The Bones of Summer (9 page)

They left when it was almost dark, making their separate ways home.

All the next day, Daniel was smiling. Even Dad noticed. Over a lunch of cold meats and pickle washed down with tap water, he coughed and when Daniel looked at him he was frowning.

“Something up with you?”

“No, sir.” He shrugged. “Should it be?”

His frown deepened. “Remember to show respect, Daniel. It's the Lord's command that a boy respect his father. Don't ever forget that.”

“No. I won't.” Daniel thought he would never be allowed to forget it. He also knew that if he didn't come up with some kind of reason for his happiness, his father might be inclined to dig deeper. He couldn't allow that. “I ... I've been reading my bible more recently. The Book of James. It's ... good.”

After a tense few seconds, his father sat back, his frown gone. He closed his eyes and began to mutter under his breath in tongues. Daniel swallowed and tried to ignore the gabbling. He knew enough not to say anything though, to wait until his father was finished. When he had, he opened his eyes again and gave his son a rare and brief smile.

“That's good to hear,” he said. “The Lord is at work in your life, Daniel. You must allow Him to have his way. Perhaps we can pray together later. I've work to do now, but I'll see you this evening. We can talk then.”

When he was gone, closing the kitchen door carefully behind him, Daniel stared at the congealing food, and tried not to think about God. Instead, he thought of Michael.

For the next five evenings, they met at the hill and spent an hour, maybe two, together. It was always good and always different. The fifth time it rained on them, a summer squall, and they laughed and used their clothes to wipe grass smears from their skin. Sheltering in the trees, arms wrapped around each other, they watched a rabbit running for cover.

“How old are you, Michael?” Daniel asked when the rain eased.

“Does it matter?”

“No. I want to know, that's all.”

He smiled. “I'm thirty-one. I live and work in London. I'm an insurance consultant, a job I dislike, and I have never owned a pet. Of any kind. I enjoy opera. And you're—”

“Seventeen.”

“Yes, I know. I asked your father yesterday.”

“About me?”

“Yes.”

Michael said nothing else, but his answer made Daniel shiver. Still he continued. “Okay. I'm seventeen. I live in Devon. I'm taking A levels in History, French, and Art, but I don't know what I want to do. My mother left us when I was six and I've never seen an opera. I like walking, and ... and you. Michael, why were you crying before, here on the hill?”

For an answer, he drew Daniel close and kissed him.

“Daniel,” he said, as if tasting the name. Then he looked away, into the trees, and Daniel waited. He didn't know what else to do.

After a while, Michael spoke again.

“Someone hurt me,” he said. “Someone I'd been with for a long time. Someone I loved. I needed to get away, stop the darkness inside. So I came here for a holiday. I came here, and I met you.”

Daniel's throat was dry and his eyes burning. “And what do you feel now?”

“Different.” He smiled at him. “Happier.”

“Then there's no need to cry. Please.” He shook Michael's arm and forced him to look at him. “
Please
, don't leave at the end of this week. We can be together, can't we?
Somehow?
”

“Daniel, I—”

"Daniel?"

When he swung around, eyes blinking back tears, he already knew who it was. His father stood, framed by leaves, his face in shadow.

After that there was a quarrel. So much anger. He'd tried to reason with his father, but it had done no good. His father had slammed him back against the tree. In return Daniel had lashed out and there'd been a fight. He thought Michael might have tried to stop them, but he couldn't remember properly. Didn't want to. He must have been knocked out.

When he woke in his own bed the next day, chest and face bruised, and stumbled to the front door, brushing his father aside as if he were air, the cottage was empty and the car gone. The following week Daniel left home. He never went back.

And he never saw Michael Harris again.

* * * *

When, in the here and now, Craig stopped talking, his childhood seemed to be all around him. Hidden in the trees and in the mist covering the valley. He wished he could see the river but it was still too dark.

Paul coughed. “Did you try to ring Michael at all? Or see him? After you left, I mean. That is, if you went to London first after you left here.”

“Yeah. I went to London. I didn't know how to find him. I had no number or anything. Anyway, I thought ... well, I thought my father must have scared him off or he'd had second thoughts about me or something. Either way, he wouldn't want to see a boy from the sticks again, would he? I was just a holiday fling. He probably thought I was too young, and I suppose he'd be right.” He took a small branch from where they were sitting and stabbed it into the earth around him a few times before dropping it.

“Maybe. Though age isn't the be-all and end-all when it comes to relationships, you know.” Paul gave a short laugh. “Though I shouldn't be the one to say that.”

Craig caught his frown, even in the still-dim light. “Why not?”

Paul swallowed and folded his arms, as if holding in memories. Or words.

“Tell me,” Craig pursued, glad of the change in focus away from his own past. “Bloody hell, Paul, I can't be the only one spilling my guts this morning. It's your turn. Officially. Go on.”

“Okay,” he said, rewarding Craig with a brief smile. “Okay, but it's difficult.”

“Hey. So what isn't?”

Paul took a deep breath, stared straight ahead, swallowed again and then finally spoke. “When I was nineteen, I had an affair—a few weeks only—with someone who was fifteen. His name was David. He lived next door and I thought I loved him. I didn't. I was just very lonely. It was stupid and very wrong.”

He stopped abruptly, as if what he'd said had surprised him so much that he didn't know what else to say.

Craig reached out, touched his leg. He kept his hand there. “What happened?”

“Nothing much. And everything, I suppose. We were found out, of course. David and his family moved, and my father was the angriest I'd ever seen him. I dropped out of uni and never went back. Even now I sometimes wonder how David is doing, hope he's okay.
God
, but I suppose we all have unfinished business.”

Craig let the silence hang between them for a while before speaking. He found it wasn't uncomfortable.

“True,” he said at last. “The past can be pretty scary. Thank God we're here now. There is one thing though.”

“Which is?”

“I wish I'd been David. Lucky bastard.” Then he kissed Paul.

They ate breakfast at Andrea's. Afterward, while they were cleaning up, Paul surprised him again.

“Can I make a suggestion?” he said, the question aimed at them both.

“Please do,” Andrea replied as Craig simply nodded.

“You said, Andrea, that Mr. Clutton quarreled with his church before he vanished. The police will have already questioned them, of course, but, as I always say, there's never any harm in going over the same ground. Would either of you mind if I asked them a few questions as well? On an informal basis. Sometimes you can get more out of people if you don't have any official status. What do you think?”

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Chapter Eight

Craig's instinctive answer was yes. Even though it meant facing the Fellowship again. Andrea was more uncertain, not wanting Paul to put himself out or for the neighbors to be disturbed.

“It's okay,” Paul reassured her. “I can be subtle. It's my job. Besides, as Craig is down here already, trying to find out where his father is, then it's the most natural thing in the world to ask them.”

She could do nothing but agree with that. Ten minutes later, Paul and Craig were in Paul's car heading to a farm on the other side of the village. Andrea thought that Reggie Birt, the church leader, was more than likely to be at home or in one of the outlying fields. Craig noticed that Paul hadn't suggested they ring first. Perhaps he was hoping for the element of surprise.

In the car it was Paul who spoke first.

“Tell me about this church then,” he said. “What's so different about it?”

Craig took a breath. And the memories came rushing back. The Jerusalem Pentecostal Fellowship had been a major part of his childhood and teenage years. It was where his mother and father had met, although, looking back, he realized his mother's commitment to it had waned before she'd left them. Part of the reason for her going, he supposed. Still, without the Fellowship, he wouldn't have been born, would he? They were a small, charismatic church based only in this part of Devon. The founder had been Reggie Birt's father, but of course Craig couldn't remember him. Reggie himself must be in his seventies by now. What Craig could remember were the three-times-a-week prayer meetings, the two-hours long—at least—services on Sundays, all of these in a house that had been converted for the purpose. As a boy, he'd grown to hate the hard wooden chairs made to fit the grown-ups, the rambling prayers, the chorus-singing, the speaking in tongues, the interminable bible readings and, worse of all, the talks from Reggie Birt. When he was twelve, his father had asked him to start baptism classes, but for the first time in his life he'd refused and kept on refusing. In spite of being prayed over in meetings, in spite of the lash of his father's tongue, and hand. In spite of long conversations, or rather monologues, with Reggie and all the guilt for sin he'd been made to feel. Andrea had helped him during all this; he wouldn't forget that. Ever. She'd said, even to his father's face, that Craig's—or Daniel as he was then—choice should be respected and they should let him be. He'd been glad to have someone to talk to who wasn't part of the whole church structure. If he hadn't had that, he might have given in to them in the end. And finally, after what seemed like months, they had let him alone. Not just let him alone either. They had cast him out of the church, asked him officially to leave them, and they'd never spoken with him again. If he saw any of the Fellowship in the street or at the shops or even, once, at school, they'd simply turn their backs on him and walk away. If they said anything at all, they quoted Matthew Chapter 18 at him:
If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault.... If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

Even now he could remember the words. They'd obeyed them too. His own father had only begun speaking to him again after two more months. And that barely. Almost too much for a young boy to cope with, and he was surprised he'd survived at all. Now Craig wondered how much his rebellion had affected his father's relationship with the Fellowship. At home, things had certainly never been the same afterward. Telling Paul this, as briefly as he could, he wondered too if any outsider could ever really understand what it had been like.

As they turned into Reggie Birt's farmhouse driveway, Paul glanced at him, frowning. “God, that must have been pretty bloody. I used to know ... a Baptist but I've never come across a fundamentalist sect. And tongues too. What's that sort of church called again?”

“Charismatic,” Craig replied. “Never something I did though. It always terrified me.”

“I'm not surprised.” As he put the handbrake on, Paul leaned over and squeezed Craig's hand. “Come on then; let's see if the charismatic fundamentalist Mr. Birt is in.”

The thick-set young man with the receding hairline who opened the front door wasn't anyone Craig recognized. Neither was he someone who used words much. When Paul asked for Mr. Birt, the only answer was a shake of the head. When Craig followed this up by asking if he knew where he was, the young man nodded and only then did he speak.

“He's on the West Field,” he said with a Devon accent almost impossible to understand. “Where I just come from. Mending fences.”

Craig didn't need to ask where that was and a few moments later they were on their way. “It might be muddy,” he said. “We should have brought boots.”

Paul shrugged. “Never mind. We'll have to manage.”

Not only was the West Field muddy, but it was bitterly cold too. The wind from the north roared through and by the time they reached Reggie Birt's distant figure, Craig was shivering inside his jacket.

As they approached, Reggie Birt straightened up. He hadn't changed much in the years since Craig had last seen him. He was a tall, gaunt man with gray hair and gnarled hands. This morning, he was wearing dirty overalls and mud-encrusted boots. Around his neck hung a large wooden cross. It was the cleanest thing on him.

Reggie shaded his eyes with his hands and blinked at them. Like the farm laborer in his home, he said nothing, and it was up to Paul to break the impasse. Craig was glad of it; the sight of the man had felt like a punch in the gut and it would have been beyond him to think of what to say.

“Good morning, Mr. Birt,” Paul said. “My name is Paul Maloney. I've come down from London today with my friend, Craig Robertson, and—”

“I know who you are,” Reggie Birt interrupted, staring at Craig, his hand reaching for the cross at his neck. “I recognize Daniel. You don't need to tell me things I already know.”

Craig swallowed. “My name's not Daniel anymore, Mr. Birt. I changed it. I'm Craig now.”

The old man shook his head. “You can't change what God has given you. Daniel's a good name, a biblical name. Denying it is like denying the Lord. It's a sin.”

“That may or may not be the case, Mr. Birt,” Paul cut in, his voice calm. “We certainly have no wish to offend you. But as you may know, Craig's father, James Clutton, has gone missing and we're trying to find out what might have happened to him, where he might be now.”

“The police have already asked me those questions. I could tell them nothing. I don't know where James is. The Fellowship is praying for his safe return.”

“I understand that, but Craig is worried about his father. He thought you could help.”