Starve Acre Read online

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You both sat there in silence, did you?’

  Ewan presented them with the mound of sandwiches and they each took one before he was called away by Doug, who wanted Willoughby to fetch in the bottle of Bowmore.

  ‘What do you think we were talking about?’ said Juliette.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we’ve failed, Richard.’

  ‘Failed how?’

  ‘We should have told her earlier about what’s been going on.’

  Now Eileen’s looks made sense. Given the clandestine nature of the phone call Juliette had made on Boxing Day, she’d come to the conclusion that it was Richard who’d insisted on keeping things from her.

  ‘Well, she knows now,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. She was left out. You know what she’s like. They’re all the same, Richard. I’ll no doubt get it in the neck from Harrie as well when Mum tells her everything.’

  ‘I thought you’d moved from Edinburgh to get away from the McPherson Stasi?’ said Richard. ‘It’s got nothing to do with Harrie. Nor your mother for that matter.’

  ‘She is Ewan’s grandma,’ said Juliette, chewing the edge of her sandwich. ‘She does care about him. She thinks we ought to take him to see Dr Ellis again.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To make sure everything’s all right.’

  ‘Does he look ill to you?’

  ‘Not physically. That’s not what Mum’s saying.’

  ‘Oh, upstairs she means. I didn’t realise she was a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Do you have to be so sarcastic? She’s only trying to help.’

  ‘Well, come on,’ he said. ‘Ewan’s not like that.’

  ‘You can hardly say that he’s the same as the others in his class.’

  ‘No, he’s not. Thank God.’

  The conversation paused as Ewan came around again with the sandwiches. When he’d moved on to Russell, Richard said, ‘I don’t see how your mum can have any kind of opinion about him anyway. She hardly ever sees him.’

  ‘She was a teacher for thirty years,’ said Juliette. ‘She knows what she’s talking about when it comes to kids.’

  ‘He’s only just five,’ said Richard. ‘Give him a chance.’

  ‘Aye,’ Juliette replied. ‘Mum said that you were in denial.’

  Even though Ewan had agreed to go to bed at nine thirty, when the time came he refused and Eileen looked on as though she hadn’t expected anything less of him. Richard made light of it and swept the boy on to his shoulders, jigging him up the stairs to his room and singing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ over the cries of protest.

  The promise of stories persuaded him to clean his teeth and put on his pyjamas and then after ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and ‘The Cat in the Hat’ he at last began to look drowsy.

  Richard kissed him on the forehead and Ewan wrapped his arms around his neck, squeezing until it became uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Richard.

  ‘Will it be noisy in the field tonight?’ said Ewan.

  ‘Why would it be noisy?’

  Ewan let go. ‘He says my name sometimes. He tells me to come to the tree.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Jack Grey.’

  ‘Jack Grey?’ said Richard. ‘Where did you hear about him? From Gordon?’

  Ewan seemed to think that it would be a betrayal to say yes out loud and so he nodded instead.

  ‘And what does he sound like, this Jack Grey?’ asked Richard.

  ‘I don’t like remembering his voice.’

  ‘Well, when does he talk to you, then? When you’re about to go to sleep?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘To do things.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He said to hurt Susan.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He said to break the snowman. He said he didn’t like it being there in the field.’

  ‘Is that why you didn’t want to go to bed tonight? Because of Jack Grey?’

  Ewan nodded again and Richard sat down on the bed.

  ‘You know, Jack Grey isn’t real,’ he said. ‘He’s like the Jabberwocky. You don’t think the Jabberwocky’s real, do you?’

  They shared a little laughter at the thought and Ewan shook his head, but it was only to please. It was clear that the boy wasn’t at all reassured.

  ‘If you hear him when you’re nearly asleep, then I reckon you’re just dreaming about him,’ said Richard.

  ‘I’m not, Daddy.’

  ‘You might not notice that you are.’

  ‘Daddy, I’m always awake when he talks.’

  It was pointless trying to convince him otherwise.

  ‘How about I put the radio on?’ said Richard.

  Ewan liked the foreign longwave stations. The incomprehensible murmurings from Göteborg or Hilversum had always sent the boy to sleep when he was little and had had a Pavlovian effect ever since.

  Richard plugged in the console, tuned into something he didn’t understand and lowered the volume to a soporific level.

  ‘Close your eyes now,’ he said and laid an extra blanket over the boy.

  Ewan gave an agitated cry – the kind he’d made as a baby – and reached out for him again.

  ‘I’ll only be downstairs,’ said Richard but the boy clung to him for a while longer.

  ‘Listen,’ said Richard. ‘You go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning it’ll be a brand-new year. All those things that you’ve been afraid of won’t be there any more. I promise.’

  When Richard went back to the living room, Gordon broke off from his conversation with Eileen.

  ‘Dr Willoughby,’ he said, pouring a fresh glass of wine. ‘It’s New Year’s Eve and you’re as dry as a witch’s tit. Here.’

  He passed over the drink with a look of concern.

  ‘You seem perturbed,’ he said. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Didn’t he settle?’ asked Juliette.

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Richard.

  Had he been on his own with Gordon, he would have asked him exactly what kind of stories he’d been telling Ewan. It was one thing spinning him a few yarns, but to keep him awake with thoughts of Jack Grey was too much.

  They played Yahtzee, blackjack and whist with the wireless on low in the background and the clock marking off the last hours of the year. Sitting between Gordon and Eileen, who both got louder with every glass they drained, Juliette’s restlessness seemed all the more acute. She desperately wanted to go and make sure that Ewan was all right but when she finally got up to do so, her mother guessed her intentions immediately and told her to sit down.

  ‘Just leave him be,’ she said, choosing a card from the fan in her hand. ‘The more you make a fuss of him, the more he’ll act up.’

  Gordon rubbed Juliette’s arm affectionately and she re-joined the game, her foot tapping anxiously on the floor.

  Midnight approached. Eileen topped up the drinks clumsily and licked Beaujolais off the stem of her wine glass. Doug mixed himself another whisky and soda.

  On the radio, Big Ben began to toll. There were handshakes and kisses and they linked arms as Gordon started on ‘Auld Lang Syne’. When it rolled on through a second chorus and then a third, Juliette took the opportunity to slip out and check on Ewan.

  They were still singing when Richard heard her padding down the stairs. She came into the front room distressed, her arm half inside the sleeve of her coat.

  ‘It’s Ewan,’ she said. ‘He’s not in the house.’

  Doug laughed and poured himself another drink. ‘Playing hide and seek, is he? Cheeky bugger.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s not in his room?’ said Eileen.

  ‘Yes I’m sure,’ Juliette replied, sitting down to put on her boots. ‘I’ve looked for him everywhere.’

  ‘He won’t have gone outside, will he?’ said Gordon. ‘It’s pitch black and freezing cold.’
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  ‘Well, if he’s not in the house, Gordon . . .’ said Juliette. ‘Look, are you going to help me or just stand there?’

  Unconvinced that Juliette had searched the house properly, Eileen sent Doug to scour each room and he ambled off with his glass of Scotch. The rest of them went out with torches, to the back garden first and then down the lane. It was a clear night and a freezing easterly wind passed through the trees along the valley.

  ‘He won’t go that far,’ said Gordon. ‘He’ll feel the cold and come back soon enough.’

  ‘But we’ve no idea how long he’s been out,’ Juliette said. ‘If you’d just let me go and check on him, Mum . . .’

  ‘I really don’t see how any of this is my fault,’ said Eileen. ‘Perhaps you ought to keep the front door locked at night.’

  ‘It was locked,’ said Richard. ‘And bolted.’

  ‘Then I’m surprised we didn’t hear him leave,’ Russell said.

  ‘Children are more cunning than you think,’ said Eileen, but thankfully Juliette wasn’t listening and walked away shouting for Ewan. The further along the lane she went the more agitated her voice became.

  ‘Should we call the police?’ said Russell.

  ‘I could get in the van and drive down to the village, see if he’s there,’ Gordon suggested. ‘I’m sure I’m sober enough by now.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll have gone the other way on to the moors, do you?’ said Russell.

  But scanning the field with the torch, Richard had lighted on something moving towards them. It was Ewan, tramping up through the frozen mud in his nightclothes and wellingtons. Richard called to Gordon, who whistled for Juliette. She came running over, pushed past Richard and with her torch beam jiggering wildly over the frosty earth she got to the boy first, shaking him by the shoulders and berating him for leaving the house. The others watched as she lifted him on to her hip and brought him back up to the lane.

  In the light of the various torch beams, Ewan’s eyes looked strange and stranger still when they returned to the house. Even in the hallway, his pupils remained so dilated that barely any of the colour showed.

  ‘Has he been sleepwalking?’ said Gordon.

  It didn’t appear so. Ewan didn’t have the vacancy of someone in a trance but scrutinised each face with cold intent.

  Doug came down the stairs finishing his drink and put his hand on Juliette’s cheek.

  ‘Ah, you’ve found him then,’ he said. ‘You see. No harm done.’

  That seemed to be true at first, but as they took Ewan into the kitchen, Eileen noticed that his skin had turned a deep pink colour. And when Juliette took off his pyjama top, his whole torso was the same.

  ‘What is it? A rash or something?’ said Gordon.

  Russell put on his glasses and inspected Ewan’s neck.

  ‘It might be,’ he said. ‘If he’s been in the wood, then he could have come into contact with something he’s allergic to.’

  ‘Like what?’ Juliette said, thumbing away Ewan’s hair to examine his brow. ‘He’s been in the wood a hundred times and never come out looking like this.’

  ‘I’m not even sure it is a rash,’ said Russell. ‘A rash would be blotchy. This looks like sunburn.’

  ‘How can it be sunburn?’ Eileen said and took over his position. ‘He’s just chapped from being outside.’

  But when she put the back of her hand on his arm, she found him warm to the touch.

  ‘He could have a virus,’ suggested Russell. ‘That might account for his eyes.’

  ‘Don’t you feel well?’ said Juliette, turning Ewan’s face to hers.

  The boy gazed at her dumbly.

  ‘Are you sure he’s not still asleep?’ said Gordon and he clicked his fingers close to Ewan’s ear.

  ‘Ewan?’ Juliette said. ‘It’s Mummy. Are you all right?’

  ‘Just put him back to bed,’ said Doug. ‘The poor wee man doesn’t need you lot making a fuss over him. Let him sleep. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Look at him for God’s sake,’ Eileen snapped. ‘He needs a doctor.’

  ‘What’s that he’s got in his hand?’ said Gordon.

  No one had noticed until now that Ewan had a tight hold of something that had stained his wrist and fingertips red.

  ‘Come on,’ Richard said. ‘Let’s see. Did you find something in the field?’

  ‘Can Mummy have it?’ said Juliette. ‘Show Mummy what it is, Ewan.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ Eileen said sharply, trying to prise the boy’s fingers apart. ‘Do as you’re told.’

  But the more she wrestled with him, the stronger his grip became. Eventually, he crushed what he’d been holding and blood seeped out between his knuckles.

  ‘What is it?’ Juliette said, crying now as Ewan relented and loosened his hand. ‘What did you do?’

  His palm dripped with the pap of some animal’s viscera. But as Richard lifted him to the sink and Juliette washed his fingers they could see that most of the blood was his own. Stuck into his skin were small, sharp bones. Ribs. A spine. It was then that the boy began to speak. He still wasn’t fully conscious and the narrative was somewhat garbled and frenetic but Richard managed to pick out that Jack Grey had told Ewan to come to the wood, that he’d show him how to see in the dark and sit very still and catch mice with his bare hands.

  Yes, thought Richard, he remembered all that clearly enough. He didn’t need to be reminded about it by Gordon. Nor did he want to hear his specious interpretations about what had happened that night, especially since it was his stories that had disturbed the boy’s sleep in the first place. The man was obsessive. He always had been, about one thing or another; that was just the way he was. But whereas his dogmatism had once been good-natured, this felt intrusive. It truly offended him that Richard could doubt his explanation of why Ewan changed. The arrogance of the man was startling.

  The truth of the matter was that after his foray into the wood on New Year’s Eve, Ewan had woken the next day sniffling and sneezing, but his usual self. His skin was normal, and he had no recollection of having wandered out of the house the night before. In the sobriety of the morning, the diagnosis was much clearer: the boy had simply had a fever; he’d been half asleep and gone out to play unaware of the time; he’d found the detritus of some dead thing in the wood and picked it up not knowing what it really was. The explanation was simple if Gordon chose to see it.

  Richard listened to the sound of his van getting fainter as he walked down the field to the tent. The green smell of damp and leaves and uncoiling ferns that he’d enjoyed on that first spring evening became stronger the closer he came to the wood. He wondered whether the hare might venture out from the undergrowth when dusk fell. There was such stillness here that he might well hear its feet drubbing across the field, though at that moment the thought wasn’t particularly pleasant any more. And if it were to come to the tent as the vixen had done, he didn’t think that he would like to be trapped with it.

  He set up the tripod and with the camera aimed down into the hole he took a dozen photographs from various angles, the flash picking out colours and details that the light of the gas lamp was too soft to show. The root was not entirely black but smeared with deep reds and umbers. A subtle ribbing showed how it had grown as it sniffed out water.

  Richard counted the smaller stems that grew from it, some of which were very thin and tapered out like the ends of carrots, but others were more substantial.

  In pursuing one particular offshoot that burrowed straight down (how far did it go? Twenty feet? Forty? Fifty?) he came across more. They had to have belonged to the Oak. The abundance was too great for any other explanation. And what he’d found was just a fragment of a great web. If the whole root complex could be somehow mapped, then it might give a more accurate indication of how big the tree itself had been. The mental impression he’d had of it so far seemed, on reflection, much too conservative. After all, one bough had held the weight of three bodies.

 
Since he’d come across the print of the hanging, the Bonnie Sonnes hadn’t been far from his thoughts.

  The implication was that if they had swung together then they must have committed their crimes together, and if that were true then it would have devastated the village.

  The evidence of that lay partly in the fact that there were no Sayles, Calverts or Beestons left in Stythwaite. Either the families had been hounded out after the hangings or they’d left of their own accord. It was impossible to know. More often than not, the past was left in fragments like this. It was a chip of pottery, a broken skull, a shattered spearhead. Sometimes there was only a handful of words to go on too. Roderick Sayles had ‘burned the hay’, but whose field he’d set alight had not been recorded. If he’d been hanged in wintertime, then perhaps he’d torched the bales as they sat in storage but why he’d done so was anyone’s guess.

  And as smoke drifted among the houses and fogged the street, had Edmund Calvert taken the opportunity to go to the church unnoticed? While the other villagers were beating out the fire had he been hitching up his smock in the crypt?

  But it was Will Beeston’s crime that Richard had contemplated most often. The wood engraver had captured in his face an unmistakable look of joy as he flung the child from the top of the church tower.

  If this had been the only thing that had happened, then it would have been logical to conclude that Beeston was just psychotic. But it was unlikely that all three boys had been suffering in that way. It may have been a temporary madness. That was possible. There were berries and plants that grew in the dale even now that could cuff the mind sideways. If not that, if it had been planned, then perhaps they’d made a pact and set out to deliberately torment the village for some reason. Yet their crimes seemed like personal indulgences.

  It was no wonder, then, that the boys’ fathers had looked to blame it all on Jack Grey. To make the inciter of these offences some fictional sprite of the woods was easier than trying to understand why these lads had suddenly fallen into sin. There was nothing more remote than another person’s mind. Even down the bloodline the communiqués were lost. A father had no more chance of truly knowing his son than he had of knowing a stranger. That had been proved to Richard on the day of the spring fair