‘Hey,’ Tim said. ‘What you doing up there?’
‘Nothing,’ Rory said. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket that had seen better days and a T-shirt, and he looked blue with cold. Tim opened the tractor-cab door and swung himself down. He looked up at Rory, twenty feet above him.
‘How long have you been up there?’
‘Dunno—’
‘You better come down.’
Rory hesitated. He’d climbed up on impulse, rather to see if he could, making toe- and fingerholds in the maize wall as he went. But getting down was another matter. Tim went close to the maize.
‘I’ll catch you.’
Rory shrank back.
‘I’m not going to lam you,’ Tim said. ‘I just want you down.’ He moved to stand directly below Rory. ‘Lie on your stomach and move yourself over the edge feet first. There’ll be a drop and then I’ll catch you.’
Rory’s head disappeared from view, and then his trainered feet appeared over the edge above.
‘Slowly,’ Tim said.
Rory manoeuvred himself until he was holding on only with his arms.
‘Let go!’
Rory fell. Tim caught him clumsily around the waist as he dropped and they both tumbled to the floor.
‘Bloody hell—’
‘Sorry,’ Rory said. He scrambled sideways away from Tim’s bulk and got to his feet. ‘Sorry.’
Tim got up slowly, brushing down his boilersuit.
‘So you should be. Why are you here in any case?’
Rory said nothing. He didn’t know, except that he’d been driven from the cottage by a sudden desperation to be out of it, and the farm had seemed a simple destination.
‘You know what trespass is?’
Rory shook his head.
‘It’s being on someone else’s land or property unlawfully. It’s interfering with what belongs to someone else.’
‘I didn’t interfere—’
‘Suppose you’d knocked some of that maize down?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘You could have.’ Tim looked at him. He was shivering. He hadn’t enough flesh on him to keep a sparrow warm. Tim jingled the keys in his pocket. ‘I’ll take you home.’
‘No,’ Rory said.
‘Why not?’
Rory said nothing, just kicked at the soft dust on the floor of the barn.
‘You in trouble?’
‘No,’ Rory said.
‘Then—’
‘I’ll go,’ Rory said. ‘I’ll go. You don’t need to take me. Thanks.’
‘Where’ll you go?’
‘On a bit,’ Rory said.
‘You’re not dressed for it.’
‘I’m OK.’
Tim let a pause fall, and then he said, ‘Where’s your dad?’
‘He’s not here—’
‘Working?’
‘No,’ Rory said. His head was bent as if he were intent on watching the scuffing patterns his feet made. ‘He lives in Sedgebury.’
‘So your mum’s on her own there, with you lot?’
Rory nodded.
‘You better ring her,’ Tim said. ‘Tell her where you are.’
‘No—’
‘Why not?’
Rory couldn’t explain. He couldn’t tell this man he hardly knew that if he rang Nadine there’d be a scene and a drama and she’d insist on coming to get him and on thanking Tim Huntley as if he’d rescued Rory from drowning. He said, instead, hurriedly, ‘I got bored. I’ll – I’ll go now—’
‘Home?’
‘Yes—’
‘Mind you do,’ Tim said. He remembered Nadine distraught in the dark lane on Christmas Eve and then in her kitchen the next morning, cool as a cucumber in her dressing gown, as if she’d known him all her life. She must be over forty, to have these kids, must be. But she didn’t look it. She looked younger than Tim’s sister, who was only thirty-two but had had three children and let herself go in the process and now looked fifty. Fat, frumpy and fifty. This boy’s mother, chaotic though she was, still took a bit of trouble. Tim had discussed her and the children, at length, with his mother.
‘You keep an eye,’ Mrs Huntley had said. ‘Remember those kids in the caravan? We don’t want that happening again, we don’t want to be accused of turning a blind eye. You look out for this lot, see things don’t slip too far.’
Tim put a hand in his pocket and found a packet of chewing gum. He held it out to Rory.
‘Hop it.’
‘Thanks—’
‘I’m going to ring your place, dinner-time. And if you’re not home, you’ll cop it.’
‘Why did you go?’ Nadine said.
Rory shrugged.
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’
‘Didn’t think—’
There were baked beans on the plate in front of him, and he was pushing them about with the blade of his knife, making a mess, not eating. It occurred to him to say that he was bored here, fed up, stuck in the cottage with his sisters and a television so old that, even when mended, it couldn’t get a proper signal, but he knew it wasn’t worth risking it. He’d only have to start talking like that and everything would blow up again and he was too tired for that. He was tired all the time, it seemed to him, tired of having nothing to do, nowhere to go, tired of tension, tired of having to watch what he said, tired of baked potatoes. He used to feel tired this way in the past, when Matthew and Nadine quarreled or Nadine went off somewhere and left Matthew to cope. Rory swallowed. He mustn’t think of Matthew. If he was tired, he certainly mustn’t because it would make him start wanting him to be there, wanting him to be as he used to be, just Dad, and not as he was now, only partly Dad because of what had happened, because of Josie and Rufus. Rory didn’t hate Josie and Rufus the way Nadine wanted him to, but he hated what their arrival had done to his life. It had been a rough old life before, in a lot of ways, but at least Dad had been in it, at the centre, a necessary presence making tea, yawning in the kitchen in the early mornings, wearing an old plaid dressing gown that Rory knew was as impregnated with his smell as his skin was. Tears pricked behind Rory’s eyelids. He put the knife down and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘Sort of—’
Nadine looked round the table. Clare had eaten half her beans, but Becky’s and her own were virtually untouched. We’re a sorry lot, she thought, a sad little crew of human rubbish, the bits and pieces chucked out when other people’s lives change and they want to throw out what they don’t need any more. Poor children, poor scruffy, weary children with their disrupted lives and their dependency and their genuine desire not to cause me pain. I shouldn’t have slapped Becky, I shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t shout at them for things they can’t help, like having expressions or gestures that remind me of their father, of what happened, of what got us here. They’re good children, they are, they’re good, loving children, and they’re all I’ve got, all the future I’ve got anyhow. She smiled at them.
‘Eat up.’
Becky slowly shook her head.
‘No thanks.’
‘Look,’ Nadine said.
They waited. She leaned forward, her forearms either side of her plate, and spread her hands flat on the table.
‘We’ve got to make a go of this.’ She paused and then she said, ‘Haven’t we?’
They didn’t look at her.
‘We’ve got to make a go of living here and going to school here and of each other’s company. We’re not going to give in. Are we? We’re not going to let our lives be ruined by other people’s choices. Tell you what—’