Their destination, the village of Burnt Yarley, was to Will’s eyes indistinguishable from a dozen other villages they’d passed through on their way: a scattering of plain, square houses and cottages built of the local limestone, and roofed with slate; less than half a dozen shops (a grocer, a butcher, a newsagent, a post office, a pub), a church with a small churchyard surrounding it, and a steeply-humped bridge rising over a river no wider than a traffic lane. There were, however, three or four more substantial residences on the outskirts of the village. One of them would be their new house, he knew: it was the largest house in Burnt Yarley, so beautiful that according to Will’s father Eleanor had cried with happiness at the thought of their living in it. We’re going to be very happy there, Hugo had said, offering this not as a cherished hope, but as an instruction.
ii
The first sign of that happiness was waiting for them at the front gate: a plumpish, smiling woman in early middle-age who introduced herself to Will as Adele Bottrall and welcomed them all with what seemed to be genuine pleasure. She instantly took charge of the unloading of the car and the removal van, supervising her husband Donald and her son Craig, who was the kind of sullen, thick-necked sixteen-year-old Will would have feared an arbitrary beating from in the yard of St Margaret’s. Here, however, he was a workhorse, eyes downcast most of the time, as he lugged boxes and furniture into the house. Will was given a glass of lemonade by Mrs Bottrall and wandered around the house to survey it, coming back to the front now and then to watch Craig at his labours. The afternoon was clammy – thunder later, Adele promised, it’ll clear the air – and Craig stripped down to a threadbare vest, the sweat trickling down his neck and face from his low hairline, his neck and arms peeling where he’d caught too much sun. Will was envious of his muscularity; of the curling hair at his armpits, and the wispy sideburns he was cultivating. Pretending a concern for the care Craig was exercising with the tables and lamps, he idly followed the youth from room to room, watching him work. Occasionally, Craig would do something that made Will feel as though he shouldn’t be watching, though they weren’t particularly odd things for anyone to do. Passing his tongue over his frizzy moustache; stretching his arms above his head; splashing water on his face at the kitchen sink. Once or twice Craig looked his way, a little bemused at the attention he was getting. When he did Will made sure he was wearing a facsimile of that indifference he’d seen on his mother’s face so often.
The unloading went on until the early evening, the house – which had not been lived in for two years – subtly resisting its re-occupation. Interior doors proved too narrow for several of the tea-chests, and rooms too small gracefully to accommodate pieces of furniture from the house in the city. As the hours went on, tempers grew tattered. Knuckles were skinned and bloodied, shins scraped and toes stubbed. Eleanor maintained an imperious calm throughout, seating herself in the bay window which offered a magnificent panorama of the valley and sipping herbal tea, while her husband made decisions as to the arrangement of rooms she would never have trusted to him in the old days. Once, trapping his fingers between a box and the wall, Craig let loose a fair stream of foul language, silenced by a hard slap on the back of the head from Adele. Will chanced to witness the blow, and saw how Craig’s eyes teared up from the sting. He was. Will realized, just a boy, for all his sweat and muscle, and his interest in watching Craig’s labours instantly evaporated.
iii
That was Saturday. The night did not bring thunder, as Adele had predicted it would, and the next day the air was already sticky before St Luke’s solitary bell had summoned the faithful to worship. Adele was amongst the congregation, but her husband and son were not. By the time their task-mistress finally appeared, they had already put in almost two hours of graceless work, unloading the tea-chests in such a ham-fisted fashion that several pieces of crockery and a Chinese vase had been forfeited.
Alert to the general malaise, Will decided to keep out of the way. While the Bottrall clan stamped around below he remained upstairs in the room with the sloped, beamed ceiling which he’d been given. It was at the back of the house, which suited him fine. From the deep-silled window he had a view up the unspoiled slope of the fell, with not a house nor hut in sight, just a few wind-stunted trees and a scattering of hardy sheep.
He was pinning a map of the world up on the wall when he heard the wasp, its last days upon it, come weaving around his head. He snatched up a book and swatted it away, but back it came, its buzz escalating. Again, he struck out at it, but somehow it avoided his blow and, winding its way around him. stung him below his left ear. He yelped, and retreated to the door as the insect flew a victory circuit around his head. He didn’t attempt to swat it a third time, but opened the door, and stumbled downstairs, wailing.
He got no sympathy. His father was in the midst of a heated altercation with Donald Bottrall, and shot him such a glance when he approached that he swallowed his complaints. Gulping back tears he went to find his mother. She was once again sitting at the bay window, with a bottle of pills on the arm of her chair. She had a second bottle open, the contents in her palm, and was counting them.
‘Mum?’ he said.
She raised her eyes from the pills, a look of genteel despair upon her face. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said. He told her. ‘You are careless,’ she replied. ‘Wasps always get nasty in the autumn. You shouldn’t annoy them.’
He began to protest that he hadn’t annoyed it at all, he’d been the innocent party, but he could see by the expression on her face that she’d already tuned him out. A moment later, she returned to counting the pills. Feeling frustrated but utterly ineffectual, he withdrew.
The sting was really throbbing now, the discomfort fuelling his rage. He went back up to the bathroom, found some ointment for insect bites in the medicine cabinet and gingerly applied it to the sting. Then he washed his face, removing any evidence of tears. He was never going to cry again, he told his reflection; it was stupid. It didn’t make anybody listen.
Feeling not in the least happier, he headed back downstairs. Little had changed. Craig was lounging in the kitchen, his mouth stuffed with something Adele had cooked up; Eleanor was sitting with her pills; and Hugo had taken his argument with Donald – who looked bull-headed enough to give as good as he got – out into the front garden, where they were talking at each other in a red rage. Nobody noticed Will stamp off towards the village; or if they did, nobody cared sufficiently to stop him.
The streets of Burnt Yarley were virtually deserted, the shops all closed. Even the little sweet-shop, where Will had hoped he might soothe his frustration and his dry throat with an ice-cream, was locked up. He peered in through the window, cupping his hands around his face. The interior was as small as the façade suggested, but packed to the rafters with goods, some dearly targeted at the ramblers and hikers who passed through the town: postcards, maps, even knapsacks. Curiosity satisfied, Will wandered on to the bridge. It wasn’t large – a span of maybe twelve feet – and built of the same grey stone as the tiny cottages in its immediate vicinity. He sat on the low wall and peered down into the river. The summer had been dry, and there was presently little more than a stream creeping between the rocks below, but the banks were fringed with marsh marigolds and dumps of balsam. There were bees around the balsam in their dozens. Will watched them warily, ready to retreat if one winged its way towards him.