The Lewis boys sat at the dinner table, waiting for their mother. On the white linen, a jug of diluted blackcurrant juice, their empty plates and cutlery. Mrs Lewis came over with the potatoes and put them on the table. Then she brought two trays covered in foil and said, ‘Carrots, broccoli.’ On the worktop, a cooked joint of meat was resting.

Toby poked a hole in one of the foil trays and steam rose from the carrots beneath. He cut a knob of butter and dropped it onto the potatoes, watched it melt.

Henry looked out the kitchen window. It was still light, the sky covered in bright sheets of grey cloud. He followed a plane as it flew slowly across the glass, out of sight—

That morning, Henry woke when his brother Toby pulled at his ankles.

‘Get up, lazy bones!’

Toby ran to the curtains and opened them theatrically. Sunlight flooded the room, hurting their eyes.

‘Mum says you’ve to get up. We’ve to go out, it’s some day outside.’

Henry dressed and ate his corn flakes at the breakfast bar.

‘Make sure you’re back for lunch,’ Mrs Lewis said, as they left the cottage. ‘And stay away from Skeltons farm!’

They loved going to Skeltons farm to look at the animals: sheep, pigs, chickens and goats. They would run through the field of Highland cattle, hoping for a chase, but the gloomy beasts paid them no heed. Henry liked their horns, their pelts of rust. On the farm they grew raspberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and plums. But it was the strawberries they liked best.

On the country road, with the cottage out of sight, Henry said, ‘Let’s go back to the farm, the strawberries should be ripe.’

The last time the strawberries were too small, coloured white, green, a mixture. They picked them anyway and Toby ate some, not liking the taste. Henry said, ‘That’s a seed. It will grow in your belly and a strawberry bush will sprout from your head.’ Toby said that was rubbish, but Henry knew that he was thinking about it, that the thought troubled him.

That evening, Farmer Powers telephoned their mother. Henry knew it was him because of the way her mother spoke. In a voice reserved only for Farmer Powers. Henry felt ashamed of his mother then, not understanding why. When she put down the telephone, she berated them, said they’d been spotted at Skeltons farm, picking and trampling the strawberries. What did they think they were doing? What would folk think? To the brothers her anger seemed disproportionate, it frightened them.

They reached the line of silver birch marking the perimeter of Skeltons farm. Above, a flock of crows congregated in and around the trees, squawking, nesting, fighting. Pecking at the earth. The sun slid in shafts through the leaves so that the brother’s faces bore their colour: diluted yellow, glassy green. When they reached the strawberry field, they stooped to avoid being seen. Here the dry brown earth striped with rows and rows of vegetation, under which, hanging heavily, were mounds of red fruit.

The brothers looked at one another, smiling. Then they began picking the strawberries, commenting on their size, stuffing the fruit into their mouths as they went. With their hands full, they sat on the dirt and ate greedily.

‘Henry, will a strawberry plant really grow inside me?’

‘Nah. Eating the red ones kills the seed.’

‘I like these big juicy ones,’ Toby said, holding aloft a half-eaten berry.

‘The wee dark ones are the best.’

‘O look, Tweedledum and Tweedledee!’ a voice called, and the brothers turned and saw Jeremy Powers, the farmer’s son, marching over. He stood over them, blocking the sun, his shadow warped and bent angular over the strawberry rows.

Jeremy was known simply as ‘Powers’ at school. The brothers had never spoken to him because he was in a higher year, but they knew who he was. Everyone did. A solitary boy, never in uniform, always in fights. He had a ferociousness about him, something feral. Even when beaten, he would never give in, would keep getting up, blood pouring from nostrils, until a teacher rushed out to stop the fight. Over time, pupils left him well alone, said he was unhinged, not all there.

‘We only ate some,’ Toby said, looking up at Powers.

‘Some? Some, he says! Look at your faces, you’ve had plenty.’

‘We were about to go,’ Henry said, getting to his feet.

‘O, I bet youse were. About to go, he says! With a belly full of my father’s strawberries.’

‘We’re sorry,’ Henry said.

‘Why doesn’t your dad grow strawberries?’

The boys were silent.

‘I’ll tell you why. He’s in jail.’

‘That’s not true,’ Toby said.

Henry gave his brother a stern look. He was desperate to think, to deal with this.

‘Fucked off with some tart, my father said.’

‘Liar!’ Toby said, his lip trembling.

‘Did.’

‘Did not!’

‘Your mum fancies my father. Drop her pants for him she would. No hesitation.’

Henry wanted to say something but could not. There was some truth in what Powers said about his mother. And she never explained to them where their dad went. Only that he wasn’t interested, that men couldn’t be trusted.

‘Tell you what I’ll do, since I’m in a good mood,’ Powers put his hands on his hips. ‘Rather than tell my father what you’ve been up to… Rather than beat the shit out of you both…’

The stench in the pig shed caught Henry’s throat.  He counted ten pigs of mixed size and there were piglets running around the matted straw, snorting. Most were eating from a trough, some drank from the water tray. One broke wind as it slept on its belly.

Powers vaulted the gate, slapped the sleeping hog and said, ‘Wake up, Mrs Lewis!’

The pig stood groggily and Powers steered her through a door. Then he hopped over the gate and led the boys to an area fenced with corrugated iron. Here there was no roof, just a thick metal pole running diagonal, corner to corner. From it hung a horizontal bar on a chain, reminding Henry of a circus trapeze.

The brothers watched the pig circle the enclosure, yawning that big pink mouth, the hairy lips. Her tiny eyes, dwarfed by her ears, gave the impression of permanent cheer.

‘My dad made this,’ Powers said. He held a stainless-steel rod, about eight inches long. On it a trigger attached, not unlike the brake on a bicycle.

‘What is that?’ Toby said, ‘What are you going to do?’

Henry heard fear in his brother’s voice. He felt useless.

Powers strode over to the pig and began stroking its hairy head. The pig closed its eyes, wet snout in the air, submissive.

Toby looked at Henry. Henry shrugged. A resonant crack bounced from iron, the brothers jumped.

The pig spasmed, thumped to the floor.

Powers lowered the horizontal bar and attached the hog by its hind legs. He pulled on the chain, hoisting the pig until it dangled prone.

The stunned pig, still grinning from ear to ear, swayed gently in chains. A plane flew overhead, rattling the iron fence.

Powers took a blade from an old drawer and handed it to Henry.

—Mrs Lewis used a sharp knife to carve the joint into strips. Juice ran from the meat, clear juice that pooled in the tray, blushing when it caught the light. Then they heard claws skidding across the tiles and their border terrier Joey, mad with the smell of meat, bounded into the kitchen and began barking incessantly, leaping into the air.

‘I’m going to kill him!’ Mrs Lewis said, shooing the dog with her leg.

‘Don’t worry mum,’ Toby said, ‘Henry will do it.’

April 2020