All the Little Children
Jo Furniss
Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.
—“A Shropshire Lad,” A. E. Housman
Chapter One
Crouched in the lea of an ancient oak tree, the safest place I could find on the sparse margins of the forest, I hid from my own children. Hunkered down like prey, I ferreted out my mobile phone; I just needed five minutes to take a work call, that’s all. Then the little terrors could have me. But Billy came crashing through the undergrowth, forcing me to flick the ringer to silent. Late-summer foliage shrouded me.
“Mum-may?”
His voice was close. I imagined his kissy lips pursed in confusion. Maybe he could smell me, like baby birds do? His footsteps faltered and he called, “Marlene?” The realization that he thought I would answer to my adult name more readily than “Mummy” sent me into a swoon of guilt. I knew I should jump out and gather him up. Play the role of fun mummy—surprise! But the phone vibrated in my hand. Billy’s footsteps moved away; he trotted toward our campsite, still calling. His aunt’s voice sang out in reply, as I knew it would if I waited long enough, and Billy whooped as he was swept into one of her hugs. Their entwined laughter tumbled through the trees to taunt me.
If only I could stack up my life like one of Billy’s wooden towers, into an edifice of compartmentalized blocks. If only I could turn my back for five minutes without those pretty boxes tumbling down. Oopsy-daisy, as Billy might say. I tapped the screen to answer the call. The line connected to a hollow wind tunnel and cut off. Return call. Line engaged. I tried again, but a voice said the number was not available. And finally, the connection cut altogether.
“Sod China.” I hoped the sentiment would reach my unreachable Chinese employee who was screwing up my day. “And Shropshire,” I said to this remote hole in the forest where I’d dragged us for a long weekend in order to bond with my kids. “Sod them all,” I said to a rare patch of blue sky visible through the canopy. It was hard enough raising three children without my staff regressing the moment I went off-line.
One of those sudden forest breezes caused the oak to shudder around me. A lilt of Billy’s laughter wafted by. Amid the green of the forest, it sounded magical, like fairy music. I pushed myself to my feet, too big and too cumbersome for this realm. Too adult.
It was Saturday. Still morning. Cloudy with a high risk of tantrums. The kids had spent the whole summer bugging us—my sister-in-law, Joni, and me, that is—to go camping. The trip was a consolation prize for Joni, something to look forward to after she’d had to cancel plans to visit her mother back home in Pennsylvania. But as the school holidays ticked by, I had so much work, so much travel, that we left it to the last weekend.
I booked a rare day off work so we could get away early on the Friday, but a crisis broke out at my factory in China. My business partner assured me she would handle it; I should go. And when I wavered, my husband got his knickers in a knot. I’d promised Julian that I would keep our progeny out of his preened hair for the weekend while he packed up and moved out, in order to, in his words, “give you some head space.”
As I sneaked out of my hiding place and followed the path out of the forest, the trees swelled and roiled in the breeze, their leaves like thousands of tiny hands applauding in sarcasm.
My car door opened with an echoing creak. It really was dead quiet in the forest. I stepped up onto the running board of the Beast, breathing in the new-leather smell of the SUV’s boat-like cabin. Don’t know why we’d even bothered packing tents; we’d be more comfortable sleeping inside this cocoon. My father always said you had to run in a new vehicle, but the long drive into the countryside had done the Beast good. Its gleaming flanks had been blooded with a go-faster stripe of authentic off-road muck. It was in its element. Shame it had to be demoted back to the school run on Monday morning.
I plugged my phone into the car’s charger, skimming past e-mails and texts that Julian had sent before I’d even been gone a day: he probably couldn’t find something in the house. But then again, he couldn’t find his arse with his own two hands, and I’d had enough of mollycoddling him. He wanted time on his own; let him find out what that entails. The man was an oversized Alice in Wonderland, just as rigid and self-righteous, whose world had shrunk when it should have grown. It held no job, no childcare duties, not even one of his pie-in-the-sky business schemes or, since his knees had given out, a vague plan to train for a triathlon. His life had grown so small that the tiniest detail now loomed large. Minor changes to the household routine—the cleaner putting the breakfast cereal in the wrong cupboard, for example—would rile him. Heaven forbid he should have to locate one of his innumerable gadgets. I deleted his pleas for a return call; let him go it alone—see if he could survive one weekend without me.
After Julian’s messages, I’d received nothing else—no e-mails or calls—which was the point of coming away, but still. When I tried to call Aurora, my business partner, an electronic voice told me the network was busy.
“So I can get a connection when I’m in China, but not in bloody Shropshire?” I muttered.
Something standing right behind me gave a gruff of assent.
Adrenaline flashed up my spine. The phone slipped out of my hand and bounced once on the seat. I should jump into the car and lock the door, I thought. I should scream for help. Go on, scream—scream! Warn the children. I tried to arrange my throat, but when nothing came out, I twisted round and saw a dog, some kind of giant mastiff. A starburst of relief prickled my limbs.
“Hello,” I said, only for the dog to advance a pace and press the side of its head against my abdomen. I laid a palm across its skull, which was a good couple of inches broader than my hand. “You’re a big fellow,” I told him. “I’ve ridden ponies smaller than you.” His tail swatted the ground once.