by Jon McGregor
And now this giant of a man sits in an armchair clutching a hot-water bottle and watching the sky change colour outside. He refuses to watch television, listening instead to the radio while he keeps watch on the land and the sky. He claims to take no interest in the running of the farm: he signed everything over to them almost immediately, and has rarely offered an opinion. But she knows that he watches. She has seen him looking at a newly ploughed field from the upstairs window, or running a hand along a piece of machinery in the yard, or lingering by the kitchen table while she does the accounts. She has seen the faint smiles and nods which indicate that he is well pleased. She hopes that George has noticed; she suspects that he has not. Sometimes, when George takes his father his evening meal, his father will talk about something he’s heard on the radio: a concert recording, a weather forecast, a news report. Often they’ll just sit, and George will listen to his father’s short creaking breaths, thankful to have him there still. She doesn’t sit with them at these times. She reads, or deals with paperwork, or goes back to her writing, waiting for him to reassure himself that his father is well.
They’ve never had children, and this has
They’ve never talked about it, and yet
In this way, their lives together had settled into something like a routine. He was up first, feeding the dogs, bringing her a cup of tea, eating his breakfast and leaving his dishes on the table. She dressed, and ate her breakfast, and cleared the table, and waited until she heard the radio in his father’s bedroom before going to help him dress.
Caring for his father had taken up more and more of their time over the years. His health was poor enough to justify moving him into a nursing home. There was one over in March; she had a friend whose mother was there, and had heard good reports. But it was obvious that his father would refuse to go. And she had been unable to find a way of bringing it up with George. There were so many things she was unable to bring up with him. Sometimes it felt as though they only related to each other through talking about work, about the business. As business partners, they have been close, communicative, collaborative. All those good words.
In the mornings and the afternoons, they worked in the fields. That wasn’t really true. It might have been true once, in the very early days, when they’d had to work hard all the hours of daylight to try and pull the business out of the hole his father had dug it into. There’d been no money to employ extra labour, and they’d had to do everything themselves. There was less land then, but it was still a struggle and they were always exhausted by the time they found their way to bed.
But things had changed, gradually. They’d bought more land, secured more grants and loans. Diversified. And almost without noticing, they’d stopped being farmers and become managers. Most of the field-work was done by labourers hired by sub-contractors, people they never spoke to. George still liked to do some of the work himself – the ploughing, the ditch-digging, the heavy machine-based jobs – but there was no real need. For the most part they spent their days on the phone, or filling out forms, buying supplies, dealing with inspectors, negotiating with the water authorities. Discussions about drainage and flood defences seemed to take more and more of her time now. The floods seemed to be coming more often, covering more land, taking longer to drain. Maybe we should switch to rice, George had started saying, and she wasn’t sure whether or not this was a joke.
All of which meant that when he said he wanted to tell her something, and that they should take the time to walk out along the path beside the canal after lunch, it was no real interruption to the running of the farm. Down in the few fields which weren’t yet flooded, the workers carried on, their backs bent low, and she was able to stop him and put her hand to his chest and ask what it was he wanted to say.
In the evenings he often spent time in the barn, fixing things. She would spend that time walking backwards and forwards from the house to the barn, offering to help, and having that help warmly but firmly rejected. He was unable to admit, even now, that she was better than he was at mechanical jobs: repair, maintenance, improvised alteration and the like. Her father had been a mechanic. It was natural that she would have an ability in that area. But still, he found it difficult to accept.
At the same time, he found it difficult to have sufficient patience with, or tolerance of, the writing she did. She had only ever called it writing: he was the one who used the word ‘poems’. But whenever he said it – ‘poems’ – it was with an affected air, as if the pretension was hers. So, for example, he might come crashing in from the barn late one afternoon, with his boots on, and say Would you just leave your bloody poems alone for one minute and help me get the seed-drill loaded up? There were five other places he could have put the bloody in that sentence, but he chose to put it there, next to ‘poems’. This is an example, she would tell him, if he was interested, of what placement could do.
Once, he says, he saw a man metal-detecting in that field. He was driving past and saw a car parked on the verge, a faint line of footprints leading out across the soil. The light was clear and strong, and the man in the field was no more than a silhouette. He sat in his car, watching. Twice he saw the man stoop to the ground and dig with a small shovel. Twice he saw him stand and kick the earth back into place, and continue his steady sweeping with the metal detector. He wanted to go and tell him to stop, but there was no good reason for doing so. It wasn’t his land. The man would surely have asked permission, and anyway he was doing no damage so soon after harvest.
He wondered what the man thought he was going to find, he says. He had a sudden feeling of inevitability; that this would be the moment when the body was found, the moment when everything could be made right. He thought about going to fetch Joanna, so she could be there to see it as well.
He’d been living like this for years, it would seem, lurching between a trembling silence and a barely withheld confessional urge. When he thought about it later, he realised there was no reason why a man with a metal detector should find a body. But that kind of logical thought seemed to crumble in the face of these moments.
He got out of the car, and waited. The man in the field looked up at George, and George looked down at him. Ready. The man packed his tools into a bag and began hurrying back to his car, stumbling slightly across the low stubble.
Did you find anything? George asked.
No, the man said, nothing. And he got in his car and drove away.
This is the way it happens, in the end. This is the way he describes it, when he tells her:
He was driving, he said. There were bright lights, and men in white overalls standing in the water. There were police officers along the embankment and a white tent on the verge. There were police vans in the road. A policeman was directing the traffic through from either direction. The men in white overalls were doing something with poles and tape. He could hardly breathe, he said. There was something like a rushing sound in his ears.
The policeman waved at him to stop, and walked over to the car, and asked George to wind the window down. He reminded George that they were at school together, and George didn’t know what to say. A funny do this, isn’t it, the policeman said. George thought the policeman was probably waiting for him to ask what had happened but he didn’t say anything. The policeman told him anyway: they’d found a body in the water. The farmer had seen it. They were assuming it had been buried for years, and that the flood water must have disturbed the soil and brought it out. There wasn’t much left of it now. The policeman said he couldn’t imagine they’d find out who it was, and then he asked after the family and said he should let George get on. George said that his wife and his father were both fine and drove slowly into the fog.
Later, he drove into the yard and the dogs came barking out to meet him. He sat in the car for a moment, too weak to open the door. Joanna could see him from the kitchen window. She stood and watched. She wondered what was wrong. The lights of the house were clear and warm, spilling into the foggy night. He go
t out of the car and walked to the house, pushing the dogs away, and she came to meet him in the hallway. He looked at her and said that they needed to talk. She said it would have to wait until she’d finished some more work, and he said there was always something else to do, some other reason to wait and to not talk. He said they couldn’t go on like this, it had gone on for too long, they were young when it happened, they were older now, time had passed, they needed to bring things out into the open and deal with the consequences and stop trying to hide what it was doing to them both. She looked at him. It was the most she had heard him say for a long time. It didn’t fit. All right, she said. Fine. Bring the dogs.
He served the meal she had prepared for his father and took it through to him.
They found a body in the field down the road, his father said.
George nodded, and said that he’d heard.
Can’t think it was anyone from round here, his father said.
No, George said. I shouldn’t think so.
She Was Looking For This Coat
Lincoln
She came in and she was looking for this coat. It was her father’s, she said. He’d left it on a bus last week. She spent a long time describing it. Herringbone was a word she used. Also she said it was a kind of faded moss-green. Or more like a faded sage-green, but like a faded dark sage-green, with a brown hue. She asked me if I knew the colour she meant. I said I thought I was getting the idea. She had her hands resting on the counter, and she was trying to look round behind me, the way people do, like they think I’m hiding something. She said the buttons were tortoiseshell and one of them was missing. She said the lining was a very dark navy-blue and it was torn from one of the arms right down to the hem. She asked me if I thought hem was the right word to use about a man’s coat. I said I wouldn’t know about that. He’d left it on a bus the previous week, she told me again, on the Wednesday. It did have a belt but that might be missing, she said. I turned the pad of Mis/Prop/B forms across the counter towards her and asked her to fill in her name and address and telephone number. I said I could do the rest. I said I didn’t think we had anything right here in the office but I could make enquiries. She was looking at the form like she couldn’t read it. She said it was definitely Wednesday. She said she thought the coat was from Burton’s. I asked her if she knew which bus the item had been mislaid upon. She said she didn’t. She said it would have been some time in the morning. She said her father had told her he’d gone to meet his friend for lunch, when she’d spoken to him, when she’d spoken to him on the phone, last Wednesday. The way she was talking, I felt like asking her if she needed to sit down. I asked if her father had a bus pass and she nodded and I told her in that case he was unlikely to have been on the bus before nine thirty. She looked surprised. I said so we’re narrowing it down now aren’t we, love? I tried a smile. She didn’t smile. I asked if there were any valuables in the pockets. She said she wasn’t sure. She picked up the pen. She said there’ll be pens in the top pocket, in the breast pocket. She started to fill in her name and address. Kathryn something. With a Y. It was a nice name. It suited her. She had very dark black hair. I told her if she could put all her contact details on the form I’d be able to make enquiries and someone would be in touch. I told her she’d given a very good description and I was sure if the coat had been handed in we’d be able to locate it for her father. There was another customer waiting by then. There’s never normally another customer. I said someone would be in contact as soon as possible, if it had been handed in. I told her unfortunately in this day and age etc. She asked me had she mentioned it being a long coat. I told her I thought I’d assumed that. It came down to here on him, she said, pointing to her knees, but he was a lot taller than me so it would look longer than that on me. I started to say something but I didn’t say anything. We had quite a queue by then. We never normally have a queue. I said I hoped we’d be able to locate the item for her. I told her someone would be in touch. She told me the collar was brown. She was trying to remember the name of the material. She said what’s it called, it’s like inside-out leather, you have to brush it, it’s soft to the touch, it smells like leather but it’s soft to the touch when you stroke it, it leaves marks if you stroke it the wrong way. I asked her did she mean suede and she said yes, that was it, suede. I wrote on the form that the coat had a brown suede collar. I asked her was there anything else I could help her with today.
Looking Up Vagina
Welton
He was the first boy in his class to get pubic hair. He’d vaguely assumed that this might be something the other boys would be envious of. Perhaps even awestruck by. Something which would make them see him in a new light. But it turned out to be just one more thing they could use in their campaign of vilification against him.
Vilification was a word he’d come across recently. It was a word he’d found easy to understand.
Virile was another word. It was something to do with sex. He knew pubic hairs were the first step on the way to getting sex, so he thought this might mean he was virile and the other boys would be impressed or maybe even intimidated or at the very least would reconsider their apparently venal opinions of him.
He’d had the pubic hairs for over a year now. He was used to them, and had almost forgotten that they might be an issue. The subject had never come up. But this was the last year of primary school, and they were starting weekly swimming lessons, and at the swimming pool there was a communal changing room. One of the boys saw, and pointed it out to the other boys, and soon enough all of them were looking and asking him questions about it.
And for a moment everything seemed to hang in the balance, like when a bus hangs off the edge of a cliff and everything depends on whether the passengers rush to the front or the back. It would only have taken one boy to say something like, ‘cool,’ or, ‘nice one, Smithy,’ and everything would have been different. There might even have been some quiet veneration, before everyone put on their trunks and got into the pool. Word would have spread around the school, and he would no longer have been vulnerable to being tripped in the corridors. People would have talked to him on the bus, or between lessons. But instead, someone pushed the balance the other way. Robin was in the vanguard. He shouted something, pointing at the pubic hairs and turning to the other boys for support. They all joined in, and the shouting continued for the rest of the day, and for some days after that. Weeks.
‘Bush’ was the word that got shouted. Bush, and its many variations, with everyone trying to think of a new version: bush, bushy, bushwhacker, bushmonkey, bushman, bushy bushman, busharama, bushface, bushmuppet, bushalicious, bushbum, bushbunny, busher, bushayre, busherara, busheba, lord bush, president bush, sir bushwhacker of bushingdon, bushmonster, bushbilly, bushwilly, bushknocker, bushiel-san, bushelman, bushalackalonglong, bushy-bushy-bush-bush.
It wasn’t even as if his pubic hair was unusually verdant.
Someone told the girls, and so then all the girls knew that he was the first boy in the class to get pubic hair. One of them came up at lunch-time and asked him if it was true. She looked like she was on the verge of being impressed, but her friends were laughing so he said it wasn’t. He said he vigorously disputed it. Robin and another boy heard this, and pulled his trousers down in order to publicly verify the facts. There was a certain amount of vicarious laughter from just about everyone in the vicinity.
He stayed home from school for a few days after that. Mostly he lay in bed, looking up vagina and vulva in the dictionary.
He understood, already, that in a few years’ time these same boys would get, or claim to be getting, sex, and that he would be mocked and called a virgin. Virginal. Someone would realise that virginal sounded like vaginal, and he would be called a vagina; a vagina-head. He could visualise it precisely. There was no logic to it. It was vindictive. There was no way he could win. There wasn’t really any hope of winning. It made him feel vexated.
But he also understood that one day he would leave. Event
ually, he would leave. And when he was gone they would still be here. He would move to a big city, and go to university, and be friends with people who didn’t feel the need to mock and belittle him, people who were interested in reading and art and philosophy and those varieties of things. And Robin and everyone else would all still be here, with their limited vocabularies, working in the chicken-processing factories and vegetable packing-houses, looking for someone else to victimise.
Victorious would be a word he could use then. Vindicated.
Keeping Watch Over The Sheep
Alford
They told him he wasn’t allowed on the school premises. They didn’t even use the word allowed to start off with, they just said they thought it would be better if he didn’t come in. Better for everyone concerned is what they said. Only that didn’t even feel like an everyone which included him. He wasn’t really bothered what they thought, he said, he just wanted to come in and see his daughter. That’s when they actually stepped in his way and said he literally wasn’t allowed on the premises.
For Christ’s sake, this was the school nativity.
When would he get another chance to come and see his little girl in her first ever school nativity? Never is when. But the man just stood there all immovable and what have you, his arms folded to show just how totally immovable he was. Said his name was Carson. Mr Carson. Wasn’t even the headteacher or anything, but the other teachers were obviously all women so he must have been sent out to deal with the situation.
That’s what he was now. A situation.
He said to Mr Carson, he said, look, it’s only the school hall we’re talking about here. He was only going to stand at the back. He wouldn’t try and talk to her. Rachel wouldn’t even have to know he was there, he could hide behind another parent, he could slip out before the end. There didn’t need to be a problem here, he said. Mr Carson just stood there and said it was out of his hands.
