Scared to Live

He’d been trying to train himself to remember those happier images, instead of the one that had tormented him for years: the bloodied body on the paving stones that he’d never actually seen. Some of the youths responsible for Joe Cooper’s death were already back out in the world at the end of their sentences. Two years for manslaughter, that was all. First-time offenders, of course. Ben knew he was bound to run into one of them some day soon. It was probably futile to hope that he wouldn’t recognize them.

‘Bad do about that family in Edendale,’ said Matt when he greeted his brother in front of the house. ‘The fire, I mean.’

‘Yes, really bad.’

‘Are you working on that?’

‘We don’t know if it was malicious or not yet.’

‘It’s not good when kids are involved, whatever it was.’

Matt removed his boots and stripped off his overalls in the porch. A tabby cat immediately jumped up and inspected the overalls to see if they’d make a decent bed.

‘Actually, I was down at Foxlow earlier,’ said Ben. ‘We had a shooting.’

‘Oh, I heard,’ said Matt.

‘Did you?’

‘It was Neville Cross who found the body, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, not quite. But he made the call.’

‘Neville’s the NFU rep, you know.’

‘So the farmers’ grapevine has been busy, has it?’

‘Something like that.’

Matt stroked the cat absent-mindedly. His hand was huge, so it covered the animal’s head completely. Only its ears protruded, trembling with the vibration of a deep purr.

‘Come into the office, Ben. There’s something I want to show you.’

‘Is there room for two people?’

‘As long as you don’t mind sharing your breathing space with a smelly old dog.’

The farm office was cramped and untidy. It was the aspect of the farm that Matt paid least attention to, because it meant being indoors. Occasionally, Kate came in to help out with the paperwork and sort the mess into some kind of order, so they muddled through year by year, driving their accountants up the wall. ‘I’m a stockman, not a filing clerk,’ Matt would say. But deep down, he probably knew that this failing was the reason he was doomed. These days, farmers had to be business managers and entrepreneurs above anything else, if they wanted to survive.

Matt eased himself on to the office chair in front of the computer. He was filling out so much as he got older that he looked too big for the desk, like an adult sitting in an infants classroom.

‘I’ve been looking at the internet,’ he said.

‘Blimey, we’re going to have to watch you. At this rate you’ll be catching up with the twenty-first century.’

Matt scowled. ‘Most of it is a load of crap.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘In fact, I’ve never seen such crap.’

‘You have to learn how to filter out the rubbish to find the useful stuff.’

‘I’m a livestock farmer, so I know what crap is.’

‘Yes, Matt.’

Ben perched on the arm of a deep armchair. The chair itself was already occupied by an aged Border collie called Meg, who didn’t even bother opening an eye. She was there by right, and wasn’t moving for anybody. Ben wouldn’t have dreamed of booting her off.

Matt booted up and frowned at the screen as he waited to enter his password. ‘I’ve got something I want to show you.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been looking at ideas for diversification again? What is it this time – rock festivals? You’ve got the fields, and the mud.’

‘That’ll be the day, when I let thousands of hippies camp on my land.’

‘It worked for Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.’

‘No, it didn’t. He had riots between gangs of rival jazz fans.’

Ben laughed. ‘What is it, then?’

‘It isn’t about the farm at all,’ said Matt gloomily, still staring at the screen.

Realizing that he wasn’t even denting his brother’s morose mood, Ben leaned forward to see what he was looking at. He’d brought up a website that must have been bookmarked in his favourites, because he hadn’t used the keyboard to type out a URL. Ben was surprised that Matt even knew how to do that.

‘It’s an article I found about schizophrenia,’ said Matt. ‘Well, to be more exact, about its inheritability.’

For a moment, Ben was thrown by the word ‘inheritability’. It was an expression he was accustomed to hearing from Matt, but strictly in relation to livestock breeding. Was a high-yielding cow likely to produce offspring that were also good milk producers? What percentage of lambs sired by a Texel ram would have the same muscle ratio? That was inheritability. Genetics played a big part in breeding animals for desirable characteristics. But schizophrenia? It didn’t make sense.

‘What on earth are you trying to tell me, Matt?’

‘It was something I heard one of the nursing home staff say, before Mum died. It hadn’t occurred to me before, and nobody ever mentioned the possibility. Not to me, anyway. I don’t know if they mentioned it to you, but you never said anything.’

‘Matt, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It occurred to me that it might be like other conditions. Do you remember that family of Jerseys that were prone to laminitis? It was passed on from one generation to the next, and we never could breed it out. We had to get rid of them all in the end.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

‘Well, according to this, schizophrenia is hereditary, too.’

‘What?’

‘Ben, it’s for the sake of the girls as much as anything. I need to know what the odds are – the chances of schizophrenia being hereditary. Will you read it?’

Almost against his will, Ben ran his eyes over the text on the screen. It has been verified that schizophreniaruns in a family. People with a close relativesuffering from schizophrenia have an increased chanceof developing the disease. Parents with schizophreniaalso increase the chances of passing the disease to theirchild.

He straightened up again. ‘I don’t want to know this, Matt.’