Andrew Taylor - The Scratch

Jack had phoned us out of the blue last week. He had been invalided out of the army, he said, though he was perfectly OK now, really, just a bit jittery sometimes. All he needed was a bit of peace and quiet and time to sort himself out.

So naturally Gerald asked him to stay. Gerald was a decent man. The Forest was full of peace and quiet, or so people think.

On his first morning, Jack slept late. Gerald left for work at about seven thirty, as usual. He was a designer for a company that had a laboratory and offices just outside Monmouth. They made components for electronic instruments. He explained to me precisely what he did on several occasions but I never really understood it.

His departure left me in limbo. Usually at this time of the day I would leave the washing-up and, still in my dressing gown, shuffle into the studio with a cup of coffee and Radio Four. Cannop would often come with me and doze on the sagging, paint-stained sofa.

But I couldn’t just abandon Jack to his own devices, not on his first morning. So I got dressed, too, and made myself look respectable. I pottered about downstairs. I had fed Cannop and put him outside before Gerald left. The cat was now sitting on the kitchen windowsill, looking in. I felt irritated on his behalf as well as my own.

The irritation evaporated when Jack came downstairs just before nine. His hair was unbrushed and he hadn’t shaved. He looked so young and defenceless that it was hard to be angry with him. I poured him coffee and we sat at the kitchen table.

‘How did you sleep?’ I asked.

‘Off and on. You know how it is.’

‘Strange bed? New place?’

‘Yeah. That’s it.’ He glanced over to the window, at Cannop, and looked away. ‘I’ll go for a run after this,’ he said, cradling the coffee mug with his hands. ‘Clear my head. What’s the best way into the Forest?’

‘We’ve got our own gate. It’s just beside the Hovel. Do you want a map?’

‘No thanks – I’d rather find my own way. But I can go anywhere, right? I’m not going to be trespassing?’

‘No. It’s our Forest as much as anyone else’s.’

‘What about you? I don’t want to stop you doing anything.’ He looked awkward, as people often do when they mention my occupation. ‘Your … your art.’

‘I’ll just carry on,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in the studio – it’s at the far end of the house – beyond the sitting room. Come and find me when you get back. Or help yourself if you need anything.’

I went into the studio and became immersed in what I was doing. Every now and then I would surface – once because I glimpsed Jack jogging up the garden path on his way back; and again because Cannop yowled so piteously at the studio window that I had to let him in.

It was nearly lunchtime when I emerged, driven not only by a desire for food but by the niggling sense that I really ought to be a proper hostess for half an hour. Jack was already in the kitchen. He’d found the map of the Forest on the dresser and spread it on the table before him.

He looked up. ‘I saw a boar.’ His face was transfigured, as though he had just seen the Virgin Mary. ‘It just stared at me and then lumbered away. It was like something out of the Middle Ages. Or Game of Thrones .’

‘We’ve got a lot of them.’ I took out a container of soup I had made at the weekend and poured it into a saucepan. ‘Some people say too many. Still, the tourists love them. And some of the locals.’

He said, ‘There must be lots of wildlife.’

There was something in his voice that made me glance at him. ‘Deer, of course,’ I said. ‘Foxes, rabbits, grey squirrels, badgers, weasels and rats and God knows what else. And then there are the birds.’

‘I guess you never know what you might find, what might be hiding out there.’

‘No.’ I turned up the heat and began to slice the bread. ‘Sometimes you see white stags. There’s probably a colony of unicorns somewhere.’

It wasn’t much of a joke, but he laughed. That was the first time I had seen him laugh. It made him look younger.

We had the soup, followed by cheese and fruit. Jack ate well; there was never anything wrong with his appetite.

Afterwards, he leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘Clare?’ he said. ‘I was wondering. You know I didn’t sleep brilliantly?’

‘Yes. Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘You know.’

I smiled. ‘I don’t, actually.’

‘After everything, I kind of got uncomfortable about being in houses. Sleeping, I mean.’

I didn’t know him well enough to try to cajole a confidence from him. ‘So what would you like to do?’

‘Would you mind if I slept outside?’

I stared at him. ‘But, Jack – you’ll freeze. We still get a ground frost sometimes.’

‘I’ve got a good sleeping bag. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d let me sleep in the Hovel.’

‘Doesn’t that count as a house, too?’

‘Not really.’ He glanced out of the window, where Cannop was looking in at us. ‘It’s got a temporary feel to it, hasn’t it? Like a shed or a tent. A tent with a stone chimney – that’s what Gerald called it. A place for squatters.’

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t sleep there. If you’re sure you want to.’

‘Great.’ Jack was almost cheerful. ‘I looked in the windows this morning. And there’s a sort of loft, too, isn’t there, up the stone steps at the side? I’d be fine.’

I didn’t say anything. But he read what was in my mind.

‘It’s not the bedroom you gave me, you know. It’s a great room. It’s just me. Besides, it means that the cat can come in the house again, and I won’t have to feel guilty about that as well.’

‘As well as what?’

He coloured and pushed back his chair. ‘Oh, you know.’ He began to stack the plates and bowls. ‘As well as for putting you out like this.’

The Hovel was a two-storey building with a sagging roof of pantiles. Gerald and I had been full of plans for it when we moved here fifteen years ago. First there was the holiday accommodation idea, and then the studio. Neither of them worked because we lacked the money and the will to convert the Hovel into something habitable, even on a temporary basis, by normal human beings. It was tiny. It didn’t have water, let alone a proper lavatory. It managed to be damp all the year round, whatever the weather. Everything we kept there went rusty or mouldy. We’d often talked about putting in a wood burner, but we never had.

So gradually the Hovel became what it was now: a cross between the garden shed and the place where we put things we didn’t really want but couldn’t bear to throw away. When they were younger, the children used it – first as a playhouse and then, when they were teenagers, for activities they thought we would disapprove of.

After we had cleaned away lunch, Jack and I went to the Hovel together. We kept it locked, because you could never be sure who might wander in from the Forest.

I showed him the ground floor first, a low-ceilinged room with the rusting remains of a cast-iron range in the fireplace. There was a dead blackbird in the grate, a desiccated and dusty collection of feathers and bones. It was gloomy in here because, apart from the open door, the only other light came from a grimy window on the side of the building facing the Forest.

Jack touched the handle of the lawnmower, unused since last autumn. ‘I could mow the lawn, if you like.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘I like gardens but I’m not so keen on gardening.’

‘No problem.’

An external flight of steps led up to the room above. I unlocked the door and went in. Jack stopped on the threshold. For a moment I saw it with his eyes: the clumsy stone walls which had lost most of the plaster that had once covered them; the delicate iron fireplace, a refugee from a smarter house; a small window, grey with dust and cobwebs, looking out on to the garden; the beams and rafters rising to the tiled roof that allowed specks of daylight into the room. There was an old mattress against the wall and a cluster of cigarette ends in the fireplace.