Starve Acre Read online

  One such Saturday, as his mother was driving back out of Stythwaite, the Somertons’ dog had got loose and, having been shooed out of the churchyard, it careered across the road and under the wheels of the car. Hearing the noise, the villagers poured out of their cottages and the afternoon drinkers from the pub. The priest phoned the policeman in Lastingly and the whole village kept Richard’s mother there on the street until the constable arrived. The Somertons, in particular, had been insistent that she was charged with something, but the policeman didn’t need much encouragement to give Mrs Willoughby notice to present herself at the station in Skipton on Monday with her documents. Then came the line that she’d taken to heart for years afterwards.

  ‘I don’t know how you drive in town, love, but you slow down when you come through here,’ he said. ‘It might not be a dog next time. It might be a little lad. You wouldn’t want some idiot knocking the life out of your child, would you? You think about that when you get behind the wheel.’

  What a thing to say. Couldn’t he see that she was pregnant?

  ‘Skipton, first thing Monday,’ he said, and then finding no one willing to remove the dog from under the car he took hold of its back legs and dragged it to the kerb.

  All this had happened in the mysterious world that preceded Richard’s birth, where the roots of his parents’ unfathomable habits and decisions lay. As he grew up, the story about the Somertons’ dog had explained a few of their foibles but it still left the most important questions unanswered. The mongrel had been one of a dozen that mooched about the village. Had his mother really been so ashamed of killing it that she couldn’t face anyone in Stythwaite ever again? Had there been so much hostility towards the Willoughbys that Richard had been sent to a boarding school miles away? It seemed unlikely. Yet, as a child, it was difficult to know what to think.

  No one had ever talked to him about the incident, of course. Even Audrey Cannon, the expert rumourmonger of the grocery shop, was still tight-lipped when it came to Edith Willoughby. She meant well, love, was all she’d ever given away.

  She meant well. Meaning: she’d tried too hard. Meaning: that her benevolence had been taken as interference. They hadn’t wanted her smiles or her cups of tea or her home-made cakes. They hadn’t wanted her attention or an ear to bend. Nor a walk around the village or another chapter of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists or Jude the Obscure.

  Richard imagined that they tolerated her at first, the way they might have waited out a storm, but then they’d have started talking – in the King’s Head or after mass, where he pictured her altruism being broken and shared like another round of communion bread. Their collective indignation had nothing to do with a dead dog. His mother had simply embarrassed them all. It hadn’t occurred to the villagers that they either needed charity or that they ought to show it to each other.

  He told Juliette very little about any of this. Like his mother, she had come here to live with others, not as an outcast. And while it was obvious that she’d have a hard time being accepted as an equal, Richard gave her whatever encouragement she needed to join the Fair Committee or the PTA. They were civil to her, rather than friendly, though Juliette seemed to think that that would change over time if they could see that she was serious about being a part of the village.

  But after what Ewan had done to Susan Drewitt at school, he was afraid that all the effort she’d made would come to nothing and that people would think of the Willoughbys as they’d always thought of them.

  It had angered him more than he imagined it would and he suspected that some of that sentiment came across in the meeting with Ewan’s teacher. It wasn’t a denial of the facts as they stood – Ewan had hurt the girl on purpose, and had admitted to holding her fingers in the jamb of the closing door – it was the situation. A cloud would be cast over Juliette’s belief (and therefore his own) that they’d made the right decision in moving here, and the boy would be tarnished with a reputation he didn’t need.

  Although, at the time, Juliette hadn’t been thinking of notoriety. She just wanted to understand why Ewan had done it. He had never been violent before. Not once. He was a boy of simple pleasures. All that summer before he started school, he’d been content just to look for birds in the back garden or fly his kite on the moor. On other days, he’d explore the field, digging like Daddy did, trying to find treasure. There’d been no sign that he would turn in such a sudden way.

  His attack on the Drewitts’ girl being so random, so out of character, made it all the harder for Juliette to take. She blamed herself. The lessons she thought she’d taught him about friendship and kindness had obviously been inadequate.

  But, as Richard explained to her, Ewan had only been at Holy Cross a few weeks when it happened: perhaps he’d merely taken out his anxieties about starting school on someone else. It had to be said, too, that Miss Clarke was young and inexperienced, insensitive as yet to the nuances of children’s behaviour, too broad in her brushstrokes. She’d painted Ewan as the aggressor and Susan as the innocent victim, but who knew, really, whether either of those labels was entirely accurate?

  And perhaps a veteran teacher might have seen that it was only pent-up frustration boiling over. Ewan had always been a little behind the others. Not quite as quick to count numbers, or recognise letters, never quite clapping to the beat. But, as everyone liked to reassure Richard and Juliette with great authority, he was only that way because he’d been born early. He’d soon catch up. There would be plenty of time. Children had it in such abundance that they could throw it away and waste it just as they pleased. For them, it would simply unfold and unfold. Only, it hadn’t. Not for Ewan.

  Richard worked in the study until dusk fell. Harrie ran Juliette a bath and then went to the kitchen to cook. A while later, when the water was draining away, Richard heard her calling.

  ‘Jules, there’s food on the table when you’re dressed,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ Juliette replied.

  ‘Well, sit down with us anyway.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Juliette, coming out of the bathroom now. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You must be. Come and have something at least.’

  ‘It’s nearly seven,’ Juliette said, and Richard listened to her going up to the top floor.

  ‘Hold on, I’m talking to you,’ said Harrie. ‘Don’t you go back to that bloody room.’

  She followed Juliette, calling her back, demanding that she eat, but Richard knew that she was wasting her breath. Seven o’clock had been Ewan’s bedtime and since his passing it was the moment of the day when Juliette most felt his presence. Nothing would keep her from being in his room when the clock struck the hour.

  Realising that her orders were being ignored, Harrie softened her tone.

  ‘Why don’t you sleep with me tonight?’ she said. ‘You could bring the mattress and put it next to my bed, like you used to do.’

  ‘We’re not children, Harriet,’ Juliette replied.

  ‘It’ll give us a chance to talk.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be about Ewan. We can talk about anything. I’ve not seen you for months.’

  Juliette responded by firmly closing the door to Ewan’s room and Harrie spent another few minutes knocking and negotiating with her until she finally gave up and came back downstairs. Richard couldn’t help but feel a degree of satisfaction at her defeat. It was just like her to think that she’d be able to walk into the house and change everything with a clap of her hands. And if she couldn’t, then she’d assume that it was only because Juliette was being deliberately obtuse.

  ‘I mean, does she actually want to get better?’ she said, quizzing Richard as he put on his coat and scarf in the hallway. ‘I just don’t understand why she’s being so resistant. What is it she wants?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong person,’ he said, glad that he had the excuse to leave and go to Gordon’s.

  The wipers carved
off thick wedges of snow from the windscreen and Richard crunched out of the driveway, following Teddy Burnsall as he cleared the lane.

  Although the worst that the weather had thrown down was sheared aside by the blade of the tractor’s plough, there were still patches of ice where the wheels of the car would spin before they gained the traction of the tarmac again.

  Richard came to the village tense and jittery and was grateful to see the church tower at last. The doors were open and the lights were on. It was the night the bell ringers practised. The last of them, late and hurrying, waved to Teddy as he swung around the corner by the edge of the graveyard and headed towards his farm. Everyone in the village seemed to consider him a decent man and had been outraged on his behalf after what Ewan had done to his horse at the spring fair the year before.

  But the boy had been goaded and that always exacerbated his difficulties. The Burnsalls’ daughters had to take some responsibility.

  Over the bridge, Richard passed along the main road – the curtains in the cottages all drawn, the windows of the King’s Head steamed up – and out beyond the last streetlight to Gordon’s place, which in the dark always seemed much further away.

  When the headlights caught the faces of the stone lions, Richard turned between the gateposts and followed the cracked driveway to the house. As soon as he pulled up, two St Bernards appeared and kept him in the car until Gordon came to the front door and sent them lumbering around the corner.

  ‘Aren’t dogs vile?’ he said, as Richard made his way up the steps. ‘I’d shoot the pair of them if it were up to me. If you get a move on, the tea shouldn’t be too stewed.’

  He left Richard stamping the snow off his shoes and called from the front room.

  ‘Felicitations, it’s still drinkable. And, Richard, don’t let that fucking cat in. She’s being an unalloyed madam at the moment. I’ve told her the furniture’s Arts and Crafts, but she just looks at me and carries on scratching.’

  The ash-blue Persian in the hallway scrutinised Richard and darted away into the junk-filled recesses of the house before she could be picked up.

  Every time Richard visited Gordon it was more noticeable that the domestic function of each room was rapidly becoming overtaken by the commercial. Things that he hoped to sell were heaped everywhere. The front room had too many clocks, too many radios, too many televisions, too many paintings. It reminded Richard of the Royal Academy exhibitions where the pictures were stacked from floor to ceiling.

  Gordon offered him one of the unmatching chairs by the gas fire, briskly sweeping the velvet cushion free of cat hairs.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Russell to trim the damned thing, but he won’t, of course. Not after last time. She turns into a perfect devil if you try to hold her down. Between you, me and the four walls, I’m just waiting for the opportunity to drown the little fucker in the bathtub. There.’

  Replacing the cushion, he patted the seat and smiled. As he’d got older he’d become fleshier in the nose and lips, and had started to take on more than a passing resemblance to Dylan Thomas. He dressed like him too in a bow tie and a three-piece suit pungent with an aftershave that smelled of cloves.

  He took hold of Richard’s hands as he sat down and turned them over. The lines on his palms had gone black with soil.

  ‘You’re still digging then?’ he said.

  ‘I’m still digging and I’m still alive.’

  Gordon frowned at his flippancy. ‘Has anything turned up?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Richard, thinking better of telling him about the hare’s skeleton.

  ‘You’ve been prowling about in that place for months,’ said Gordon. ‘And you’ve found nothing? I don’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s not that unusual, I can tell you.’

  Gordon poured the tea. ‘At what stage do you decide that the whole thing’s otiose and call it a day?’ he said. ‘Or are you going to take up the entire field?’

  ‘Don’t you think the roots are there?’ asked Richard.

  ‘I think there’s something there,’ said Gordon. ‘Yes, you may well smile, but I’ve lived here longer than you and I’ve seen things.’

  ‘Seen things?’

  ‘In the mind’s eye, yes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Gordon considered the question. ‘Things left over,’ he said.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s hard to put my finger on it exactly. But you certainly couldn’t make me go through that gate. Your father could never persuade me to go burrowing with him.’

  ‘He was only after old pennies, Gordon.’

  ‘What you go searching for and what you find aren’t always the same.’

  ‘Did you get that from a Christmas cracker?’

  ‘I’m not talking proverbially, smart arse. I’m talking from experience. I don’t like the place.’

  Seeing Richard’s reaction, he laughed, though without much humour.

  ‘Your father used to give me that look,’ he said. ‘He thought I was barking too. They all do, don’t they, apart from you, sparrow?’

  He directed this at Russell, who came in with the cat in his arms. He was a pale, demure lad with thick copper curls and, at nineteen or twenty, was one of the younger lodgers Gordon had taken in over the years. He sat down on the arm of Gordon’s chair, trying not to let Richard see that he had a black eye. Turning away a little more, he allowed the cat to rub her cheek against his hand.

  ‘I don’t know what you see in that animal,’ said Gordon.

  ‘Companionship mostly,’ Russell replied. It was clearly a pointed remark, but Gordon didn’t react.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you tell your friend that next time she gets at the furniture I’ll pluck those claws out. Or get Richard to bury her in the field.’

  The smile he passed over with the cup of tea was difficult to read. It was often hard to gauge him, actually. That was part of his charm and it was one of the reasons they didn’t much care for him in Stythwaite. But then unless one had family pedigrees that stretched back so far as to be forgotten, they didn’t really care for anyone much.

  Gordon was an outsider, just as Richard’s mother had become. It had made them natural allies. Ewan, too, had picked up on the fact that Gordon was somehow separate from the folk in the village, and they had bonded with a surprising devotion. Whenever they were together, Richard and Juliette watched Ewan transform into an animated, gregarious boy they barely recognised. He’d adored Gordon and Gordon had been exceptionally protective over him. He fussed about so many things when it came to Ewan that Richard and Juliette thought that his concerns could only really be an affectation. He must have known that they weren’t about to let Ewan hurt himself in all the ways he feared. They’d hardly let him drown in the beck or fall out of a tree. And they couldn’t see what harm would come to him across the lane. In any case, they’d moved to Starve Acre so that Ewan could enjoy the outdoors and Gordon knew that.

  Yet he always seemed determined to direct Ewan’s attention away from the field. He’d brought him a record player and provided his first bicycle. He’d drive up to the house with books he’d picked up from the second-hand fairs and read to him. That was what Ewan looked forward to the most, even if the stories were always a little too mature for him to fully understand. It was the way Gordon told them that he enjoyed. Even Juliette sat and listened. People did when Gordon spoke. Especially at the memorial service, when he’d recited so passionately the text of Corinthians 15.

  In those vague, blank weeks that followed the funeral, Richard and Juliette had spent more time with him than they had when Ewan was alive, the three of them propping each other up at the worst moments. Juliette, especially, found Gordon a great comfort; he was attentive to her when Richard was at work. But what seemed obvious now was that he had been weighing her up and waiting for the right time to tell her about Mrs Forde and the Beacons.

  Still, he’d been led by his heart. Richard had to remember that.
He had been lost once, just as they were.

  A number of years before, another of his lodgers – it was Gordon’s euphemism – had been killed in an accident on the motorway and Mrs Forde had been the one to lead him out of the maze of his grief.

  That he’d been wary of her at first was something he’d confided in Richard many times in order to persuade him that his feelings about her would change too.

  ‘I was just as doubtful as you are,’ he’d say. ‘I was quite convinced that she wouldn’t have any answers. And she didn’t.’

  Then he’d lean in, sotto voce.

  ‘I did, Richard.’

  She had not given him counsel, it seemed, but simply made him notice what he already knew, what he intuitively felt about the afterlife. It was, he said, so simple that he laughed when he realised how easily it had been overlooked. This sudden seeing had had such a profound effect on him that he’d aided Mrs Forde with her ministrations ever since, driving her all over the county so that she could attend to the bereaved. Richard had no doubt that Gordon just wanted others to benefit from the insight he’d been given but it seemed as though he were trying to find some way to repay her too. She refused to take any money in return for what she did and, though Gordon thought it honourable, it made Richard all the more concerned. It would have been better if she had asked Juliette to cross her palm with silver; at least then her motivations would be transparent. He’d rather she was a businesswoman plain and simple than someone so convinced of their numinous gifts that they felt it a duty to share them out of charity.

  Outside, the two dogs barked at a passing car. Russell fidgeted anxiously and left the cat with Gordon.

  ‘I’ll go and get things ready,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, go on, sparrow. You fly off,’ said Gordon.

  ‘What happened to his eye?’ said Richard when he’d gone.

  ‘He was shopping for me at Cannon’s and fell foul of some bastards coming out of the pub,’ said Gordon. ‘He won’t say who, but I have my suspicions. That’s why the dogs roam freely. They’re for his sake rather than mine. I’ve long since given up being afraid of the rebarbative little shits around here.’