Maggie joined him, sheltering him under her red umbrella.
‘Where are the kids?’ he asked.
She grimaced. ‘Back at the hotel, driving Mrs Blatter crazy.’
Enid Blatter had borne their cavorting for half a dozen weekends through the summer. She’d had kids of her own, and she handled Debbie and Ian with aplomb. But there was a limit, even to her fund of mirth and merriment.
‘We’d better get back to town.’
‘No. Please let’s stay another day or two. We can go back on Sunday evening. I want us all to go to the Harvest Festival Service on Sunday.’
Now it was Ron’s turn to grimace.
‘Oh hell.’
‘It’s all part of village life, Ronnie. If we’re going to live here, we have to become part of the community.’
He whined like a little boy when he was in this kind of mood. She knew him so well she could hear his next words before he said them.
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Well we’ve no choice.’
‘We can go back tonight.’ ‘Ronnie -‘
There’s nothing we can do here. The kids are bored, you’re miserable …”
Maggie had set her features in concrete; she wasn’t going to budge an inch. He knew that face as well as she knew his whining.
He studied the puddles that were forming in what might one day be their front garden, unable to imagine grass there, roses there. It all suddenly seemed impossible.
‘You go back to town if you like, Ronnie. Take the kids. I’ll stay here. Train it home on Sunday night.’
Clever, he thought, to give him a get-out that’s more unattractive than staying put. Two days in town looking after the kids alone? No thank you.
‘OK. You win. We’ll go to the Harvest-bloody-Festival.’
‘Martyr.’
‘As long as I don’t have to pray.’
Amelia Nicholson ran into the kitchen, her round face white, and collapsed in front of her mother. There was greasy vomit on her green plastic mackintosh, and blood on her green plastic Wellingtons.
Gwen yelled for Denny. Their little girl was shivering in her faint, her mouth chewing at a word, or words, that wouldn’t come.
‘What is it?’
‘Denny was thundering down the stairs.
‘For Christ’s sake – ‘ – Amelia was vomiting again. Her face was practically blue.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She just came in. You’d better ring for an ambulance.’
‘Denny put his hand on her cheek.
‘She’s in shock.’
‘Ambulance, Denny . . .’ Gwen was taking off the green mackintosh, and loosening the child’s blouse. Slowly, Denny stood up. Through the rain-laced window he could see into the yard: the barn door flapped open and closed in the wind. Somebody was inside; he glimpsed movement.
‘For Christ’s sake – ambulance!’ Gwen said again.
Denny wasn’t listening. There was somebody in his barn, on his property, and he had a strict ritual for trespassers.
The barn door opened again, teasing. Yes! Retreating into the dark. Interloper.
He picked up the rifle beside the door, keeping his eyes on the yard as much as he could. Behind him, Gwen had left Amelia on the kitchen floor and was dialling for help. The girl was moaning now: she was going to be OK. Just some filthy trespasser scaring her, that’s all. On his land.
He opened the door and stepped into the yard. He was in his shirt-sleeves and the wind was bitingly cold, but the rain had stopped. Underfoot the ground glistened, and drips fell from every eave and portico, a fidgety percussion that accompanied him across the yard.
The barn door swung listlessly ajar again, and this time stayed open. He could see nothing inside. Half wondered if a trick of the light had –
But no. He’d seen someone moving in here. The barn wasn’t empty. Something (not the pony) was watching him even now. They’d see the rifle in his hands, and they’d sweat. Let them. Come into his place like that. Let them think he was going to blow their balls off.
He covered the distance in a half a dozen confident strides and stepped into the barn.
The pony’s stomach was beneath his shoe, one of its legs to his right, the upper shank gnawed to the bone. Pools of thickening blood reflected the holes in the roof. The mutilation made him want to heave.