Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  He could play the townie: ‘All this – it needs cutting back. I thought – probably get someone in to do it. Someone who knows what they’re doing. Not my thing – all this.’

  It was the truth – the near truth. That morning Holly had suggested he harvest and stew fruit for Charlie’s tea. (‘They must be organic, right? I mean we’ve been here since the spring. Nobody’s sprayed them.’) Patiently, whilst fending off his help to zip up the grey dress, shaking out the black jacket, matador-style, she’d explained. How you just peeled a good big apple, cut it up, cooked it in a pan, stirred in that Manuka honey she’s just managed to get hold of that was going to be good for Charlie’s gripy tummy. How it wasn’t rocket science for Chrissake.

  But what was a good apple? Not bruised… not already home to a tetchy wasp. Even on the tree every fruit he examined had some sort of mark or excavation. Did this mean it was not good?

  ‘So what is your thing then?’

  ‘Well – what do I do, d’you mean?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I’m on a break at the moment.’

  ‘Sick leave is it?’ It was said, he felt, with a challenge in the tone even though it hadn’t made it onto the face.

  Cow! He really didn’t want to get into this. But where was the refuge from the smiling down, provocative child – yes, child he still thought her. This must be innocence rather than goading – surely? A misreading. Of something not meant or not understood. Not yet experienced. In your thirties you were about as far away from teenagers as you were going to get: twice their years, off the pace of their culture but still with only babies and toddlers amongst your friends and in your own house – so no new perspective there either…

  ‘A career break. We’ve got the little fellow in there.’ Bollocksfuckingbollocks. ‘We-er had the kid, you know and one of us had to take a break. Holly, that’s my partner, she helps run a business. It’s a leather factory, if you know what that is. They deal in all types of leather. It’s in the city – in Chester. She runs it really. So it was easier for me to… just till we get him off to school. It’s good. It’s been good. I…’

  ‘Yeah? See you.’

  The truck that was suddenly there beside him on the Wrexham Road, its air brakes hissing, was a sort of comfort. It drove off Samson with his inquisitive passenger and allowed Alun to get inside, though appleless… Charlie, must check on Charlie.

  Up in the small bed with its racing-car modelling, the boy slept on, one finger hooked into his light brown curls. He knelt beside him and gently pulled down the child’s hand and, though gummed with chocolate, tucked it beneath the quilt – for what reason? Did he want to wake him? No, of course not and yes, he needed to have Charlie awake so that he could make amends in play or treats. He needed to make up to Charlie for the disquiet that had come over him out there in the orchard, being questioned by that brainless girl. Sick leave! But the boy, though he stirred, burrowed down again into sleep. Against the weight of the covering, the sticky fingers flapped uselessly and stilled. He ought to wake him – tonight as they attempted to eat off their separate trays, Charlie, alert and demanding, would give the game away. Cantering laps of the room, pretending to showjump Holly’s outstretched legs and failing – and delighting in the failure with thought-numbing screams.

  How long did you leave this child down?

  That afternoon he found a machete-type thing in one of the locked outhouses they had yet to clear out. With the boy still sleeping soundly he took it to the briars in the hedge and several other overgrown bushes he couldn’t identify; he hacked and decapitated with wired intensity. Sick leave. As though hawking around cheap (slash) fucking rancid (slash) hides was such a big deal. As though minding (slash) your own child (slash) was so (slash) fuckingoffthefuckingwall. As though sticking manfully to the cause of Durward (slash) Leather Ltd was going to find the cure for cancer.

  ‘And is it all chugging along as normal at Skin City?’ he asked Holly almost before she’d put down her keys and looked around for Charlie, ‘He’s that heap of sand, by the way, driving the fire engine.’

  ‘Oh, well done Alun!’ Holly was out of the back door, picking her way down the uneven path in black five-inch heels. ‘Hello yuk-mush!’ She picked the giggling Charlie up and carried him in at arm’s length. ‘You could get him cleaned up when you know I’m coming home. What time is it? It’s gone seven for FS.’

  ‘You like to bath him on a Friday. You said…’

  ‘I know. I know. But you could have given him a lick and a promise first.’

  ‘I’ll do it now. Just give him to me.’

  ‘Doesn’t matt…’

  The pair disappeared up the stairs. Ten minutes later, changed, different, all smiles, they were back… Charlie standing on the rug between them, his unclouded blue eyes fixed on Holly’s face – as they did the instant the very instant the exact instant she came into a room.

  ‘Early frost, eh?’ This from the student working out the summer’s end at the garage, behind armoured glass. Alun had spoken to him a couple of times, knew more than he needed to know, now, about his parents’ giving up the farm, his course in Forestry at Bangor, his debts. No name.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Well – yeah. Don’t usually get it white over, not October, do we?’

  He pocketed the card – ‘To be honest, I haven’t a clue’ – never for a second taking his attention from the VW out on the forecourt, from Charlie, trapped in his seat, staring good- naturedly about him.

  An October frost – that was meant to mean something was it? Put on the spot, he realised, he couldn’t have told the exact date and would’ve had to grope for the month. As he sat, feet up on the kitchen table and the Driving section of last Sunday’s paper open before him, he made a point of noting October 10, 2004. So – today was the 12th… a date completely without significance of any sort. It wasn’t a day away from that important decision on his productivity bonus. No new and fragile contact at The Club Chair Company needed to be inveigled out to lunch. And as for that flight to Stuttgart the lamebrain Julie had forgotten to book, it had turned out to be no bad thing because that had been the week World of Bags had come back to him with the biggest, single…

  Swinging down numbed legs he was straight up onto his feet. The paper slipped into its constituent pages onto the floor and he crumpled it for the recyc rather than bother with reassembly. How pathetically easy it was for the brain to stumble into this sort of thing! Present events, hateful as they unfold but their edges gradually smoothed over by memory to become cosy, funny: to become Well, of course, at the time, while you’re doing it, it can be an absolute nightmare but you get a real rush when you pull off a…

  An early frost, was it? OK. A spur to replacing those broken flags before the weather worsened, before Holly in her beautiful brush-dyed, scarlet leather knee-highs went arse over tit. Charlie was uncomplaining as, rebuttoned into a jacket, he was piggybacked outside. ‘Right, Charles William Mann, your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to lever up these broken bits, stack them out of sight behind the outhouse because Daddy has no idea what you’re meant to do with spare bits of path and then bring those four new slabs that have been sitting round the front for over a month and drop then neatly into place. They will of course be a perfect fit.’

  Charlie, nodding, made a move to pick up the crowbar (another outhouse find) but when Alun said, ‘No! That’s for Daddy to use,’ a cynical look crossed his three-year-old face. He trotted off in the direction of the swing singing ‘Per-erflect fit, per-erflect fit’ in his clear treble.

  ‘Don’t worry there’ll be something for you in a minute…’ Alun couldn’t think what though. ‘And then you can help me with the really hard part, yeah?’ The child didn’t even favour this one with a backward glance. The path was history. Down the garden, that’s where it was happening… determination to be there was written into his spine, in his arms swinging, despite the padded coat. But small for his age: the observa
tion came accompanied by a slight niggle, a psychic pinprick. Was Charlie destined to be not only light-boned and pale as Holly but also more Holly-beneath-the-skin? Attention easily focused and biddable as a tuning button, cutting from this to that message, the fuzzy to the sharp. Nothing ever got to Holly, as they said at the Chester office, because Holly didn’t let it.

  The stack of four flags – no five flags, one for breakages, of course – was nestling in its fringe of long grass behind the front hedge. Misjudging size Alun rammed them with the wheelbarrow – and did it again. He could at least have offered Charlie a ride around in the barrow, something that never failed to delight. When he’d got this first one shifted, he’d do it for the next and the next. He bent to the task.

  From beyond the hedge, there were three distinct sounds. (Later he’d be able to work out that these were the incident itself and everything else its aftermath.) First came a female voice: a shout that began as ‘Whoah-h!’ but carried on beyond the word as ‘oh-oh-oh!’ until drowned out by the second noise, an easily identifiable squeal of brakes. This ended in a thud, dull but with metallic overtones. There were a few seconds of silence during which Alun let go the slab almost trapping his own fingers and stood up. Just over the hedge, but very close to it, was the silver roof of an estate car. He had a moment to recognise it (he was good on cars) as a Mercedes when a new sound started up. It was the worst thing he had heard in his life: a deep, throaty bellow that rose and slackened, rocketed up to an almost unbearable pitch before subsiding into a thick gurgle. Another bellow – more gurgling – a blessed pause – and a horrible human-like scream.

  The steps down onto the road were almost blocked by the car’s bonnet but he fought the hawthorn to get out. Hidden by the car but now directly ahead of him he came across Mel. She was lying on her side, one arm beneath her head, which was turned toward him. Her eyes were wide open and apparently staring into his. Her hat was still in place though pushed back so that strands of bright red hair were on show and there was a long black mark across her cheek. As he knelt down to touch her face and speak a word to her, the offside door of the Mercedes (with its dented panel) began to swing open. It would, he saw, catch the unmoving Mel in its arc. Angrily he placed both fists on the door and slammed it shut. A face behind the glass – with an open mouth – registered with him as nobody, neither man nor woman.

  ‘Stay in!’ he shouted at it. Dimly he was aware that in the vehicle’s interior someone had begun to cry.

  Mel blinked.

  ‘It’s all right but you shouldn’t move,’ he said to her. He patted the arm that lay along the road surface – in fact, had become a part of the road’s surface. The green material of her sleeve was ripped away and her lower arm embedded with gravel. A terrible mewling rose again from somewhere beyond them and Mel screwed up her eyes as though wishing someone, somewhere would just turn it down. She groaned and flopped over onto her back. ‘Oh fuck,’ she breathed but managed to straighten out her legs.

  ‘You really have got to keep still…’

  ‘Sam-son.’

  ‘What?’

  Her hand, its palm dark with grit and blood gestured to somewhere else, somewhere vaguely in the direction of town. ‘The fucking horse!’ she shouted furiously.

  ‘But…’

  ‘I’m all… right. Listen! Go!’

  It didn’t occur to him to do anything but follow such fierce instructions. Certainly not to turn back to the car and its occupants. Around the corner he found the animal, half of it lying across the grass verge, the rest (the brown heap of its hindquarters and a pair of threshing back legs) sticking out into Wrexham Road. Across the way a motorcyclist had dismounted but stood, visor down, his back to his machine, not moving. Ahead a white van was pulled up on the opposite verge and its driver just getting out. ‘D’you have a mobile?’ he had to shout above the horse’s terrific bellows which had grown at his approach. The man nodded and fumbled at his belt unable to look away from the animal on the ground. ‘Call the police and ambulance and – and a vet. Say people hurt – and a horse. Badly injured. OK? Yes? Corner of Old Wrexham Road and Tatten Lane. Yes?’ In a wide curve he walked to the front of Samson. To the approaching van driver he said. ‘Can you go into the lane and check on the girl – the rider – and whoever’s in that fucking car? Can you, please?’ Just as he had felt impelled to do with Mel, he knelt down and patted what was closest – in this case a thick, twitching foreleg with its white sock. Samson rolled his eyes and screamed and a violent shudder travelled along his body. Two iron shoes clattered on the tarmac. Alun pulled his hand away. He could see now the explanation of the creature’s complaint. The upper right foreleg and right shoulder were not so much injured as mashed: there was a reduction to a bloody ragout of tissue where a robust, load-bearing joint had once been. What had become of the hide in this area with its cover of brown hair was a mystery. No sign of it. It was as though this had been completely dissolved in the impact: the guard was off the machine and the works were on show. Creamy subcutaneous fat and the humps of muscle, grey wires connecting this with that, white and pearly-pink shards of bone, all had come spilling out. Incredible that such a blunt-instrument as a car had done this… easier to believe in a shotgun, a bomb blast, a mauling by lions.

  The waxing and waning of distress was the result of the animal’s attempt to rise. With stupid persistence, Samson drew his hind legs under him and tried to heave himself up to a comical sitting position. The left foreleg straightened but wasn’t anywhere near up to the job of raising such a weight alone. Repeatedly he slumped back onto the turf as blood and gobbets from the gaping hole in his right side sprayed out. Alun thought of catching at the broken rein that hung from the bit, wondering if he had the strength to hold the suffering horse down. Never having so much as touched Samson in the weeks of their acquaintance (having been threatened, in fact, by his wayward nature and size) dare he take charge of the animal now, in its last few minutes of life?

  Suddenly Mel was beside him. The flayed arm hung by her side and either she or someone else had taken off her hat.

  ‘Christ, you shouldn’t be up.’

  Her face was the colour of plaster and seemed to set as she looked down. ‘I’m all right – just my wrist. Can you help me get this jacket off?’

  ‘Why don’t you wait for the ambulance? Let them decide…’

  Already she had the good arm free. ‘Are you going to help or what?’

  Gently as he could, Alun pulled the stiff garment off her. She dropped onto the grass, not able to kneel, and took hold of the bridle. Surely she lacked the strength to hold the head in place? And yet from her touch, beginning in her fingers, some new force flowed. Through the leather of noseband and cheekpieces it shot, through the half-dead-half-living fabric of the straps and into the horse’s jagged nerves. It was as though the animal paused, just for an instant, in its simple program of flight: Mel let go the rein and carefully placed part of the olive stuff of her jacket across Samson’s eyes. The long rasping in his throat continued and he began to grind his teeth, horribly – Alun felt he must be sheering off the enamel with the force of it – but the great legs stilled.

  ‘Is that what you’re meant to do? To keep them quiet?’

  ‘I don’t know – how the fuck do I know? It’s just something I’ve seen on the TV.’

  Apart from the slowing of the occasional car – to be waved away by Alun – a sort of peace descended on the three of them. Mel sat bare-armed, pale but not crying, not shivering or moving much at all, one usable hand on the horse’s forehead and its blindfold. Her arms, he saw, were nothing like Holly’s; they were more like a boy’s or a younger version of his own, rounded and strong.

  Chat was out of the question, surely. Low voices could just be made out, back in the lane; they’d be huddled around the car, Alun guessed. He dreaded the appearance of anyone else. Certainly to have the driver, the perpetrator of this carnage, come walking up now with explanations, apologies, recriminations�
�� with anything, just any speech at all: Alun felt if that happened he’d be on the bastard straightaway – it was what he could do to stop Mel having to think about it, having to reply.

  ‘Shush-sh.’

  Mel was whispering softly to the horse presumably as she felt each agitation beneath her fingers. ‘Shush, Samson.’ She breathed the comfortable words but stared straight ahead into the empty road. Beneath the jacket Samson’s head jerked.

  ‘I couldn’t understand,’ Alun said, ‘why he kept trying to get up. I mean it must hurt him to…’

  ‘It’s not in their nature, to be down like this.’

  Another spasm wracked Samson’s frame; the rounded mass of dark ribcage and belly, overshadowing the covered head, had taken on the look of something helpless, something blubbery and aquatic now stranded on a dry shore.

  ‘Christ, is he?’ ‘No,’ Mel said.

  ‘I thought then – you know.’

  ‘He’s going into shock, I think. A horse is a big thing.’ Still not looking, still letting the breeze take the brilliant spirals of hair and irritate her dirty cheek with them. ‘They’re big so they take a while to die.’ (So Samson was dying. There was relief in this at least, because Mel’s surety meant that there was nothing he ought to be doing. There were no actions – messy, difficult, are you up to this? – that if performed might save the horse and if not…) ‘They live in their bodies, horses, you know? What their bodies are doing, that’s them at that moment. That’s where they’re at. If you don’t ride, you can’t understand. It’s a good way to be. That’s what I try to be – as much as I can. You just are what you’re doing and that’s it. If you can do that, you can lose all the other stuff – the crap. All the crap with my mum and dad, it’s been going on for years and even now – she lives in France now, yeah? With her new bloke. She lives in another country and it can still kick off over nothing. Me… what I’m doing or what she thinks I should be up to. Who owns this really gross painting – that was last thing. He finds it’s gone. Two years, then he notices the space on the wall and he’s all for going over to get it back because…’