Ellis sat opposite his dad at the kitchen table. Denny shut his eyes with satisfaction as he sipped his tea.
"You should get Michael Finsey"s kid brother to plant all these bulbs. He"s backward and works like a demon. Pay him to do it."
Denny blew on his tea. "That"s a good idea, Ellis. A really good idea. Unless you want to do it. Seems a shame to pay someone else when you could have the money."
"No. No way. I don"t ever want to be paid by you for anything. That"s official. Anyway, I don"t want to plant another bulb in my entire life. It"s the most boring thing I have ever done, not including school of course."
"Of course. Guy Finsey is a good idea."
Ellis leant across and peered into Denny"s mug.
"Can I try a taste?"
Denny shrugged and smiled and slid his mug across the table. Ellis took a sip and impersonated his father"s closed eyes and contented sigh, as if it was impossible to drink tea without them.
"Yeah, I think I like it."
Denny took his son to the stove, opened the fire box and placed more logs on the flames, and showed Ellis how to make a pot of tea, using tea leaves.
"How much sugar do you have?" Ellis asked.
"One."
"Think I"m gonna need two."
"How strong do you want it?"
"Exactly the same as yours."
"Nice and strong, then."
They sat together and drank their tea. Over Denny"s shoulder, Ellis saw Mafi in the garden. She inspected the boxes of unplanted bulbs and wiped the laughter from her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Mafi"s laughing at you," Ellis said.
"She called me an idiot when I turned up with those bulbs."
Ellis"s face creased into a smile at the thought. He had never known his dad to abandon a job before.
"Four thousand is quite a lot," Ellis said.
"Do something for me," Denny said, taking a bulb from his pocket and placing it solemnly in Ellis"s palm. "Go and put that on Mafi"s pillow."
Ellis wriggled and laughed. "Really?"
"Really. Then we"ll go and speak to Mrs Finsey."
It was in the darkness just before dawn, when there was colour in the winter sky and flames in the stove and his father moving softly around the kitchen, that tea tasted best to Ellis O"Rourke. It was a communion wine, warm, dark and sugary, drunk by himself and his living G.o.d. After it, the arrival of words and daylight stole something precious from the day.
On Christmas morning, Ellis took tea in to Mafi and placed it beside her bed and she hugged him the same as if he was still a little boy. He carried the tray into Denny"s room where he and Chrissie presented their dad with a stocking. It was the first Christmas they had insisted they were too old for stockings and instead reversed tradition by filling one for their dad. They climbed into Denny"s bed and drank tea, three in a row, filling the bed with laughter and body-heat, and jostled Denny as he opened his stocking.
"A pair of socks, why thank you ... and a pair of Superman underpants, fitting ... what"s this ..." He read the cover of a pre-recorded ca.s.sette. "Felicity Lott, Strauss, how wonderful. Thank you."
Then he delved again, and pulled out a volume of Colemanb.a.l.l.s and a bar of Woods of Windsor soap and a box of milk chocolate footb.a.l.l.s and then a small cardboard box, which he scrutinised but didn"t understand.
"What on earth is this?"
"It"s a packet of condoms," Chrissie said, "in case you get lucky this Christmas."
"Pop "em in your bedside drawer," Ellis said.
Denny bowed his head. "Idiots ..." he muttered, and his shoulders heaved a little with laughter. He turned the stocking upside down and out rolled a satsuma. He placed it on the bedside table, next to the photograph of the lighthouse on the shingle beach and the fishing boat run aground. Chrissie cuddled up next to him, resting her head on his shoulder, and Denny flashed his eyes at Ellis.
"More tea please, dear boy, if you"re spoiling me."
In the kitchen, warmed by a fire lit that Christmas morning by the son for his father, Ellis stood over the brewing pot and felt the elation of giving.
Reardon taught the boys to shoot rabbits that winter. William Rutton showed them how to paunch and skin them. He crunched the rabbits" t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es under his butcher"s knife, to make the boys laugh, and shouted, "There go the Harrises!"
Mafi made rabbit pie which was tough to eat.
"Just bring me the younger ones in future, my darlings," she told the boys. Denny pulled faces as he chewed.
When the clocks went forward, and Guy Finsey"s bulbs adorned the orchard floor, Ellis and Tim got their first paid job, delivering grocery boxes for Ivan. On Thursday afternoons, after school, the boxes would be laid out on the brick floor of Ivan"s shop, beneath the tiers of plastic gra.s.s. They had a porter"s trolley each, which took eight boxes, and they set out from the forge crossroads in opposite directions, Ellis delivering to Windmill Road, Morleys Road and Elsa"s Farm Cottages, Tim to Scabharbour Road and Mount Pleasant. They ate a Golden Delicious as they went, pushing the trolley one-handed as they bit into it, and when Ellis returned home, three pounds richer, Mafi would call out to him in mock disgust, "French apples, Ellis O"Rourke! I ask you!"
And, often, he"d appear at her living room door and shrug. "I like them, I just do. They"re nice and soft."
And if Mafi over-played her growl of disapproval, she"d cough and splutter and begin to laugh. She"d always laugh, even when she felt a little weak, even on the days she didn"t have the energy to do much, which occurred now from time to time. And when she went into hospital for an operation, just before Ellis"s fifteenth birthday, there was still her throaty laugh, even then.
Ellis never got a straight answer from Denny as to what the operation was, just an a.s.surance in a vague tone: "There"s nothing to be worried about, dear boy."
And whilst Denny sat holding Mafi"s hand, as she waited nervously to be wheeled away to theatre, Ellis tiptoed down the lane and followed Chrissie and James into Treasure Island Woods, determined to see for himself, at last, the act of lovemaking. He had witnessed the beasts of the field doing it, he had seen pictures of professionals performing it, but no magazine could have prepared him for the transformation in two people he thought he knew, or for the noises they would not normally make or the words they would not otherwise use. He ran from his hiding place and didn"t stop until he found himself in the West Wood where he walked the length of a fallen oak and perched on a bough above the ground. The West Wood was the territory, in late summer, of the Bermondsey Boys and Ellis would not have considered being here then. A coachload of children arrived in the village each August weekend from different parts of London. Children who never saw the countryside, who lived in tall blocks of flats and walked to school along the edges of main roads. Kids with weird voices. Kids with dark skin. They stayed for a week at Halls Green House where rumour had it there was a swimming pool and a snooker room and stables. There was always tension, but rarely trouble, until the last week in August when the Bermondsey Boys came and then Ellis lay low all week because there was always trouble.
This August, I"ll not hide, he told himself. I"m fifteen tomorrow and I"ve seen things today I wouldn"t have believed. I"m too grown up to fear the Bermondsey Boys.
When he got to Longspring he clambered to the top of the hay barn and lit a cigarette. He lay back in the hay and tried to come to terms with the violence of his sister"s lovemaking. He wondered when he would get to do what she and James had been doing. How often do people do that? Is everyone doing it? Who of he and Tim would be the first to do it? It was bound to be Tim.
"ELLIS O"ROURKE!"
Reardon"s voice boomed out from the foldyard.
"If you should ever decide, in a moment of enlightenment, that having a lit cigarette in a timber barn full of hay is somewhat foolish, then feel free to desist!"
Ellis scrambled down off the bales and took his cigarette outside.
"Sorry," he said. "I"ve had a h.e.l.l of a day."
It was late when Denny got back from the hospital. He asked Ellis where Chrissie was and he told him she was out with James. Ellis offered to pour his dad a beer from the fridge but Denny said that he wouldn"t have a drink in case he got a call from the hospital.
"What sort of call?" Ellis asked.
"No sort in particular." Denny smiled warmly to fend off further questions. He went to the fridge and looked inside. He checked inside the oven. "I"m hungry," he muttered, his face crumpling.
Ellis had never heard his dad say that he was hungry before. His dad was never hungry or tired or uncertain or anything of the sort.
"Me, too." Ellis smiled, placing his hands under his legs and sitting forward on the chair.
Denny bowed his head and took a deep breath. "You have eaten, haven"t you?" His voice was stern.
Ellis shook his head.
"Your sister has done the shopping, hasn"t she?"
Ellis nodded and smiled.
"Well, where is it?"
"She"s not back yet."
"What do you mean, she"s not back yet? It"s nine o"clock."
"She rang me from the town to ask me if I minded her going back to James"s for a bit. She"ll be back about ten ... with the shopping."
His dad filled the kettle again and slammed it down on the stove. He threw a tea bag into his mug and sat down opposite Ellis. "And you said you didn"t mind?"
Ellis shrugged and nodded. Denny repositioned his chair so that he was sideways to the table, the same way he did after a meal. He crossed his legs and lit a cigarette. His jaw muscles clenched and he looked out of the window.
"Ellis ..."
"Yes, Dad?"
"You"re fifteen years old tomorrow. You are old enough to say no to your sister. You are old enough to walk over the green and buy some food and cook it. You are old enough to think of what I"ll need when I get in from a day like today."
"I know. I"m sorry."
They sat in silence. Then Ellis said, "But you kept telling me everything was fine so I didn"t really know today was a day like today."
Ellis couldn"t sleep, not after the shouting between Chrissie and his dad. The atmosphere was strange. The cottage was not accustomed to raised voices. He went downstairs, lifted away the tablecloth that covered the television and switched it on. He imagined his dad and his sister, also unable to sleep, joining him and the ill feeling drifting away amid the magic of being up so late, the same magic that came to this room on Christmas Eve or during a power cut or on election night. And, sure enough, pretty soon, the floorboards above creaked and Ellis smiled to himself in antic.i.p.ation. But the footsteps on the stairs were brisk and heavy. The living room door burst open and Denny bore down on his son, his face gripped by anger he did not want to feel. He shoved Ellis towards the door and Ellis ran upstairs. He buried himself under the sheets and fought to silence his whimpering. Denny marched in.
"I was sleeping, you selfish little b.u.g.g.e.r!" he hissed. Then he punched Ellis"s arm through the bedclothes and slammed the door behind him.
From the door to the ward, Ellis and Chrissie heard their great-aunt screaming.
"They were killing him, they were killing him! They were cutting up our boy, Denny!"
Ellis peered in and saw his dad holding Mafi. She looked like a ghost. Tears streamed from her eyes.
"They were cutting up our little Ellis! Get them away from him, Denny!"
Denny rocked her.
"Just a bad dream," he said. "Just a bad dream."
A nurse pulled the curtain round and left Ellis doubting that Mafi would ever seem the same to him now that he had seen her like that.
"Are you having a nice birthday?" Mafi asked Ellis.
They had washed her face and brushed her hair and wrapped a woollen shawl round her bony shoulders. She almost looked like Mafi again. Ellis couldn"t think of anything to say to her. His fingers played with the stiff hospital sheets and he wondered what Mafi"s dream had been. Chrissie answered for him.
"We all had a big bust-up last night. Dad"s in a foul mood."
"She"s exaggerating," Denny said. "I"m going to find some tea for us." He got up and wandered out of the ward.
"He"s ruined Ellis"s birthday," Chrissie said.
"I don"t mind," Ellis protested.
Mafi looked Chrissie in the eye in such a way that Chrissie could not look away.
"What?" She laughed nervously.
"He"s worried sick," Mafi said. "You should be thinking of him. He"s only human."
Chrissie went quiet and soon she left the room. When she returned, she was holding Denny"s hand and she had been crying. They drank tea. Silence took hold again but now the silence wasn"t so bad. Denny O"Rourke looked at the sky. He wondered how many times the four of them would be in a room together again. Just them, no boyfriends, no girlfriends ... and Mafi.
"I think you should all go out and enjoy the sunshine," Mafi said.
"It"s freezing out," Chrissie protested.
"It"s an order. Go away and get some air. I do not want Ellis O"Rourke spending his fifteenth birthday in a hospital ward full of old biddies."
As Ellis stopped in the doorway to look back at his great-aunt, his dad rested a hand on his shoulder, and as they walked along the corridor Denny left his hand there, and as they stepped into the lift and waited for the door to close he rubbed Ellis"s arm where the bruise had risen. Ellis looked up at his dad and smiled. Denny leant over and kissed Ellis on the head and Ellis wrapped his arms round his dad"s waist and pressed his head against him. Denny felt his heart ache with love. And he decided he would take his son to the Marsh.
They glided through a line of empty villages. As a child, when visiting Aunt Mafi on the coast, Denny had learned to recite their names in order: Woodchurch, Kenardington, Warehorne, Hamstreet, Ruckinge where the old farm implements were laid out in a field above the road Bilsington, Bonnington and Lympne. A dog chased the car up Lympne Hill. Ellis watched it through the back window. It barked and leapt and then it gave up and returned home. When Ellis turned round they were on the Aldington plateau and, to his right, the English Channel was a sheet of winter grey. They parked outside the castle and walked through woodland. Where the woods ended the footpath continued along a ridge, and in the field above them two wildebeest were grazing. Chrissie stopped in her tracks.
"f.u.c.k me!"
Denny glared and winked at her in the same moment.
"Sorry," she said. "But that"s a wildebeest, isn"t it?"
They were at the bottom corner of the wildlife park.
"See the wildebeest, Ellis?" Denny said.
But Ellis didn"t hear him. He had climbed on to a gate and was looking in the opposite direction. Beneath him was a vast, graceful sweep of perfectly flat land, offered to him like an open hand. The land was dissected by intricate veins of reflective blue water, some twisting randomly, others deliberately straight. In between these d.y.k.es were patchworks of deep green pasture. Rare amongst the pasture were fields of brown earth where shadows slept along the plough lines. The sound of sheep rose from the green carpet, joined the chack-chacking of the fieldfares and hung in the air parallel to the plateau where they stood. There was no perspective or direction to the sound here. It was gentle and yet it travelled effortlessly across great distances to them, on board a chill November breeze. For all the indescribable places Ellis had seen in the pages of National Geographic, the land in front of him now, framed by sea and sky and stretching out of sight, seemed the most extraordinary. It was neither beautiful nor dramatic but, as he gazed upon it for the first time, it immediately felt to Ellis like home.
"Where are we?" he asked.