Guilty One (25 page)

‘I remember her telling me that was what happiness was … She never talked to me about Norman and Delia. Always avoided it – said it was too painful.’

Harriet sighed. Daniel heard her husband asking if she wanted tea.

‘What did you mean when you said she was punishing herself?’ Daniel asked.

‘Well, when your little girl is taken, you become a foster parent where they send you a new little girl every few months. But each one is never her …’ Harriet’s voice thickened again. ‘How could she stand it? And you know that until you came along they were
all girls,
every single one.’

Daniel put a hand over his mouth.

‘She said,’ Harriet’s voice cracked again, and she allowed a single gasp of a sob, ‘that Delia had brought out so much love in
her … she didn’t know what else to do with herself, you see. She just had to keep on giving … It was that which killed her, believe you me! She died so alone, and it’s not right when she loved half the world’s unwanted.’

‘I never knew any of that,’ said Daniel. He pressed his back against the wall, his mind bright with memories in the darkened hall. ‘When I was little, when I first moved to stay with her, it was like she was the talk of the town. There were all these stories flying around about her. You wouldn’t believe …’

‘Aye, there would have been. Little towns like that’re full of small-minded people, aren’t they now, and she was such a character. She was a city girl. She loved London; she was happy there. It was Norman who wanted her to move up to Cumbria. I mean … Cumbria … for the
love of God.
Minnie in Cumbria! After he died, I just couldn’t understand why she stayed. She had no connection to that place. Move back to London or move back here, I told her, anything but stay in that bloody place.’

‘She liked the farm, the animals.’

‘That was just an excuse.’

‘She raised a family there. She had a home …’

‘Even if she’d come back to Ireland … but she was determined to stay, as if it was her penance.’

‘Penance for what?’

‘Well, she blamed herself, didn’t she? As if she would ever have knowingly harmed that little one. She loved her more than anything else in this world.’

‘What happened?’ Daniel was whispering. ‘A car accident?’

‘Yes, and can you imagine losing a child of six?
And their only child.
And Delia was such a wee lamb. She was the brightest, funniest child you ever knew. She was the spit of Minnie when she
was wee. Black curls and the brightest blue eyes you ever saw. She was a
darling.
I was working in England myself when it happened and I came as soon as I heard but the wee lamb was nearly gone by then …’

Daniel held his breath.

‘She was still conscious, you see … drifting in and out. The worst injuries, and she was in such terrible pain. Minnie just couldn’t take it. She was holding her hand and the little one was saying to her,
Am I dying, Mammy?
And, oh God, she was fighting it so hard, fighting to hang on. Minnie was suddenly so calm. I just remember her whispering to Delia:
It’s all right, pet, you’ll be my angel still …’

Harriet began to cry softly. Daniel stood up and put the hall light on. Its sudden brightness strained his eyes and he shielded them with his hand. He turned it off again.

‘Minnie blamed herself because she was driving when it happened?’

‘She was driving … but it wasn’t just that.’ There was the sound of Harriet blowing her nose. ‘Delia had a party that night, you see. She was at one of her friends’ houses for a birthday party and Minnie went to collect her. One of the other little ones wanted to go home then too and Minnie offered to give her a lift, so as to save her dad the trouble, you know …

‘Good God, I remember like it was yesterday. Minnie told me that Delia was wearing her best dress with the tiny daisies on it and that she just looked so sweet. She told me Delia was carrying a bit of cake from the party in a blue napkin. I still remember – she said it was a
blue napkin.

‘Minnie, God forgive her, she gave Tildy, Delia’s friend (I’m sure that was her name), the front seat with the seatbelt and all.
Delia was in the back, without a seatbelt. That was how it was back then, Danny, in the seventies … no such thing as safety. Hadn’t even been invented …

‘Minnie said that the little one was singing in her ear – Delia always loved to sing in the car. She had an elbow on each of the passenger seats, like, y’know how kids do, or did back then anyway, and Minnie told her
sit back,
but then … that was it.’

‘What was it?’ said Danny, his thumbnail between his teeth.

Harriet started to cry again. ‘They swerved. The roads were wet, you see. There had been so much rain and
those bloody country roads,
they were wet and slippy. Minnie said that Delia didn’t make a sound, not even when she … hit the windscreen. Oh, God! I’m sorry, Danny, I can’t do this just now.’

Harriet was weeping. He heard her sharp intakes of breath.

‘I just wanted to say that I was sorry,’ she cried, ‘for the other day.’

‘I’m sorry to have upset you.’ His chest was tight. ‘Thanks for calling back.’

‘She loved you, you know,’ said Harriet, sniffing. ‘She was proud of you. I’m glad you made it up for the funeral. She would have wanted you to be there.’

Daniel hung up. The flat was cold. He had a pain at the back of his throat. He walked into the living room, which was also cast in darkness. The photo she had left him was like a black cut-out against the white fireplace. Without turning on the light and picking it up, he could see her face. It must have been the late sixties, early seventies: the colours were brighter, happier than real-life colours, as if they had been painted, snatched from the imagination instead of life. Minnie was in a short skirt and
Norman wore dark horn-rimmed spectacles. The child too was almost unreal: porcelain cheeks and white pearl teeth. She was like Ben Stokes: stolen from life when she was still perfect.

He walked in darkness into the kitchen, where he took a beer from the fridge. The brief light from the fridge taunted him. He felt cold and the chill bottle caused goose pimples to rise on his arms. He bit his lip and then drank deeply from the bottle, finishing half of it before letting it fall hard on to the kitchen work surface.

Daniel put one hand over his eyes. He was so cold, but his eyes were burning. He put the back of his hand to his lips, uncomprehending, as hot tears coursed down his cheeks. It had
been so long since he had cried. He covered his face with the crook of his arm, remembering the comfort of her flesh wrapped in the rough wool of her cardigan. He swore, and bit his lip, but the dark was forgiving; it allowed it.

20

It
was spring. The air was strung with the scent of manure and brave new buds. Daniel’s wellington boots squelched in the mud of the back yard as he fed Hector and the chickens. The door of the shed was hanging off its hinge and some of the wire mesh was torn. Daniel knelt in the mud to repair the mesh and screw the lock back into place. Foxes had killed chickens at the farm next to Minnie’s. Her own birds had only been startled, set clucking and fluttering against the mesh in the middle of the night until Minnie had gone out with Blitz to scare off the fox.

It was six thirty in the morning and Daniel’s stomach yawned with hunger as he worked. It was still cold and his hands were pink to the cuff. He was growing out of his clothes again, and his shirts had begun to ride up his forearm. Minnie had promised to get him new ones at the end of the month, along with a football strip. He was striker now in the school team. But today was Saturday, and they had the market.

Daniel could see Minnie at the window, filling up the kettle and making the porridge. In the morning, her grey hair hung down, held back at the sides by two tortoiseshell clips. Only after she got dressed would she wind it up on top of her head.

Daniel’s
mother’s hair had been light brown and short, but she dyed it blonde. As he emptied the last of the scraps into the chickens’ run, Daniel remembered the feeling of her hair between his fingertips. Her hair was thin and soft, unlike Minnie’s heavy curls.

After the trouble with the Thorntons, Minnie had told Daniel that she would apply to adopt him. They had done all the paperwork together, spreading the forms over the kitchen table. Now they were just waiting. The idea of being someone else’s son, at the same time as being his mother’s son, was strange to Daniel, yet he had agreed and felt a strange auspicious joy at the thought.

Minnie had asked him if he wanted to change his name to Flynn, but he had decided to keep his own name: Hunter. It was Daniel’s mother’s name, not his father’s. He wanted to keep her name because he liked it. It was his name, but he also reasoned that when he was eighteen his mother might want to find him. If she ever looked for him, he wanted to be easy to find.

Inside, Daniel washed his hands in the bathroom, enjoying the feeling of the warm water on his cold fingers. When he was finished, he leaned on the sink and stared at his face in the mirror. He stared at his dark hair that was almost black, and his dark brown eyes, which were so dark that you had to look really closely to distinguish the pupil from the iris. Daniel had often felt estranged from his own face. He looked so different to his mother. He did not know where his features came from.

He had never known his father. Several times Daniel had asked for his father’s name but each time his mother refused, or told him that she didn’t know who he was. Daniel had seen his own birth certificate but his father’s details were blank.

Soon
he was to have two mothers: one the state approved of and another which the state did not; one he had to care for and another who cared for him. But still no father.

Minnie had the radio on in the kitchen. She was stirring the porridge and moving her hips to the music. When she served up, Daniel blew on his porridge before adding his milk and sugar. Minnie had taught him to pour the milk on to the back of the spoon so as not to pierce the skin of the porridge.

‘Starving,’ he said, as she poured him some orange juice.

‘Well, you’re a growing boy, so you are. Eat up.’

‘Minnie?’ said Daniel, taking a mouthful of the sweet porridge.

‘What, love?’

‘Will it be this week we hear?’

‘Should be. That’s what they said. You’ve not to worry, mind. It’ll happen. But when it does, we should celebrate.’

‘What’ll we do?’

‘We could go for a picnic. We could go to the beach …’

‘Really? But you’d have to drive.’

‘Well, we could take it slow. Take our time.’

Daniel smiled and ate the rest of his porridge. He had never been to the beach and the thought of it made his stomach flutter.

‘Minnie?’ he said, licking his spoon. ‘After the papers come, will I call you Mam?’

She got up and started to clear the breakfast things. ‘As long as you’re civil, you can call me whatever you like,’ she said, ruffling his hair.

Above her pink cheeks, her eyes were shining. Daniel watched – not sure if she was happy or sad.

*

It
was still cold, and Minnie made him wear his parka as they set up the market stall. Daniel was now well practised. He pinned the plastic cloth over the wooden table, as Minnie took an inventory of the produce in the boot of her car. She was wearing two cardigans and gloves with no fingers.

Minnie arranged her table: eggs and three chickens she had slaughtered, plucked and gutted herself, new potatoes, spring onions, carrots, swede and cabbage all fresh from the earth. She had pots of her jam to sell as well: apricot and strawberry, and eight rhubarb tarts.

Daniel opened up the ice-cream tub that was her till, and counted the float. Anything to do with money was his job. He took the money from customers and counted the change. He counted their profits and his own wage as a percentage. When the car was emptied and the stall was ready, Minnie got out the flasks and the sandwiches: milky coffee for Daniel, sweet tea for her, and strawberry jam sandwiches. If it was busy they would probably not finish the sandwiches until they were packing up to go, but if the stall was quiet they would eat them all before eleven.

‘Zip up your jacket.’

‘I’m not cold.’

‘Zip up your jacket.’

‘Zip up yourself,’ he said, doing as she asked.

‘Don’t be cheeky.’

The stalls were arranged around Brampton’s Moot Hall, which had stood in the centre of town for nearly two hundred years. There were about eight other stalls besides Minnie’s. Most sold either vegetables or meat, or home-made produce, but Minnie was one of the few who offered a range. Her farm was not big enough for specialising. She sold what she made for herself.

The first
hour passed quickly, and Minnie sold two chickens, and several half-dozen eggs. She knew that her chickens were the best and even those who disliked her would buy her eggs because of that.

Daniel’s hands were pink from the cold. When Minnie saw him tucking them into the sleeves of his jacket, she rubbed his hands to warm them. She made him put both palms together, as if in prayer, and then she rubbed them between her own hands until the heat returned. She rubbed him vigorously, so hard that he shook.

As the blood returned to his fingers and his arms, Daniel remembered rubbing his mother’s hands. She had always been cold: too thin and not enough clothes. He remembered the bones of her hands against his young palms. He wondered where she was now. He didn’t feel the same need to find her, but still he wondered, and he wanted to know if she wondered about him. He wanted to tell her about the farm, and about Minnie, about counting the float and taking his cut. He remembered the touch of her thin hands, brushing the hair off his face. When he thought of it, he would feel a pain underneath his ribs. It was like an intense hunger – a yearning – to feel her sweep the hair off his face again.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Minnie asked.

Daniel took the plastic cup she handed him into his two hands, so that he could steal its warmth. He shrugged and took a mouthful of sweet tea.