They’d earmarked this day for ploughing but the east field had a silver skin of frost at dawn and now the prospect seemed unlikely. Mr Mayhood had assured him over breakfast, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t rule it out just yet until we’ve had a quick inspection. If it goes down any deeper than a couple of inches, we’ll have to put it off. But I don’t think it looks too bad.’ After they washed up the dishes, they put on their woollens and walked out together, treading the compacted ground in search of where it seemed most frozen. Somewhere near the middle of the field, they stopped. Mr Mayhood pushed his fork into the soil. ‘Looks all right. About an inch. It ought to take a plough, I think,’ was the decision. ‘We could let it thaw, but there’s a danger it’d get so wet the tractor will get stuck in it – that’s something Hollis warned me to look out for. Anyway, let’s have that cup of tea first. Warm our cockles up before the wagon comes.’
They went back to the porch to drink the tea that Florence had left out for them, and waited for the lorry to arrive with their manure. They’d ordered it dried out and pulverized this time, less pungent than the fresher stuff.
‘It’s mornings like these I’m inclined to hire somebody else, you know,’ said Mr Mayhood. ‘Can’t keep looking for a fella who refuses to be found. If he came back, we’d take him on again, but it’d be for half the wages. Florence says she’ll put the word out in the village. That all right by you?’
Charlie nodded, cradling his mug and letting its steam thaw his nose. ‘You’ve been more than fair to that old man. Too fair.’
‘That may be so.’
‘He wouldn’t do the same for you or me.’
‘That may be so, as well. But isn’t that what makes it necessary?’
‘I suppose.’
When the lorry came, he watched it dump the muck in one big pile in the yard, knowing it would be his job to shovel it on to the trailer later on for spreading. Once Florence had got finished with the plough, they’d have to rake the field by hand because their harrow needed welding. Even with the guarantee of Joyce’s help, he’d not been looking forward to the task, and now it seemed they’d have to manage it without her. Not only had his sister been away all night with some bloke no one knew, she hadn’t even had the courtesy to telephone and give her reasons – no doubt, when she offered them, they’d stink about as much as the manure.
Mr Mayhood hadn’t let his disappointment with her show yet. All he’d said was, ‘I don’t think we ought to speculate too much about your sister. She’s an adult and I’m sure she’ll have an explanation when she gets back home. I think it’s only right she’s heard.’ But Charlie recognized their method: channelling their irritation into cleaning, cooking, laundering and other preparations for the day. His aunty used to manage Joyce that way and it had got her nowhere. The only difference was the Mayhoods were a lot more persevering, more inclined to let Joyce remedy her faults before condemning her. It was a major part of why he felt so grateful to them. He could still remember those long afternoons he’d spent with Mr Mayhood in the summer, back when they’d been making renovations to his room. They’d been planing beams of ash to make his bed frame, working to the drawing he’d submitted for approval. One day, in a sweaty, resting moment, Mr Mayhood had blown out his cheeks and told him there was apple juice down in the larder, nice and cool. They’d gone to fetch the jug and stood for a while in the shady kitchen, gulping down two glassfuls each, an easy silence growing in the room, a sense of safety coming over him, until he’d got the confidence to say what he’d been meaning to for weeks.
‘Mr Mayhood, could I ask you something?’
‘Yes, of course. What’s on your mind?’
‘It’s just that I’ve been thinking – why did you choose me for this? I mean, I can’t help wondering if someone else deserved it more.’
But Mr Mayhood had laughed softly. ‘Oh, you earned it fair and square. Your drawing was the best we saw, no question. It had real control, precision. Vision – most important. And a little something unexpected. That’s what I was hoping we would find. And here you are, look, proving my sound judgement.’
He’d been sheepish about voicing what he’d felt, but said it anyway: ‘You’ve changed my life. I wanted you to know that.’
Mr Mayhood hadn’t answered to begin with. His eyes had narrowed as he’d put his glass down, as though thinking, Hasn’t been two months yet, lad. Bit early for that surely? But then he’d cleared his throat and spoken: ‘Not at all. You’ve changed it. I just opened up the door to let you through.’ He’d leaned back on the counter, grabbing the short pincers of his false hand with the other. ‘Let me tell you something I’ve discovered, Charlie, and I’m certain this is true. More certain than I’ve ever been, in fact.’ He’d paused to make sure he was being listened to. ‘If every person on this earth was born with just two things, they’d never have to struggle. Do you know what those things are? Belief and opportunity. Belief and opportunity. But the problem is they’re gifts that other people have to give you. If you get them from your parents, then you’re lucky. Otherwise you have to find them somewhere else, from people who don’t know you well or owe you anything. A lot of people spend a long time searching for those things, and some find one but not the other. Some give up entirely. Me? I stumbled on them. I was fortunate. Someone cared enough to get to know me and to set his store by what he saw in me. And that’s how life should be. Belief and opportunity for everyone. I’m only passing on what I was given at your age. And I don’t plan to stop with you and Joyce.’
They’d gone back upstairs to plane the last few lengths of timber. As they’d worked, he’d sensed that Mr Mayhood was content to have his company, to share his purpose. And he’d thought to say, ‘Who was it helped you, after you got out?’
‘A fella at the Corporation up in Liverpool. His name was Mr Wheating. I didn’t even think he liked me very much, but he surprised me. Aftercare had set me up in his department: city planning. On a trial basis only, mind. I knew it was a blessing, even if I earned a pittance. This is looking better now, I think …’ Mr Mayhood had reached down to brush the shavings from the beam, and then he’d kept on planing. ‘Wasn’t much for me to do there to begin with. I just filed away the drawings, made the tea and organized the post. But then one of the draughtsmen went on sick leave and I asked if I could pitch in with some drawing. Wheating told me no, but I just kept on asking. I suppose he got annoyed with all my pestering and, in the end, he gave me a block plan to copy. I still remember what it was: a big municipal estate in Norris Green, and I was told to do it twice. I had those finished in a day or two and I could tell he was impressed, you know, because he had a wobble in his face – like this – but he just gave me something else to copy out. Another block plan, only much more complicated. Something from the Tunnel project. When I brought that back, he gave me a few more. Eventually, he calls me in to see him in his office. He says, Look here, Mayhood, I’ve been speaking to some people at the architecture school. I’d like to keep you on, because I know that I could put you to good use, but I believe you’ll have a brighter future over there. They’d like to meet you. Well, next thing I know, I’m sat across a table from Charles Reilly, and he’s looking over all my copied drawings. After that, I get a letter saying they have a scholarship for me. I thought it was a wind-up. All that I could think about were other lads at Feltham I’d been in with. I was just like you. I couldn’t understand how I’d got all the luck while most of them were still inside or grinding out a living. But, you see, that’s what I mean: belief and opportunity. They’re simple things that shouldn’t be so hard to find. And I’m just trying to do my part.’
It sickened Charlie that his sister had been taking this for granted. Every minute she was late, every time she muttered grievances under her breath or shook her head and scowled, it came across as an affront to the intentions of the Mayhoods. To stay out with some fella overnight and not turn up to do her chores or farmwork in the morning? Well, that shamed him just as much as it shamed her. The worst part was – and wasn’t this just typical? – she’d managed to involve him in her scheming, too.
Just this morning, as he’d laid the breakfast table, Florence had stood in the doorway, fretting. ‘How much do you know about this fellow Joyce is seeing, Charlie?’
‘Next to nothing, really. Just a few details.’ He’d rehashed the description he’d been given by his sister – brown hair, worsted blazer, specs, the post office – and recognized how terse the information sounded, how uninterested in her life it made him seem. So he’d hurried on, ‘I did go down there once or twice to have a look at him myself. But there was never any sign of him, and she got moody with me when I raised it with her. That’s the way she is about this kind of thing – all secretive and sensitive. She said he was some sort of manager. Goes up and down to different branches, so she told me. But you never really know with Joyce.’
Florence had blinked back at him, as though it was the first she’d heard about his sister’s unreliability. ‘And why’s that?’
‘Well, because she tends to –’ He hadn’t known how best to phrase it. ‘Make things up. At least, she used to.’
‘Are you saying you don’t think this chap is real?’
‘I’m saying I’ve not seen him.’
‘Did you get his name?’
‘No, miss. I’m afraid I didn’t.’
‘Hmm.’ She’d clucked her tongue. ‘Well, if she isn’t back by lunchtime, I shall have to walk down to the post office myself. Agreed?’
‘Sounds fair enough to me,’ he’d said. ‘I’m sorry that she’s made you worry. But she’s like an alley cat, my sister. She might vanish now and then, but you’ll feel daft for getting so worked up when she comes back again.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
‘I know I am.’
She’d lingered on the threshold, saying, ‘Best put layers on today. Don’t want you catching cold out there. We’ll need you fit and ready in the draughting room.’
‘I’ve had my thermals on all night.’
‘A wise decision.’
He’d allowed her to go off without another word, which made him liable for worsening the situation. There’d been chances to report the other things he knew. For one, the Woldingham phone number he’d discovered on her ciggie packet that no one ever answered when he rang. For another, when he’d gone to check the nearest post offices, he’d met two clerks with neat brown hair and round-wire specs, and both of them had been in blazers, though he couldn’t tell by sight if they were gabardine or worsted. When he’d asked them if they knew his sister, Joyce, they’d both returned the same bewildered look; one of them had sounded irked, the other had become uncomfortable, repeating, ‘I’m a married man. Can’t help you,’ and then calling, ‘Next!’ to the old lady in the queue behind. That’s when he’d tried coaxing answers out of Joyce and she’d explained about the fella being an area manager.
He should’ve followed her last night. He should’ve gone out in the cold and dark and trailed her to the Duke of Wellington until he knew for sure who she was meeting. But there’d been a lot of work to do, assisting with the competition entry, and he’d lost himself in the momentum of it all.
Her big announcement had been so abrupt it should’ve made him pay attention. She’d not waited for a quiet moment after lunch; she’d walked up and informed the Mayhoods while they’d been reviewing all their parti sketches at the plan chest. Progress had been fairly static for the past few weeks and Mr Mayhood had become exasperated with the project. He’d been pacing in the hallway every hour, going off to lie down in the parlour with the curtains shut, banging his claw-hand upon the tabletop when he was unconvinced by what he’d drawn and sighing heavily until his face turned ruddy. Ever since the documents had reached them from the Battersea committee – a ream of pages that the Mayhoods had been calling ‘the conditions’ – Charlie had been hearing nothing but the scratch scratch scratch of ink pens in the draughting room. Joyce had sidled up to Mr Mayhood from her station by the window and declared, ‘I don’t know if it’s the best time to be asking, but I’ve been invited out this evening for a drink. I’d like to go, if it’s all right with you. It’s with a fella I’ve been getting friendly with the past few months. Would that be something I could do?’ Seeing her endure the awkwardness of asking for permission had been quite a new experience for Charlie and he’d found it almost touching. Mr Mayhood had continued spreading out the parti sketches on the plan chest, circling around them with his specs clutched in his hand.
‘You don’t need my blessing, Joyce,’ was the response, ‘and you can make your own decisions what to do in your free time. Enjoy yourself.’
‘All right. Thanks,’ she’d said. ‘I will.’
And though Charlie hadn’t said a word to her, he must’ve looked discouraging, because she’d frowned at him as she went past. ‘No one asked you, mouse,’ she’d said. ‘Get back to work.’
Florence, with the easy manner that she had for soothing tension, had gone over to his sister’s desk and perched beside her on the stool. ‘How dashing is he?’
‘Average,’ she’d said.
‘But interesting?’
‘Not sure yet.’
‘I thought you said you two were getting friendly.’
‘Only chatting in his place of work. It’s not the same. That’s why I’m going for a drink with him. To see if there’s a future in it.’
‘Is he going to pick you up?’
‘We’re meeting in the village. He’s not having my address until he’s earned it.’
‘Good for you, Joyce. Sounds as though you’ve got him nicely trained already.’
‘I just hope he’s not too boring. I’m all right with ordinary, but boring I can’t stand.’
‘Yes, I know exactly what you mean.’
Mr Mayhood had begun to riffle through a sketchbook, ripping pages out and placing them into a grid with all the others. ‘Everyone, please gather round a sec,’ he’d called, and so they had. He’d prodded at the top left image: a more developed drawing they’d decided weeks ago had great potential. ‘I still like the gist of this approach, but something’s overworked about it all. We’ve not defined the grammar for the building yet – it’s neither one thing nor the other. Mostly, it’s the foyer. It’s too compacted here at the south face and it’s stifling the entire scheme. We’ve not really carried through our rowan leaf idea. The foyer really needs to have a sense of openness. It’s much too sectioned off. The light should course through it as one, not like this, in slats – that isn’t right.’ He’d jabbed another sketch, two rows below. ‘I mean, have a look at this one here. You’ve captured it already, Flo. You did that, when? About a week ago? I should’ve seen it then. The central stairwell’s got that lovely tulip shape to it. I really think that’s what this building needs. It has to have that sort of openness and flow. It’s so much better. Don’t you think that’s better? I believe it’s better. There’s a motif there, and we can use it to define our whole approach. That tulip shape. We’ll have to start again, of course, but we’ve got time to play with.’
Until yesterday, their competition work had been a drudge. The Mayhoods had been agonizing over whether to withdraw and claim back their deposit. But, by accident of Joyce distracting them, they’d been rewired. The impetus had carried them past midnight and he wasn’t sure that Mr Mayhood even went to bed.
Now the yard was full of dry manure and they were bristling in the cold. It was the bitter kind of chill that settled in your bones. The winter sky was dismal, not a chance of sunlight breaking through.
‘You might need a flask of brandy out there, Charlie,’ Mr Mayhood said, eyes on the field. ‘Or I could light a brazier. Take turns standing round it.’
‘I’ll make do with my ciggies,’ he replied.
‘I wish I’d never packed them in, you know.’
‘You must’ve lost your mind.’
‘Yes, probably.’
Florence came out then, with gloves on and a woolly hat, a brown scarf hiding everything below her eyes. ‘Are you sure you want to plough this morning?’ she said. ‘Looks more like a day for baking bread to me.’
‘Last warm day for weeks, this,’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘We have to make the most of it.’
‘You call this warm?’
‘Relative to what’s ahead of us, it’s sweltering.’
‘I’d best get knitting balaclavas, then.’
‘Yes, but not for Charlie – he’s got cigarettes to warm him up.’ Mr Mayhood dug him in the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s bring out the tractor and we’ll hitch the plough. It’s best if Florence makes a start out there – the ground might break the coulters yet – but you can do the last few furrows, if you like.’
Their hard work kept them warm enough. While Florence ploughed the east field, he and Mr Mayhood shovelled dry manure on to the trailer. It was mostly wordless labour, and when either of them spoke, it was an act of courtesy, a way of showing one another they were glad to share the burden. That’s how it was meant to be at Leventree, he understood that now: as long as they were farming, they should never have their minds on architecture. The silence and the toil were meant to give them separation from all that, to cleanse them. And some days it did. On others, it exhausted him to the extent that he could barely hold a pencil or envision anything except the comforts of his bed. He’d never been so worn out since his first few weeks in borstal, which had been so draining that he’d fainted twice on the parade ground and been carried to the nurse, who’d given him a glass of salted water to drink. He’d toughened up quickly after that, but it had taken him a while to lose the nickname Jellylegs.
Part of him was still preoccupied with Joyce as he climbed on to the tractor for his turn at ploughing. Every time he arced around to start another furrow, his first glance was back towards the porch, in the hope that she’d be standing in her workman’s trousers, ready to pitch in. But the hours passed and he and Mr Mayhood – Florence, too, before she went inside to organize their lunch – were left to haul the trailer up and down the field, edging it along the imprints of the tractor’s wheels. They worked in twenty-five-yard patches, Charlie flinging the manure, spade after spade, and the Mayhoods raking it all through. Once or twice, the tractor’s engine sputtered out and, when it did, a holy feeling swelled in him. The noises of the world became much sharper, more alive. The crackle of his ciggie as it burned, the straining stitches round his bootcaps as he flexed his toes, the distant lowing of their neighbour’s cattle in the barn. Then Florence got the tractor going again and all he heard was engine judder, till he got that low tone in his ears like someone blowing in a bottle. And on they went again, another twenty-five or thirty yards, rehearsing the same motions with their rakes and shovels. By the time the job was done, his back was griping and he couldn’t feel his nose.
After he’d washed up and changed, there was a treat for lunch – oxtail and barley stew with carrots, which he mopped up with two rounds of soda bread. Every week, he checked the rota, took note of the days when Florence was marked down for cooking. She always made hot food for them, substantial meals full of flavour; not the scrappy sandwiches with soup, or cheese on toast with pickled onions, that the rest of them would put together. Today, she even set a plate aside for Joyce and left it covered on the range, assuming that his sister would be hungry when she finally returned. She looked towards the mantel clock and said, ‘It’s after half past one. I think I should go down there.’
‘Please don’t take too long. I’d like to start on final plans and elevations by next week. We’ve really got to get this scheme pinned down today,’ said Mr Mayhood. ‘And it’s your project now, your vision.’
‘It’s ours,’ she answered. ‘Last I checked, we were a team.’
‘Well, either way, you’re steering it from this point on. We can’t be long without you.’
‘Fifteen minutes, at the most. Relight the fire and I’ll be back.’
‘I’ve got a pile of useless paper we can burn, all right.’
She didn’t laugh, just creased her mouth at him. ‘Better yet, start writing. It’ll come down to how well we can describe the scheme to them. It’s salesmanship that wins you competitions and we’ve hardly got a word on paper that’s persuasive.’ Then, catching Charlie’s eye, she added, ‘What’s the betting Joyce is coming up the drive once I get out there?’
‘If she is,’ he said, ‘please tell her that we ate her lunch.’
‘Don’t either of you dare.’ She went to fetch her coat, then came back through the kitchen on her way outside. He watched her from the steamy window with the hot tap filling up the sink. How was it she could look so beautiful from such a distance with her back turned and her woollens on? It was unfair to his poor heart. He scrubbed the pots and cleaned the dishes for the second time that day, and Mr Mayhood dried them. After that, they went to get a fire started in the draughting room. He twisted up some newspaper and poked it in between the kindling Mr Mayhood laid out in the hearth. They watched it all take flame and smoulder, breathing in the earthy flavour of the smoke.
‘I’ll put some coffee on for us,’ he said, but Mr Mayhood shook his head.
‘No, that can wait. We’d better take a good look at the site survey again and make sure we’re not likely to encroach on any boundaries. This new idea we have is looking right, I think, but if it doesn’t fit the plot, we’ve got to work out how to alter it.’
They were still there, loosely measuring the boundaries of the site with a scale ruler, when Florence got back home. Charlie spotted her head bobbing past the window, heard the brisk thump of her footsteps on the porch. She breezed in with her overcoat on, pulling off her scarf. ‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘could I have a word, please?’
Mr Mayhood looked at her. ‘Of course.’ He put the ruler down in front of Charlie. ‘Hold that thought,’ he said, and followed her out into the hallway.
For a moment, Charlie rested in the wing chair by the fire, lifting up his stocking feet towards the blaze. He knew they were discussing Joyce but didn’t want to press his ear against the door: he’d had enough of hearing other people whisper their displeasure at his sister.
When Mr Mayhood came back in, he had an air of disaffection, striding up to gather a few papers from his bureau. ‘Shall we carry on?’ he asked.
Then Florence reappeared, her face a little pinked, her steps more hesistant. ‘Charlie,’ she said, as he stood up from the chair, landing her attention on him in the way that made his legs weak and his thoughts go drifting. There was recognition in that look she gave him – a truth they both agreed but weren’t prepared to voice – and she was trailing after him, until she stopped and said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help but worry. She might well be like an alley cat. And I might well be trying to mother her. But – look – it’s after two and she’s not back. It seems to me that we’re neglecting our responsibility towards the girl. I don’t mean you, Charlie, of course. I’m trying to get through to my husband.’
Mr Mayhood was already nettled by the whole exchange. ‘I’m not phoning the police, Flo. She won’t thank us for it.’
‘No, you mustn’t,’ Charlie put in then. ‘That’s only going to rile her up when she gets back.’
‘But what if something’s happened to her?’ Florence said.
He couldn’t stop the fast, dismissive laugh that left his throat. ‘It’s just the way she acts sometimes, that’s all. Believe me, she’s been doing this since I was little.’
‘Hear that? Charlie understands what’s right,’ said Mr Mayhood. ‘We have to let her be. This isn’t school or borstal. It’s a place of work and Joyce is free to come and go. We promised her as much, so we can hardly blame her now she’s done it. There’ll be consequences, though. She’ll lag behind. She’ll have more duties on the rota next week to catch up. And she’ll have to stick with colourwashing prints for longer than she ought. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be happy if she makes a habit of this sort of thing. But I’m not going to jeopardize her licence by involving the police. It’s one late night. That’s it. She’ll come back when she’s ready.’
Florence was subdued for a moment. Then she said, ‘Like Mr Hollis did, you mean?’
‘Flo, come on. Enough now. That’s a different situation and you know it. Hollis bit off more than he could chew.’
‘I just think we ought to be prepared to ring the station if she’s still not home by suppertime. Perhaps we might ask Mr Kimball to advise us what –’
‘Not Kimball. He’s already got it in for her.’ Charlie hated to be so abrupt and he could see the disillusionment in Florence as he cut her off. Her remonstrating hands dropped quickly to her sides. But he could only think of what their supervising officer might put in his report if he was told of Joyce’s absence. It was just the sort of vague misconduct he’d been waiting for since they’d arrived. Not truancy, as such, but waywardness. An indication of her sliding back into her old behaviour.
Florence patted down the cushions on the sofa in a sort of protest and a storm of dust rose out of them.
He asked, ‘What happened at the post office before?’
‘I learned a thing or two.’ She sat down, straightening her skirt. ‘They said there is a regional manager – Mr Crottee. In his fifties. Married with four kids, and bald. Does that sound right to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I told you, she gets secretive about this stuff. The details never quite add up. It’s all because the fellas who she likes don’t tend to stick with her. So she’ll save a bit of face by telling you as little as she can. That’s Joyce. She’s hard to fathom out.’ What he didn’t say was that there’d been a time when he’d believed she was a prostitute. A dreadful thing to level at her and he still regretted saying it aloud. There’d been plenty of good reasons for suspecting it – he’d known enough about her circumstances, things she’d said to him, what he’d observed. But, really, he’d been nudged towards a false conclusion by a lot of gossip from his aunty and her church friends as they’d sat in their front room with fruit-loaf slices and Earl Grey. His sister had denied it – and so earnestly that he’d found himself believing her. True candour was a rare event in Joyce’s life, but he could always recognize it when he saw it.
Florence crossed her arms and said, ‘Till five o’clock. No longer. Supper is her duty and she knows the rota. If she isn’t at that range by five, I’m phoning Mr Kimball. Understand, it’s not a punishment – I want to know that she’s all right.’
‘Whoever she’s been with, he isn’t worth her time – or yours. I’m sure of that.’
Mr Mayhood was still fussing with the site plan. ‘I think that’s Charlie saying we should get on with our day. And, after all, he knows her best.’
And so they pressed on with their competition entry. He was glad for the diversion of the project. How much longer could he let his sister do this to him? In the throes of work, his mind would float away from her. She wasn’t in the marks he put on paper. She could never stand inside the buildings he imagined, spoil their shapes, though she could break his concentration if he let his thoughts run off in her direction. Wasn’t that what she was always telling him? Protect yourself. Be no one’s ha’penny. And drawing was the only thing he’d ever known how to control.
On this score, he’d learned so much already from the Mayhoods. They never quarrelled when it came to architecture. They were so invested in each other’s talents, sympathetic to each other’s strengths and flaws, and it was always clear which one of them was leading on a project. Yesterday, while Florence had refined her concept sketches, he and Mr Mayhood had stood watching at her shoulder. In an hour, the halls of residence had found their form: a low, wide structure with a channel through its middle where the main staircase would be, a glass and steel chamber with curved walls. It had looked, from that initial sketch, as though a tulip had been darned with zigzag stitches. Today, he stood in silence behind Mr Mayhood, seeing him enhance the concept she’d begun, exploring basic elevations freehand, using charcoal, then fashioning another sequence more exactly, using pencil, with his clamp appliance on the T-square.
It still astounded him that Mr Mayhood could achieve such accuracy in his drawings. With no feeling in his right hand, he could still manoeuvre the straight edge and balance it, retaining the precision in his lines. He’d go clipping and unclipping from whichever instruments he needed, losing no momentum. When they’d first met one another, Mr Mayhood hadn’t worn the arm at all – there’d been an empty space below the elbow where the sleeve had been rolled up and safety-pinned.
It had been the governor who’d organized his visit. An officer had taken Charlie out of Sunday chapel to escort him to the office. As soon as he’d been let inside, the governor had risen from behind his desk to say, ‘Good morning, Savigear. Please have a seat. You needn’t look so terrified – you’re not in any trouble.’ Mr Mayhood had been at the window with a teacup. The grounds of Huntercombe were framed behind him, still and vacant, grey as pewter. ‘I’d like to introduce you to the man whom you’ll be working for this summer – that’s assuming you keep up the good behaviour till your discharge.’
Right then, Mr Mayhood had stepped forward with a gloss of pride about his eyes. ‘Hello, Charles,’ he’d said, and offered his left hand. ‘So glad to meet you. I must say, your drawing really took my breath away – I mean that. It’s extremely nice to put a face to it, as last. My wife and I are looking forward to your being with us, very much.’ They’d shaken.
‘Good to meet you too, sir. Thank you.’
‘I thought we’d take a little stroll outside. Just half an hour or so. And you can ask me any questions you might have. I’m sure your head is full of them.’
He’d looked towards the governor, who’d said, ‘It’s all right, Savigear. An officer will go out with you. You can join your working party when you’re ready.’
As soon as they had got outside the sky had cracked apart. Instead of doing circuits of the garden and the playing fields, they’d had to be content with standing underneath the covered walkway as the rain fell hard on the parade ground. ‘Well,’ said Mr Mayhood, ‘as you’ve got your stripes already, you can have a smoke now, I suppose.’
‘I would, sir, if I had any.’
‘Oh, I should’ve thought to bring you in a packet.’
‘That’s all right. I’ll scrounge one from a prefect later.’
‘What’s your poison? Woodbines?’
‘Them and rollies, mostly.’
‘Some things never change. And Player’s for the prefects, right?’
‘That’s it.’ The rain had gushed down from the sloping roof and formed a kind of beaded curtain in between them and the trees. ‘How d’you know so much about it all?’
‘Two years in Feltham, that’s how.’
‘As a volunteer, you mean?’
Mr Mayhood’s brow had lifted. ‘No, when I was your age.’
‘Oh.’ His whole perception of the man had altered after that. ‘You couldn’t have been guilty, sir.’
‘I did the crime, all right, if you can call it that.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was shifting stolen goods for somebody, that’s all. Wrong place, wrong time. You’ll know the feeling.’
‘Yeah, I do, sir.’
‘Well, don’t worry. It won’t set you back for ever. I’m not going to let it.’
Any doubts that Charlie might’ve had about the Mayhoods and their contest had been washed out in the rain. What sort of barrel-scraping architects went searching for apprentices at borstal? Were they looking for cheap labour? Someone they could boss around and torment? Were they skinflints? Desperate? In dire straits? When he’d seen that missing limb, it had occurred to him that something wasn’t quite as advertised. This one-armed architect was trying to recruit a dogsbody to clean his house and shine his shoes. There’d be no draughting work and no profession at the end of it. There had to be a negative he wasn’t seeing. But, that grey afternoon, he’d stopped mistrusting his own happiness.
‘If we had room and work enough to go around, we’d take a hundred of you,’ Mr Mayhood had explained it. ‘I’m not daft enough to think that every kid in borstal has the skill to be an architect, but I’m certain that they all deserve a chance to learn. I know what a place like this can do to you. You’ll have it tough sometimes, and they can work you like a mule, but they’ll still treat you with respect. In Feltham, there were lads you’d never even look at in the corridor in case they beat you down, but then you’d see them working on the lathe in hobby hour and they’d have a peacefulness about them – they’d go whistling round the workshop, never bothering a soul. That’s what a sense of purpose gives you. Just to know you’re good at something other than the things you grow up having to be good at, out of sheer necessity, or else because somebody’s breathing down your neck. I’m sure there must be lads in here who you avoid – you’re probably right to. Some can’t raise a smile for anything but violence. I’ve seen the way it goes. A lot of kids like that are just too damaged to put back together. But the point is: they weren’t born that way. The world’s what did it to them. Pain and suffering. Neglect. The loss of things. There’s no one reason lads wind up in here. A lot of them have more of an excuse than others. But what matters is the way that you emerge from it. Believe me, with a little help, there’s nothing you can’t do when you get out of a place like this.’
A few weeks after that, a parcel had arrived for him at Huntercombe. He’d opened it to find a large tin of tobacco, ciggie papers and a book, The Architect in History by M. S. Briggs. There’d been a pencilled note: Dear Charlie, Just some things to keep you out of trouble until June. Best wishes from the Mayhoods. The library index card was still glued to the inside page: the Liverpool School of Architecture.
Now the first of Mr Mayhood’s elevations was complete, the halls of residence were looking more coherent, but, in Charlie’s view, the new design was lacking something. He went to sit at his own board to see if he could understand the problem, working from his memory of Florence’s initial sketch. It didn’t have that sense of openness they’d all been striving for. Perhaps if he could strip it down to its component parts, as though it were an engine, he could tune up the design. He drew it hurriedly in charcoal, trying not to think too much about his motions. What if separate structures could be formed in concrete, mirroring each another? Not triangles exactly, but right-angled shapes like this, with slopes joining their axes. Concave. Shallow. Shallower than that … With frames of steel rising upwards, making stairwells? See-through. They could panel them with glass. And if the buildings could be set apart, like this – perhaps a little further – the entire space would open up. A tulip shape, implied by where the two slopes merged, just like they wanted … He felt sure of the idea and couldn’t get his vision on to paper fast enough. The more he sketched, the less he noticed how much time was passing or the twinge of hunger in his stomach. It was nearly five o’clock when he finished and the draughting room had emptied out. The embers of the fire were long dead in the hearth.
He found the Mayhoods in the kitchen. A solemnity had settled in the house, in part because the winter darkness seemed to spread so suddenly in Ockham that it prompted Florence to switch on the wall lights in the hallway by late afternoon. But more than that, the voices in the kitchen were downbeat and fitful: ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Of course you do.’ ‘It’s odd, I’ll give you that.’ ‘We have to, don’t we?’ ‘Yes, but I’m still loath to do it.’ As he waited on the threshold, Florence stood up from her chair. ‘We’re wondering what we ought to do about your sister,’ she said. ‘Can you pitch in making supper? She was going to bake a Woolton pie, but we’ve got stew left over, if you don’t mind doubling up on it.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘Just let me know what I can help with.’
‘Maybe we could do a crumble with those Bramley apples?’
‘I’ll get my pinny on.’ He rolled his sleeves up, fetched his apron. ‘Are you going to be phoning Kimball, then?’
‘We’ve not decided yet,’ said Mr Mayhood from the table. He was reading the conditions document again.
‘I’d prefer it if you waited.’
‘How much longer?’ Florence said. ‘A day? A week?’
‘At least another couple of hours. They’ll get the wrong idea about her.’
‘Charlie, listen. It does seem we’re getting to the point where something’s needed. At the very least, we should’ve heard from her by now. She could be hurt.’ Mr Mayhood leafed another page, eyes down. He didn’t seem prepared to look at anything besides the paragraph he was absorbing. ‘Florence has just phoned the Duke of Wellington. No one there’s seen hide nor hair of her.’
‘Well, they would’ve had a crowd in last night, wouldn’t they?’
‘That’s true.’
‘And probably the fella would’ve got her drinks. She’d not have gone up to the bar herself.’
‘You’re right, I know, but still. First, Hollis does a midnight flit and now she’s absent without leave. We can’t ignore it.’
‘But you said that she could go. You said she didn’t even need to ask.’ He couldn’t tell who he was trying to protect, his sister or himself, though he was drained by the resistance.
‘Frankly, Charlie, I don’t know what’s best. I really don’t.’
Florence cut in then: ‘I think we ought to check her room and see she hasn’t taken anything. Not stolen,’ she took care to say, ‘I meant, she might’ve packed a change of clothes … But I don’t want to rummage through her things.’
The silence that came after this was freighted. ‘OK. I don’t mind. I’ll do it.’
‘Would you, Charlie?’
‘Yeah, it wouldn’t be the first time.’ This sounded much more damning than he’d hoped for and it brought a faint reaction out of Florence. ‘What should I do first? The crumble or the screw’s inspection?’
She threw a tea towel at him. ‘Oi. You know that’s not what I’m suggesting.’
‘He was joking,’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘Right, Charlie?’
He untied his apron. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I don’t care. I might be worried over nothing, but I’m worried. I can’t help it.’
‘Fine. I’ll go up now and have a look,’ he told her. ‘But when she sees I’ve touched her stuff, I’m blaming it on you.’
‘I’ll live with that.’
‘Just don’t phone Kimball. Please. Not yet.’
‘We promise we’ll hold on,’ said Mr Mayhood, setting down the document at last. ‘And we appreciate your help with this.’
His sister’s room was as she must’ve left it: in its customary state between abandonment and order. A wardrobe door was open and she’d hung a bath towel over it. Her bed was made with borstal corners, but she’d flung a pair of nylons on the counterpane and they were hanging from it, beige and ropey. There was still a flowered scent about the air: the fancy perfume she’d been loaned by Florence, with its bottle like two doves entwined, was resting on her desk. Her coat was gone, but that was hardly unexpected. Including her work boots, she owned two pairs of shoes and only one was missing. Tucked behind the curtains, on the windowsill, there was a ratty hardback called The Border Legion that she must’ve dropped into the bath and left to dry. Her drawers were stocked with clothes she hadn’t ironed yet, or else had worn and put back in. Everything seemed right and in its place, as far as he could tell.
Except her suitcase wasn’t there.
She’d kept it resting on her wardrobe since the day they’d been assigned their rooms. It was the same make, size and colour as his own – good leather, issued to them on their discharge. That she’d moved it didn’t trouble him too much, unless it was a sign she’d been preparing to pack up her things and leave. He checked the obvious spots. Behind the ottoman, beside her desk, below the bedstead – there it was. He dragged it out and laid it on the counterpane to open. There was just a cardigan inside, which looked too small for her. But as he lowered down the lid, he felt something dislodge and shift – a lump there, in the lining. He worked his fingers on the baggy fabric to make out the shape a little better. It was long and on the narrow side.
He took the case into their bathroom, got a razor blade from his shaving bag and put a clean slice in the lining, tearing it quickly. What he brought out of the cavity was shammy-wrapped and moist. A jeweller’s box. There was a seal of parcel tape, already cut. He was afraid to open it, but had to know. Small pieces tumbled out at once and bounced across the tiles like pebbles. Teeth. Gone yellow with tobacco. Bloody at the ends of their long roots. And in the box’s top there was a strip of a straw hat, torn ragged. He recognized it right away, before he’d even read the message stitched on the reverse. For my darling Geoffrey love Maureen.
Revulsion climbed up from his guts so fast, he didn’t make it to the toilet bowl – he sicked into the bathtub. For a while, he stayed there on his knees, doing what he could to get his breath and stop from sicking up again. He rinsed his mouth out underneath the tap and washed the chunks of oxtail, carrot, barley down the plughole. All that he could think was: Woldingham 9264. He had to tell them now. There couldn’t be another deviation or excuse. He needed to account for what she’d done.
On the way downstairs, his fingers brushed the merry bunting on the banister. He almost dropped the box. The hallway seemed a thousand miles below the ground and every step he took was noiseless, numb. Just yesterday, he’d come down these same steps and she’d been standing at the mirror with her coat on and her hair blown dry. She’d given him a look as she’d turned round: not pained, not troubled, nothing. But he should’ve seen it in her blankness. Long John Silver.
He could hardly carry his own weight by now. The duskiness inside the house bewildered him. He saw the parlour door was open and the Christmas bulbs around the tree had been switched on. And there was Florence, lighting candles on the mantelpiece. As she spotted him, she shook the flame out of the match that she’d been using. ‘Charlie, what’s the matter?’ When he tried to speak, his voice went missing. ‘Did you find something up there?’ She came and took him by the shoulders, touched his forehead with her palm. ‘You’re so clammy. Sit down here, sit down.’ She steered him to the sofa, perched beside him. ‘Arthur!’ she called out. ‘I’ll fetch him. Just sit here. I’ll fetch him.’ And she hurried off.
The Christmas lights went blurry in the corners of his eyes. He smelled the paraffin of molten wax. The sick cloyed hotly in this throat. He was wishing for the same thing now as he’d been wishing for two years ago: that somehow Joyce would have a better explanation for it all. But, even then, he’d known the consolation wouldn’t come. The coppers hadn’t taken anything she’d said as truthful either – and why should they have listened to a word she’d said? A witness had already phoned the station to report them. PC Higgs had told him so. ‘He’s given us a statement. Says he saw a pair of youngsters meddling with the Jaguar across the road. Revving it so loud they woke up half the street. A girl who must’ve been six feet, he reckons, and a shorter lad with dark hair just like yours. Coincidence or what? The girl was driving, so he reckons, but the lad was underneath the bonnet, got the engine running. There you are, see. No point acting innocent with me. You’re going to be charged the same as her.’ He wasn’t going to take the blame for this, as well. They’d hang him for it. Hang her, too, if they could find her. He was going to retch again, but kept it down.
‘Charlie?’ Mr Mayhood said now from the doorway. He came to sit beside him, wrapped one arm across his back and spied the mangy box that he was turning over in his hands. ‘What’s that you’ve got? It’s all right. You can tell us.’
‘I –’ He forced the words out. ‘I just found it. In her room. Her suitcase.’
‘Could I take it, please?’
He nodded and let go.
*
The caravan was pitched among the high grass on the brow of a small meadow. Mr Mayhood hadn’t wanted to delay until the light of morning, so they parked the wagon by the fence and wandered up the slope with their flood lanterns. It was colder than it had been in the fields, first thing, and everyone was tired. He could see it in the pinkness of the Mayhoods’ eyes when they passed through his lantern’s beam and felt it in the lag of his own body. Everything was sore in him. The sharpness of the night air spiked his lungs. He couldn’t smoke. It seemed insensitive and selfish. As they’d driven down the Ockham Road, he’d wondered if they should’ve left the house at all. ‘Don’t worry. If she’s coming back this late, she won’t be troubled on her own for half an hour,’ was Mr Mayhood’s view. ‘I’m not leaving Florence waiting there in case she does. Nor you.’ Half of him was hoping that he’d never see his sister’s face again. The other half was praying no harm came to her.
They hadn’t eaten supper – nobody could find their appetite – and, anyway, the sight of Mr Mayhood with that box of teeth had changed the pattern of their evening. It had made the thought of sitting down across a table with the man seem like a punishment. The tolerance he’d shown when he’d first seen them – not surprised or devastated, just cold-staring at the box, as though he’d recognized a basic failure in his sums. There wasn’t any coming back from that, and Charlie knew it.
Now he followed Mr Mayhood up the slope towards the caravan, the tall grass yielding as they walked. They brought their lanterns to the door. The padlock was unbroken and the leaded windowpanes were still intact. They peered inside, but it was hard to see with the net curtains drawn and the reflections on the glass. Below the undercarriage, there was nothing but a mound of mulch and dirt.
‘Charlie, shine your light around that end, please, would you?’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘You too, Flo.’
They did as they were asked. ‘Are you all right?’ she whispered to him on the way.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ She sighed so heavily that he could see the breath spuming in front of her. At any other time, he might’ve tried to catch it in his fist. They raised their lanterns to the window at the towbar end.
‘There’s nothing in there,’ Mr Mayhood called.
‘What are we doing, Arthur?’ Florence called in answer.
‘Looking.’
‘Yes. For what?’
‘A load of nothing, hopefully.’
‘So far, so good,’ she said to Charlie.
There was quiet for a moment. His pulse beat thickly in his neck. Next thing, he heard the trudge of Mr Mayhood in the dark, a clanking sound. And then an urgent ‘Oi! You two! Get over here!’ They ran round with their lanterns shaking. Mr Mayhood was now on his haunches by the wheel. ‘Do you see what’s on that tyre?’
Florence stooped, passing her light across it. ‘Mud.’
‘Exactly. And it’s on the wheel arch, too, look – streaks of it. The hubcap, there. But Hollis never moved this thing. I know that for a fact. I should’ve spotted it before.’
Charlie knelt down for a closer view. ‘He’s right. It’s caked into the treads, all round the edge. Somebody’s moved it. And not long ago.’ He could make out scuffed impressions in the earth below, dried up and frosted.
‘Well, if they did, they put it right back where they found it,’ Mr Mayhood said.
He went towards the other end. There was a little wheel there underneath the towbar and he walked a path from it downhill, inspecting every inch of ground along the way by lantern light. Charlie followed, seeing for himself. The wheels had left a phantom trail, bending the meadowgrass in three straight lines, going ten feet down the slope, no further. Where no weeds or grass could smother them, impressions of the tyres marked the dirt.
‘What do you reckon, Charlie?’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘You know her best.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me,’ he answered.
Mr Mayhood stared up at the caravan and started walking back. ‘I think you do. But never mind for now.’ As he brushed past, he gripped him by the shoulder for a second, then let go. ‘Come on. You’ll need to help me push it forward. I don’t have your sister’s strength.’
‘She can’t have done this on her own. She isn’t capable.’ There was no doubt in his mind she could’ve towed the caravan ten feet or more, but it was harder to accept the rest. To prise the teeth from a man’s jaw and keep them in a box – that was an act of evil. She’d always been a liar, a thief, a disappointment, but she had no cruelty in her heart, and no amount of rage would bring that sort of violence from her. He was certain of that much. But Mr Mayhood tramped on through the dark without a word.
It took the three of them to shift it from its pitch. Florence heaved the towbar, guided them, while he and Mr Mayhood leaned their backs into the other end. They had to budge the wheels out of their footings first with all their weight, then it began to roll more easily and gained momentum from the incline, until Florence called, ‘Stop there! That’s it!’ She put the handbrake on. For a moment, he and Mr Mayhood were bent double, steadying their breath. He’d felt the mud beneath his boots as they’d been edging forward, a new softness to the earth, and when he fetched his lantern, raising it above the empty space the caravan had left, the light revealed a difference in the dirt. There was a woozy oblong where the soil had been turned over and then patted down. A soil of deeper colour than the land around it – dense like clay. Their bootprints were pressed in it now, clean through its middle.
Mr Mayhood set his lantern at his feet and then sat down. ‘I think we’ve taken this about as far as it can go,’ he said. ‘That’s Hollis under there. I’m not exhuming him. It’s time we called in the police.’
Florence only stared down at the earth. ‘You’re saying that’s a grave?’
‘I’ve seen enough of them to know.’ He rubbed his sweating forehead and exhaled a broken noise. ‘Jesus, Charlie, how could this have happened?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He was a gruff old bastard, Hollis, but he meant no harm. She must’ve lost her bloody mind.’
No answer he could give was going to be enough, but Charlie mustered one more ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, it’s the end for us. You know that, don’t you? I mean, everything is wasted now. It’s done.’ The folds of Mr Mayhood’s sleeve had come unpinned and it was draping like a windless flag about his stump. There was a devastated slump about his body. ‘You’d better go with Florence. Take the wagon over to the station. Don’t ring 999 – they’ll get the wrong idea. I can wait for them all night, if need be.’
‘Do you really think that she could do this?’ Florence said. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. She wouldn’t have it in her heart.’
Slowly, Mr Mayhood lowered his back on to the ground. ‘I never would’ve dreamed it a few hours ago. But that’s a grave. And they’re his teeth back at the house.’ He lay there, gazing up, with one hand on his breast, then shut his eyes. ‘Anyway, what bothers me is people thinking we could do this, Flo. Let’s fix one problem at a time. So hurry up. Take Charlie. Tell them everything.’
‘You can’t stay here all night,’ she said. ‘You’ll freeze. You haven’t eaten.’
‘I’ll be fine. I’ve suffered worse.’
Charlie spoke up then. ‘Or we could leave things as they are. Go home together.’ It was less of an appeal than a prayer. Because the only thing he wanted was to push the caravan on to its pitch again where it belonged and never speak of what they’d found. Maybe they could drive out to the coast and hurl the box of teeth into the sea. Nobody would miss old Hollis. Nobody was looking for him. No one cared that he was gone.
But Mr Mayhood’s eyes flicked open then and he sat up. ‘You’re right – we could do that. It wouldn’t be too hard, at first. Just put this all back where it came from, eh? And off we go into the night.’ A wreath of vapour lifted from his body as he spoke. The tolerance he’d shown before was absent now. His voice had coarsened. He was glancing to the stars, as though to curse them or commune with them. ‘Forget it all. I like the sound of that. I do. But trust me when I say this, Charlie, you can carry on as though it never happened, but it’s not the same as living. And we want a life for you.’
‘You know she’ll hang for it,’ he said. ‘They’ll catch her and they’ll string her up.’
‘If she’s a murderer, they might. But we can’t let her get away with it.’
‘You’re asking me to be a grass and I won’t do it.’ He was picturing the too-bright station with the sullen sergeant at his desk, abandoning his evening paper as they walked in, flashing them a can I help you? face, and the eternity that he would take to write down everything they told him, only to slip off into another room to speak to his superiors and then return with tougher questions, using different names to speak of her: Miss Savigear, this Joyce you’re on about, your older sister, your apprentice, this young woman you’re in charge of, your employee. The police would take the bones of Charlie’s story and discard the rest. They wouldn’t care to listen when he spoke of her kind nature, how she’d screen her eyes at the romantic parts of films to hide her crying. When they asked if they could have a photograph of her, they wouldn’t want the daft one of her riding on the back of a stuffed lion at Maidstone Zoo; they’d want the mugshot from her borstal file in Mr Mayhood’s cabinet.
‘One of us has got to do it,’ Florence said, behind him. ‘I can go alone, if you’d prefer. I’ll tell them. Here –’ She held her lantern out so he would take it. Her expression was a plea. ‘You know what’s right and wrong, Charlie, and this is wrong. You can’t have something like this weigh you down, no matter who’s responsible. And if it wasn’t Joyce, then someone did it, after all. We can’t just shut our eyes and say we didn’t notice.’ When he took the lantern from her, she reached out and squeezed his arm in solidarity. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ It seemed there was no situation dire enough to stop him yearning after her. ‘Try not to catch pneumonia out here. Arthur doesn’t know I know it, but he’s got a flask of brandy in his coat, so you can share it out between you.’ Mr Mayhood gave a hum. ‘You see? I told you. That should keep you going for a while.’ And then she was no longer there for him to put his mind to, trampling down the slope somewhere en route towards the wagon, darkening the distance.