Ghost Wall(15)

The day was bright again, as if England had forgotten how to rain. The bracken is always the first to turn, bronze already coming through at midsummer, but it was still a steadfast deep green. It seemed as if all the flowers were out at once, purple and yellow vetch, foxgloves, of course the heather on the uplands. Even the harebells in the woods and honeysuckle which should have been over by now were still deliriously blooming. I kept my mind on the flora as I moved around stiffly, shoulders held back trying to stop the tunic grazing my skin, avoided sitting down until Dad told me to. You’ll spill your breakfast, he said, show some respect for your mother’s cooking, I won’t have you wandering about like that. I dropped my gaze and did as I was told. It hurt. I’m not very hungry today, said Moll, sorry Alison.

Silvie’s to joint those rabbits this morning, my dad said. Alison, you two make sure they’re ready when folk are wanting them this time, hear me? In company, I risked it, wanted him to know I still had a mind and a voice: yeah, but it’s hard, Dad, to have the lunch on the table at one sharp for seven people who are being guided by their bellies not the clock. Mum drew her breath. So what, I thought, hit me again, I dare you, in front of all these people, let’s have a public beating, an Iron-Age ritual of pain, go on, try it. Don’t be thicker than you can help, Silvie, he said, that’s why you have it ready in good time, so there’s food when folk are wanting it. Get to work now. He met my gaze. You can sit on that rock by the rack, should be comfortable there, hm? Dan stood up. I’ll do it, he said, me and Pete. We need to know how. Silvie can go with Moll, she did most of the butchering yesterday. Happen you’ll need her to show you how, said Dad. I’ll do that, said the Prof, keep my hand in, my wife likes her meat in cubes on plastic trays, haven’t had the chance to do this for years. Go on, girls. Pick some more of those garlic greens, take the foraging book and see what else you can find, we should be getting more roots and leaves at this time of year. There was wild thyme, I said, up on the moor. Aye, said Dad, but the man said roots and leaves, didn’t he, not herbs, it’s not an excuse to go ramping off over the moors, you girls stay local if you’ve no-one with you, hear me? Yes, Dad, I said. We will. Mum, I guessed, was staying home doing the washing up again, and that was her problem.

Leaving the camp with Molly felt like sneaking out of school at break to buy sweets, before I joined the sixth form and we were allowed to leave the premises so all the glamour went out of the newsagent down the road. We hurried at first, feet quick over the sun-dappled twigs and leaves as if someone might call us back. Come and dismember small mammals after all, take this down to the stream and scrub it. Molly went first, the plaits bouncing and snaking on her brown tunic. I felt my own scalp itch; I supposed there wasn’t a lot of Iron-Age hair-washing. People used to use cow’s urine, Dad had said with satisfaction, though he couldn’t explain why. He would enjoy handing the two of us a bucket of cow piss and instructing us to put our heads in it. I stumbled over a branch, caught myself. Molly stopped. Sorry, I’m going too fast, I just somehow couldn’t wait to get away. She held out her hand. You OK? I gave the hand a squeeze and let go. Her fingers were warmer than mine, dry and strong. Yeah, I said, fine, I just tripped. So where are we going, I said, should we look at the book, if there’re any garlic greens left they’ll be in shaded hedgerows or maybe in sunnier bits of woodland. Nah, she said, fuck that, we’re going to Spar.

We set off again. The path was too narrow for us to walk side by side. But what about the foraging, I said, we can’t go back there with a pack of crisps and say hey, guess what we found under a hedge. What if we buy some veg, she said, and rough them up a bit, roll them in the mud. I scampered at her heels. Won’t work, you can’t forage farmed veg, it’s just stealing, Dad’d have a fit, they’re expecting wild plants. Well then, she said, we’ll find some, but after Spar, it’s not as if they can say it’s taken us too long or we didn’t find enough, the Prof keeps saying how it’s not like shopping and you can’t go out with a list knowing you’ll be back in time to cook to the six o’clock news, maybe today it takes a while and we don’t find much. OK, I said, but we can’t go back empty-handed, seriously, my dad would completely lose it. Mm, she said, does he do that often, Silvie?

Something lurched, as if I’d just gone too fast over a hill in a car. No, I said, it’s fine, I mean I know he was a bit short with us yesterday but he’s like that, he doesn’t mean it. Yeah, she said, I’m kind of more interested in what people do and say than what they mean, I learnt that after my dad left. I could sense the approach of a story I didn’t want to hear. One of my friends’ mums had tried the same thing when Claire and I were passing through her kitchen on the way out: Silvie, you know Claire’s Auntie Karen, my sister? Did our Claire tell you she’s left her husband now? He’d been hitting her, turns out, her and the kids, a few folk’d had their suspicions. No, I’d said, Claire didn’t mention that, how sad, anyway me and Claire were about to go out, if that’s OK.

Molly and I were coming to the edge of the wood. Beyond the trees the sun came down hard and I found myself covering my eyes with my forearm. Hey, Molly said, it’s not that bad, take a minute to get used to it. Must say, I didn’t think sunburn was going to be a problem up here, actually I brought jumpers and a coat, Jim said it’s always cold up north. Mm, I said. I had not understood until meeting the students that we lived ‘up north’, that we were ‘Northerners’. Up from where? It’s probably about the same as where you live, I said, you know there’s the whole of Scotland further north, we’re really about in the middle here. No, it’s definitely colder here, she said, it does feel different. And the nights are shorter. Now if we go along this track we’ll come to the road and then it’s all of ten minutes to the shop, only we’ll look right prats if anyone sees us. We look right prats whether anyone sees us or not, I said, and they’ve probably heard all about it by now anyway, round here.