Guilty One

4

Daniel got up in the morning, dressed and went downstairs. Minnie was not there and he hung around in the kitchen for a few moments wondering what to do. He had not really slept. He had not returned the china butterfly when he brushed his teeth. He had hidden it in the room. He had decided that he was never going to give it back. He wanted to keep it only because she wanted him to return it. He didn’t even know why he had picked it up, but now it had value to him.

‘There you are, pet. You hungry?’

She was dragging a pail of animal feed into the hall.

‘I’ll make us some porridge and then I’ll show you round. Show you your jobs. We all have jobs to do around here.’

Daniel frowned at her. She talked as if she had a large family, but it was only her and the animals.

Minnie made porridge and cleared a space on the table so they could eat. She made a strange sound when she was eating, as if she was breathing it in. After she swallowed, she would make a tutting sound in appreciation of the taste. The noise distracted Daniel and so she finished first.

‘There’s more if you want it, pet.’

Again, he said that he was full.

‘Fine then. Let’s go to it. You don’t have wellies, do you?’

He shook his head.

‘It’s all right, I have pretty much all sizes. Come on.’

Outside, she opened the shed and he stepped inside. It smelled of damp earth. Along one wall was a row of rubber boots, large and small, just as she had said. There were ten or twelve pairs in all. Some were baby-sized and then there was a pair of giant, man-sized, green wellington boots.

‘Are these all the kids you’ve taken in?’ he asked, as he tried a pair on.

‘And then some,’ she said, bending over to tidy up one or two that had fallen on their sides. When she bent over, her skirt rode up at the back to expose her white calves.

‘How long have you been fostering then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, love. Must be more than ten years now.’

‘D’you get sad when the kids leave?’

‘Not if they’re going to happy places. One or two’ve got adopted by nice families.’

‘Sometimes you get to go back to yer mam, though …’

‘That’s right. Sometimes, if it’s for the best.’

His boots were a little too big, but they would do. He followed Minnie as she entered the chicken run and then the shed at the top. The inside smelled of pee. Birds clucked at his feet and he thought of kicking them away, as he did with pigeons in the park, but he stopped himself.

‘I look after Hector,’ she said. ‘He’s old and he can be a bit bad-tempered. I do him as soon as I get up. Your job is to feed the chickens and to look for eggs. It’s the most important job here.

Hector’s there just ’cause I love ’im, but I make money from the chickens. I’ll show you how to feed them and then we can look for eggs. It’s easy, you’ll catch on and then you can do that every morning before school. That’ll be your job.’

The run stretched back for fifty yards. Some of it was covered, but then the rest was open. Daniel watched her as she took handfuls of feed and sprinkled it along the run. She told him to try and so he copied her, scattering the feed.

‘That’s corn,’ she said. ‘The farmer two over gives it to me for a box of eggs. Not too much of it, mind. One or two handfuls is enough. They get the kitchen scraps and then there’s the grass and weeds that they like too. How many do we have here, do you think?’

‘ ’Bout forty,’ he said.

She turned and looked at Daniel in a strange way, her mouth open a little.

‘Well done, smarty-pants. We have thirty-nine. How could you tell that?’

‘Looks to be that many.’

‘All right, now while they’re busy eating, we go and look for the eggs. Take this …’ She handed Daniel a cardboard tray. ‘You can see where they’ve been sitting,’ she said. ‘See? Look, I got one here. Lovely big one that is.’

Daniel didn’t like the farm and her house, but he found that he liked this task. He felt a brisk thump of joy as he searched for and found the eggs. They were dirty, splattered with hen shit and stuck with feathers, but he liked the eggs. He didn’t want to break them, as he wanted to break the porcelain butterfly and kick the chickens. He kept one, secreting it inside his pocket. It was a small brown one, and he felt it still warm.

When they were finished, they counted the eggs. There were twenty-six. Minnie started to move about the yard, preparing Hector’s feed and talking to the chickens that clucked around her ankles. There was a fork against the wall and Daniel picked it up. It was almost too heavy for him, but he lifted it above his head like a weightlifter. It fell to the side.

‘Careful, love,’ she said.

Daniel bent and picked it up again. She was bent over, her massive skirted bottom in the air. Holding the fork near his head, he stepped forward and pricked her on the backside with it.

‘Here,’ she said, standing up suddenly. ‘Put-that-down.’ Her accent was funny, especially when she said words like ‘down’.

Daniel grinned back at her and wielded the fork, taking one step towards her and then another, the tip of the fork raised towards her face. Again, she didn’t back away from him.

Daniel felt a sudden jolt as his pelvis was smacked into his spinal column. He dropped the fork and then it came again. The goat rammed him a second time in the lower back and he went forward, falling on top of the fork, face into the mud. He got up right away and spun around, fists tight and ready for a fight. The goat lowered his head, so that Daniel could see the fine brown horns.

‘No, Danny,’ she said, taking him by the elbow and pulling him back. ‘Don’t! He’ll go through you like you wouldn’t believe. The old goat’s got a soft spot for me. He wouldn’t have liked what you did there. Just leave him, now. You get gored with one of those horns and that’ll be the end of you.’

Daniel allowed himself to be pulled away. He walked towards the house, moving sideways so that he was facing the goat. As he reached the doorstep, he stuck his tongue out at Hector. The goat charged again and Daniel ran into the house.

Minnie told Daniel to get washed and get ready to go out. He did as she asked, while she stood in the kitchen, washing the eggs and repacking them.

He washed his face in the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then crept to his bedroom. The egg was still whole in his pocket and he put it in the drawer by his bedside. He sat it on a glove and placed three socks around it, like a nest, to warm it, closed the drawer and was about to start downstairs, when, as an afterthought, he went back into the room and took his mother’s necklace from under his pillow and placed that in the nest too, right beside the egg. He checked his back and buttocks for scratches from the goat’s horns. He had grazes on both palms from when he fell.

Minnie was winding a pink woollen scarf around her neck. She was still wearing the same grey skirt and boots that she had worn the day before. On top of her long cardigan, she put on a green coat. It was too tight for her to button up, and so she went out like that, with it open and the pink scarf swinging.

Minnie said they were going to register Daniel at the local school and then they would buy him some new school clothes.

‘We’ll walk,’ she said, as they passed her car. It was a dark red Renault with spiders’ webs strung across the right-hand wing mirror. ‘Need to show you the way to school anyway, don’t I?’

Daniel shrugged and followed her.

‘I hate school,’ he told her. ‘I’ll only get kicked out. I always get kicked out.’

‘Well, if you have that attitude, I’m not surprised.’

‘You what?’

‘Think positively. If you do, you might just be surprised.’

‘Like think about me mam getting better and then she will?’

Minnie didn’t say anything. He was a pace behind her.

‘I wished that for years anyway and it never ’appened.’

‘Being positive’s different to wishing. What you’re talking about is just wishing.’

It was fifty feet from her house before they reached a proper path. Minnie told him it was a twenty-minute walk to school.

First they walked through estates, then a park, then a field with cows in it. As they walked, Minnie told Daniel about Brampton, although he told her he didn’t care. He wouldn’t be staying long.

Brampton was just two miles south of Hadrian’s Wall, she told him. When he said he had never heard of the wall, she said she would take him one day. It was ten miles to Carlisle and fifty-five miles to Newcastle.

Fifty-five miles, Daniel thought as he walked behind her.

‘You all right there, pet?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking right down in the mouth today.’

‘M’all right.’

‘What is it you like to do? Not used to boys, so I’m not. You’ll need to keep me up to date. What is it you like, eh? Football?’

‘I dunno,’ he said.

They passed the park and Daniel turned to look at the swings. There was a heavy-set man alone on one of them, letting his foot gently rock him.

‘Want to have a shot? We’ve got time, you know?’

‘That bloke’s there,’ he said, squinting at the sun which was now high in the sky.

‘That’s just Billy Harper. Billy’ll not bother you. He loves them swings. Always has. He’s all right. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Around here, pet, everyone knows everyone else. It’s the worst thing about the place, you’ll find out. But the good thing is once you have everyone’s measure you’ve nothing to fear. There’s no secrets in Brampton.’

Daniel thought about that: no secrets and everyone knowing your measure. He knew small places. He’d been put in a few of them, when his mam was sick. He didn’t like small places. He liked Newcastle. He wanted to live in London. He didn’t like people knowing his measure.

As if she had heard his thoughts, she said, ‘So you like Newcastle then?’

‘Aye,’ he said.

‘Would you like to live there again?’

‘I want to live in London.’

‘My, really? London, I think that’s a fine idea. I loved it there. If you grow up and move to London, what do you think you’ll be?’

‘I’ll be a pickpocket.’

Daniel thought she might tell him off then, but she turned and gave him a little push with her elbow. ‘Like Fagin, you mean?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Haven’t you seen Oliver Twist?’

‘Maybe. Aye, I think so.’

‘There’s an old man in that – pickpocket – comes to bad end.’

Daniel kicked at some stones. A cow turned in her path and moved towards him. Daniel jumped a little and skipped behind Minnie.

She laughed. ‘Och, lad, cows’ll not ’arm you. It’s the bulls you got to watch for. You’ll learn.’

‘How can you tell if it’s a cow or a bull?’

‘Well, lucky you. You’re here in Brampton. A town full of farmers – you can find out the answer.’

‘But that’s a cow, is it?’

‘It is.’

‘An old cow like you.’

She turned to him on the path, stopped walking and looked at him. She was out of breath a little and her cheeks were red. The light in her eyes had gone again. Daniel’s heart began to beat very fast, the way it did when he used to come home to his mam’s after being away. His heart would thump as he touched the door handle, not knowing what he would find behind the door.

‘Have I insulted you since you’ve been here?’

He looked at her, with his lips just parted.

‘Have I?’

He shook his head.

‘Speak up.’

‘You haven’t.’

‘All I ask is a similar courtesy. Do you understand?’

He nodded.

‘And while we’re at it, you know your time is soon up with that butterfly.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I said you could have it for a few days, but now I need it back. This evening, when you wash your face and brush your teeth, I want you to return it, do you understand?’

He nodded again, but her back was turned.

‘I said do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he said, louder than he had meant.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad we understand each other. Now let’s forget it.’

He followed her along the path, watching her boots in the grass and noticing that the back of her skirt was splashed with mud. His arms felt funny and he shook them to get the bad feeling out of them.

‘Look!’ she said to him, stopping and pointing at the sky. ‘Do you see it?’

‘What?’

‘A kestrel! See it with the pointed wings and long tail?’

The bird sculpted a wide arc in the sky and then perched on a high tree top. Daniel saw it, and raised his hand to see more clearly.

‘They’re beauties. We have to watch them from getting the chickens when they’re small, but I think they’re elegant, don’t you?’

Daniel shrugged.

When they got there, the school was an old building surrounded by run-down huts. He didn’t like the look of it, but followed Minnie up the steps. She hadn’t made an appointment and so they had to sit and wait. He didn’t like schools and he felt the ceiling of the place pressing down on him. Again, she seemed aware of how he felt.

‘It’s all right, pet,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to start here today. We just need to get you enrolled. After you’re all booked in, we’ll get you some new togs. You can choose them yourself. Within reason, mind you, I’m not made of money, like,’ she said, leaning into him.

She smelled almost floral. The definite ming of last night’s gin, but then the lemon and the damp smell of her wool, the chickens, and somehow the whiff of the summer grass they had brushed through as they walked to the school. For a moment, smelling her, he felt close to her.

The head teacher was ready to see them. Daniel expected Minnie to ask him to sit outside, but she pulled him up by the elbow and together they stepped inside the head teacher’s office. He was a middle-aged man, with thick glasses. Daniel hated him before he had even sat down.

Minnie took ages to get into the chair beside Daniel, in front of the head’s desk. She unwound her scarf and took off her coat and then spent time rearranging her cardigan and skirt. Daniel noticed that she had left muddy footprints which trailed from the waiting room into the office.

‘Minnie,’ said the head teacher. ‘Always a pleasure.’

Daniel could see from a triangular nameplate on his desk that his name was Mr F. V. Hart.

Minnie coughed and turned towards Daniel.

‘Yes,’ said Hart. ‘And whom do you have for us today?’

‘This is Daniel,’ said Minnie, ‘Daniel Hunter.’

‘I see, and how old are you, Daniel?’

‘Eleven,’ he said. His voice sounded strange in the room, like a girl’s. Daniel looked again at the carpet and Minnie’s muddy boots.

Mr Hart’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Daniel. Minnie opened her bag and put a piece of paper in front of Mr Hart. It was paperwork from Social Services. Mr Hart took it and lit his pipe at the same time, biting hard on to the stem and sucking until the dirty, heavy smoke drifted over Minnie and Daniel.

‘It seems we don’t have his papers in from the last school he was at. What was the last school he was at?’

‘Maybe you could ask him? He’s sitting right there.’

‘Well, Daniel?’

‘Graves School in Newcastle, sir.’

‘I see. We’ll request it. What kind of pupil were you there, Daniel, would you say?’

‘Dunno,’ he said. He heard Minnie breathe, and thought she might be smiling at him but when he turned she wasn’t looking at him. Hart raised his eyebrows and so Daniel added, ‘Not the best.’

‘Why do I sense that to be an understatement?’ said Hart, relighting his pipe and sucking until smoke blew down his nose.

‘This is your new start,’ said Minnie, looking at Daniel. ‘Isn’t it? You plan on being proper exemplary from here on in.’

He turned to her and smiled, then turned to Hart and nodded.

The next morning, Daniel awoke with the thought of the new school pressing on him, heavier than the blankets of his bed. So many new schools. He listened to the chickens in the yard outside and the pigeons cooing in the gutters. He had dreamed about his mother again. She was lying on the couch in the old flat and he couldn’t wake her up. He called an ambulance but the ambulance wasn’t there yet and so he was trying to wake her, trying to give her the kiss of life as he had seen on television.

The dream was close to something which Daniel had actually experienced. Gary, his mum’s boyfriend, had beaten up Daniel and his mum and then left, taking most of the money and a bottle of vodka with him. Daniel’s mother had spent what was left of her dole money on a hit because she said she wanted to feel better. When Daniel woke in the middle of the night she was hanging off the couch with her eyes half open. Daniel had been unable to wake her and had called an ambulance. In real life the ambulance came quickly and they revived his mother. Daniel had been five.

Again and again he dreamed of her. Each time he could not save her.

Daniel lay on his side and reached into the bedside drawer. His hands closed on the egg, which was cold as a stone now. He warmed it in the palm of his hand. Again he reached into the drawer, his fingers searching for the cheap gold necklace that she had worn around her neck and given to him one day when he was good. When he was good.

It was gone.

Daniel sat up and took the drawer out. He placed the egg on his pillow and searched through the drawer for the necklace. He upturned the drawer, and shook out the sock and the children’s books, the biros and old stamps torn from envelopes which had been left in the drawer by her other children. The necklace was not there.

‘I can’t go to school,’ he told her. He was dressed in the clothes she had laid out for him: white vest and pants, grey trousers and a white shirt. He had done the shirt up in a hurry and the buttons were mismatched. He stood before her frowning, with his hair sticking up.

Minnie was spooning out porridge for him and dropping aspirin into a glass for herself.

‘Course you can, love. I’ve made your lunch.’ She pushed a bag of sandwiches towards him.

He stood before her trembling, the egg in his right hand. His clean socks were getting all hacky mucky from her kitchen floor.

‘Did you steal my necklace?’ He could only whisper it.

Minnie raised an eyebrow at him.

‘It was in a drawer with the egg and now it’s gone. Give it back, now.’

Daniel threw the egg on to the kitchen floor and it smashed with a splat that sent Blitz skipping back to his basket.

Minnie bent and put the sandwiches into his school bag. He ripped the bag from her and threw it across the floor after the egg. She stood up very straight and clasped her hands in front of her.

‘You have to go to school. If you replace the butterfly, I’ll replace the necklace.’

‘I’ll smash yer fuckin’ bu’erfly if you don’t gimme my necklace, you thieving old cow.’

She turned her back on him. He thought about getting the knife out of his pocket but the knife hadn’t worried her before. He turned and ran upstairs. He had hidden the butterfly under his mattress.

‘Here,’ he said, putting it on to the work surface. ‘Here’s your stupid bu’erfly, now give me the necklace.’

She was wearing his necklace. He couldn’t believe it. She took it off and handed it to Daniel, then put the butterfly in her pocket.

‘So, what have we learned from that, Danny?’ she said as he got his breath back.

‘That you’re a fat thieving slag.’

‘I think we’ve learned that the both of us have precious things. If you respect mine, I’ll respect yours. Do you remember the way to school?’

‘Fuck off.’

He slipped on his shoes and slammed the door, dragging his school bag behind him. On the way he kicked at the nettles and dandelions that grew. He picked up stones as he went and threw them at the cows, but they were too far away. Billy Harper wasn’t on the swings, so Daniel stopped and swung them right round so that none of the other children could play on them. He was late for school but he didn’t care.

He didn’t care about last chances or new starts. He just wanted everyone to fuck off and leave him alone.

He got lines on his first day for being late.

His teacher was called Miss Pringle and she reminded him of the butterfly. She wore a pale blue jumper and had blonde hair that hung below her shoulder blades. Her tight jeans had a rose embroidered on the pocket. She was the youngest teacher he had ever had.

‘Would you like to sit at the blue table, Daniel?’ Miss Pringle said, bending over a little to talk to him with her palms pressed together between her knees.

He nodded and sat down at the table which was beside her desk. There were two other boys and two girls on the table. There was a piece of blue paper taped to the middle of the table. Daniel sat with his hands under the table, looking at a space on the floor beside Miss Pringle’s desk.

‘Girls and boys, we’re happy to welcome Daniel to the class. Would you like to say welcome to our class?’

Welcome to our class, Daniel.

He felt his shoulders hunch, feeling their eyes on him.

‘Daniel moved here from Newcastle. We all like Newcastle, don’t we?’

There was a sputter of comment and a scraping of chairs. Daniel glanced up at his teacher. She seemed about to ask him a question, but then decided against it. He was grateful.

All through the morning, Miss Pringle kept rubbing his back then hunkering down beside him to find out if everything was all right. He wasn’t doing the work that she had asked them to do, and she thought he didn’t understand.

The lads on his table were called Gordon and Brian. Gordon said that he liked Daniel’s motorbike pencil case, which Minnie had bought for him. Daniel leaned across the table and whispered to Gordon that if he touched it, he would stab him. Daniel told him he had a knife. The girls at the table laughed and he promised to show them.

The girls were Sylvia and Beth.

‘Me mam told me you’re the new Flynn foster kid,’ said Sylvia.

Daniel slumped down into the desk, over the jotter which he had covered in pictures of guns, although Miss Pringle had asked them to write about their favourite hobby.

Beth leaned over and pulled Daniel’s jotter away from him.

‘Give it back,’ he told her.

‘How long have you lived here then?’ Beth asked, her eyes wide with glee, holding his jotter beyond his grasp.

‘Four days. Give me back my jotter or I’ll pull your hair.’

‘If you touch me, I’ll kick you in the balls. Me dad showed me how. You know Old Flynn’s an Irish witch, don’t you? Have you seen her broomstick yet?’

Daniel pulled Beth’s hair, but not so hard that she would cry out. He reached across the table and snatched back his jotter.

‘You should be careful. She makes all the kids into stew. She ate her own daughter and then she killed her husband with a poker from the fire. Left him bleeding in the back garden, with the blood pouring all over the grass …’

‘What’s going on here?’ Miss Pringle was standing with her hands on her hips.

‘Daniel pulled my hair, miss.’

‘We don’t tell tales, Beth.’

Outside in the playground at lunchtime, Daniel ate the cheese and pickle sandwiches that Minnie had prepared, watching the lads play football. He sat on the wall to watch, sniffing in the wind, trying to catch someone’s eye. When he’d finished his lunch he tossed the bag on to the ground. The wind caught it and swept it to the gutters of the pitch, near the wire fence. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched over. It was cold, but he had nowhere else to go until it was time to go back. He liked watching them play.

‘Wanna game, man? One down, like.’

The lad who asked him was short, like Daniel, with red hair and mud splattered down his grey trousers. He wiped his nose with his sleeve as he waited for Daniel to reply.

Daniel jumped off the wall and walked towards him, hands in his pockets.

‘Wae’aye, man.’

‘Can you play, like?’

‘Aye.’

The game made him feel good. He had had a dark, heavy feeling in his stomach since the fight with Minnie over the necklace and he felt it lift for a moment as he ran the length of the muddy pitch. He wanted to score, to prove himself, but there wasn’t achance. He played hard and was out of breath when the bell rang.

The boy who had asked him to play came up at the end. He walked beside Daniel, with the ball hooked under his arm.

‘You play all right. You can play again tomorrow, if Kev isn’t back.’

‘Aye.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Danny.’

‘I’m Derek. Are you the new lad?’

‘Aye.’

A boy with black hair tried to punch the ball out of Derek’s hands.

‘Give over. It’s mine. This is Danny.’

‘I know,’ said the boy with the black hair. ‘You’re the new foster kid at Flynn Farm, aren’t you? We’re the next farm down. Me mam told me that Minnie the Witch had a new one, like.’

‘Why d’you call her a witch?’

‘ ’Cause she is one,’ said Derek. ‘You better watch, like. She killed her daughter and then killed her husband on the grass outside the house. Everybody knows.’

No secrets, Daniel remembered. Everyone knows your measure.

‘Me mam saw her husband dying and called the ambulance, but it was too late,’ said the boy with the black hair. He was grinning at Daniel and showing the gaps between his teeth.

‘Why’s she ’ave to be a witch? She might just be a murderer?’

‘Why she never get charged then? Me dad says you only ’ave to look at her to see she’s not right. You could end up like her last one.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘She was only at Minnie’s for about a month. Nob’dy at school even knew her name. Right quiet lass. She went into this mad fit in the playground and died.’

The boy with the black hair dropped to the ground in imitation of the fitting child. He lay with his legs open and sent his arms flailing, palsied and electrified.

Daniel watched. He felt an urge to kick him suddenly, but did not. He shrugged his shoulders and followed them back to the school.