Thirty years ago #2
“—bring back that new medicine Maclure wrote me about. I hope they’ll be open to it, seeing as how sick everyone’s been for
the past week. I’ve never seen the flu hit so hard. But if it’s not herbalism plain and simple, they don’t trust it.”
“They will.” A creak of bedsprings. “I’m sure if you keep trying—”
“I will, dove. All I’ve ever wanted was to make life better here. It’s improved a little—hasn’t it? You remember what things
were like when we were young . . . But it’s an uphill battle. Seacliff doesn’t change.”
Arthur crept back into bed; evidently, he’d hear nothing more about himself. On the table between his bed and Charlotte’s,
the frames of his glasses were dented. He’d have to find a different route home tomorrow, if he could.
He lay awake for a long time, wondering how to change his father’s mind.
He still hadn’t figured it out when morning dawned.
Charlotte had already stumbled out of the room, half asleep but lured by the smell of eggs frying. Floorboards creaked as
George emerged from their parents’ room.
His footsteps paused at the children’s door. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut.
A soft knock.
“Arthur?” A brief pause. “I’m going now.”
Arthur’s eyes prickled, but he clenched his jaw. He cried far too much for a boy his age, about any number of silly things.
Like when he accidentally stepped on an ant going about its little ant life and squished it. An innocent victim of his daydreaming
and plodding human feet. His father going to Port Lorne without him was undoubtedly sillier than that, since it didn’t involve
murder.
“I know you’re disappointed,” George said. “You’ll understand one day, when you have your own bairns.” A long pause, more
unbearable than the last. “Well . . . I’m off. Be back in a fortnight or so.”
Arthur was determined not to go out and see him off as he usually did, but he couldn’t help saying, “Bye, Dad.” But the floorboards’
creaking swallowed it, he said it so quietly, and his father didn’t hear him. The back door slammed.
Arthur turned over in bed, burying his face in his pillow. He should’ve gone out and said goodbye properly, but boys his age
were supposed to be stubborn, weren’t they, and everyone thought he ought to be more like other boys his age.
The window muffled his parents’ goodbye out in the garden. Charlotte asked their father to bring a doll back for her; George
promised he would. Arthur’s ears snagged on his own name, but whatever had been said was finished before he could sit up and
strain for a better listen.
Another knock. His mother, this time, but she didn’t wait for a response before entering.
She was short and slender, with ruddy, freckled skin and blue eyes warmer and less watery than her son’s.
She disliked her freckles and had tried any number of things to do away with both her own and Charlotte’s (none successful), but Arthur wished he had freckles like they did.
Having been warned too much sun would cause them, he’d spent most of last summer outdoors with his face turned skyward.
All he’d achieved was the most magnificent sunburn of his young life.
“Well, now!” Eileen said. “Sulking in your room while your father goes off without so much as a fare-thee-well. I’d never
have expected it of you.”
Arthur reddened, regretting it, but she cried out; she’d caught sight of his bruises. Perching beside him, she grabbed his
chin.
“Mam—” Arthur wriggled free. “Mam, it’s all right. I’m fine.”
“The state of you! And still you’d not let your father in? I’m sure he could’ve done something for you.”
Shame burned through him. “He did. Last night.”
Arthur hunched, mussing his hair with his hands.
“I just wanted to go with him,” he mumbled.
His mother softened. “I know. One day. Here.”
She pressed something into his hand. His father’s silver acorn on its chain, which George had worn around his neck every day
for as long as Arthur could remember.
“He wants you to hold on to it until he gets back. Mind you don’t lose it.” Eileen bit her lip. “Might be best to leave it
home for lessons.”
She touched his cheek, too close to his bruised eye. Arthur flinched.
“It looks awful,” his mother said.
He shrugged, certain it had looked worse before his father had dotted cream onto it. He clutched the acorn so tightly it dug
into his palm. A lump swelled in his throat.
“If you’re sure you’re all right—” Eileen glanced at his split lip, a wobble in her own as she stood “—you’d best get dressed.
Lessons start soon.”
Arthur swallowed. He didn’t give a fig about lessons, or what might happen today when he left them. All he could think of was George, tending his bruised eye and split lip. Not mentioning it to Eileen because Arthur had asked him not to.
Arthur flung himself out of bed, still in his nightshirt, and dashed through his father’s workroom at the back of the cottage
and outside.
“Dad!” he shrieked. “Dad!”
The garden glistened with dew. Grass dampened his feet and the hem of his nightshirt. The garden gate was swinging, but the
small stretch of heather between the fence and the forest’s edge was empty. The only sign his father had been there was the
narrow trail of flattened heather from the gate to the trailhead.
Arthur’s chest heaved. He barreled through the gate, but his mother gripped his shoulder.
“He’s gone, Arthur. Come, now, or you’ll be late for school.”
“I have to tell him.” Arthur clutched the acorn to his chest, eyes welling. “I didn’t mean it.”
“He knows, sweetheart. Come get breakfast, won’t you? Charlotte’s eaten so much sausage already there won’t be any left if
you don’t hurry. You can tell him you’re sorry when he gets back.”
Arthur wiped his eyes. “Okay.”
A fortnight. Just a fortnight. Then George would return, and Arthur could fling himself into his father’s arms and tell him
he was sorry. He’d ask George to tell him more about Port Lorne and his journey through the forest, whether he’d seen the
Lord of the Wood, and the whole thing would be forgotten.
For two weeks, that was what Arthur told himself would happen.
Instead, his father never came back.