19

2018

ORLA PULLED SAM FROM BENEATH the yew bush, yanked him viciously by the arm. His small, shocked face was white with surprise.

‘Sam, who were you talking to? I heard you, I heard you!’ She gripped his shoulder, too tight.

He shook his head, terrified. No one!

‘I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you, Sam! Who was it? You must tell me, you must –’ Orla fell back on to her heels. Her hands skidded on the wet grass and Bridie protested.

Sam wrapped his arms round himself, silent mouth opened wide with distress. He pointed to his chest, pointed to the ground.

‘Your friends?’

Sam nodded.

‘Who are they, Sam? Tell me, sweetheart.’

But Sam would not.

He was silent for the rest of the day. Orla kept him inside and occupied him with DVDs. She didn’t want him out of her sight, didn’t want him in the garden. It wasn’t safe. Orla thought about his wide-open mouth, the noises coming from his tired little throat. The excitement in his voice as he called out to someone she could not see.

Toby returned and heaved the polythene sacks of compost and slate through the side gate. Orla put Bridie down for a nap. When she came back to the kitchen, Sam was gone, slipped out to join Toby despite his mother’s stern face and instruction to Sit right there and watch the television.

Orla gathered dirty plates from the table and put them in the sink. She leaned against the countertop and watched her son.

Sam ran along the high back wall, doing rings around the oaks. Occasionally, Toby threw a stick at him, or a small pebble covered in earth, and Sam pretended he’d been shot, and fell to the ground dramatically. He knew to stay away from the dug-out pond – Toby had marched him down and explained the severe consequences of crossing the boundary marked out with stakes and string. Sam, unused to such gravity from his friend, nodded solemnly. They even shook on it.

Bridie cried out in her sleep and Orla went to the hallway to listen. Once more, Bridie called out, and then silence. Orla hoped she would sleep longer, they’d had such a broken night.

When she returned to the kitchen, Sam was a third of the way up the monkey puzzle tree that leaned directly over the pond. As he climbed, he looked upwards.

She grabbed hold of the edge of the sink. She had to tell Toby – Toby would get him, he was closer. Orla reached out to the window and found herself fixed to the spot. Her fingers jumped to her chest and felt the lump of the hag stone beneath her shirt; she tugged it out and pressed it to her eye with a hand that trembled.

Sam was halfway up the trunk. When she followed his gaze she saw the other children sitting on the branch above, two sets of short legs swinging. Their bodies were obscured by the tree limbs, but she clearly saw the dangling legs and the white hands on the green leaves. The hem of a dress, cuffs of dark trousers.

Sam, determined, hoisted himself up by a lower branch. The white legs kicked and shuffled over to make room for him on the branch, and Orla caught a glimpse of blond hair. Then Sam was gone, up into the green.

Toby, busy in the flower bed by the east wall, turned just as Sam broke his hold and fell, so beautifully – gracefully – down into the trench of the pond.

In his white T-shirt, he looked like a feather.

‘Toby!’ Her shout left her mouth as a whisper.

But Toby had seen and was already running. He shook off his gloves and they lay like a pair of amputated hands on the grass. He vaulted the string, slid on the loose earth, and fell on his hands and knees in front of Sam, who lay on his back in the damp soil.

Orla slammed the kitchen door behind her and sprinted, hopped the string and slipped down the crumbling side of the pond, into the deep depression, and knelt next to Toby. She followed Sam’s staring eyes upwards but saw only branches – no swinging legs, no little white hands. No one else.

‘Oh my God, oh my God, I didn’t see him start, the tree – how did he get so high –’ Orla spoke too fast, reached out to touch him. Toby put one large hand underneath Sam’s shoulder and the other on his chest and raised her son out of the ground.

‘There we go, that’s better. Right, let’s see what we’ve got.’ Toby touched Sam’s neck and head. He parted Sam’s hair at the back to look for blood. Gently, he took hold of Sam’s face by the temples and turned his head from side to side.

‘All fine upstairs, no worries here. That arm, though.’

Sam’s face shone with sweat. Damp hair clung to his forehead and two livid spots of colour burned high on his cheeks. He held his arm tight to his body, and his little hand hung limp on the end of an arm that rested against his belly at an unnatural angle.

‘Sam, my love, just let me look.’ He moaned and turned away. ‘Just quickly, just let me see, I promise I won’t touch.’ Orla took in the bend in his forearm, the palest green bruising already beginning.

Toby crouched in front of Sam. ‘Well, now, that’s a fine break. I expect that hurts.’ He peered into the child’s face. Sam nodded. ‘Fancy a trip into town? I know someone who can fix that.’

A clean crack in his ulna. Orla thought about the white, wet bone and the screaming nerves and the swollen veins. Toby stayed with them while Sam was X-rayed and medicated and fussed over by nurses and wrapped in plaster, and he bounced Bridie around with an amount of cheer that Orla found both exasperating and heartening.

He looked at her over the top of the baby’s head. ‘You all right?’

‘I feel terrible.’

Toby shrugged and made a face at the baby. ‘Kids break things, means he was having a good time.’

‘It shouldn’t have happened.’ Orla felt sick.

‘But it did happen, and it’s all right. No sense wishing it different. He’s a boy, it’ll happen again.’

‘He doesn’t usually do things like that. He’s not a climber, he doesn’t like being dirty.’

‘It’s a big garden, natural for kids to explore.’

‘He likes to be able to see me. He used to like it, I mean.’

‘Growing up, though, isn’t he. He’ll be wanting to go off, see things for himself. He’s not a baby, Mrs McGrath, not like this one here.’ He blew a fat raspberry into the ambrosia folds of Bridie’s neck.

The nurse brought Sam into the room, wielding his plaster arm and grinning. Orla had explained about his speech and they’d been so kind.

‘Right, here we are! Mrs McGrath, you can pick up a prescription for paracetamol at the dispensary, and you’ll need to make an appointment for Sam with the GP in about a week.’

‘Okay, okay, thank you.’ Sam climbed into Orla’s lap and she pulled him close. His broken arm felt weighty, clumsy, where it hung against her thigh. ‘Can we go?’

‘Absolutely, you’re all set. Take him into the GP if you notice any redness or swelling above the cast or in the hand, or if the pain is keeping him awake. You should only need paracetamol for the next couple of days. And it goes without saying that you don’t want to get the cast wet – so no baths, only showers, and I’ve found a couple of layers of bin bags usually does the trick.’ She smiled at Sam, who waved with his other hand.

‘Thank you, thank you so much.’

Toby stood and swung Bridie on to his hip. ‘Now then, about time we were getting home. What do you reckon?’

He drove them home. Sam fell asleep in the back, exhausted by the excitement and the attention, and Toby made occasional reference to various limbs he’d injured as a child. Orla knew he was trying to make her feel better, but she didn’t. Sam had been lured up there, enticed by something she could neither accept nor rationalise.

Toby parked in front of the house and switched off the engine.

Orla shifted Bridie on her lap, warm and heavy as a dense rye loaf, and felt mildly guilty that the car seat was up in Bristol with Nick. ‘Thank you, Toby – I can’t tell you how much this means to me. You were so great today, I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been on my own.’

Toby swung his legs out and stretched his hands above his head. ‘I’m glad I was here – would have been shit trying to do that on your own. And you know I love the kids.’ He nodded at Sam, who had woken up and was trying to get out of his seat-belt with only one hand. Toby opened the door and reached in to help him.

‘Come in, have dinner with us.’ Orla made the offer lightly, knowing she was approaching Toby’s invisible line.

‘That’s really nice of you, Mrs McGrath, but I can’t.’

‘Please, Toby, I’d love it if you did. I want to say thank you. We’ll make pizzas, it’ll be great.’

Sam bounced on his toes and pulled at Toby’s hand to steer him towards the house.

‘I can’t, I really can’t. It’s so nice of you. I’m sorry.’ He dug his hands into the pockets of his fleece.

‘Toby – seriously. What’s wrong? You’ve never come in, not even on the shittiest days in the winter for a cup of tea. Do you not feel comfortable? Have we made you feel like we don’t want you?’ Orla’s throat hurt.

‘No, no! It’s not that – you’ve been great. You and Nick – you don’t know how much I appreciate you giving me this job. I love coming here –’

Sam looked from adult to adult, face twisted in distress.

‘Then what is it?’

Toby held his car keys so tight that Orla saw the flesh of his hand whiten and then turn livid where the metal dug in. ‘It’s my nan, she made me promise. When I took the job, she made me promise I wouldn’t go inside. She’s afraid – she didn’t even want me up here, but honestly we need the money and I don’t see what the problem is.’

Orla was surprised; it seemed a disproportionate fear. ‘Your grandmother said that?’

Toby looked down at the sparse, dirty gravel. ‘She hates The Reeve, Mrs McGrath. Most people in the village do. They think there’s something bad up here. Water spirits, old gods, all that stuff. My nan said the house attracts all of it, that it’s wrong. So when I said I’d take on the work up here – she went spare. Dad had to convince her to let me, and she made me promise not to go in.’

‘And do you believe her?’

‘No. No, and neither does my dad. But my grandma, she’s always believed in that kind of thing – she reads Tarot in the village sometimes, there’s a horseshoe over every door in our house. Loads of people here are like that, it’s not anything unusual. Dad says she always had an open mind, and too much got in.’

‘I’m so sorry, Toby. You don’t have to come up here, you know, if it’s a problem.’ Orla worried that the distress at being abandoned by Toby, too, was clear in her voice.

Toby smiled and shook his head. ‘Don’t. I like coming. I’ll just not come in, if that’s all right. It makes my nan feel better.’

‘That’s kind of you.’

‘You know what I think? It’s a load of shit. Honestly, Mrs McGrath, it’s fine. Not everyone thinks like my nan. You can’t think like that, you live here.’

‘I’ll take her.’ Deftly, Nick transferred Bridie from her high chair in the kitchen to the floor in the sitting room, where she immediately took off towards the hallway. She’d become fascinated by the stairs, despite her inability to navigate them successfully, and twice Orla had rescued her from where she’d got herself stuck, halfway up and in tears.

Exasperated, Nick went to retrieve her. He’d been short ever since he came home after Sam’s accident. He had driven from Bristol that night and the recriminations started the minute he slammed his car keys on to the kitchen table.

‘For fuck’s sake, Orla, how could you let this happen?’

‘Nick, can you just be reasonable about this? It was an accident – kids do have them, you know. Toby says he broke loads of stuff when he was little, just running around –’

‘I don’t give a fuck what Toby says.’

‘Jesus, Nick! I said I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t need my forgiveness, Orla, surely.’ Nick laughed, a cruel little sound. ‘Not when you’ve already forgiven yourself.’

‘I don’t understand why you’re being so nasty about this – it was an accident.’ She poured another measure of gin into a glass that was already clouded with fingerprints.

‘That’s probably enough, don’t you think?’

‘What?’

Nick picked up the gin bottle and shook it so that the liquid in the bottom sloshed against the sides. A burning, delicious reproach. ‘Maybe if you laid off the booze a bit, you’d actually notice when your own children were in danger.’

‘Oh, come on. I don’t drink that much, especially not when I’m here on my own with them. Nick, honestly, that’s a cheap shot.’

‘Is it? You get through it pretty fucking quick. I’m always the one who puts the bins out on Monday morning – that recycling fills up fast.’

‘Fuck off, Nick. You’re being awful – I was scared too, you know. I felt so bad, and you’re just making it worse.’

‘He could have been seriously hurt, much worse than a broken arm.’

‘I know, I know that. You weren’t here, you don’t know what it was like – I had an eye on him and then Bridie was crying and when I came back he was halfway up the bloody tree and I was so far from him, all the way up here – it was terrifying.’ Her voice caught, and for a moment Nick looked chastened. ‘He was following someone, I think, I can’t be sure, it was so far –’

‘Following who?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know who it was.’

‘Well, where are they now?’

Orla put her hands to her mouth. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I told you, Orla, you need to stop it with the drinking, especially in the day, when I’m not here. How can I trust you with them? And you took Bridie in that shitty Land Rover without a car seat?’

‘I didn’t have much choice, did I? Not when you leave me here without a car every week?’

Nick put the bottle down on the table and picked up the plate of congealing pasta that Orla had put aside for him. ‘Lucky Toby was there.’

‘Oh, so now you like Toby again?’

‘Don’t be obtuse, Orla.’

‘Well, thanks a lot.’

‘You know what I mean – you’ve been really weird lately. Distracted, always in a bad mood. I know you’re frustrated because you can’t paint’ – Orla noted the point he scored with that little needle – ‘but you need to pay more attention. It’s your only job, and you’re fucking it up. Have you been sleeping?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You said on the phone the other day, to Helen, that you’re not sleeping properly.’

Had she said that? She didn’t remember.

‘Do you know how hard it is to watch both of them in a house this fucking big? Especially now Bridie’s almost walking? It’s impossible. You’d know that if you were here.’

‘Orla, bloody hell. Is that necessary?’

‘You don’t know what it’s like. Seriously, Nick, I was gone for maybe thirty seconds. One minute Sam was just running around the garden and the next thing I knew he was up the tree. You know how quick he is.’

‘Even so.’ Nick pursed his mouth, prim.

‘What do you mean, even so? It’s not my fault. It’s this house – I can’t bear it. We’re not the same since we came here – none of us are.’

‘So, what? You want to move?’

Orla sat down at the kitchen table and spread her fingers on her knees. ‘Yes. You know I do. I want to leave. Don’t you? It’s been harder than you thought, all the commuting. Hasn’t it? You’re always complaining about it.’

‘It’s not like I get this brilliant welcome when I come back. The house doesn’t exactly feel friendly.’

‘That’s what I’m saying, Nick. To me, the house feels like that all the time. I can’t bear it, I can’t bear to be here –’

Nick spoke over her, quickly. ‘I’m really tired of listening to you find fault, Orla. And of course I’ve noticed you haven’t been yourself – you’ve been annoyed, distracted, short with the kids. Asleep half the bloody time and drunk the other half.’

She began to cry; Nick seemed oddly unmoved by her tears, usually a sure-fire method for reconciliation. ‘Nick, for God’s sake, just be a bit kind.’

‘We’re not moving, Orla. I put everything we have into this house. The kids love it, my parents love it. And Sam is starting to talk, isn’t he? That’s what you said.’

‘It was a few words, it’s hardly definitive.’

‘More than he’s said in a long time. That was the whole reason we moved here, wasn’t it? For that? And now you’re saying, what – that it doesn’t matter?’

‘He wasn’t even talking to me, he was just shouting –’

‘Then who was he talking to?’

Orla wiped her face with her fingers and put her hands in front of her eyes. ‘Himself? I don’t know, I don’t know, Nick – and you remember the singing, the tape? I couldn’t even find a tape, so I don’t even know what I heard. I can’t figure it out, he won’t say a single word to me, but I hear him, I hear him talking when I’m not there and it makes me feel like I’m failing. I can’t keep him safe. I can’t keep us safe.’ She hated to admit that maybe he was right about Sam – maybe she hadn’t been paying attention. Or at least, she hadn’t been paying attention to the right things. She’d been so fixated on the little legs she thought she’d seen swinging from the tree branch – there one moment and gone as soon as she dropped the hag stone – that she knew in her darkest heart that she hadn’t been watching her son as closely as she ought.

That night, when she reached for her husband in the forgiving dark, he turned away. It was always how they’d found their way back to one another, no matter how vicious the fight, and when he retrieved her fingers with an unspoken regret and replaced her hand on the pillow, Orla understood that, for now, she was being put aside: the path to Nick was closed. She wondered what else the house was going to take.