Eating Air

by Pauline Melville

  ‘Which target?’

  There was determination in Mark’s voice as he continued:

  ‘We’re targeting a man called Stephen Butterfield who is a top executive for the HCB bank in Amsterdam. It’s a kidnap. You talk about popular support. Have you any idea how much bankers are hated at the moment – with their bonuses and executive jets and high-flying lifestyles? People would welcome their come-uppance. And this time I’ve made sure it will work. He won’t get hurt. It will be coordinated with a series of bombings at the HCB bank at night when the bank is empty.’

  Hector regretted asking. They passed a fisherman in his garden. He stood behind a tarred fence. His boat was winched up on one side of the house. The fisherman himself seemed arid and dry, pale as the dusty stones. He leaned on a rusted rake. They acknowledged him as they passed.

  ‘That’s someone who’d take you across the Channel if you pay him well enough,’ Hector muttered, against his better judgement.

  Ten minutes later they reached the power station. There was a bench near to the wall outside one of the three reactor buildings. The two men sat on it. Behind them sunlight caught the spectral white brilliance of a seagull’s flight as it skimmed against the grey of the power station wall. Hector wished Mark had not told him anything. He looked at his watch.

  ‘I’d better be on my way. I’ve got stuff to do at home.’

  They started to retrace their steps along the bleak road. When they reached the house at Littlestone Mark said, ‘I’m going over to Holland to do a recce on the bank and some surveillance on Stephen Butterfield.’ He grinned. ‘Are you with us or against us?’

  Hector felt drained. He found it impossible to refuse his old comrade outright.

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hector gestured towards the house: ‘Try and leave the place looking as if no-one’s been there. The lock’s bust but otherwise clean up where you can.’

  ‘Tell Khaled I’d like to see him. The others would too. He might be interested in what we’re doing.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Mark did not look round as he went in the house.

  *

  Hector returned to the empty house in Hythe.

  He sat in the front room and stared at the ashes in the grate in a whirlwind of confusion. At two o’clock he pulled on his jacket and left the house. He flung himself into the car and started to drive without knowing where he was heading. Ten minutes later he found himself on the A20 to Dover. He roared up the steep hill overlooking St Margaret’s Bay. On top of the white cliffs he pulled over onto a patch of litter-strewn asphalt near the cliff edge where a small crowd had gathered.

  A group of Morris men had assembled by the cliff-top barrier. A small boy, his faced daubed with black, his forehead bound with a fluttering yellow handkerchief, was handing out promotional leaflets to the few people who had come to watch. The Fool who accompanied the Morris men was lounging against some railings. He wore a black tailcoat, black leggings, white trainers and a crooked top hat from which sprouted a sheaf of tall feathers. In one hand he carried a pig’s bladder on a stick and in the other a long skinny pipe of a trumpet. Without warning he executed an extraordinary leap and blew a harsh note on his horn.

  The Morris men shuffled into formation and started their stamping dance, banging on tambourines with the bells on their legs jangling.

  To his surprise Hector realised that one of the people watching the dancers was the woman he had seen at his print shop. She wore a loose fawn mackintosh. Her bright headscarf was tied in an unusual way with the points at the top in a Brazilian or Caribbean style. One hand supported her chin and she was absorbed in the dance. Hector moved towards her. She looked up as he approached. Hector underwent a rush of attraction to the woman.

  ‘Excuse me. I saw you in my print works the other day. But I think I’ve met you before.’

  She smiled and then looked back at the dancers.

  ‘I was a dancer. You might have seen photos of me. I used to be with the Royal Ballet a long time ago.’ She pointed to the Morris men. ‘I can’t resist any sort of dancing. Even this.’

  ‘I think I know you from somewhere else.’

  He caught a momentary look of alarm in her eyes before she turned back to watch the dancers.

  ‘Would you like to come for a coffee?’ he asked when the dancing had finished.

  ‘Why not?’

  She followed him in her own car. In his car mirror Hector could see the skinny dancing figure of the Fool silhouetted against the Dover cliffs and fields, his coat-tails flying in the breeze. He felt as if he had been taken over by some inexplicable force and had relinquished responsibility for his own actions. Somewhere in the rolling hills and fields to his right, he realised, Barbara and Dawn were tugging potatoes from the dusty earth. He felt liberated from hearth and home.

  Chapter Twelve

  Together Barbara and Dawn trudged over the furrowed land to the far end of the field. The day was warm and the benign soil underfoot was a dusty pinkish brown. Dawn wore a short denim skirt and a stripy tank top. Her straight toffee-coloured hair was lank and floppy. Her gait was clumsy and there was a determined expression in her slanting blue eyes as she strode forward.

  It was Dawn’s task to wait with a sack at one end of the field while her mother worked her way along one furrow and back along the next picking the new potatoes and putting them in a trug. Then Dawn emptied the trugs into the sacks which she did slowly but with great care, diving to pick up any potatoes that fell to the ground.

  Barbara stood up to ease the ache in her back. Most of the pickers were the wives of ex-miners trying to earn a little money after the closure of the Kent coal fields. She looked out over the fields. The women formed ragged lines across the hillsides. From a distance they looked like an uneven shuttle on a loom slowly weaving their way backwards and forwards across the land.

  At lunchtime they stopped and gathered together in small groups. Sandwiches burst from wrapping paper blooms. Madge, an ex-miner’s wife with a strong twisted face, smiled down at Dawn:

  ‘Are you off to the grass toilet then, Dawn?’

  Dawn nodded and put down her sack full of new potatoes. She made her way to the overgrown patch of land behind them and squatted to piss in the tall seeding grass. It was a lavatory made of wild flowers with wondrous green wallpaper. The humming of bees and insects filled her ears. Pollen tickled her nose. Stalks tickled her bum. There was a pause before the waters came and then the hot smell of urine on grass as she shifted her feet trying not to piss on her new trainers. When she went back to join the others they were already munching on their sandwiches and pouring tea from a Thermos. A skylark spiralled its way up into the blue sky singing. Madge looked skyward following the bird’s ascent:

  ‘Hark at that skylark, drib drib drib. Did you watch Celebrity Spies last night? They had a special version for May Day.’

  ‘No. I don’t like that guy whatsisname. The presenter.’

  White plastic knives buttered buns.

  ‘On May Day you’re supposed to bring a white pig into the house and feed it all day with bread and butter or it will turn cannibal and eat its piglets. When the colliery was working my George wouldn’t go down the pit if they passed a pig on the way to work. It would mean a pit disaster. Same with the trawlermen and the fishermen. See a pig and they’ll turn back. My nan says pigs can see the wind. She used to frighten us with stories about a boar that ran through the skies in a storm. That’s how she kept us quiet. That and the gin.’

  Since the pit closures the women’s husbands were mostly unemployed or doing casual work, ditching and hedging. Madge fished in a carrier bag for another bun. When the women finished eating they lay on their backs in the sun.

  ‘Did you know that pigs can get sunburn? And there’s wild boars in Ashdown forest now.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘It was on telly. They escaped from some boar farm in Tenterden d
uring that hurricane in the eighties. Been breeding. There’s quite a few round about these days. They’re all over Kent and Sussex in the woods. There’s some in Devon as well.’

  Barbara levered herself up onto her elbows:

  ‘That’s funny. My husband was on the train the other day and says he saw a dead sow lying on the embankment.’

  ‘Sometimes the wild ones try and mate with the domestic ones. They’re wanting to breed. That’s when they’re dangerous. That’s probably what happened. A wild one must have killed a tame one.’ Evie shaded her eyes from the sun and looked across the field. ‘I wouldn’t mind mating with a nice wild husband – if I could find one.’ She was laughing.

  Madge put her hands on her hips:

  ‘Never mind finding a husband. How to become a widow, that’s what I want to know. I want my husband gone and I want everything that’s left, the money, the house, my son, everything. And I’ve worked out that a hitman is less expensive than a bloody lawyer.’

  The other women laughed until the tears rolled from their eyes.

  A shadow of anxiety passed Evie’s face.

  ‘I worry that all this is going to come to an end soon. The other farmers are using these gang-masters to bring them cheap labour from abroad. Ukrainians. Albanians. Poles. Look down over there. That farmer used to rent out holiday caravans. Now the whole caravan park is used to house east Europeans. But what with this credit crunch they’re likely to lose their jobs too.’

  The women strained their eyes and looked down in the distance to a field of caravans with groups of men standing around.

  ‘Oh well. Everything is changing these days.’

  The sun had begun its slow descent westward. The women went back to work. As the afternoon progressed Barbara kept stopping and straightening up. Dawn waited patiently at the end of the field screwing her eyes up against the sun. The clock moved ever more slowly and the afternoon’s end seemed to recede away from the workers as though they would never catch up with it. They were scattered now, bobbing like lost swimmers in the billowing Kent fields.

  In the van on the way back the women pondered over whether they would still have jobs when the season came for Brussels sprout picking. Back at the White Horse pub the van dropped the workers off at Eythorne. Since the pit closures the whole district had an air of dull neglect. Barbara helped Dawn fasten her safety belt and they drove home. She asked her daughter, ‘What’s your favourite lesson at school these days, Dawn?’

  Her bulbous jaw and enlarged tongue sometimes made Dawn’s speech difficult to decipher but her answer was quite clear.

  ‘Dinner,’ she said.

  Later that evening when Dawn was in bed Barbara went upstairs. The dolls’ houses all around her looked both mysterious and cosy in the lamplight. She started stitching some upholstery for tiny sofas and chairs. She worked away as if she were finally able to stitch some safety into her own life. She was still working when Hector quietly let himself back into the house.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was no-one to whom he could tell everything.

  They lay naked, face to face on top of the double-bed in the darkened room. The affair was still new enough for them to spend time looking into each other’s eyes. Hector stroked the curve of the woman’s body, the smooth dip from the waist to the rise of her hip, and then brought his warm hand to rest in the hollow of her back. He had not been looking for an affair but it had released in him a wave of euphoria. He pushed a strand of dark hair away from her face and smiled at her.

  ‘How did this happen?’ he asked. The strand of black hair fell back across her face. He traced the curve of her mouth with his finger.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘And how can you convince me you’re not working for the police?’

  She giggled and put her leg over his, entwining them together.

  ‘Of course I’m not. What about you? You could be.’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Not likely given my history.’

  She turned her head on the pillow and smiled at him.

  ‘On the contrary. You’re just the sort of person they would recruit. Nobody would suspect you.’ She pulled on the lobes of his ears. ‘You won’t even tell me your address and home telephone. I’ve only got your mobile number and the number at work.’

  ‘That’s not because of my political activities. That’s because of my wife.’ Again he pushed the strand of hair from her face. ‘I thought I recognised you from somewhere.’

  ‘I didn’t recognise you.’

  ‘Well it was a long time ago and you couldn’t have seen me more than two or three times in that house in London. I spent most of the time in Milan. And, if I remember rightly, you were always off somewhere with the ballet company.’

  ‘Tell me again what you did in Italy.’

  He fingered the tiny mole on her top lip and sighed:

  ‘Maybe you’ve fallen in love with the young man I used to be.’

  She scrambled on top of him and lay with her chin on his breast bone.

  ‘No. I love you as you are now. The man you are now.’

  He shifted her gently to one side and sat up.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I’m going to tickle your feet to see how long you would last under interrogation.’

  They took it in turns to tickle each other’s feet to test their will-power until their stomachs ached with laughter. Then they play-wrestled for a few moments. She pulled the pillow down in order to settle more comfortably.

  ‘You have to be able to resist interrogation by chat as well as by torture. Interrogation by chat is a skilled art.’ He grinned and rolled over on top of her again. It was true she was slow to arouse. Slow as the rose adagio she told him she had once danced. He had to work for a long time. And she did not bother to do much in return. What didn’t give her pleasure, she didn’t bother to do.

  ‘That’s nice. Go on doing that,’ she said. ‘Go on. Just go on doing that. That’s it. That’s it.’

  They lay on top of the bed with their limbs plaited together like dreamy milk-fed infants. After a while she said:

  ‘I’m getting cold. I’ll go and make us some coffee.’

  He ached when he had to detach himself from that body. He watched her stand up and stretch. She flicked her black hair over her shoulders and looked round at him with a smile. He watched the naked figure go to the door.

  ‘You still have the body of a fourteen-year-old,’ he had said in amazement when she first undressed. ‘You’re so bendy and pliable. Can I have a photograph of you dancing? I’d like to make a print of it.’

  By the time she came back with a mug of coffee in each hand Hector had switched on the bedside lamp and was reading a book he had found at the side of the bed. He did not hear her come in. The years in jail had taught him to become lost in books very quickly. She handed him his coffee.

  ‘I hate other people’s kitchens,’ she said as she lowered herself back onto the bed. They had borrowed a friend’s dull flat for their rendezvous. ‘You don’t know where to find anything.’

  ‘I have to go in a minute.’ He sat on the edge of the bed sipping the coffee. It was dark outside now.

  ‘I thought you said your wife had taken your daughter away for the weekend.’

  ‘She has but she might be trying to phone me at home on the land-line. My daughter likes to say goodnight. She’s the most precious thing in my life.’ The mention of his wife and daughter suddenly reminded him of Mark and their fierce argument on the road to Dungeness. He became agitated and looked around on the floor for his clothes.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift.’ She rolled off the bed and started to dress.

  ‘No don’t give me a lift. You said your car lights weren’t working. I don’t want you to get into trouble.’

  Her eyes grew big with astonishment and laughter as she turned to face him.

  ‘Is this the same man who had convoys of police chasing him d
own the autobahn from Hamburg to Munich at a hundred miles an hour? The man who blew up an Alitalia airplane on the ground?’

  ‘Just an incendiary – a flash and a lot of black smoke. The plane was empty at the time. Most of the serious bombings in Milan like the Piazza Fontana bombing were carried out by agents provocateurs on the extreme right. We were infiltrated.’

  He recalled the cheery face of the police informer who had penetrated their group in Milan all those years ago. In a moment of paranoia he was suddenly not sure of anything or anybody, even her.

  ‘There were infiltrators everywhere in those days … in England too.’ She sounded hesitant, her voice small and diminished. She helped him button up his shirt.

  ‘I can’t believe this is the same man who’s worrying about my car lights. I’ll give you a lift,’ she said firmly. He watched while she brushed her hair with practised hands, holding the hairpins in her mouth, and twisting the hair again and again into a knot on the top of her head.

  ‘Drop me by the Imperial Hotel then. I’ve left my car there.’

  She pulled up in the hotel car park to let him out. He leaned back in through the window and bent his head to kiss her on the neck and then on the lips.

  ‘Your neck and your breasts smell of lemons.’ Then he smiled. ‘You’ve given me back my youth,’ he said.

  ‘If your wife ever found out about this affair, would you admit it?’ She looked up at him enquiringly.

  ‘Only if there was evidence. Anyway, you are married too.’

  She looked away for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am married too.’

  ‘Still to that same man? Donny. I remember him vaguely. Michael Feynite used to call him “the radiant stranger”.’

  She looked back at him and he saw something impish sparkle in her dark El Greco eyes at this description of her husband.