Raven Summer (2 page)

Max laughs about all that now. He says how daft we were, how childish, but it’s not really that long ago. And I still dream about it. I dream that war has come at last. I’m running and hiding, I’m heading north again, all alone. I’m at one of our hiding places. I’m lifting a great rock to get at the stashed boxes beneath.

Jak! Jak!

The call’s louder now, more insistent. The bird flutters down into the ruined hall.

Jak! Jak! Jak! Jak!

We peer into the shadows. The bird furiously flaps its
wings. We both know we’re scared and we’re scared to admit it.

Max licks his lips.

“Hell’s teeth,” he says. “It’s just a bird!”

I reach for the knife, draw it out. It fits snugly in my hand. We clamber in over the fallen stones and the raven croaks one last time and flies straight into the sky and it’s gone.

We can’t help laughing. My heart’s thudding.

“We’re so stupid!” says Max.

“I know!” I say. “It was just a stupid bird!”

“It thought we were
chasing
it!” said Max.

Then we shut up. There’s a tiny sound somewhere in Rook Hall.

We can’t turn away. We can’t run. We pick our way over the rubble and sheep droppings towards the sound of crying. And there it is, on a pile of broken stones. It’s a baby, wrapped in a brown blanket, in a basket. There’s a scribbled note pinned to the blanket.
PLESE LOOK AFTER HER RITE. THIS IS A CHILDE OF GOD
. And there’s a jam jar filled with notes and coins at her side.

We carry her home the long way, through the fields.
We climb over gates. We pass the baby carefully across the gates to each other. We walk on the hard rutted ground at the edge of crops of corn and barley.

We take a break in the shade under a hawthorn tree. I stroke the baby’s cheek and she catches my finger in her hand and holds it tight. Max says that’s what babies always do. He knows about babies. He’s got a whole string of sisters and brothers. He leans down till his face is right down in the basket. He sighs and grins.

“Smell her,” he says.

“Eh?”

“It’s one of the things about them. They smell lovely. Weird, but lovely. Go on.”

So I lean right down. The baby touches my face and I feel her tiny sharp fingernails on my cheek. I smell the weird lovely smell of her.

“See?” says Max.

“Aye.”

“That’s what you once smelt like—till you started turning into a big farty lump.”

We hold up the jar of money and peer inside. There’s fivers and tenners and coins from now, and there’s notes and coins from the last century: big five-pound notes, big pennies and little farthings and shiny sixpences. I unscrew the lid and take out some notes, fold them and stuff them in my pocket. I stare at Max.

“We
can’t
,” he says.

“Who would know?”

“Somebody. I don’t know. Whoever’s it is.”

“Mebbe it’s finders keepers, Max. And we could stash it in one of the hiding places for when we need it.”

He shakes his head.

“What a dreamer,” he says. “Anyway, it’s not like
you
need it, Patrick Lynch’s son.”

I sigh. He seems so boring these days, like he can’t wait to grow up, like he won’t do anything reckless anymore. I take the money out of my pocket and hold it out to him.

“
You
take it, then. Go on, be daft for once.”

He doesn’t, of course.

“Mebbe there’ll be a reward,” he says. “Mebbe nobody’ll claim it and it’ll all be ours in the end.”

“Aye,” I say, “that’s sensible.”

Another jet booms by. The baby cries again. I stuff a few
notes in my pocket while he looks at her. I put the rest back in the jar.

“She’ll be hungry,” says Max, so we lift the basket and set off again.

We go through the last field, over the last gate, head for my house.

Dad’s window’s still open. We put the baby on the kitchen table. There’s a yell from upstairs. Max jumps. I grin.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “He does that when he’s stuck. When the story’s going nowhere or when one of his characters is causing problems.”

“Sounds like he’s getting attacked,” says Max.

Dad yells again, like he’s in agony.

I point to my head.

“It’s like he lives in here, not in the real world.”

“Weird,” says Max. “Where’s your mum?”

“She went off to Newcastle this morning.”

The baby’s still whimpering.

“She’ll need milk,” says Max. “But what kind?”

I stroke the baby’s cheek, and smile at her, then I go upstairs. I stash the money from the jar in my bedroom. I knock at Dad’s door.

I hear a grunt, then he calls,

“Who’s that?”

“Me.”

“I thought you were with Max all day.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not. You’re knocking at my door. Is your mother not back yet?”

“No.”

“
Tch.
Look, I’m in the
middle
of something.”

I want to shove the door open. It’s not long since I used to sit under his desk drawing pictures and scribbling as he wrote. Not that long since I even sat on his knee as he wrote.

“We found something,” I say through the door.

“Good!”

“We don’t know what to do about it.”

“Hell’s teeth, Liam! You’re a big lad now, you know.”

He comes to the door. There he is with his scruffy beard and his hair all messy. There’s the screen glaring on the desk behind him. There’s the pages of scribble lying all over the floor. There’s the walls filled with books and books and books.

“I’m in the
middle
of something,” he says again.

He yells at the sky and shakes his fists as a jet flies past.

“Go and bomb Tony Blair!”

“We found a baby,” I say.

“You found a
what
?”

“A baby, by the river.”

He stares at me, like I’m a hundred miles away.

“And where’s the baby now?” he says.

“Downstairs, on the kitchen table. And she needs some milk.”

Even when he’s standing there looking at her and touching her
cheek with his finger, he says,

“You’re having me on, aren’t you? It’s one of your lot, Max, isn’t it?” He rolls his eyes. “And how come you just happened to be at the right spot to find her?”

“A raven took us,” I say.

“It led us through the village and down the fields,” says Max.

Dad grins.

“Hey, nice touch, lads. But you’ll have to write it yourself if you want all this in a story. I’ve not got the time.”

He raises his hands.

“Look, Liam,” he says. “I know it’s a pain that I’m so busy, but I’ve got to get on with this book.”

“And there was this as well,” I say.

I put the jar of money and the note onto the table.

He narrows his eyes.

“Is this true?” He sighs. “It is, isn’t it? That’s all I need.”

Dad calls the police. Max holds his knuckle to the baby’s mouth and lets her suck on it.

“She thinks it’ll give her milk,” he says. “She’ll be bawling when she sees there’s no chance.” He strokes her cheek. “There, there. We’re going to sort you out, sweetheart.”

Dad puts the phone down. The police are on their way. He stares at the baby. She opens her mouth and screams.

“What should we do, Max?” asks Dad.

Max looks inside the blanket.

“She needs her nappy changed,” he says.

“We can’t do that,” says Dad. “We should wait for the police before we go ahead and do anything like that.”

The baby bawls on. Dad makes a coffee. He scribbles in a notebook.

“So it wasn’t a crow or a rook?” he says. “They all look the same to me. Birds. Black.”

“Raven,” says Max. “It’s bigger than a crow.”

“And it was the same one, all the way?”

“Aye,” says Max.

Dad scribbles.

“You can tame them, can’t you?” he says.

“Aye. And eat them if you’re daft enough.”

Dad nibbles his thumbnail. He scratches his beard. He peers into the jar and scribbles again.

“And there was a hiker, with a red hat?”

“Yes,” I say. “Like there’s always hikers.”

“And the snake was an adder, yes? And it’s the heat they like, yes?”

“Aye,” says Max.

“And did you ever hear about anything like this happening out here before, Max?”

“Happens all the time,” says Max. “We’re always finding babies by the river with jars of loot beside them.”

I stash the knife with the money in my bedroom before the police arrive. There’s two of them, PC Ball ands WPC Jenkins. They’re wearing bulletproof vests over their short-sleeved shirts.

“Do you really need to turn up like we’re a bunch of crack dealers?” says Dad.

“It’s policy, Mr. Lynch,” says PC Ball. “No need to take it personally.”

“You never know who’s got a gun or a knife in their pocket,” says WPC Jenkins.

“Even out here in the peaceful spots,” says Ball.

He looks at me. I look straight back at him. He grins.

“Or are you all little angels out here, eh?” He winks. “Any chance of a cuppa, sir?”

They write it all down: the journey, the discovery, the journey home. They write about the snake. They raise their eyebrows at the bit about the raven, but they write it anyway. They write a description of the hiker.

“Walking gear,” says PC Ball. “Red cap. Could be a man or a woman. Not too specific, is it, lads?”

“They weren’t close by,” I say. “And the sun was glaring.”

“And Rook Hall?” he says. “It’s on a walking route, eh? So they left her in a place where they knew she’d be found.”

“They?”
says Dad.

“It’s usually the mum,” says PC Ball. “They’re too young, they can’t cope, something like that.”

“She’ll need help as much as the baby,” says WPC Jenkins. “She’ll turn up in the end. She’ll not be able to stay away from her child.”

They phone headquarters: the area around Rook Hall needs to be sectioned off and searched.

“They’ll be contacting all the hospitals now,” says WPC Jenkins. “They’ll get messages to the GPs. Somebody some-where’ll know something. They’re looking for the hiker. These things don’t stay mysteries for long.”

A motorbike screams on the military road. A jet howls past. Dad growls at it. PC Ball sips his tea.

“Peaceful out here, isn’t it?” he says.

An ambulance turns up. A couple of young paramedics in orange jumpsuits come in.

“Abandoned?” says the girl, Doreen. She lifts the baby. “Who’d abandon a lovely little lass like this?”

She holds the baby up high.

“Girls are
gorgeous
!” she says. “But my goodness, they can stink!
Pooee!
But guess what I brought, just for you? Nappies! Hurray!”

She changes the baby on the draining board. She murmurs all the time, she makes her eyes wide and bright, she coos and squeaks.

“Perfect as a picture. And sweetly smelling as a rose. Now, would our lovely little girly like some
milk
?”

She feeds it from a bottle. The baby snuffles and sucks, and after a while just goes to sleep, and Doreen sits there with the baby on her lap. She smiles and sighs.

“You found a proper little angel, lads,” she says.

The paramedics take the baby away. The police take the basket and the note and the jar of cash. They say they’ll be in touch. There’ll be lots more to ask, lots more to talk about. They’re just about to leave when PC Ball says, like he’s suddenly remembered to say it,

“Thank you, lads. You’ve been good citizens.”

“What else could we do?” says Max.

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” He tightens the straps on his bulletproof vest. “Some lads in your position, seeing all that cash …” He grins at me. “Know what I mean, lads?”

I look straight back at him.

“No,” I say.

“That’s great. And you weren’t—even a good lad like you, Liam, even for a few seconds—tempted, were you?”

“What?” snaps Dad. “What
exactly
are you suggesting?”

“Oh, nothing, sir,” says PC Ball. “But in our position, you always have to allow yourself to wonder.”

And he looks at me for a moment, then they’re gone.

We sit at the kitchen table. Dad says he should get on, but he doesn’t move. Scribbles a bit in his notebook. Stares and ponders. He’s doing what he does to just about everything, turning it into a story.

“How old do you think she was?” he says.

“A few months,” says Max. “Mebbe four.”

I imagine Mum holding me up high when I was a few months old and saying, Boys are
gorgeous!
We were in Newcastle way back then, stony broke. We were right on the brink, Mum used to say.

Dad keeps on scribbling.

The fields are shimmering outside the kitchen window. There’s cattle, sheep, hedges, copses, the blue blue sky. And more jets, black and silent over the hazy wind turbines at Hallington Ridge.

Then there’s footsteps outside, and here’s Gordon Nattrass at the door. I go to him.

“You said you’d come to the field,” he says. “And you didn’t.”

“We got sidetracked,” I tell him.

“You weren’t avoiding us, then?”

“Course we weren’t.”

We watch each other.

He’s still carrying the saw. There’s a sack slung over his shoulder. “You’re missing out, brother,” he says. “We had a great time.” Then he goes. A few drops of blood drip from the sack as he walks away.

It’s late when Mum comes home.
Max has gone. Dad’s upstairs. There’s a smell of cigarette smoke on her, and that look in her eyes she has these days when she comes back from town.

“What a day,” she says. “Lunch with Sue, then of course the gallery launch, then of course we go on for drinks.”

“But you drove,” I say.

“I just had a teeny weeny bit.” She pours a big glass of red wine. She points to the ceiling. “His nibs is at work?”

I nod.

She puts her hands to her face and beams.

“They’re going to show
my
work, Liam. In a brand-new gallery right slap bang in the middle of Newcastle. This is
big
, son.”

She swigs her wine, closes her eyes, sighs.