White Nights - Ann Cleeves [31]
Today, while he was working in the field, Kenny found himself thinking quite a lot about when they were children. The games they’d all played together. Perhaps that was to take his mind off the sight of the body swinging from the roof of his hut, the hut he’d built with Lawrence. He wondered if he’d think of the dead man every time he went in there to get his boat ready.
He’d begun with the neeps as soon as Perez had gone and now it was time to stop for lunch, but he had that compulsion to carry on, at least until he’d come to the end of the row. So he pushed the hoe backwards and forwards down the line and remembered what it had been like here nearly fifty years ago. When he’d been a peerie boy, all scabbed knees and snotty nose, blushing like a girl whenever anyone spoke to him.
Today there was only one child in Biddista, Aggie Williamson’s granddaughter, Alice. When he’d been growing up there’d been five – him and Lawrence, Bella and Alec Sinclair, and Aggie, who hadn’t been a Williamson then. He struggled for a moment to remember her maiden name. Watt. She’d been Aggie Watt. A timid little thing. Looking at her now when he went into the post office, seeing her with her nose in a book, he thought she’d hardly changed in fifty years. She’d looked like an old woman when she was a child. Small and peaky and delicate.
Lawrence and Bella had been just like each other even then. Headstrong and determined to get their own way. And bright. Fighting to be top of the class in Middleton School, laughing at jokes nobody else could understand, annoying the teachers with their cheek and their quick, slick answers. In competition, but attracted to each other just the same. Kenny had only wanted not to be noticed.
Now there were three of them left in Biddista. Bella had turned into a grand artist. She’d been away to college, studied in Barcelona and New York, but she’d been living in the Manse for more than twenty years. Aggie was back staying next door to the house where she’d grown up. And he was in exactly the same place, doing much the same things as he had as a child. It occurred to him that fifty years ago to the day he could have been in this field helping his father to single turnips. Only two of us escaped, he thought. Alec died while he was still young and handsome. And Lawrence ran away when Bella broke his heart.
He reached the end of the row and straightened his back, felt the muscles pull in his shoulders. If Edith was here she would rub them for me, he thought, pull the tension out of them. And he thought how much more skilled Edith was at touching him now than when they’d first got together. There was a lot to be said for getting older.
Edith’s family hadn’t come from Biddista. He hadn’t met her until he started at the big school. She was a few years younger than him. They’d gone in on the bus together, but he’d hardly noticed her until he was fifteen. She’d had freckles then and curly hair. Mousy brown with a touch of red in it. He’d been too nervous to ask her out and the first approach had come from her. She’d always known what she wanted. Later he brought her to Biddista, and she’d met the others – Lawrence and Bella, Alec and Aggie. She’d never quite fitted in. They’d been kind enough to her, even Bella, but Edith had always kept herself a little bit aloof.
As he straightened he saw that the sun had gone in, covered by a bank of mist which had slid in from the sea. Further inland it was still clear. Standing still after the work he felt the cold air dry the sweat on his forehead and his neck.
In the kitchen he put the kettle on and looked in the fridge for food. At one time Edith always made him lunch. When he was doing building work and it was too far from home she’d pack him up sandwiches, a thick piece of date slice or that chocolate