Starve Acre Read online

  Juliette thought about it. ‘But he just wants to spend so much time alone.’

  ‘Some children do,’ said Ellis. ‘My eldest is still happier in her own company.’

  ‘But he isn’t happy,’ Juliette said. ‘He’s lonely.’

  ‘He’ll patch things up with his classmates soon enough,’ said Ellis. ‘Children don’t tend to live in the past as much as we do. Anyway,’ he went on, getting up when he heard the nurse’s voice. ‘It’s not so long until Christmas. I’m sure that’ll be a good diversion for him, won’t it?’

  The nurse knocked and brought Ewan in with the bulb of a lollipop swelling his cheek.

  He’d said nothing all the way back home but stared out of the car window, licking sugar syrup off his fingers. When they pulled into the driveway, he looked warily out of the rear window at the field. The night before had been so wild that the boy had probably mistaken the sound of the thrashing trees for the voices in his room. Richard suggested that he go across the lane, if only so that he knew there was nothing there to be afraid of.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘While it’s not raining.’

  With some hesitancy, Ewan got out and went to the edge of the road. He looked both ways as they’d taught him and then squeezed between the gate and the post.

  ‘You’re happy to just let him go off and play, are you?’ said Juliette. ‘After what’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll keep an eye on him from the study,’ Richard said. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  But that wasn’t what she meant.

  ‘Don’t you think there ought to be some consequences for what he did?’ she said.

  Richard’s feeling was that he’d learned his lesson already. Seeing his parents angry and upset with him was punishment enough.

  Juliette watched the boy capering his way through the field, his night terrors evaporated by daylight. ‘Well, I don’t see any remorse in him,’ she said.

  ‘And what would remorse look like in a five-year-old exactly?’ said Richard. ‘He’s forgotten about it. So should we.’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘Try.’

  Juliette conceded for the moment and went into the house to start cleaning Ewan’s room.

  As he sat at his desk and typed, Richard watched the boy gathering up the debris from the storm. He began to make a pile of dead wood in the middle of the field, and what looked alarmingly like a bonfire at first turned out to be a sort of castle. The construction kept him busy for some time and became interwoven with a game in which the large branch he straddled was transformed into a majestic horse. There was no point expecting him to be contrite. If anyone ought to feel guilty, thought Richard, then it was him and Juliette, not Ewan. It shouldn’t have been so easy for him to find the lighter and put himself in danger. But not only that, it was the assumptions they’d held about him that were making all this seem so much worse than it was. He’d always been such an obedient lad that Richard wouldn’t have imagined he’d even think about going into the study if he’d been told not to, let alone rummage through the drawers. He’d acted out of character, but it was a character that they had moulded for him. Ellis had been right: children changed.

  He’d been right, too, about Ewan needing space to play. Over in the field, the boy was immersed in his own world as he rode to and from the fringes of the wood gathering twigs with yellow leaves to act as flags for his battlements.

  Each journey seemed to be rife with danger, as he veered around enemies and swashed the air with a stick sword. The route he took from his castle to the wood was the same each time and so while this episode of the game persisted, Richard could put him in the peripheries of his sight as he worked, knowing that he would not stray far. It was only when the motion of the little figure suddenly stopped that Richard turned his attention fully to the window.

  Ewan was standing very still by the pile of branches he’d made, gazing up into the sky. Richard followed his line of sight, but he couldn’t see any birds or aeroplanes – the kinds of things that the boy often pointed out.

  Still staring, Ewan dropped the foliage he was carrying, backed away and then ran up the field towards the house.

  The snowstorm lasted for most of the night, and in the morning Harrie let Juliette sleep until ten before going up to her room with some tea. She spoke softly to her now and tried to coax her down to the kitchen so that she could cut her hair, though Richard could tell that she had some ulterior motive.

  ‘You needn’t look so worried, Jules,’ she said, laying sheets of newspaper on the floor. ‘I always made a good job of it, didn’t I?’

  She stood behind Juliette with a brush and drew it through her hair, making her wince when it caught the tangles.

  ‘I thought we might go out today,’ she said.

  ‘Go out where?’ said Richard.

  ‘Down to the village,’ Harrie replied, picking up the scissors from the table. ‘You could do with some groceries.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Juliette. ‘I need to clean for when Mrs Forde comes. She said that I had to.’

  ‘Well, we don’t even have to go as far as the village if you don’t want to,’ said Harrie. ‘We could just walk to the wood or something.’

  She made the first cut, sending a sheaf of auburn hair to the floor.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ said Juliette. ‘I have to prepare the house for the Beacons.’

  Harrie combed her hair straight again and blew the strays off the scissors.

  Coming to the point now, she said, ‘Look, there’s someone I’d like you to speak to.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Juliette. ‘Who?’

  ‘He was so good for me after everything that happened with Rod,’ said Harrie. ‘He’s one of those people who make you feel very at ease. I could tell him anything. His name’s Osman.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Juliette, understanding now. ‘I’m not seeing your fucking psychiatrist, Harriet. Is that the reason you’re here, to drum up some trade for him?’

  ‘You need to talk to someone, Jules.’

  ‘What is it with you and talking? Is that the cure for everything?’

  Harrie put down the scissors. ‘Listen, it wasn’t until Osman got me to open up about Rod that I came anywhere close to moving on. He really straightened me out.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did,’ said Juliette. ‘Does Graham know?’

  ‘I’ll put that remark down to your condition.’

  ‘My condition?’ said Juliette, getting up. ‘What is it you’ve diagnosed me with exactly?’

  ‘Jules, I’ve spoken to Osman about this Mrs Forde and he agrees with me that it’d be much better if she didn’t come.’

  Juliette struggled for words, as she often did when her sister infuriated her, and her response was jumbled.

  ‘Why would I care what this Osman thinks? You had no right . . . he knows nothing about me . . . Jesus, Harriet.’

  ‘Can’t you at least hear what he has to say?’ said Harrie, directing this to Richard as much as Juliette.

  ‘She doesn’t need a psychiatrist,’ he said.

  ‘And I already know what he’ll say,’ said Juliette. ‘They’re full of it, people in that profession. They send people mad.’

  ‘You’re basing that on one experience, Jules.’

  ‘One was enough.’

  Ewan had come away from the children’s clinic in Wakefield hysterical.

  ‘They don’t know what they’re talking about half the time,’ said Juliette.

  ‘If you think it’s all nonsense, then it won’t do you any harm to see him, will it?’ Harrie retorted.

  ‘Do you think I’m losing it?’ said Juliette. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re well,’ said Harrie. ‘Given what you say about Ewan.’

  ‘Why can’t it be true? I wouldn’t be the first person it’s happened to.’

  Harrie sighed irritably. ‘Oh, listen to yourself. Listen to what you’re saying, Jules, for he
aven’s sake. You can’t believe it, surely?’

  Juliette left the room and Harrie called after her.

  ‘Your hair. It’s not finished.’

  When Juliette ignored her, she turned to Richard.

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ she said.

  ‘Can’t you just let her work things out on her own?’

  ‘Richard, if there’s one thing that’s clear it’s that she’s no idea what’s best for herself any more. She needs Osman, not these others. Not this Mrs Forde.’

  ‘She’s not a vase,’ said Richard. ‘You can’t just tip one thing out and pour another thing in.’

  Harrie frowned at him and gave a little exasperated laugh. ‘You really can’t see how ill she is, can you?’

  ‘Grief isn’t an illness.’

  ‘But she isn’t grieving. How can she be when she thinks Ewan’s alive? She needs help.’

  ‘And you’re the remedy?’

  ‘I am on your side, believe it or not.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘That she gets away from this house as soon as possible,’ said Harrie. ‘And I’m not being dramatic. The longer she stays here the worse she’ll get.’

  ‘Where should I take her, exactly?’ said Richard. ‘This is her home.’

  ‘Let her stay in Edinburgh with me for a while. Give her some time with her family and she’ll be a different person the next time you see her. I know she will.’

  ‘Is this why you came?’ Richard said. ‘To spirit her away?’

  ‘You think she’s better off here?’ said Harrie, leading him to the door of the kitchen. ‘Look at her.’

  Juliette was out in the hallway polishing the mirror and listening to the tapes she’d made in Ewan’s room. She had the volume dial at its limit and the sound of her own breathing, the rattle of the pipework, the draught from the window and all the other restless movements of the house that she’d recorded were amplified to a deafening cacophony.

  Harrie tried her best to persuade Juliette out of the house, but she continued to swab and scrub, moving from the hallway to the stairs, where she swept each riser in turn and cleaned the brass rods with a duster.

  She hadn’t inspected the house so closely since the days following the fire in Ewan’s room. Her process had been as meticulous then as it was now. Once she’d got rid of the smell of smoke and taken down the curtains to be washed, she made Richard lock the study and keep it locked whenever he wasn’t using it. All the matches were kept in cupboards well out of Ewan’s reach and anything else that the boy could conceivably appropriate for mischief was consigned to the shed in the back garden.

  Juliette knew perfectly well that it would be impossible to second-guess all the ways in which Ewan might hurt himself, but she felt that she had to do something nonetheless. With the winter approaching, the boy was spending less time in the field and more time in the house. But it didn’t seem to Richard that it was anything to do with the weather. The afternoon he’d been out there playing knights and castles after his visit to Dr Ellis he’d come back in troubled by something. And each time he’d been out since he’d only gone as far as the gate before running home.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Richard asked him. ‘Don’t you enjoy going there any more?’

  Ewan shrugged and Richard wondered if he’d simply run out of games to play.

  ‘No,’ said Ewan. ‘I know lots of games.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I don’t like the tree,’ Ewan said.

  ‘The trees in the wood, you mean?’

  ‘No, the big tree.’

  Now Richard knew why the boy had been staring up into the sky. He’d been picturing the old oak. No doubt Gordon had filled his head with stories.

  ‘But there is no tree in the field,’ said Richard. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘It’s there sometimes,’ said Ewan, the logic completely sound to him. ‘Sometimes it’s not.’

  Richard had taken him and shown him that the acre was empty and, holding his hand, Ewan seemed content. But he still wouldn’t go there on his own. Instead, when he wasn’t at school, he drifted around the house from one room to the next or sat glumly on the stairs dressed as a pirate or a cowboy for a game that had quickly become dull.

  Anxious that boredom would lead to curiosity and curiosity to injury, Juliette tried to keep him occupied as much as she could by playing board games or helping him bake biscuits or distracting him with a book or a comic. On Sundays, she and Richard might take him for a walk across the moors towards Micklebrow or drive over to Skipton to look at the castle.

  Once, they had gone to stay with Juliette’s parents in Edinburgh for the weekend, a tense couple of days during which Eileen and Doug tried to guess why they’d come. Nothing had been said to them about what Ewan had done to Susan Drewitt or about the fire, but they could tell that something was wrong. Juliette spent most of the time fretting over Ewan, whose moods had been impossible to keep up with. He’d been morose and then hyperactive, wanting company one minute and to be alone the next.

  ‘We all need our own space,’ Doug had said to comfort Juliette. ‘Even at that age. Give him some room to breathe, pet.’

  When they got back to Starve Acre, she tried, but each time Ewan went to play in his bedroom Juliette would contrive some reason to go and see him a few minutes later. She’d take up clean clothes or choose that moment to start clearing out his wardrobe or changing his bedding.

  In turn, Ewan began to do the same to her.

  After putting him to bed and getting into the bath, she might surface from the water to find him watching from the doorway. Or he seemed to have a knack for knowing when Richard and Juliette were in the early stages of foreplay and would get into bed with them before it went any further.

  Under the sheets, he’d pinch their skin or pull Juliette’s hair, simply because it hurt, it seemed.

  ‘It’s all for attention,’ Richard said. ‘Nothing else.’

  ‘But he doesn’t want our attention,’ said Juliette. ‘He wants to be on his own.’

  ‘Deep down, I mean.’

  As far as Richard could see, Ewan was as needful of his parents as any other child.

  ‘Do you like him?’ Juliette asked. ‘As a person, I mean.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Richard. ‘Why? Don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Genuinely. I can’t say.’

  ‘He’s still our Ewan,’ said Richard, and she looked at him as though that were the problem. He was whatever they had made him. If they didn’t like what they saw, then it was their own fault.

  It seemed to Richard sometimes that Juliette had actually brought twins into the world: Ewan and Guilt. The latter had always been the stronger of the two. It fed more, weighed more, demanded more of their attention. When it had outlived Ewan, it had grown larger still.

  Even before she fell pregnant, Juliette had talked about her boy, her Ewan, describing in detail the personality he would have and the clothes he’d wear. And while Richard always thought it nothing more than a rather sweet exercise of the imagination, it shocked other people that Juliette could have so much confidence in an untested womb. They dressed their concerns as jokes but still, the feeling among friends and family had been that Juliette was in danger of jinxing herself and the child in some way, if a child came at all. When she was pregnant, it was easy to dismiss it all as superstition, but then Ewan had been born early and when they tried for a second baby a year later nothing happened. Then the thought that she had been presumptuous and had inflicted some damage on herself was hard to shake off. When Ewan passed away, she was convinced that it had been her who’d invited death to the house.

  But whether it had been a punishment or simply harsh biological fate, it didn’t much matter in the end. No conclusion seemed to make sense. No one could explain what Ewan’s life was supposed to have meant. He’d gone before he could really become anything or achieve anything or make anything. It see
med that he’d only come into the world to take all their love and then fill them with sorrow.

  As Juliette swept the landing outside the study, Richard tried to type up the notes he’d made in the tent. But he found himself distracted by the hare and took off the newspaper he’d laid down on top of it to examine the bones again. Quite what he should do with them, he didn’t know. To keep them in a box felt like a waste. He could, of course, take the remains to the university when he returned there. Biological Science might want them. Or he could mount the skeleton in some way so that the hare would look as though it were springing across his desk.

  He searched the shelves for a book that might explain such a procedure but found nothing of use and resumed the work of unpacking another of his father’s boxes.

  An hour passed. He sorted what he could into subject groups and added the rest to the ever growing piles of miscellany under the window.

  At the bottom of one box, he found a set of books fattened by old envelopes full of dried wildflowers from the garden. And in the middle of a pamphlet on the fly agaric was another of the woodblock prints.

  Compared with the others, it was in poor condition. The edges were crumpled and at some point it had been folded into a quarto. The creases had made the paper fragile and so the whole thing came out in four sections that Richard arranged on the desk.

  It appeared to show three farmers. One with a cudgel. One with a net. The last, holding a lantern on a pole, knelt in his field saying, ‘Jack Grey, Our Bonnie Sonnes Dyed For Thee.’

  Richard hadn’t heard that name since his childhood, when the Cannon boys in the village shop would try to scare him.

  You know Jack Grey lives in the wood by your field, don’t you, Willoughby? You know that he comes out at night and looks through your windows?

  The older people in Stythwaite had their stories too, about being followed through Croften Wood as children, about their grandfathers warning them to look out for Jack Grey. Though what he would have done to them if he’d caught them creeping through the trees was never clear. And while the thought of being watched as he slept was unsettling, Richard couldn’t ever quite picture what he would have seen if he had woken up. Jack Grey was one of those figures who, for some reason, persisted from one generation to the next, becoming ever more obscure until only the name survived, attended by a vague sense of malevolence.