Starve Acre Read online

  Richard indicated that he was. Stuck in the van, he had no choice.

  ‘After Ewan died,’ Gordon said, ‘Juliette and I spent a lot of time talking.’

  ‘I know you did,’ said Richard.

  ‘And she told me things that she didn’t tell anyone else.’

  Richard had always suspected that that had been the case. Juliette had never spent hours unfolding her soul to him – but he knew that it was often easier to speak to a stranger, as it were, than someone enveloped in the same grief.

  ‘I don’t mean her feelings necessarily,’ Gordon said. ‘I’m talking about certain facts concerning Ewan.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  Richard could see that his shortness was making Gordon uncomfortable and he was both glad and sorry for it.

  ‘This is hard for me,’ Gordon said. ‘I’ve known you for a long time. You’re a good friend.’

  ‘As are you,’ said Richard. ‘But this Mrs Forde has caught you, Gordon. And to be honest, I’m surprised; a man of your intelligence.’

  ‘Caught me?’

  ‘Conned you, then.’

  Gordon’s frustration got the better of him for a moment. ‘Do you still think that this is it?’ he said. ‘What you see or what you can feel under your hands is everything?’

  ‘Of course it is. You’re deluded if you think otherwise.’

  The hare’s transformation had been unnatural but it had required no intellectual sacrifice, no faith, no imagination. It had occurred in this world of forms. For whatever reason it had happened, whatever it meant, it was real.

  ‘Forgive me, Richard,’ said Gordon, ‘but if you can’t see that Ewan was affected by something in that field, then you’re more deluded than anyone.’

  ‘It was make-believe,’ Richard said. ‘From the stories you told him about Jack Grey.’

  ‘I only told him about Jack Grey so that he had a name for what he’d seen or heard. I thought it would make more sense to him.’

  ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘I’m saying that I don’t know what’s there, Richard. Not entirely. No one does.’

  ‘Really? I’m shocked.’

  ‘I’m not sure that being facetious is very helpful any more.’

  ‘How else should I be? It’s nonsense, Gordon. Like all that drivel the Beacons came out with.’

  ‘I’ll excuse your ignorance. You’re obviously upset.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Richard. ‘If there were anything in it, I’d have seen what the rest of you saw when Mrs Forde came to the house. I passed her test, didn’t I? She found whatever she needed to find in my blood.’

  Gordon turned away from him and looked down the street. He’d rigged it.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Richard. ‘Why?’

  ‘You wanted to be with Juliette, didn’t you?’

  ‘So, it was kindness, was it?’

  ‘Insurance.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘None of us wanted you to sabotage the meeting. It was too important.’

  ‘For who?’

  ‘For Juliette, of course.’ Gordon turned to face him square on. ‘The guilt was killing her, Richard. I couldn’t let her carry on feeling like that.’

  ‘We both felt guilty, Gordon.’

  ‘It was different for her.’

  ‘How?’

  Gordon paused then said, ‘She was with Ewan when he died, Richard. She let him go.’

  Richard looked at him and went to get out but Gordon held his wrist tight until he took his seat again.

  ‘It was for your sake,’ he said.

  ‘My sake?’

  ‘I have to tell you this,’ Gordon said. ‘Please listen.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  Still gripping Richard’s arm, Gordon said, ‘You don’t know how close you came to dying.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about Ewan, Richard.’

  ‘Ewan?’

  ‘Juliette told me that she woke one night a few days before he died and saw him standing next to you with a handful of pebbles from the beck,’ said Gordon. ‘You were fast asleep. You had your mouth open.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done anything.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘It would have been a prank,’ said Richard. ‘He was only five.’

  ‘But if Juliette hadn’t woken up?’

  ‘Then what? Even if he’d tipped the lot in, I’d have spat them out.’

  Gordon looked at him. ‘No, no, Richard,’ he said. ‘Ewan had wet the stones so that they’d slip down your throat. You would have choked to death.’

  He rubbed his thumb over Richard’s knuckles.

  ‘Let me drive you up to Starve Acre,’ he said. ‘Don’t go back on your own.’

  ‘Move your van,’ said Richard, opening the door and getting out.

  ‘We could try to persuade Juliette to stay with me and Russell,’ Gordon went on. ‘I could make room.’

  Richard looked at him until he switched on the engine.

  Where the top road levelled out, Richard put his foot down and cut through the puddles and the trails of mud from the farmers’ trucks. Every few seconds he cast his eyes to the rear-view mirror expecting to see Gordon following him. The man was a fool for taking what Juliette had told him at face value. She simply wanted someone to blame for what had happened and so she’d blamed herself. What mother wouldn’t? She hadn’t watched Ewan die at all. It was a metaphor. She’d been sound asleep when it happened and so in her mind for all the use she’d been that night she might as well have stood by and observed. Gordon knew nothing.

  Richard hoped that they had parted with enough hostility to make him stay away, at least for now. Things would be bad enough with Juliette’s parents here. Especially her mother. Eileen’s heavy-handedness would only provoke Juliette into strengthening the barricades.

  Still, now that Harrie had set off for the station Juliette would be on her own. If they could only have the chance to talk, he was certain that he’d be able to get through to her. With only the two of them in the house it seemed more likely that she’d listen. And if she were willing to listen, then she might be persuaded to leave.

  Expecting to find Juliette still holed up in the nursery, he was surprised to hear her moving about in the kitchen. He stashed the box of poison behind the row of wellingtons in the hallway and hung his coat on the rack.

  When he went in, she looked up from the table and finished off slicing a sandwich of meat and pickles.

  Something about her appearance had changed. There was colour in her face. Her eyes were brighter.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she said. ‘I can make you something if you like.’

  Richard shook his head and sat down opposite her. He wondered what she’d done with the hare.

  ‘It’s good to see you eating again,’ he said.

  Between mouthfuls, she said, ‘It feels like I can’t fill myself today. I’m hungry all the time.’

  ‘You’ve some catching up to do, I suppose.’

  He’d always been able to tell when an apology was coming. Juliette would offer her hand in a particular way, beckoning until he took it. She did so now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ he said. Her skin was so warm. Her pulse kicked against his fingers.

  ‘For going off earlier. I didn’t mean to worry you.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You came back.’

  ‘I know I’ve been difficult to live with,’ she said, and as Richard began to reply, she interrupted with, ‘No, don’t pretend. I have.’

  ‘It’s been hard for all of us,’ he said.

  ‘It was only because I didn’t understand what was happening. I’m better now.’

  She let go of his hand, took another bite of her sandwich and wiped butter from her lip.

  Richard looked at the clock. ‘How long’s Harrie been gone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘
Didn’t you hear her leave?’

  ‘I was busy.’

  ‘You do know that she’s gone to fetch your parents, don’t you?’ said Richard.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you worried?’ he said. ‘You know what they want to do.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘They’ll take you to hospital.’

  ‘And how are they going to do that?’ said Juliette. ‘Pick me up and throw me in the back of the car?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Richard, none of them can do anything. And once they realise that, they’ll go home again.’

  ‘I think you’re seriously underestimating your mother, Juliette.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how loud she shouts. She only has words.’

  ‘She’ll write letters and make phone calls. She’ll bring doctors.’

  ‘This is our house though, isn’t it?’ said Juliette.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So we don’t have to let anyone in that we don’t want.’

  He made her look at him. ‘It might come to the point where none of us has a choice about that any more,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not ill, Richard. Perhaps I was, before the Beacons came. But now everything’s clear. I don’t feel confused.’

  ‘You do know that it was a set-up, don’t you?’ said Richard. ‘Gordon persuaded Mrs Forde to let me stay.’

  ‘I thought that was probably the case.’

  ‘Then how can you believe a word she said?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what she said. It was what she showed me,’ said Juliette. ‘In fact, I don’t even know that it was her who showed me. When I saw how things really are, it didn’t feel as though it was anything I didn’t already know.’

  ‘That’s exactly how Gordon put it.’

  ‘Well, that’s how it is,’ she said, patiently accepting his cynicism. ‘I’m not saying it just because he did.’

  ‘It was a trick, Juliette,’ said Richard. ‘And a convincing one, I’ll give you that. But if you’re just clinging on to all this because you’re ashamed of being fooled, then there’s no need to feel like that. You were desperate.’

  She smiled peaceably and looked at him. ‘It wasn’t a trick and I wasn’t fooled.’

  He turned to the clock again. ‘We could get away,’ he said. ‘We could pack a few things and leave.’

  ‘Leave? What for? I can’t go anywhere, can I?’

  ‘Of course you can. What’s stopping you?’

  She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. ‘He’s sleeping,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to wake him yet.’

  ‘They will take it away, you know,’ he said.

  ‘They’d have to catch him first.’

  ‘Why don’t we let it out in the field?’ he said. ‘That would be a start. It might just convince them that you’re getting better.’

  She was smiling at him. She didn’t understand.

  ‘Juliette, listen to me,’ he said. ‘Once your mum and dad get here, you and I won’t be able to talk about this alone any more. Which is why we should go.’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘You. That animal, Juliette. What do you think I mean?’

  ‘We are talking, aren’t we?’

  ‘I mean talk properly. Away from here. Where we’ve got more time.’

  ‘Richard, we’ve got the rest of our lives. What are you worried about?’

  She finished the sandwich and started to quarter an apple with a fruit knife.

  ‘Please, Juliette. Just pack a bag and let’s go. Stella would have us for a few days. I’m sure she would.’

  ‘But I’m perfectly happy here.’

  ‘For now, maybe. But everything’s going to change. Believe me.’

  Juliette drew the knife through the flesh to cut out the pips.

  ‘I feel sorry for you, Richard,’ she said. ‘I really do. I’d give anything for you to feel at peace. Jesus, when I think of all those months I wasted blaming myself for what I did,’ she went on. ‘It’s no wonder I was ill.’

  ‘For what you did?’

  ‘Ewan,’ she said. ‘I was with him when he was dying. And I did nothing.’

  ‘He died on his own, Juliette. It was the middle of the night.’

  ‘No, I was there too. I woke up and went to him while you were asleep.’

  ‘And you left him in his bed for me to find the next morning? Come on. I don’t believe you’d do that.’

  Richard held her hand again. ‘What happened to Ewan wasn’t anyone’s fault,’ he said. ‘Certainly not yours. You mustn’t feel guilty.’

  ‘But that’s just it,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel guilty any more. I know that the light left him for a reason.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Because he was so unhappy, because he would have carried on hurting people,’ she said. ‘Richard, there’s such an intelligence to everything that happens. I wish you could see it.’

  ‘There wasn’t any reason why Ewan died when he did,’ said Richard. ‘The doctors said so. Don’t you remember?’

  She offered him a wedge of apple. He said nothing and she ate it herself.

  ‘You’ll come to realise how privileged we are soon enough,’ she said. ‘We’ve got another chance to love, Richard.’

  ‘A child, Juliette. Not that animal.’

  ‘But we called him, and he chose to come. That’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

  She touched his hair, kissed him and went out.

  He watched her go and soon heard the pipes of the house pink and rattle when she ran the bath taps.

  Despite what Juliette said, it was clear that she still felt culpable for the boy’s death. But Ewan’s heart had been imperfect from birth. Two doctors had told them that. The abnormality could have made itself apparent at any time, they said. He might have been taking his first steps or queuing for his pension. There was no telling. No one could have understood all the contexts and patterns that determined his survival from one moment to the next. Which meant that there was no better way that he could have lived. There was nothing that Richard or Juliette could have done differently.

  At the time, it had been no comfort to hear. But it had the benefit of being true. It could be demonstrated with diagrams. There were books that explained a defective heart in great detail.

  In the study Richard searched for them on the shelves and among the mounds under the window. Down in the hallway, the phone started to ring. Knowing it would be Gordon, he deliberated and then ignored it, peeling off the tape from the last of the cardboard boxes.

  He didn’t believe that Juliette was so far gone that she couldn’t be reasoned with. No one ever fell that far. Even his father might have been brought back, given time.

  From the box he took out books on pancreatic cancer, the Iberian lynx, amino acids, the rings of Saturn, fenland irrigation and the ichthyosaurus.

  Between a volume on granite and a treatise on pneumatology was a small leather folder and inside the remaining woodblock prints had been sewn together with string. Richard took the book over to the desk and switched on the lamp.

  Here were the three boys, the Bonnie Sonnes, being apprehended by the parish mob.

  Here they were, shackled in a cell.

  Over the page a courtroom of leaded windows and anguished faces, the Justice in his chair compelling the defendants to ‘diſcloſe all facts before God’.

  Next, the village-made instruments of persuasion. The blacksmith’s tongs. The ploughman’s whip.

  They had been productive, it seemed, for confessions quickly followed.

  ‘’Twas Jack Grey caſt his eye upon us! He bid us do much cruelty, sir!’

  ‘And where dids’t thou meet him?’ asked the Justice.

  The artist had described the answer that came.

  Here were the three boys standing in the field by moonlight.

  Here were the three boys on their knees, bowing down to the creature coming out of the wood.

/>   A large, bright-eyed hare.

  The last few pages of the book were brittle and brown with age and would not stand to be turned too often. Perhaps it was better that way.

  Here were the villagers congregated around the tree ‘In Gladneſſ Of A Devilment Ended’.

  From the bough, the rope hung long and tight, and at its end the hare sagged in the throttle.

  Now here was the hangman burying the animal beside the corpses of the three boys.

  Here was the forester with his saw in his hand watching the villagers dumping Old Justice into the same grave pit.

  Outside, Richard heard Harrie pulling into the driveway. The car juddered for a moment or two and then fell silent. He wished that he’d bolted the front door. That would have bought him some more time with Juliette. Leaving the prints on his desk, he went upstairs to warn her that her parents had arrived and found the door to the nursery unlocked. She was in her dressing gown, still damp from the bath. She invited him in and went back to watching the hare as it started to twitch itself awake under the blankets in the cot.

  A night-light held the room in a soft blue glow. A clock ticked. Some more of Ewan’s toys had been recovered from the boxes in the scullery and the rug was littered with plastic animals and brightly coloured building blocks, some stacked, some knocked over in fun.

  Below, the hallway became loud with talk as Harrie, Eileen and Doug came in. The phone began to ring again.

  Richard tried to speak to Juliette but she hushed him and leaned over the bars to pick up the hare. It took some effort. It had grown large and muscular. Its long body dangled and she folded in its wheeling back legs until it rested against her chest.

  She had been right. The hare wanted to be here. It had always wanted to be here. When he’d taken it out to the field, it had tried to get back to Starve Acre and find Juliette. It had only run into the wood because he’d forced it that way.

  Eileen called out. Richard heard her heels going into the kitchen. Harrie answered the phone and began arguing with Gordon.

  ‘What should I do?’ said Richard.

  ‘Let them come,’ Juliette said.

  ‘But they can’t see you like this.’

  Eileen was running up the stairs now, yelling for Juliette again. Doug followed her, shouting louder. But there was no anger in their voices, only a strain of fear that Richard knew well. It was the unique dread of every mother and father. The persistent sense that their children had always been drifting away from them. Out of reach and beyond their help. Into their own deranged worlds.