The Scratch. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ at me and then lumbered away. It was like something out of the Middle Ages. Or Game of Thrones.’

      ‘We’ve got a lot of them.’ I took out a container of soup I had made at the weekend and poured it into a saucepan. ‘Some people say too many. Still, the tourists love them. And some of the locals.’

      He said, ‘There must be lots of wildlife.’

      There was something in his voice that made me glance at him. ‘Deer, of course,’ I said. ‘Foxes, rabbits, grey squirrels, badgers, weasels and rats and God knows what else. And then there are the birds.’

      ‘I guess you never know what you might find, what might be hiding out there.’

      ‘No.’ I turned up the heat and began to slice the bread. ‘Sometimes you see white stags. There’s probably a colony of unicorns somewhere.’

      It wasn’t much of a joke, but he laughed. That was the first time I had seen him laugh. It made him look younger.

      We had the soup, followed by cheese and fruit. Jack ate well; there was never anything wrong with his appetite.

      Afterwards, he leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. ‘Clare?’ he said. ‘I was wondering. You know I didn’t sleep brilliantly?’

      ‘Yes. Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?’

      He shook his head. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘You know.’

      I smiled. ‘I don’t, actually.’

      ‘After everything, I kind of got uncomfortable about being in houses. Sleeping, I mean.’

      I didn’t know him well enough to try to cajole a confidence from him. ‘So what would you like to do?’

      ‘Would you mind if I slept outside?’

      I stared at him. ‘But, Jack – you’ll freeze. We still get a ground frost sometimes.’

      ‘I’ve got a good sleeping bag. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d let me sleep in the Hovel.’

      ‘Doesn’t that count as a house, too?’

      ‘Not really.’ He glanced out of the window, where Cannop was looking in at us. ‘It’s got a temporary feel to it, hasn’t it? Like a shed or a tent. A tent with a stone chimney – that’s what Gerald called it. A place for squatters.’

      ‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t sleep there. If you’re sure you want to.’

      ‘Great.’ Jack was almost cheerful. ‘I looked in the windows this morning. And there’s a sort of loft, too, isn’t there, up the stone steps at the side? I’d be fine.’

      I didn’t say anything. But he read what was in my mind.

      ‘It’s not the bedroom you gave me, you know. It’s a great room. It’s just me. Besides, it means that the cat can come in the house again, and I won’t have to feel guilty about that as well.’

      ‘As well as what?’

      He coloured and pushed back his chair. ‘Oh, you know.’ He began to stack the plates and bowls. ‘As well as for putting you out like this.’

      The Hovel was a two-storey building with a sagging roof of pantiles. Gerald and I had been full of plans for it when we moved here fifteen years ago. First there was the holiday accommodation idea, and then the studio. Neither of them worked because we lacked the money and the will to convert the Hovel into something habitable, even on a temporary basis, by normal human beings. It was tiny. It didn’t have water, let alone a proper lavatory. It managed to be damp all the year round, whatever the weather. Everything we kept there went rusty or mouldy. We’d often talked about putting in a wood burner, but we never had.

      So gradually the Hovel became what it was now: a cross between the garden shed and the place where we put things we didn’t really want but couldn’t bear to throw away. When they were younger, the children used it – first as a playhouse and then, when they were teenagers, for activities they thought we would disapprove of.

      After we had cleaned away lunch, Jack and I went to the Hovel together. We kept it locked, because you could never be sure who might wander in from the Forest.

      I showed him the ground floor first, a low-ceilinged room with the rusting remains of a cast-iron range in the fireplace. There was a dead blackbird in the grate, a desiccated and dusty collection of feathers and bones. It was gloomy in here because, apart from the open door, the only other light came from a grimy window on the side of the building facing the Forest.

      Jack touched the handle of the lawnmower, unused since last autumn. ‘I could mow the lawn, if you like.’

      ‘Great,’ I said. ‘I like gardens but I’m not so keen on gardening.’

      ‘No problem.’

      An external flight of steps led up to the room above. I unlocked the door and went in. Jack stopped on the threshold. For a moment I saw it with his eyes: the clumsy stone walls which had lost most of the plaster that had once covered them; the delicate iron fireplace, a refugee from a smarter house; a small window, grey with dust and cobwebs, looking out on to the garden; the beams and rafters rising to the tiled roof that allowed specks of daylight into the room. There was an old mattress against the wall and a cluster of cigarette ends in the fireplace.

      ‘The floor’s OK,’ I said. ‘Gerald put down new boards just after we moved in. We had to take down the ceiling at the same time, but we never got round to replacing it.’

      ‘It’s fine as it is.’

      ‘I’m sure we can find you something better than that mattress. There’s no loo, I’m afraid.’

      Jack shrugged. ‘I can go in the Forest or come up to the house.’

      ‘We can give you a potty,’ I said. ‘I have got rather a nice Victorian one in my studio, with a plant in it.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘Everything’s perfect.’

      We spent the next half hour playing house. That’s what it felt like – children pretending to set up a home. I even picked some daffodils and put them in a vase on the windowsill of the upper room.

      Jack did the real work. He swept the room and brought up an inflatable camping mattress from the house, and then his backpack. I found blankets, torches and candles. He laid out his sleeping bag on the new mattress but he didn’t unpack his backpack.

      He took off his jersey and rolled up his shirt sleeves as he worked. His arms were tanned, much more so than his face. There was something boyish about his movements – supple, swift, sometimes clumsy.

      I opened my mouth to suggest he might like a radio to keep him company. But the words never came out. At that moment Jack was extending his right arm to hang his coat on a nail in the wall by the door. I saw his forearm. There was a scratch on the soft skin.

      ‘What’s that?’ I said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Your СКАЧАТЬ