The Rye Man Read online

  Then he was gone, running through the long grass using his hands like a swimmer to speed his path, along the river bank, running until the hot stabbing pain in his side forced him to stop. But still he walked, both hands on his hips like handles on a jug, his breathing coming in deep retches. Stooping down, he splashed his face with water, dipping his hand into the reflection of clouds, then started to run again. And when the pain pierced his side the memory of the sounds twisting round his head spurred him on and would not let him stop.

  He found his father in the lower fields cutting hedges, the lane smudged with black, thorned clippings, but his breathless story bewildered him and he had to repeat it again and again. He did not tell his father everything, but when it looked as though he would turn again to his hedge cutting, he pulled his father’s arm with an urgency and a familiarity that startled them both. He knew his father did not understand, thought it was only some child who had accidentally got locked in, but he did not care if only his father would come and set him free. He clambered up behind him on the tractor and the noise of the engine prevented any further conversation, but he could sense his father’s feeling of exasperation in the stiffness of his posture and the roughness of his gear changes.

  His father knew without needing directions where the house was and as the tractor trundled slowly up the lane leading to it he tightened his hand on his father’s broad shoulder. Impatiently, he watched him knock at the door of the house then walk towards the barn. His father kept asking him if he was sure, as if not totally convinced that he had not made up the whole thing, or that it was not part of some childish game, and for a terrible moment he began to doubt his own memory. But as they came closer to the locked door and the blocked-out windows he remembered the touch of the finger and knew that it was real.

  His father tried to open the door, his large hands rattling the lock, then put his head to it and listened, both palms pressed against the wood above his head. He called out but there was only silence and when he turned round there was irritation on his face, an expression that said his suspicions had been realised. Before, it would have been a look which would have silenced him, driven him to shelter, but now he grew desperate and begged his father to listen again, showing him the gap in the wood where the finger had appeared. His father ran his hand along the sill dismissively and as he did so they both heard the soft whimper from inside. He clattered the pallets with his fists and called out again and again, asking if there was someone there but the only response was the rising whimper.

  His father’s face had changed now, as if finally it had come awake, and he sent him running across the yard to fetch the axe with a voice driven by urgency. He had to twist and jerk it with both hands before he freed it from the wood, and as he ran he almost tripped, his knee banging against the blunt edge of the axe-head. In his father’s face he saw the uncertainty which had replaced his familiar calm self-confidence and as he took the axe he hesitated, holding it in his hands as if feeling for its balance while he tried to decide what to do.

  With a sharp jerk of his hand he motioned him to one side and the axe was swinging towards the door in a great slicing arc. The noise of the cracking, splintering wood was terrible to him as if something secret, almost delicate, was being broken in front of him and he closed his eyes as the axe rose and fell again and again. As it clattered to the ground he opened his eyes to see his father holding on to the wall with one hand and kicking in the lacerated door until it flapped inwards, vibrating in the sudden surge of silence like a plucked chord.

  Without moving they both stared at the fan of light which squirmed across the barn, lighting up the soiled whorls of straw, the smear of shit, the scraps and husks of food strewn across the stinking floor, felt the hot, fetid stench hit their senses. His father rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, told him to stay where he was, then dipping his head to clear the lintel, entered the barn.

  He watched his father hesitate, then step out of the fantail of light and disappear into the shadows, heard him say, ‘God in heaven,’ repeating it two or three times, but softer each time, and then he was talking too softly to hear the words but it sounded like the way he would speak to some frightened animal which might bolt at any second. The whimpering had grown louder again and it was accompanied now by strangled hawking noises.

  His father suddenly stepped back into the light but his face was turned away and he did not speak except to tell him to stay where he was and not to move from that spot. He waited in confusion as he walked back across the yard and then realised his father was going for the sheet flapping on the line, going to wrap whatever was in the barn in it. His father walked slowly as if each step was heavy with thought and, unable any longer to resist the impulse, he edged into the barn, his hand covering his mouth and nose like a mask. He stared through the grained striations of darkness which seemed to crackle and pulse like static, and squinted into the wavering pockets of shadows. His eyes blinked and focussed again.

  It was the pale frost of face he saw first, a tiny blur of white with dark hollows of eyes, shrouded by a tangled mane of matted hair which stretched to his shoulders. Hair smirched and sodden with shit. A boy, maybe five or six years old – it was hard to tell. Completely naked, the raised ridges of his ribs pushing through his skin. He was crouched on a nest of straw like a small bird and then he stood up, his skinny sticks of legs were bowed and misshapen and covered in pussed scabs like scum on the surface of stagnant water.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom he saw the boy’s lips were moving in wordless speech, quicker and quicker like some small fish impaled on a hook and gasping for life. He willed the words to come out but they seemed to choke and flounder into nothingness. The only sound came from the flies buzzing round his head. Struggling to subdue his own fear he stepped forward, wanting to tell him he was the boy whose finger he had touched but he, too, could not find any words, and then his father was shouting at him to get out and pushing past him with the crumpled sheet trailing across the rancid straw.

  Standing in the yard he breathed in the fresh air while his father shouted to him what to do. He was to run to the Henderson place and get them to telephone for Sergeant Crosby then wait to direct the sergeant to the barn. When he had done that he was to go straight home and wait there, without speaking to anyone about what he had seen.

  It seemed an eternity before the sergeant appeared, his large lumbering figure hunched over the handlebars of his heavy, black-framed bicycle, his face red with the strain and his hat pushed back on his head to let the air at his face. His corded revolver nestled snugly in its leather holster. He wanted to follow the ticking whirr of the bicycle but he had already disobeyed his father once and knew there would be trouble if he were to repeat the offence. So he set off for home as he had been ordered to do, but as he ran the fear in his stomach loosened and he was sick in a ditch, heaving until his stomach was empty. And in his imagination he saw the child animal wrapped in the folds of the sheet, the curved bones of his spindle legs dangling like bruised stalks, his hollow eyes blinking in the fierce and frightening light of the world. Heard, too, once more, the strange choking sounds rasping in the boy’s throat.

  *

  ‘And you never saw him again?’

  They stood in the yard where grass and weeds fought each other for space, and looked about them.

  ‘No, just those few seconds. That was all.’ He pushed his hand through his hair. His mouth felt dry and he wanted to spit. Then he told her things she knew already because the words broke the silence which pushed down on them too heavily. Told her about having to give evidence in court, of the crowd of women who waited outside the court-house to jeer at her, the stories in the papers.

  ‘And do you know what happened to him?’ He felt her hand fumble for his.

  ‘They took him to a home somewhere. I think he had operations to straighten his legs but he never learned to speak. That’s all I know.’

  They stood facing the stone bar
n. There was no door now, or blocked-out windows, just a dark frame of shadows and on parts of the wall the plaster had flaked away, leaving slabs of rough stone exposed. He moved closer to the doorway but he could feel her reluctance in the tightness of her grip and he, too, hesitated.

  ‘How could anyone do something like this, John? Do it to their own child,’ she asked, her voice almost a whisper.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was sick, maybe she was to be pitied as much as he was. I never think of her.’

  ‘But you do think of him, don’t you?’ She was looking at him closely and for a second he thought of lying to her but knew he could not carry it off, and he wanted to hear his own truth, because the place in which they stood would brook no lies. He had to tell her.

  ‘Yes, I think of him sometimes, more often since we came back here to live. And sometimes it’s in my dreams. I think of him being kept here all that time without anyone knowing and what it must’ve been like – the darkness, always the darkness, and then the sound of the key in the lock and the door opening a splinter of light. Sometimes I think I hear that whimpering, over and over, in my head.’ The words rushed out as if glad to be released.

  ‘And what world did he live in? I think about that. Was it a human world and how could it have been when he never experienced any of the things which make us human? And if it wasn’t a human world then what was it, where was it? And when he felt the touch of my finger did he know he had touched someone who was the same as him?’

  He paused for breath and was conscious that for the first time in a long while he was sharing something with her which was secret and private. It was too late to stop.

  ‘But mostly I think about what it was he tried to say, of the need which forced those terrible sounds into his throat. Standing there naked in the darkness, what did he try to say? But maybe they were only sounds which had no meaning. I don’t know.’

  He stared again into the open doorway but he could feel the pull of her hand and he knew he could take her no further. He put his arm around her shoulders and they turned back the way they had come. They walked slowly through the scraggy scrub of weeds and grass, picking their steps with care, their voices low and intimate, the way people speak at a funeral or in church. Ahead suddenly, a bird shot up out of the grass, its flapping crack of wings quickening the beat of their hearts.

  *

  He had written to the McQuarries, asking them to make an appointment, but had received no reply. A fortnight later he telephoned and spoke to Mrs McQuarrie. She was hesitant and said she would get her husband to ring him, but the call never came. He was not sure what to do. He could not have the child assessed by the educational psychologist without her parents’ permission. In the meantime he arranged for her to get extra help with reading and writing. It only amounted to one half hour slot a week, but it was the best he could do.

  She would look at him now when he took her class for history and when he spoke to her would answer with a few barely distinguishable words. But she seemed interested in what they were doing, and with as much individual help as he could manage, she was able to complete some of the tasks in a limited way. A couple of times he persuaded Emma to come in and work with the class. She had prepared templates and drawings of Celtic jewellery and the children made copies in air-hardened clay and then painted them. With Emma’s help, Jacqueline made a Celtic cross with a tiny hole for her to thread through some string or wool.

  She seemed to enjoy working with the children and spent a long time at home in preparation. Her only condition about coming was that he should keep her out of the staffroom and he was happy to oblige, shielding her particularly from Mrs Haslett’s inspection. He had escaped major confrontation with Haslett only because he had not given her any opportunity, but he knew that it was probably just a matter of time before their wills crossed. He found himself wondering if it would ever be possible to really make anything of the school while she and Vance were such an established part of the place.

  She had sniffed a little about his first joint history trip to the monastic site at Nendrum with Liam Hennessy’s Holy Cross, but had said nothing directly and he found it difficult to gauge what she was thinking. He was a little surprised, too, when Jacqueline brought in a permission slip from her parents.

  The day itself was overcast and the pre-warned children came equipped with Wellingtons and rainwear. The bus had collected the children from Holy Cross first and when it arrived they had filled the back half. Hennessy was stretched over two seats smoking a pipe. They had never met before and they shook hands and exchanged comments about the weather prospects. He was slightly older than he had anticipated, with receding grey hair and a thin flush of a face which hinted at an acquaintanceship with drink. He wore an elbow-patched tweed jacket, flannels and a pair of trainers which looked as though they had been borrowed for the day. The smoke from his pipe curdled in the damp draught which seeped through the bus. The two sets of children eyed each other briefly with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, then turned to their own friends and their own conversations.

  ‘Did you have any objections, then?’ Hennessy asked.

  ‘No, none. And you?’

  ‘None. Parents seemed happy enough and any that weren’t are keeping it to themselves.’

  A thin smattering of rain sprinkled the windows as they chatted about their schools, and when the discussion turned to the new proposals for assessment, Hennessy took his pipe out of his mouth in order to swear more freely.

  ‘A load of absolute shite – excuse my French, but it’s enough to turn anyone’s head. Martin Trainor – get your feet off the back of that seat before I come down there and skelp your legs!’ He gestured elaborately with his pipe.

  ‘Listen, John, I’ve been in this game a brave few years now and let me tell you something for nothing. Whatever you do, do nothing, keep your head well down and there’s a good chance it’ll all pass overhead. One thing’s certain – don’t go running round like a headless chicken turning your school upside down for the goalposts’ll move a right few more times before they’re stuck in cement.’ He nodded sagely in agreement with himself, only breaking his self-absorption to shout at another miscreant. ‘In the name of God, Malachy Brogan, take those headphones off before they set on your ears and try talking to someone. It’s a quaint old custom called conversation, very popular in days gone by.’ (And, as an aside) ‘Nowadays they call it social interaction.’ He winked at him and puffed on the pipe. ‘Typical bloody EMU. Put the two tribes on a bus and you’re supposed to be on the way to the promised land, when one half’s spitting out the windows and the other half are wired up to some bunch of heavy metallers. Still, it looks good for the inspectors and the money flows like holy water. Have you had any of the Key Stage cops out with you yet, John?’

  ‘No, not yet, but I’ve a probationer, so no doubt we’ll see an inspector at some stage.’

  ‘Well, when you do, give them short shrift and they’ll not be back in too big a hurry.’

  Hennessy had seemed quite normal on the telephone, but he enjoyed him and found himself feeding him lines like a straight man in a comedy act.

  ‘Have I been to the training days? If I have to sit once more and listen to some arse-bandit tell me that he doesn’t know any more of the answers than I do, then I’m going to tell him to bugger off and get somebody who does! That’s the trouble with this bloody shooting match – you never get to meet the boys who’ve their fingers on the triggers.’

  The rain was falling more steadily now and he took the opportunity of a lull in his colleague’s conversation to hand out the work-sheets he had made. It was a kind of trail where they had to gather information about the monastic site and then use it to work out some answers as to how the monks might have lived and worked. He wasn’t sure if Hennessy was taking a hand out of him or not, but he had to supply him with a copy of the answers, and he began to wonder if he had done any of the preparation work they had planned.

  Soon t
he bus was crossing the narrow stone bridge on to Mahee Island and slowly negotiating the twisting road which led to the site of the ruins. Now the full attention of the children was focused on the world outside, where ploughed fields sloped down to Strangford Lough and the stony shoreline where the ebbed tide had left knots of worm casts and seaweed-draped rocks. Some of them spotted swans and others clambered up the back of their seats to share in the sighting. When the bus stopped, Hennessy stood up at the front and gave out final instructions. They had already been divided into groups of four, two from each school, and he gave them their orders to work well together and a final warning about behaviour.

  ‘Now, listen, ladies and gentlemen. There has been a monastic site on this place since the seventh century. Yes, Leanne, it’s even older than I am, and when we all get back on this bus I expect it to have been left exactly as we found it. You don’t wander off to the shore. It’s on private property and is patrolled by alsatians who would savage you as soon as look at you, and you don’t climb any walls or throw stones. And let me tell you one other thing. Up in the outer cashel there’s a pit dug and it has a sign above it which says, “Pit of uncertain origin.” That means they’ve never worked out what it was used for, but I’ll tell you what it’ll be used for today – anyone I see dropping sweetie papers or Coke tins or scratching their initials on the stones. Now, leave your lunches on the bus, but take your coats and clipboards and line up at the side of the bus. And, Malachy, unless you want to walk home, don’t even think of bringing those earphones.’

  While Hennessy was speaking, he watched his own pupils studying him with amazement, some with widening eyes when he mentioned the pit. The children from Holy Cross stared impassively, obviously inured to his style of delivery.