Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

34. Before

Before

At the end of the summer holidays, when Bobby is nine, we invite the whole of his class for an afternoon at Blakely Farm. Bobby is in charge of events and he plans it like a military operation: First the children will meet his favorite animals, before a picnic tea beneath the oak tree, and then target shooting.

We begin with a tour of the farm. Bobby shows the kids how the milking machine works, demonstrating how he fits the teats to the cow’s udders, how it is suction that keeps them on. He can do it in seconds, just like the men.

In the sheep field, Bobby hands out biscuits so the children can feed our ewes.

“Wow, Bobby,” says Hazel, a gorgeously pretty child with bright blond Rapunzel plaits. “Are you allowed to do this every single day? You are so lucky.”

This was a good idea , I think, as we begin our picnic beneath the old oak tree. The children are getting to see Bobby for who he really is. I know, because the teachers tell me, that Bobby spends his classroom hours gazing out of the window, like a prisoner who pines for the outside world, missing the sensation of sunlight warming his skin. Well, he does pine. Being inside is a torture to him.

One time, he let himself out of the playground at break time and arrived home in the middle of the day. I was about to take him back when Frank stopped me.

“Let him have this just this once,” he said. “What good is school to him, really? Everything he needs is here.”

Frank was exactly the same as a boy, Jimmy too. They are men of the earth.

The oak tree has more meaning for us than any other on the farm. It is where Frank asked me to marry him. Not on bended knee or with a ring or champagne. He said, simply: “I don’t want a life without you in it. I never did.”

I could tell from the way he was looking at me, in a blaze of love, he meant something significant by the words.

“Frank. What are you saying?”

He picked me up and carried me around the oak tree, as if we were performing some bizarre pagan ritual. “To marry me, you silly woman. Wasn’t it obvious?”

While the children eat, I find myself watching a boy called William. I know William, of course. There are only twelve in the class and the children have been together for four years now. William’s homelife must be lonely. A strict, older father, a timid, devoutly Christian mother, neither of whom seem to have much time for William and none for the other parents at school. William is never invited to the other children’s houses and, as far as I know, none of them have ever visited him at home either.

More than anything, it’s his clothes that set William apart. In his smart white shirt, corduroy shorts, and Fair Isle pullover he looks like a wartime child, one of the evacuees you saw in photographs sitting disconsolately on their suitcases, clutching a stuffed toy. William is wearing a felt trilby and he cannot stop playing with it. He picks it up in one hand and twirls it on a finger, he throws it in the air and catches it, before putting it back on his head. The hat is a statement of some kind, perhaps his attempt to stand out, but the other children don’t seem to notice. There’s something rather sad about William.

Finally, with tea cleared away, it is time for the target shooting. All the children are excited about it, even the girls, who I imagined might be bored at the idea of firing guns. We line them up in front of two hand-painted targets: red, white, and blue rings with a small black bull’s-eye at the center.

David demonstrates how to hold the air rifle, wedging it into his armpit, so the weight of the gun rests on his chest. “It’s heavy,” he says. “You need to get used to it before you start looking through the sights. Take your time, there’s no rush. Everyone will get a turn.”

He is stern as he talks to them about gun safety and the rules which must be obeyed before a shot is taken.

“Is your pathway clear? Look left to right and behind you to make sure no one is in the way. Always wait for the word ‘clear’ before you fire. Do you understand?” The children stare at him, transfixed. Yes, they say, nodding their heads. Outlining the risks simply feeds their excitement.

David stands beside each shooter, stamping out any silliness before it can begin. Jimmy and Frank are the reloaders, taking each gun as soon as it has been fired and slotting in the next pellet. The boys can hold the guns themselves and most of them hit or get close to the bull’s-eye; with the girls, Frank and Jimmy hold the gun in position, while they get used to the sights, fingers on the trigger, David’s sharp “Clear!” like a shot of adrenaline.

It is when William comes up for his turn that the atmosphere changes. William, I realize too late, is an attention seeker. He stands beside David, squirming and jiggling on the spot, swiveling to grin at the kids behind him.

“Keep still,” David snaps. “Or you won’t see the target.”

I sense it, before it happens. Something repressed in the child, a simmering frustration. He lines up his shot, David shouts “Clear!” and, like a nightmare, William spins a half circle, pointing the gun at the other children, who freeze in shock as he yells: “Take that, suckers!”

David smacks the rifle from his hand with such force it smashes onto William’s sandaled foot and he howls in pain.

David yells, “What were you thinking, you bloody little fool?” and William bursts into tears. There’s something odd about his crying, even then. He’s shocked, embarrassed, his toe is probably bruised and possibly broken, but the way he cries, a tearless, earsplitting wail, feels put on. I catch the bemused glance that passes between Jimmy and Frank.

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?” I say, crouching down to examine William’s foot.

His big toe is bright red, the nail already beginning to discolor—it will bloom from maroon to black in no time.

“It was only a joke, it was meant to be funny,” William says, but David snaps at him.

“Your finger was on the trigger. You could have killed someone. There is nothing funny about murder.”

William buries his face in my chest and I force myself to put an arm around him as we walk back to the farmhouse.

Alison, William’s mother, is waiting in the yard with the other parents. As soon as he sees her, William starts up with the deafening wail, his limp exaggerated.

“Stop that!” Alison says to him. And then to me: “What’s wrong with William’s foot?”

“He’s bruised his toe—” I begin, but David steps out in front of me. I hadn’t realized he was following so closely behind.

“I’ll explain, Beth. I’d like to get across the severity of what just happened. Your son did something so unbelievably stupid and dangerous this afternoon he could have killed someone. The kids were target shooting with air rifles—heavily supervised, I might add, we were rigorous in our safety instructions—but, somehow, William got it into his head it would be funny to swing around and point his gun at the other children. I knocked it out of his hand and that’s how he came to bruise his toe. All I can say is we are very lucky the injury is such a small one. It could have been so much worse.”

“William, shut up!” Alison snaps, silencing her son’s caterwauling in a heartbeat. “Am I to understand the children were playing with guns at the party?”

“Air rifles, Alison,” I say. “Target shooting. It was written on the invitation.”

“What kind of person invites a class of nine-year-olds over to play with guns?”

I see the other mothers watching intently, not sure which camp they should belong to. They all knew about the shooting activity.

“What you really need to be asking yourself,” David says, “is what kind of child, despite repeated instructions about safety, would turn his gun on his classmates? Whether or not he intended to shoot, I didn’t wait to find out.”

I notice how far apart Alison and William are standing, how she hasn’t looked at him or tried to comfort him once, how he cowers as he watches her. I thought she was meek and timid, but this woman is all steel and cold, suppressed anger.

“I should never have let him come. You don’t take enough care. Everyone knows what your family is like.”

“Do tell,” David says. “What are we like?”

“Reckless.” Alison spits the word out, a bad fairy come to ruin the party. “Sooner or later something bad will happen and, when it does, it will be your own fault.”