Lost in the Flames (2 page)

The next day Jacob was in the out-house when he heard William’s footsteps and then a pause at the door. His heart beat quicker as he waited for what he knew would come next.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ William sneered, his usual greeting.

Jacob halted his two-word response as it was forming in his mouth. He was too busy for a violent argument now.

‘Nothing,’ said Jacob, lifting his head from the sack into which he had been peering.

‘Nothing?’ said William. ‘That sack doesn’t look like nothing to me.’

‘What sack?’

‘That one, knob-head. The one you’re holding. And why did you tell Rose I’d let the birds out? She gave me a right doing over. Like she hated me or something.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it, then, should you?’

‘Why the bloody hell not? I told you it’s cruel, keeping them in there.’

‘No, it’s not. They came back, didn’t they?’

‘Must be bloody stupid, just like you.’

Jacob turned his back and looked at Eric. Eric looked at him and rolled an eye.

‘Let’s have a look in the sack, then, birdbrain,’ said William, tugging at the thing.

‘Sod off, William.’

William pushed Jacob away and grabbed the sack and pulled it open, sending a flurry of feathers into the air.

‘What are all these doing in here? Planning to make an eiderdown, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Well what then?’

He grabbed Jacob’s ear and twisted, felt something twisting inside of him too.

‘Get off me, William.’

‘Tell me, or else.’

He twisted the ear some more and Jacob’s face went red.

‘Some wings.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’m going to make myself some wings. And then I’m going to jump out of the window.’

‘Stupid sod. You’ll kill yourself.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘I’ll tell father.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

‘Suit yourself …’

And William left Jacob to it.

Jacob took the garden canes that he had cut to the right length, and the light cloth he had filched over time from his mother’s pile in the top room, and he set about weaving them together with twine, then
coated the cloth with cow glue and edged the wings with long pheasant feathers and layered the rest with the ones from the chickens that he had plucked for Alfred. Then he fixed the leather straps that would go round his arms and hid the wings away behind the tool cupboard to dry. The next day he came back and closed the out-house door and winked at Eric and Penelope and took out the wings and slipped his arms into the straps and stood and flapped his arms and pressed his cheek into the feathers and looked up and grinned at his birds.

‘What do you think, Eric?’ he said. ‘Will they work?’

Eric stared at him and cooed. Jacob cooed back.

‘Good, then,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ll let you know how I get on.’

He crept out of the out-house and in through the kitchen door and up the stairs to the top room where the dormer window was. He hurried over to the window and pushed it open.

‘Jacob, bloody hell, don’t jump! I thought you were joking.’

William had been sitting unseen, reading a book about tractors, looking at the pictures mainly.

‘Course I wasn’t joking,’ said Jacob. ‘Look at my wings. I’m going to fly.’

And he began to squeeze himself out of the window. William rushed across and grabbed his arm and dragged him back in.

‘Get off my wing, you idiot! You’ll break it!’

‘Don’t be a fool, Jacob. Those wings are useless. You’ll drop like a stone.’

‘Get off me, they’re not useless, they’re bloody beautiful.’

‘Please Jacob,’ said William. Jacob had never heard his brother say please before. It caused him to pause. ‘Well at least don’t jump from the top floor. Try it from the room below. Please …’

‘All right then,’ said Jacob.

He hurried off downstairs and heard his brother’s footsteps hurrying after him. Jacob perched on the sill and flapped his wings and cooed and cried out, ‘Look at me fly!’

He flung himself out into space just as Alfred looked up from the orchard. Jacob felt the wind rush past him as the wings folded beneath his weight and he crashed down into the rose-bed where he lay impaled on the thorns and could see William’s little face looking down on him from the window above, a hand held against his brow, and as Jacob felt the pain in his ankle and the blood on his face, he saw Alfred towering
over him with a face fluttering somewhere between admiration and rage.

‘You bloody little fool,’ he said at last as he hauled his son from the thorns and went to call the doctor to cast the broken ankle in plaster.

‘How’s the ankle, little Icarus?’ Rose asked when she saw Jacob later.

‘Broken,’ he said. ‘Almost snapped in two.’

‘The shell must break before the bird can fly …’

‘Is that Chesterton again?’

‘No, that one’s anonymous. Does it hurt very much?’

‘Course not.’

‘Just as I thought,’ she said, and she stroked his hair and he smiled at her.

Norman Miller lowered himself into the tepid waters of the cast-iron bath and a faint slick of grime slipped across the surface. With just his head and knees above the waterline, the smell of wet sheep seeped up into Norman’s nostrils and he ducked his head under the water, then out again, and lathered himself a wig of suds from the block of soap he kept in the drip-tray by the taps. He looked around at the damp brick walls and the single window in the far wall, with its Victorian glass and its bubbles and eddies and sand-speck imperfections. During the day it afforded a transparent view across the fields and at night a clear window onto Norman Miller in his bathroom birthday suit, but no one would be out there at this time, just the sheep, and the fox that visited nightly in search of a chicken dinner until Norman shot it later that winter. And Jacob Arbuckle peering through the glass, spying on the newcomer, hatching a plot.

A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling on a double-twisted wire, illuminating Norman as he rinsed off the soap, towelled down his enormous frame, and retrieved his clothes from the pine rail by the door. He dressed quickly, ordered his hair with a brisk sweep of his hand, called the dogs, and stepped out of the tiny cottage into the farmyard as Jacob melted away into the fields.

Norman could see the bathroom light in Webster’s twin cottage next door, so he left him to his ablutions and walked wearily across the
yard, past the patch where the strawberries grew in June, and crunched up the gravel path to the porch. In the farmhouse kitchen, Mrs Brailes was preparing the farmhands’ evening meal. Norman took his usual seat, nearest the range, a dog each side of his chair.

‘Fine weather today, Mrs Brailes,’ he said.

‘Indeed.’

Mrs Brailes was a woman of few words, rarely wasting three syllables when two would do. Mr Brailes, the farm manager, placed a bottle of Hook Norton ale on the table next to Norman, then held out a raw onion that his wife had just peeled.

‘No, thank you,’ said Norman. He never accepted anything at the first time of asking and therefore missed out on many of the good things that life had to offer. He did not consider raw onions to be one of them.

‘Are you sure, Norman?’ said Brailes. ‘These little buggers are bloody good for you,’ and he took a huge bite out of the onion and chewed on it vigorously. Behind him Norman could hear Mrs Brailes biting enthusiastically into one of her own and when he turned to face her he saw that it had brought tears to her eyes, such were its health-giving properties.

‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away,’ elaborated Brailes. ‘But an onion a day, even better! You’d never need a doctor in your whole life, they’d all be bloody redundant!’

‘Never been ill in all my life anyway,’ said Norman.

‘How was the horse today?’ Brailes asked, his voice rebounding off the low ceiling as if he were talking to the hard of hearing.

‘The horse is grand,’ said Norman. ‘It’s a good thing we got that nail out when we did or he’d have been lame by now.’

‘Excellent!’ boomed Brailes.

Norman assumed that this habitual volume went some way to explaining Mrs Brailes’ verbal reticence – no word could be got in, edgeways or otherwise, when Brailes was in full flow. Norman and Webster referred to him as The Bellows, their private joke being that if they should find it difficult one night to light their fires, it would be sufficient to have him in the room for a brief conversation and there would be a roaring blaze in no time.

Mrs Brailes placed a steaming bowl in front of each of the men.

‘Soup,’ she said.

‘Swede?’ bellowed Brailes.

‘Parsnip.’

Norman ladled in a spoonful, then took a swig of beer. The door opened and Webster shuffled in. He sat down next to Norman, yawned elaborately, and only when finished remembered to cover his mouth. He smiled guiltily, then leaned a careless, weary elbow on the table and sent his spoon clattering onto the flagstones and set the dogs off barking.

‘Quiet!’ said Norman and the dogs cut their noise instantly and settled down again beside his chair.

‘Webster, have you always lived your life in a state of such constant bloody confusion?’ laughed Brailes, and Webster’s other elbow jerked back and sent his fork in the same direction as the spoon and the dogs were off again.

‘You’re lucky Mr Brailes is of such a naturally charitable disposition,’ murmured Norman.

Webster looked distraught.

‘Just pulling your leg, Webster,’ said Norman.

‘Come on, Webster, get that down you,’ said Brailes, placing a bottle of ale on the table beside him, then an unwanted onion, and Mrs Brailes ladled out another bowl of soup.

‘Parsnip,’ she said, then added rather unnecessarily, ‘Not swede.’

‘Hedging tomorrow, then, lads,’ said Brailes, ignoring his wife’s sudden verbosity.

‘I’ve sharpened up the bill-hook and the slasher,’ said Webster eagerly. He was several years younger than Norman, not quite out of his teens, and having fallen out with his family in Suffolk was eager to please his new boss.

‘We’ll get plenty of firewood out of those hedges in the bottom fields. They’ve been left too long,’ said Brailes. ‘You two can take half a cartload each for your fires. The cottages will be cold now.’

‘They certainly are,’ said Norman.

‘Coalman’s coming on Wednesday,’ continued Brailes. ‘You can have a sack each.’

He was generous like that, Mr Brailes, thought Norman. A good sort, not like some of the people you meet.

‘Marvellous soup, Mrs B,’ said Webster. ‘Is there cabbage in here as well?’

She smiled at him almost maternally. She had no children of her own.

‘No, Webster dear. Only parsnip.’

‘I have to see someone about a pig in the morning,’ said Brailes, breaking a momentary silence. ‘Alfred Arbuckle, lives just up the hill there. Norman, come with me. I’d like your opinion. You can have a bit of a lie-in. We’ll leave at eight.’

Brailes saw the look on Webster’s face.

‘Don’t worry, Webster, you can come too. We’ll only be away an hour – you can clean out the hens and do the hedging when we get back.’

‘Pork,’ said Mrs Brailes, as she placed a plate in front of each of the men.

They ate, talking occasionally about the ailments of the animals and the difficulties caused by the recent deterioration in the weather, then Norman and Webster left together to return to their cottages.

‘Fancy another beer?’ asked Webster.

‘Yes, but I don’t fancy the walk,’ said Norman. The pub was half a mile away across frozen fields, or a mile by road. ‘I’m dog-tired already. I want my bed.’

Inside his cottage, Norman lit the fire. The logs he had cut from the tree that had come down in the copse behind the house were too long to fit in the grate so he propped one end up on the firedogs to burn and the other end would do for tomorrow. The dogs stretched out on the threadbare rug by the fire and Norman sank himself down into a tatty armchair that Brailes had dredged out of the back of a barn for him. The pigeons had stained the top of it white with their droppings, and its insides had sheltered whole generations of mice, but it was generously proportioned and comfortable and gave off a less powerful smell than most of the people who had ever sat in it. Norman removed his boots and placed them by the fire to dry out so they could get wet again in the morning. They were the ones his father had passed down to him a dozen years before – size 12 Victorian-style ankle boots, tough brown leather that in their early days chaffed the skin off their wearer’s heels and bunions, but were now shaped to Norman’s feet like well-polished gloves. When Norman left County Durham, his mother had jokingly called him Noah, taking things away with him in pairs – two dogs, two boots, twin memories of two half-brothers lost to the
great farms of Canada and Australia, two broad shoulders to carry the weight of the world, and the chips that life had taken out of each of them. Norman’s earliest concrete memory, at five years old, was of a brown-clod November field beneath a mizzling sky, lashed to a plough and set on his way with a swipe of a stick across the horse’s rump. The horse’s tail swished and little Norman craned his head sideways in a vain attempt to see what lay ahead as the plough surfed wildly across the ground, gouging an irregular furrow from one end of the field to the other as his father, whom he only knew as Mr Bainbridge, rushed along beside him in his chaffing leather boots, shouting encouragement and advice to his five-year-old son, then turning the horse at the far end and setting him off again in the opposite direction. Norman and the horse did four lengths of the field before Mr Bainbridge tired of running and pulled the horse to a halt. He was grinning from ear to ear and took his son’s head in his hands, shook him tenderly, then untied the ropes and hugged him to his chest.

‘Well done, my lad, well done! You’re a proper farmer now. I’m proud of you. Dead proud!’

They had gone back to the village and Mr Bainbridge left him at the gate of his grandmother’s house, then went back up to Black Hill Farm, the largest in the area and soon to be transferred by inheritance into Mr Bainbridge’s tutelage. He had grown up there and learned his trade for years so that he could in turn pass the farm on to Norman one day, despite the complications in his relationship with Norman’s mother, Mary Miller. She was younger than Bainbridge, barely into adulthood, when she took the job at Black Hill Farm, but she had heard of the possibilities offered by quiet bedrooms at the end of long corridors and she made it her business to find herself alone with John Bainbridge in one of them one day. The encounter was more extended and pleasurable than she had been led to believe, and it became a regular part of her week until the inevitable happened. She christened the inevitability Norman.