Free Rook by Jane Rusbridge Page A

watch?’
    Harry nods. He places a hand on her shoulder, his thumb resting on the nub of her collar-bone, and seems about to say more but when he stands in silence, looking up at the canopy of leaves, Nora’s awkwardness rises like a barrier. She bends to brush something imaginary from her ankle and Harry’s hand drops to his side.
    ‘We must allow the bird to be wild,’ he says. ‘Help him return to life among his own kind.’
    Nora nods, although a part of her resists the idea. Harry makes it sound as though it’s just a matter of giving permission. What if, after the plummet from a high nest and the suffocating rush of air, Rook can’t be wild? His beak flips open readily enough for food but so far he has not let out any sound louder than a wheeze or putter. Perhaps the baby bird fell from his nest and squawked or cried or peeped for his parents until the muscles of his parched tongue and the throb of his scarlet throat were strained beyond the ability to produce any more sound. A silent rook would not survive.
    They make their way back and are crossing the maize field towards the abandoned church when over by the farm outbuildings a Land Rover fires up and rumbles towards them, accelerating fast, the driver’s door swinging open. The farmer is half-in, half-out. Heat rushes to Nora’s head. They shouldn’t be here. She takes longer strides, to cover the gap between hedge and churchyard as quickly as she can, staring down at her feet and trying for nonchalance by pretending to be unaware of the Land Rover which continues to head straight for them. Harry dawdles as usual, still some way behind her, hands in his pockets. He’s whistling something she half-recognises from one of her mother’s old Frank Sinatra LPs.
    Nora is a few yards from the churchyard boundary and the gap in the hedge, when the Land Rover skids to a halt beside her, raising a cloud of dust. The farmer leaps out of the cab. He is wiry, whipped taut with fury.
    ‘This land is private, very private.’
    ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t—’
    ‘If you’ve come here for the rooks, you’ll only disturb them.’
    ‘No, I didn’t know. I’m sorry . . .’ Nora’s words drain away under the white heat of his glare.
    The farmer spits in the dust.
    ‘Wrong time of year, though.’ Harry’s deep voice is close behind her. He snaps a grass stem, twiddles and pops it into his mouth. The weight of his hand rests again, companionably on Nora’s shoulder. ‘Got lost, didn’t we, mate? Too many beers, lunchtime, sunny day: know what I’m saying?’ With a roll of his tongue, he passes the stem of grass from one side of his mouth to the other and winks at the farmer.
    Beside Harry’s slow calm, the viciousness of the farmer’s pent-up fury dwindles. He swings up on to the Land Rover’s mounting step to stand high above them in the open doorway. A gun lies across the passenger seat. Harry slips a hand around Nora’s waist and with an almost imperceptible nudge, encourages her to start walking away.
    By the time they have reached the evergreen seclusion of the ramshackle churchyard, the Land Rover has disappeared.
    ‘He was so angry.’
    Harry removes the grass stem from between his lips. ‘Jealous,’ he says. He peels the broad green leaf from the stem. ‘Probably thought we’d been shagging.’ Harry chucks the grass stem high into the air. ‘Like we’d want to roll around in all that bird shit.’
    They look at each other and start laughing.
     
    Through Nora’s open bedroom window, sometime in the night, comes a metallic scrape from the flagstones below, and a faint humming: a favourite dance tune of her mother’s. Nora dips her head under the sash. In the moonlight Ada is posed like a fifties film star on the garden bench below, slender legs crossed at the ankle and tucked to one side, her right arm raised from the elbow, hand poised in the air holding something balanced there, between her fingers, the way she’d hold a