by Rob Grant
'Anyways, them came over all apologetic, and sorry, like, and them was going to put things to rights and not to worry and blah-de-blah-de-blah. And us thought that's be an end to it. But no. A week later, us gets another letter of condolence from the social, only this time it's got his death certificate in it, and a big cheque an' all. Very big cheque, it was. A widder's payment, it said. Lump sum. Start of a regular widder's pension, and all. Well, that got us thinking. Mebbe us should stay quiet about it, and keep the money. Him groaned and grumbled, of course. Him was a very proud man, my husband. Not one for taking handouts. Him was all for going back and shoving that cheque up them's mossy ends. Only, the next day, us get another letter. The 'surance company sends its condolences, too, and inside that, there's another big cheque. Well, even him starts to see the logic then. See, us'd lost the farm a couple of years earlier. Them 'mission fellers, them had been paying us not to grow nothing. Us hadn't been growing nothing for two seasons, and getting good money for it and all. But my old fool of a husband, him got bored just sitting around not growing nothing, pay or not, so him started planting. Just for something to do of a day, see? Us weren't going to sell it, or nothing. It were like an hobby for him, is all it were. Well, them 'mission fellers come up at harvest time, and them didn't see it like that at all. Them said us was in breach, and this and that, and the upshot was us lost the farm. So us was stuck. Us still couldn't grow nothing, only now us weren't even getting paid for it.
'So this money, this 'surance money and widder's pension, that were a godsend. So us agreed it were best if us didn't argue, and just accepted that him was dead.
'Him moved out to the woodshed, and kept out of the way whenever the social comed round, or them 'mission bassards or the 'surance fellers turned up.
'It worked out nice. The widder's pension kept on coming, us had a fortune in the bank: everyone happy.
'But that besn't good enough for him. Oh no. Him gets bored of it, don't him? Like it's too much bother for him: sitting in him's woodshed dawn to dusk, being dead. So him starts knocking on the door, saying him's bored with being dead now, and can him move back in the house? Move back in the house! I asks you! Well, I tells him straight. "Being dead," I says, "besn't sommat you gets tired of. You has to stick at it, being dead, or us'd wind up in prison, like as not." Him says him could be just as dead in the house as in the woodshed. In the house! "And how's that supposed to look?" I says. "Us, a widder woman sleeping with the corpse of us dead husband? That'd get tongues wagging, and no mistake. Them'd have us in a straitjacket and cart us off to the nutty farm, quick as buckshot."
'Well, him didn't want that, us whisked off to some padded cell Lord knows where. Him's lonely enough already, what with being dead and stuck in the woodshed morning, noon and night. So him gives it up for a while. Then him gets all restless again and starts follering us round the yard when I'm about us chores. All that time, sitting there wi' nothing to do but be dead, him's got nothing better to do than thinking and scheming.
'Now, him says him's got this big plan for us to go off somewheres with all the money and live a life of leisure. Somewhere far away. Like Nice, him's saying, or Monte Carlo. Because it just won't sink in, him's dead. Him can't go nowhere. Him's got no passport, no social number, no identity card. Soon as him shows him's face in public, then them 'mission fellers'd be the least of it. Us'd have the social after us, the police and the 'surance fellers, too. And them 'surance fellers is worst of all. Them'd lock us up and swallow the key.'
She creaked off her chair and biddied towards me. 'But, of course, him won't let it lie. Him's always worrying away at one barmy crackpot scheme or another. So now, I do us best to ignore him.' She peeled back the poultice from my right hand and peeked underneath. 'It's not easy, mind. Him's always finding sommat to try and shag things up. Him's even taken to ploughing the fields in him's tractor, the barmy old bat. If that's not going to bring them 'mission fellers looking, I don't know what is.' She seemed satisfied with the work the poultice had done. 'That's all better, I reckons,' she clucked, and unwrapped the rag.
I looked down at my hand. Where the knuckles had been skinned raw, there weren't even scabs, just fresh, pink skin. I flexed it. I made a fist. No pain. Now, I've been around a lot of places, and I've seen some pretty strange stuff, but I've never witnessed anything quite as close to miraculous as the healing mojo Mamma had used on me. I looked up into her rheumy old eyes. I was trying to think of an adequate way to say thanks, but it wasn't necessary. She shushed me with her eyes. My expression was enough gratitude for her.
She unpeeled me and I was all pink and pain-free, all over. Even my ribs felt good. I pulled on my dry, warm clothes gratefully. I was renewed. I looked up to see her holding my tattered old butternut shoes like they were a pair of rats she'd found on her breakfast plate. 'Thim's aren't no good for walking in,' she said.
I laughed. 'Thim's aren't no good for making pumpkin and paper planes out of.'
'Pumpkin shoes?' She shook her head. 'I bets that's another of them 'mission fellers' brilliant ideas.'
'Yeah. They are full of them, aren't they?'
'They're full of sommat.'
Without any kind of warning or further consultation of any kind, she hooked open the door of the stove and threw my shoes into the flames.
Well, marvellous. It had been hard enough getting around in the bloody awful cardboard and squash shoes. Now I'd have to walk back to civilisation in a pair of socks that were so shredded, I was almost barefoot. Not good.
But she stooped to a cupboard in the corner of the room and tugged out a pair of very sturdy, proudly polished boots. 'I reckons thims'll be your size, more or less.'
'But... aren't they your husband's?'
'No good to him, is they? Thim's him's Sunday shoes.' She genuflected. 'May him rest in peace.'
She held the boots out and, reluctantly, I took them. I had to admit, they were a pretty good match for my size, and after my extended experience with vegetable footwear, they qualified as way beyond comfortable, let me tell you. It was like slipping my feet into warm honey. I laced them up tight and stood. I really was feeling ready for anything now. I'm not saying I looked like a style guru: I wasn't about to be invited-to grace a catwalk or headline at a Paris fashion show, but I was fully kitted and ready to go. And I needed to be. This whole interlude had taken up far too much time. I was in good shape physically now, but I was still a key suspect in the abduction and assassination of a major politician, I still had an incredibly wily and accomplished killer dogging my every move, and I was still a dirty agent, stranded outside the loop of what I laughingly call my community. I wasn't exactly in a position to relax.
The old biddy was looking me up and down with a sense of proud accomplishment, like she'd raised me from a suckling babe and now I was all growed up and ready to take on the world. I felt bad about taking the old man's shoes, but not bad enough to give them up. I smiled at her. I thanked her. God help me, I actually did call her Mamma.
I walked down the kitchen steps onto the cobbled farmyard. I was trying to think of some way to repay the kindness I'd been shown, so I didn't notice the proud sound my footwear made on the cobbles. The old corpse in the shed looked over. He spotted the shoes and his forehead unfurrowed so rapidly his cap almost shot off his head. He looked over at Mamma in disbelief, then back at the boots, shook his head despondently and returned to his long, lonely brown study.
Mamma called from the kitchen doorway: 'You'll be wanting a ride into town, won't you?'
Well, I didn't want to impose any more than I already had, so I was about to turn the offer down. Then I saw the hole in the outbuilding that could have been my head, and I decided it probably wouldn't be too much of an imposition after all. 'Thank you kindly,' I said.
She threw over a bunch of keys. 'You'm can take the tractor.'
The old guy winced. So did I.
I looked down at the keys, then over at the woodshed. The old man looked away. 'I can't
take your tractor,' I protested.
'Sure you can,' Mamma said gleefully. 'Stop certain folks who besn't here from using it and getting us all in bother.'
I looked down at the keys again, then back at the woodshed. The old guy just kept staring ahead, stoically. He wasn't about to give her the satisfaction.
I was in a pickle here. I didn't want to deprive the old fogey of his pride and joy, but I was in big-time trouble, and I had to make some distance, fast.
I settled on a compromise. I tossed the keys a few centimetres in the air and caught them. 'Tell you what,' I said aloud, aiming at no one in particular. 'I'm going to sit here on the tractor, on the passenger seat, and put the keys in the lock.' I strolled over to the tractor shed and hoisted myself into the cab. 'And I'll just sit here and see if anything supernatural happens. Such as, maybe, the spirit of your departed husband takes over the controls.'
The old guy looked over at me, then looked away.
I waited.
He looked over at me again. Then he looked away again.
I was losing patience. 'What do I have to do here? Hold a sance?'
He stood up and stretched, then wandered over in my vague direction unhurriedly. He stopped by the tractor's front wheel and kicked at it offhandedly. 'I'll give you a lift to the station,' he said, 'if you admit I besn't dead.' He looked over at Mamma defiantly. Mamma looked over at me. I couldn't please them both. Really, Harry Salt's number one inviolable tip for peace, happiness and long-term survival: never take sides in a marital dispute.
I looked up at the heavens. 'I sense a ghostly presence,' I said. 'I hear a voice from the Other Side. I really don't want to take this tractor, departed spirit. Give me a sign that I don't have to.'
The old man shook his head and evacuated a long thick plume of brown sputum onto the hay-strewn cobbles. 'You'm as stubborn as her,' he said, 'you bassard.' And he climbed in the cab.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Travelling in a tractor, well, it's not a massive improvement on walking. It's almost as slow, and easily as boring. It's also unbelievably noisy and smoky. On top of which, the magnificently engineered suspension has the same therapeutic effect as applying a pneumatic drill on full throttle to the base of your spine. It picks up every judder of the engine, every nuance of the road, every obstacle, rock and stone the wheels pass over, amplifies them a thousandfold and delivers the combined shock direct to your backbone.
The old guy didn't say anything for quite a while, or at least I didn't hear him say anything. He just drove on, staring morosely through the windscreen. It struck me that this was the second time today I'd been a passenger with a dead man at the wheel.
Finally, he did pipe up: 'Thim's my Sunday shoes, besn't thim?'
I looked down at the boots. They were so damned comfortable, I'd forgotten they were there. I heaved a reluctant sigh. 'D'you want them back?'
'What for? I besn't no need of Sunday shoes. Don't allow corpses at morning mass.'
'I don't mind paying you for them.'
'What would I do with the money, young feller? Casn't spend it. Casn't do nothing, when you've passed away.'
And he fell back into his glum silence.
After five minutes or so, he chirped up again: 'Comfy though, those bassards, isn't thim?'
I rolled my eyes back in their sockets. He wasn't going to let it go, was he? 'They're very comfy, yes. They are comfy boots. They are the most comfortable boots my feet have ever laid their little tootsies in. All that notwithstanding, I am fully prepared to return these boots to you and make the rest of my incredibly long journey totally unshod, in nothing more than my poor and bleeding shredded socked feet, if that is what you desire. So tell me, Pappa, once and for all, finally and irrevocably: would you like me to restore the boots to your possession?'
Pappa shrugged. 'I already said you'm could keep the bassards.'
'One last time, just to make sure we're completely on the same wavelength. Are you absolutely sure you don't want me to take these boots off my feet and give you them back?'
He waved me away with his hand. 'Let the living benefit, I says.'
We phutted along a while further.
After another five minutes or so, he cocked his head and looked at me sideways. 'You'm a lucky young bassard, you know.'
If this was about the bloody boots again, I was fully prepared to remove them both and force them down his gullet, laces and all. Lucky for both of us, it wasn't about the bloody boots again.
'Lucky?' I said, surreptitiously reaching down for the laces.
He said: 'There were a 'mission feller last week. Him weren't so lucky.'
I suddenly remembered Mamma's reference to fellers with an appetite for buckshot.
'Him come round wanting to chuck her out of the farmhouse. Chuck her out of the farmhouse been in her family this two hundred year gone? Daft bassard. Sending one feller to chuck out Mamma? You'm'd need eighteen battalions of the Foreign Legion, minimum. Toughest bassards them could lay them's hands on. And even then, them'd better bring cannons.'
'What are you saying, Pappa? Are you saying she shot him? She shot an investigator from the European Farming Commission?'
'I besn't saying nothing, young feller.' He grinned so wide his chin ground against his nose. 'Besn't possible I were there to see nothing, I being dead.'
The rest of the journey passed without conversation, for which I was grateful.
Eventually, we came to a bend in the road, and Pappa pulled the tractor over.
'Railway station's just down the road a step.' He nodded in that direction. 'Casn't take you no closer, on account of me being all dead and causing a fuss and all, corpse showing up on the platform.'
I'd made my decision. I turned to face him. 'Look, Pappa, you and Mamma have been very kind to me...'
'Part from near blowing your noggin off your shoulders.'
'Apart from that, yes. Apart from the near decapitation, you've been kindness itself. So I want you to have this.' I handed him a wallet.
He took it from me. 'I don't understand. What's this?'
'It's a life.'
'A life? How d'you mean, young feller, a life?' He flipped it open.
'It's another identity. All the papers you'll need to bring you back to the land of the living.'
He flicked through the contents. 'Birth certificate, driver's licence, identity card, passport, credit card...?'
I reached over and removed the credit card. I wasn't feeling that generous. 'You'll have to get the photographs changed.' I scribbled down a phone number. 'Here's a man who'll do that for you, in Paris. He'll charge you, but there's enough money in there to cover it.'
'Well, you've gasted my flabber, young feller. Have I got this right? Are you saying... I can be you?'
'That's sort of what I'm saying, yes.'
'I don't have to be me no more?'
'Absolutely.'
'But... what about you? Who'll you be?'
'Don't worry.' I smiled. 'I've got someone else I can be.'
'And I won't have to be dead no more?'
'You won't have to be dead another second. But listen: I'd move away from the farm, if I were you. Mamma's right: those 'surance fellers are the worst. You stay at the farm, they'll smell an ID swap scam all the way from Brussels. And if she really did shoot that 'mission feller...' I tailed off. I really didn't want to think about that.
'Cardew Vascular...' he read. 'Cardew Vascular?' He mulled over his new name. 'I don't much like that name. Sounds a bit like a snotty old sod. I don't know how Mamma'll feel about hanging around with a feller name of Cardew Vascular.'
'It's the best I can do.'
'Cardew Vascular. Fancy that. Mamma walking out with a hoity-toity like Cardew bloody Vascular. And us barely a year in us grave. Bloody hussy.' He laughed, the same familial monodental cackle I'd grown to loathe slightly less.
I climbed down from the cab.
'And us can go anywheres us wants? Cardew and Mamma?'
&nbs
p; 'The world is your oyster.'
'Us could go as far as Nice or Monaco, even?'
I had to smile. Both Nice and Monaco were probably less than three hours' drive away, if you travelled by anything faster than tractor. To Pappa, they were lands of fable. They might as well have been just around the corner from Alpha Centauri or three doors down from the dog-star. Frankly, I really couldn't see the two of them fitting in with the Nice set. Mamma would probably want to take her shotgun to the harlots sunbathing naked on the beaches. I couldn't easily picture them swanking around casinos either. Still, they'd find somewhere to belong.
'You can go where your fancy takes you. Don't forget to change the photos.'
'I won't, young feller. Besn't you worry.'
I started off down the road. Just before I rounded the bend, Pappa Cardew called out: 'Young feller?'
I turned.
'Tried the soup, did you?'
I nodded. 'That I did.'
'Tasty, ain't she?'
'Very tasty.'
'You know what Mamma calls that? She call it 'mission man broth she do.' Laughing, he slipped the tractor into reverse.
I just stood there and watched him go.
'Mission man broth?
Tasty indeed.
So the bassards aren't completely useless, after all.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Now, country folk have a lot of different perceptions from city folk. What they consider to be edible, for instance -- and I'm not just talking about 'mission man broth -- what passes for acceptable entertainment of an evening, or what constitutes a satisfactory size for a gene pool. But nowhere is the difference more profound, in my humblest of opinions, than when it comes to distances.
