Crow Boy Read online

  ‘Another of your strange Sassenach customs?’ she asked him. ‘I wouldn’t worry. They’ll all be doing the laundry in a while and there’s plenty of soap and hot water to be had there.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re working with food now!’

  Missie Grierson waved away his worries and gave him an inquiring look.

  ‘Don’t make me regret giving you a chance,’ she advised him. ‘Now, I’ve been thinking about how we might make best use of you around here. How are you with pigs?’

  Tom actually took a step back in surprise. ‘Pigs?’ he echoed. ‘You mean like . . . real pigs?’

  ‘No, I mean straw ones,’ said Missie Grierson and, when he seemed to relax a little, she added, ‘Of course, real pigs, do you know of any other kind? What experience have you with ‘em?’

  ‘Well, I’m fond of a bacon sandwich,’ said Tom. ‘If that helps?’

  Missie Grierson shook her head. ‘I mean, have you looked after them?’ she cried.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one until today,’ he admitted. ‘And that one was dead. Before that, I’ve only seen them in photographs.’

  ‘In where?’

  ‘I mean, like . . . in pictures?’

  This caused even more merriment among the orphans.

  ‘He’s never seen a pig!’ echoed Alison gleefully, ‘Except in pictures!’

  ‘Well, I’m from the city,’ argued Tom. ‘You don’t get pigs in the city, do you? You only ever see them out in the . . .’ His voice trailed away. ‘Oh right, this is a city . . . and . . . somebody was chopping up a pig on the way here, so . . . I suppose you do have them, right?’

  ‘Of course!’ cried Morag. ‘The best porkers on the Close!’

  ‘Ask anybody,’ said Alison proudly. ‘You haven’t tasted pork until you’ve tried some of ours. The secret’s in what we feed them.’

  Missie Grierson waved to silence her. ‘Too much jibber-jabber,’ she said. ‘Morag, show Tom where he’ll be working. And mind you don’t stay out there all day. We need to make a start on the laundry.’

  The girl nodded, wiped her hands on her apron and then, stepping away from the sink, she stooped and picked up a big iron bucket filled with potato peelings and other scraps of thrown-away food. She swung her head to indicate that Tom should follow her and led him across the kitchen to a door, which she barged open with one shoulder to reveal a small, sun-blasted yard at the back of the house. She stepped outside and Tom followed – then almost reeled backwards as the smell hit him full in the face.

  ‘There,’ said Morag, grinning. ‘Here are our lovely ladies, all ready to meet you.’ Several huge pink shapes were waddling around in the mud-filled yard, snuffling and grunting contentedly. Morag started pointing to the pigs, identifying each of them in turn. ‘That one’s Bessie, she’s my favourite; she’s so wise she can almost talk to you. That one with the black ear, that’s Mary; you need to watch her ‘cos she can be a bit of a handful. The one with all the wee bairns around her is Matilda and . . . Tom, whatever’s wrong with you?’

  He was hunched over, desperately trying not to heave. The smell was unbelievable, quite the most disgusting stench he had ever encountered, and he was almost afraid to breathe because it felt as though the foul air was burning his lungs. He turned to head back through the doorway in to the house but Morag caught his sleeve and pulled him further into the yard.

  ‘Ach, come on with ye!’ she chided him.

  ‘I can’t!’ gasped Tom. ‘What about the awful smell?’

  Morag grinned mischievously. ‘Oh, don’t worry, they’ll soon get used to it!’ She laughed delightedly at his outraged expression. ‘Come on, it’s no’ that bad.’

  ‘It’s ‘orrible,’ snorted Tom. He had pulled a grubby tissue from his pocket and was holding it over his mouth and nose. ‘How can you stand it?’

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it. Goodness, you Sassenachs must lead an odd kind of life, if you’ve never smelled pigs. Here . . .’ She set down the bucket of slops. ‘Perhaps you’d like to feed ‘em?’ She indicated an empty trough on the far side of the yard. ‘Just dump it all in there,’ she suggested.

  Tom looked for a clear path to the trough but soon realised there wasn’t one. It meant wading through an ankle-deep slurry of mud and excrement to reach it. ‘These are my school shoes,’ he protested.

  Morag looked down at her battered old boots. ‘These are my only ones, but there’s just the one way to get to that trough, unless you know how to fly. Go on with ye and stop acting like a baby.’

  He picked up the bucket and began to wade grimly over to the trough. His feet sank to the ankles, the thick glop tugging at them, threatening to pull his shoes right off. Every time he lifted a leg, a fresh wave of the stench flowed around him and he could feel his eyes filling with moisture. To make matters worse, the pigs were clearly aware of the reason for his visit and they came charging over to him to root at the bucket, their great bristling bodies jostling him, nearly knocking him over.

  ‘Don’t lose your footing,’ Morag shouted helpfully. ‘Pigs will eat anything they find on the ground.’

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ he muttered. He made it to the trough and upended the bucket of slops into it. He was instantly surrounded by a crowd of grunting pigs, eager to be the first to get their noses into the food. Tom was nearly knocked flying by Bessie as she brushed one massive shoulder against him, but he somehow managed to keep his balance and started to wade grimly back to Morag. When he finally emerged on to drier ground, he looked down to see that his feet were two clumps of evil-smelling muck.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with these?’ he asked.

  ‘They really suit you,’ said Morag – but not in her own voice. Tom glanced up in surprise, to see that the girl’s pretty face was flickering and melting like a dodgy DVD.

  ‘Morag?’ he whispered.

  But she was no longer Morag. She had grown another foot in height, her long blonde tresses replaced by a short auburn bob. ‘I think you should take them,’ said Mum. ‘They look really cool.’

  Tom looked down again to see that the two blobs of muck had been suddenly, inexplicably, replaced by a pair of bright red Converse sneakers – while the filthy ground beneath them had turned into a stretch of clean blue carpet. He looked up again in dull amazement. Mum was just standing there, smiling at his astonished expression. ‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’ she asked him. But before he could even think of an answer to that, another figure stepped into view from behind him. It was Dad – Dad dressed in an immaculate black suit with a crisp white shirt and a black silk tie. He was grinning as though everything was fine and dandy.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted. ‘What do you say? Do you want them or not?’

  Seven

  Tom looked around in stunned silence. He knew exactly where he was. He was in the Schuh store on Market Street in Manchester. He’d been here a few times but never with his Mum and Dad. In fact, he’d called here only last Saturday . . . at least, it seemed to him that it had been last Saturday, though he could no longer be sure – he’d seen the red Converse boots in the window and told himself that he’d treat himself to a pair when he got some birthday money. Now it seemed like his parents were offering to buy them for him, but . . . there were more pressing concerns right now.

  ‘How . . . how did I get here?’ he croaked.

  Mum and Dad stared at him for a moment, as though waiting for a punch-line. Then they exchanged glances and shrugged.

  ‘I blame you,’ said Mum, jovially, a tone of voice she never used when she was talking to Dad. ‘You’ve been working him too hard. Poor lad’s lost his mind.’

  Yes, maybe that’s it, thought Tom glumly. He’d come back from the seventeenth century with his brains scrambled. How else was he to explain this?

  ‘He hasn’t worked that hard,’ protested Dad, laughing. ‘But he has done brilliantly. Four A’s!’ He looked at Tom. ‘And I said if you got three, I’d buy you the boots.’<
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  ‘A’s?’ Tom stared at them. ‘I’ve got A’s? In what?’

  Dad looked confused. ‘Er . . . well in English, History, Maths and . . .’ He looked at Mum for help.

  ‘Science,’ she added. She looked at Tom. ‘How could you forget?’ she asked him. ‘You only got the results yesterday.’

  Tom didn’t know what to say. He’d never had an A in his life! What in hell was going on here? He noticed a mirror on the wall, a short distance away, and he stumbled over to it to check his reflection, half-expecting to see an unfamiliar face staring back at him. But no, as far as he could see, he looked exactly the same as he had the last time he’d checked.

  ‘Still the best-looking boy around,’ said Mum.

  ‘Hey!’ Dad warned her and she smiled, bowed her head.

  ‘Still one of the two best-looking boys around,’ Mum corrected herself and then unbelievably, she stepped closer to Dad and they exchanged a little kiss, right there in front of everyone.

  ‘No way!’ cried Tom and they both turned to look at him.

  ‘I think we’re embarrassing him,’ murmured Dad. Then he looked at Tom. ‘You OK, sport? You look a little pale . . .’

  ‘It’s . . . warm in here,’ murmured Tom.

  ‘Sit down a moment,’ Mum advised him. She steered him to a leather bench, pushed him down on to it and then, kneeling in front of him, began to unlace the boots.

  ‘No, I’ll leave them on,’ he told her. ‘If that’s OK.’

  She smiled. ‘I can’t say I blame you!’ she said. ‘God knows how you managed to get these ones so filthy.’ She indicated Tom’s black school shoes which were encrusted with dried mud. ‘Looks like you’ve been wading through a pigsty,’ she said.

  Tom stared at her, wondering if she somehow knew what had happened to him. But now she had turned back to Dad. ‘Michael, you go and sort out paying for them,’ she suggested and handed him Tom’s school shoes. ‘These can go in the box. And make sure you get a receipt, just in case he changes his mind.’ She looked again at Tom. ‘You’re sure these are the ones you want? You could go for the leather if you prefer; it’s only another ten quid . . .’

  ‘No, these are fine,’ mumbled Tom. ‘Thanks.’

  Dad nodded and strolled away.

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’ asked Mum. ‘You seem . . . odd today.’

  He glared at her. She looked different from how he remembered. Her hairstyle was pretty much the same, but it looked sharper, glossier. She was wearing a coat he hadn’t seen before, a bright red coat, the same colour as her lipstick and nails.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ he asked her.

  She looked dismayed. ‘But you said this was where you wanted to come. If there’s somewhere else you’d rather . . .’

  ‘You know what I mean! What are we doing back in Manchester? What happened to Edinburgh?’ He leaned closer and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘What happened to Hamish?’

  She gazed back at him, her expression blank, and he realised that she couldn’t have faked it that well. She genuinely didn’t have the first idea what he was talking about. Thoughts raced through his mind in a jumble. This wasn’t something he had experienced before and nor was it something that was likely to happen to him in the near future. He thought, once again, of Kane in Timeslyp, the way he would burst through a series of doors, each of them leading into an alternate reality. Was this what had happened?

  Dad came wandering back, a shoebox tucked under his arm. ‘Sorted,’ he said. He looked from Mum to Tom and back again. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  Mum smiled. ‘This is Tom’s day. Let’s see what he’d like to do.’

  Tom could hardly believe it. Mum was asking him what he wanted to do, like it really mattered. He thought for a moment. ‘I could eat something,’ he ventured. ‘I’m quite peckish.’

  ‘Great idea,’ said Dad. ‘Where do you fancy?’

  ‘Wagamama’s,’ said Tom, without hesitation. It was a kind of test. It was his favourite place to eat but Mum always vetoed it, saying her delicate stomach couldn’t tolerate the flavours . . . but not today.

  ‘Wagamama’s it is,’ she agreed and started towards the exit.

  Tom got to his feet and followed her. ‘But . . . you don’t like it there!’ he protested. ‘You always say the food’s too spicy for you.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m having the chicken katsu curry.’

  ‘And the duck gyoza,’ added Dad. ‘Don’t forget that. With the sticky plum sauce. Mmmm.’

  Twenty minutes later, Tom was sitting at one of the long wooden tables, watching in amazement as Mum wolfed down a portion of curry as though she’d been eating it all her life. Dad too, seemed to be enjoying his bowl of noodles, as never before, and he’d ordered not one but three side dishes. Not bad for a man who previously couldn’t seem to make a decision about anything. Tom picked at his own food, staring around the crowded interior of the familiar restaurant and it seemed to him that he was looking at it for the first time.

  It was the same but different somehow – bigger, brighter, louder than he remembered it. In the open kitchen, the chefs in their white jackets and red headbands sent up brilliant columns of orange flame from beneath their sizzling woks and shouted instructions at the waiters, who bustled frantically to and fro among the tables in their brightly coloured T-shirts, their electronic order pads held ready for action.

  The food in Tom’s mouth seemed to explode with flavour – the duck gyoza, rich and succulent parcels dripping with sweet plums; the chicken katsu curry, tender mouthfuls of meat in a thick, glutinous sauce. Dad offered a taste of his noodles, which were springy and crunchy and laced with chilli and fresh ginger. It wasn’t usually Tom’s favourite dish, but today it tasted like a bowlful of heaven.

  I’ve gone barmy, thought Tom, calmly. There was no other explanation. His accident back in Edinburgh had given him a bash on the head that had sent him into some prolonged hallucination from which he would probably never escape. And what about Morag and her friends, back in the seventeenth century? Was he going to see any more of them?

  ‘You know,’ said Dad, lowering his chopsticks for a moment. ‘We’re really proud of you, son.’

  Tom nearly laughed out loud at that one. ‘Is that right?’ he muttered.

  ‘Sure. I mean, you turned it all around, didn’t you? Started studying extra hours, made sure your homework was done before you went out. Showed those teachers they were wrong about you.’

  ‘Why are you talking like this?’ cried Tom.

  Dad held his hands up in mock surrender. ‘Yeah, I know, a bit cheesy. But I just wanted to say, well done. Keep on like this, and you’ll be headed for university in a couple of years. That is, if you decide it’s what you want.’

  ‘Don’t pressure the boy,’ Mum chided him. ‘Just because you went, it doesn’t mean Tom wants to follow in your footsteps.’

  Tom’s jaw dropped. He knew for a fact that Dad had never gone to uni. He’d done a vocational course at an obscure technical college back in Wales. But it was pointless to protest the point. Clearly, in this version of reality, Dad had done rather better for himself. He decided to probe a little more.

  ‘So, Dad . . . your job?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’ve never really understood exactly what it is you do.’

  Dad laughed. ‘Join the club,’ he said, but when Tom didn’t laugh, he smiled and thought for a moment, as though considering the best way to answer. ‘I suppose it’s just a case of deciding what a building needs to be and then, thinking about what it could be. You have to find the right balance between the two. You know, I always think that architecture is like . . .’

  ‘You’re an architect?’ Tom interrupted him.

  Dad laughed. ‘Well, yes, you knew that much, didn’t you?’

  ‘Er . . . sure,’ said Tom. He wanted to add, you were a painter and decorator last time I checked. Instead, he turned his atten
tion to Mum. ‘And I suppose you’re still . . .’

  ‘at the BBC,’ she finished. ‘Yes, of course; I think I’d have mentioned if there’d been any change.’ She gave him a puzzled look. ‘I feel like I’m at an interview,’ she said. ‘You are being a bit odd, Tom, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘What happened to the catalogue?’ he asked her.

  ‘What catalogue?’ She was looking at him blankly, her red painted mouth moving around a mouthful of sticky rice.

  The one you used to work for. The words were in his head but he couldn’t bring himself to say them, because he knew he’d just get that blank look again, as though he’d started speaking in another language.

  He tried to rationalise things in his mind. OK, so he was back and everything had changed for the better. Mum and Dad were together, they both had better jobs, they seemed incredibly happy and he, Tom, had turned into some kind of genius, getting A grades left, right and centre. But . . . it couldn’t be as easy as that, could it?

  There was a great flash of flame from the open kitchen and Tom turned his head to look. A huge cloud of smoke had momentarily blanketed the chefs from sight and, as it began to clear, he noticed a strange figure standing over by one of the hobs – a thin man wearing a powdered white wig and a fancy gold jacket. He was staring expressionlessly across the rows of tables at Tom. Then he grinned, revealing twin rows of rotten green teeth.

  Tom dropped his chopsticks and said something rude. His parents stared at him across the table.

  ‘Steady on, sport!’ said Dad. ‘There’s no need for that kind of language!’

  Tom stood up. ‘I need to go,’ he said. He looked back towards the kitchen. The man seemed to have vanished now but he knew he couldn’t just sit here and eat while there was any chance of him returning.

  ‘You’ve barely touched your food,’ observed Mum. ‘Are you sure you’re not feeling ill?’

  ‘I’m . . . tired,’ said Tom. He was already sliding sideways off the bench. Dad started waving frantically to one of the waiters, while he attempted to cram in a last couple of mouthfuls of noodles.