Pux Cottage had been in the family for over 150 years. Starkey didn’t think it had been decorated since the day it was built. He’d hated the place. Hated the fact that it was miles from anywhere, hated the way the school bus dropped him right outside and the sneering looks and jibes he’d endured whenever it did. The place looked like it should have been bulldozed when Britain was still at war with Hitler.
Starkey hadn’t had the money to start with and there’d been no enthusiasm on his part. Only duty, and the germ of an idea that had grown like Japanese knotweed in his heart. He’d made himself do some work – the plan was to renovate as and when money came in. He’d done exactly that for three months last summer until mid-October when the poor light made it hardly worth his while. The long-term goal was to make it something to post on Airbnb. Something to generate a little income.
And this summer he’d been back to do some maintenance. Essential stuff. Preparatory work.
His father’s job as a driver for a produce manufacturer took him all over the south-west in a liveried lorry, and his mother worked for a local farmer preparing meals and cleaning. They hadn’t had a telephone until he was seventeen.
When his father finally bought a van to use to sell some produce of his own, they would often wait ten minutes before a gap appeared in traffic allowing them to leave the property. Starkey learned to cycle early, but he chose back ways, around the fields, across to Yatton or Congresbury for a bus to get into the city. And, more importantly, the other direction, to where he’d first seen the Turner girls playing in their garden.
The day that changed his life.
The memory, the humiliation, it all came flooding back as he looked around at the familiar lane and the fields beyond. His mind slid back to a warm summer’s evening when the twins brother, Mathew, emerged out of the woods behind him, sixteen years old and bigger than him by a long way. The place the Turner family rented was large, with a big garden bordered by the trees where Starkey hid and watched the girls. He was only a year older than they were and what he longed for then was nothing more than innocent companionship. Someone to play with.
But Mathew Turner had seen him, caught him.
‘Sit on the floor, oik,’ Mathew had said, spitting with hate, tying Kevin’s hands behind his back and binding his feet.
‘What are you doing here, you little perve?’ he’d demanded.
‘Nothing. I-I live—’
‘Hear that, girls? He lives.’
‘I lu-live near the road. Pux Cottage.’
Kevin heard giggles. The girls, he realised, must have walked down behind him. When he tried to turn, Mathew slapped his face, hard.
‘Keep your eyes front, peeper. You’re trespassing, do you know that?’
‘There’s a path in the woods—’
‘Shut up.’ Mathew poked him with a stick. ‘This is our house for the summer and we say it’s trespass, got it?’
The stick was hard against Kevin’s chest. It hurt.
‘What’s your name, oik?
‘Ku-Kevin.’
Mathew laughed, circling. ‘You look like a Ku-Kevin. Hey Kevin, I don’t want you wandering around our property ogling my sisters. That’s bad. I think I need to teach you a lesson, right girls?’
He hoped they’d say no. But they didn’t. They both answered in unison. Spiteful and loud. ‘Yes, teach him a lesson.’
‘Let’s do what we do to little perverts at school. Bag and snag. What do you say?’
‘Bag and snag,’ the girls again, not so confident this time.
‘What’s—’ Kevin began, but never finished as Mathew’s foot thumped into his back and sent him sprawling face first into the grass. The larger boy straddled him, yanking his waistband, pulling down his trousers and pants to below his knees, revealing his bare bottom. They were all laughing, the girls loud and unsure. Laughing at him half-naked in the grass while his face burned with shame. Across the fields, through his tears, he could see the church and the cemetery surrounding it. The dead would be his only witnesses to this assault. And his God, the one his mother made him worship, stayed dumb and blind to his predicament, heedless of his silent prayers for help.
‘Shall I turn him over, girls?’
‘No,’ they squealed.
‘Oh, but we have to. We need to snag a look at his jewels, don’t we, oik?’
Kevin, face to the ground, hands tied behind his back, unable to resist as Mathew rolled him over. Kevin tried to bend his body, but Mathew had one knee on his chest and one on his thighs, exposing the younger boy to the world. He looked up through tear-stained eyes at the girls, who were looking down, laughing at him.
‘Right, go on you two, go back up, I’ll get rid of Kevin here. And say nothing to Mum, yeah? Don’t need to make her worry.’
The girls ran away, squealing with laughter. Kevin wanted the world to open up and swallow him.
‘Now, it’s just you and me, Kev,’ said Mathew. ‘Let’s turn you back over on to your front, shall we?’
Kevin cooperated. Glad of covering himself. But Mathew didn’t get up. He sat on Kevin’s thighs, one hand on his back. At first, Kevin didn’t know what the metallic jangling noise was. But then he realised it was a belt being unbuckled. At first, he thought he was going to be beaten. Twice in his life his father removed his belt for the exact same purpose. But that wasn’t why Mathew Turner now loosened his trousers.
Up until the older boy put his knee between his thighs to open them, Kevin had no idea what was happening. But a minute later, he knew. The pain was excruciating. Mathew’s breath on his neck, his teeth in his shoulder. He felt it all again now as if it had happened yesterday. The weight of the larger boy, the acceleration. When it was over, Mathew got up, undid the rope and walked away with one last sentence.
‘Tell anyone and I’ll tell them you took your trousers off in front of two little girls. They’ll send you away to pervert school. Don’t let me see you around here again, Kevin. You know what will happen if I do.’
* * *
A car horn from the road not forty yards away brought Starkey back to the present, nausea from the sickening memory making him breathe through his mouth to control it. He wiped sweat from his face and tried to slow his breathing, staring at the rutted lane, remembering the way rain would fill the deep gouges in the earth for months from October through to May. The pungent smell of sprayed manure from the farms. Remembering the years he’d spent jumping over these puddles and never quite managing to keep his shoes clean so that he’d had to clean and polish them night after long winter’s night. How many of those nights had he spent dreaming of getting away, of becoming someone other than the humiliated little boy? He’d lost count, and yet, each one had seemed an eternity.
He’d moved out of Pux Cottage at eighteen and never moved back. Despite the proximity of traffic just yards from the front door, he’d been incredibly isolated in this place, and the incident with the Turners had made him frightened of being out in the fields alone. He’d watched the cars and buses and lorries from his bedroom longingly, wondering about them, wondered why no one ever stopped. If anyone ever bought the place, it would be to knock it down and perhaps fashion a better entrance, a safer way in and out. But Dunroamin was invisible to the hundreds and thousands of drivers and passengers who drove past and barely caught a glimpse of the grey, drab building behind the overgrown hedge.