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.