‘Who needs to go away on holiday?’ Adrian said more than once.
She sent him out for walks, pleading work as an excuse for not joining him, and he strode off, looking conscientiously around.
‘So much to see, if only you lift your eyes. People just don’t look.’
He waved an arm.
The second time she was left alone, she came out of the lean-to when she was sure he was away up the lane and first heard something rustle, then the scrape of the gate. She waited in the doorway and saw a small shadow.
‘Hello?’
The girl froze.
‘Where are you going?’
No reply, only the stare.
‘You’re going to have to talk to me about this, you know. About coming here and trying to sneak in and taking things. Where are the others?’
When Paula went nearer to the girl, she saw something in her eyes as well as defiance, some wariness, and felt the tension in the thin body, poised, ready to streak away again.
‘There’s a jug of lemonade. Do you want some?’
She went past the girl without touching her and into the kitchen, took the lemonade from the fridge, two glasses. A shadow fell across the doorway.
‘You can come in.’
A couple of steps, but no more. Paula set the drinks on the table, with a packet of biscuits.
The child had dark brown hair in matted ringlets, a boys’ checked shirt and shorts. Her eyes were thickly lashed.
Paula drank her own lemonade.
‘I’m Paula.’
The girl dived forwards and grabbed three biscuits deftly off the plate.
‘Don’t eat like that, you’ll choke. Wash them down with this.’
But she gobbled the biscuits, then drank. Her face puckered up.
‘Sorry. It is a bit sharp.’
‘S’not lemonade.’
‘Yes it is. I made it. With lemons. There’s some milk.’
She got a carton from the fridge. When she turned round, the child was pushing three more biscuits into her mouth and the last one into the pocket of her shorts.
‘I could make you some toast.’
Paula watched the milk drain down the glass, as in a speeded-up film.
She made three rounds of toast with butter and strawberry jam.
Starving children happened in Africa, not here in rural England, she thought as the child ate, this land of plenty and supermarkets twenty minutes away. Shame flooded through her. She had not realised until now that the leaf soup and unripe berries, the bird nuts, were free food for empty bellies. She made two more slices of toast, but as she started to butter them Adrian came in through the door, red-faced and perspiring, his shirt tied round his waist. His pale upper body was damp.
‘What on earth’s going on?’
The child was trying to bolt, clutching the toast, but could not get out, because Adrian’s thick body was blocking the doorway.
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘sit down again. It’s only Adrian. He doesn’t mind.’
‘Who the hell said I didn’t mind?’ He threw his shirt onto the floor. ‘Are we feeding the neighbourhood kids now or what?’
The girl’s eyes were wide with alarm. Paula reached out and tried to lead her back to the table, but she pulled away, wire-taut at the touch.
‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘She’s in here stuffing herself with our food and she hasn’t even told you who she is?’
‘Shut up!’
He looked astonished and in his astonishment, stepped forwards.
The girl was out of the door and away, her feet soundless on the path.
‘For God’s sake, Paula.’
‘No, actually, for God’s sake, Adrian. Why did you frighten her like that? That child’s hungry – heaven knows when she last ate a proper meal.’
‘And it’s all down to us to remedy that, is it? You know what’ll happen, don’t you? Come six o’clock the lot of them will be round here and you’ll be giving them a full cooked meal, and where do you suppose it will end? Next thing, they’ll be living here.’
‘No,’ Paula said, clearing the crockery. ‘They won’t. But if they come back for more food, they can have it. Have you ever been hungry?’
‘Well of course I’ve been hungry. So have you – everyone’s been hungry.’
‘Yes and known where the next meal was coming from and when. Not the same.’
He stood at the sink, sloshing cold water over his face and shoulders. The water sprayed over the draining board onto the floor.
‘You could have a cold shower,’ Paula said.
For the week that he was home there was no sign of the children. Adrian insisted on their taking numerous walks, in spite of the heat.
‘Gypsies,’ he said one day, panting up the slope between overhanging trees. ‘They’ll have moved on. You could tell they were Gypsy kids.’
‘How?’
‘Thieving. Never at school. Besides, they had a Gypsy look.’
‘A Gypsy look?’
‘You know what I mean. Swarthy.’
‘The little boys were quite fair.’
Adrian pushed ahead of her as the path widened.
On Monday he left at seven o’clock for work and by nine two of the children were hanging about near the gate.
‘If those kids come back, you don’t feed them, OK? It’s like stray cats. Once you start . . . ’
She made a pile of toast and took it out to them, with a bought fruitcake. They snatched and ran. Paula followed.
It was a caravan, parked in the corner of a field, hidden behind a thicket away from the road and the houses. She saw them streak along, keeping close to the hedge, and disappear inside. Through the open door she saw a table and a woman’s back against the light. After a few moments the woman came out. There was a white plastic garden chair beside the caravan steps in which she sat heavily and turned her face to the sun.
Everything went quiet. Paula went on, keeping so close to the hedge that brambles scraped her bare arms.
The caravan was quite large with a gas cylinder attached to the back and a rainwater butt. Two of the children, the boys, had come to the doorway and were staring at Paula in the usual hostile way, eyes like pebbles.
The girl appeared behind them.
‘Ma.’
It was almost a whisper, like a warning.
The woman opened her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ Paula said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
The children huddled together.
‘Creeping up like that. Who the fuck are you?’ She half-turned her head. ‘You lot get back in.’
The huddle vanished.
‘Oh, I get it. You’re the one that hands out food. What the fuck do you mean by that?’
Paula cleared her throat.
‘We don’t need handouts. We’re not charity cases.’
‘I was only – they seemed hungry.’
‘Yes, well they’re not.’
‘They ate what I gave them.’
‘’Course they did, they’re kids – what do you expect?’
‘They were eating the bird nuts.’
The woman laughed. It was hard to tell her age.
‘And berries.’
‘How long you lived round here? They’ll eat anything. Why not?’
‘The berries weren’t ripe and the bird nuts – they’re not really for humans to eat.’
The woman laughed again and hauled herself out of the chair.
‘Just leave them be.’
‘Shouldn’t your children be at school?’
But she was climbing the steps back into the caravan.
‘You sod off,’ she said without looking round.
Paula glimpsed the children behind her. The van was in full sun and she imagined them inside the hot space, crowded together, fractious, tempers short. She wondered if they were beaten. The thought was upsetti
ng, but there was nothing she could do. Eventually she had to retreat.
‘What did I tell you?’
The heat was making Adrian bad tempered at the end of every day.
‘You’ve brought it on yourself. Of course they’re not hungry. They get every benefit going. They’re taking you for a mug.’
He went out into the humid garden with a can of beer.
If they were not hungry would they be bothered to steal food? She looked at her painting of a badger disappearing down a hole.
Why would they?
They had wolfed down the toast as if they hadn’t eaten for days. Was that what children normally did? She doubted it.
Adrian had taken off his shirt and shoes, and was lying on the grass with the beer can held to his chest.
‘Like a cattle truck,’ he said, ‘going and coming back. Worse coming back. You don’t know what heat’s like until you’ve been on that six thirty train.’
They were not eating till late on these nights and Adrian went up to bed immediately afterwards. The food lay heavy on his stomach, making him snore. Paula had taken to sleeping on a rug in the garden. Only a brief dawn chill and the dew sent her inside, an hour before his alarm went off.
She lay thinking of the girl, cramming hot toast into her mouth.
No one would eat like that if they weren’t ravenous. No child would munch bird nuts and steal half-boxes of cornflakes.
The alarm sounded.
Adrian groaned and pushed back the single sheet.
Paula woke to the sound of his raised voice coming from outside.
‘I’ll take my belt to you, do you hear me? And I’m sending for the police. We’re sick of you. Now bugger off!’
Paula raced downstairs.
‘Little sods. Opened the door and they were in here, in this kitchen. Helping themselves to that.’
The half-eaten custard tart had been under cling film.
‘You encouraged them. You started this.’
She did not go out shopping until late afternoon, when the sky had turned inky and the air was so moist she felt as if she were trying to breathe underwater. The storm broke as she was checking out, crashing directly overhead. She went to the café and sat watching the car park flood and felt as if she were waiting for something, suspended between two places, two worlds.
‘It’s unreal,’ a woman at the next table said.
Adrian sent a text to say his train was delayed: ‘f...ing line flooded’. She had another coffee.
When she got back, the lane was awash with earth and branches and stones. The front path was a stream.
But it was not the storm that had broken open the door and smashed a couple of panes in the lean-to; not the storm that had smeared her paints all over her half-finished work; not the storm that had thrown china onto the kitchen floor, deposited excrement on the worktop and left puddles of urine on the floor.
Paula sat down, shaking.
Thunder grumbled in the distance and the sky was sulphurous.
When Adrian got in just after ten she was still sitting there in the half-dark.
‘Bugger’ he said, standing in the doorway, his hair plastered to his forehead. ‘Oh bugger.’
She expected him to blame her, but he did not. He said nothing at all, just dropped his jacket onto the chair and helped her clear up, unloaded the car and put the groceries away, taped a piece of plywood over the broken windows.
He ate some cold ham and tomatoes, with chunks of bread torn off the new loaf. Paula ate nothing.
‘It’s them, of course,’ he said through a mouthful of pink meat. ‘You do know it’s them? This can’t go on.’
‘It could have been anyone.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
Adrian put his plate in the sink.
‘You should eat,’ he said.
She opened the back door and stood on the step. The storm had retreated, the air cooled. Water was running down the lane and dripping off the trees. What had it been like in that caravan, parked in an open field? What if the roof leaked, the windows let in water? What if their beds were soaking wet? They had taken what food there had been in the kitchen, but that wasn’t much. What if . . . ?
Her brain swirled. The clouds parted to show a clear patch of night sky.
She went inside.
‘I think this is it,’ Adrian said the next morning. He had called in sick. ‘After last night I do feel sick, in actual fact.’ He had brought tea and got back into bed. ‘I really think this is it.’
‘What is what?’
‘To begin with, I never realised what the commute would be like. Never imagined it. Which I really should have done. You should look at a thing from all sides.’
Paula sat up. Beyond the window the sky was pearl grey and the air coming through it was fresh.
‘And you’re lonely.’
She looked round at him. ‘I’m not lonely.’
‘Of course you are or you wouldn’t have had those kids round all the time.’
‘I didn’t . . . ’
‘I don’t blame you, Paula. I understand, actually. It’s obvious you’ve been lonely and I should have seen it. I’ve been a bit selfish.’
Her mouth worked, but no words came out. She did not fully understand him.
‘We don’t have to go back to Salisbury Road. We could try a bit further in. There’s that nice new development at Ashtree.’
‘What are you talking about?’
But it was obvious. She looked at him and saw the light of determination in his eyes.
‘I’m happy here,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to live on a new development.’
‘Of course you’re not happy.’
Paula repeated to herself what he had just said. How had she not understood before now? She had simply never realised.
‘And the commute is killing me. Oh, the weekends are great, going for our walks, being surrounded by . . . ’ He waved his hand.
‘Nature.’
‘Exactly.’
‘But how much of it do I get to see otherwise? It’s OK for you.’
‘Yes,’ Paula said. ‘It is.’ Because it was and the walks had nothing to do with it.
‘I’m sorry it hasn’t worked out, but with these kids wrecking the place . . . We’ll have to be careful about that, by the way – not to mention it.’
‘I thought you were going to phone the police.’
‘Best left, I think. I mean, on reflection. No, I meant not mention it to prospective buyers.’
‘There won’t be any.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course there will. This is a dream cottage. That’s why we bought it. Our dream cottage.’
‘It’s still mine.’
‘You’ll be much better off at Ashtree. I’ll check out the website.’
‘No.’
‘They’re bound to have a website.’
‘I mean, no, don’t bother to check it out. Unless you want to go to Ashtree on your own. It would probably suit you.’
‘You ought to stay in bed today. You had a nasty experience. You’re not yourself.’
‘I am, actually. That is exactly what I am – myself. I’m staying here by myself. If I have to.’
‘You’re still in shock.’
‘No,’ Paula said.
Adrian moved out the following week.
‘It isn’t permanent, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s only until you come to your senses.’
He tried to put his arm round her, but she dodged it.
The night after he left she walked round the cottage, then round the garden, then up and down the lane, feeling as if she might take off and float. It was warm again but clear, the moon like a wire. Quiet. She made tea and sat on the grass, trying to remember when Adrian had started to talk about moving to the country, when she had started to take him seriously, when it had become her own want, stronger than his, but for different reasons. He had tried it on to see if it would fit, half-serious, then in panic when he found
himself here. She had slipped into it as into the right skin.
The children had not been back. The damage and mess had been a gesture and once made, needn’t be repeated. It had almost certainly not been done by them anyway. They had gone home, crying, talking about policemen and the adults had taken matters into their own hands.
But now that Adrian had gone Paula felt she had permission to worry about them again. When she saw them she would say they could come whenever they liked.
She did not see them and after three days she walked up to the field, carrying a bag of crisps and some apples. If the woman was there, she would try and speak to her and explain. Apologise.
The field was empty. The grass where the caravan had been was pressed down and yellowed and there were muddy grooves, but otherwise no sign that it had been there at all. Paula scuffed the grass back into place here and there with the side of her shoe and for a moment felt as if the space that had contained them and the van in which they lived was still full of them. But it was not.
That night she boiled two eggs and set them on a plate with salad and bread and butter, but when she sat down at the table she felt nauseous and could not eat. In the morning she left her cereal untouched. Her throat constricted when she looked at it.
She drank, tea, coffee, water, ate a few squares of chocolate. Nothing else for days. The cottage was deathly quiet. She walked out sometimes, down the slope between the trees, and saw the ghosts of the children stirring the leaf soup, heard their footsteps on the path as they grabbed the bird nuts and pattered away, their pockets full. It rained, then it was hot again. She stopped working. Her paints dried up in their pots.
Adrian rang.
‘It’s a great house,’ he said. ‘Small, but it’s detached. You wouldn’t be bothered by the neighbours. It’s got a south-facing garden.’
‘Trees?’
‘Well, they’ve put some little ones in, attached to those wooden posts, you know. They’ll soon grow. Quite a few kids.’ He laughed. ‘Look properly fed, of course.’
‘Ah.’
‘How are the little Gypsies?’
‘Fine.’ Paula said. ‘They’re fine.’
‘They been round again?’
‘Oh yes. Certainly. I make them toast and cake. You know.’
‘Paula, I warned you.’
‘Yes. You did.’