seemed an age to Stephen but he knew they weren’t. In fact, he knew they were inadequate, unseemly. Still, he was glad when his mother led Amelia away.
“Want a hand filling it in?” Richard asked.
“Yes, why not?” Stephen didn’t like to disappoint. The younger boy seemed so keen. Stephen set off to collect their shovels but Richard had no time for such subtleties. He yanked off his jumper and started pushing the earth back into the hole with his bare hands. Even that wasn’t fulfilling enough, apparently. He jumped into the grave, scooping armfuls of soil, trampling poor Finn underfoot. Stephen winced at the sound of bones splintering. But Richard was having a rare old time. And that was all that ever really mattered.
There was no opportunity for Stephen to slip away and seek out Lumsden over the coming weeks. The reduced family was not grieving, certainly not overtly, but the permanent loss of one member meant rearrangement, the redistribution of a substantial workload. Stephen had already taken on most of Finn’s outdoor chores, albeit he now had to do them properly or they would all starve. There was little scope for him to take on more. Richard was happy to help. He didn’t seem to mind the most menial tasks. Digging and shovelling strongly appealed. Amelia, it went without saying, was never going to shovel muck. She was happy collecting eggs, though it took her half the day. She was not allowed to know what happened to hens that stopped laying, or unwanted chicks. Stephen showed Richard how to neck a bird, though, and the younger, bigger boy added a new interest to his repertoire. His enthusiasm remained. He was always asking, Can I do this, Stephen? Show me how. But he seemed to lose energy day by day. He’d start off full of vim, but then... After a week or two Stephen imagined he could see energy draining from Richard. Another week and the boy lacked the strength even to start a task. What was he doing the rest of the time, Stephen wondered, to sap him so? He even feared that Richard had developed Finn’s mysterious wasting disease.
Stephen re-evaluated his relationship with his mother. Before, he had blamed Olivia for everything – the twins, the move to Yorkshire, his isolation. But now he realised it was his father who had constricted him like a shirt three sizes too small. With Finn gone, Stephen felt a weight lifted from him. To the ignorant, Olivia had always seemed the dominant one, but that was just because her voice was so loud and grating. In truth – he saw it now – it had been Finn who pulled the strings, quietly, furtively, like a worm destroying an apple from the inside out. In a way Olivia was a victim, like her son.
Olivia, of course, now did all the inside jobs, the household chores. Initially Stephen continued to put the washing machine on first thing and hang the laundry out when he got chance. Then, a week or so after the makeshift funeral, his mother was up before him, the machine already loaded and washing Amelia’s pink sheets. Had Amelia messed her bed, Stephen wondered. Was his sister (he had begun to think of her thus, he had no idea why) also subject to sticky dreams? He was never called upon to do the laundry thereafter.
There were other, less obvious changes at Oughterthwaite. Stephen sensed something in the air, quite literally. A scent. A sensation. The tang of electricity with a metallic aftertaste – that was the only way he could describe it, though of course he had no need or desire to describe anything to anyone.
The year drew on. The days shortened. One last burst of activity, turning over the ground and mulching, and there was little more to do on a purely arable smallholding. Richard did a bit to help but he still seemed listless and was obviously glad when Stephen told him the end was in sight.
With less physical activity to tire him Stephen found sleep harder to come by. And when he slept the dreams returned. Vivid dreams. Dreams of chasing and being chased. Of being lost and found. Found naked. Exposed. Dreams of meat and flesh and baby Amelia’s rose-pink nipples. He woke unrested, riddled with anxiety. Mercifully this round of dreams had not proved sticky. Perhaps that part of adolescence was behind him. In the interval between waking and rising, cocking an ear for sounds of activity downstairs, Stephen began to think again of Mr Lumsden, the rampaging predator that obsessed him, and the freedom of the world above.
And then, one bitter cold morning before the sun was fully up, Stephen went outside to find the earth beside the compost heap disturbed. No, disturbed was too lazy a word. Churned was better. Ripped up and thrown here, there, everywhere. Stephen saw a corner of frayed grey blanket poking up from the middle of the spoil. He declined to investigate further. Behind him, in the kitchen, he heard the washing machine start up. He could not let his mother see this ... disgrace. He scraped as much earth as he could, back into the hole, with the side of his wellington. Then he jumped up and down to try and flatten it with his weight. Later, he would come back and do a proper---
“What are you doing, Stephen?”
It was Richard, pink-eyed with sleep but so weary he seemed to sway in the non-existent breeze.
“You know,” Stephen hissed. “You know!”
“I don’t,” Richard said, all innocence.
Liar! Stephen thought. But what was the point of saying it? Richard would protest, perhaps even cry. Olivia would be dragged into their confrontation and would see what had happened to Finn’s grave. Stephen no longer had any desire to upset his mother. As for Richard---
“I’ve had an idea.”
It had taken three days but finally he had come, his hands and nose slightly redder, his cheeks tinged with blue, the only concession to the oncoming winter a plaid muffler poking out of the neck of his waterproof jacket.
“Oh aye?” As if no time had passed, as if it had not been the thick end of two months since they last spoke.
“About your pig. I mean, the pig you’re looking for. If you’re still interested.”
“Oh I’m interested all right. Night afore last the bloody thing got in my hen hut. Blood and guts everywheer. You’ve never seen the like.”
“I didn’t know pigs ate chicken.” Stephen made a mental note to barricade the coop at Oughterthwaite from now on.
“Eat bloody owt, pigs will. Grain, eggs, meat, fresh or rotten. I tell thee, lad, if pigs had half a brain they’d rule the bloody world.”
“But they haven’t, have they? Got half a brain?” Stephen grinned. “That’s where we’ve the advantage.”
He was still grinning when he returned home. Grinning so broadly, his cheeks ached, unaccustomed to grins. He found Richard crouching beside a blazing bonfire. He had not known Richard could set a fire.
“What you up to?” Stephen asked, echoing Richard’s question that morning.
“Olivia told me to do it,” Richard said, suddenly defensive. It was always Olivia, Stephen thought, never mum. Rightly so: Olivia wasn’t Richard’s mother. She’s mine. And if Olivia considered it all right for Richard to play with fires, why should Stephen argue?
Instead, he breathed deeply, enjoying the woodsmoke, the heat. There was nothing like the heat of a good blazing fire. A thought occurred. Where had Richard found the kindling? He’d better not have helped himself to the winter stockpile---
“Olivia gave it me,” Richard said, anticipating the question. “It’s Finn’s bed. Olivia said she didn’t want to sleep in it no more. Not after ... you know.”
Stephen had not considered his mother’s finer feelings. To be brutally honest, he had not considered Olivia had finer feelings. Clearly he had underestimated. He relaxed, listening to the crack of cinders, the occasional hiss of something vaporising, savouring the sweet familiar scent of---
“What’s that smell?”
Richard had also relaxed. He gave his sniggering, snuffling snort of a laugh. Said, “Crackling!” with a ring of triumph that wiped the grin clean off his adoptive brother’s face. Realisation dawned for Stephen. How could he not have noticed? The long narrow shape, still recognisable for what it was, what it had been. The threads of rough cloth floating in the smoke. He looked past the fir
e, towards the compost heap. The hole where the heap used to be.
Richard was cowering now, inching towards the house, dragging himself across the ground on the seat of his pants. “She told me to do it,” he whined. “Olivia! She said it was for the best!”
Stephen strode past him, reaching the kitchen first. His mother was at the sink. She seemed shocked to see him. So she should, Stephen thought. Amelia, of course, was at the window. She must have seen. It clearly hadn’t bothered her. How cold was she, Stephen wondered. Cold – or stupid. So completely, hopelessly brainless that she was utterly devoid of fellow feeling. How else could she watch her brother incinerate the last broken vestiges of---
Perhaps it was for the best, he decided, stomping up the stairs to his bedroom. Perhaps Olivia – Mum – was right. But to give the task to Richard... Did she not realise? Did she not see the evidence in her own backyard?
He threw himself on his bed. He lay there simmering with emotion. Anger that he had again been bypassed, revulsion at what had been done, anxiety at what still needed to be done. Anxiety, and a certain thrill. From the thrill came a furtive, fleeting pleasure, quickly replaced by anxiety that so many elements could still go wrong.
“Stephen!” His mother, calling up the stairs.