The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life by William Nicholson Page A

Life has been too full.
    ‘Did he like it?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Oh.’
    Jack catches a small note of dismay in his mother’s voice. All at once it strikes him there is ammunition here. There is the opportunity for a counterstroke. He makes his voice small.
    ‘He wrote on it, You can do better than this .’
    ‘Oh, darling. I was so sure he’d like it.’
    ‘Me too.’
    His voice is so small now his mother can hardly hear him. The strategy is working.
    ‘Sweetheart! What a beast that man is. He’s wrong. It was a wonderful composition. Daddy was terribly impressed.’
    ‘Was he?’
    Now his sad little voice is breaking her heart. She pulls the car into the side of the road. She turns round, reaches out a hand.
    ‘Were you terribly disappointed?’
    ‘Sort of.’ He feels his eyes fill with tears. His mother’s sympathy is so delicious that the required emotions rise up in him without effort on his part. He finds he has been hurt by Mr Strachan’s dismissal of his dream. He had hoped for praise. Instead he has been rejected. A tear rolls down his cheek.
    ‘Oh, darling.’ His mother dabs his cheek. ‘Carrie, why don’t you climb in the back and let Jack come by me?’
    ‘But Mummy—’
    ‘We’re halfway home already, darling.’
    So Carrie goes in the back and Jack goes in the front and for the next ten minutes his victory is doubly sweet, because it has been won after an initial reversal. He knows Carrie’s submission is only temporary, but it is his turn in the front, not hers, she deliberately set out to violate the treaty, and now order is restored.
    ‘I’m going to tell Daddy about this,’ says his mother. ‘It’s just not good enough. It makes me angry. It really does.’
    She turns the car off the road and down the short drive to home.

16
    Martin Linton manoeuvres the ancient mud-encrusted Landrover down the farm road, weaving round the deeper pot-holes, banging into the shallower ones, his dogs yipping softly in the back as they smell home. The road has not been resurfaced by the Edenfield Estate for twenty years now. He receives the repeated hammer-blows to the suspension with a bitter satisfaction. His life has been so punishing for so long that he has come to source his pride in his ability to endure hardship. The jolting ride sings a song to which he has words: ‘Do your worst you’ll never—, do your worst you’ll never—, do your worst you’ll never—, knock me down.’ He recalls the sight of the Underhill boys pelting away across the field in terror.
    Should have shot the little shits.
    To the end of the track and into the yard. Nettles grow in the cracks where the concrete paving has buckled. The old flint walls of the great barn are beginning to crumble. Wind and rain have scratched at the lime mortar and etched it away so that now the flints stand out like teeth. Here and there the roof tiles have slipped, letting in the weather to rust the farm machinery stored within. Only the barn’s timber frame is sound. Posts, beams, rafters, purlins all oak, the original timbers cut and slotted over three hundred years ago, and still too hard to knock a nail into without bending it. From a practical point of view the steel and aluminium Atcost barns in the storage yard do a better job, being virtually maintenance-free and entirely weather-proof. However those modern structures draw no envious glances from passing walkers; whereas the handsome old barn beside Home Farm causes them to stand and stare, consumed with covetousness.
    The dogs jump out as soon as the Landrover stops, and bound up to the back door of the house. Martin always comes and goes by the back door. The front door looks onto the village street, and has an eighteenth-century portico, and a brick path leading to a pretty iron gate. It’s so little used that the hinges have rusted, and ground elder covers the front step.
    ‘Down Bess! Down Sal!’
    The dogs stand back to let him through. The door opens into a dark