Missing Joseph

Who’s there?”

Footsteps sloshed across the yard. Conversation ensued. Maggie strained to hear it, but the voices were low. A woman said quietly, “Is it Frank?” at a distance and a child’s voice cried, “Mummy, I want to see.”

Maggie pulled the blanket closer round her. She clutched on to Nick. “Where c’n we go? Nick, can we run?”

“Just be quiet. He ought to…Damn.”

“What?”

But she heard it herself:

“You don’t mind if I have a look round, do you?”

“Not at all. Two of them, you said it was?”

“A boy and a girl. They’d be wearing school uniforms. The boy might have had a bomber jacket on.”

“Never saw a hair of anything like that. But go on and have a look. Let me get my boots on and I’ll join you. Need a torch?”

“Got one, thanks.”

Footsteps went in the direction of the barn. Maggie grabbed Nick’s jacket. “Let’s go, Nick. Now! We can run to the wall. We can hide in the pasture. We can—”

“What about the dogs?”

“What?”

“They’ll follow and give us away. Besides, the other bloke said he was going to help in the search.” Nick turned from the window and looked around the shed. “Our best hope is to hide out in here.”

“Hide out? How? Where?”

“Move the sacks. Get behind them.”

“But the rats!”

“No choice. Come on. You’ve got to help.”

The farmer began to tromp across the yard in the direction of Nick’s father as they dropped their blankets and started pulling the sacks away from the wall. They heard Nick’s father call out, “Nothing in the barn,” and the other man say, “Have a go with the shed, here,” and the sound of their approach spurred Maggie into a fury of pulling sacks far enough from the wall to create a burrow of safety. She had retreated within it — Nick had as well — when the light from a torch beamed in through the window.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Nick’s father said.

A second light joined the first; the shed became brighter. “The dogs sleep in here. Can’t say as I’d want to join them even if I was on the run.” His torch clicked off. Maggie let out her breath. She heard footsteps in the muck. Then, “Best to have a closer look, though,” and the light reappeared, stronger, and shining from the doorway.

A dog’s whine accompanied the sound of wet boots slapping on the floor of the shed. Nails ticked against the stones and approached the sacks. Maggie said, “No” in despair without making any sound and felt Nick move a step closer.

“Here’s something,” the farmer said. “Someone’s messed with that chest.”

“Those blankets belong there on the fl oor?”

“Can’t say they do.” The light darted round the room, corners to ceiling. It glinted off the discarded toilet and shone on the dust on the rocking chair. It came to rest on the top of the sacking and illuminated the wall above Maggie’s head. “Ah,” the farmer said. “Here we’ve got it. Step out here in the open, youngsters. Step out now or I’ll send the dogs in to help you make up your minds.”

“Nick?” his father said. “That you, lad? Have you got the girl with you? Come out of there. Now.”

Maggie rose first, trembling, blinking into the torchlight, trying to say, “Please don’t be angry with Nick, Mr. Ware. He only wanted to help me,” but beginning to weep instead, thinking, Don’t send me home, I don’t want to go home.

Mr. Ware said, “What in God’s name were you thinking of, Nick? Get out here with you. Jesus Christ, I ought to beat you silly. You know how worried your mum’s been, lad?”

Nick was turning his head, eyes narrowed against the light that his father was shining into his face. “Sorry,” he said.

Mr. Ware harumphed. “Sorry won’t go far to mend your fences with me. You know you’re trespassing here? You know these people could’ve had the police after you? What’re you thinking of? Haven’t you no better sense than that? And what were you planning to do with this girl?”

Nick shifted his weight, silent.

“You’re filthy.” Mr. Ware shone the light up and down. “God almighty, just look at the sight of you. You look like a tramp.”

“No, please,” Maggie cried, rubbing her wet nose against the sleeve of her coat. “It isn’t Nick. It’s me. He was only helping me.”

Mr. Ware harumphed again and clicked off his torch. The farmer did likewise. He’d been standing to one side, holding the light in their direction but otherwise looking out the window. When Mr. Ware said, “Out to the car with both of you, then,” the farmer scooped up the two blankets from the fl oor and followed them out.

The dogs were milling round Mr. Ware’s old Nova, snuffling at the tyres and the ground alike. The exterior lights were shining from the house and in their glow Maggie could see the condition of her clothes for the fi rst time. They were crusted with mud and streaked with dirt. In places the lichen from the walls she’d climbed over had deposited patches of grey-green slime. Her shoes were clotted with muck out of which sprouted bracken and straw. The sight was a stimulus for a new onslaught of tears. What had she been thinking? Where were they supposed to go, looking like this? With no money, no clothing, and no plan to guide them, what had she been thinking?

She clutched Nick’s arm as they slogged to the car. She sobbed, “I’m sorry, Nick. It’s my fault. I’ll tell your mummy. You didn’t mean harm. I’ll explain. I will.”

“Get in the car, the both of you,” Mr. Ware said gruffly. “We’ll do our deciding about who’s at fault later.” He opened the driver’s door and said to the farmer, “It’s Frank Ware. I’m at Skelshaw Farm up Winslough direction. I’m in the book if you discover this lot did any damage to your place.”

The farmer nodded but said nothing. He shuffled his feet in the muck and looked as if he wished they’d be off. He was saying, “Funny blokes, out of the way,” to the dogs when the farmhouse door opened. A child of perhaps six years old stood framed in the light in her nightgown and slippers.

She giggled and waved, calling, “Uncle Frank, ’lo. Won’t you let Nickie stay the night with us please?” Her mother dashed into the doorway and pulled her back, casting a frantic and apologetic look towards the car.

Maggie slowed, then stopped. She turned to Nick. She looked from him to his father to the farmer. She saw the resemblance fi rst— how their hair grew the same although the colour was different; how their noses each had a bump on the bridge; how they held their heads. And then she saw the rest — the dogs, the blankets, the direction they’d been walking, Nick’s insistence that they rest at this particular farm, his form at the window standing and waiting when she had awakened…

Her insides went so calm that at fi rst she thought her heart had stopped beating. Her face was still wet, but her tears disappeared. She stumbled once in the muck, grabbed the Nova’s door handle, and felt Nick take her arm. From somewhere that sounded like a thousand miles away, she heard him say her name. She heard him say, “Please, Mag. Listen. I didn’t know what else…” but then fog filled her head and she didn’t hear the rest. She climbed into the rear seat of the car. Directly in her line of vision a pile of old roof slates lay beneath a tree, and she focussed on them. They were large, much bigger than she’d imagined they would be, and they looked like tombstones. She counted them slowly, one two three, and was up to a dozen when she felt the car dip as Mr. Ware got into it and as Nick climbed in and sat next to her on the rear seat. She could tell he was looking at her, but it didn’t matter. She continued counting — thirteen fourteen fi fteen. Why did Nick’s uncle have so many slates? And why did he keep them under the tree? Sixteen seventeen eighteen.

Nick’s father was unrolling his window. “Ta, Kev,” he said quietly. “Don’t give it a thought, all right?”

The other man came to the car and leaned against it. He spoke to Nick. “Sorry, lad,” he said. “We couldn’t get the lass to go to bed once she heard you were on your way. She’s that fond of you, she is.”

“S’okay,” Nick said.