Hunger Read online

  ‘That’s a mess,’ Adrian said. ‘When are you going to start on it?’

  ‘It’s nature.’

  He turned away.

  Five minutes later he was in bed, asleep.

  There was a full moon. She sat out on the grass, looking at the pale, ghostly light on some white phlox which had appeared by the hedge. There was a night scene in the children’s book she was illustrating. She looked carefully at the white petals. Her bloodless white hand. The silver stones on the wall. Something barked. Something rustled low down among the bushes.

  She felt happy.

  ‘I heard something,’ Yvonne said. She wore a black satin dressing gown with a scarlet dragon in raised embroidery on the back.

  ‘It’s always quiet here at night. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Bit too quiet. You get used to traffic noise; I suppose it lulls you to sleep. But whatever it was woke me up and it was barely six o’clock.’

  ‘Adrian is up at twenty past.’

  ‘It wasn’t Adrian.’

  ‘What sort of noise?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it was a noise. A sound. More a sound.’

  Paula set the coffee pot down on the kitchen table.

  ‘But you slept all right on the whole?’

  Yvonne reached for the sugar. Her fingernails were painted navy blue, but the edges were chipped. Paula thought that if you wore nail varnish in startling colours you had to maintain them.

  ‘Adrian looks very washed out.’

  ‘It’s a long commute.’

  ‘Up so early, home so late. I don’t understand it.’

  ‘He loves being in the country.’

  Yvonne gave her an unpleasant look.

  ‘We’ll go for a walk later. I have to finish something off that I left to dry last night.’

  ‘Oh don’t pay any attention to me. I can amuse myself.’

  ‘No, but we will. Go for a walk I mean.’

  Paula noticed at once, as soon as she walked into the workroom. The drawing board had been moved, only slightly, but she would have noticed even a centimetre. And the side window was slightly ajar.

  It was not until later that she noticed that the chocolate had gone. She had eaten two squares and folded the paper over the open end of the bar. It had been on the table, to the right of her pencil pot.

  Yvonne wandered in.

  ‘Oh heavens, sorry, sorry. I always forget that you don’t.’

  She dropped the cigarette on the brick floor, crushed it to and fro under her heel and left it there.

  Paula said nothing. Adrian would, when he came home and smelled smoke in the house. She would leave it to Adrian. She was his mother.

  ‘Shall we go out, then?’

  Yvonne lit a fresh cigarette the moment the front door closed behind them. Paula said nothing, only picked up the spent match from the path where her mother-in-law had thrown it.

  ‘We generally go this way – past the houses and down into the wood. Well, not much of a wood but, you know . . . I love trees.’

  It was warm, slightly damp. Misty.

  ‘I’d go mad,’ Yvonne said. ‘Never seeing anybody.’

  ‘I like it. I like my own company.’

  Yvonne looked at her sideways.

  ‘What do you do at the weekends, when Adrian’s home?’

  ‘Go for walks. You know.’

  ‘What will it be like for him in winter? Out of the house in the dark, home in the dark. Not much fun, you know.’

  ‘Moving here was his idea,’ Paula said.

  Yvonne grabbed her arm as the track sloped down between the trees.

  ‘Where does this lead?’

  ‘We come out at the bottom into a clearing, then cross the field.’

  ‘With animals?’

  ‘With . . . ’

  Rabbits, badgers, foxes flitted through her mind.

  ‘Cows? Bulls?’

  ‘Oh no. It’s perfectly safe’

  Yvonne stopped to light another cigarette.

  ‘I’m not much of a one for fields. Shall we go back?’

  She walked quite smartly once they were on the level again, so that she reached the cottage gate first, just as all four of the children were sneaking round from the back. The eldest, in front, had her hands full of something; the boy behind was cramming a handful of cornflakes into his mouth from the open box he carried. The small ones came up behind. One held a packet of biscuits.

  ‘Oh my God!’

  Paula pushed past Yvonne and put out her arm to catch hold of the girl at the front.

  ‘It was you,’ she said, without any anger. ‘You came and took the chocolate.’

  The eyes were wary and also defiant.

  ‘Who on earth are these children? Do you know them, Paula? Where are they from? What are they doing coming out of your house? Why aren’t they in school? Have you been stealing? Why aren’t you at school?’ Yvonne spoke loudly, as if the children were deaf. ‘I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’ve been in your house. They’ve been stealing, it’s perfectly clear. Don’t just let it go, Paula. You turn a blind eye and they’ll be back.’

  ‘Will you please leave me to deal with this, Yvonne? Go into the house.’

  The children were now pressed together as a single unit, like small animals. Their hair was matted, their faces dirty.

  ‘What were you doing?’ Paula said. ‘You took the chocolate, you ate the peanuts from the bird feeder, now you’ve been in and . . . ,’ she gestured at the food. ‘Where do you come from?’

  They were mute, staring and still.

  ‘You shouldn’t just walk into people’s houses. You know that, don’t you?’

  The small boy clutched the biscuits to his chest.

  ‘Those will break,’ Paula said. ‘If you hug them.’

  The mist had thickened to a drizzle, muffling the air.

  No word was spoken and she did not see any signal pass between them. One minute they were standing together in their hostile silence, the next they were running, down the path and through the open gate, making almost no sound, flashing away like birds between the high hedges. A few cornflakes drifted down in their wake and settled on the ground.

  ‘They’ll be back, you know.’ Yvonne said. ‘You should call the police.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Is it real or instant?’

  ‘I don’t buy instant. The police are miles away . . .’

  ‘It’s that sort of inertia they rely on. Nobody being bothered to report them.’

  ‘Yvonne, they’re children – young children. The last thing they need is the police involved in their lives from the very start.’

  The glass of the cafetiere cracked as she banged it down. Yvonne firmed her lips together.

  Adrian did not get home until after nine that night. The train line was unreliable; they had been held up by another signalling failure. There were bruise-coloured smears beneath his eyes.

  ‘Signalling failure. Engine failure. Driver failure – failure to turn up.’

  He fell onto the sofa so hard the springs bounced.

  ‘We had a burglary,’ Yvonne said.

  Adrian sat up.

  Paula wanted to slap her. ‘Well, hardly.’

  ‘What else do you call it? They were stealing. They came into this house while we were out and stole things. I call that a burglary.’

  ‘They only took food.’

  ‘Oh, so taking food isn’t burglary?’

  ‘They’re children. They are less than ten years old.’

  ‘A child can be held morally responsible from the age of seven.’

  Her voice was oily with satisfaction.

  ‘You mean you caught them at it?’

  ‘Only I wasn’t allowed to phone the police.’

  Adrian lay back again and closed his eyes.

  ‘Paula?’ He sounded infinitely weary.

  ‘They’
re children. You saw them in the wood that day. You know the ones. You said it was wonderful.’

  ‘What was wonderful?’

  ‘That they could be roaming about freely, enjoying nature.’

  ‘Roaming about freely thieving from other people,’ Yvonne said. ‘Where do they live, these children? You’ll need to tell their parents.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Paula took the empty mugs into the kitchen, dumped them in the sink and went outside. It had rained again. The air smelled of wet leaves, wet grass, damp earth. A blackbird sang.

  She went to the bottom of the garden and stood very still, wondering what she ought to do about the children. Not the police, of course, and she had no idea where they came from. She could follow them, the next time, but they appeared and disappeared like wraiths.

  She had no thought of accosting their parents, but she wanted to know what their home was like and why they did what they did. Why they were not at school.

  A light went on in the front bedroom, but she knew Yvonne would still be downstairs, waiting. When she had married Adrian her sister Elaine had said, ‘You do know it’s normal for mothers of only sons to hate the women they marry, don’t you? She’ll give you grief.’

  Elaine’s own marriage had lasted barely two years, but as Ted’s mother was dead before they met, Paula had not understood how Elaine knew all the things about which she preached with such apparent authority. She had not thought a great deal about Yvonne in advance, but then she sometimes thought that she had not thought a great deal about Adrian, either. He had pursued her – wooed her, Elaine said sarcastically – with such ferocity and determination, such eagerness and puppy-like ardour that she had been unable to put up any resistance, unable to see him clearly, unable to imagine what their future might be like. It had been easy to let herself be swept along. She was by nature quite lazy and a sort of inertia had stifled her, blurring her usually sharp critical sense. She had been very fond of Adrian. Who could not be? He hadn’t a bone of malice in his body, never complained, always enthused, was optimistic to a fault, all of which was refreshing to someone who was inclined to occasional melancholy. Yvonne had existed, vaguely, but lived miles away from them. That her doing so meant she would come to stay for a week or more at a time was another thing Paula had not bargained for.

  Over the past nine years she had learned how to deal with Yvonne’s visits simply by carrying on as usual and letting Yvonne follow or not, accompany her or stay at home. It had worked quite well. Sometimes Yvonne came with her – to the art supplier, the shops, the park or a garden centre, to have coffee or even lunch out. Sometimes she did not, but put her feet up on the sofa and read crime novels. And waited – counting the minutes, Paula always thought – until Adrian returned from work.

  They did not much like one another, she and Yvonne, but nor did they argue. There was not feeling between them energetic enough to spark off rows.

  Yvonne was sitting in the half-dark, book on her lap.

  ‘Adrian is worn out.’

  ‘He soon makes up his sleep at the weekend.’

  ‘It’s this commuting.’

  Paula did not answer. Her mother-in-law was right, of course, but it was not something she felt like discussing when his travelling was inevitable, a fact of their lives. It wasn’t as if he had not thought about it all before they had moved.

  ‘Don’t you ever ask yourself if you’re being selfish?’

  Paula was startled.

  ‘It’s all very well for you down here, everything cosy, just enjoying the countryside and doing your painting.’

  ‘I work,’ Paula said. ‘What you call “your painting” is work. I get paid for it. We couldn’t manage without.’

  ‘Are you telling me Adrian isn’t the breadwinner around here?’

  ‘We both are. I’ll lock up now, Yvonne. You only need to switch the lights off when you come up.’

  ‘And what about children?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, I am not calling the police. I’ll try and find out a bit more about them and, of course, I’ll speak to them if they come here again, don’t worry – I don’t approve of letting them get away with theft any more than you do. But they’re very young. It isn’t a police matter. Not at the moment anyway.’

  ‘I did not,’ Yvonne said, ‘mean those children.’

  Paula had never said that she did not like children, that children made her uneasy. She was nervous of them. She did not like the way they stared without smiling, felt judged by the stares. Judged, she thought now, slipping out of her jeans and T-shirt in the dark bedroom, by the stares of the children who had broken into the cottage and eaten the bird nuts, the four unsmiling, silent children.

  Yvonne had raised the subject only two or three times in all their nine years and apparently never expected an answer to what had not exactly been a question. Why had they no children, she and Adrian? Because Paula did not like them and Adrian did not care enough to insist. If she had become pregnant, he would have taken to being a father as eagerly as he took to everything, regressing even more deeply into childhood himself as a result. But as she had not, he sailed along cheerfully with her alone.

  She lay beside him on her back now, hands behind her head. She always left the curtains open. There was a moon, gliding majestically up the sky. Adrian breathed quietly. He was a quiet sleeper.

  Images of the children were in her mind, stuffing their mouths with sour berries and bird nuts, sneaking out of her house with the biscuits and the box of cereal. Always, they looked straight at her, unsmiling, solemn, hostile, defiant.

  She sat up. Little thieves. They were little Gypsies, ragged, running-wild thieves, the rural equivalent of streetwise.

  The next time it would be tins and packets and jars, and then they would move on to the ornaments: silver box and knives, her paints, the laptop, Adrian’s coin collection. They thieved to order, surely. No group of such young children would think it up for themselves. The stirring game, the hedgerow berries, that was one thing. None of that mattered, even though they should clearly have been in school. And it was none of her business. But coming into the cottage and stealing was something else and they had been told to do it by adults.

  She went to sleep abruptly, her thoughts snapped off midway and the children’s unsmiling faces shifted about in her mind, now shadowy, now clear, all night, all night.

  The sun shone. She had almost finished her illustrations.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  Adrian rubbed his hair with the flat of his hand. It was Saturday.

  ‘About what?’

  He dipped his forefinger into the butter and rolled it round, then into the sugar bowl, then sucked his finger.

  ‘That is disgusting.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You’re not really going to ring the police are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m not.’

  ‘Good. They’re just . . . ’

  Paula moved the butter. ‘Enjoying the natural world around them?’

  ‘Thing is, they have the sort of freedom without boundaries that town kids never dream of.’

  ‘Town kids nick things.’

  ‘Come on . . . a few cornflakes?’

  Yvonne walked through the kitchen in her dressing gown on her way to light a cigarette outside.

  Adrian made a gesture behind her back for ‘When is she going?’

  The day Yvonne went they lay in the sun all afternoon with bottles of beer and bags of crisps and apples, and dozed and read and Adrian said he had never felt so light of heart. He used the actual words. Light of heart.

  ‘But you hate the commute.’

  ‘No, no, I’m used to it and it’s worth it, isn’t it? Worth it for all this.’

  He made a vague sweep of his arm.

  ‘The green. Trees. Fresh air.’

  ‘Nature’s bounty.’

  He glanced at her, but Paula’s face was solemn.

  ‘Well yes. You
like it, don’t you? I mean, you’re happy? You wouldn’t want to go back? Back there?’ He seemed to need reassurance.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t want to go back. There.’

  ‘So you’re happy?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ Paula said.

  She could not have begun to explain just how happy. She did not think she had admitted it to herself. Happy here. Happy every day she woke. Happy alone. Happy to see no one at all from the time she barely stirred when Adrian’s alarm went to the moment she heard him open the gate in the evening. Happy to lie on a rug in the garden or on her bed, looking at the trees. Working peacefully. Making tea. Clearing a bit more of the garden. Alone. Happy. She had met no one since they had arrived here except the postman and a woman walking a black dog. Unless you counted the children.

  She could not have told him that she dreaded the weekends, when he was at home, not because she no longer loved him – she loved him as much as she ever had, which was probably not a great deal. She liked to be alone here, that was all.

  The summer grew hotter. Paula could work only early in the morning because the lean-to became stifling. She read undemanding books and then just looked up at the leaves that hung heavy and still.

  Adrian – jovial on Friday night, because he had a week’s holiday coming – suggested they go to the nearest village for a pub supper, which they ate at a table in the garden: home-cooked ham, eggs, chips, peas. Real ale.

  ‘None of this gourmet-dining rubbish,’ he said, wiping bread round the last smears of yolk. ‘Ruin of goods pubs, that’s been. Coulis of this and scented with that.’

  She agreed. Agreeing was a relief. They held hands, walking back through the still, July night, stomachs bloated.

  ‘Best move we ever made.’ Adrian belched softly. She agreed again.

  He sat in a deckchair most of the week, reading American crime novels recommended by Yvonne, while Paula worked. She looked up occasionally and saw him, legs splayed below khaki shorts, and felt irritable, her precious, solitary days invaded, time stolen.