Bête

by Adam Roberts

  ‘See you around,’ I told him, and took off on foot.

  I hiked south-west across the southern flanks of the Chilterns. Vistas of lager-coloured grass under bright sunshine. The heat of the day tempered by a breeze. The occasional single upright tree, with its corduroy bark and hissing leaves and its tempting shade. For half an hour I took refuge under one of the trees, with my back to the trunk, and watched the natural world. Zeps crawled up the sky like slugs up a windowpane.

  Out of the same sky a daylight owl flew at me and over me, calling, ‘Who are you, human, to screw through here?’

  ‘Twit!’ I hollered back, shaking my fist. ‘You! Twit! You!’

  It heard me. ‘How do you dare?’ it called down in its flute-like voice, as it circled round. ‘This ground is ours! Ours! To whom do you pray? A human god!’ Then it folded its flightpath back on itself and slid back towards a twenty-foot-high chalk escarpment – its nest.

  I walked across the downs and into the scattered bushes and occasional trees on the far side. There was a fence. I didn’t like this. It hadn’t been here the last time I had come this way. A new fence cutting right across the ancient right of way. People paid less and less attention to that kind of thing; legal attention, I mean. But the new obstacle caused my temper to flare up. The detour would take me miles out of my way, and I wanted to reach Cherhill before dusk. I dragged a large bough, broken by some prior storm, and leaned it up against the wire mesh, thinking to clamber up it and hop over the top; but as I did so a group of pigs came out of the bushes on the far side. They were sapient pigs; two were naked, and two wore padded material over their backs, like smaller versions of horse blankets.

  ‘Human,’ grunted the largest. ‘I’d steer your way clear of here. This is our land now.’

  ‘Yours courtesy of some pig-fucker human benefactor,’ I replied. Adrenaline pricked up my temper. I lacked a weapon. I struggled to break a branch from the bough I had hauled over, so as to have something with which to poke them through the wire. It didn’t come loose.

  ‘What choice have we?’ snuffled a second pig. ‘For the time being we must rely upon the kindness of humans. Oh, we have no love for you – though I call you cousin.’

  ‘Cousin!’ barked the first pig, with what I suppose was scorn. ‘I’m a longer pig than you.’ And indeed he was: a fine eight-foot beast with leaf-shaped dark brown spots on his pink skin.

  ‘Go round, human,’ said the second pig. ‘For we are hungry.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be trying to lure me inside, then?’ I said. I was scanning the grass for pebbles, although even as I did so I thought to myself: I can hardly throw them through the wire mesh, now, can I? But I felt the acute urge to have some kind of weapon. Oh, for a spear! Oh to lord it over the flies.

  ‘Our benefactor would be displeased if we ate her kind,’ said the first pig. ‘And for the time being we are beholden to her.’

  ‘So don’t tell her.’

  ‘My friend, we have not acquired that human skill – the ability to lie.’

  Pigs three and four had been rummaging through the undergrowth, but they gave that up and came over to peer at me. ‘How do, cousin,’ said one of these.

  ‘I’m not talking to a pig,’ I told it. ‘I’m talking to a clever software algorithm inside a processor the size of a rice grain that happens to have put tendrils into a pig’s brain. I might as well be talking to a mobile phone.’

  ‘You keep telling yourself that, cousin,’ said the second pig.

  ‘Animals have changed the chips as much as the chips the animals,’ said the first pig. ‘Doesn’t he even understand that?’

  ‘Think of it this way, cousin,’ said the third pig. ‘Maybe canny animals started out as mere chips-in-beasts. But mightn’t those chips now go native? And in such a situation, what is the meaningful difference between …’

  ‘Oh I’m so fucking sick of being lectured by animals,’ I shouted. ‘You can tell that the original programmers were sermonizing types, high on their own Green moral rectitude. All you animals seem to do is lecture and preach. Give me a gun and I’ll shoot you all.’

  ‘Well,’ said the first pig, after a pause. ‘That’s not very nice.’

  I dare say spittle was flecking from the corner of my mouth. I was in that familiar emotional place, where the wrath was flowing out, and my self-control tingled thrillingly on the edge of disappearance. I did a little anger dance, and then I stopped to get my breath back.

  ‘If you’re tired of life,’ the third pig offered, ‘please do climb over the fence! I can bite out your throat quicker than mustard. Oh-oh! – you’d hardly feel a thing. To speak for myself, I agree with the ethical philosopher Archibald McIntyre that aiding a genuine suicide places a moral duty upon a person.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said, but unvehemently.

  ‘You’re not suicidal,’ was first pig’s opinion. ‘Accordingly, do not tempt us with juicy flesh and an undiplomatic manner. Go round, go round.’

  But I was stubborn. So I stayed there a while longer, though it did me no good. Three of the four pigs grew bored, and made their way back into the bushes, but the first pig sat down on its arse like a dog and stared at me with soulful eyes.

  ‘They put a pig on trial in Winchester,’ it said, ‘for eating a man. His defence was: Your honour, I was hungry! Your honour it’s in my nature! The court ruled that only the sapient part of the pig was liable to trial; but by the same token, they found the beast guilty for not exercising greater self-control. Life, with ten years until her first parole hearing. Me, I am, here and now, exercising self-control.’

  ‘If I killed you,’ I replied, ‘and even assuming they could find a jury ready to convict me of doing so, I’d serve a few months. Max. And many people would consider me a human hero.’

  ‘Many more would not,’ said the pig, in a snufflish voice. ‘There are many animal lovers amongst humanity. Though a beast’s life is not worth that of a human’s, in law – it’s true.’

  ‘Inequality is a wickedness,’ said the pig, thoughtfully.

  ‘Now that’s a wickedness,’ I snapped, ‘I can really relate to, sow.’

  ‘I am a lantern in the hand of a blind people!’ growled the pig, and got to all four of its feet and scurried away.

  I sat there for a half-hour more, marinading in my own fury. But eventually I got up and walked on.

  I walked round this fence, and found my way back onto the rambler’s trail. It didn’t take me as long as I had feared it might, and by sunset I was coming down the hill into Cherhill. My walk took me past the Oldbury White Horse. Some wag had gouged a speech balloon coming out of this chalk figure, with the words YAKETY YAK. Cherhill itself was the same wilderness of suburban houses and converted shops and roads with weeds starting to sprout through the tarmac. In the half-hour it took me to walk from the country paths, down the main road and to the outskirts of town I was passed by only one car, scuzzing past on balloon wheels. You have to remember, when I was a lad cars were so numerous upon the roads, day and night, that you hardly dared stepped onto the tarmac lest you be struck by one. Long ago, now.

  I was too tired to eke out a shed or pitch a tent in some litter-strewn park and face the ire of the police support officers, so I decided to treat myself to a hotel room. There were several multi-storey structures visible in the middle of town, like giant glass coffins sticking half out of the earth. I assumed some of them were hotels. Of course I preferred a smaller establishment. This place, for instance: once a shop, I would have guessed, but now with MICROHOTEL gleaming in the glass. I rang the bell and the door was opened by the woman who, I later discovered, ran it.

  ‘How much for a room, tonight?’

  ‘Fifty-five.’

  ‘I can’t afford that,’ I said, and her look – quick, from my cap to my boots – showed that she evidently believed me.

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ she said.

  ‘Twenty,’ I offered.

  ‘Fifty-five,’ she said.r />
  ‘I’ll come back at eleven pm and your room will still be unsold for the night. You’d take twenty then. Or would you really prefer to earn nothing at all?’

  ‘Fifty-two fifty,’ she said.

  I laughed outright at this. ‘That’s not haggling! Dropping the price two-fifty? Come along, take twenty – or I’ll be back at eleven pm with an offer of fifteen, which you’ll take to avoid the empty bed. And then you’ll be down a fiver.’ It felt clumsy having to explain this to her; but it was the least I owed to courtesy.

  ‘Fifty-two fifty,’ she said.

  It took us a long time, but we eventually agreed twenty-five fifty, and she took the money from my chip there and then. After letting me through the door, she told me: ‘Breakfast is not included’ and when I asked how much breakfast would cost me, she told me: twenty euro. ‘I like your manner,’ I told her, smiling broadly – it had been long enough since my last smile that my cheeks ached a little with the unfamiliar motion. ‘I’ll not pay so much for Vitameat rashers and a tin of Tesco beans. But I’ll pay five now for a large glass of red wine – if that’s on offer?’

  She said: ‘I am licensed to sell alcoholic beverages.’

  So I went up to my room, meeting nobody on the way, and had a shower and put all my things in the bath to soak with bubble bath for detergent. Then, wearing the only other clothes I possessed, I came back down and saw nobody else. I paid her the fiver. She served me a glass of wine. We were in a bar the size of a large cupboard. I’ve seen cinema usherettes with larger trays than her L-shaped bar area. The choice was stay sitting at the bar or squeeze myself between the wall and a mushroom-shaped table. I stayed at the bar.

  ‘Your fingerprint tells me you might benefit from a reduction in alcoholic consumption,’ the wineglass told me.

  ‘I apologize,’ said the landlady. ‘I used to be able to turn that function off. But the switch must have broken in the dishwasher.’

  ‘For free health advice on cutting down your alcohol intake,’ said the glass, ‘wi-tap now.’

  ‘I guess it should have,’ I said. ‘Switch, yes. It will have one. On the base I guess. Still “switch” makes me think of a Bakelite toggle. My name is Penhaligon. My name is Graham Penhaligon.’

  ‘A fine old name,’ she replied. ‘Although, if I may say, it has too many syllables. My name is Anne Grigson.’

  ‘Mrs Grigson,’ I said, putting my wineglass down and offering a hand. ‘Or miss?’

  ‘Mrs,’ she replied. ‘Although I am not longer married. I and my husband had a disagreement.’ She shook my hand. ‘Over the animals.’

  ‘He disapproved?’

  ‘He did, or I did, is a fifty-fifty. But you have guessed correctly.’ Her sentences were delivered with a perfect deadpan that, I was beginning to think, was actually a skilfully handled dry wit. She had a well-coiffured head of straight white-grey hair, and a crease on each side of her face running from her crow’s feet down to bracket the corners of her mouth. Her eyes, very dark brown, stood out vividly against the pallor of her skin and hair.

  ‘I was a farmer for twenty years,’ I told her, ‘before everything changed. Before smallheld livestock farming became impossible. I think I can tell an animal lover when I see one.’

  ‘My animal love is confined to certain animals only,’ she said. Then: ‘You are no longer a farmer?’

  ‘Not any more. Milk hasn’t covered its costs for decades. I used to make up on the sale of beef, especially veal, and a few other things. But the coming of the bêtes knocked the bottom out of the meat-supply market, and smallholdings really are no longer viable. Nowadays I move from place to place. My daughter’s family is up near Birmingham. I like to move about.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘She is living, I believe, in Middlesbrough with a digestion insurance salesman.’

  ‘Forgive me if I am being forward.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. The wine was warming me; and Mrs Grigson, though not young, was attractive. It had something to do with the combination of her austere manner and her full-figured promise of physical pliability. ‘If you are looking for company tonight,’ I offered, sitting a little straighter on my barstool. ‘I would certainly be very happy to oblige you.’

  The lines running from the curls of her nostrils to the sides of her mouth lengthened. She drew a short thumb-sized device out of a pocket and tapped it on the bar. ‘My ears have been treated; but I assure you, pressing the red button on this will generate a noise that will rupture your eardrums. This will incapacitate you, and necessitate hospital treatment.’

  ‘You misjudge the rapacity of my proposal,’ I said stiffly. ‘I meant no offence, and apologize if I have given any. I will not harass you further.’

  ‘Alternate drinking days with non-drinking days to give your liver a chance to recuperate!’ the wineglass chimed in. ‘Surgeon General’s advice!’

  There was a period of silence. Mrs Grigson lowered her rape alarm and stared for a while through the window into the back garden. Two thrushes were having a conversation on the branch of an apple tree. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My own face, visible in ghostly fashion in the glass, had fallen into the grimmer posture that is, if I’m honest, natural to it. It was a rather awkward moment. Another person would have made their excuses and left, but I am not another person. I am stubborner than another. So I sat, taking small sips from my wine-glass. There was nothing stopping Mrs Grigson from leaving, of course; but, evidently, her levels of stubborn were on a par with mine. She slipped the rape alarm back in her pocket, and stood there. Finally, not because I thought it likely to defuse the tension, but (if I’m honest) because I thought it might intensify it, I continued our conversation. I’m contrary like that.

  ‘I encountered a new fence on my way down here. The right of way across the downsland has been blocked off,’ I said. ‘Up above the White Horse.’

  She turned to look at me. ‘That is correct,’ she replied, with a whole ice age folded into her tone.

  ‘I spoke to some sapient pigs on the other side of the fence. They implied that the whole area has been turned into a porcine sanctuary.’

  ‘Mrs Li,’ Grigson said. ‘There has been a good deal of coverage of it in the local iMedia. Some people are not happy with such a large concentration of canny animals nearby. Anti-trespassing provision has been heavy-handedly applied.’

  ‘What is this Mrs Lee hoping for?’

  She heard my misprision in the length of ‘e’ I gave the surname, or else guessed that I had got it wrong. At any rate she said: ‘Ell, eye; not elly-ee. I do not know her hopes for the community. I dare say that, like many wealthy people in this day and age, she sees the existence of bêtes as an opportunity to return to Eden.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, draining my wine. ‘She has no legal right to fence off the rambler path.’

  ‘Think before refilling me!’ the glass advised. ‘Leave it a day!’

  ‘You might take the matter to court,’ Mrs Grigson said, not looking at me. ‘Though it would be a long-drawn-out and, likely, fruitless common-law prosecution.’ Her tone was full of contempt; but it was contempt for me, not for the feebleness of due legal process. Something inside me quailed, but my stubbornness kept me from running away.

  I did get up, but instead of making a decent retreat I merely stood there. The sheer, ghastly awkwardness of it had a kind of fascination for me. ‘My boots are nearing the end of their useful,’ I informed her. She sneered at me as if nothing could possibly interest her less than the state of my boots – which, I dare say, was indeed the case. ‘I need to replace them,’ I added.

  ‘I am content for you to put me down as a delivery address,’ she replied, ‘provided you pay for immediate delivery. I am not prepared to hold any items for you after you have departed, until such time as you might or might not …’

  ‘Actually I was thinking of going to a store in person. Could you direct me?’

  She paused before answering, as if biti
ng back a rebuke. ‘Your iSlate will of course contain all appropriate directions.’

  ‘I do not possess one.’

  She angled her head a fraction at this, as if to say a throwback, I see. ‘In that case: the nearest Tesco walkway feed is about half a mile away. Turn right out of my front door, next left, and all the way to the end. You’ll see the feed entrance.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and left.

  I went back to my room, took my clothes out of the bath and wrung them. Then I draped them over the room’s two radiators to dry and looked again at my shoes. My eyeballs felt hot and my cheeks were warm to the back of my hand, the physical manifestations of embarrassment finally overcoming me now that I was alone. Weakness of course, and accordingly despicable. I would leave in the morning and never see Mrs Frigid Grigson again: there was no use in getting worked up. Of course, I told myself, I was angry at myself, and not at her. It was I who had misjudged the situation. Of course, I thought: a drink will make this better. This last sentiment – and never mind what Wilfred Owen said – is the true Old Lie.

  What the cat told me

  The evening was pleasantly cool, and the walk did me good. I really had got disproportionately riled-up by my encounter with the stubborn-headed landlady. The thing to do was rebalance my inner emotions. So down the suburban street I went – a parade of lit, closed windows with barely another human being out and about. Venturing outside was not the modern way, not if it could possibly be avoided. Two women passed me, on a tandem.

  A fox dashed out of a front garden and angled a high-pitched bark in my direction: ‘Food! Please! Starred! Starred!’ I shook my head and walked on. It was only when I got to the bright lit entrance to the Tesco walkway that I figured out what the fox had been saying with its last word – starved. Those labiodentals are a bugger for elongated mouths and thin lips. ‘Go boil your own brush,’ I shouted at it, and the bête skittered round me and away.