The Ullswater Undertaking Rebecca Tope (good books to read for young adults .TXT) 📖

Hartsop still only occupied a scant twenty minutes. In the straighter final section, Simmy entertained a host of swirling ideas about families, and how a woman could be fertile for thirty years or so, but seldom more than that. You could in theory have a full sibling thirty years older than yourself, although she had never encountered an instance and they were likely to become even more rare now that teenagers had stopped having babies. Twenty-five years was a lot easier to credit, although even that must be unusual. Quite why she was following this line of conjecture she could not have explained. It had just begun to flow into thoughts of Bonnie Lawson and how Simmy could very easily be her mother, when she reached her new home. ‘Here we are!’ she sang to her baby, as she parked beside the house that was still not much more than a barn. Humphrey’s van was there and she could hear him whistling at the top of the stairs. It was twenty minutes past two.

By three o’clock, Robin had been fed, changed and played with. His temper seemed to be set fair and the weather outside likewise. Humphrey and his mate were fully engaged with creating a third bedroom out of a large empty space – a project that would take at least another two weeks. The controversial door had been changed and Humphrey’s spirits were back to their usual buoyant state. ‘Going like clockwork,’ he reported.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Simmy said to her son. ‘We haven’t had any exercise today. We might get as far as Patterdale.’ She tied him onto her front in the complicated contraption that made her feel like something between a Welsh woman and a Native American. At least it left both hands free and the sensation of the warm little body against her chest was delicious. She set out down the small road that led northwards, following the stream that fed into Ullswater. There were gates and stiles and stony outcrops to be navigated, but none of them presented any real difficulties. The exercise was palpably beneficial. She could feel her muscles and bloodstream responding. What very strange cultural attitudes there were to new mothers, she reflected. Although thankfully almost all those which ordained forty days of passivity seemed to be out of fashion.

She knew she ought to be going up the road to look for Aunt Hilda’s house. But that was much too far to walk, and no way was she bundling poor Robin back into the car. Instead, she would methodically go over again everything she had learnt about Fabian and his family, and try to formulate a coherent narrative out of it. It would be a useful mental workout if nothing else.

But she was repeatedly distracted by the bustle of nature all around her. Birds were scurrying to and fro with their beaks full of either nesting materials or food for babies, Simmy supposed, unsure of quite where spring had got to in that respect. It sounded fanciful even in her own mind, but she did suspect that she had a deeper understanding and empathy for the busy little homemakers now that she was a mother herself.

And then, under a tall tree she saw movement. Bending awkwardly, she found a scrap of grey fur that twitched when she nudged it. A baby squirrel, she realised, looking up to see if there was a visible nest. What did a squirrel nest look like anyway? What ought she to do about it? Any small furry mammal would soften a maternal heart, and this one was characteristically cute. Its eyes were open, and it seemed to be unharmed. Inevitably she picked it up for a closer look. And equally inevitably, she decided to adopt it and give it a decent chance of life.

But – oh God! – it was a grey squirrel! A child of Satan, a loathsome piece of vermin to be stamped into oblivion by the self-appointed guardians of Lake District fauna. There were actually laws about them, although Simmy did not know the details. Genocide, ethnic cleansing – as Russell Straw would say. She ought to throw it into the river and forget she ever saw it. Instead she tucked it into a fold of Robin’s sling, keeping some fabric between child and animal, just in case it might try to bite him. And she gave up any idea of walking to Patterdale, after all.

Chapter Fifteen

Christopher came home to find Simmy leaning over a cardboard box filled with a mixture of newspaper and grass, with a bundle of grey fur curled up in one corner. ‘Good God, what’s that?’ he demanded, like any outraged patriarch coming home to find an intruder.

‘Sshh!’ she told him. ‘I don’t want the builders to know about it. They probably belong to some outfit that protects red squirrels.’

‘Uh-oh,’ said Christopher, looking more closely. ‘Tell me that’s not—’

Again, she hushed him. ‘I found it on the ground. It’s almost old enough to survive on its own, I think. I couldn’t just leave him, could I? He probably only needs a week or so of help.’

‘And then what? Isn’t there a pogrom out against them?’

She gave him a tragic look. ‘That’s exactly the word for it. I’ve been getting all overwrought and emotional about the whole business. It feels so fascist, don’t you think? Favouring one species over another and talking about foreign invaders that have to be exterminated. It’s impossible not to make comparisons with places like Rwanda and Nazi Germany. It’s a horrible thing to do. It’s bad enough that they wage war on random plants like Himalayan balsam or giant hogweed, but when it comes to animals, I can’t bear it.’

‘They’re convinced they’ve got right on their side. I heard they’re thinking of introducing lots of pine martens because they eat grey squirrels but not red ones. It’s bound to end in a whole lot of unforeseen consequences. Like cane toads,’ he added