The Other Child (41 page)

The summer evening presented the farm in the best possible light, but I was still horrified at how dilapidated it had become. The farm gate was hanging on broken hinges and could obviously no longer be closed. It would never be repaired again. I was always amazed that in over half a century no one had found enough energy and resolve to deal with the problem.

All kinds of scrap equipment were strewn around the farmyard. In among these items, chickens pecked. In the past they had lived in their own separate chicken run. The sheep pasture fences were in desperate need of repair, and so many stones had fallen out of the walls that the animals could easily climb through them. The house looked dark and almost uninhabited. Weeds grew almost to the front door. The bench was missing where Emma had loved to sit in the evening sunlight. It had probably been turned into firewood. The windows were thick with dirt. It was not likely that you could recognise much of the splendid landscape, when you looked out.

But the air smelt just as it always had, and the sea would be the same, as well as the bay and the particular light there in the evening.

The thought of the bay crystallised a decision in me. I suddenly knew where my first walk should take me.

I put my rucksack down in the nettles by the front door. Freed from its burden, I set off with a spring in my step.

As soon as I had plunged through the dark gorge and stepped onto the twilit beach, I saw Chad. The sun had disappeared behind the cliffs, and the sea was an opaque night-blue. The beach, normally so wide, was just a thin strip of sand, but the tide had passed its height and the water was gradually retreating.

Chad sat on a rock, his face in his hands.

I stepped up closer.

‘Good evening, Chad,' I said in the end.

He gave a little jump, looked up, and then sprang to his feet. He seemed completely confused. ‘Fiona! Where d'you come from?'

‘From London.'

‘What … I mean … just like that?'

He did not sound as excited as I would have hoped, but nor was he unfriendly. He was simply surprised.

‘Well, looks like you survived the war,' I said, not thinking of anything more witty. I added, ‘Not that I could have known this happy situation from your lively correspondence with me!'

He ran a hand through his hair. It was a gesture which reminded me of the fifteen-year-old boy he had been when I met him, the boy who – I could see this even in the rapidly diminishing light – was now a distant memory. He was twenty-one years old, and he had changed completely. At that moment I would not have been able to put into words exactly what the change was, except for the obvious fact that he was four years older than the last time we had met. But of course I had expected that. I think what amazed me was that he had aged much more than I had expected. More than the furrows and wrinkles on his face, it was in his expression. He did not look like someone who was twenty-one. He could have been thirty or forty.

When I had time to think about it in the following weeks, I realised that war had speeded time up. These men, who had still been boys really when they reported for duty, full of patriotic fervour and a naive idea of what was awaiting them at the front, had experienced more things, and harder things, than others experienced in a lifetime. They had seen mates fall and the possibility of their own death was a constant presence. They had killed in order not to be killed. They had held out in ice-cold trenches, enduring hours of nerve-shattering gunfire, and had been forced to listen to the sharp screams of the dying. Nothing remained of their earlier lives in which they had often not had a care in the world, and had been safe. The Allies had vanquished Hitler's Germany. This knowledge remained for men like Chad, giving all they had endured a meaning. It did not change the images they would carry inside them for the rest of their lives. It did not change anything about the unsparing brutality to which they had been confronted from one day to the next – a side of life that none of them would have imagined beforehand.

By the way, Chad never talked to me about his war experiences, not then or later. Years afterwards I discovered a revolver on a shelf in his study on the farm. It lay between a couple of files. When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Me gun. From t' war.'

‘Why are you keeping it?'

‘Just am. In case we get burgled.'

I held it. ‘It's heavy,' I realised.

‘Put it back!' he ordered. ‘Don't want t' have t' do with all that any more!'

I had understood. I never mentioned his gun again, nor dared to ask him about that traumatic part of his life.

Right now what he said was, ‘I'm sorry. I shoulda written. It were all … too much.' He made a gesture of something billowing up.

‘How's your dad?'

‘He's not copin'. He barely does anythin' on t' farm. Just sit at home starin' at t' walls. He never got over me mam's death.'

I was not surprised. As an eleven-year-old girl I had intuitively understood that Emma was the soul of the Beckett farm, and that it was she, much more than her husband, who had the impulse to grasp the nettle. Without her, Arvid had become a hollow shell. It fitted in with the image I had of him.

‘I try t' do me best,' said Chad. ‘But it's hard t' get a farm goin', when it's totally run down. In these times …'

His eyes bored into me. ‘You're a right young lady,' he said, changing the topic abruptly. I felt myself blush.

‘I've left school,' I said. ‘I didn't know what to do next. Mum thought some distance to my life in London might do me good. That's why I'm here. I'd like to stay for a while … if I may.'

‘Of course. Could do with another pair of hands,' said Chad and grinned.

He was kidding me. I smiled.

And suddenly, in a split second, he was the Chad I had known, the boy who had responded so tenderly to my infatuation. He opened his arms and let me fall into them. I felt secure with him that evening on the beach, although the feeling was later to prove to have been illusory. Whether because of the war or the example of his silent father, he was already starting to become the clammedup man who in the end would be unable to show feelings.

At the time I did not know that this change had already started. I was too young to understand it, and too blissfully in love to think about the future. The bitterness and weight of the last few years evaporated. London, the war, my depressive mother, Harold – suddenly that was all far away and unimportant. Finally I had arrived at the place where I belonged. Close to the man I loved.

That was the extent of my romantic thoughts on that darkening beach. Soon night fell. The sound of the sea changed as the ebb tide sucked it further and further out. The sky was clear and full of stars. August nights have a particular magic to them. Perhaps a falling star or two even fell into the sea. Who knows? In any case, that's how I imagined it, after the first time that we made love in that stony bay in Staintondale.

It sounds corny, I admit. A warm summer night, stars, the sound of the sea, two young people and first love. An overwhelming feeling of happiness after years of doing without. It might sound too perfect, but I have to say that it felt just like that. No doubt I saw things with rosy spectacles, as you do when you are young. Today I can imagine that the pebbles were uncomfortable, that it stank of seaweed, and that clouds drifted across the sky, concealing the stars. I can imagine that there was not a single falling star, that it was rather cool and that we started to shiver with cold. But back then I did not notice any of that. It was like a dream which was not disturbed or tarnished by anything. The complete intimacy with Chad, the way we melted together, seemed to make it the most wonderful moment of my life and – naive as I was, in spite of everything – I was sure that we would be inseparable.

Chad had cigarettes. Afterwards we cuddled close together for a while on the rocks and smoked. I did not say that this too was a first for me, in order not to look too childish. I dragged on the cigarette as casually and naturally as I could, and thankfully I did not cough. Chad had put his arm around me. For a long time he did not say anything.

In the end he said, ‘I'm cold. Shall we go back t' farm?'

That was when I realised I was freezing too. I nodded, which he must have been able to see, because he got up and, holding my hand, helped me up too. Hand in hand, we silently felt our way back through the gorge. At the top, I breathed a sigh of relief. Now the stars and the moon lent us a little light.

Chad carried my rucksack into the house. It was dirty inside. I saw that at a first glance. And it did not smell good either. It smelt as if food was rotting somewhere in the kitchen. It was clear that inside the house the process of decay was also far advanced. It was no longer the cosy nest which Emma had made of the simple and poor house. It was cold, damp and a mess. Even I, who was ready to see the Beckett farm in almost any condition as paradise on earth, had to admit that you could no longer feel at home here. I resolved to start to make everything beautiful and homely the very next day.

Chad turned on the light in the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. The remains of dinner stood on the table.

‘Looks like Dad's gone t' bed,' said Chad. ‘Unfortunately 'e don't normally even tidy up 'is meal.'

Disgustedly he looked at the salami sausage and bread which had been bitten into rather than cut in slices, and at a cup half full of coffee. The coffee had globules of fat on the surface. ‘It get worse every day!'

‘I'll tidy it up,' I offered immediately, but he held me back.

‘No! I don't tidy up after 'im, and I don't want you to either! 'e ain't sick, just lettin' 'imself go, and I ain't got any patience no longer.'

‘It will go off, and it stinks. Just let me put the sausage in the fridge.'

The farm had an old-fashioned icebox which regularly needed a new block of ice. It turned out that no one had ordered an ice delivery in a long while. The icebox was as warm as the rest of the room. Inside it there were a few indefinable items that stank and should have been thrown away long ago.

Chad looked slightly embarrassed. ‘T' farm takes up all me time and energy. Dad should look after t' house, but …' He did not finish his sentence. It was obvious that his dad did not look after anything.

In the end I put the sausage and bread in the pantry. It had no windows, was dark and a few degrees cooler than the house.

‘Tomorrow we have to order ice,' I said, as if I were the housewife on the farm.

Chad agreed. ‘Will do. Promise.'

We stood there looking at each other. I thought, Now say you love me. Say that I should stay for ever! Please. Don't let what was so special tonight just disappear.

However, he could not stop casting angry glances at the table. He was angry with his father. That was clear to see. Perhaps he was no longer thinking about what had just happened down at the beach.

And instantly I knew what had been irritating me the whole time.

Something was missing. Something which should have seen us coming and appeared by now.

‘Where's Nobody, by the way?' I asked.

Chad lowered his gaze. Suddenly it was creepily quiet in the kitchen. I heard something rustling in the pantry. A mouse, I thought.

I asked again, almost afraid.

‘Chad! Where's Nobody?'

13

‘Well,' said Chad slowly. ‘Couldn't go on like that.'

We were sitting at the kitchen table, right under the light. It made Chad look tired and grey, me too, no doubt. Chad had opened a bottle of beer and offered me some, which I had refused. I was serious about not touching a drop of alcohol.

The evening – the night – had changed. There was the kitchen with its rotten smell, the clammy air in the house and the feeling that something threatening was coming closer. I shivered. I suddenly felt terrible.

‘What do you mean,
Couldn't go on like that?'

Chad stared into his glass. ‘He were no longer t' boy you remember. He suddenly shot up and were enormously tall fer ‘is age. Don't know how old 'e was, but I'm guessin' he were fourteen or fifteen. Not much longer and he'd be a man.'

I thought of the lanky, young blond boy. Only three and a half years had passed since I had last seen him, but of course he could have changed a lot in that time. I just found it hard to imagine.

‘Yes … and?'

He looked up at me. ‘Fiona, his mind don't grow with his body. He still think like a child, and always will. Me Mam always claimed he'd wake up one day. Rubbish. Nobody's mentally disabled, no gettin' away from it.'

‘That's nothing new,' I said.

‘You knew 'im as a child. He ‘ad ‘is limits, but were ‘armless. That changed. He …' Chad stopped.

‘What?' I asked. I was feeling more and more worried.

‘March this year a young lass appeared on t' farm. We didn't know her. She was lookin' for work, and askin' at all t' farms round about. We had enough work, but no money. Anyroad, we ‘ad t' send her away. But just as she were goin'… Nobody came out.'

I waited.

‘Like I said, the lass was young. Not twenty years old. She had beautiful long blond hair.'

I could guess what was coming. ‘And Nobody …?'

‘He ran over, grinned at ‘er an' grabbed ‘er ‘air. He were makin' those incomprehensible sounds he always make when he talk. The woman were frightened half t' death. She tried t' get away, but 'e kept hold of ‘er ‘air. Then ‘er breasts. He were slobberin' over her. He were … first time I've seen 'im like that …‘e were all excited. Then she starts screamin'. I drag Nobody off ‘er and she ran off, fast as she could. I shouted at 'im, but 'e just grinned. Soon as I let go, 'e rubbed ‘is hands frantically over ‘is crotch. Disgustin'.
He
was disgustin'.'