I
The yellow leaves of the weeping willow in autumn
Hartington House, Dorset
October 2005
Gus crept up to his mother’s study door and put his ear to the crack. He inhaled the familiar smell of Marlboro Lites and felt his frustration mount at the sound of her husky voice speaking on the telephone. He knew she was talking to his teacher, Mr. Marlow. He assumed, correctly, that she wasn’t on his side. Gus was a problem no one wanted to take the trouble to solve. “I don’t believe it!” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Marlow. It won’t happen again. It really won’t. His father will be down tonight from London. I’ll make sure he talks to him…You’re right, it’s absolutely not on to bite another child…I’ll find him and send him straight back to school.” Then her tone softened and Gus heard her chair scrape across the wooden floorboards as she stood up. “I know he can be a bit aggressive, but we only moved from London a couple of months ago. It’s been difficult for him. He’s left all his friends behind. He’s only seven. He’ll settle in. Just give him time, Mr. Marlow? Please. He’s a good boy, really.”
Gus didn’t hang around to hear more. He tiptoed back down the corridor and out the garden door onto the terrace. The lawn was a rich, wet green, sparkling in the pale morning light. He took a deep breath and watched mist rise into the air. He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and shivered. He’d left his coat at school. Swallowing his resentment, he wandered across the terrace and up the thyme walk lined with shaggy round topiary balls. His shoulders hunched, his feet kicking out in front of him, his eyes searched for some small creature upon which to vent his anger.
At the end of the thyme walk was a field full of sheep belonging to their neighbor Jeremy Fitzherbert. Among the sheep was a disheveled old donkey called Charlie. Gus enjoyed nothing more than bullying the beast, chasing him around the field with a stick until his braying grew hoarse and desperate. He climbed the fence. Sensing danger, Charlie pricked his ears. He spotted the little boy jumping down and his eyes widened with fear. He stood frozen to the ground, nostrils flaring, heart turning over like a rusty engine.
Gus felt a jolt of excitement. He forgot about biting Adam Hudson in the playground, about running out of the school gates and up the High Street, about his mother’s angry voice and his own clawing sense of isolation. He forgot about everything except the sudden rush of blood as he set off in pursuit of the donkey.
“You a scaredy cat?” he hissed as he approached the terrified animal. “Whoooa!” He lunged at him, delighting in the clumsy way the donkey stumbled back before cantering stiffly off towards the woods at the top of the field, braying in panic. What a shame he hadn’t brought the stick. It was more fun when he hit him.
Bored of that game, Gus continued into the woods, leaving Charlie trembling in the corner of the field, surrounded by sheep. The ground was soggy, strewn with twigs and brown leaves amongst which a shiny pheasant scraped the earth for food. The sun shone weakly through the leaves, illuminating the spiders’ webs that adorned the surrounding shrubbery with lace. Gus picked up a twig and began to swipe the webs, squashing the fleeing spiders under foot. The pleasure was fleeting, and he was left with the emptiness of believing, albeit subconsciously, that he was of no value to anyone.
Miranda Claybourne put down the telephone and remained at the window, staring out over the orchard. The ground was littered with apples and the last of the plums. She had sensed her son’s presence at the door, but now he had gone. Of all the days Gus had to choose to play truant, he had chosen Deadline Day. She stubbed out her cigarette, reassuring herself that a lapse in her struggle to quit was absolutely okay; three puffs hardly counted. She didn’t have time to go looking for him, and anyway, she wouldn’t know where to start, the grounds were so large and, she observed with a sinking feeling, desperately overgrown and wet. The thought of tramping about in gumboots was intolerable for a city girl used to Jimmy Choos and concrete. On top of everything she had her monthly column for Red to finish. So far, the only advantage of living in the country was not having to brush her hair and apply makeup for the school run. Gus and his five-year-old sister, Storm, cycled up the drive every morning, leaving their bikes by the gate to take the school bus that conveniently stopped for them at eight. In London she had had to get up early in order to make herself presentable to the other mums in four-by-fours and oversized sunglasses who carried off a seemingly effortless glamour in Gucci, their smooth hair colored and cut to perfection at Richard Ward. In Hartington she imagined that barely anyone would have heard of Gucci or Richard Ward, which had seemed charmingly quaint on arrival, but was now simply quaint. She complained wittily in her column, which chronicled her struggle to adapt to country life, and turned her resentment into hilarity. Along with the wet, dreary weather, somehow wetter and drearier in the countryside than in London, the quaintness of Hartington was almost intolerable. There was nothing to do but laugh.