Ross Raisin - Gods Own Country

They’re not going to fill you up, course, I said. Just tickle your belly some.

We finished our crop and went collecting some more from the nettle bushes growing round the edges of the clearing. She studied me, the first few pickings, so as to learn how to get them without being stung.

Sam, where did you go to school?

I plucked a flower and moved over to a new bush.

In town.

You didn’t like it either, did you?

School wasn’t so bad — it was the bastards in it I wasn’t so partial on.

She didn’t say anything else and I thought she’d let it by. She went on picking flowers in quiet as I trod off a distance, going behind another tree stump, but after a while she followed toward me, searching the nettle growths other side the stump.

Did you have a girlfriend at school? she said then.

I glegged over the stump top at her, lit up by a shaft of sunlight. She was concentrated on the nettles, waiting for what I’d say.

Yes.

I sucked a flower, the sweet tingle of nectar disappearing on my tongue. Someplace in the wood a bummelkite was buzzing away, searching out his own flowers to sup a drink from.

They weren’t all bastards, then, she said.

No, we got on fine.

She laughed. Well, that’s lucky, her being your girlfriend and everything. What was her name?

Katie Carmichael.

The drone of the bummelkite filled my brain — it sounded like it was inside my head, no matter it was really a way off in the distance, head jimmied up a flower bell, like some floppy white bonnet. That and his stripy black-yellow jumper, he was fetched up proper rambler. Katie Carmichael. I’d not spoke them words out loud for a fair time. I focused myself on the sound of the bee, blanking out all else, imagining him going from flower to flower, well, here’s a fine day for it, summer’s here, for sure, pity someone’s had at all the nettle flowers already.

Sorry, she said. You don’t mind me asking, do you? I was just interested.

No. Fine. It’s been three years anyhow.

She was looking at me over the stump. Is that when you left, school?

Yes. I lobbed an empty flower case on to the ground, avoiding her eyes. The bee had drufted further away, I strained for a listen of him, but he’d gone too far off.

We used to wag school together, I said.

Did you ever get caught?

Sometimes. We’d get put on detention.

The shaft of sunlight switched off like a light bulb as a hump of cloud passed over, slowly drifting through the clear sky as I watched it through the window, lost with myself, until Wetherill’s shout jarped my attention. Marsdyke! Stop time-wasting. You have an essay to write, I don’t need to remind you. I took up my pen and looked at the sheet in front of me — The Value of Education. All I’d wrote was — Education…and a picture of an alien with its nose drawn out of the E. I sneaked a glance sideways to look what him next me had wrote. Almost a page, was what, though I couldn’t read it — they didn’t let you sit too close in detention, to stop you playing up. I wasn’t heart-sluffened about that, mind, owing as it was an arsehole called James Trott sat next me, who was on detention for writing — Conway’s a spastic — on to his desk, and spelling spastic wrong.

Where to now?

She was back at the entrance of the clearing.

Come on, I said, walking past her toward the bags. You’re still hungry, are you?

Starved.

Come on, then.

We collected up the bags and returned on to the moorland, adjusting our eyes as we stepped outdoors of the wood into the bright. I was heading us east, toward the dull blue frame on the horizon, because that direction, about a mile away at the end this stretch of moor, was Garside — a village big enough there was a pub, and shops, and articles to steal. I didn’t tell her my plans yet. I was waiting until it was time, and she wasn’t in such a quiet study. She’d lipped up, thinking on what I’d told her. Imagining me and Katie Carmichael sneaking behind the back the school, kissing and holding hands and giggling at bollocks. Might’ve been she thought me and Katie Carmichael were still warm on each other, even after so long. She should’ve tried the picture I was thinking — of Katie Carmichael pinned to the desk and the flesh bruising up her arm. That’d cure her.

There was a bridleway we came to, led straight across the moor toward Garside. I wasn’t right sure of my plans yet, but I knew it’d need us both, one of us would likely have to be the distraction, knocking over a pile of tins or something similar. Oh dear, sorry about that, and the shopkeeper coming over to help, all smiles, don’t worry, love, it’s no problem just leave it to me — and all the while I’m stuffing my pockets with punnets of sarnies. She was tailing behind a yard or two. She hadn’t so much dander as yesterday, she was hungry, was why.

We’re going to steal us some lunch again, I said, over my shoulder.

Oh. Is that a good idea?

You want to eat, don’t you?

Well, yeah, of course, just…I’ve got some money, you know.

She’d not told me that. She’d not been so qualmish about stealing the day previous, neither. I thought for a moment whether we should use the money, to buy our lunch, but then I realised we’d be best saving it for the time. We’d have more need of it later.

We won’t get caught, I told her. You don’t need to spend your money. Come on.

As we neared the end the moor, a great, flat plain came into sight down below. Garside was settled in the middle, and the land all round it was coloured bright yellow with fields of oilseed rape, so as it seemed we were looking on some mighty daffodil, the village as its centre. The bridleway took us down the hillside to where the oilseed fields began, and we walked along the edge a while until we found a snickleway path through the yellow, and waded through, the tops of the flowers reaching up to our stomachs, a butter-coloured mass for miles all about us, bulging and writhing with the breeze. I picked the head off one. I wanted to show her how they split open with a squeeze and poured out a spew of greasy, black seeds slippery enough you couldn’t hold a fistful, they fell out your grasp as soon as your hand gripped. She was still in a study, though, and I didn’t tell her. They’d be harvested and ground to oil in a few months, all these crops, bubbling and spitting in skillets from this coast to the other as folk fried up their bacon and their panacalty. I’d learn her about all of that later, after we’d had a feed and she’d got her energy up. She’d see soon enough there was nothing to worry over, we’d be running out the shop with a bagful of food and the shopkeeper chasing after, holding hands and laughing like monkeys, she’d see.

I led her through the oilseed until the path met with a narrow, winding road that took us into the village. Garside wasn’t much — a scatter of houses along a single road, fair similar to Goathland, with a post office, a grocer’s, and a church aside a small graveyard. People who lived here didn’t want for much else. They could live and die and be buried a gobspittle from the house they got bred in.

There was nobody about, luckily, as we followed the bend in the road on to the main part the street, from where we could mark the whole place, deserted, peaceable as a fluffed fart.

That’s the grocer’s, look, I said, pointing her the village store, with its neat boxes of onions, potatoes and fire kindling lined up on a trestle table. All we have to do is you distract the shopkeeper while I get some food. I was talking fast, I knew, getting flowtered because we were about to begin the next of our adventures.

I’m not sure. What if we get caught?

But I didn’t answer her, I started for the shop, and she followed on. I could hear her footsteps behind me.