Chapter One
Every young
boy craves the attention of his father, or craves the attention of someone they
might think of as a father; they might look up to their brother, an uncle or a
character from their favourite book. But not every boy has someone like this to
look up to: they simply have a favourite football team and footballer, a
singer, a band all in plain sight through a television screen or the pages of a
magazine. Tom had none of these. He had a father, but if you knew Tom’s father
you would understand why he barely deserved the name.
Tom sat in
the back garden. He closed his eyes and heard distant cracks and tremors in the
eaves of the trees, rooks were gathering before the sun went down; they cawed
and called to one another as they hopped from one branch to another until they
found a friendly perch.
The cat’s
coat brushed up against the hedge, his head held up as he watched shades pass
in the air above, making their way to their perches in the woods. In the cat’s
mouth a mouse hung on to the last moments of its life, it lay still, its heart
beating manically; upside down in the cat’s mouth, its belly faced the air
where the rooks were passing by, its eyes facing down to the earth. Sensing a
change of posture the mouse twitched, but the cat held on as it sauntered over
to Tom, brushing itself up against Tom’s legs that were crooked up so that his
knees supplied a perch for his chin. Eyes closed. Listening intently. All was
silent except the bullying of the rooks in the woods and the cat’s steady purr
of pride.
Vainly the
cat stepped about Tom’s feet, the mouse in its jaws dead still now, Tom’s eyes
blinked open as it passed in front of him, dropping it casually, one paw
pressing it against the ground, the other held up as it licked and smoothed
away a dab of blood.
It wasn’t
his cat and he didn’t ask for these mice it kept bringing, but he took them
anyway, never touching the cat in thanks or gratitude. He was unsure of the
black mog and had no idea who it belonged to; he wasn’t even sure he liked it
all that much, but even so it kept coming back.
Doors
slammed behind him. His father was back. The door always seemed to slam. It
would only be moments now; he picked up the limp mouse, still warm and wet,
from the ground and stuffed it into his pocket. Sitting up he watched the cat
disappear through a gap in the hedge, always the same gap he realised.
Tom’s father
stood behind him, his gaze on Tom’s hand still stuffed into the pocket with the
limp, wet mouse.
*
His father
wasn’t happy and never seemed to be happy. The neighbours thought he must have
his reasons, but none knew what they were or why the doors slammed the moment
he came home and throughout the evening. Neither Mr of Mrs Ford had been over
to the house since, they felt, there was little invitation there and imagined a
rude greeting from Tom’s father should they ever do so. The other neighbours
felt the same way, though never said so, preferring to keep their talk to
themselves.
Tom’s jacket
hung over the end of the banister where his father had told him to leave it: it
wasn’t cold, so there was no need to have it on. Tom disagreed, but hung it
there all the same, the mouse still curled in his pocket.
Doors
slammed and the key turned in the lock as his father left for work. Scattered
about the house, heads of deer, bodies of badgers, a fox, heron, wren, stoat,
rabbit, hare, and others, looked from one wall to the other, from mantle piece
to window and from shelf to doorway. Tom always made it his game to look each
one in its glass eye, see the outline of himself in profile, looking back.
The badger’s
teeth were bared, one of them chipped, he imagined from a scrape with its
partner or maybe the fox. He summoned up scenes of fox chasing hare, but
settling for the rabbit that hare led him to. All around the house the smell of
the chemicals his father used had spread and seeped into the paper, the floors
and cushions and even the bread, despite the fact it was in a tin bin on the
kitchen counter.
Beside the
bread bin his father had left out his tools and chemicals. Each time he had the
chance Tom relieved the jars of tiny quantities, in order not to be missed.
Moving to the shed, he took his mouse and began his surgeon’s procedures.
It was
stiffer now after its sojourn in Tom’s pocket, but he applied all his little
tricks to give it back some movement before removing everything that was now
unnecessary and depositing it in a jar, which he sealed tight after pouring
vegetable oil over the contents.
Before long
the cat’s mouse seemed to have some life in him and he was able to admire his
work. When he peered into the creature’s eyes it seemed to stare at him in a
way his father’s things never did.
The cat
nudged the shed door and Tom hid his things away. The light that greeted him
was brighter than normal and he blinked back a tear, almost stumbling over the
cat. It reached up clawing at his trouser leg, but Tom wouldn’t pass him the
mouse. Not now.
One of the
cat’s claws caught and pushed through the fabric of his jeans, scratching at
his skin and Tom yelped, the cat hissed and pulled away from him, turning its
back. It stayed a moment before stalking off.
Closing his
eyes he listened to the wind and imagined the clouds overhead, gusting over his
valley. He felt the tug and nudge of the wind’s breath and in his mind he saw a
kite drifting up under the wind’s guidance.
Chapter Two
A bell rang
out from the doorway. The electric bell was new, fitted after dad was given the
parts by someone Tom didn’t know and hadn’t heard of before. It rang again and
a shadow moved back and forth, the shape spilled from one section of frosted
glass to the next. Whoever it was knew he was there, Tom could tell. Could tell
from the way they hung there, a physical shadow shifting in the glass. When the
face came up against the glass he pulled himself back further than he thought
possible. From the top of the stairs he saw the shape linger, shift, shimmer
and reach for the bell again.
Polyester
fibres scratched at his skin. He lay flat against the landing carpet, his shirt
had pulled itself up after he had slunk back as much as he could and now the
fibres scratched and bothered his skin.
The bell
rang one last time. The shadow stood waiting, before finally melting away
leaving nothing but light to press against the glass.
Tom waited
until the light darkened, until the sun had left the sky, before he moved. He
went first to the toilet, dropped the white plastic down and stepped up to peer
through the crack at the top of the window. Nothing. But now it was almost too
dark for him to see anything.
He moved to
the next window in the room over the dining room. Nothing. Lamps flickered on.
His eyes watered from looking so hard for something that wasn’t there. The dark
moved into the house, into every room and up out of the corners until every space
was filled and smothered. Tom sat himself down in the corner of the room and
crooked up his knees and rested his chin there. If he turned a light on now and
there was someone outside, someone he couldn’t see, then they would come again
and ring the electric bell. They wouldn’t give up if they came again.
He stayed
there long enough for his stomach to tremble and shake at him. If he moved to
the kitchen and made anything to eat they would know he was here. And would
come for him. So he sat there. Counting the beats of his heart.
Finally he
began to fidget. He pulled at the back of his left trainer’s heel with the
toe-top of his other right trainer, pulling it down so that the cool air filled
the warm space there; he repeated the action in reverse, his right trainer
worrying at his left. Over and over.
Spilling
into the room, the moon’s light lifted the darkness up casting new shadows. Tom
turned from his corner, pulling his left trainer back onto his foot, he turned
and saw a full, bright moon looking in and flooding the street outside. He
moved then, ducking under windows, to the stairs and moved to the back of the
house. He unlatched the sliding glass door and took a cushion from the
armchair.
Sitting down
he shifted the cushion until he was comfortably bedded down, he moved his
weight back onto the large planter behind him: terracotta, but grey in the
moon’s glow. The fern that grew there tickled at his head and Tom sunk further
down to avoid its touch.
He was too
late for the rooks. Everything was quiet except for the wind in the trees
lifting leaves and branches about, but even this was gracefully hushed.
His father
didn’t return.
*
Tom was
still in the garden the next day, fallen down, no longer propped up against the
planter, but tucked under its gaze on the concrete flagstone. The bell was
ringing. Its electric ting picked its way along the hallway and out through the
open door at the back of the house. Tom stiffened. His mouth was dry, it felt
clogged. He heard sounds at the side of the house but knew no one would come
that way. At the side a wooden door with a simple latch blocked the way and was
bolted from this side at its top and bottom. The top of the wall it stood in
had a line of dried cement with jagged shards of glass stuck there. Nothing could
come over or through that way.
The bell
rang again and again. From the garden he couldn’t be seen from any angle and so
he stood up and listened. If he moved back to the sliding door he might be seen
through the window at the front, it looked into the dining room and into the
kitchen and at its edge would catch sight of the back door.
Tom realised
then the sliding door was open. Had been open all night. If they did look they
might see it was open. They would know. It wouldn’t do any good to hide if they
saw that. They would know and he couldn’t hide from then.
He leant up
against the back wall, his jumper stuck like Velcro to the bricks’ rough touch.
He pulled the left heel of his trainer down. The bell rang out.
Ringing down
the hall and into the garden, the sound pulled at the hairs on the back of his
neck. The gap in the hedge caught Tom’s eye.
If he
dropped to his knees and hugged himself down to the ground he could get to the
hedge without a chance of being seen. At the gap’s edge Tom flopped to his belly
and filled up the space, first his head, then shoulders then his waist and he
was through, on his feet. His trainer had come off. He put it back on and
tightened the sticky strap. This was his first time through the hedge, even in
the wood that was here. He had always played at imagining it from his side,
from the garden where he sat on the concrete step.
Closing his
eyes he let his mind picture again the paths here, the dells and hidden places.
Opening his eyes he saw it all. The paths he imagined were there, the crowds of
nettles, and open before him, a dell that curved away, its end out of sight.
The electric
bell was a distant sound now and muffled by the hedge at his back.
A thread in
his jumper had pulled and tugged at a branch in the hedge. He loosened its grip
and began to march into the wood.
Chapter Three
That evening
Tom sat at the top of the landing; the chair he sat on was normally piled high
with newspapers, some unread. He had moved them to the floor; some had slid
over, making a very untidy collection at his feet. A small plate teetered on
his knees, a ham and cheese sandwich lay at its centre. It was cut up into
quarters. He used to like it that way. He always wondered why his sandwiches
were cut in quarters, though he never asked.
He started
with the upper left corner and then took the bottom right. Always the same
pattern. Once, in the old house, he had put his plate down to answer the door,
afterwards he had forgotten which was the upper and which was the lower and had
made two fresh quarters, starting all over again. His father had seen him do
that and watched as he finished it off. He watched Tom do lots of things after
that.
Before
making the sandwich Tom had opened up his old trunk and taken out the periscope he still had from
the old school. Now it was balanced on the sill of the upstairs window. After
he finished his sandwich he planned to take another look at the street, happy
that no one could see him when he did.
Every hour
on the hour Tom took a peek through the periscope. Every hour the clock in the
hall chimed, signalling Tom to put his book down and take another look. But
each time he did, there was nothing to see.
In the
morning Tom dressed, put his good boots on, and his Mac, he made a box of
sandwiches and a flask of tea and burrowed through the hedge gap.
At the
bottom of the dell he left his bag with tea and sandwiches and made off in
search of a perch. It wasn’t long before he found the thick branch of a yew and
pulled it down, dragging it through dry earth and tearing at resting leaves and
other debris, untouched before Tom’s entrance. The branch made an excellent
perch for him and he took some time securing it against wobbling before sitting
down and taking a sip of tea.
The sunbeams
tripped through branches that edged from side to side in the breeze; beams
lapped at Tom’s knees and face before hiding behind the trees’ thick stems
again. The angle of their descent shifted and changed and they moved from his
left cheek to his right as he sat there through the day. There was a moment, in
the middle of the sun’s movement, when Tom’s breath caught and held itself,
paused. A badger moved against the horizon of the dell, waddling, head down
snuffling at the dry earth. It didn’t see; it didn’t even hear Tom, he sat so
quietly.
*
The badger’s
entrance was the only sound to break the stillness other than the branches
above him. Eventually the sun gave up lapping at Tom sat there on his yew
branch, and passed beyond direct view, though Tom could make out the
after-effects above him and beyond the trees. Golden reds and oranges filled up
the sky. His neck hurt from looking up so much. Lowering his gaze he closed his
eyes.
He heard
them then. In the distance. Birds. Rooks. Coming home. They
didn’t settle at first, but soon enough one took up a perch, then another and
another, until all were joined in unison, cawing and cracking their voices
across the dell. Each one hopped and took off, finding a preferable spot to
take in the assembly. When the oranges and reds deepened, they began to settle
down. Occasionally one would take a look at Tom. All had seen him there, sat so
quietly, attending their every move, but they ignored him for the most part
until occasionally one would become too curious or incredulous that he should
be there.
Tom’s
sandwiches were finished and his tea gone. Some breadcrumbs remained and he
shook these out. He noticed one or two take a quick look at the crusts on the
ground, but they seemed offended at such an offering and didn’t look for long.
Though Tom waited, none came down and eventually a thin chill usurped the
quieting stillness, mist began to rise from the ground and Tom packed himself
up. The cat sat on the back step as Tom passed through the gap in the hedge.
Held firmly in its jaws was a new catch, brown and wet. Tom stopped, watched
the cat as it squeezed down on the body, before letting it fall from its jaw. Tom
looked into the cat’s eyes in that moment, looked at the cold stare then looked
at the small body. It didn’t move; the cat sat up and sauntered away, moving
past Tom and away through the gap in the hedge.
A sound came
from the front door, the tumblers in the lock clacked and a key scraped against
the metal there. The door slammed and Tom raced to the small wet body quickly
stuffing it in with his flask and sandwich wrapper. He threw the bag back over
the hedge, out of sight of his father. A thin trickle of sweat ran down the
side of his face and the thin cold he had felt as he left the dell now rested
at the back of his head.
The back
door slid open and his father collected him up and brought him inside. Tom lay
on the floor, too rigid to sit, his eyes locked open.
His father
moved around him; put away the jars that had been left out. He filled the
fireplace with balled-up newspaper and covered it with thin strips of wood. One
or two larger bits of wood went on then, along with some coal. He struck a match
and soon the back room warmed up, the empty quiet disappeared against the
crackle of the wood and in due course Tom’s eyes closed.
Chapter Four
Tom’s boots
were still on his feet when he woke, bone dry now after a night in front of the
open fire. The lids of his eyes stuck together and there was a kind of yellow
slick in their corners; between the roots of his lashes the slick had dried and
flaked turning a pale yellow and white. Outside, brushing up against the clear
glass of the door the cat moved about, it played sentinel at the back door,
waiting. Tom washed and changed and cleaned out the cold fireplace; he opened
the door where the cat waited, it followed him to the ash pit in the garden’s
corner where a cloud of grey gently fell to the old embers in slooping waves.
When the cat
moved to the gap in the hedge Tom remembered the bag, remembered the day
before: the badger, the tea, the assembly he had sat below. It didn’t take him
long to retrieve. It was damp and dirty. He emptied the contents, washed out
the flask, put the wrapper from his sandwich in the bin and looked at the cold
wet thing the cat had brought him. A mouse. No, not a mouse. A
sparrow. He felt somehow sadder when he realised what it was. Looked at it
a little longer, sighed and wrapped it in newspaper.
The sparrow
lay there, covered in fading print for half the day before Tom decided to take
it to the shed. He closed the door and turned the light on, it was dark today.
Soon all his jars and hidden tools were out and he was at work. He cleaned it
and tended it and eventually brought a semblance of life back to its broken
body. It sat, by the end of the day, on a thick dry twig, about to take flight,
caught forever more in that pose – the moment between the static earth and the
free sky. A scratch came from the door and Tom let the cat in, it stretched
itself up, its back curving in as it brought its face up towards the sparrow;
leaping up, it sniffed and looked at Tom, its gaze was deep: Tom could almost
hear its thoughts. The cat left then, rushing across the lawn, springing
forwards and away into the hedge.
His father
returned for tea that night; fish and chips from the chip shop, reheated in a
pan. His father liked a lot of vinegar. There wasn’t a word passed between them
and Tom cleared the plates afterwards while his father silently slipped to the
study. On nights like this Tom knew to leave his father alone, knew not to
speak to him. In fact he knew it was best not to bother his father at all if he
could help it.
He was
washing the dishes and the few things they had used when the doorbell gave a
cry, ringing down the hallway. Tom heard something fall in the study, books or
a box, something loud, then nothing. He stood motionless with a knife in his
hands, half washed. No movement followed the sound from the study. The bell
rang again and didn’t stop, in the gap in the hedge Tom saw the cat frozen
still, another catch held in its mouth.
The second
sparrow had a dappled breast; little dark brown spots were strewn proudly
across its chest. An almost contented expression fell across Tom’s face as he
took the pair of them in. The cat pushed and nudged at his legs approvingly. He
decided then to take himself back down to the dell. He wanted to see the rooks
again, sit in that silent nook of the earth waiting for them to spill down from
the darkening skies.
He almost
forgot to quarter his sandwiches, poured his tea in the flask and stuffed it
into his bag. The cat was gone when he emerged from the house. He passed
through the gap in one fluid movement, not even a stitch caught on the dry
branches.
All was as
he left it. The yew branch sat, beckoning for company, waiting for him. He sat
and unwrapped his sandwiches straight away. He balanced his tea beside him on
an even part of the branch and checked it didn’t tip before easing into the
stillness.
An hour
passed before he heard the familiar shuffle of the badger. He didn’t see it,
but he heard it. It passed ahead of him, out of sight. Soon it was behind him.
Sounds came from the right side and again from ahead of him. He slowed his
breaths and listened. The badger was shuffling everywhere and sometimes all at
once. He saw nothing, not a snout, not the black of its back or a flash of its
eye.
A tail
swished up and out of sight at the corner of his eye. The tail appeared again:
it wasn’t the badger. Tom shifted about, moving the focus of his senses. The
tea tipped and spilled into the leaves at his feet. A line of hot tea dribbled
towards his perch and he stood to wipe it away and set everything all back in
place. The flask lid had soil at the edges and he wiped it away. He dried the
patch of tea as best he could and sat back down; he raised his legs up and
tucked his knees under his chin. Dry leaves shifted then, behind him this time;
they crinkled and cracked under the weight of someone’s step. Tom froze, his
heart shook in his chest and his head felt tight: clamped.
“Are you
waiting for the birds?”
“The rooks.”
His voice was dry when it answered.
It was a
girl’s voice that had asked about the rooks. Her mouth was at his ear. “Why?”
The
tightness in his head shivered away and he thought. He didn’t know. “Why not?”
It wasn’t
his voice, he didn’t recognise it, but it had come from his mouth. His chin was
still resting on his knees. He hadn’t blinked since hearing the leaves crackle
behind him.
“I’ll wait
with you.” She moved from his back and sat alongside him, moving his flask cup.
She licked her thumb and polished the edge of the cup, wiping the soil that had
dried there away. “It won’t be long now will it.” She didn’t ask him, she
stated it. She knew as well as he did, he realised immediately and moved one
knee away from his chin; he let his neck twist his face around to look at her:
nutty brown hair curled over her shoulders. In places scraps of leaves were
stuck. She didn’t smile and neither did he. Together they waited; already in
the distance the birds could be heard returning.
Chapter Five
Over the
next seven days the cat continued to bring him regular presents and each day he
went to work on the little bodies giving back the memory of motion and action
to each and every one. Not all were sparrows, there was the occasional robin,
or blue tit, even a blackbird with a beautiful yellow beak. Tom gave all of
them a moment of life again and when he was done he looked his prize in the eye
and smiled. The cat would wait and stretch itself up until it was almost twice
the size in that last moment and a loud purr would thrum from deep inside.
Tom’s father
didn’t come back in all that time. Occasionally the bell would ring, but Tom
was ready; he had a flask of tea prepared and sandwiches in tinfoil, he would
slip out through the gap and wait for the rooks to come back to court. The
crusts he left behind were always gone, though not one rook would come while he
sat there, and so he watched them skip and drop from one branch to the next;
whenever he went down to the dell he was never alone anymore. The girl was
always there an instant after he unwrapped his sandwich, poured his tea and sat
down. Almost like clockwork.
They talked
about so much Tom couldn’t keep track sometimes. She knew all about his father
by now. There were things he never meant to tell her, but somehow his story
would start to tell itself and before long another chapter would be revealed about
how he and his father had come to live in their house on the edge of the wood.
On the
eighth day Tom came back home to find his house a mess. There were newspapers
everywhere. The cupboards were open, their contents all over the floors.
Drawers were hanging on their runners, glass was smashed and tables and chairs
were upended. The front door was broken, the wood at the edges splintered
around the hinges.
Tom crept to
his room, his belly brushing against the stiff polyester of carpet pile. He
slowly poked his head into his room. The only room untouched. Outside the head
of one of the deers had fallen from the wall and it eyed him as he dragged
himself silently into his room and under his bed.
Tom stayed
there as long as he dared. He could feel the cold breeze coming from the open
doorway downstairs; the bottom of his bed was crossed by pine slats; he counted
up all the stickers he had grouped there on the slat with the knots. Each
sticker covered a knot and smaller stickers orbited. When he was finished he
pulled his sleeping bag out from under the bed, took his duvet too, and crawled
downstairs.
Tom took his
things down to the dell and slept beneath the watchful eyes of the assembly
above. They didn’t seem to mind; he imagined some might understand: they knew
as much as the girl did after all.
The clouds
had been punched away by strong winds earlier that day, the night was dark,
stars winked and their light stuttered through the earth’s thick atmosphere.
The cat appeared and kept him company. Its heavy body folded itself into the
duvet and it purred happily, perfectly content with Tom’s change of address.
*
In the
morning dew had collected on the blue nylon of the sleeping bag and his duvet
was damp. The cat was gone, remnants of brown fur shed in the night left
behind. The girl sat on the branch watching Tom unstick himself from his bed.
“Your
father’s at the house”
“Is he?”
said Tom.
“He’s trying
to tidy up.”
Tom sat up
and wrapped his arms around his knees; he looked down at the laces on his
shoes. One had come undone. It was bright; scrunching up his eyes he looked
back at the girl before looking away at the empty branches above.
“Where do
you suppose they go every day?” asked Tom.
All day the
two of them trudged across fields and over muddy tracks, through overgrown
hedges and over broken fences. She showed him exactly where they went and
together they watched them dart about across a valley full of fresh sown wheat.
A river ploughed a path at the bottom, separating the fields and dividing the
valley in two. Tom sat gazing across over the vision below him, at the birds
laboriously picking at the trenches, twirling in the skies above. He closed his
eyes and imagined the scene beside the river, the birds there, swans, swallows,
heron and snipes. His father used to have a snipe, but it had been lost in the
move. The girl rested her head on his shoulder, he didn’t tense, didn’t even
twitch. He looked down at his shoes, the mud there and the splatters up his
trousers.
Before the
rooks decided to make their way back Tom pulled himself up and helped the girl
who reached for his hand. At the dell his things were still gathered; before
leaving he had tidied them, folding them neatly, but not so thickly that they
wouldn’t dry during the day. He gathered them up and made his way back to the
house.
He stood in
the open doorway at the back watching a man move about his home, Tom stood
there framed in the doorway for a full ten minutes before the man noticed him.
The man called another from the front of the house. He spoke to him. Looked him
right in the eye. Looked at his trousers, the mud, the bedding and then back at
Tom.
“Your
father’s in a lot of trouble.”
Tom kept his
gaze, a hard knot forming at the back of his head, his fingers tingling.
“Do you know
where he is?”
Tom could
see from here that the front door was fixed.
“Is he back
tonight?”
The other
man carried on moving about.
“Tell him we
were here. You’ll tell him won’t you.”
The deer’s
head from upstairs was on the dining table now. Tom’s hands tightened and his
eyes began to glaze, but the cat brushed his ankles and the tingling ebbed, the
knot loosened and the cat purred.
“We want
your dad, you realise that don’t you?”
Tom nodded.
A phone rang. The man pulled the noise from his pocket and spoke into it as he
moved away, his back turned on Tom and his voice spoke into the phone. Tom
followed the cat to the shed stayed there, tucked into the corner.
Tom used the
time to pull out his collection, put together from the cat’s offerings. He set
each one out around him; they looked intently down at him, or up at him from
the perches he had given them, some had heads cocked at an angle, or wings half
spread and ready to take flight.
In the
morning, when he woke, the collection had doubled and the cat was gone.
Chapter Six
Tom’s father
sat in his car; the light was red and he tapped at the steering wheel counting
the seconds to green. Only a few people were out and it was dark, overcast. It
looked ready to pour down. A few spots had already appeared on his windscreen,
rolling into a long streak.
There was
nothing in his mirror and the light was still red. He could see the other side
of the temporary works. There was no one that side either. Edging out, he
rolled through the single lane system and towards the exit. No one stopped to
watch and he accelerated. As he passed through he could see that the opposite
light was red as well. Broken. His grip tightened. Both lights, red. Useless.
Behind him a
neatly wrapped package rolled around and as he turned the next bend, slid from
right to left and into the foot space behind the passenger seat. When he
straightened up he looked down at the brown paper parcel, it looked okay, but
it was just out of reach to check. In his boot the faint chink of glass crept
into the quietness. Tom’s father preferred it like this. No radio; no
disturbance.
It began to
rain. He thought of his son and in the same instant ground his teeth. He didn’t
need him; didn’t want him. But he was his. He saw his own eyes looking back at
him when Tom did look back at him. In those moments neither would look
away and Tom’s father would drum his fingers, or tap his foot, until the sound
moved his son’s stare away. His wife wouldn’t understand why her son slept
under the bed, wouldn’t understand why he would collapse: refused. It was best
just to ignore it, he thought. Best not to bother. But as he thought of him his
teeth made scraping sounds in the quiet of the car, the engine rattled and the
glass jars chinked in the boot.
He tried,
though it was hard, not to think of Tom. Tom was a mistake and had ruined
everything. Tom had his ways of spoiling things, but he was his. His eyes. His
own eyes set in the body of his son, like the eyes he set in the animals he
preserved. Tom was like one of his creatures: something in him was frozen, but
even so, it looked back and haunted him. Another bend, taken too quickly,
jogged the brown paper package from behind the passenger seat over the little
hump between spaces and into the gap behind Tom’s father. Reaching round he picked
it up and moved it to the seat beside him. At home he would put it away in the
badger's belly, or maybe the deer’s head: he hadn’t decided. Thoughts about Tom
distracted him and he remembered everything he had lost thanks to his son: his
wife, his life. His fingers no longer tapped the wheel, they gripped the wheel
and the leather squealed under the pressure.
He parked
the car away from the house, turned off the lights and watched. The door was
repaired now and a new thick oak frame held the door in place. Despite the new
door he sat in his car waiting for his heart to stop racing. They wouldn’t come
tonight, not so soon anyway.
When he came
down the head of the deer had been moved and a bowl of soup sat in its place:
tomato. His father knew he didn’t like tomato, but always bought it anyway. He
always watched Tom eat it all. At the end, when it was finally finished, the
edge of his mouth would rise as brief as a wink, his eyes would flick to the
sink and Tom would clear his place: afterwards, he paid Tom no mind.
He listened
to his father from the other room. He made phone calls and moved a lot of boxes
around. In the quiet moments Tom pressed his ear to the wall and listened to
his father. He could hear him breathe, hear him shift and fidget in his chair.
The room Tom
now sat in, ear against the wall, held the badger. It watched him as he knelt
at the wall listening to his father. Tom became aware of its gaze and looked
back, it had been held, captured in this single moment for years now, but now
Tom felt it looked at him with a fresh gaze.
The phone
rang and Tom’s father hurried to the wall where it hung. Tom listened without
understanding. Heard the voice of his father, angry and threatening. It didn’t
scare him, those tones were familiar to him, but he took the opportunity to
move to the kitchen for a glass of water. At the glass door the cat brushed
against the glass, pressing flat the fur against its side. It had seen Tom and
stretched up against the clear pane, caught his eyes and sat back on its
haunches. Tom heard the voice of his father grow in volume and he slipped out,
leaving his glass half-filled on the counter.
Together
they moved to the shed. Tom took a vegetable box and carefully filled it with
his creations, using old newspaper to pack the gaps he give the birds the
protection they would need: a nest, he thought.
He took one
last look at his father through the kitchen window and left without catching a
thread, through the gap in the hedge. It was wet, the rain had passed and it
was a clear night, but soon his feet were wet from the muddy water creeping
into and through the thin material of his shoes. His feet were warm, even if
they were wet. The cat left him in the dell, darting into the undergrowth,
appearing every so often with its tail held high and listening to the air. Tom
sat and watched it disappear, guessing at where it would come from next.
Although it
was cold and his breath formed tiny little clouds, he didn’t feel it and sat
happily, his box, and the collection hidden there, at his feet. He sat on the
yew branch, just as still as he could, all night.
In the
morning he watched the rooks take to the air, the mist rise from the earth and
the girl as she swung among the branches.
Chapter Seven
Tom’s father
didn’t sleep all night. The phone call the night before had disturbed him and now
he was worried. Tom had disappeared, but he was happier without him in the
house. He sat through the night eyeing the door. It was locked and bolted
across the top. The deer’s head was as good as new sitting on the kitchen
table. The phone hung silently on the wall. One edge of his thumbnail drew
itself across the grain of the chair’s arm so slowly Tom’s father could count
the number of grains there. His head was a knot of anger and frustration. He
had done everything asked of him; begun the business with the animals, even
though he hated it, had taken the packages and never asked the obvious
questions. He realised then that his problems didn’t stem from the packages or
the animals, but from his son. Before Tom this had all been a sort of game for
him and his wife, but since Tom it had all begun to change. She had left. They
never wanted children; she never wanted Tom. He remembered her complaints about
his eyes: ‘just like yours’. It wasn’t his fault, but it was an accusation
nonetheless.
A knock came
from the door. His thumb froze and his nail pushed an impression of itself into
the grains. The bell rang. He stood up from the chair, unable to sit any
longer. He didn’t plan to open the door, but despite the long night to think
through what he would do, he was lost. He felt like a breath lost in a gale and
the sound of the doorbell filled his mind.
A crash came
from behind him then; glass fell to the floor splintering into a hundred pieces
and a familiar face stood in the door to the garden, his hands bloody. The man
called to the door and his boots crunched against the glass, pressing the
shards into the floor. The man smiled and stepped onto a larger shard of glass,
it cracked and in that instant Tom’s father rushed toward him. The man’s foot
lost its hold and he slipped, falling to the floor. Everything was silent. The
face, once so familiar, looked back at Tom’s father without seeing: with the
full force of his weight his head had struck the remnants of glass still in the
frame of the doorway. Tom stopped for a moment, his fingers tingling, his heart
knocking at his chest furiously.
A shout came
from the door and Tom’s father ran into the garden, he pushed his way through
the hedge scratching his face as he did so and emerged on the other side. On
the other side he freed his sleeves from the clawing grasp of the barrier
between his home and the wood. He heard a crash; shouts; boots against the
garden’s flagstones: a voice called out to him and he pushed off into the wood
along the thin track.
Each step
took him down and each step came quicker than the last. He saw footprints in
the mud. Smaller than his own. When he heard someone pushing through the hedge
from where he had come he turned and slipped his hands coming up wet and soggy
from the mud at his feet. Dark edges of dead leaves stuck against his palms.
The sound of
boots charging down the path brought him to his feet and he plunged ahead.
*
Tom and the
girl were sitting together when his father slid into view. His father stood
transfixed by the two of them. Tom’s fingers tingled and his palms grew warm
and he rubbed them against his trousers. His father stepped forward and the
girl dropped from their seat, hiding behind Tom. His father paused then, his
eyes flicking from Tom to the girl and he moved forward again. A branch swung
up behind his father and he fell, his knees sinking into the ground; the man
behind him, the man Tom had met, stood over him ready to swing again, but his
father fell backwards from his kneeling position forcing the stranger to stumble.
The girl’s nails stuck into Tom’s arms and she held on to him; his palms cooled
and his fingers no longer tingled.
The crunch
of a branch shook Tom then. His father stood over the man who was silent and
still at his feet, his face firmly planted in the floor of the dell.
His father’s
frame heaved and turned. All the hate he had for his son surged up; all the
memories of everything wanted and then lost, all the disappointment and now
this. He threw himself at his son and the girl spilled to the floor. His hands
flew into Tom’s face and as he hit him time after time, he felt relief flood
his body. He shook Tom and threw him to the ground where the girl caught him
up.
Tom’s father
looked at the quiet shape of his son, smiled and looked to the heavens, obscured
by the arms of the trees enclosing the dell. Above him a host of rooks stood on
their perches staring back at the man below them. Tom’s father stuffed his
hands into his pockets, deep against the edges, feeling the stitching there.
Fluff and dust stuck against his knuckles and in the fresh wet cuts. The
assembly above him stood silent, sentinel. None twitched, or hopped or even
shuffled on their perches. Motionless they looked down from branches up high.
Shifting his
weight from one leg to the other, his feet made deep recesses in the wet, muddy
ground. His shuffling became quieter and quieter; he looked from one bird to
another. He saw then that there weren’t just shaggy black rooks looking back,
but smaller birds too. Each bird Tom had given a frozen moment of life to was
now in the trees above, alongside the rooks. His vegetable box was empty. At
the girl’s insistence they had found new perches for each and every one.
The rooks
began to twist their heads and look to one another, look to the birds that Tom
had brought back to them, scattered now in a great spiral. Each one looking
down at the scene below: sparrows, robins, blackbirds finches and others, all
looked at Tom’s father with black eyes; his profile was fixed in the reflection
held there, and, again, he began to shift his feet, nervously now.
Sweat sprang
from his brow and the tightness returned to the back of his head. A great roar
erupted from the trees as the rooks took flight and beat their way into the
air. As they did so each one of Tom’s creations broke free of their perches and
twisted into the air gathering together in one great mass below the branches.
They moved almost as one, swinging with a broken motion and as Tom’s father’s
mouth opened in wonder and fear, a scream caught on the edge of his throat, the
great swarm fell like darts and shot into his open jaw, stuffing up his mouth
and burrowing deep down into his gullet until each and every one, each and
every feather, filled up the man beneath them.
The girl’s
hands smoothed back Tom’s hair, his head held in her lap. A tear pushed its way
from his eye, but her fingers caught it up. Tom’s breathing evened out and
eventually he sat up, resting his weight against the girl as they looked down
at his father. Tom had always known he was a bad man, a bad father and in that
instant found he was the happiest he had ever been.
The girl
rocked him back and forth and purred into his ear.
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