time of year when everyone – even the non-farm people in their spit-clean wellies – gathered to remember the area’s past and to celebrate what remained of its industry.
There were no fairground rides, just a bouncy castle that came every year with a man from the next town – but it was only something to occupy the children while the real business of the day took place. This was the exhibition and judging of animals. Mostly that meant dogs and sheep, but sometimes also a coveted prize bull.
After he had parked up in the neighbouring field, my father would head straight for the judging ring, where he would sit for most of the day, making notes on the quality of the animals and the judges’ decisions. He understood the slight distinctions of dogs and of livestock, the stance and colour and distribution of weight that made one animal more worthy of accolades than another. As for me, I would look at the ring of stubbly old men and quivering terriers, and think they all looked the same, animals and owners alike.
My mother, like me, had no interest in livestock. She would make her way to the marquee, where flower displays and vegetables and sponges had undergone their own eagle-eyed judging process. If my mother had won a prize, which only happened two or three times that I can remember, my father and I would be dragged to the tent to admire her achievement in loud, carrying voices. Otherwise, she would spend around an hour studying the exhibits, before bustling across to the tea tent, where she would inevitably find a group of women she knew.
With a parting gift of five pounds in my pocket, I was left free to wander. I rarely spent the money – even when I was small, I had no interest in the bouncy castle or the face-painting. Instead I would watch the drystone waller giving his demonstrations. His name was Ted. Over the years, as the world grew more complicated and the War circled ever nearer, Ted was an unerring constant. I suppose he became a friend of sorts.
‘Morning, Monster,’ he would say when I arrived by his plot, ‘you’re here early.’ He said this every year, and every year it was true.
I would watch him set up and lay the first few stones, then I would wander off to check the other exhibits: the chugging vintage tractors, the man who could carve animals out of tree trunks, and the stick-dressing competition, where old men exhibited their carved walking sticks and shepherds’ crooks. Every now and then, I would circle back around to check on Ted and his progress with the wall. Sometimes he would even let me put one of the crowning stones on the top.
I wonder what happened to Ted. I wonder whether he built any of these walls above the village. I take off my backpack and clamber across one, dislodging a couple of stones as I do. They tumble loudly as everything shifts under me. I consider putting them back, but what would be the point? There is no livestock left to segregate, no claims to be made on arbitrary squares of land. Just bigness, spreading out in all directions. If I had time, I could demolish every single one of these walls. It would make no difference to anything.
*
My parents’ house sits squat and grey at the bottom of the hill. The whole village looks as I remember it. For all I know, my parents could be in the house still, waiting for somebody to burn or bury them. A lot of Sickness victims were left like that, everyone around them too afraid or too ill to do what needed to be done. For a moment, I almost turn back – but then I see the charred circle of earth at the edge of the village, and all the hair follicles on my head prickle.
I pull my pack higher on my shoulders. I stride down the hill.
When I reach the little road that runs through the village, the signs of neglect push themselves forward like boisterous children. Unmown grass along the verges. A broken window at a neighbour’s house. Untended flower beds that were once kept so prim and proper.
The gate to my parents’ garden is stiff on its hinges. I consider oiling it, just to feel the rightness of it opening smoothly under my hand, but that would be stupid. I’m not planning on staying.
The front door opens more easily. I had expected it to be locked, but of course there was nobody to lock it.
Inside, the hallway is dark and grey, and there is a smell of damp. It rests at the back of my throat and festers.
I check the downstairs first. It’s strange, walking through these old rooms, exactly the way I remember them, down to my mother’s china ornaments on the mantelpiece and my father’s cluttered papers. Like I’m observing my childhood through someone else’s eyes.
I search the kitchen, but the cupboards are empty, raided by our neighbours once my parents were dead, the way it was everywhere once quarantine was enforced. I check the secret cupboard at the back of my father’s desk, the one that only opens when you pop a slat of wood from its notch. As a child, I thought this was a hiding place worthy of an adventure novel; as an adult it just looks obvious. I pop out the piece of wood and the cupboard creaks open.
Inside are two envelopes, one big, one small.
The big one contains documents: the deed to the house, birth certificates, and my parents’ wills. I cast them aside and open the smaller envelope.
Stuffed inside it is more money than I’ve ever held in my life. There must be six or seven thousand pounds in twenty- pound notes, crammed inside this little envelope.
I run my thumb across their edges. They make a soft burring sound as I flip through them. My parents’ rainy-day fund. I never knew they kept so much cash in the house.
I have an urge to take it with me. Even now, this amount of money inspires a kind of awe. I can’t seem to put it down. It sits in my hand as I hover between staying and leaving, crouched on the patterned carpet in front of my father’s old desk. It’s a kind of power, tying me to this spot. The things this money can buy . . .
Could buy.
I look at the fat wad of notes in my hand and force myself to see a stack of useless coloured paper. I stuff both envelopes back in the secret cupboard. Out of habit, I close it up again.
I start upstairs, the musty smell still latched onto the walls of my throat. Even though I’m climbing, there’s a feeling of going deeper into the house.
I check the bathroom and the spare bedroom. Nothing but a few dead moths on the windowsill. When I can put it off no longer, I open the door to my parents’ bedroom.
There’s a lump in the bed.
I cover my eyes with my hand and force myself to count to ten. I feel foolish, like a child playing hide-and-seek with nobody to search for. I open my eyes.
Nothing. Just the bundled duvet and a couple of pillows. I take deep breaths and scan the room. Nothing to show that this was the room my parents sickened and grew weak and died in. Nothing but a smell of damp and empty house.
I step back along the landing into my old bedroom.
The walls are still the same garish green I chose when I was twelve because I knew it would upset my mother’s muted tastes. On top of the chest of drawers is a wooden automaton of a man riding a bicycle, which Harry Symmonds gave me for my birthday and which I used to like to take apart and put back together again.
The unmade bed is piled with cardboard boxes: all the books and tools and instruction manuals I wouldn’t let my parents throw away after I moved out. The brown parcel tape is cracked and flaking. On one of them there’s a half-dead fly buzzing on its back.
I catch sight of myself in the mirror beside my bedroom door. I look thin. Where before my face was
