Rebecca watched as the man in the black suit just stared at his captive.
‘Is this going to take very long?’
The man in the black suit took out a cigarette packet and placed it on the table, quite deliberately. ‘Can I smoke? Do you smoke?’
The prisoner nodded. The man removed a cigarette, lit it, and took a puff.
‘Why am I here?’
‘Why don’t you tell me about your day?’
‘No.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I want to know why I’m here.’
The man stared at him. ‘You play chess?’ He tapped his cigarette in the tray.
‘No. Once or twice. You?’
‘No.’
They sat in silence for a few moments.
‘Why do you want to get home so badly?’ the man asked.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
Rebecca felt light-headed again, so she finished her drink. She touched her forehead. It felt cold, clammy, somehow.
There was meowing from the hall.
‘Did you feed him?’
Her father nodded, not taking his eyes off the screen. He hadn’t spoken to her all day, but for pleasantries and grunts.
The cat began to move towards their dirty plates. He tried to be coy and stealthy and above it all in that way only cats can be, but Rebecca was wise to the tactic. She got up and collected the plates.
The television flickered.
Rebecca lingered in the doorway, smiling faintly at the cat. He stared back, upset that his scraps were being taken away. She thought about her life.
She thought about the horses’ eyes buried in the earth.
She stepped through to the kitchen and her heart stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY
George could smell the smoke all the way up to the third storey, his suit jacket and trousers piled in a ragged heap in the corner of his room from the night before, his nose running.
He was exhausted, had barely got out of his pyjamas all day. He was hungry. All he could think about was dead things.
Pig offal burning in the sun, burgers, pork, sausages. That, and having a drink. A bottle of beer. Some wine.
It was just about warm enough to sit outside. Warmer than the weather had promised.
And all this in November. What a time to be alive.
Downstairs, his wife, his friends, the plus-ones and the tolerated we-have-to-invite-them-or-it-will-look-bad remnants, sat and stood and drank and smoked and chatted and ate.
He had planned to cook those sausages. He always cooked them. And it wasn’t like many of these sods invited him to their houses, or if they did, that he’d be served anything but salmonella.
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ Shelly had asked, just an hour or two after they had woken up. She’d been very concerned about his cold. She’d bought him medicine, made him tea. He’d taken a sick day, hadn’t he? Why had he taken a day off if he was capable of running a barbecue? He’d tried to explain the finer points of exaggerating a situation to work colleagues, but still, she would not believe or trust him. He was expelled from the whole event.
His wife and brother-in-law had then oven-cooked the meat inside, just to be safe. It was November, however warm it seemed, and you didn’t barbecue things in November. They finished it all in the fire to give it an extra crispy finish.
George kept telling her his cold was nothing, but still she kept fretting.
‘What about your hands?’ she’d asked.
‘What about them?’ George had grimaced at her from the kitchen table, from the low light.
‘They’re all red.’
‘It’s called work, Shelly.’
‘Don’t tell me something’s not wrong with those hands.’
‘They’re fine.’ They weren’t. They were rough and sore. The business on the farm had been difficult, even with the gloves Alec had forced him to put on. ‘Go on. Have it all without me, then. I’ll rest upstairs.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
She frowned.
‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow.
‘Nothing,’ she said softly. ‘It’s just I don’t want you to be annoyed at me.’
‘Why would I be annoyed?’ His voice was flat and strained, as passively aggressive as he could make it.
‘OK.’ She turned to smile. ‘If you’re sure.’
So here he was in a room full of piles of unwashed but neatly organized clothes. He’d seen cairns like these. Little piles of rocks in heaths and moors and fields, dedications to the dead that you could crawl inside.
His hands burned. His head began to split.
He had no water. He knew he should go to the bathroom and pour more from the tap but his body and mind and will would not cooperate.
He drew the curtains and lay down, hoping it would all go away. He checked his phone, setting an alarm for a few hours’ time on the off-chance he fell asleep.
His phone background showed his wedding day. Fifteen years since then and he’d never changed it, not on a single phone he’d had since.
They’d been happiest without friends.
An email had arrived. They’d got the CCTV footage from the shore, the night of the fireworks and the killings.
He’d go in to see it tomorrow, if he was better.
He rolled over and closed his eyes, already stinging.
He’d cut himself in places – he didn’t know how exactly, but it had been a long day at that rusty farm. He’d put ointment on the nasty scabs and he’d hidden them from his wife by wearing long-sleeved pyjamas.
He just needed a good rest. She would only worry and fret.
He fell asleep, trying to ignore the sun streaming through the window.
Outside George’s house, the barbecue was coming to an end, and with it the last heat of the year. Around a dozen or so guests remained, chatting, poking skewers of marshmallow into the campfire’s flames. Midges danced around their heads and arms, pulling blood from beneath the surface of their skin. No one noticed the theft. Globules of O-positive, AB, and insulin-rich B floated around their laughter and smiles. Someone opened a cold beer in the dark, preferring to keep away from the heat.
One guest was showing everyone photos of her new home. Fiona was moving much nearer London. She wanted to be near her family. It was the reason everyone moving on gave, as if leaving this place represented some fundamental human failure.
‘Empty nest,’ she said. ‘The house is filled with ghosts, now they’ve all gone. Now Richard’s gone.’
Her husband had died the year before. A stroke after a long bout of emphysema. He’d been older than her, they hadn’t entirely loved each other, but she was alone now, no underlying conditions, no anything.
‘It feels like my kids are gone too, sometimes,’ she said. ‘I know where they are . . . one of them only lives half an hour away, but . . . it . . . it feels like they’re lost, all the same. Like they’re waiting for me.’ She picked up her drink, smiling. ‘Sorry. Too much wine.’
‘I want you to keep in touch,’ Shelly said. ‘I don’t want you to forget me.’
Fiona smiled back, gently, half dismissive. She didn’t say anything.
‘We’ve thought of downsizing ourselves, but, well. We like it here.’
Fiona nodded. And then, after a moment, after staring into the fire, said, ‘I always said I’d move closer to my children if he died first. Do you know what Richard said he’d do if I died first?’
‘What?’
‘He said if I died first, he was going to travel the world.’ She sighed, trying to smile. ‘He had an Irish passport.’
Out on the road, they heard a car speed past towards the town centre. Must have been breaking the limit.
‘Where did he want to go? Any place in particular?’
‘Ireland, for sure.’ Fiona’s face quivered a bit.
‘Why?’
‘He’d never been,’ Fiona said, and the back door opened.
It was George.
‘What are you doing out of bed?’ she said, rushing towards him.
He was covered in sweat.
‘George?’
He moved a step forwards and fell, dizzy, his head hitting the wall of the extension.
‘George?!’
His head was bleeding where it had hit the brick. He didn’t say a thing. His eyes were shut.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
‘I love you,’ the farmer whispered, those eyes that looked back up at him so much like those horses in the earth, so much like what had happened to his land, his life.
Rebecca’s head was still bloodied where she’d fallen in the kitchen, that same blood still slick against the counter.
He drove her to the hospital.
She had awoken briefly on the journey, had tried speaking, but her words had not made much sense.
Memories ran through her mind.
She talked about a black carriage.
Her father didn’t understand.
The horse’s breathing was laboured, her nostrils flared, her neck moist with sweat.
She dipped her head into a bucket of water next to the sign. It seemed narrow for her. Rebecca thought about her eyes, how the world must look to a creature like that, being either side of her head rather than the front. It was thirty degrees Celsius. The horse had been bringing people up and down the beachfront all day, a black carriage harnessed to her back, her driver an old man.
Michael brushed the sides of the horse’s neck, her black mane, too.
‘We’ll be ready to go soon,’ he said.
Rebecca nodded.
‘We don’t get many people wanting to do this by themselves.’
Rebecca didn’t answer.
Soon she was inside, seated on the stale starched candy-stripe seats, watching the waves pull in and out at sea.
The driver did not turn around as they went. She watched the way the horse moved forwards, the way he called her ‘Annie’.
‘It’s my birthday present,’ she mumbled.
‘Oh, right.’ Michael kept his eyes ahead. ‘Well, happy birthday.’
Rebecca nodded.
What do you want most in the world?
‘You.’
You’ve already got me.
‘Still.’
Tell me what you actually want. What do you actually want?
They kept moving and moving. The ride took them past the arcades, past the cafes, past even the abandoned hotels. Down here there were rows of old white houses that had once been expensive, other buildings, wrecks of places no one visited, no one kept.
The old cinema, one of the first in the whole country.
Four false Corinthian columns stood along the front like faded tree trunks. Above, where in an ancient temple you might have seen beautiful marble friezes depicting wars and gods and the history of human suffering, there were just letters. This frieze was not triangular, but flat like the roof itself. There were only letters, bound to the front of weathered stone, several now missing.
EM—R, it read.
The doors and the windows below had been boarded up and bolted.
Outside, someone waited far away.
He had a camcorder in his hand. He was filming her ride. It was hot and sunny enough that she could barely make him out, heat-fog rising from the pavement. Rebecca wondered, briefly, thinking of this, if the horse’s feet were OK on this concrete. She’d heard something about dogs on paths, how their paws could be burned. Maybe the horse was made of sterner stuff.
She looked at the camcorder, and waved to him.
He didn’t wave back.
The driver’s head changed angle briefly, looking at the stranger too.
‘Who’s that?’
‘He paid for this,’ Rebecca said. ‘It’s his gift.’
‘He didn’t want to come and ride with you?’
‘He’s afraid,’ Rebecca said, trying to smile.
‘Of horses?’ Michael scoffed.
‘Maybe.’
They went on and on.
Later, her father would pick her up from town. She’d told him she’d gone to town with friends. Her mother had been supposed to pick her up, but she was in bed again. Still she refused to see the doctor. She’d always been like that.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said. ‘You had a good one?’
They had a cake for her back at home. He’d made it himself. It was a surprise, but she’d seen it in the byre fridge. It was full of mini edible sheep.
Rebecca thought about the horse, on and on.
‘Can I go riding?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Riding lessons.’
Her father sighed. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Ask your mother,’ he said, and that was the end of it.
Rebecca wouldn’t ask. Of course she wouldn’t ask.
The sky grew dark.
The world passed by.
Rebecca stopped having these memories.
She stopped seeing anything, even in her mind.
She had started to cough once they got inside the front doors of the hospital.
Her father drove back by himself, not telling anyone he was leaving his little girl alone, or that he was returning. He thought about the farm, about those early days. He thought about walking the fields, about the policeman, about the marshes.
There could be lovely days out here, there could be sunsets that made him cry for joy. There could be moments when the world assembled itself in his eyes, puzzle pieces of reflected light, echoes of distant bleats in the wind, the blossoming of wildflowers in colours he had no names for. He’d watch birds dance in the air, he’d listen to them call to each other through the reeds. He’d take antlers and place them all around his home.
His wife had been sick for years, in her mind and in her heart. No one had understood her, no one had understood him, what he had tried to do for all of them.
He imagined everyone thought he was just a fool, but he knew the secret of all life. He knew that thoughts were no one’s fault, not in the end. They are just things that happen to you.
They are just like everything else, like weather, like the sun, like frost.
He was crying, now. He accelerated along the road.
He was going to go to his fields.
He was going to be alone, now, too.
He wondered if he might see his wife again, somehow, some day.
She had been Grace, in her name, in meaning, in smiles and in tears.
He wondered if they would forgive all they had done to each other.
He wandered, walking out into the reeds, into the awful dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The sun had set on Ilmarsh, the sky a faint red. On earth as flat as this, there was nothing to stop the spread of light along the horizon, not the low buildings, not the hedges, not the abandoned tractors, not people. The light changed the world, if light was all you could see.
The radio played in the car. It was dark, now.
‘Can you turn it off?’ Simon asked.
Alec began to sing along, exaggerating each syllable.
‘Dad . . .’
‘Fine, fine.’ He turned it off. They drove in silence for a while, but for the rumble of wheels on the road. Simon’s rucksack sat on the seat next to him in the back. He’d gone to a friend’s house after school, a hamlet far from the centre.
‘You hungry yet?’ Alec asked.
‘A bit.’
‘We’ll get something on the way back, yeah?’
His son didn’t say anything.
‘Something on your mind?’
The boy was eighteen. Everything was strange with him, like it is with everyone’s teenaged child. He was sort of almost an adult but he wasn’t. Simon was his boy, but he was a man, too, old enough and big enough to have a life his father didn’t know.
‘I had a dream last night,’ Simon finally said.
‘You have dreams every night. We all do. It’s how the brain works.’ Alec grinned at his son in the rear-view mirror, but the boy wasn’t smiling.
‘I don’t,’ he said.
‘You do. You just don’t remember them.’
‘Can I say what my dream was?’ There was something in Simon’s voice.
‘Sure.’ Alec looked in the mirror again. ‘I was just saying you have more dreams than you think. It’s interesting, we don’t actually know what—’
‘Dad.’
‘Sorry. Go on.’
‘No.’
‘You’re going to sulk?’
Simon looked away.
‘Come on, tell me about your dream. I was just having fun.’
‘No. It was stupid, anyway.’
ILMARSH, 25 MILES, the sign read. Everything was so spread out here, so isolated, even this thirty-minute drive felt like a quick journey. It was nothing like London.
They soon passed back by Well Farm itself, the white tents fluttering in the slight breeze, reflecting the headlights. They were going to take them down in a couple of days, once they were certain there was nothing else in the soil.
‘How was school?’ Alec asked.
‘Can we turn the radio on again?’
He did so.
Silence, but for low voices talking about traffic in a distant town. Outside, the view seemed to remain the same no matter how far they travelled.
‘Simon?’
‘Yeah?’
Are you sure you’re OK?
I’m sorry if I’ve been distant.
‘What do you want for dinner?’
His son was staring out of the window, lost in some thought. After a pause, after Alec repeated the question: ‘Sorry?’
‘We could get fish and chips, a kebab, anything you want . . .’
‘Chips would be good.’
The road was rougher here, potholes that had not been repaired for over a year.
‘I know what’s wrong,’ Alec said suddenly, trying to be cheerful. ‘It’s a girl, isn’t it?’
‘Dad . . .’
Sixteen Horses Page 12
