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Tom's says he's in no mood for faffing about but that doesn't stop Ruby from pulling his face down and kissing him hard on the lips. Oh his lips which only yesterday were soft and warm and sort of squishy. Now his mouth is tight, unyielding. Tom is unyielding. What can she do but throw her arms around his neck, press her body against his? She writhes and slithers and wiggles her bum. Oooh. Aaah. But it's like kissing the hard plastic face of her walking doll. It's like hugging a broomstick. Ruby's mother and aunt puff on cigarettes and laugh and say they've never seen the likes of it, and then Uncle Cutbert, swaying slightly on the other side of the Dutch door, pushes his head into the room. "Ee ba gum. Yon clever chuff ..." He mutters yon clever chuff as he mutters everything else - in his strange incomprehensible language. Incomprehensible, Ruby's mother has explained, because he's always lived here, on this farm in Yorkshire. Stephen, Ruby's father, also grew up with a broad accent but after the war when he went down south to study at the London Police Academy he learned to speak like the toffs.

"Hold your water, you great pudding head," Aunt Kate says. "It's all in fun. Pay no mind, Ruby. Your uncle's had a skinful."

"Please," she says to Tom, "let's." His flinty blue eyes dart around the room, looking for escape.

"Yon lass wants bringing down to earth with a bang," Uncle Cutbert says.

"Away with you," Aunt Kate says.

"Th'art a grand one, arn't tha?" he says. "A right mawk, like tha mam."

Ruby looks at her mother, then back at her uncle. His hair and jacket are covered in things - twigs, downy feathers, iridescent insect wings, scraps of wool - as though he's been rolling around the world, picking up lint. His eyebrows curl up at the ends like little black horns. He smells of beer and damp bread.

"That's enough, Cutbert," her mother says. "There's no need to take it out on a wain." She sounds tired, the way she always sounds lately. And her sad eye, the one that droops naturally, is almost shut. All her ancestors had one sad eye, she claims. It's the mark of a Highlander. Brave fierce folk.

Ruby stands at her mother's side and takes her hand. "Arn't tha," she says softly, watching her uncle's face. "Arn't tha, arn't tha, arn't tha." He raises his hand as though to swat at a fly and Tom slips past him and out of the house. Uncle Cutbert staggers in a little circle, dumbfounded. "Cheeky pappet. I knew tha dad when he had holes in his underpants."

Underpants? Ruby yanks her mother's arm like a chain. What is he talking about? Underpants?

***

Last week Ruby crouched in the grass, examining the moon-shaped scab on her knee and when she looked up a man was walking toward her. He was her father except he wasn't. How could he be? Her father was back in Edmonton, not here with her mother and sisters on this month long holiday. He was a detective of some kind and Ruby knew that a difficult case had suddenly come up. A disappeared girl. She'd gone for a ride on her new bike and never came back. The girl was the daughter of an important politician and her smiling face had appeared in all the newspapers. Nell says the girl is made of prairie dust. That her skin is pink sand. On moonless nights she goes down to the river to pick blackberries though how she knows this Ruby can't say. Nell calls the missing girl: Mermaid Child. She has told Ruby that the Mermaid Child sleeps inside an empty culvert; by day she lies on top of it, sunning herself, flicking her tail.

Ruby's father had asked her mother to postpone the trip to Britain until the following year but she said she couldn't wait, she had to get back. It had been six long years since she'd left the old country and she missed her parents and brothers, missed the smell and taste of things, the bread and butter and jam, even the tea. "God almighty," she'd say, "I'd give my left leg for a decent cup of tea."

The man striding past Ruby and toward the farmhouse was shorter than her father, thicker around the middle, and he was wearing funny clothes. Something was wrong with one of his arms. His jacket sleeve fell loose from his shoulder. Ruby got up and followed him over the field and across the yard, falling in step behind him, mesmerized, as though he were the Pied Piper and she one of the doomed children of Hamelin.

"Dad!" Nell cried when he walked into the kitchen.

"Just in time for tea," Aunt Kate said in her deep humming voice. "Come, come. Sit yourself down." She was a small woman with large breasts and toothpick legs and her smile was so pretty and sad it hurt Ruby's heart. She stood in the doorway watching her aunt set platters of food on the table - slabs of red meat and roasted potatoes, string beans and dumplings, a blue jug of gravy. The man took off his cap and slapped it against his thigh.

"I'm that hungry I could eat man off horse, then go back for horse." Ruby's mother came into the room. "Cutbert," she said, but the man ignored her so she said it again, louder, holding out her hand, as though she were demanding something hidden in his clothes. They stared at each other while Aunt Kate fidgeted and wiped her hands on her pinny.

"Tha looks fair nattered," the man said finally.

"A long flight," Ruby's mother said. "Three long flights. We're all flagging."

He pulled up a chair and sat, his left arm in a sling, the hand at the end of it, small and withered. "That's nowt tae me."

"For the love of God. We're only here for a fortnight. Can you no try to be civil?"

Aunt Kate shook her head and smiled at Ruby and Nell. "Your uncle wasn't brought up. He was dragged up."

Dragged up?

Ruby looked to her sister for an explanation because Nell always had an explanation, but she shrugged and said, "It's sort of like ducks waddling up a red carpet."

"Let's have another go, then, shall we?" Ruby's mother said. "Now, Cutbert, how have you been?"

A black dog trotted into the room and nuzzled its head between the man's thighs. "Aye, Jep," he said, taking the dog's face in one hand. "Th'art a lovely beast." Aunt Kate stepped forward and announced that Jep had given birth to three pups. Two had died, which was a terrible shame, but the one that came through was a right wee smasher.

Ruby reached out to touch the tip of Jep's tail and the man looked at her intently. "Th'art like tha mam," he said, and Aunt Kate said sure enough, Ruby was the spitting image of her mother. Normally this would have pleased Ruby - with her pale blue eyes and wavy blonde hair, her mother's appearance made Ruby think of a cornflower - but that day she burst into tears.

"If tha don't stop tha bubbling, I'll give thee summat to bubble about," the man said. "Dast hear me? I'll give thee summat to bubble about."

***

Uncle Cutbert drove Ruby, Nell, Tom and Philip to the market to sell the vegetables grown in the back garden. Before they got out of the van he reminded them that gypsies were camped outside the village. They stole chickens and children both. "Tha wants to watch thyself. Dast hear me?"

"Aye," Philip said. At eleven he was the oldest.

For the first hour Nell wrapped tomatoes and beans and radishes in newspaper while Philip took money and Tom counted out change. A girl eating chips from a paper cone stopped to ask if Nell and Ruby were the American cousins she'd heard about.

"Canadian," Nell whispered.

"Speak up," the girl said. "What say tha?"

"Canada," Nell said.

"America, Canada," the girl said. "It's all the same to me, isn't it?" An old man at the next stall called over to ask if yon lasses could kiss like movie stars. He was surrounded by rabbit hutches, the rabbits huddled inside nibbling on dirty scraps of lettuce, or simply quivering in terror. Nell scowled; her mouth pursed like fig. "That one's got mug on," the old man said, then pointed at Ruby. "A shifty look, she has." He walked over and pulled a coin from his pocket and flipped it in the air.

"Our Ruby," Tom said, brightening. "Aye, she's a jammy devil." And before she could speak, he pulled her to his bony chest and kissed her on the mouth. She was flabbergasted. Normally, Philip and Tom called her a blinking nuisance. They told her to chuff off and play with the baby but here was Tom looking into her eyes and pleading with her to put some life in it.

"Life?"

"All moaning and groaning like," he whispered.

"Give us some more then," the old man said.

Tom kissed Ruby again and this time she wiggled her hips while moving her head energetically from side to side. Oooh. Aaah. She supposed she ought to close her eyes but she sensed things shifting around her, people gathering, a few egging her on. "There's a saucy lass," someone shouted. "Bold as a brass monkey." Out the corner of her eye, she saw the old man flip the coin again, above the vegetable cart, once, then twice. Philip reached up and caught it and Tom pushed Ruby roughly aside and lunged at his brother.

"My tanner."

"Says who?"

Tom shoved Philip in the chest and then they were rolling on the ground, kicking and punching. The people gathered around the stall began to hoot and cheer as though they were at a football game at Walkington Green. The old man pulled a handkerchief from his jacket sleeve and coughed and spat into it. "Hard luck," he said, shaking his head, though Ruby didn't know which boy he was speaking to. "Hard luck, lad."

***

Ruby sits at the long kitchen table, chewing on a pea pod, leisurely masticating until nothing remains in her mouth but a wad of green pulp. The baby, propped up with cushions on the floor, is stuffing pieces of newspaper into her mouth, her face a puddle of black drool. Aunt Kate and Ruby's mother finish washing the dinner pots, then kick off their shoes and roll down their stockings. They sit at the table and pour cups of tea and Ruby's mother says it's as clear as the nose on her face that Cutbert has not let bygones be bygones. Aunt Kate lights up a cigarette and says how pleased she is that Ruby's mother has stopped in Yorkshire before going up to Scotland to visit her own folk, she enjoys a bit of company now and then, and Ruby's mother says she imagines it gets awful lonely on the farm, with no women about, not a soul to talk to from one week to the next. "Let's be honest, Cutbert never was one for conversation." Aunt Kate stirs her tea and in her humming voice admits she's a little ashamed of his nobs; his behaviour is worse than deplorable.

"Deplorable," Ruby agrees and the women laugh.

"Och, you're not to blame," her mother says. "He always was pig-headed so and so."

"The accident didn't improve his temper," Aunt Kate says.

"Och, Kate, there's no excuse for the way he goes on. A broken record, so he is, blaming us for this and that and the next thing. You'd think we left just to spite him. Stephen's no farmer. Cutbert himself said as much."

And then Aunt Kate and Ruby's mother sit in silence, drinking tea and smoking and looking down at the baby, who has started to whimper. Ruby spits the green mash into her palm, and, sensing a change in mood, moves outside to the stoop. Jep is walking through the yard, Uncle Cutbert's trained crow riding her back like a small black queen.

"He's his own worst enemy," Aunt Kate says. "Sometimes I think he can't help himself."

"You're too easy on him!"

"You fancied him yourself once."

"Water under the bridge," Ruby's mother says. "All water under the bridge."

"He's not one to forgive. He says he'll never ..."

"Never," Ruby's mother interrupts. "Never's a long word."

The baby starts to cry and Ruby walks away, toward the barn, imagining herself invisible, but then her mother's beside her, saying, "Take the wee one down to the sty. Be a good hen." She wipes the baby's face with her sleeve. "Off you go. The pigs will do her good."

Ruby pushes the pram down the lane, chuntering to herself, "Hate baby, hate pigs, hate Yorkshire." She parks in front of the sty - a sunken pit with a heavy wooden door that slides back and forth like the door on a boxcar - and pinches her nostrils. The baby strains against her harness, hands clapping, feet kicking. The injustice of it all so infuriates Ruby she drops her hand and breathes through her nose. The stink! The astonishing powerful stink. It's like a punch to head. There's nowhere to sit so she shifts from foot to foot, until finally, at long last, the baby's fingers slip into her mouth and a vague look passes over her face.

Time is interminable.
A moth spins in the air.
Leaves rattle in the breeze like pieces of tin.
Jep barks.
The crow caws.
Weird orange clouds scud across the sky.
A bug crawls up Ruby's arm.

Her sister's eyelids close, and when she's sure the baby's asleep, she eases the pram backwards, gently, gently, but the baby's eyes pop open and her shrieks bring Ruby's mother out of the house in stocking feet, waving a cigarette.

"For the love of God, give us another five minutes."

The little arc-shaped door at the back of the sty - the door Ruby discovered while exploring the outbuildings - opens, and Uncle Cutbert's head pokes through, followed by the rest of him in gumboots and overalls. He dumps a bucket of slop into the trough and the pigs charge towards it, sending the baby into another fit of yelping and hand-smacking. And then, to Ruby's amazement, Uncle Cutbert begins to sing. He sings something about bonnie lasses and getting canned. His voice, deep and rich and familiar, is the sound of her father's voice on a Saturday morning, making pancakes in the kitchen.

Where hast tha been since I saw thee, I saw thee. On Ilkley Moor ba tat. On Ilkley Moor ba tat.

Uncle Cutbert stops singing and mucking about to watch an ugly pig with black markings try to mount a larger one, both of them squealing and grunting and mashing their hooves into the mud. He looks up and sees Ruby. "Yon pig's had more boyfriends than I've had Sunday dinners." Her mouth falls open. She gapes. What does this revolting spectacle have to do with Sunday dinner? And this horrible grinning man. What has he to do with her?

***

"Leave the wee one alone!"

Impossible.

Ruby runs away but as soon as Uncle Cutbert and Jep head out to the fields she sneaks into the shed and kneels by the box in the corner. The pup is as soft as bread dough and fits perfectly in the palm of her hand. It has silky brown fur and cloudy blue eyes. She's in thrall to this creature - that it lives and breathes. She holds the warm body against her chest, rubs its sweetness against her cheek. She kisses the wet nose. Rolls the pup from one hand to the other the way she rolls the warm eggs she finds in the barn, back and forth, back and forth, until, oops, the pup slips, and, plop, lands in the dust.

The pup opens his mouth. Yawns. Ah. Such a tiny pink tongue!

She picks it up and begins again, this time dropping the pup on purpose, just to hear the soft splat in dust. She drops it again. From higher and higher heights. Until the pup stops moving and its eyes register nothing.

***

From an upstairs window Ruby watches Nell run back and forth beneath the clothesline. As usual Tom and Philip have told her to chuff off. As usual they're arguing over the rules of some game. Tom is saying Nell can be a nurse who tends the wounded men on the battlefield but Philip says the battlefield is too dangerous for a nurse.

"She's got tae be summat," Tom says.

Each time Nell arrives at the sheet, her arms fly up at the last moment and her face breaks into a smile. Watching her, Philip suggests she's a captured Nazi spy who can only say Sprechen sie Deutsches and Auf wiedersehen. She stops running to say she also knows how to say Wohnst Du mit Deiner Mutter?

What's it mean, then, he wants to know and Nell says, "Do you live with your mother?" and then she dips through the sheet again and Philip says, Aye, he supposes there were spies who said that, and Tom asks why Philip always gets to say what's what, and Philip says because he read a book about weapons in the Middle Ages, and also he was in the field when their dad's hand got caught in the thresher's blades.

"Were thee?" Tom says.

"Aye."

"Were thee?" Tom says again.

"Flopping heck. I'm telling thee nowt nae more."

Nell volunteers to be a captured German spy who's forced to be a nurse, against her will, and Philip says he doesn't want to faff about all day, and he raises his gun, a few sticks banged together with nails, and shouts, "Wohnst Du mit Deiner Mutter?"

Ruby leans on the sill and watches her cousins skirt around sheds and broken farm machinery - I felled ten Gerries with one blow! - but it's Nell she eyes jealously, Nell crouching by the tap with a spade and metal plate, mixing dirt and water. Each time Philip or Tom falls to the ground, she rushes over to slather muddy paste on their wounds and coo her German phrases. But after a while Philip and Tom just bypass Nell, falling dead and getting up again and she wanders over to a tree where she begins to glop mud onto its trunk, using her hands to pack the grooves.

This is Ruby's chance to call down, to ask if she can play with Nell but suddenly Jep is barking with great excitement, the crow is flapping into the air, and Philip and Tom are laughing and pointing at something she can't see. She runs to the corner window.

The pigs!
Loose and stampeding around the field.
Rampaging back and forth.
Butting heads.
Charging in crazed circles.

And there's Ruby's mother and aunt running around the field, both of them trying to catch a pig by the tail. It's a sort of delirious chaos, a slapstick movie.

Ruby's chest clenches - the little arched door! How easily the metal bolt slid from its hasp, as though it had been greased. She wants only to close her eyes and blink the pigs back into the sty. She wants to be somewhere else, not here in this room where she and her mother and sisters sleep, all in one bed. She glances down at the blue aerogramme open on the dresser.

Darling, How good to hear you're getting on so well with Kate. I am sorry about Cutbert ...

Her father. His absence blows like a cold wind through a hole in her chest. If he were here none of this would be happening. The baby wouldn't cry all the time, frazzling everyone's nerves, her mother wouldn't stay up all night, smoking and scribbling letters which she rips into little pieces, her uncle wouldn't bully them all in his strange unintelligible language, Nell and her cousins wouldn't ignore her, the pigs wouldn't be wreaking havoc in the field below. Ruby folds the letter and slips it into her pocket, then runs down the stairs and out of the house. At the edge of the field Tom and Philip are standing rigid while Aunt Kate, trying to corral a few pigs into a fenced-in corner, keeps shouting, "Huddle up now. Huddle up."

"Blood and sand and buckets of tea," Ruby shouts. Just as she's about to run toward the mayhem, Tom grabs her arm. "Th'art daft. Tha'll get flattened."

***

In the dark and confusion, no one notices Ruby follow her cousins and uncle out to the barn. Home from the pub, he's furious that the pigs have broken through the fence, ruining the neighbour's barley. She slides down behind the sacks of chicken feed by the door and listens to her uncle interrogate Philip and Tom. Who, he wants to know, left the sty door open?

Neither boy answers.

"There's no need tae bother thyself. I'll belt thee both black and blue."

Philip protests, then, as God is his witness, and Tom says, "May I get struck with lightning." Ruby imagines Uncle Cutbert unbuckling his belt and wrapping it around the knuckles of his good hand. All the threats of the past two weeks run together - I'll bray thee one, I'll knock thee into middle of next week, I'll cuff thee up side of head - and when she looks up, moonlight is streaming down through a high window. He mutters deep into his chest, "Nae then, Ruby Dove, would like tha to pull up a pew and park tha frame?"

Eyes in the back of his head!
She rises to the full length of her body.
He turns around slowly. "Own up."

She can feel herself shrinking beneath his judgement. But no, she will not shrink. She will not tremble. She puffs herself up, face frozen into a ghastly smile. Imagines herself: Highlander. Fierce. Brave. Her mother's ayne folk.

"Ruby?" Tom says. "Tha didn't, did tha?"

Didn't what? What is he accusing her of? Killing the pup? Leaving the sty door open? What? A noose closes around her neck and she steps back, panicky, choking, arms swinging. She knocks over a milk tin. Her eyes fill with water and she's hit with the stink of manure and dead animal, her own fear. It's like the dream in which you can't wake from the dream in which you can't wake. She starts to run but turns the wrong way and pitches forward into the box hedge, its prickly branches and pungent yellow flowers. She thrashes uselessly, grasping for something to hold onto.

"I'm nae as daft as I look," Uncle Cutbert says, softly, menacingly, and she senses Jep emerging from the shadows. Jep is everywhere at once, an enormous growling dog, bigger than the barn, its mounds of sweet hay. And then Ruby's running toward the house, toward her mother and aunt and sisters, toward every shining window. Feet slapping the ground, blood pounding in her head, she tries to shout but her voice is hoarse whisper. "It's a lie. You're not my dad's brother."

"Bent as a butcher's hook," Uncle Cutbert roars after her. "I knew when I first saw thee. Th'art bent as a butcher's hook."