Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page A

fair.’
    Adrian pushed ahead of her as the path widened.
    On Monday he left at seven o’clock for work and by nine two of the children were hanging about near the gate.
    ‘If those kids come back, you don’t feed them, OK? It’s like stray cats. Once you start . . . ’
    She made a pile of toast and took it out to them, with a bought fruitcake. They snatched and ran. Paula followed.
    It was a caravan, parked in the corner of a field, hidden behind a thicket away from the road and the houses. She saw them streak along, keeping close to the hedge, and disappear inside. Through the open door she saw a table and a woman’s back against the light. After a few moments the woman came out. There was a white plastic garden chair beside the caravan steps in which she sat heavily and turned her face to the sun.
    Everything went quiet. Paula went on, keeping so close to the hedge that brambles scraped her bare arms.
    The caravan was quite large with a gas cylinder attached to the back and a rainwater butt. Two of the children, the boys, had come to the doorway and were staring at Paula in the usual hostile way, eyes like pebbles.
    The girl appeared behind them.
    ‘Ma.’
    It was almost a whisper, like a warning.
    The woman opened her eyes.
    ‘Sorry,’ Paula said. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.’
    ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
    The children huddled together.
    ‘Creeping up like that. Who the fuck are you?’ She half-turned her head. ‘You lot get back in.’
    The huddle vanished.
    ‘Oh, I get it. You’re the one that hands out food. What the fuck do you mean by that?’
    Paula cleared her throat.
    ‘We don’t need handouts. We’re not charity cases.’
    ‘I was only – they seemed hungry.’
    ‘Yes, well they’re not.’
    ‘They ate what I gave them.’
    ‘’Course they did, they’re kids – what do you expect?’
    ‘They were eating the bird nuts.’
    The woman laughed. It was hard to tell her age.
    ‘And berries.’
    ‘How long you lived round here? They’ll eat anything. Why not?’
    ‘The berries weren’t ripe and the bird nuts – they’re not really for humans to eat.’
    The woman laughed again and hauled herself out of the chair.
    ‘Just leave them be.’
    ‘Shouldn’t your children be at school?’
    But she was climbing the steps back into the caravan.
    ‘You sod off,’ she said without looking round.
    Paula glimpsed the children behind her. The van was in full sun and she imagined them inside the hot space, crowded together, fractious, tempers short. She wondered if they were beaten. The thought was upsetting, but there was nothing she could do. Eventually she had to retreat.
    ‘What did I tell you?’
    The heat was making Adrian bad tempered at the end of every day.
    ‘You’ve brought it on yourself. Of course they’re not hungry. They get every benefit going. They’re taking you for a mug.’
    He went out into the humid garden with a can of beer.
    If they were not hungry would they be bothered to steal food? She looked at her painting of a badger disappearing down a hole.
    Why would they?
    They had wolfed down the toast as if they hadn’t eaten for days. Was that what children normally did? She doubted it.
    Adrian had taken off his shirt and shoes, and was lying on the grass with the beer can held to his chest.
    ‘Like a cattle truck,’ he said, ‘going and coming back. Worse coming back. You don’t know what heat’s like until you’ve been on that six thirty train.’
    They were not eating till late on these nights and Adrian went up to bed immediately afterwards. The food lay heavy on his stomach, making him snore. Paula had taken to sleeping on a rug in the garden. Only a brief dawn chill and the dew sent her inside, an hour before his alarm went off.
    She lay thinking of the girl, cramming hot toast into her mouth.
    No one would eat like that if they weren’t ravenous. No child would munch bird nuts and steal half-boxes of cornflakes.
    The