The Litten Path

by James Clarke

  Especially Lawrence. An accidental birth, was there any other kind? So she hadn’t breastfed him and maybe that was why they weren’t close. His pincer lips made her sore so she’d used formula milk and become callous with the bottle. Lawrence gorged himself like a little piglet. Shell had watched the milk dribble down his double-chin.

  Although she knew she was being irrational, it niggled Shell, not breastfeeding her son. It niggled her every time he puked after he’d been fed, and the memories of how it was always Arthur who rose at night to quell the baby’s tears, Arthur who boiled the nappies clean in the saucepan while Shell could only think of shouting to make Lawrence stop crying rather than burp him, take him for a walk or have a bash at a lullaby, all that niggled her, too.

  And she wondered about herself, why she behaved this way. Never playing dress-up. Never doing drawing with Lawrence or telling him stories, failing to coax him from his shyness the way the other women did with their children. Things just never occurred to Shell, and going back to crouch in front of her son in the playground, putting her hands on his shoulders and saying, ‘Don’t worry, you go play,’ felt like too much of a climb-down once she’d realised her mistake.

  Probably Lawrence thought about this stuff too.

  She hunted for her jacket, scaling the stairs and carefully avoiding the scrub marks staining the wall. Her house felt that cheap sometimes. The mounted ornamental plates Arthur bought from the car boot sale, the minibar he’d insisted on in the living room, with its platter for mixing the drinks, all of it made Shell cringe.

  Boss-eyed walls. Lightweight doors. Shell entered the spare room and looked at the blow-up bed, which was semi-deflated. There was her jacket lying next to it. Arthur had taken the spare change from her pockets.

  She swept downstairs, forcing her arms through the sleeves and that bastard from her head. She’d cut Arthur’s bloody hair off the other week. Had to. Fingers like crabs’ legs along his and Lawrence’s scalps. As soon as she found the moth in Lawrence’s hair, she’d crumbled the thing to nothing. There had been no choice but to react after what her family had done, and by that logic if she was going to react in the first place it was better to do it thoroughly if she was going to do it at all. Liars and cheats needed telling.

  Gripped by what you might call a fugue, Shell took the kitchen scissors to the main bit of Lawrence’s fringe where the moth had been. She disposed of the hair in the brazier then promptly found more hidden moths, snipping where they had been too.

  After that she cut the lot off, using the razor while she was at it. She’d get that scalp smooth-bald rather than pie-bald, give Lawrence a head like a light bulb rather than a globe where the stubble formed into misshapen continents, reminders of what she couldn’t quite remove with the scissors. Arthur was next; Shell wasn’t nearly so gentle, snapping at his hair, focusing in particular on the grey strands shaped like zigs of electric wire, while Arthur stared churlishly at the limp and sooty clothing strung along the washing line. A solitary red tear had dribbled down his forehead.

  Shell locked the front door. Yes, she remembered Litten. She remembered her youth, making her way down this same route, glistening today, some parts still cobbled, past the allotments with its plots and its vista of plants and bamboo canes, its benches and sheds, the rectangles of soil looking like recently filled-in graves.

  She sparked a fag, sucked as much nicotine back as she could. She’d never been a drinker; she’d always smoked. She liked the kick of it. She liked forcing the fumes out of each nostril. Arthur thought she’d quit long ago. She hadn’t. Shell felt like she’d been a smoker long before she ever tried it. Her grandparents had smoked; her dad, Lee – pomade in the hair and Sinatra down the pub – he’d smoked; so did her mother. Shell had always liked the smell. Taking up the habit felt so natural. There is such a thing as fate; it’s called being pre-disposed.

  She thought of herself at sixteen, poring over those exercise books, maths problems squished as nonsensically as dead ants on the page. Pointless, all of it. Shell had snuck down the shop to buy something to take her mind off things, and there met a lanky streak of piss with a bicycle, leaning against a wall with a roll-up sticking out of his yap. The youngster seemed to think he knew absolutely everything, and although there was the odd sideways look, he showed no real interest in Shell, which intrigued her all the more.

  Because she wasn’t beautiful. She knew that and was fine with it. Beautiful girls were never taken seriously. They weren’t grounded. They rarely developed wit or clever tricks. And in any case who needs looks when you’ve sex appeal? Shell was clear-eyed: she knew her face was too plump, like an over-filled water balloon, still blokes wanted her. That made it all right.

  She had worn the boy down until he offered her the ride she’d hoped for from the start. Astride the saddle with her legs splayed, her groin clenched the leather, her fingernails sunk deep into Arthur Newman’s cardigan as he stood on the pedals and clattered them down the rec. It had beaten revision. Shell smoked her first cigarette that day and put her tongue so far down Arthur’s throat that he had to pull away and splutter. When she was young Shell was as shy as Lawrence in many respects, but sex or the promise of it always drew her out into the open. Nothing else was important then, not school, family or the prospect of what she’d one day do. All there was, was living and music and boys, in particular that ambivalent lad who’d promised to call on her the first chance he got, whom, as it turned out, she wouldn’t speak to again for another six years. Waking up with the world to look forward to, that was Shell Newman’s girlhood, and was anything better than being young when you felt as past it as she did?

  The wind was beginning to snap as Shell approached Litten Hill. She made her way up the slope, an inhospitable bluff with no grass to speak of, more an abundance of scruff and fern. She pushed through the lengthening sward, ignoring the underwood’s snags, following a path taken recently, she assumed, by her hairless husband and son.

  She’d never been one for exercise but walked a lot and was naturally hardy, so made good time. She emerged from the scrub and found herself on the summit. Below her the broken woods spread until they reached the borders of the town. A bird glided low, casting no shadow so deeply was the dying light imprisoned by the clouds.

  Voices. Shell pursued them, catching her denims on a bramble. Crouching to untangle herself, she spotted the twin domes belonging to her husband and son, who at times felt more like kith to her than they did kin.

  They were bent over a sapling whose red leaves emerged from the bin bag in which its roots had been wrapped. Shell was out of their line of sight, yet close enough to hear their voices carried by the wind.

  “You might as well start digging,” Arthur said.

  “Here?” said Lawrence.

  “Course bloody there.”

  Lawrence knelt gingerly on the ground, which made Shell smile. “Dirty earth,” he said, prising a clump of field out and holding it above his head. Shell could see him prodding the muddy roots, the soil presumably showering onto his trousers, because Arthur was saying “Watch them pants or your mam’ll go spare. You know what she’s like at the mo—”

  He stopped himself.

  Shell’s smile faded.

  “Just be careful, will you.”

  “Whatever you say.” Lawrence stabbed the trowel into the ground. Winter was over but the North didn’t seem to have registered it yet. The stubborn breeze blew. Shell would have abolished the wind if she could.

  She buttoned her jacket at the collar. Arthur, smoking a roll-up, wore an anorak; Lawrence, digging away, was dressed in a parka. Each sported a newly shaven head, warped skulls accentuating open-car-door ears. They must be freezing, Shell thought.

  When the hole was big enough Arthur dragged the sapling to it. The sheltered sun had dropped rapidly in the sky and the streetlamps in town and the boxy farmhouses scattered about the hills had
begun to emit a bleak, spectral glow.

  “Nice leaves them, Dad.”

  “Soon as I saw it, I knew it were ours.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  Arthur readied the sapling, missing its bin liner floating off in Shell’s direction. Shell stuck a foot out and trapped it, picked it up and stuffed it in her pocket.

  Her husband used the trowel to cut around the perimeter of the pot, then began to prise the sapling free with its stem, careful to protect the root ball. He sometimes showed a similar tenderness to Lawrence, and could be careful when he wanted to be. It was one of the first things Shell had ever liked about him.

  “Never mind that,” he said.

  Removing the sapling had caused some damage to the pot so Arthur tore away the broken section and chucked it, the shape frisbeeing past Shell and jamming in the ground. The root ball began to crumble in his hands.

  “Shit.”

  “It weren’t?”

  “Pipe down. This needs to be in ground by time she gets here.”

  “You better not have nicked it, Dad.”

  “You what?”

  “Nowt.”

  “Go see if she’s bloody coming.”

  Lawrence trotted down the scarp. While he was gone, Shell saw Arthur drop the sapling into the hole and heft the earth in. There was no sunset. There was only the space between the daylight and the darkness.

  Lawrence returned. “She’s not here.”

  “Aye, well when she is, make sure you put on a show of it. It’s for all of us is this. Wish I had a bloody camera.”

  Bastard would need far more than a camera.

  Arthur firmed the sapling in with his boot heel while Lawrence stood a yard or two away, clicking his fingers. Shell knew her husband sometimes found it difficult to look at their son; that thinking too deeply about fatherhood sometimes made Arthur feel like he was going to fall over. She could see it in the way he stamped at the maple’s base now, so decided to put him out of his misery.

  “What’s big surprise then?” she said, marching over.

  The pair started.

  “How long you been there for?” Arthur said.

  “Just arrived.”

  “Right on schedule.”

  “Well, you did say tea time.”

  Lawrence pointed at the sapling, a reedy juvenile that bent midway and sent its branches into parts. “He’s got us this,” he said.

  Arthur reached for Shell’s hand. “A family tree.”

  “Right.”

  “Maple.”

  “For us do you mean?”

  “Course us. We’ll watch it grow. When we need somewhere to think, we’ll come here. It’ll watch over us, Shell. Symbolic, like.”

  Shell took her hand back.

  Arthur said, “Lawrence and me planted it.”

  “I can see that.”

  “So what do you reckon?”

  “Reckon it’s a nice idea.”

  “And?”

  “An’ what?”

  “Well don’t you want to give it a once over?”

  “I am doing, Arthur. It’s a tree.”

  “Oh, but it’s more than that, love. It’s—”

  “So where’d you get it?” Shell said. This was such a pathetic plan. A try-hard thing to do.

  “Bought it.”

  “Where from?”

  “Threndle House,” said Lawrence, quietly.

  “Eh? No,” insisted Arthur.

  “Did you?” Shell said. “Because if you did—”

  “I didn’t, love—”

  “Cause if you did, Arthur . . .” Shell’s guts bunched. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t have.

  “Look, I thought it’d be summat,” said Arthur. “Cause we need summat.”

  “And it is.”

  “Exactly.” Shell’s husband moved closer.

  “But it doesn’t change much, does it?” Shell said, making a point of not looking at Arthur and noticing Lawrence doing the same. “An’ don’t you think there’s bigger things afoot this evening? As they’ll likely be calling it tonight.”

  “Oh come on, love. Cause you’ve no idea—”

  “I’ve no idea?”

  “No, I mean can we not just think about summat other than the bloody strike for five minutes,” said Arthur. “I just wanted to do summat nice. Not only for us, but for Het and Sam and —”

  “Uncle Sam?” said Lawrence. “We don’t even know where he went.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” said Arthur feebly.

  “Or what happened.”

  “Don’t you bloody start!”

  Shell intervened. Better for the boy to hear about his uncle when the time was right. Some loyalties remained. Pity scars covering what had healed badly.

  She said, “Look, it’s another nice idea, Arthur. Like I said . . .”

  “But, love—”

  “But tea’s on. And Lawrence is cold.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. And it’s getting dark.”

  There was no denying that. Shell took her son by the arm and began to steer him down the hill. Arthur stayed where he was. His head resembled an un-cracked egg.

  “Coming or what?” Shell called back; then, when Arthur didn’t reply, said “Ballot, Art. Don’t forget.”

  He didn’t reply: he simply tugged a leaf from his tree, and the sadness of the act nearly made Shell run over and throw her arms around him. “I’ll see you later then,” she called, leaving her husband to become a silhouette. The surrounding countryside was cloaked in blue and a slit of moon glimmered over everything. Shell now knew that somewhere beyond the muddle of homes and lives below her, beyond the ballot, even, was the richness of Threndle House and a hole in the back garden betraying where Arthur had stolen that tree.

  Back home, she flicked on the telly; there was nothing worth watching except the news. Shell could stand no more clips of Jack Taylor, so thought about calling a friend, Jan maybe. Then again she wasn’t sure she could face anyone. She preferred to do her fretting in private. Tonight was the perfect night for that.

  She switched the telly off, and from across the room caught sight of her reflection in the dormant screen, recalling the second time she’d seen Arthur, all those years after she first kissed him down the rec, the two of them leant against one of the concrete posts that held the fence up.

  He’d been at The Masons. Older, of course, still appealing. His elbow sported a damp patch and his leather jacket hung on a barstool by his arse. The young Arthur had that loose, knowing expression Shell once mistook for confidence: a manner she now knew was born of a detachment akin to panic, like an animal hiding in the hay at the back of its cage at the zoo.

  “Remember me?” she’d said.

  “Oh, heck.”

  “You said you’d be in touch.”

  “Summat came up.”

  “For six years?”

  “How you doing, love?”

  “Don’t change bloody subject.”

  “Let’s get you a drink.”

  “He doesn’t even remember my name.”

  “I’m not daft, Shell. See, I remember that smile an’ all.”

  “Tell us summat I don’t know.”

  “Drink?”

  “Can tha afford it?”

  “Two beers please, pal.”

  “What gives impression beer’s my drink?”

  “A man can tell.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “What you doing with yourself these days then, love?”

  “Keeping myself amused.”

  “I’m down pit.”

  “Quelle surprise.”

  Shell could spit to think of herself. Daft and curly bobbed, all half-closed vowels and hoop earrings, pisse
d-up then coaxed into a knee-trembler by the bins while the band played, married before she even knew what was right for her.

  She’d been pregnant so it had seemed like a good idea, and in many ways it had been. Not now. The morning after the wedding, Shell awoke with such a sore throat after all the cigarettes she’d smoked at the reception that she ordered milk with her breakfast at the Grey Grebe Hotel to soothe it. Arthur had borrowed a neighbour’s scooter – a wedding favour, he claimed – to chauffeur her. They’d had fried eggs, his hand heavy in her lap while she played with his long hair and frowned at the ring he’d bound her with: a pale band of silver with a stone in it. She’d split her yolks and ate as daintily as she could. The milk furred in a moustache on her lip.

  It was getting on for eight, still early. Shell took out an old photo album, searching for the parts of herself that had been lost or irreversibly altered. The album was leather bound and had cream padded pages and a date written in biro on the inside front cover that made her feel old.

  She tried to skip the nuptial pictures but inevitably ended up stopping on one: Arthur captured in his brown tux, that yellow tie she’d picked out for him. Booze-grizzled and gap-toothed. Those dated pork-chop sideburns, remember them?

  Such a kid. Secret smile. Shell’s eyes were shadowed blue and her blustered face was all styled-up. She’d worn droplet earrings that her gran had bestowed. Hiding behind the veil she’d felt so mysterious, covered by a perforated cloth that now reminded her of the net curtains hanging in the fucking kitchen.

  More pictures. Lawrence when he was a baby. What a fidget, frantic clapping. It made Shell feel uneasy, thinking of that, and she wasn’t sure why. She closed the book and went to the window-sill. Her cigarettes were buried in their hiding place in the tissue box. She lit one up out of the back door and had just about finished it when she heard footsteps coming along the backs.

  “Shell?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “It’s Het.”