First prize at Cambridge Writers Short Story Competition 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They said the sky could drive you mad. Wide open, flooding light, far as far to see. But I think he was born crazy. They said on a full moon you could see them standing on the banks, feet in the black earth, hurling rocks at each other across the drainage dykes. Silly untrue stories about villagers with too many features in common in too small a gene pool. He didn\u2019t wait for any moon to throw his stones. Sitting up in one of the trees along our lane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Get down with you,\u2019 mum would shout over and over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was no trouble at all. Maybe a bit, getting the teasel burrs out of my hair after a run through the meadow with Zoe. That was just to feel the warmth of her nearby with a brush, brush, brush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019ll be a fine lass of a girl any day now,\u2019 she\u2019d sigh picking through the bristles, plucking out the purple flower pieces. \u2018So don\u2019t go hanging by the gate on your own.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Like you did mum?\u2019 I\u2019d ask and she\u2019d give me a half-slap in fun and I saw the sparkle in her eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then my brother would poke his nose in. Something slimy in his mind, blown in from the wilds. Blown in on a wind straight from the east. Straight from Russia they said, straight from the Urals, they said. I\u2019d no idea what they were and the name played in my thoughts. In winter the wind blew the snow in flurries. In summer it blew whatever it found. Days of wind, months of stinging air across the beet fields. Calmed when the elms broke the flow, all dead now and stumps falling in to lie with the ancient bog oaks. He wasn\u2019t calm. As though the wind stirred him up. Rushing, pushing, shouting, pinching, biting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I left his evil words and deeds to sit alone in my room. A tiny box with a view to die for, as many had, out in the dykes and flat, flat mud stretching to the Ship of the Fens. It didn\u2019t need a full moon to light that Cathedral in my mind. It hovered above the mist on a chill November day, almost from outer-space. I\u2019d been there once. Taken to walk the aisles and see our village\u2019s kneeler on the pews. Hand stitched with an emblem. A bird I think. All those kneelers from all those villages. I thought they looked unused. Then all those statues, heads hacked off, in the Lady Chapel. Who had done such a thing? Hack off heads? Someone talked about the reformation, didn\u2019t make sense, too dangerous. I hoped they weren\u2019t coming back \u2013 the head hackers that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s shouting too loud for me not to hear, screaming at mum for what she can\u2019t give \u2013 dad. Not even a chance to find the man that had given her the once over, perhaps by the gate on a different night by a different moon. Or maybe somewhere nearer to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Looks of the grandfather,\u2019 the old woman would say in the ramshackle post office, come shop, come gossip house. A building of pale brick in a village of pale brick. I used to believe they\u2019d started off red, ordinary bricks, that paled once they\u2019d had the blood drained out of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The post-mistress cackled away while anyone who chose to listen would nod and reply: \u2018No good\u2019ll come of it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
School wasn\u2019t so easy. Not the work, only the walk. I was happy, singing, catching the grass stalks from along the lanes, chewing the ends while I listened to the whoop of the curlew, the rattle of the occasional corn bunting or the nearby familiar robin. Such space, flat fields for ever. Hedges ripped out by one financial plan or another. All fine in summer. Not fine when it turned to winter; when he turned. I\u2019d shiver, pull my coat round me tight, wondering who might be there in the winter gloom, wondering what happened if you stayed alone at one of the gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t long at school before they told me. I couldn\u2019t believe it. Does anyone believe it when they hear it for the first time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What? In there? In my \u2026\u2019 I said looking down at my skinny body. \u2018There\u2019s no room in there.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018He\u2019ll make room.\u2019 An older Zoe told me. \u2018He\u2019ll push and push. It\u2019ll hurt. There\u2019ll be blood.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Never.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018You\u2019ll have to get used to it. That\u2019s what mum said.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He didn\u2019t believe it either, or didn\u2019t say he did. Maybe I should have taken more notice of the look. The gates seemed to grow a little larger, a little darker. Shadows on the school walk. There were stories. One girl shrieked all the way home. Someone came to our house, official. Mum begged them to let it pass, one more chance. She won them over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After that mum was shouting at him more than ever. Some blows. No peace in the house. No cat or dog. We would have had one but mum didn\u2019t trust him. Not when she\u2019d caught him with the poker and the mouse. Red hot. Squealing like \u2026 well like what you\u2019d imagine. Sometimes I think I can still hear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was no surprise when he hit her with the same poker and pushed her down the stairs. I heard the thumps as she seemed to hit each step. No screams after the first thump. The blood soon matted in her hair after she reached the bottom. Still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Mum,\u2019 I cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019d gone. She didn\u2019t answer. I sat on the last step. The night came with the cry of the owls hunting by cold moonlight. Their cries clear and sharp cutting the wide skies. The morning came with songbirds and the light. I thought it was the wrong time of year. Why were they singing now? Autumn had passed. Spring a long time away. I shivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the postman who found us. Front door still open wide. He saw me in my nightdress, bloodied and tearful, with my bare feet almost blue. He went for help although I thought other ideas passed though his brain before he went. I thought the postman was the type to hang around gates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They didn\u2019t find my brother. I told them he\u2019d run. They only gave half a search, half a heart for half a search. I guess they knew he\u2019d come back on his own. And they were right. More noise and bites as they tried to hold him down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was taken to a home. Not homely. Brown carpet and pictures not quite right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They made me see a therapist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What shall we talk about?\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Dunno,\u2019 I said trying to keep the fens out of my voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What was it like growing up in your home?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Wad-yer-mean?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018What was it like being an only child?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"