Andrew Taylor - The Scratch

‘I saw Jenny and Chris at the station,’ Gerald said, opening the cupboard door. ‘Off to Italy next week.’ He was talking more loudly than usual, as he did when he felt awkward. ‘They’ve a house just outside Florence. Didn’t your parents have a place there once, Jack? In Italy, I mean.’

He glanced over his shoulder. ‘No. Portugal.’

‘Lovely when you’re there,’ Gerald said. ‘But it can’t be easy to keep it going when you’re not. I mean, what if the pipes burst or something?’

I put the teapot on the table. Gerald took out a packet of biscuits left over from Christmas and stared at it. I pushed him out of the way and took out the biscuit tin and a plate of flapjacks.

‘And then there’s security,’ Gerald said. ‘Always a problem with second homes.’

‘Tea’s up,’ I said, as no one else seemed to have noticed.

Jack turned. For the first time he looked directly at me. ‘What’s that, Clare? The shed or whatever it is.’

‘We call it the Hovel,’ I said. ‘Or rather, the children did when they were little and the name stuck.’

‘Quaint, isn’t it?’ Gerald said, drawing out a chair. ‘It’s a squatter’s cottage, probably.’

‘Squatters? Here in the country?’

‘Oh yes. The Forest was Crown land, you see, and the boundaries have always been fluid. In the old days, they say, people had a right to put up a house on a bit of waste ground as long as they could do it between dawn and dusk.’

‘Like putting up a tent?’

‘Yes. A tent with a stone chimney. Once you had your chimney you could build the rest at your leisure. It was the chimney that counted.’

‘So no one lives there?’

‘Not for years and years. It was a complete ruin when we moved here. It’s more or less weather-tight now, and we’ve run a power line to it. Clare was going to use it as a studio, but it’s too damp and cold for that.’

‘The children and their friends used to camp there,’ I said. ‘We did have wild thoughts of turning it into a holiday home and letting it out. But we decided not to in the end.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘You wouldn’t want to have strangers there.’

The cat flap in the back door made its slip-slap sound. Jack glanced in the direction of the noise.

‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’

‘His name’s Cannop,’ Gerald said, still talking more loudly than usual. ‘Thinks he owns the place. Just push him out of the way if he’s sitting on your chair. He’s used to it.’

Cannop was walking towards me but he stopped when he caught sight of Jack, who it happened was sitting in the Windsor chair with the frayed velvet cushion that Cannop liked to use himself when he had any choice in the matter.

Jack touched his lips with his tongue. ‘I don’t like cats much. Sorry.’

Gerald lumbered to his feet. ‘I’ll put him out for a bit,’ he said, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Do him good, eh? Thinks he owns the place.’

He scooped up the cat, who gave a yowl of protest, and pushed him headfirst through the cat flap. Cannop’s legs scrabbled for purchase but he was no match for Gerald’s superior force. When the cat was outside, Gerald locked the cat flap.

‘Sorry,’ Jack said again. ‘It’s just one of those things. I’ve never liked them.’

‘That’s OK,’ I said, feeling that, in some obscure way, I had failed in my duty as a host. ‘We’ll keep him out of your way while you’re here.’

As I said the words I wondered how easy that would be to achieve. It depended on Cannop. Like most cats, he generally did more or less what he wanted in the long run.

When we had finished the tea, I took Jack upstairs to show him his room. It was over the kitchen, long and thin, with a sloping ceiling and two windows looking out over the Forest.

‘I’m afraid you can only stand up in part of it,’ I said. ‘It used to be our daughter’s when she was small.’

Jack propped his enormous backpack against the bed. ‘My cousin,’ he said. ‘We’ve never met, have we?’

‘I expect you’ll meet her one of these days – Annie’s at university now.’

‘And you and Gerald have a son, too?’

‘Tom. He’s living in Birmingham, working in a café.’

Jack stooped to peer out of the nearest window. ‘How big is it?’

‘What?’

‘The Forest.’

‘Over twenty-five thousand acres, they say, plus all the outlying parts.’

‘Can people go there?’

‘You can go anywhere you like, more or less. It’s publicly owned. Sometimes you can walk for miles without meeting a soul.’

‘I’d like that,’ Jack said.

He went to bed early that night. To be honest, it was a relief. He hadn’t spoken much during supper and Gerald and I had struggled to keep a conversation going.

We cleared up in the kitchen. The floorboards overhead creaked as Jack moved to and fro in his room. Afterwards we went into the sitting room and turned on the television.

‘It’s going to be hard work if he’s like this all the time,’ I said.

‘It’s not his fault.’

‘I know. But what’s he going to do all day?’

Gerald shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy him.’

‘It’s easy for you to say,’ I said. ‘But you’ll be at the office five days a week.’

‘Look, Clare, we can’t just ignore him. He hasn’t got anyone else.’

‘I know. I’m not saying we should turn him out.’

‘I’d have thought you’d quite like the company. You said the other day how empty the house felt now the kids are hardly ever here.’

Gerald had an annoying habit of turning something I had said against me in argument. I said, ‘Yes, but it also means I now have more time to concentrate on work.’

We watched the talking heads on the television for a moment or two.

‘Nothing wrong with his appetite, anyway,’ Gerald said. He stretched out his hand and wrapped it round my forearm. ‘He just needs peace and quiet. Regular meals. Not too many people. We can give him all that.’

I patted his hand, accepting the olive branch.

‘Did he say anything about what happened? On the way from the station.’

‘He didn’t say much at all. I did most of the talking.’

‘He looks all right.’

‘Yes, but he wasn’t actually wounded. Not physically. It’s post-traumatic stress disorder. Or is it syndrome?’

‘What’s he going to do with his life now he’s out of the army? Does he know?’

‘He’s considering his options. That’s what he said in the car.’

‘I know it’s selfish, but I just wish …’ I broke off.

‘Wish what?’

I looked at the brightly coloured figures on the screen in front of us. ‘I wish he could consider them somewhere else. With someone else.’

That was the problem. Jack had no one except us.

Gerald had been his mother’s brother. She had married an engineer whose work took him to the Middle East and Central Asia. Jack had either lived with them or boarded at an international school in Geneva. Sue and Gerald were perfectly friendly as siblings go but she was about six years older than he was and they had never been close. She hadn’t even come to our wedding.

We exchanged cards and presents on Christmases and birthdays. There were occasional phone calls, though these had dwindled in frequency over the years. Gerald had stayed with them once, quite early on in our marriage, when he had been in Dubai for work. That’s when he had met Jack for the first and only time and seen him playing with Lego.

Sue was long dead, killed in a car crash at a busy intersection in Ankara when Jack was away at school. His father had died of cancer last year.