Grace to see.
The deliberation that had started about Dadda’s sickly ram petered out, and Laurel put on her glasses.
‘That’s beautiful, is that,’ she said, holding the locket in her palm. ‘Aren’t you lucky, Grace?’
‘Well, you said how much you liked it at the wedding,’ said Kat, standing behind Grace to do up the clasp. ‘I wanted you to have it.’
‘You didn’t need to bring her owt,’ said Liz.
‘Oh, it’s not much,’ said Kat. ‘I’ll never wear it again. Someone might as well get some use out of it.’
‘What do you say?’ said Liz.
‘Thanks,’ said Grace.
‘Not that you deserve owt at the moment,’ said Liz and Angela told her to be quiet.
‘I’ve left it empty,’ said Kat, when Grace prised apart the two halves of the shell. ‘So you can put something special inside.’
‘Isn’t Auntie Katherine lovely?’ said Laurel.
Grace stared at her present and nodded.
‘You might look a bit more grateful,’ said Liz.
‘She’s said thank you, hasn’t she?’ said Angela.
‘It’s the face on her, though,’ said Liz. ‘We’ve happier looking pigs.’
‘I’ve brought something for you as well, Tom,’ said Kat, before an argument could start. ‘It’s from Mum and Dad.’
Dadda left his roll-up in the ashtray and took the card off her.
‘I’m afraid it was either doves or sunsets, or both in this case,’ said Kat.
‘No, it’s very good of them to send it, love,’ said Dadda.
‘Let’s see,’ said Laurel.
He passed it to her and she read what the Reverend had written.
‘It’s a lovely passage is that,’ said Laurel, handing it on to Liz. ‘“I will lift up mine eyes to the hills.” Very appropriate.’
‘It says here that you’re welcome at the vicarage any time, Tom,’ said Liz. ‘If you have a shave you could go for high tea. That’s what you lot have in the afternoons, isn’t it, Mrs Pentecost, when the rest of us are working?’
‘Give over,’ said Bill. ‘She’s not posh, are you, love? John wouldn’t have married her if she was.’
‘I’m sure I remember you going to grammar school, John,’ said Liz.
‘He went to grammar school because he’s got brains,’ said Angela. ‘Not because he’s posh.’
‘Aye, but look where he works,’ said Liz. ‘Mr Pentecost moves in much higher circles these days, you know.’
‘Is it a big house your father has?’ said Angela.
‘No, not really,’ said Kat, even though it was. A Victorian pile set back from the church by a long, striped lawn, where on summer evenings the blackbirds in the willow trees sang as bright as cutlery.
‘Do you still get along with him all right?’ asked Laurel. ‘Even though you didn’t marry in church?’
‘Yes, what does Daddy say about it all?’ said Liz.
Oh, Daddy was a modern man. It was Suffering St Barbara who thought Christendom would fall now that Kat had made her vows in front of a civil servant. No, the Reverend knew that the world had many distractions for young folk like us. He knew that it wasn’t exactly fashionable to go to church, he knew that each new generation was more likely to come to Jesus via a maze than a set of stairs. I shouldn’t worry about what Barbara thought. She didn’t understand the complexities of the contemporary spiritual path as well as he did. Five years of running the teen group on Friday nights, you see.
All this confided to me in the summerhouse one afternoon not long after we’d been married, his hand on my arm, as we watched Barbara coming across the lawn with a tray of drinks and Kat and her younger brother, Rick, following her and mimicking her cautious steps.
Back at home, Kat always reverted to being a little girl again. She allowed herself to be scolded and criticised by her mother, and liked to play and argue over cryptic word games with Rick, who called her Kit-Kat and seemed like a little middle-aged man despite being still at school. He was destined for a clutch of first-class A-levels and then his pick of ancient universities. He was one of those people who seem to absorb information as easily as oxygen, and whenever the Reverend steered the dinner table conversation away from the domestic dramas of the wider family towards literature for my benefit, Rick had always read whatever we discussed. Joyce didn’t faze him. Chekhov he knew. Donne was a doddle.
‘I used to believe in God,’ he told me one night, as he sketched a picture of King John at Runnymede. ‘But then I read The Waste Land and I watched him die.’
‘Die?’ said Kat. ‘That’s three points to me.’
‘No it isn’t,’ said Rick, without looking up. ‘If I’d used the word disintegrate, then maybe.’
‘Cheat.’
‘Cheat? Now, that’s three points.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘Fraid so, Kit-Kat.’
And so they’d go on, playing as if they were little children.
Whenever we came to visit Kat’s family, it was obvious that she would never want to be far away from them, even if her mother corrected her on almost everything she said. But that kindly hand the Reverend so often placed on my arm, was a bestowing of duty. It was up to me to wean her away from the quiet, ticking rooms of the vicarage, away from Barbara too. The Deacon, as he called his wife, meant well, but she didn’t need to be consulted (even in thought) on every decision Katherine made. A bit of distance would do them both good.
But then we’d found out that Kat was pregnant and that was that. Her mother was already making plans for when we came to stay with the baby, and had already picked some names. Rory, she liked, or Lachlan, or Iain, perhaps, after her father—the supplementary ‘i’ something the boy could carry through life to remind him that he was one eighth Gaelic. Or Boyd, maybe, or Fingal, she said as she came round the table with the coffee pot after dinner. She did her best to present them as suggestions.
∾
After we’d eaten, it wasn’t long before the photograph albums were brought out of the cupboard under the dresser. Angela laughed at the old pictures of Liz, Liz laughed at the old pictures of me, all teeth, ears and dishevelled hair
. Though by the time I was mid-way through grammar school, the dark brown curls had unfortunately gone. As I’d got older, it had been Joe Pentecost’s genes that had surfaced most strongly, giving me his prominent Adam’s apple, his mousey double crown, a pair of stringy legs.
Before she turned the page, Laurel kissed her fingers and touched the picture of Jeff that was next to the one of me, the Jeff she’d once known as a cherubic thing of five.
‘He were such a bonny lad,’ she said.
‘Aye, and now look at him,’ said Liz.
‘Oh, he’s still got his looks,’ said Laurel. ‘We all married handsome men, didn’t we, Angela? Your Jim were a good-looking feller. You’ve got his eyes you know, Grace.’
Laurel rotated the page so that Grace could see her maternal grandfather startled by the camera flash one Boxing Day, his nose as red as Mr Punch’s from the brandy he was drinking. He’d been a strongly-built man with thick, sandy hair and the kind of cheekbones that a matinee idol would have coveted. His soft, grey eyes lived on in Grace, as Laurel had said.
‘This is a nice one of him too,’ said Laurel, finding another shot, where Jim was crowned with a yellow paper hat. ‘He looks quite happy, doesn’t he?’
Had he been planning it that day, though? I wonder. As he’d sat there silently eating the pork from the pigs he and Angela had been rearing all summer, had he known what he was going to do?
‘Here, I don’t suppose you’ll have seen these ones of John’s mam, will you, Katherine?’ said Laurel, opening one of the other albums.
Mam had been caught in a moment of work, standing thigh-deep in a yard full of ewes at Gathering, her hands gripping the horns of a four-shear destined for the auction market. They’d have been married about six months then, Mam and Dadda, the same time as us. Mam would have been about as pregnant as Kat, too.
Rather than beautiful, she was what folk in those days would have called handsome: a bright, square face and a nest of springy hair under a fishing hat that seemed to be permanently fitted to her head. She had strong wiry forearms and the rest of her was quietly sturdy under the Fair Isle sweater and dungarees. The same smile was there in every picture, broadened further in the one of her holding me in swaddling blankets.
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