A Nice Place to Die by Jane Mcloughlin

baby.

TEN
    B ert Pearson glowered at the clock on the kitchen wall.
    Bert had spent a long time sitting in the kitchen trying to work out what he was going to say to Mark. The fire in the range was long dead, and the room was cold. Bert’s limbs were stiff and painful and he couldn’t feel his fingers or toes.
    He kept telling himself that this was his son and as his father he’d got a duty to say something, but Bert didn’t even convince himself. He might be Mark’s father, but he’d almost forgotten the days when the relationship had meant anything much to either of them. That had been when Mark was just a kid helping round the farm and he’d spent every Sunday morning with the boy down at the rugby club giving him the benefit of his experience just like the other dads with their lads. In those days Mark had been proud to boast that his father was the best player in the first team the year the Catcombe Corinthians beat Plymouth Albion in a friendly.
    Bert Pearson sighed. It was a long time since he’d left the farm of a Saturday afternoon to watch Mark play. George Webber had called in that very day to tell him the boy had scored the winning try in yesterday’s game. George had thought Bert would like to know, Bert having not been there to see it.
    But George hadn’t come to tell him about Mark’s try; that was just an excuse. George Webber hadn’t come to the farm for years; there was something serious on his mind to bring him to visit Bert.
    When he came out with it, Bert was shocked.
    He hadn’t believed George at first. He’d even started to take a swing at him, but that hadn’t come to anything. George said there were others who would back him up. It was the talk of the market that week, Mark taking up with a right little tart from the housing estate, a real tough backstreet low-life whore from Catcombe Mead who took drugs and had two layabout brothers who spent their nights molesting the village girls in Old Catcombe and tearing through the streets on their motorbikes terrorizing old women.
    George even told Bert the girl’s name: Jess Miller. She came from a bad family, he said; her brother had a motorbike and he was one of the worst of the thugs who caused so much trouble in the village, it would be no surprise to anyone if he’d been in jail. Word had it, too, that he had something to do with the Reverend Baker’s murder.
    Bert shook his head in disbelief. He protested to George that Mark was a good boy; he wouldn’t be interested in going with a cheap girl like that. Why would he? But then, Bert asked himself, where is he now?
    â€˜There’s not so many young girls in the village to catch his eye,’ George said. ‘It’s not like it was in our day. So many of the young’uns have moved away. Nothing for them round here these days, Bert.’
    After George left him, Bert phoned the rugby club. He asked for Mark. The secretary went to look for him but then he came back and said Mark hadn’t been with the lads after the match, and he hadn’t come in the bar for a drink.
    Bert asked himself, what could he possibly be doing out at this time of night when anyone who worked around farming would have to get up early in the morning?
    Bert felt depressed and scared. He didn’t know what to say to the boy, or even how to start a conversation with him. Mark’s mother should be here, this was her business. Joyce should have brought the boy up better, she should be at home looking after him instead of spending her evenings out wasting her time with a gaggle of boring middle-aged women frittering away a few hours on rubbish. This business with Mark was her fault, and now the whole future of the farm, the traditional Pearson way of life, was at risk. Bert thought, I wish she’d come home. I wish she’d come home and tell me what to say to him, she’d know what to say, how to explain to Mark why he must never