The Loney (30 page)

Something was wrong.

I touched Hanny on the arm. He was staring straight ahead.

‘What is it?’ I said and, following his eyes, saw that there was a hare sitting on the other side looking back.

It turned its head to one side, sniffed the air, looked back at us, twitched one of its tall spoon ears, and then bolted just a little too late as a dog emerged from the fog, careered into it and tumbled it over in the mud. The hare kicked with its back legs, once, twice, trying to rake off the jaws that were clamped to its neck, but was limp a second later as the dog thrashed it from side to side and chewed out its throat.

This time I got a firm grip on Hanny’s arm and tried to pull him away. If we went there and then I thought we could get away. But he stood rooted to the spot, still looking past me, over my shoulder, not at the hare or the dog but at the two men that had come out of the mist and were standing there watching us.

I
t was Parkinson and Collier. They were dressed in blue overalls and hard boots caked in mud. Scarves wound around their necks and mouths. Their flat caps dripped with the damp.

Collier had a chain over his shoulder. He lowered his scarf and called the dog to him and when it refused he went over and kicked it off the hare onto its side. He raised his hand to the dog and with a well practised obedience it whined and cowered and Collier got a hold of its collar so that he could pass the chain through it. Parkinson continued to stare at us, cold breath misting around his face.

The brook cluttered over the rocks and bracken.

Still holding Hanny’s arm I started to walk away, but Parkinson moved with an unexpected quickness. He sloshed through the water in a few steps and grabbed the hood of my parka, bringing me to heel like Collier had done with his dog. He turned me to face him and gently rearranged my coat so that it no longer strangled me.

‘There’s no need for thee to rush off,’ he said.

He took his hands off me and flicked the wetness from them.

‘Hast tha been for a dip?’ he said.

He smiled when I didn’t respond, amused that I was drenched and shivering. Then he noticed the rifle Hanny was holding and took it off him. Hanny let the rifle slide out of his hands and looked down at his feet.

Parkinson fitted the stock against his shoulder and squinted through the sight.

‘Where did you get this from?’ he said.

‘We found it,’ I said.

‘It’s a bit special is this, for a lad like thee,’ he said, glancing at Hanny.

Collier caught the frown I gave Parkinson.

‘He means a retard,’ said Collier.

Parkinson took the rifle down and pulled back the bolt to open it up. Hanny had loaded it. I could see the top bullet of the clip pressed down inside the receiver.

Now that Parkinson had let go of me, I tried to lead Hanny back the way we’d come, thinking that they might settle for having the rifle off us. But Parkinson quickly held my shoulder again.

‘Don’t go just yet,’ he said.

‘Everyone will be waiting for us,’ I said.

‘Will they?’

‘We’re going today.’

‘Going? Where’s tha going?’

‘Back home to London.’

‘London?’ he said. ‘Tha wouldn’t make it back across to the mainland, never mind London.’

‘We can swim,’ I said, and Collier laughed.

‘Nay,’ said Parkinson with mock concern. ‘I don’t want thee drowned.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘We’re going home today. Do what you like at Moorings. Take what you want from the place. I don’t care. No one will care.’

It was bravado founded entirely on fear and went as quickly as it had arisen the moment Parkinson laughed and turned to Collier.

‘I’m not sure I like that accusation. We’re not thieves,’ he said. ‘Are we?’

‘Nay,’ said Collier.

The sound of a baby crying came from the direction of the house. The dog looked up. Parkinson and Collier glanced at one another. The crying stopped.

‘Here,’ said Parkinson, serious now. ‘It’s nowt personal. But we can’t let thee go. We’re going to have to take out some insurance. You understand what I mean, don’t you? By insurance?’

I looked at him and he put his hand on my shoulder again.

‘It’s the way it has to be. There’s nowt you or I can do about it. You just fucked up, that’s all. Wrong place, wrong time. Come to the house and we’ll get everything sorted out.’

***

Leonard was loading his car when we got to Thessaly. Clement was there too, fetching and carrying boxes. When he saw us he stopped and looked at us with—what was it?—pity, guilt?

‘Carry on Clement,’ said Leonard.

Clement nodded slowly and moved towards the Daimler and slotted the box he was carrying into the back.

Leonard came closer and lit a cigar. Collier’s dog started barking loudly and straining on the chain. Leonard looked at Collier and Collier, capitulating, took out a frayed leather muzzle from his pocket and fitted it around the dog’s face.

‘You must love it here,’ said Leonard, turning to us. ‘You just can’t stay away, can you?’

He took a drag on his cigar and looked at Parkinson.

‘Are you sure this is necessary?’ he said. ‘In an hour’s time there’ll be no trace that anyone’s ever been here. If I were you, I’d send them back across when the tide goes out and leave it at that. They’ve already given their word to keep their mouths shut. What the hell are they going to say anyway? They don’t know anything.’

Parkinson answered him with a stare and Leonard sighed.

‘Bring them inside then,’ he said.

I don’t remember either of us trying to run or fight or do anything for that matter. I only remember the smell of the wet ferns, the sound of water churning out of a gutter, the feeling of numbness knowing that no one was coming to help us and that we were surrounded by those people Father Wilfred had always warned us about but who we never thought we’d face, not really. Those people who existed in the realm of newspaper reports; dispatches from a completely different world where people had no capacity for guilt and trampled on the weak without a second thought.

We went into Thessaly by the back door that led into the empty kitchen we’d seen briefly the first time. On the floor was a metal dish of dog food that smelled as if it had been there for months. Collier’s dog nosed at some of the chunks of meat, trying to angle its mouth so that it could eat them through its muzzle.

From somewhere else in the house, the baby cried again. A desperate bawl that petered out into a whimper that seemed resigned to the fact that no one was going to come to give it comfort.

Parkinson opened the door that led out into the hallway.

‘Go on,’ he said with a nod of the head.

I hesitated and felt Hanny’s hand in mine. He was shaking.

‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘We’ll go home soon.’

Collier let his dog out on the chain a little further. Under the grill of the muzzle it growled from its throat and bent its head to try and nip at our ankles.

‘Go on,’ Parkinson said again.

‘It’ll be alright, Hanny,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

Once we were in the hallway Leonard, Parkinson and Collier stopped and looked at the door that led down to the cellar. The door was closed. From the other side came the sound of the baby screaming again. Hanny made kissing movements with his hand.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Parkinson.

‘He wants to see Else,’ I said.

‘She’s not here anymore,’ said Leonard.

‘Where is she?’

‘How should I know? She’s nothing to do with me now. She’s not my daughter. Laura took her home yesterday. You don’t need to worry about them. They both got paid. Everyone’s got what they wanted.’

‘Apart from you two,’ said Parkinson.

‘We don’t want anything,’ I said. ‘Just let us go back home.’

Leonard looked at Parkinson and then at us.

‘If it were up to me,’ he said. ‘I’d trust you not to say anything. But I’m afraid Mr Parkinson here thinks otherwise. And as he’s the one with the rifle I’d be inclined to trust his judgement.’

‘You know,’ Parkinson said to me. ‘I think that the problem is that tha doesn’t believe that we can help him.’

He nodded to Collier.

‘Tell them what your dog did to your ’and.’

Collier held up his hand—he was no longer wearing the black mitten—and drew a line slowly across the back of it with his finger.

‘Every fuckin’ tendon,’ he said. ‘Hanging off in rags it were.’

‘Five years without work,’ said Parkinson. ‘Int that right, Mr Collier?’

‘Aye,’ said Collier. ‘There’s not much call for a one-’anded drayman.’

‘And now?’ Parkinson said.

Collier flexed his hand in and out of a fist and then grabbed hold of Hanny’s arm, making him jump. He laughed, enjoyed Parkinson’s approving grin, and let go.

‘I had a cancer growing in the throat,’ said Parkinson, pressing a finger to his Adam’s apple and then making a star with his hand to show that it had disappeared.

He put his arm around Leonard’s shoulder.

‘And my friend here looks a proper picture of health, dunt he? Not a sign of arthritis.’

Leonard looked at me and smiled. I hadn’t noticed, but Parkinson was right, Leonard’s limp had gone.

‘Hanny’s fine,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to do anything to him.’

Parkinson laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s funny int it?’ he said. ‘How you church people can have more faith in something that can’t be proved than something that’s standing right in front of you? I suppose it comes down to seeing what you want to see, dunt it? But sometimes tha dunt get a choice. Sometimes the truth comes along whether tha wants it to or not. Int that right, Mr Collier?’

‘Aye,’ he said.

Parkinson nodded and Collier grabbed Hanny’s arm again. This time he didn’t let go. Hanny struggled. I tried to prise Collier’s hand away and was so intent on doing so that I only dimly registered Parkinson moving Leonard aside and taking the rifle down.

The shot brought little coughs of dust down from the ceiling and replaced all other sound with a high pitched whining in my ears. A spent bullet casing skittered away down the hall and Hanny fell onto his side, clutching his thigh which had burst open all over the floorboards.

Parkinson put the rifle back over his shoulder and nodded at Hanny writhing in silent agony on the floor.

‘Now tha’ll have to have faith,’ he said. ‘Like it or not. Unless tha wants to take him home a cripple as well as a fuckin’ retard.’

Hearing the gun go off, Clement had come inside and was standing next to Leonard looking on with horror at what had happened. Leonard noticed him gawping and gave him a nudge.

‘Don’t just stand there, Clement,’ he said. ‘Get him up.’

Clement started to back away, but Parkinson pointed the rifle at his chest.

‘Hey, tha’s not delivered full payment quite yet, Clement.’

‘Let me go home,’ Clement pleaded. ‘I’ve done everything you’ve asked for.’

‘Aye, so far. But tha owes us a few more favours before we’re done.’

‘Mother will be worrying where I am. I can’t stay.’

‘I’m not sure tha’s got a great deal of choice int matter, Clement. Not if tha dunt want to end up in Haverigg again. You know we could do it. It were easy enough last time. Tha didn’t have the wit to get out of it then and I can’t see that tha’s found any more since. Moorings goes up in flames. Caretaker seen acting suspiciously by local men. What does tha get for arson these days, Clement?’

Clement looked at him and then knelt down at Hanny’s side, rolling him gently onto his back so that he could get an arm under his shoulders. Hanny’s face screwed up in pain. He was crying like the Hanny I knew as a little boy, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish. It might have been the time he fell out of the apple tree in the back garden and broke his wrist, or when he came off his bike and left most of his chin on Hoop Lane. I’d always hated it when he cried. When he cried it meant I hadn’t kept him safe. I had failed.

‘Here,’ said Clement and showed me where to put my arm around Hanny’s other shoulder.

Hanny opened his eyes and looked at me, completely bewildered, then he sagged and passed out. Between us, Clement and I got him up, snapped him back into consciousness and got him to take his weight on his good leg, while the other bent under him and dragged a trail of blood and fleshstrings along the hallway.

Leonard took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door to the cellar. He went down, shaking them in his hand. The baby’s crying intensified to the hysterical screaming of something that feared that sound above everything else.

I
t was the first of June and the street outside was breathless and hazy in a prelude to the punishing heat that summer was to bring. Hour by hour the day had been acquiring the tension that comes before a thunderstorm. Everything moved slowly, if it moved at all. The wood pigeons in the plane tree had been quiet and motionless for hours. On the windowledge a bumble bee sat in the sunlight and didn’t stir even when I tapped the glass. The next door neighbour’s cats hunted for shade rather than the mice and finches they usually left on our doorstep.

I was revising
Hamlet
for an exam the following day. It was the final one. And once it was over, school would be done for good. Already the place had become different. Things had stopped mattering so much. No one, not even the teachers, seemed to care anymore and I could see it for what it was: an intestinal factory line that was winding down at the end of a particular run of production. Though what it had produced, I wasn’t sure. I felt no different to when I started. Only a little soiled from having passed through its bowels.

What I was going to do next, I didn’t know. I would be sixteen in a week’s time, but the world didn’t quite seem as open as I’d thought it might. When I looked at Farther I saw that work and school were really no different. One merely became qualified to pass from one system to the next, that was all. Routine was a fact of life. It was life, in fact.

She was leaving me alone at the moment, but I felt Mummer prowling around me, waiting for the day of my exam results when she could pounce and drag me away to the life she thought I ought to have. It’d be A Levels in History, Latin and Religious Education, then a Theology degree before six years in seminary. I could fight back, of course, assert myself, but without knowing what I wanted to do I’d have little chance against her. I’d be like that hare in the mouth of Collier’s dog.