'Well, there's no need for you to be.' Janie's mouth tightened and she clenched her fists. 'They're just yobbos, as bad as those rioters in London. Anyway, why are they going to beat you up?'
'They say—I'm an English—bastard,' Gavin was beginning to sob now.
'Well, I think they're Welsh . . . ' She stopped herself in time. 'I see, they're copying these Welsh nationalists they've seen on telly. Anything that's English can't be any good. Spray the English road signs with aerosol paint. Set fire to the English holiday cottages. Drive the English back over the border. Good God, it's like the old border skirmishes of years ago. I suppose this boy Kevin Arnold is English?'
'Yes.' Gavin buried his face against his mother. 'They say that we've no right to be living at Hodre and they'll beat me up just to show you what'll happen to you if you don't pack up and leave'.
'Well, we're not standing for that sort of behaviour either at school or anywhere else,' Janie snapped. 'In fact, I expect your Dad will go and see Mr Hughes on Monday and get this nonsense sorted out.'
'No! No, Mum, please don't let Dad go and cause trouble because the Wilsons will kill me!'
Janie sighed. Terrorism at juvenile level, even out here in the sticks. Gavin was terrified; the Wilson boys obviously held the school in a grip of fear. It was all Peter's fault for coming out here in the first place. They never had any of this kind of trouble at Perrycroft.
Slowly she helped Gavin undress, pulled on his pyjamas the way she used to do when he was small, and felt the way he trembled in every limb. He didn't resist, showed none of the embarrassment that a nine-year-old might display in such circumstances. Because he was very, very frightened.
As Janie descended the steep narrow staircase she could hear the tap-tapping of Peter's typewriter from the front room, which he was using as a study. And in that moment she hated him for what he was doing to them. Oh why couldn't they have stayed back home in the nice friendly comfortable city? Why did he have to write a book and change their whole lifestyle? Why couldn't he have stayed on in a regular nine-to-five job that didn't have any problems?
She knew the answers to those questions all right. Because Peter didn't want to conform to the System. Because he wanted more money. And more. Because he didn't give a damn for anybody now, neither herself nor Gavin.
But somebody was going to have to sort these Wilsons out. If necessary she would do it herself.
A scratching, scurrying noise from the ceiling above her interrupted her thoughts. Mice. The skin on the back of her neck pimpled and her mouth went dry. For one fleeting second she almost ran towards the front door, to get away from this vermin-infested hovel. But she didn't, because her terror of the unknown was greater than that of rats and mice.
And there was something insidious out there in the blackness of a mountain night. She could sense its presence.
The Foggs always had a lie-in on Saturday mornings. Not as long as on Sundays because there were weekend chores that had to be done; like shopping, washing the car, mowing the lawns in the summer.
Janie groaned to herself as she awoke and saw the dark grey of a winter's morning filtering into the bedroom through the frayed curtains. Everything came back to her in one rush as though determined to depress her for the day. The Wilsons, those rodents, the lack of mod-cons and all the extra work it entailed—like carrying in buckets of coal, which left a trail of mud and coaldust across the kitchen floor, and trying to light a stubborn old Rayburn that smoked back so that she needed a bath afterwards. But Gavin was her main worry. She'd told Peter in bed last night, half-expecting him to fly into one of his rages and threaten to kill the Wilson boys with his bare hands. Instead he had said, 'Decidedly awkward. We'll have to play it very, very carefully.' What was he going to do, and what would happen to Gavin on Monday?
Fully awake now, she slid out of bed and padded barefooted across the rough floorboards. A feeling of uneasiness had her hurrying across the tiny landing. When she had looked in on Gavin last night he had been lying still with closed eyes, but she had known that he wasn't asleep. He'd probably worried himself sick all night.
Janie opened the door of the small bedroom and peered inside. It was dark, because the curtains weren't so rotten and they effectively shut out the cold inhospitable November daybreak. She stood there in the doorway, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Oh God, no! Panic flared inside her, making her switch on the light and scrabble with trembling fingers at the heap of discarded blankets at the end of the bed, praying that somehow she would find Gavin curled up asleep beneath them. But her prayer went unanswered. There was no sign of the boy; Gavin was gone.
'What the hell's going on?' Her shout had brought Peter on the run, trying to blink the sleep out of his bleary eyes, angry at being awakened so abruptly.
'It's Gavin. He's gone!' Janie sensed her own helplessness, her futility. This time she would not be able to stop the panic, the fear of this past week that had built up inside her and was threatening to explode at any second in the only possible way. 'For God's sake, Peter, do something. Find Him!'
'Pull yourself together.' He grasped her firmly by the arm, wondering if he ought to slap her across the face now or wait until she became hysterical. He waited. 'The boy's not a prisoner in his bedroom. He doesn't have to wait for us to get up first.' Peter noted the cast-off pyjamas, the bedside chair where his son's clothes should have been draped but weren't. Damn it, there was nothing to worry about. Yet. 'I'll take a look downstairs.'
Peter was aware of Janie following him, and half-expected her to hold on to his pyjama jacket. She never used to get emotional this way, just a bit fraught sometimes during her periods. Now she was frantic.
He checked the front rooms, then went back to the kitchen. All empty. They turned, faced each other, and Janie saw her own fear momentarily reflected in her husband's eyes. I knew there was something out there last night and now they've got my baby!
'He might have gone outside. Probably has.' Peter knew that his voice had trembled, but hoped Janie hadn't noticed it. Damn it, she was unnerving him.
'Let's go and look for him then.' She was already on her way to the back door.
'Hold it.' He caught her by the arm, pulled her back. 'Let's get dressed first. We can't go wandering about on a cold damp November morning in our nightclothes.'
I don't care. I don't care if I bloody well catch pneumonia, so long as I find my baby! She stood there numbed, unable to resist as Peter began pulling her towards the foot of the stairs. It was like a slow-motion dream; somehow, after what seemed an eternity, she found herself dressed in her denim suit, and almost stopped to put make-up on. She followed her husband back downstairs and out into what would have been an olde-worlde garden had it been cultivated. Instead it was just a mass of dying bracken and foxgloves, wet with the dew that soaked their trousers long before they reached the crumbling stone steps that led up to the granary. Janie noted details that had escaped her ah" week: the missing slates on the roof, the way the timbers bowed because they were riddled with woodworm and might snap at any time. Everything was either dead or dying at Hodre.
She opened her mouth to call Gavin, but no sound came. She mentally shied away as Peter pushed open the creaking heavy door and looked inside. He was afraid, too, of what he might see in there, but he had to look.
'He's not in here.' Peter turned back, letting the door swing closed. In the early morning light his unshaven features looked strained and grey. 'He must've gone up the fields.'
'Oh no, not up there.' That wood, so dark and forbidding, hiding whatever it was she had sensed this past week. 'He'd never go into the forest.' But her expression said that he just might.
'We'd better take a look.' Peter came back down the steps and closed his hand over hers. Suddenly even he needed Janie's support.
The big wood was only just visible, a dark mass that showed through the thinning horizon mist like a slumbering monster with a spiked back. A faint golden glow on the dying bracken showed them that the sun was already up, trying its hardest to break through. As it melted the grey swirling vapour Janie became afraid of what they might see. She had to force herself to look. Some sheep. That rabbit again, or was it a hare, up by the top hedge. Funny how you noted these things in a crisis when you were all churned up inside, a kind of inbuilt therapy.
Gavin wasn't on the fields. In which case he must be in the forest. It might stretch for miles, row upon row of artificially planted conifers that somehow destroyed the natural magnificence of the panoramic landscape. Hiding—things.
'He wouldn't go far into the wood.' Peter hoped he would convince Janie, because he didn't convince himself. 'When we get up there maybe we can shout for him.'
When we get up there; Janie was hanging on to Peter, her calf muscles beginning to ache after the first hundred yards. She thought she might be sick or else burst into tears. Maybe both, only right now it was taking her all her time to get her breath.
Sheep eyed them curiously, bunched together and moved away as though they hadn't seen humans before. A ewe was limping as though it had a damaged foot and Janie found herself feeling sorry for it.
Then they were close to the wood, could almost feel its hostility as they stood in the shadow of the nearest trees, which blotted out the hazy rising sun. Silence except for the steady drip of moisture like some form of Chinese water-torture sent to plague them. Somewhere in the dense coniferous greenery a magpie chattered harshly like distant guerilla machine-gun fire. A friendless landscape.
'Ga—vin!' Peter shouted, feeling almost foolish at the feeble noise which his normally powerful lungs made. It was the fog, or low cloud, or whatever it was, of course, stifling his shout, not even allowing it to echo.
They just stood there, two people not daring to look at each other because they did not wish to read the expression of fear in their partner's face.
'He's got to be around here somewhere,' Peter muttered. He thought again about going into the wood. No, the boy wouldn't go in there, he had no reason to. But young boys didn't need reasons.
'Listen!' Janie gripped his arm until her fingernails dug deep like the talons of a bird of prey.
They both listened. The magpie was chattering again as if determined that these trespassers in a corvine domain should not hear whatever it was. A movement somewhere in the thicket as though some heavy creature had trodden on a dead branch and snapped it.
And inside, Janie was wanting to run, to dash headlong back down that steep field, not caring if she slipped and fell. Her terrors of the previous night came back like a damp icy cloud driven by a shrill Arctic wind, chilling her right through. There was something in there; this time there really was!
A monster was forcing its way through a pile of dead bracken, a black-faced creature with horns and eyes that regarded the two watchers intently and had them cowering back; then it lumbered out into the open, standing staring at them with a bewildered expression on its face.
'It's—it's, a—sheep' Janie's voice was weak with relief.
'A ram to be precise.' Peter tried to make it sound casual. 'Nothing to worry about.'
'But where's Gavin?'
It all came back to stark reality, the hopelessness and the panic which was starting to return.
'He must be . . .'