You aren’t supposed to be here, the old man tells Mum over and over, but if he has to put up with her and her little buggers, then they can earn their keep. He fires the woman who has worked for him for years. Gabriel hears her weeping, pleading for the sake of her children, but she’s out the door. I want your room cleared, the old man tells her. I want you out the door by this afternoon. Mum can do the cleaning, the old man says, and the cooking and the ironing and this little bugger, the dragonstick prods his back, this little bugger here can help you.
Gabriel has to clean the grate in the kitchen, sweep out the miserable heap of ashes that falls from the small pile of wood the old man allows them to burn in the evening. Outside the sky is grey, the sun a pale disc straining through the clouds. It’s raining and everything is damp, everything is cold. Mum drapes a clothes horse with washing and places it near the grudging fire, but nothing dries.
Gabriel has other chores. He has to sweep the kitchen floor, wash the dishes after supper. He has to weed the garden, dig his hands right into the cold ground, the soil compacting under his nails. The old man has shown him how to ease the weeds loose so there’s no chance of them shooting up ever again.
Nothing comes free here, you understand, the old man says as Gabriel kneels on the ground. The dragonstick points and points again. That’s a weed, he says, and jabs the offending plant, and that one. Make sure you get them all. No point in weeding if one of the little buggers is left behind to spread.
Gabriel also has to feed the hens. They wander the garden, roost in trees, watch him as he arrives with a pail of greens, carrot tops, vegetable peels. Their eyes are beads, their beaks are small and pointed. Gabriel stands in the rain, water running into his eyes, mixing with tears as the hens gather around him. Come rain or shine the hens must be fed, come rain or shine Gabriel has to feed them and collect their eggs. He throws the peels, scatters them as fast as he can, but he’s never fast enough to avoid the sharp pecking beaks. Sharp enough to cut through his thick, grey school socks and draw blood.
The hens don’t like Gabriel. They don’t like the way he creeps into their coops, slides his hands into the damp straw. They don’t like it when he steals their eggs and puts them into the plastic bucket the old man has given him.
The rain falls and falls on the tin roof of the old man’s house. Sometimes it falls so hard that it’s hard to hear Mum when she talks. Her voice is quieter by the day, her eyes darker. There’s a small shake to her hands and she walks softly, as if she’s afraid to make any more noise than necessary. She hushes Harriet when she cries, whispers to Gabriel when he comes home from school. Now she calls him her Little Man when she smooths his hair back from his forehead, when she leans over his bed and says, Sweet dreams, my Little Man.
Gabriel lies in bed and listens to the rain on the tin roof. The sky is grey when he goes to sleep, the moon can’t shine through. It’s grey when he wakes up in the morning. Gabriel lies in his bed and listens to the drip-plop-drop of the rain falling into the bucket in the corner of the room. Everything is wet, everything is damp and cold. There are three small, deep holes on the outside of his hand from where the hens have pecked it. He sucks them and draws a little blood.