Starve Acre Read online

  Up until then, things had been relatively peaceful for a few months. Ewan had had no other visitations from Jack Grey. Each school day passed without incident, though the relief Juliette felt as she picked Ewan up at the gates at three only lasted until the following morning when she dropped him off again. He said so little that it was difficult to know what he was thinking. He remained unpredictable and each good day only prolonged the outburst that Juliette (and Richard) sensed was coming. It was apparent that the other parents shared the same apprehension. Not that they said anything.

  Since the episode with Susan Drewitt, folk in the village hadn’t blanked the Willoughbys as such. No one had forced Juliette to leave the PTA or the Fair Committee, but then no one had insisted she stay either. There was only indifference, which was worse in a way. On the day of the spring fair, they were treated as those from Micklebrow or Lastingly or Skipton were treated: as visitors. It was only the three Burnsall girls who went out of their way to upset the Willoughbys by picking other boys over Ewan as he waited for a turn to ride their pony.

  Richard and Juliette were looking at the display of children’s artwork when they saw that Ewan was getting frustrated and suggested that he choose something else to do. He complied with less fuss than Richard expected and they went hand in hand to the stall where Audrey Cannon was selling bottles of pop.

  For the rest of the afternoon they kept him busy, spinning him on the roundabout, pushing him on the swings, watching him play quoits and skittles, trying to ignore the looks from other parents. Juliette was on edge too but she was determined to show everyone that she was a good, loving mother of a son who could be loved. Richard had to admire her courage, though he knew that it was exhausting her. She was not a natural actress.

  The fair always culminated in a game of cricket between those who lived in the village and those who lived on the farms. The Willoughbys, living in neither, sat at the boundary line with the ones too young or too old to play.

  Ewan saw that his classmates were kicking a football about by the sycamore trees and he lay on his belly watching them trying to score between the two bicycles they’d let fall into the grass.

  ‘Why don’t you go and join in?’ said Richard.

  ‘Can I?’ said Ewan.

  ‘Of course.’

  Juliette looked uncomfortable with the idea but to Richard it seemed like a good opportunity for Ewan to make amends for what had happened with Susan Drewitt.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Go and share your lemonade with them.’

  Ewan got up and went over to the girls first, offering the bottle. There was a cautious pause and then Susan took it and swigged and passed it around to the others. The football skipped past Ewan’s legs and he went after it as the other boys called for him to shoot.

  Reconciliation was easy for children of that age, Richard thought. They didn’t harbour resentment for long. They weren’t afraid. Anger, wariness, jealousy and trepidation were fleeting emotions. It was only as they got older that they turned malicious, like the Burnsall girls who’d come over with the sole intention of taunting Ewan again. Holding the football under his arm, he watched them closely, absorbing the names they called him as they pulled the pony along by its bridle. Sticks and stones, Juliette had taught him. Turn the other cheek.

  The girls saw that Richard and Juliette were watching them and moved on, the youngest poking out her tongue as a parting shot. Ewan stared as they went away laughing but was soon distracted when the football was knocked out of his arms and the game resumed.

  Juliette rested her head on Richard’s shoulder.

  ‘Little bitches,’ she said.

  Even though he’d told her back in Leeds that it wouldn’t be easy to live here, he felt no satisfaction in having it proved. He wanted it to work just as much as her. He wouldn’t have agreed to move here at all unless he’d imagined they might be a degree happier. His mother must have felt the same. At least at first.

  It was hard to imagine that she hadn’t noticed the mood shifting around her in Stythwaite. In fact, he was certain that she had but had chosen to ignore it. Not out of arrogance but because she didn’t want to admit that she’d made a mistake. She didn’t want to feel like a fool and so she’d blundered on. In her own way, Juliette was doing the same thing.

  Drained from the effort of her performance her breaths lengthened against his. She had her eyes closed. Her hand was limp. Richard was weary too. He lay back, taking Juliette with him, allowing her to curl into his side, enjoying the weight of her head on his chest. He shut his eyes against the sunlight and idly teased the stem of a dandelion. The woodpigeons in the sycamores, the warmth of the breeze and the smell of the grass faded as he balanced on the verge of sleep. It was a pleasant vertigo, a welcome unsteadiness. But he slipped and woke at the same moment, everything so much louder as he came to consciousness. Juliette surfaced too and worked the heels of her hands against her temples.

  Behind them, the voices of the children were so alike, all melded into shouts and shrieks and laughter, that they didn’t notice that Ewan had disappeared until one of the Burnsall girls came running from the wall of the churchyard calling for her father.

  He was at the crease with the bat poised and, distracted by his daughter, he let the ball clatter into the stumps. A few people, who hadn’t noticed the girl shouting, cheered and clapped but it became obvious to them that something was wrong.

  Teddy Burnsall handed the bat to Sam Westbury and followed his daughter over to where the pony had been tied to a tree. The two other girls were there now, bawling at Ewan who squatted down in the grass ignoring them.

  Richard and Juliette ran over, parting the crowd that had gathered.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Juliette, putting herself between Ewan and the eldest, Deborah.

  ‘He wants locking up,’ she said. ‘Little bastard.’

  The middle sister harmonised. ‘He’s not right in the bloody head, that one,’ she said and went back to comforting the youngest, who wept and snotted and wanted to go home.

  Ewan scraped at the soil with the end of a stick, impervious to the cries of distress.

  Behind him, Teddy and Olive Burnsall were trying to calm the pony. Its legs shivered and it shook its bowed head as if it were trying to dislodge flies from its nose. Taking hold of its reins, they managed to turn the animal and lift its chin to see what had happened.

  One eye stared at the people standing around, the other had been stabbed to glue.

  Ewan hadn’t been able to settle that night. Whenever he was on the brink of sleep, he’d snap awake and start to cry. Juliette listened for a while and then rolled over, leaving Richard to see to him, though he had no intention of talking about what had happened until the morning when the incident wouldn’t be quite so raw.

  Curled on his bed, Ewan had his hands over his ears and it had taken Richard some time to get him to let go.

  ‘What is it you can hear?’ he said, holding the boy’s head to his chest.

  ‘Jack Grey,’ said Ewan quietly.

  ‘He’s come back, has he?’

  ‘He was there at the fair.’

  ‘Was he? I didn’t see him.’

  ‘You can’t see him,’ said Ewan. ‘He talks, that’s all.’

  ‘What’s he saying now?’ Richard asked.

  ‘He’s not saying anything.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ said Ewan. ‘Now it’s like this.’

  He made a strangled sound in his throat.

  After carrying Ewan down to the study, Richard sat the boy on his knee and they looked through the pictures in the encyclopaedia of birds. Could Daddy make a bird? he asked and handed Richard a sheet of carbon paper. Could Daddy make a rook? And a rook it was, a whole parliament, that became the cast of a story Richard invented while Ewan nestled into his lap.

  Once upon a time, he said, willing the incantation to pluck him, Ewan and Juliette out of this life and drop them into another, once upon a time, the rooks c
ame down to Starve Acre and saw that Jack Grey was making a terrible noise in the wood. He was shouting and bellowing and throwing stones at all the birds. So, the rooks waited for Jack to come out into the field and when he did they swooped down and carried him off in their claws. Over the fells they went and across the sea and then . . .

  Ewan had fallen asleep against his chest and was breathing deeply. In his hand he clutched one of the paper birds and it was still there when Richard laid him down in his bed. It was hard to reconcile this vulnerable little boy with the cold-eyed creature they’d hurried back to the car that afternoon. For him to have hurt the pony as brutally as he had, to have been so exacting with the stick, hardly seemed possible.

  Juliette would want to take him back to see Ellis and Richard knew that he’d have no choice but to let her. Ewan wasn’t going to get better on his own. They ought to have acted sooner. That at least was clear. Richard blamed himself. He’d put too much faith in Ewan’s behaviour being a natural phase and been too certain that the boy could be taught right from wrong like any other child. Now he had to admit that he had no idea what to do. He should have listened to Juliette. His concession about Ellis would be his apology to her for not doing so. In the morning he’d agree to whatever she wanted. She’d know what to do. Despite what had happened she would still be more able than him to think through the problem rationally. But when he returned to the bedroom and was hanging his dressing gown on the back of the door, she said, ‘I’m frightened of him, Richard.’ And he believed her.

  Bad weather rumbled through the dale and Richard closed up the tent and took the camera back to the house. Coming in through the front door, he was about to go up to the study when Harrie collared him.

  ‘Oh, Richard, you tell her,’ she said, trying to stop the dog under her arm from barking. ‘She won’t listen to me.’

  He followed her into the kitchen where Juliette was sitting on a chair by the woodstove.

  On her lap was the hare.

  It lay still while she stroked it from head to haunches, drawing its ears through her fist. The dog’s presence didn’t appear to faze it at all.

  ‘Get her to take the bloody thing outside, will you?’ said Harrie.

  ‘I think you should, Juliette,’ said Richard.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For one thing it stinks,’ said Harrie. ‘And Cass isn’t going to stop making a fuss until you do.’

  ‘Where did you find it?’ said Richard.

  ‘You were in the garden, weren’t you?’ Juliette said, nuzzling the hare’s fur with the back of her hand. ‘He came to the door of the shed while I was getting more paint.’

  ‘You can’t have it in the house,’ said Richard.

  ‘That’s what I told her,’ said Harrie, and moved behind the table away from the hare. ‘It’s a wild animal.’

  ‘He doesn’t look wild to me,’ said Juliette.

  Under her touch, the hare closed its eyes in contentment.

  ‘It could be ill,’ said Harrie. ‘They don’t normally sit so still, do they? It might be diseased.’

  ‘He’s not ill,’ Juliette said. ‘He’s just hungry. Is there anything we can give him to eat?’

  ‘Don’t feed it,’ said Harrie, muffling the dog’s jaws. ‘Otherwise you’ll never get rid of it. Once it knows that there’s food here, it’ll keep coming back.’

  ‘Harrie’s right,’ said Richard. ‘Better let it fend for itself. Do you want me to take it outside?’

  Juliette looked up at him for the first time since he’d come in and put a protective hand on the hare’s back.

  ‘He’s wet and cold.’

  ‘Jules, please,’ said Harrie. ‘Cass is giving me a headache.’

  Richard gestured for the animal again and Juliette said, ‘No. Let me. I’ll do it.’

  She stood up and gathered the hare in her arms. Its long legs scrabbled and Harrie moved back even further as Juliette carried it out through the door.

  ‘She was always the same when we were children,’ she said, watching her sister walking over to the greenhouse in the rain. ‘She was forever bringing in cats and mice and insects. Mostly because she knew I didn’t like them.’

  By the cherry tree, Juliette stopped and seemed to be talking to the hare, showing it the house, the garden.

  ‘Oh, put it down, Jules, for God’s sake,’ murmured Harrie.

  Eventually, Juliette crouched and unlatched the animal’s claws from her shirt and sent it away into the undergrowth.

  Richard wondered if it had come back to the house for the same reason the vixen had come back to the tent. There was food here. There was shelter. But the hare had seemed so eager to get away from Starve Acre that it was odd it should return so soon.

  ‘We should start on the second coat now,’ said Harrie as Juliette came inside.

  ‘Second coat?’ Juliette looked behind her to see where the hare had gone.

  ‘In the nursery,’ said Harrie.

  ‘Fine, yes, all right,’ Juliette said and peered through the kitchen window as Harrie ushered her back upstairs to carry on painting.

  ‘Bring the cans, Richard, will you?’ she said.

  Picking up the tins of emulsion, he followed them, leaving Cass to bark at the back door until she was certain that the hare had gone.

  Richard heard the dog again early that evening, yelping and whining. Then Harrie crying out for help.

  Crossing the landing, Richard found her kneeling on the floor of her room stroking Cass’s twitching body. Blood had been thrown everywhere, against the walls, the rug, the lampshade by the bed.

  ‘My God, what happened?’ said Richard.

  ‘The hare was in here,’ said Harrie, holding together what was left of the little dog. ‘I tried to chase it off.’

  Her hands were scratched and bleeding too.

  ‘Where is it now?’ said Richard.

  ‘I don’t know, do I? It ran away into the house somewhere. Juliette’s gone looking for it.’

  ‘Stay here,’ he said.

  He closed the door tightly behind him and heard the ticker ticker of the hare’s claws as it lopped across the floorboards to the head of the stairs.

  Richard started after it and the hare bolted down to the hallway, its hind legs kicking out as it gained speed. At the bottom of the stairs it tumbled under its own momentum, rolling into the telephone table and upsetting the ashtray. Coated in dust, it scratched frantically on the floor until it righted itself. By the time Richard made it down, it was already dashing headlong through the kitchen, where it mounted the table then the draining board before finding the half-open window above the sink. Bending through the gap, it lifted one back leg and then the other over the stay and Richard heard it drop down on to the dustbin lid outside.

  Juliette was there in the garden and seeing the hare she smiled and beckoned to it. The animal hob-hobbed through the grass and Juliette picked it up.

  She came into the kitchen, wiping the blood off its claws and snout. Her voice had been pitched on a reassuring note but changed when she saw Richard.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t bring it in here, Juliette.’

  ‘I said what did you do to him?’

  ‘That’s Cass’s blood,’ Richard replied. ‘That thing ripped her to pieces.’

  ‘Well, the dog must have provoked him,’ said Juliette, moving to the kitchen door.

  ‘I thought you’d let it go.’

  ‘He came back, didn’t he?’

  Richard held her arm. The hare examined him with its unblinking eyes.

  ‘Put it outside,’ he said.

  ‘He’s cold and he’s hungry. I’m not turfing him out into the dark.’

  ‘It’s a nocturnal animal,’ Richard said. ‘I think it’ll survive. Take it to the garden.’

  She pulled away from him.

  ‘Give it to me, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking touch him.’ Juliette’s
raised voice echoed against the ceiling.

  She pushed past him to the hallway, meeting Harrie at the foot of the stairs. They began to argue and Richard went to stop things from getting out of hand.

  ‘What am I supposed to tell Shona when I get home?’ Harrie was saying. ‘Cass is dead.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she’ll even notice,’ said Juliette.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Harrie looked to Richard.

  ‘Please get rid of it,’ he said. ‘At least take it into the scullery. I’ll put down some straw or something.’

  ‘Would you want to sleep in the scullery?’ Juliette said.

  ‘Look at me for fuck’s sake,’ said Harrie, showing Juliette her bloodied hands and blouse. ‘Look at what it’s done.’

  ‘He was only defending himself.’

  ‘From Cass?’ said Harrie. ‘She’s half the size of that thing.’

  The hare wriggled in Juliette’s arms and she started up the stairs to the top floor, followed by Richard.

  ‘You were doing so well,’ said Harrie, going after her too. ‘You were better, Jules.’

  ‘Christ,’ Juliette said. ‘Don’t you ever stop talking? It’s all you ever do.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘No one asked you to interfere.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not why she came, Juliette,’ said Richard.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ Juliette shot back. ‘You didn’t want her to be here either.’

  ‘Listen, Jules, why don’t you come home to Edinburgh with me?’ said Harrie. ‘Come and stay with us, or with Mum and Dad. Some time away from here will do you the world of good.’

  At the door to the nursery, Juliette covered one of her ears.

  ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Just stop.’

  ‘No,’ said Harrie. ‘I’m not going to give up, Jules. You have to talk. You can’t keep all of this in your head.’

  ‘Nag nag nag,’ said Juliette. ‘Didn’t Rod manage to knock that out of you?’