THE RAIN WAS SHEETING down so hard between the oaks that Amos heard Seppe bashing away at the hut before he saw him. The blessed lad was going to break his neck up there in this downpour. Even the ewes had had the sense to get out of it; they were all bunched together in the beeches up near Drybrook when he’d left them today. He’d need to start thinking about winter shelters for them if it carried on like this, but they were hardy enough, just needed persuading to move to the old-growth now the weather had turned.
‘Watchoo up to, boy?’
Seppe replied through a mouthful of nails, the rain drumming at his words.
‘Getting the roof on. Frank told us to stop felling because of this rain. This is a good chance for me before the light fades completely today.’
The lad was getting there all right with this hut of his; quite the handy carpenter, he was. But that centre purlin wasn’t going on right, you could see that even from here, and he’d risk the whole lot toppling. And he was right about the light; the days were drawing faster than ever now with all this rain making it so gloomy.
‘Hang on there a minute.’
Amos fetched the ladder from the shed and climbed up alongside Seppe.
‘I’ve tried everything. This one won’t line up properly.’ Seppe bashed his fist on the stubborn cross-beam and it bounced slightly.
Not like the lad to be worked up like that. Amos went down a step on the ladder and squinted along the length of the roof.
‘There’s your problem: look here.’ Halfway along the roofline one of the uprights jutted out, getting in the way of the ash beam. ‘We can sort that out easy enough. You got the plane handy? Give it here a minute.’
It had been a while since Amos had used a plane, but it wasn’t something you forgot. The boy was hunched up next to him like his Billy used to be and Amos swallowed hard. Must be the rain, getting in his throat.
Amos lined up the plane with the wood and pushed down.
‘There.’ Nothing like a job done well, even in this weather.
Weather. That was a point.
‘Where’s Connie with our Joe, if you’re rained off?’
Seppe was halfway back up the roof. Amos had to strain for the answer over the blessed rain. ‘They left before me, before Frank came past.’
‘Why aren’t they home, then?’
Seppe closed right in, like he was a pheasant who knew the goshawk had spotted him. ‘I think – sometimes she would wish for a different home. A different life.’
That was the problem! The boy had forgotten the nails; small wonder the damn thing wasn’t staying put. Amos filled his palm with nails from the jam jar and Seppe lined one up. Amos had wondered, he had, about Connie and Seppe. Odd pair, to his mind, but there was no knowing what went on beneath the surface.
‘Well, she’s here, isn’t she? And our Joe, too. Doesn’t matter what you think she thinks. Proof of the pudding and all that.’
Seppe’s next sentence was a mumble
‘I’m not sure how much longer for.’
‘She wants to leave here? That’s what she said?’ Seppe nodded and knocked a nail into the dead centre of the wood, steady as you like.
‘But what about the baby?’ Amos gripped the roof ledge extra tight.
‘Him as well, I suppose.’
‘And you think she means it?’ The boy moved the next nail, positioned it just so. As he lifted his hammer, he gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders.
The rain drove on down into the earth, the leaves drove off the oaks and the nails drove down into the wood. This little hut might turn into something after all. A home for Seppe, away from that camp he was always so keen to avoid.
The sky was filling in behind the rain, darkness drawing down on them. The weight of it all pulled Amos down. Billy, out there underneath a different sky. If he was still out there at all. But he couldn’t – wouldn’t – think of a landscape that didn’t hold his Billy.
Amos swallowed out the thought.
‘My son – Billy.’ The words were sharp as splinters but they sounded all feeble against the caw of the jackdaw, calling them home now the night was cloaking in. ‘Chance is he might be a prisoner of war now too, like. It’s a slim chance all right, but it’s all I’ve got. Either that or he’s …’ He couldn’t finish it.
Seppe paused, nail halfway down. He turned on his ladder and nodded, almost formally, then moved back to the nail. Tap tap tap. The lad was concentrating so hard you could taste it. Amos’s mouth was metal, sour.
Seppe picked up the next nail, his thumb to the wood again.
Amos looked at it.
‘I thought I’d send him a parcel. In case he do still be alive. Through the Red Cross, like. Turns out you can send all manner of things; food and cards and whatnot. Christmas is coming up and it’s what our May would have done. I don’t know which camp he might be in, but them officials, they’ll know that, won’t ’em?’
Seppe looked at Amos, didn’t say a word. Amos couldn’t read that expression. It wasn’t mocking, and it wasn’t pity, but it was sad all right.
After a moment, Seppe nodded.
‘Many of my campmates have received these parcels. But … You know which country he was sent to?’
‘The last letter I got, he was in that Germany from what I could make out.’ This was what pinched at Amos as he pushed through the hawthorn and the gorse of a morning. If you didn’t know the smell of a place, the angle of the light on the ground, the camber beneath your feet, how could you ever say you understood? Him and his Billy had never been further apart.
‘And you – sorry, but I must ask this to understand – you have heard no news. Nothing from the British government?’
‘Not a sausage. But that’s a good sign, son, right?’ He scanned Seppe’s face, anxious. Those within war bore it differently, could understand things the likes of him never would.
Seppe climbed down his ladder, waited at the bottom for Amos. ‘I am very sorry, Amos. I think without news of where he is, even Red Cross will not be able to deliver this parcel.’ His face had lost its rage now, was soft with concern. Amos looked away.
‘You’re right.’ Of course the lad was right. He’d been a fool.
‘I’m sorry.’
All he’d wanted to do was get a piece of the forest to his Billy. If his Billy – but Amos shut it down and his throat tightened. He nodded, and made his way indoors.