by Jo Verity
As they swung round a bend in the track, she saw four men walking towards them and caught Arthur’s hand. These were the first people they’d seen since they left home. Wearing shabby waxed jacket and battered caps, they were not at all like the county set who shopped in Ludlow on a Saturday morning. Two black dogs walked to heel and each of the men carried a shotgun, the stock under his arm and the barrel, broken, across his forearm. As they came closer, she recognised one of them. It was Prosser.
‘Afternoon, Mrs Wren,’ muttered Prosser, touching his finger to his cap. He ignored the boy.
‘Hello, Mr Prosser.’ She could think of nothing more to say and they passed, their boots crunching on the loose stones. Her heart raced and she was cross that she had allowed herself to be intimidated by the guns. She could feel them looking back at her but she would not allow herself to turn her head, fixing her eyes on the winding track, glad to be holding the small hand in hers.
Two shots rang out from the wood behind them. The noise ricocheted between the valley sides and was soon followed by another volley. She glanced down at Arthur. ‘’Spect they’re shooting crows,’ he said.
They had been walking for an hour. The boy had stopped chatting and she knew that he must be tired. They should turn back and retrace their steps but she didn’t want to go into the wood, where Prosser and his mates were skulking about, shooting things. She pictured the Ordnance Survey map which Tom had pinned on the board in the utility room. The ridge that they were following was the high point separating their valley from the next. If she could find a route down into the adjacent valley, there was certain to be a phone box somewhere along the road, and she could ring Tom to come and pick them up. She asked Arthur to keep his eye open for a footpath and within minutes he was pulling her towards a gap in the trees.
They turned off the ridge road and followed the path. Sometimes the leggy hazels and hawthorn trees on either side met overhead, cutting out the sunlight. The stones here were covered with moss and dangerously slippery. Arthur looked anxious when she missed her footing and she laughed to reassure him, but a fall here could be disastrous. It had been irresponsible to drag the child so far and now she was anxious to get him home safely.
The descent was quick. The hedges became more defined and the lane led them past a farmhouse where the footpath became pitted tarmac, broadening to a car’s width. The house was drab and rendered with pebbledash. Net curtains obscured the windows. The woodwork was warped and rotten and flaking paint made it impossible to identify the colour of the front door. A ramshackle sprawl of sheds and outhouses surrounded the house and several vehicles stood, rusting, in the farmyard.
‘Look,’ Arthur pointed to the fence running up to the house. Strung along it, like a necklace of voodoo charms, hung a selection of dead birds and small animals. Crows, squirrels, magpies and a stoat or two dangled by the neck. Some had been there for months but some looked fresh. ‘What’s it for?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s to scare other animals away.’
‘Or people.’
If she were inclined to fancy, she might have thought someone was watching her. She turned quickly, peering back at the farmhouse, expecting to see a curtain twitch, but there was no sign of life, not even a dog barking in the buildings.
And then they were down at the road. It felt gloomier here than in their own valley. The orientation must be different, the valley sides steeper. She looked back from the road but there was no sign of the house, nothing at all to indicate that it existed.
She took over the navigation, walking down the narrow road where she was sure it would join the main road to Ludlow. Arthur looked pale but wasn’t grumbling. He was trailing Excalibur behind him now. She checked her pockets but she had no coins to make a call even if she found a phone box.
Ahead she heard the sound of a vehicle, toiling up the road in a low gear. Arthur caught her hand and dragged her to the side of the lane, pulling her tight in against the quickthorn. The spiked twigs punctured her jeans and dug into her legs. She remembered how his mother had died and realised why he was so concerned. ‘It’s OK, Art,’ she said as she saw Len’s van grinding towards them. ‘It’s the postman.’
Len drew alongside and stopped the van. ‘Afternoon. I haven’t seen you up this way before, Mrs Wren.’
Anna explained how they came to be here. She wanted to ask him about the house. The postman would be bound to know all about it but something stopped her. ‘Is there a phone box along this road?’
Len, revelling in the drama, said that there was but it was out of order. ‘I’d offer you a lift … but it’s against Post Office policy.’ He let this statement settle and then held his finger aloft, as if he’d had an astounding revelation. ‘You can use my mobile if you like.’
She phoned Tom. It rang ten times before the machine cut in. If Arthur and Len had not been there she would have sworn. The only other number she could recall was Sally’s, so she tried that. Bill answered before the third ring, as though he were waiting for her call. ‘Hi, Bill. Could you pass a message to Tom? He’ll be in the outhouse or the garden. Just tell him we’ll keep walking towards the main road, if he could come and collect us.’
‘It’ll be quicker if I come,’ said Bill. ‘No arguments. I’m on my way.’
Before she could protest he had put the phone down.
Len drove off, up the valley, and they started walking again. Arthur insisted that they walk on the right ‘to face the oncoming traffic’. She remembered her father drumming this into her head when she was a child and having no idea what he was talking about. There had been so many things that she had accepted without questioning and, if there ever had been questions to ask, she always went to her mother.
Her socks were too thin and her boots were starting to rub. The boy dragged his feet and she knew he must be exhausted. ‘Won’t be long. You are such a good navigator. I never would have seen that little path.’
‘Is Tom coming for us?’
‘No. Bill. He lives in the house across the yard. You’ll like him. He’s fun.’
There was a wall lining this stretch of the road and she decided to wait here for Bill. Arthur allowed her to lift him up onto the top of the rough stones, then she scrambled up after him, putting her arm around his shoulder, pulling him against her. Almost immediately his eyes closed and he slumped down to rest his head in her lap. She stroked his hair.
Within five minutes Bill turned up. Tom would have told her off for dragging the child so far and gone through a whole list of ‘what if’s’ but Bill just helped her lift him, still clutching his stick, into the back of the car. They took his boots off and she could see the holes in the heels of both socks, a puffy blister evident through one of them.
‘Who’s this?’ whispered Bill.
She told him.
‘Must be a tough little kid.’
‘Mmmm. Maybe. When’s Sally coming back?’
‘Tonight, I think.’
‘I hope you’re going to cook her a nice meal. Bottle of wine. Flowers. Or at least hoover around.’
‘Is that what women like? Is that what Tom does?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘What’s his secret then?’
It had been kind of him to come for them but she was tired and didn’t feel up to coping with Bill’s advances. ‘Tom’s secret? He knows how to pleasure me.’ It was a phrase she’d heard Germaine Greer use, in a lecture, and had all but given up hope of using it herself.
‘Ahhh.’ Bill flushed. ‘Good old Tom.’
They arrived back at the house to find the yard full of people. Maddy and Taliesin were talking to Celia and Mark. Peter was lifting a suitcase out of his car. There was no sign of Tom. Taliesin smiled when he saw his son, asleep on the back seat. ‘Everything OK?’ he said.
‘Fine. I’m afraid I walked him too far, poor little soul. I phoned but nobody answered, so Bill very kindly came to rescue us.’
Arthur woke, as children often do when
movement stops. The short nap had revived him and Anna suggested that they go in for a drink and a piece of cake.
Maddy followed them in. ‘You were away for ages. Where did you go?’
Anna told her.
‘Dad went down to the village, looking for you. He’s still not speaking to me. Now he’s upstairs, pretending he’s working.’
‘I’d better go and see him.’
‘I’ve been thinking, Mum. Perhaps we should leave. Dad just has to be in control, doesn’t he? Can’t he accept that I’m not like his beloved Flora?’ She put her arms around her mother. ‘You can see we’re fine, can’t you, Mum?’
‘You can’t leave tonight. I’ll go and talk to your father. You see to Art. He must be famished.’
She ran upstairs. Glancing out of the landing window, she saw Taliesin laughing and talking with the Webbers. That was the way civilised people behaved.
She tapped on the door of Tom’s workroom. He was sitting at his drawing board but she could see that he hadn’t been working. A doodle wandered across the tracing paper, its meanderings covering it from the bottom right hand corner to the middle of the sheet. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi. I couldn’t find you.’
‘I rang but there was no answer.’
‘I’m sorry. I must have been outside.’ The formality and coolness had returned.
‘Have you talked to Maddy since lunchtime?’
‘No. I’ve been working.’
‘She thinks you want her to leave. That you don’t want to see her any more.’
‘That’s rubbish. Of course I want to see her. She’s so melodramatic. I can’t bear to watch her heading for another disaster, that’s all. We don’t know a thing about this man.’
‘We do, actually.’ She recounted what Arthur had told her. ‘I don’t think he’s quite as alternative as she’d like us to think. And if they’re on their way to visit Charles Leighton, it must be to tell him about the baby. That seems a pretty reasonable thing for a young couple to do.’ She went for broke. ‘I rather like him. And the little boy is amazing.’
‘Oh well, I’m obviously the villain of the piece.’
‘Don’t be silly. Why don’t you come down and have a glass of wine before supper? It’s chicken and mushroom pie. Can’t we just have a nice meal together and take things as they come? Please. For me.’
By the time supper was ready, Arthur had flaked out. ‘He’s really good company,’ said Anna as she passed the dishes around. ‘I kept forgetting he’s a little boy.’
‘He probably spends too much time with adults,’ said Taliesin.
They were civil to each other during the meal. Tom was allowed to make dogmatic statements. Madeleine restricted her conversation to gossip about the Pen Craig inhabitants and their families. Taliesin said very little. Anna, unable to relax, waited for the evening to founder. The danger was that after a few glasses of wine people might be less guarded, but they reached the end of the meal without conflict.
They were finishing the washing up when Steven rang. He sounded agitated. ‘Is Dad trying to wind us up, or something? What’s he playing at? We can rule out all the obvious things – sex, housekeeper, money. She’s eighty-bloody-four for God’s sake.’
‘Why don’t you just ask him?’ said Anna. ‘That seems a reasonable thing to do. We know how lonely he’s been. Maybe he chose her so that no one could possibly accuse him of trying to replace Mum. I was hoping that you’d figured it out. You see him more often than we do.’
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t go there that often. I’m knackered by the time I get home from work and you know he doesn’t get on with Elaine.’
She heard footsteps climbing the stairs and the sound of a running tap. Steven was getting around to his favourite subject, his relationship with Elaine. She cut him short, reminding him that they had visitors. They arranged to speak again soon but, after she’d put the phone down, she realised she had no idea why he’d called.
Tom was already in bed, the duvet drawn up around his neck, but she could see that his pyjamas were neatly folded on the chair.
11
There was a bus leaving Ludlow for Brecon at mid-day, and Anna was to give them a lift, then carry on to the supermarket. She’d become accustomed to catering for two and the visitors had, in less than two days, cleared the fridge and made inroads into their emergency rations. On her way to the dustbin she had bumped into Celia, who was also planning to go shopping, and Anna had offered her a lift too. Before the move, Mark had made calculations of the savings in petrol and car depreciation if they doubled up on this sort of journey. They had made a real effort for the first few weeks, but the organisation required and inconvenience caused outweighed the benefits and enthusiasm petered out.
Everyone was still on best behaviour, with Tom trying particularly hard. Anna had seen him laughing with Maddy over some photographs which had come to light during the move. Then he took Taliesin off to show him his handiwork in the outhouse. Not much, but it was a start. Arthur was quiet and she wondered whether he was suffering from yesterday’s walk. Her own legs were still stiff and they were a lot longer than his. She checked the map and saw that they had covered over four miles, which wasn’t bad going for a five-year-old. ‘I’m nearly six,’ he protested when she traced their route with her finger.
‘When is your birthday?’
He looked across to his father and frowned, putting his head on one side. ‘Dad?’
‘September 21st,’ said Taliesin. ‘That’s almost half a year away, Art.’
‘And, d’you know, that’s the very date we moved here,’ said Anna, ‘so we’ll never forget to send you a card.’
The boy smiled and his plain face lit up. ‘Will you come to my birthday party?’
The room fell silent. Arthur wasn’t the only one waiting to hear how she would respond. ‘September’s a long way away, but if it’s at all possible, and if you still want me to, I promise I’ll come.’
They went around the house, collecting their bits and pieces. Arthur had a small blue backpack which contained his treasures. When he tipped the contents onto the bed, she was intrigued to see what he had chosen to bring on his visit. A magnifying glass. Some marbles. A pencil and a notebook. A necklace of glass beads. A tennis ball. And a photograph in a plastic wallet. It showed a woman standing with Taliesin on a beach. ‘That’s my Mum and Dad,’ he said.
Anna looked at the laughing girl, her hand brought up to shield her eyes from the sun. ‘She’s very beautiful.’
‘She’s dead.’
She could attempt to soften death with a litany of perhaps-es or maybe-s but children craved certainties. She’d tried the ‘some people think this, some people think that’ approach with her own daughters, but they had stared her in the eye and asked ‘But what do you think, Mum?’ However Taliesin had explained the tragedy to his son, she felt sure that conventional religion was not involved. How could any divine master plan demand that his beautiful mother be mown down by a joy-rider?
The boy touched her hand. ‘It’s OK, Anna.’
‘I think I’m going to give you a birthday present now, a sort of five-and-a-half-years-old present. Wait right there.’ She ran down to Tom’s office and searched out the box of coloured pencils which she had bought a few weeks earlier. She’d barely used them and they looked brand new. Folding them in a scrap of gift-wrap, she took them back upstairs.
Arthur was standing exactly where she had left him and he quivered with anticipation when he saw the parcel. ‘When can I open it?’
‘Save it ‘til you’re on the bus.’
He placed the package in the front pocket of his bag and took out the string of beads, holding them out to her. ‘I made this. Maddy helped me. It’s for you.’
She put the necklace on and went to the mirror. ‘Thank you. They’re the prettiest beads I’ve ever had.’
He gave her a sweet smile.
Tom found farewells hard. He mumbled a few words to Ta
liesin and shook his hand, patted Arthur on the head and hugged Madeleine, pressing a roll of notes into her hand. She started to refuse but Anna shook her head and pushed them into her pocket.
‘Poor Dad,’ said Maddy, watching Tom retreat to the house, blowing his nose.
Before they reached the bottom of the drive Anna was wishing that Celia wasn’t with them. She had squeezed into the back seat with Art and Taliesin, to allow Maddy ‘plenty of room for her bump’, then for the whole journey she enthused about babies and motherhood. Celia was a mother by adoption so what did she know about it? But Maddy took it all on the chin, smiling and nodding. It was impressive how tolerant her daughter could be of someone else’s mother.
She watched Arthur in the rear view mirror. He sat stiffly, avoiding contact with Celia. It was doubtful whether he’d met anyone quite like her before. It was unlikely that female Travellers applied lipstick, or dabbed perfume behind their ears, before they went shopping.
Had she been on her own, she would have waited with them but because Celia was with her it was impossible. Double-parked near the bus stop, they made their garbled farewells, promising to keep in touch and to visit again soon. She drove on to the supermarket, miserable with all the things she hadn’t been able to say.
They loaded the bags of shopping into the car. Anna was more than ready to get back but Celia suggested that they have lunch in the town. ‘Let’s try the new place on the corner. Jenny says the food’s excellent.’ Anna had the impression that it wasn’t a spontaneous suggestion.
As they walked up the wide street, past the Tudor splendour of The Feathers Hotel, she glimpsed their reflection in the dusty shop windows. They made an odd couple. Celia, dressed for a day at the office, wore court shoes, American tan tights, grey pleated skirt and pink fleece. On the other hand she, in dungarees, rainbow-striped cardigan and boots looked as if she’d wandered out of the garden. Had she brushed her hair that morning?