Slow Poison
Page 15
The street was crowded, and Anna could see other people jostling down the side streets which sometimes, especially if the weather was bad, were sidestepped. In past years there had been bad feeling about the jockeying for position and the best pitches but that seemed to have evaporated this year. There was music from Dark Gate Street. The shadow of last year started to stretch itself across the day. She’d wheeled Ethan up Laundry Lane and it had been really bitingly cold…
“Another pork cob roll,” a rude voice spoke behind Anna. She turned from her unwanted thoughts and plugged in a smile.
“Yes, and would you like apple sauce or stuffing?” Anna was slicing the tender morsels of meat, the flesh stripping off the carcass now with a juicy unctuousness that, Anna thought, even the most diehard veggie would be hard pressed to resist. Oh my God, was the woman licking her lips?
She was; her tongue, small and pink and reminding Anna of a cat, was licking her top lip with speedy and rather odd little movements.
“Both. And mustard.” She gestured to the pot of English mustard and then looked greedily at the chutney. “Is this apple chutney?” the woman asked, as she leaned forward to sniff at the opened pot.
“It is. Apple and caramelised onion and… this one…” Anna was about to give her the full tour when the woman simply lifted the spoon from the apple chutney into her open mouth. Anna had no idea what to do and stood, mesmerised, as the woman wolfed in another few mouthfuls, the chutney beginning to spill out of her mouth and down her chin. The woman made a beckoning gesture, her greedy eyes on the pork cob.
“Gimme.”
Anna handed it over, the woman shoving a sticky fiver into her hand in return.
“Thank you,” Anna called after her, trying to banish the urge to throw down her cooking utensils and head to the castle. Ugh. This Apple Day was horrible; it was her mood, the shadow hovering beside her mind, and she was struggling to stay a step ahead of it.
* * *
When it was time for her break Anna sat in a rather wobbly deck chair at the back of the marquee with a pork filled cob. In spite of the mood of the day she was hungry and already the rich aroma of pork and apple was making her stomach gurgle. The intense Hog Roasting duty rota had meant she’d skipped breakfast this morning, which Anna always felt was a bad idea. As she took a bite she could see through the tent flap to where the people were crowding, and the three Saturday girls were waiting at tables. From this angle Anna could watch Casey making a better job than she did of slicing and pulling the hog roast and, it was clear, dealing with the rather boisterous customers. Again, the conversation inside the marquee was ramped up and noisy. It clanged a little inside her head. She took another succulent mouthful of the pork cob. Nearby was a pitcher of apple juice, some slices of apple bobbing on the surface. Thirsty, Anna reached for a plastic glass and poured herself some.
She was obviously very thirsty indeed, the juice delicious, with its bronzy hue and heady scent of tree and blossom and honey, and what else was in there? She glugged down the glassful. Oh. No. She was drinking from the jug, how had that happened? Who cared? It was lush. The idea of a summer’s day lingered on her tongue, shone bronze light right through her. She reached for the pitcher again, but it tumbled from the worktable, the apples that had been sliced into it browning quickly on the cobbled floor.
“Rats…” Anna put down her lunch and attempted to pick up the pieces of apple. She wasn’t going to eat them, just a little lick. Ailith pushed her aside.
“Don’t…” She reached for the pieces with a pair of barbecue tongs and flung the scraps into the bin bag she was filling with paper plates and abandoned plastic glasses. “It’s turned.”
“It’s not bad… just brown, it’s been in the juice. I wasn’t going to eat it.” Anna could hear a small and peevish voice utterly unlike her own. “What do you think I am? An animal? Grazing crappy apple scraps off the floor?” Ailith looked at her, her face thinned with emotions that Anna was struggling to read. Ailith reached for the slightly chewed pork cob roll with the barbecue tongs and put it into the bin bag.
“I hadn’t finished that…” Anna reared up, felt her teeth baring in anger and Ailith, her face not blinking, stepped back.
“Might well step back you little stray.” Oh. No. God. It was like a horrible belch of nastiness from within her. She put her hand over her mouth and looked at Ailith. Ailith looked very still and serious.
Anna wanted to apologise: the words queued up in her head, but she understood that if she tried to say them they would be corrupted into insults and meanness. Ailith was still watching her. Their eyes met and exchanged a long and anxious glance before Ailith moved on her way picking up bits of apple, of pie, of cake, of toffee apple shards and throwing them into the bin bag. Anna sat down. The light was brighter still, headachy yellow.
“You sure you’re alright?” Casey asked. “Only you look a bit flushed…” She looked, as always, concerned. Anna could see the words she wanted to say in her head, but they were overwritten.
“Stop fussing you annoying bitch,” were the words cued up in her mouth. Anna pressed her lips tight closed and nodded to Casey.
“You sure?”
Another nod, it was as much as Anna could manage. The delicious aftertaste of the pork and the apple juice had soured leaving a dry tinny tang in her mouth. Inside her head her interior monologue was watching itself make spiteful “blah-di-blah-di-bitch” sounds at Casey. Anna had to keep them in. The apple juice must have been cider, must have had alcohol in it. Anna reacted badly to alcohol, it made her morose. She nodded vehemently and shooed Casey away from the roaster.
The heat from the coals began to make her feel irritable, she couldn’t get away from this. The fat spat at her and several people began to hassle her for pork cobs. Their voices were demanding, short tempered.
“For Christ’s sake how long does it take to pull some bloody pork?” one man bellowed as others jostled up behind him. Several lewd comments regarding the pulling of pork ensued. Spit. Laughter. Teeth. Ugh. Anna was repulsed.
“Hoi Pushy! Get back. I’m next, waiting here, like a lemon.” A woman grabbed for the shoulder of a small old lady who was elbowing into the queue. Anna wanted to wade in, to tell the woman not to be rude, to offer some comfort to the old lady but she found she couldn’t. A long list of short sharp swearwords were cued in her mouth. They were pushing hard to come out and she pinched her lips together. The day had lost its sunshine, there seemed to be clouds lowering overhead, and the air was heavy with the promise of rain. She watched as the man shouted at her some more, the sound rasping against her mind, and then the old lady helped herself to a bun and some pork and Anna was pushed aside and the rest of the queue began to do the same. Scrabbling. Greedy. Pigs at a trough. Anna stepped back, and back, and back. She sank to her haunches by the edge of the marquee and watched the customers take what they liked. She was too hot and too tired and enough was enough.
It was half an hour or so later when the uproar began in the Castle Inn marquee. There was a loud male voice yelling objection and then other male voices joined in and then there was the smashing of glass and the rumble of foldaway tables being toppled. Anna, still sitting beside the now emptied pork roaster could hear the uproar and she felt afraid. Her eyes were blurry with tears as she tried to lift herself onto her feet.
Inside the marquee she thought Lella might be trying to take charge but in fact Lella was the ringleader. She was yelling at Ailith who was standing, defiant, with a bin bag filled with the remains of the roasted hog and her tongs.
Anna couldn’t translate all the words, there was just the rawness of the sounds as it hammered against the smooth surface of Ailith.
“What have you done?” Anna grabbed at Ailith’s shirt front. Ailith didn’t soften or give, her face was set hard.
“What must be done. It’s bad and it has you. All of you. The meat has turned.” As she responded there was a man snaffling at the bin bag trying to retrieve some o
f the lost pork. Ailith snatched the bag tighter to her and as he swung for Ailith his fist connected with Anna. She saw Ailith reaching out for her. Anna’s bones creaked, her cheek slid against her teeth, the skin inside leeching blood; her skull echoed with the sound of the thump it made.
The world in the marquee was a broken mirror of arms and legs, of roaring faces and bared teeth. Ailith vanished into the storm of it, her face pushed back into the crowd. Here and there random shoes cluttered the floor and flew through the air as smaller fights broke out. Anna felt the sourness of the apple sauce, the apple juice, the greasiness of the meat in her mouth and throat, and she felt the salty grief of her tears because she just couldn’t do this anymore. The man had done her a favour, he had punched some sense into her.
All in a moment she knew where she had to go and what she must do, something she should have done a year ago.
22
Twitcher
Emz had spent most of Apple Day trying to appear studious in the sixth form centre. She had managed to book in her Parents’ Consultation Evening appointments and now she was looking for a moment in which to escape to Prickles. The windows were open on account of the glorious autumn sunshine and, above the garage grind of music playing from the common room, Emz Way could hear a woodpecker. The sound, a tiny fragment in the vast technological soundscape of the secondary school, was calling her out. There was the general white noise of electricity, the subsonic and ultrasonic frequencies of everything from Wi-Fi to the communications of the elephants who were resident at Castlebury Zoo. Emz, her mind filled with leaves and a small dark pond of cool dark water, wondered what those elephants might be saying to each other. She had read that elephants could communicate over vast distances, obvious really, since Africa and Asia were vast continents. Now she was struggling to think where the nearest elephants might be and what conversation might be taking place. Also, where was that small dark pond of cool dark water? That looked familiar, but she was struggling to place it, it was teasing at her, tugging at her memory. It dodged in and out from behind the herd of elephants. Two. Two probably wasn’t a herd. Were they lonely? Elephants were gregarious, weren’t they?
Her train of thought was derailed by the arrival of Mark Catton with his new entourage of Wes and Harry. Before Emz could look away Caitlin and Logan appeared, Caitlin draped around him like a snake. Before she could look down into her book and hide she saw Logan’s eyes lock onto her for a brief second and the aftermath was a prolonged kiss for Caitlin. Showing off. Emz’s inner voice sneered even as her heart creaked.
She flicked through to the middle of ‘Wildwood’ so that she looked busy and kept the little group in the very corner of her eye. She had her earphones in although her iPod had run out of battery half an hour ago.
There was a soured sharp scent of dry cider and apples in the air. Emz wrinkled her nose a little. Cider was not her favourite drink, too sweet or too sour and usually too fizzy. A slop of apple sauce flicked past her, a spot landing on her book, most of it landing on the floor beside her. She looked up. Mark Catton and his friends were involved in a food fight; they had clearly stopped off at Apple Day on their way back from town at lunchtime. Piecrust and frazzles of sponge cake pitted with apple were littering the room and being picked out of hair. The cider, in long thin brown bottles, was being passed around, the glass chinking into a discordant music. As it passed to Logan Boyle he shook his head, his fingers toying with the bottle in his hand, untouched. He watched Caitlin for a minute or two as she threw back her hair and launched into a snaking dance with Wes and Harry. It was then that he looked over at Emz. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him, watching her. Emz felt paralysed, an urge to run coupled with an urge to turn her head, to match his gaze. What was this? What was going on with him?
When Caitlin kicked Wes and Harry onto all fours and began riding them around yelling “Faster my Man Beasts!” Emz thought it might be time to leave. She headed down the staircase where Ellie was puking over the bannisters, the waterfall of thick rich apple-dappled vomit landing with a splat on the floor below.
* * *
Winn was not in a good mood. She hated Apple Day. Winn preferred cauliflower cheese.
“Apple Day? How delightfully rural, and where does Apple Day take place?” Her tenant seemed inclined to small talk. Winn was not, balanced as she was up a ladder fixing a swan neck fitting which had worked loose on the guttering above the kitchen window. It was annoying the tenant and so the tenant, Mrs Forster or Foote or whatever the hell her stupid name was, was annoying Winn by insisting on an immediate repair. The phrasing she had used on the telephone was ‘detrimental to the fabric of your building’ and Winn had, for a moment, heard her father’s voice on the telephone line, not that he had ever believed in telephones. He thought they were a contraption that people would soon tire of. Plus, he could shout very loudly and therefore didn’t need one.
“Hmm?” Mrs Whojit Fielding looked up the ladder. Winn had half-forgotten the gist of their conversation and her attention was focused on the new hole she’d had to drill with the masonry bit. She rummaged in her waxed jacket pocket for her screwdriver. Twist and twist and yep, that was tightening, that would hold. The wall might tumble down but the swan neck downpipe would remain secured to it.
“Is it going to be held here? Like the wedding?”
Winn clambered down the ladder.
“Is what going to be held here?”
There was just a glimmer of anger about Mrs Fiddle Faddle. Winn was adept at recognising such glimmers, a skill learnt from her father. His temper had been like an open gas tap and Winn’s very existence a lighted match.
“Apple Day.” Mrs Eff Whatsit, Winn thought, was not being so charming now, pinching those red lips together. Yuk. That red lipstick was a bit gory really, like a hound that had just rent apart a fox.
“Where is this Apple Day and why aren’t you there?” Mrs Faffy Fyfe was looking a little less… Ah. That was it, her name was Fyfe. Mrs Fyfe, ha, she was looking a little less patronising and a lot more peeved.
“I prefer cauliflower cheese,” Winn shrugged.
“What?” The red licky lips pursed and behind the black framed glasses Mrs Fyfe’s small black eyes widened.
“I don’t like apples. I don’t go to Apple Day. It’s not compulsory. It’s just in town. If you like cider and apple pie and people telling you about the folklore of pips then knock yourself out, otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Although there is sometimes some nice cheese, obviously, to go with the apples.” Winn raised her eyes to the sky. Mrs Fyfe stared very hard. Her eyes, through the thick lenses of the black glasses, looked like glass balls and were unblinking.
“You’d rather have a Cauliflower Cheese Day?” she asked, the too-red-by-far lips thinned.
“No,” Winn shook her head. “I don’t tend to bother with ‘events’ and such. I don’t go in much for enforced jollity.”
Winn didn’t think Mrs Fyfe looked like a woman for any kind of jollity whatsoever. Mrs Fyfe was lost in thought for a moment or two, her eyes staring at Winn in a manner which reminded Winn of her Labrador, Napoleon, when he wanted her to give him a share of her sausage.
“After all your exertions the least I can do is make you a cup of tea.” Mrs Fyfe’s rare-steak-red smile curled up into her face. It was alarming actually, and Winn found herself stepping back.
“Oh… er… no that…” Winn wanted to get away, plus it was highly likely that some bit of equipment might go wrong in the kitchen and she’d be forced to dig the socket set out of the back of the Land Rover or have to remember where she’d put that length of copper piping.
“Of course… of course… you must come in.” Mrs Fyfe made an ushering movement towards the kitchen door. Winn hesitated. A cup of tea was always a good idea. But it was a better idea if it was brewed at Prickles and enjoyed with no company. Or Emz Way’s company. Those, Winn realised, were her social limits.
“Actually no… I think I…”
“I’ve already made the tea. You are being rude.” Mrs Fyfe spoke in a hard, little voice and Winn recognised it, it was the kind of voice her father had often used to make you do something you didn’t want to do. Like castrate a pig for instance.
The tea, Winn thought, was horrid sharp fruit stuff, not proper tea at all and so she only sipped a little of it. It was an insipid golden colour like cat’s piss tasting of sour apples and served without any milk and what was far worse, without any cake or biscuit.
“Would you care for some cake?” Mrs Fyfe turned from the countertop with an elaborate vintage cake plate. It was gilt edged, and Winn thought she recognised it from the Spode cabinet in the Top Hall.
Winn did not mind apples if they were disguised as cake, so she ate three pieces.
* * *
Emz was surprised to find that Prickles was deserted. The reception area was open but empty and there was no sign of Winn or the Land Rover. A hasty note had been scribbled on the desk in chalk: ‘GONE TO HARTFIELD. REPAIR.’
They were not due any school trips this afternoon and since Apple Day was in full swing it was unlikely anyone would drop by. Emz, relishing the unexpected solitude, changed into her hiking gear and, armed with her binoculars, headed down to Cooper’s Pond.
She had not walked a hundred yards when the sensation of prickling began at her neck. She was not giving it her full attention, her eye drawn in fact to a set of distinct deer tracks which she followed. At first, she scratched at it, thinking it was an insect biting but once she was in the thick of the trees of Leap Woods the leaves began to rattle a little in a cold sharp breeze and Emz halted. This was the Trespasser feeling.