Starve Acre Read online

  There were comparisons to be made with the kinds of deities that cropped up all over England. He was really just another Green Man or Robin Goodfellow or Hag o’ the Hay. The fickle entity that either spoiled or swelled the crop. The whistler in the woods. The stranger on the lane at dusk. Friendly enough, but not entirely trustworthy. A tune on the pipes and then a blade at your throat.

  He would have been an ancient thing of folklore even when these prints were being made. It was hard to imagine that anyone had honestly thought him real.

  Just after six on Sunday evening, Gordon arrived with the Beacons. He came to the door first while the others were getting out of his van. As he shook Richard’s hand and kissed Juliette on the cheeks, he seemed unusually on edge.

  ‘Sorry we didn’t get here any sooner,’ he said, ‘but the lane’s like an ice rink and the van’s not as light on its feet as it was.’

  ‘It’s only a few minutes,’ said Juliette. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I know, but Mrs Forde likes to get to people on time,’ said Gordon. ‘It’s important to her.’

  He adjusted his tie and looked back at the three people approaching. He was wearing his best suit, Richard noticed.

  ‘Has she told you?’ said Juliette.

  ‘About what?’ Gordon said.

  ‘About Richard. About whether he can be with us.’

  But before Gordon could answer, the others were there at the door and he introduced the well-dressed young man helping Mrs Forde up the steps.

  ‘This is Peter,’ he said, and there were firm handshakes.

  He looked to Richard like one of the clerks who had worked in his father’s office. Every line of him clean and sharp, including the white stripe of scalp in his side parting.

  Next to him was a petite middle-aged woman in a mackintosh.

  ‘Rashmi,’ she said. She had the yellowish teeth of a heavy smoker. A great abundance of black hair. When she took Richard’s hand her wrist rattled with beads.

  ‘And Juliette, Richard,’ said Gordon, as Peter and Rashmi unbuttoned their coats, ‘this is Mrs Forde.’

  Richard had been expecting someone more obviously peculiar but under the gabardine she wore a cotton skirt and a simple ivory-coloured blouse. If he’d passed her in the street he’d have thought her a primary school teacher or a vicar’s wife. A plain but attractive woman in her early sixties who clipped her hair in place with a metal butterfly.

  In her presence, Gordon was unusually quiet and deferential. And Peter and Rashmi waited on her like the maids of a dowager, taking her jacket and her scarf, picking off stray hairs from her shoulder.

  ‘You have a beautiful house,’ she said, her voice kind but brisk.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Juliette. ‘I cleaned, like you said.’

  Mrs Forde looked around approvingly. ‘I could tell as soon as I walked in that this is a home you love. I should think your boy was very happy here, wasn’t he?’

  Juliette nodded.

  ‘No, no more tears,’ said Mrs Forde, passing on the handkerchief that Peter took from his breast pocket. ‘I’m sure you’ve cried enough for him these last few months, haven’t you? Make this the last time.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Juliette, smiling as she wiped the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Ewan went very suddenly,’ said Gordon, as if to mitigate Juliette’s reaction. ‘You remember me telling you?’

  ‘I do, I do,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘Though there is some comfort in knowing that if the light leaves a child, then so much of the suffering of later life is avoided. You’ll be familiar with the poem by Jonson, I’m sure?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliette.

  One of the Aberdeen uncles had copied part of it into a sympathy card. ‘To have so soon ’scap’d world’s and flesh’s rage’ under a picture of Jesus receiving a dove on to his palm.

  After Ewan’s death, almost every piece of correspondence that came through the letterbox carried the same assurances that the boy was in heaven and looking down upon them as an angel.

  The gist was often no different to those mawkish Victorian pamphlets that testified to heartbroken parents that all suffering was ordained. That no death was chance. That a child was always hand-picked to be with God. It was hard, Richard thought, for people to accept that an event could be utterly devoid of goodness. No one wanted to admit that cruelty really existed. Which is why the letters that came to Starve Acre from second cousins and old school-friends insisted that the experience of Ewan’s death would send the Willoughbys out into the rest of their lives with the sort of inner strength that was only ever forged in grief. Meaning that they were privileged in some abhorrent way.

  Eventually, Richard stopped looking at the post. Of course, people had to say something, but their presumption to know exactly what he or Juliette were feeling only made him indignant. No one could possibly have understood what they didn’t understand themselves. Although Harrie, naturally, claimed otherwise. She always thought she knew best when it came to her sister.

  For the last few hours she’d been trying to get Juliette to cancel the Beacons’ visit and, having failed, she nodded perfunctorily when they were introduced to her.

  Mrs Forde seemed to sense that her contempt was really concern and put her hand on Harrie’s shoulder. ‘You know, your sister will be quite safe,’ she said and Harrie gave a short, incredulous laugh before turning to Juliette.

  ‘If you need me,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in my room.’

  ‘If I need you?’ replied Juliette. ‘For what?’

  ‘Just take care,’ said Harrie and she shifted past the visitors to get to the stairs.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Juliette, opening the kitchen door for Mrs Forde.

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘I’ve come across it all my life. You know, for every person like yourself, there are a thousand others who’d rather walk around in ignorance. Still, I understand that in a way it must be comforting to do so for a while.’

  ‘The truth frightens some people,’ said Peter, and Rashmi concurred.

  ‘Or they just need proof,’ Gordon added.

  Richard thought that this was probably directed at him, a hint of the verdict Mrs Forde had reached. It was exactly as he thought: the taking of blood, the play of divination, was just a way of weeding out the sceptics who might show her up as a fraud.

  Mrs Forde sat down at the table and smoothed her skirt over her knees.

  ‘What’s worrying you, Juliette?’ she said. ‘You’re tense.’

  Juliette couldn’t really say why and Mrs Forde invited her to sit.

  ‘It won’t hurt you, what we do tonight,’ she said. ‘It won’t be frightening. If you feel changed afterwards, then it will only be in a good way. It’ll only be like coming out of water and opening your eyes.’

  ‘But will Ewan come back?’ asked Juliette, causing Mrs Forde to frown. ‘I still don’t really understand why I can’t see him or hear him any more. Why has he been fading away?’

  ‘I think you’ve just explained to yourself why you’re confused. Ewan Willoughby was just a body. A body can’t come back once it’s been put in the ground, can it?’

  ‘The light was just passing through him,’ said Peter, opening the large leather bag he carried.

  ‘But going where?’ said Juliette.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘Did you ever blow dandelion clocks when you were young?’

  The metaphor lost on her, Juliette looked to Gordon.

  ‘The light has a tendency to wander when it’s released from the body,’ he said, sounding unconvinced that his explanation was any clearer.

  Rashmi picked up the thread as she gathered her hair into a headscarf, her bangles clacking. ‘It’s not conscious as such,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t choose what it illuminates next. It can get lost, so to speak. It can drift.’

  ‘But there are some people,’ said Mrs Forde, ‘like myself, Peter, Gordon and Rashmi – like you too, Juliette – who can draw the light back to wher
e it once flourished, where it gave life to something precious and loved. You can invite it into a new form.’

  Juliette caught the noise Richard made and glared at him across the table.

  ‘And what about Richard?’ she said. ‘Will he be joining us?’

  Mrs Forde looked at him, put her hand on his and gave him a benevolent smile. No, thought Richard, he would be banished to the garden like an unwanted dog.

  ‘Of course he can stay,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘The reading was very strong, very positive.’

  Juliette gave Richard an accusatory look, as if he had somehow fixed it to be there. But he was more surprised than her. Surely Gordon had told Mrs Forde how dubious he was about all this. She could have easily ostracised him with her ridiculous haemomancy, but she hadn’t.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ said Mrs Forde.

  Peter and Rashmi arranged two large jars on the table. Inside one was a mound of grubby melted wax, inside the other a brand-new white candle. Tipping the first jar, Peter lit the wick and watched it catch and flare. On the table, the shadow of the sooty glass lengthened and shrank and then stretched again as the flame wavered. Gordon rolled down the blinds and switched off the lights.

  ‘Are you ready, Juliette? Richard?’ said Mrs Forde and resettled herself in her chair, her hands palm-up on the table.

  Peter, Gordon and Rashmi did the same and Juliette copied, encouraging Richard to do likewise.

  ‘Be unshaded,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘Burn brightly.’

  Gordon breathed in and out. ‘Burn brightly,’ he said.

  ‘Burn brightly,’ echoed Peter and Rashmi.

  They all held hands and a circle formed.

  ‘Think of the candle flame,’ Mrs Forde said to Richard and Juliette. ‘Keep that image in your mind and the light that was in Ewan will come back to you.’

  Juliette smiled and gripped Gordon’s hand tighter.

  For five minutes, ten, fifteen (Richard could not help but keep glancing at the clock) they all closed their eyes and breathed slowly, their chests eventually rising and falling in unison.

  After some time, the candle burned low and beyond the island of the table the room was entirely dark. Opposite him, Richard watched Juliette shifting in her chair, trying to keep her eyes closed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Mrs Forde.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Juliette said.

  ‘You’re distracted. What is it?’

  Juliette opened her eyes, causing Mrs Forde to do the same.

  ‘He’s standing behind me,’ she said. ‘I can feel him.’

  Mrs Forde held her hand firmly. ‘You have to let these illusions go. You have to see that there is only light now, not Ewan.’

  ‘But there he is,’ said Juliette, tracking whatever she thought she could see around the room and looking over Peter’s shoulder.

  ‘Close your eyes again,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘Think of the flame, like I said.’

  Juliette began to cry. ‘I’m sorry, Ewan. Mummy’s so sorry.’

  ‘Look at me,’ Mrs Forde whispered sharply.

  Slowly, Juliette took her eyes away from the dark space and did as Mrs Forde told her.

  ‘This has to end, Juliette. Otherwise you’ll be thinking in circles for the rest of your life.’

  ‘But I don’t want him to go.’

  ‘He’s already gone. He left you six months ago.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Juliette cried.

  ‘But it’s true. The only place where Ewan Willoughby still lives is in your mind.’

  Juliette sniffed back tears and Gordon kissed her hand.

  ‘She is right,’ he said. ‘You know she is.’

  Rashmi smiled, her eyes still closed, and said, ‘You mustn’t worry about him, Juliette. All his pain has gone.’

  ‘Where did he like to play?’ said Mrs Forde. ‘Where was his favourite place?’

  ‘His room,’ said Juliette.

  ‘No, no. Somewhere else. Not in the house. What about the field?’

  Juliette rejected the idea. ‘He didn’t always like going there. It frightened him sometimes.’

  ‘He can’t be frightened any more,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘That isn’t possible.’

  She smoothed Juliette’s hair off her brow.

  ‘Can you still see him now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Juliette. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then tell him he can go. Tell him he can go into the field for as long as he likes.’

  Juliette did so, her eyes red with tears.

  ‘Don’t cry over a thought,’ said Mrs Forde. ‘That’s all your boy has been since he died. Don’t fool yourself any more. Close your eyes. Think about the light.’

  Juliette steeled herself and wiped her face, though she was still looking at the door.

  Once they were all settled again and breathing deeply, Mrs Forde began to repeat a whispered mantra, the words of which Richard couldn’t make out but which sounded suitably abstruse. Rashmi, Gordon and Peter joined in too and against the hard walls of the kitchen the sibilance echoed and tangled, the sound now close to Richard’s ear, now scuttling around in the beams of the ceiling.

  The noise grew into a mesh of voices and counter-voices and Richard felt Mrs Forde’s hand tightening on his. Soon, a smile spread across her face and the others grinned too. Peter began to laugh quietly and then Gordon responded. Mrs Forde caught it next, followed by Rashmi then Juliette. Whatever one person saw or felt quickly passed around the circuit.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  ‘Yes, I see it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But it all skipped Richard and he sensed nothing but the sweatiness of Peter’s hand and Mrs Forde’s wedding ring digging into his palm.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ Gordon said.

  Half enchanted, half alarmed, Juliette said, ‘Will it stay?’

  ‘Yes, look, look,’ said Mrs Forde.

  They all opened their eyes and watched the flame in the jar shiver and distend until it went out in scrolls of grey smoke. The darkness in the room fell in on them. Richard felt hands pressing on his as they all waited.

  A few seconds later the new candle sprang into life.

  When the flame was still and strong, Mrs Forde broke the circle and Peter passed her a handkerchief to wipe her brow.

  ‘Leave the candle to burn,’ she said. ‘Don’t blow it out. Let it diminish on its own.’

  Juliette looked baffled, as if she were coming around from a dose of anaesthetic. Even when the others were hugging one another (and Richard) in a loud chatter of excitement and relief, she said nothing but sat at the table gazing around the room.

  ‘Give her a moment,’ said Mrs Forde when Richard went over to speak to her. ‘Come into the hall.’

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Gordon as Richard followed him out of the kitchen. ‘It’s perfectly normal. Some people are like that the first time they see properly.’

  ‘Normal?’ said Richard.

  But Gordon was unruffled. ‘Whatever you think, Richard,’ he said. ‘You’ll find Juliette much happier from now on.’

  ‘You won’t recognise her,’ said Rashmi, presumably thinking that this would be a positive outcome.

  ‘If she seems strange,’ said Peter as he unhooked Mrs Forde’s coat from the rack. ‘It’s only because you’ve never seen a person really at peace.’

  He held the gabardine ready for Mrs Forde to put on, but she walked away from him to the foot of the stairs and looked up into the dark.

  ‘What is it?’ said Gordon.

  She gripped the banister and went up a few steps, craning her neck to peer at the railings on the landing.

  ‘Mrs Forde? Are you all right?’ Rashmi said, trying to work out what she was seeing.

  When she came back down, her legs seemed weak and Peter passed her coat to Richard so that h
e could hold her up.

  She had begun to sweat more profusely and Gordon quickly moved the stool from under the telephone table for her to sit on.

  ‘No, no,’ she said, turning away from the stairs. ‘I’d rather we just left.’

  Peter found a fresh handkerchief in his inside pocket and dabbed at her face. Every bit of her skin had a film of moisture and there were dark patches seeping through her clothes.

  ‘Please,’ said Mrs Forde, moving Peter’s hand away from her. ‘Could we go? I need some air.’

  Richard gave the coat back to Peter who hung it on Mrs Forde’s shoulders before taking her arm.

  As she passed him, Richard could see that her lips had turned pale and she had the grey cheeks of someone about to be sick. Rashmi got the door and held it wide open, gripping Mrs Forde’s elbow to help her down the steps.

  ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ said Gordon. ‘She does get like this sometimes. It can take it out of her. Tell Juliette I’ll come and see her in a day or so, all right?’

  Outside, as she waited for Gordon to open the van, Mrs Forde looked over the face of the house and was still staring as they left.

  It was an effective piece of drama, Richard thought, for her to leave them in no doubt of her mysticism.

  In the kitchen, Juliette was transfixed by the candle. As Richard sat next to her, she gave a wry smile, as though in that moment she had realised something that had been eluding her.

  ‘Juliette?’ said Richard. ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned, blinking, not really there.

  ‘What did you see?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You said it was beautiful. What was it?’

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ Juliette said.

  ‘What were you all laughing about? What was so funny?’

  ‘The absurdity.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of this,’ Juliette said, touching her body.

  Harrie came down the stairs and a moment later she edged into the kitchen smoking a cigarette, the little dog following.