Saville (42 page)

‘That cake was good. What was that tart like?’ Stafford said.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘What was in your sandwich?’

‘Meat paste.’

‘She makes crab-paste ones, but they’re not much good.’

The faint murmur of a car engine came from the direction of the drive; Stafford lifted the sack again. A car was approaching the front of the house, bouncing in the ruts and sending up at each bounce a shower of water. It disappeared towards the door.

Stafford let the sacking fall.

‘We could go up to my room, if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ve one or two things.’

He made no move for a moment, kicking his feet against the wooden wall, the corrugated metal roof rattling ominously above their heads.

‘Or there’s the farm we could go to. At the back of these trees. Or we could cycle over, if you like, to Audrey Smith’s.
Marion Rayner lives only a mile beyond. There’s a path that takes you there across the fields. They’ve got some horses. We could have a ride.’

Yet he continued to lie back with his head propped on his hand, only reaching forward finally when he heard the sound of a second car. He lifted the sacking again, his head stooping, gazing out. Rain had begun to fall: the surface of the pond had been broken up; there was a splatter of drops across the roof.

‘I suppose we had better go in,’ he said. ‘I thought it might rain but I hoped it wouldn’t.’ He got up slowly, easing himself feet first through the narrow entrance; Colin followed. Rain spattered through the branches overhead, and drummed on the corrugated iron roof. The surface of the pond was ruffled; the geese, however, were swimming up and down.

‘We can make a dash for it. We’ll go in by the kitchen,’ Stafford said. He ran ahead, along the edge of the pond, up the paving stones, hesitating slightly as he reached the door, glancing in before he stepped inside. A third car was coming up the drive; pale faces gazed out from behind the windows. A door had opened at the front of the house: a voice called out.

The sandwiches and cakes had gone from the kitchen; Stafford, after glancing at the empty table, had opened a cupboard door; he opened a second door: inside was a narrow pantry, lit by a single window.

‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘We’d better go up.’

He smoothed down his hair, straightened his jacket, then opened one of the doors leading from the room. The sound of several voices came from the other side.

‘If anybody sees you, just nod your head.’

They entered a broad hallway. Bare walls led up to a banistered landing. The front door of the house was standing open: a woman in a blue dress was standing on the steps outside, shielded by the porch, calling to the people who were descending from the car. Through a door leading off the hall came a murmur of voices followed, suddenly, by a burst of laughter. ‘Irene, for God’s sake,’ someone called.

‘That’s mother. She’s having one or two of her women in.’ Stafford mounted the stairs in urgent strides, pausing only as he reached the landing and leaning over the banister, gazing down as
the woman in the blue dress came back inside the hall, her voice deep, almost like a man’s, directing the women who’d just arrived. ‘We go along here,’ he added. ‘My bedroom’s at the back.’

They passed an open door through which Colin glimpsed two single beds set side by side. At the end of a narrow passage stood a red-painted door to which a notice had been fastened. Stafford, as he reached the door, had felt inside his pocket and a moment later took out a key. ‘Private. Keep Out’, the notice read, with the initials N. K. S. printed underneath.

Having unlocked the door Stafford stepped inside. The room was narrow and lit by two windows on adjoining walls. The floor, like the floor of the hall below, was bare, the walls unpapered. A single bed stood behind the door; adjacent to it stood a chest of drawers, a cupboard and a desk. The floor in the centre of the room was occupied by several cardboard boxes which, the moment they were inside the room and the door closed and locked again, Stafford began to clear away. ‘Just one or two things,’ he said, pushing some of the boxes beneath the bed and balancing others on top of the drawers, on the cupboard and the desk. A single dark-blue curtain covered each of the windows, one window looking out to the pond and the roofless shelter, the other to the fields adjoining the side of the house.

‘Sit on the bed if you like. Though usually’, Stafford said, ‘I sit on the floor.’

The light pattering of the rain came from the guttering overhead. The sound of voices in the hall had faded. From the driveway, faintly, came the sound of another car.

‘What sort of meetings does your mother have?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ Stafford said. ‘They’re always women. They sometimes go on for hours.’ He lay on the floor, reaching out beneath the bed. He stood up a moment later, red-faced from his exertions, an airgun in his hand. ‘We can have pot-shots, with that, if you like. We’ll try the geese. They’re just the distance.’

From a drawer in the desk he took out a box of pellets. He loaded the gun, opened the window, and took careful aim towards the pond. There was a soft phut as he fired the gun but the white, stiff-necked birds continued to swim uninterruptedly up and down.

‘Aim high to allow for distance,’ Stafford said. He loaded the gun for him, then handed it across.

Colin aimed vaguely for the flock of birds, where the cluster of shapes was thickest; the rifle kicked against his cheek and one of the geese stood, suddenly, and flapped its wings.

‘Oh, good shot,’ Stafford said. He re-loaded the gun. ‘Let’s try for Snuffler,’ he added. ‘You can just see him inside the shed.’

The rear of the pig was visible inside the open door of the shelter. Stafford, his arm propped on the window, took careful aim, his hair falling across his brow, his left eye closed; he stood poised against the window for several seconds, motionless, then squeezed the trigger.

‘I say, good shot,’ he said as the rear of the pig disappeared inside the hut to be replaced a moment later by its head. ‘It likes being shot at. It’s like having a tickle.’ He loaded the gun again. ‘Let’s try the geese again,’ he said and, having snapped the barrel to, aimed it once more in the direction of the pond.

A man in a trilby hat appeared a little later on the lawn below; he had evidently dismounted from a bike, for his trousers were clipped at his ankles above a pair of enormous boots. He was tall, with broad shoulders, slightly stooped, with a fringe of grey hair showing beneath the brim of the hat. He wore a sports coat with leather patches on the sleeves, and as he reached the edge of the pond he glanced up suddenly towards the house.

Stafford, who’d been loading the gun, only saw him as he held it to the window, gazing down for a moment surprised to find anyone there at all, lowering the gun and hiding it beneath the sill.

‘Have you been firing that thing, Neville?’ the man called, his voice echoing in the space behind the house.

‘We’ve been firing at the pond, Father,’ Stafford said.

He leaned out of the window to shout his answer.

‘You’ve not been firing at the birds?’ the man had called.

‘No,’ Stafford said, and shook his head.

The man gazed back for a moment at the pond; evidently he’d brought something for the geese to eat for they paddled out of the water and on to the bank. He put his hand down amongst them and examined their feathers.

‘If I find you have I’ll have that gun off you,’ the man had called, staring back finally towards the house.

He went on past the pond, calling for the pig; as he neared the shelter the animal suddenly emerged and ran towards him.

‘That’s the old man,’ Stafford said. ‘He really wanted to be a farmer, you know. If we’d had more money I suppose he would have been.’

He put the gun away beneath the bed, pulling out one of the smaller cardboard boxes and saying, ‘Have you seen this? I’ll take your picture.’

He took out a camera with a concertina-shaped front, holding it to his eye and laughing.

‘There’s not enough light in here. We could go downstairs. You take mine and I’ll take yours.’ He ducked to a mirror fastened to the cupboard and from his jacket pocket took out a comb; he smoothed down his hair, ducking to the mirror once again, then taking out his key and unlocking the door.

The woman in the blue dress was standing in the hall as they came downstairs, talking to several women who were about to leave.

‘Have you seen your father, Neville?’ the woman said and added, ‘This is my son,’ to one of the women at which Stafford bowed his head. ‘My youngest son, I ought to say,’ she said, the woman laughing as she turned to the door. ‘Have you seen him, Neville?’ she asked again.

‘He’s out at the back, Mother,’ Stafford said, raising his voice as if he were speaking to the other woman as well as his mother.

‘Oh well, I’ll catch him when he comes back in,’ Mrs Stafford said, glancing at Colin then and smiling. ‘Is this the friend who was coming?’

‘We were just going out to take a photograph,’ Stafford said already moving off towards the kitchen.

‘Try and keep out of the mud,’ his mother said. ‘There might be some tea for you when you come back in.’ She’d already moved out to the porch and called back over her shoulder, Stafford himself already in the kitchen. The table, as before, was bare.

Outside, a larger bike than Stafford’s had been leant against the wall, its rear wheel half-enclosed by a canvas hood, a large black canvas bag hanging down behind the saddle.

The rain had stopped. A faint wind was blowing. Stafford, after glancing towards the brick-built shelter, moved off across the back of the house.

‘We can go on this side,’ he said. ‘There’ll be more light.’

They passed a pair of windows that opened to the lawn; inside a tiny, square-shaped room a man in a dark suit was reading a paper. He glanced up at the sound of their steps, saw Stafford, and immediately looked back to his paper again.

Several bushes had been planted on the opposite side of the house. A wooden fence, against which a hedge had recently been planted, divided the garden from a field of corn: a green haze showed up across the furrows.

Stafford handed him the camera; he showed him the eye-piece and the small chromium lever he had to press.

‘Get it in the middle,’ Stafford said.

He leant against the fence, half-smiling, smoothing down his hair at one point and calling, ‘Haven’t you got it? Come on, I can’t keep smiling here for ever.’

He smiled again, his head, with its almost delicate features, angled to one side. Beyond him, in one of the side windows of the house, several women were gazing out. A car was parked outside the door.

Colin pressed the lever and handed back the camera.

‘I’ll take one of you, then,’ Stafford said.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m not really bothered.’

‘No, I’ll take one,’ Stafford said. ‘Perhaps somebody’ll come out and take us both together.’

He looked round vaguely for a suitable spot.

‘I’ll try and get you with the house,’ he said.

He gazed into the camera for several seconds, swinging it round.

‘To your left,’ he called, and then, ‘More this way. Come a bit nearer,’ and then, finally, ‘Try to smile. Honestly, you look like murder.’

The camera clicked and Stafford lowered it, examining it for a while then winding on the film.

‘How about taking old Porky? We could get the old man as well,’ he said.

Several women had come out to the porch; the figure of Mrs Stafford appeared beyond them. She was a tall, angular woman, with something of the same proportions as her husband, grey-haired, her features thin, the nose pronounced. She glanced across absent-mindedly as they reached the drive, then turned to the women as they stepped down to the car.

At the back of the house Mr Stafford was carrying a clump of hay on a fork, disappearing into the roofless structure where the hay was still visible above the wall.

The geese had gone back to the pond, some idling in the water, others feeding along the bank. Their heads erect, they moved off as Stafford passed them, his father re-appearing, gazing across, the fork in his hand, the trilby hat pushed to the back of his head.

‘What are you up to?’ he said, staring at the camera then turning away to a shed at the back of the pen before Stafford could answer.

‘We wondered if you’d take our photograph,’ Stafford said, smoothing down his hair and glancing over at Colin.

‘Oh, I’m busy,’ Mr Stafford said, disappearing inside the shed then re-emerging a moment later with another clump of straw. ‘If you want something to do you can clean out the sty.’

‘You only have to click it,’ Stafford said, following him across and showing him the camera.

‘Has your mother finished her party yet?’ he said, glancing up towards the house.

‘They’re just leaving,’ Stafford said, and held out the camera.

‘Don’t come pestering. Do something useful or keep out of the way,’ Mr Stafford said. He hoisted the straw above his head, walking briskly over to the roofless building.

His features were large, his nose long, his eyes pale blue and shielded by heavy brows. His mouth, as he glanced across, was drawn back in irritation.

‘Isn’t Douglas in? Or John?’ he added. ‘Ask one of them. They’ve nothing else to do.’

Stafford, with a shrug, had turned aside.

‘Perhaps my mother’ll do it,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Shall we see if there’s anything to eat?’ he added.

They went back to the house.

‘His brothers have all the money. From the mills, I mean. I suppose if he had more of it we’d have a farm.’ He shrugged again. ‘Though I suppose we have enough,’ he added.

A tall, thick-chested man was stooping over the table when they went back in the kitchen. Fair-haired, with heavy features, he glanced round as he heard them in the door, then turned back to the table where he was buttering a piece of bread. He was perhaps in his early twenties; a book, opened, was pressed up beneath his arm.

‘Is there anything left for us, Dougie?’ Stafford said and the man had shaken his head, putting the bread between his teeth, then catching hold of the book and a pot of tea and crossing to the door. He murmured impatiently around the bread, nodding at the door, wildly, and Stafford stepped across and opened it.