Andrew Hurley - The Loney

Parkinson answered him with a stare and Leonard sighed.

‘Bring them inside then,’ he said.

I don’t remember either of us trying to run or fight or do anything for that matter. I only remember the smell of the wet ferns, the sound of water churning out of a gutter, the feeling of numbness knowing that no one was coming to help us and that we were surrounded by those people Father Wilfred had always warned us about but who we never thought we’d face, not really. Those people who existed in the realm of newspaper reports; dispatches from a completely different world where people had no capacity for guilt and trampled on the weak without a second thought.

We went into Thessaly by the back door that led into the empty kitchen we’d seen briefly the first time. On the floor was a metal dish of dog food that smelled as if it had been there for months. Collier’s dog nosed at some of the chunks of meat, trying to angle its mouth so that it could eat them through its muzzle.

From somewhere else in the house, the baby cried again. A desperate bawl that petered out into a whimper that seemed resigned to the fact that no one was going to come to give it comfort.

Parkinson opened the door that led out into the hallway.

‘Go on,’ he said with a nod of the head.

I hesitated and felt Hanny’s hand in mine. He was shaking.

‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘We’ll go home soon.’

Collier let his dog out on the chain a little further. Under the grill of the muzzle it growled from its throat and bent its head to try and nip at our ankles.

‘Go on,’ Parkinson said again.

‘It’ll be alright, Hanny,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

Once we were in the hallway Leonard, Parkinson and Collier stopped and looked at the door that led down to the cellar. The door was closed. From the other side came the sound of the baby screaming again. Hanny made kissing movements with his hand.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Parkinson.

‘He wants to see Else,’ I said.

‘She’s not here anymore,’ said Leonard.

‘Where is she?’

‘How should I know? She’s nothing to do with me now. She’s not my daughter. Laura took her home yesterday. You don’t need to worry about them. They both got paid. Everyone’s got what they wanted.’

‘Apart from you two,’ said Parkinson.

‘We don’t want anything,’ I said. ‘Just let us go back home.’

Leonard looked at Parkinson and then at us.

‘If it were up to me,’ he said. ‘I’d trust you not to say anything. But I’m afraid Mr Parkinson here thinks otherwise. And as he’s the one with the rifle I’d be inclined to trust his judgement.’

‘You know,’ Parkinson said to me. ‘I think that the problem is that tha doesn’t believe that we can help him.’

He nodded to Collier.

‘Tell them what your dog did to your ’and.’

Collier held up his hand — he was no longer wearing the black mitten — and drew a line slowly across the back of it with his finger.

‘Every fuckin’ tendon,’ he said. ‘Hanging off in rags it were.’

‘Five years without work,’ said Parkinson. ‘Int that right, Mr Collier?’

‘Aye,’ said Collier. ‘There’s not much call for a one-’anded drayman.’

‘And now?’ Parkinson said.

Collier flexed his hand in and out of a fist and then grabbed hold of Hanny’s arm, making him jump. He laughed, enjoyed Parkinson’s approving grin, and let go.

‘I had a cancer growing in the throat,’ said Parkinson, pressing a finger to his Adam’s apple and then making a star with his hand to show that it had disappeared.

He put his arm around Leonard’s shoulder.

‘And my friend here looks a proper picture of health, dunt he? Not a sign of arthritis.’

Leonard looked at me and smiled. I hadn’t noticed, but Parkinson was right, Leonard’s limp had gone.

‘Hanny’s fine,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to do anything to him.’

Parkinson laughed and shook his head. ‘It’s funny int it?’ he said. ‘How you church people can have more faith in something that can’t be proved than something that’s standing right in front of you? I suppose it comes down to seeing what you want to see, dunt it? But sometimes tha dunt get a choice. Sometimes the truth comes along whether tha wants it to or not. Int that right, Mr Collier?’

‘Aye,’ he said.

Parkinson nodded and Collier grabbed Hanny’s arm again. This time he didn’t let go. Hanny struggled. I tried to prise Collier’s hand away and was so intent on doing so that I only dimly registered Parkinson moving Leonard aside and taking the rifle down.

The shot brought little coughs of dust down from the ceiling and replaced all other sound with a high pitched whining in my ears. A spent bullet casing skittered away down the hall and Hanny fell onto his side, clutching his thigh which had burst open all over the floorboards.

Parkinson put the rifle back over his shoulder and nodded at Hanny writhing in silent agony on the floor.

‘Now tha’ll have to have faith,’ he said. ‘Like it or not. Unless tha wants to take him home a cripple as well as a fuckin’ retard.’

Hearing the gun go off, Clement had come inside and was standing next to Leonard looking on with horror at what had happened. Leonard noticed him gawping and gave him a nudge.

‘Don’t just stand there, Clement,’ he said. ‘Get him up.’

Clement started to back away, but Parkinson pointed the rifle at his chest.

‘Hey, tha’s not delivered full payment quite yet, Clement.’

‘Let me go home,’ Clement pleaded. ‘I’ve done everything you’ve asked for.’

‘Aye, so far. But tha owes us a few more favours before we’re done.’

‘Mother will be worrying where I am. I can’t stay.’

‘I’m not sure tha’s got a great deal of choice int matter, Clement. Not if tha dunt want to end up in Haverigg again. You know we could do it. It were easy enough last time. Tha didn’t have the wit to get out of it then and I can’t see that tha’s found any more since. Moorings goes up in flames. Caretaker seen acting suspiciously by local men. What does tha get for arson these days, Clement?’

Clement looked at him and then knelt down at Hanny’s side, rolling him gently onto his back so that he could get an arm under his shoulders. Hanny’s face screwed up in pain. He was crying like the Hanny I knew as a little boy, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish. It might have been the time he fell out of the apple tree in the back garden and broke his wrist, or when he came off his bike and left most of his chin on Hoop Lane. I’d always hated it when he cried. When he cried it meant I hadn’t kept him safe. I had failed.

‘Here,’ said Clement and showed me where to put my arm around Hanny’s other shoulder.

Hanny opened his eyes and looked at me, completely bewildered, then he sagged and passed out. Between us, Clement and I got him up, snapped him back into consciousness and got him to take his weight on his good leg, while the other bent under him and dragged a trail of blood and fleshstrings along the hallway.

Leonard took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door to the cellar. He went down, shaking them in his hand. The baby’s crying intensified to the hysterical screaming of something that feared that sound above everything else.

It was the first of June and the street outside was breathless and hazy in a prelude to the punishing heat that summer was to bring. Hour by hour the day had been acquiring the tension that comes before a thunderstorm. Everything moved slowly, if it moved at all. The wood pigeons in the plane tree had been quiet and motionless for hours. On the windowledge a bumble bee sat in the sunlight and didn’t stir even when I tapped the glass. The next door neighbour’s cats hunted for shade rather than the mice and finches they usually left on our doorstep.