The Scribbler Iain Maitland (good books to read txt) 📖

The slow brother. Having their breakfast of porridge and toast and marmalade and mugs of tea.

As they did every day. At the same time. In the same way. Heads down, working methodically through it all from beginning to end.

Mostly in silence except for the old woman’s clacking teeth and occasional bursts of tuneless humming. The brothers ate quietly, waiting for their mother to start and finish any conversation.

“What are you doing today, Chopsy?” she asked finally, as she raised her mug of tea carefully to her lips.

The smart brother swallowed a mouthful of toast before looking up. Thinking he had not heard her, she went to say “eh?” just as he spoke.

“I need to go up to the cottages again. We carted away Hempshell’s stuff yesterday. And Collins … we’ve not had a chance to look that over properly. But it shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll do that this morning and we can move anything this afternoon.”

“You’ll want to get them tenanted before Christmas. We can’t manage without the money for long.” She laughed bitterly through tombstone teeth. “I’m too old to go out and scrub steps.”

“You do not need to do that, Mother,” the slow brother said, taking her comment at face value.

The smart brother nodded his head, agreeing.

“They’ll need some work over the next week or two. Bring them up to standard. I’ll get on to it the week after, once we’ve got the trees sorted. We’re all right for money for a while longer.”

“You see that we are. We can’t make do much more. We can’t go without anything … there’s nothing left that we can go without.” Her voice rose, cracking, “We shouldn’t have to live in this … filth. Honour thy mother … that …” She stopped to think of the precise words, “… thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

She nodded to herself, yes, that’s about right.

The slow brother shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Struggling to find the words to say. He looked pained.

“We honour you, Mother. And we take care of you. And we look after you as you looked after us when we were little. Because we are your boys, Mother. We are your best—”

“Shut up with your nonsense, stupid.” The old woman put her mug of tea down on the table. “Your silly homilies don’t put food on the table … clothes on our backs … they don’t pay the bills … we’ll have bailiffs at the door next. It won’t be the first time.”

“We won’t have bailiffs,” the smart brother said quietly. “We don’t have much, Mother, but we have enough.”

“Not with the cottages standing empty, going to rack and ruin. That’s where we’ll end up. Rack and ruin.” She sobbed suddenly, angrily. “It shouldn’t be like this. I worked hard, morning, noon and night, after your father …”

The slow brother glanced nervously at the smart brother.

The smart brother ignored him. Reached out instead to put his hand on the old woman’s bony fingers. She shook it off.

“And look at us now,” she said bitterly, “living off rents and Christmas trees once a year. Everything else … you’ve lost everything else. This was a good farm once. I made it so. It made money. A living. More than a living.”

“That was a long time ago, Mother,” the smart brother spoke soothing words. “It’s not been easy … since Father … since before Father. He had to take that sales job to make ends meet … and Europe … and subsidies being cut all the time.”

She shook her head dismally as he carried on.

“And we had … so much bad luck … every year there was something. All through the 1990s. And the land, no one wants the land. Over at Woodbridge, the Hensons sold up and they built … so many houses. Set them up nicely. We’re too far off the beaten track. Nobody wants to live this far out, so far from anywhere,” he added sadly.

“It will be the death of me, all this. I won’t make it through this winter. Not if it’s a cold one.”

“Yes, you will. You wait. Once we’ve got the money for the trees in, we’ll go over to Ipswich and buy you a new coat. And a bigger heater for your bedroom. Whatever you want.”

She smiled, unexpectedly, to herself. Mopping at the spittle from her mouth with her fingers. “And we’ll have a slap-up meal upstairs at the Co-op, like we used to do.”

“Mother, the Co-op is not—”

The smart brother finished the slow brother’s sentence, before he could say “not there any more”.

“Not the talk of the town any more, Mother. But there’s a new place to eat. Where you can have a proper three-course meal, roast beef and all the trimmings. Served by proper waitresses, all dressed up nice and proper in their black and white uniforms.”

The old woman pretended to lick her lips, her thin, probing tongue somehow grotesque.

The three of them fell silent again, thinking their own thoughts as they finished their mugs of tea, had one last scrape of their bowls and spread a final smear of marmalade on the corner of their pieces of toast.

“I shall make shortbread this morning. I have plenty of sugar and flour and butter,” the old woman said emphatically, suddenly more cheerful. “You can have it with your lunch.”

The slow brother smiled. He liked shortbread. His favourite.

“And what will you do this morning?” The old woman turned towards the slow brother.

“I am taking the gun and going ratting.”

“There’s a nest of them somewhere behind the outhouse,” added the smart brother. “We’ll need to put poison down once we’re done with the trees.”

The old woman reached into the pocket of her overall, pulled out her purse and opened it, checking the contents.

“Bring me the tails and I’ll give you a shiny gold coin for each of them.”

The slow brother mimed loading a gun, cocking it, taking aim and firing.

The smart brother made a squelching noise at