Andrew Hurley - The Loney

‘Yes, Hanny, we’ll go back today,’ I said. ‘But you might not be able to see the girl. They might not let you.’

He kissed his fingers again. And rubbed his belly slowly like Else had done to soothe the ache of the baby inside.

‘I said, we’ll go back.’

This seemed to satisfy him and he picked up the hare again and looked out of the window at the outhouse.

‘Do you want to go and see?’ I said.

There was no one else around. Monro lifted his head when we came into the kitchen and I gave him some of the biscuits Father Bernard had left on the table to quieten him down. I wanted to have the outhouse to ourselves first, before it became everyone’s discovery.

We walked across the yard, trampling over the heavy wooden doors, and stood at the gap where they had once been.

Inside was an ark of stuffed animals — a hundred or more. These were the unsold, uncollected, unfinished works. Botched jobs. Seconds. The cold and damp had taken its toll and there were rows and rows of shrunken squirrels and rabbits. A poodle’s head had sunk in on itself like an old balloon. In the far corner we found a tandem being ridden by two mangy chimps. Neither of us wanted to touch them, so we fetched a broom and pushed them off. They fell stiffly to the floor, still grinning, their hands like claws, as though they had been frozen solid.

Hanging from the ceiling were dozens of bird skeletons, hawks of some kind, trussed up by the feet and left to decompose. Why he hadn’t stuffed them too, I didn’t know. Perhaps he had died before he’d had time, but there were so many of them and the way they were hung they seemed more like the hare and the rats Hanny had found stretched out on the fence. Proof of a victory of some kind.

Although the floor was littered with their bones and feathers, the smell of rotting was strangely absent, as the air had been allowed to move freely through the gaps around the wooden doors and out of the barred window set just above head height on the far wall. There was a chest of drawers underneath it with bootprints on the top where the taxidermist had stood to look out of the window. On the floor, almost obscured by dust and spiderwebs were spent bullet casings. This must have been a firing step, though what he was trying to shoot, I didn’t know. The hawks, perhaps, as they came out of the woods.

‘Look in the drawers, Hanny,’ I said and rattled the handles to show him.

He took hold of the top drawer and yanked it open. Spiders darted away, following the dark into the corners. Inside were dozens of old spanners wet with rust.

‘Try the next one,’ I said.

And here we found what I’d hoped was there. Under a thin cotton sheet were boxes and boxes of bullets. Hanny went to touch them, but I held his sleeve.

‘Let me get them,’ I said, and took out the nearest box and opened it. The bullets were set in a metal clip and were sharp and cold.

‘You mustn’t let anyone know that they’re here, Hanny,’ I said. ‘This is a secret now. We’ll take them down to the pillbox on our way to Coldbarrow.’

He stared at the bullets and I closed the drawer tightly.

***

Eventually, everyone came to look and wandered between the animals with curiosity or revulsion.

Miss Bunce stood in the doorway and refused to come in.

‘It’s awful,’ she said. ‘Poor things.’

David put his hands on her shoulders and steered her away.

‘That’s a decent-looking machine, mind you,’ said Father Bernard, nodding at the tandem that the chimps had been riding.

Hanny and I managed to haul it out and pushed it around the yard. The tyres had perished and the gears were clotted with rust but it didn’t seem as though it would take much to be able to ride it again and Father Bernard only put up a mild protest about his clothes getting dirty before he fetched his tool box from the minibus.

Before long he had the tandem upside down in the kitchen on sheets of old newspaper and was taking apart the cogs and gears, his usually well-slicked hair flopping in front of his eyes. He seemed to be in his element as he knelt down with a spanner in his hand. More at home with nuts and screws and other pieces of greasy metal than giving out communion.

Mummer tutted and fussed until she finally stood over us with her arms folded.

‘Boys,’ she said. ‘Will you please let Father have his breakfast now. There’s too much to do to be spending the day messing about with that bit of junk.’

‘It’s quite alright, Mrs Smith,’ said Father Bernard. ‘It’s nice revisiting one of the few genuine pleasures of my youth.’

She looked irritably at his black hands and the smudges on his face, as though she was, at any moment, going to spit on a handkerchief and start wiping.

‘Well, everything’s on the table, Father,’ she said. ‘We’ll wait for you to say grace.’

‘Oh, don’t let me stop you, Mrs Smith,’ he said. ‘I might be a wee while, getting all this oil off my hands.’

‘All the same. I think we’d rather do things properly, Father, even if it means eating things cold.’

‘As you wish, Mrs Smith,’ he said, looking at her with a curious expression.

I’ve thought about that look quite often as I’ve been getting all this down. What it meant. What Father Bernard had let slip just at that moment. What he really thought of Mummer.

A line of dominos, spinning plates, a house of cards. Pick a cliché. He had realised what I’d known about Mummer for a long time — that if one thing gave way, if one ritual was missed or a method abridged for convenience, then her faith would collapse and shatter.

I think it was then that he began to pity her.

***

Father Bernard went off to clean himself and Hanny and I went into the dining room to wait for him. Everyone was sitting around the table watching Mr Belderboss. He seemed in a brighter mood than he’d been in the previous night with Father Bernard, though I got the impression he was deliberately distracting himself from thoughts of his brother with the object he was examining. It was a small, brown earthenware bottle with a cork stopper in the end and a gargoyle face crudely scratched on one side.

‘It was on the windowledge, you say?’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘Yes,’ said Farther. ‘Stuck between the bars.’

‘Oh, put it down, Reg, it’s absolutely hideous,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘No one wants to see that at the breakfast table.’

He looked around at the others and then went back to studying the face on the jar.

‘I don’t see anyone complaining, Mary.’

Mrs Belderboss made a noise of exasperation that Father Bernard caught as he came in through the door.

‘My, my, Mrs Belderboss,’ he said. ‘That sounded like a soul in distress.’

‘Oh, you tell him, Father,’ she said. ‘He won’t listen to me.’

‘About what?’

She gestured to the bottle Mr Belderboss was looking at.

‘He’s obsessing again.’

‘It was in the quarantine room, Father,’ said Mr Belderboss. ‘Between the bars on the window. There’s definitely something inside it.’

He shook the jar and handed it to Father Bernard.

‘Sounds like liquid of some sort. What do you think?’

Father Bernard put it close to his ear and listened as he moved it from side to side.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘There’s definitely something in there.’

‘Ugly thing, isn’t it?’ said Mr Belderboss.

‘Aye, it is that.’

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Farther.

Father Bernard passed it back to Mr Belderboss and laughed and shook his head.

‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea.’

‘Father Wilfred would have known,’ said Mrs Belderboss. ‘Wouldn’t he, Esther?’

Mummer handed Father Bernard a plate but didn’t look at him.