by David Mark
‘Better looking with your clothes on. I mean, you looked peachy with your arse out but you are banging today. That’s a lovely outfit.’
She feels the change come over Jude, the tension bleeding into his arms. She shakes her head, urgently. ‘Don’t. He’s just a silly man, don’t …’
‘Still got the picture in my mind,’ he adds, licking his lips. ‘Oh it’s beautiful. Candle-white against the moonlight – the smell of rotting venison. I can conjure it all up at a moment’s notice. I’m good at that. All those years inside, I had a whole scrapbook of memories to enjoy. Your bitch-wife, for example, Jude. I read that it was a stroke that done her in, result of a bad head injury. Subdural haematoma – that’s it, isn’t it? Can’t have been easy to make it happen but I admire the craftsmanship. I’ll have to tell you exactly what I see when I picture her dead – see if I’ve got it as accurate as it should be …’
‘Well, you’re a bit of prick, aren’t you?’ says Sylvia, poking Mick aside and addressing her comments to his companion. ‘Stop showing off. There’s a queue. I’ve already told the security guard there’s a pillock in here causing trouble. I’d have it away on your toes if I were you.’
He turns to her, unhappy at being interrupted. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I know you,’ continues Sylvia, unperturbed. ‘You were one of the thugs Campion brought in to stop the saboteurs. Loved the rough stuff, didn’t you? And from what I remember reading in the papers, that’s not the worst of your habits.’
‘You stop talking,’ he spits, getting in Sylvia’s face. ‘You shuffle on and buy your incontinence pants somewhere else.’
‘You don’t talk to her like that,’ says Betsy, genuinely angry. ‘Say what you like about me but––’
‘And you close your mouth unless you want something sticking in it,’ sneers the man, flashing eyes and teeth. He drops the act. Snarls, from the heart. ‘You do know what he is, yeah? Know he killed his fucking wife.’
The eyes spin back towards Jude, his knuckles white where he grips the counter. ‘You are one evil little man,’ says Sylvia, shaking her head at him. ‘Go on, security guard’s coming …’
‘Come on,’ hisses Mick, tugging at his sleeve. ‘Not now. Not here.’
‘A friendly woman, his dear departed,’ says the thug in the doorway, enjoying himself again. ‘Very accommodating. Came to quite the understanding with Campion, didn’t she? The things we do for love, eh? But she isn’t here to pay that debt any more, is she? And Punch, you aren’t my type.’ He leers at Betsy. ‘So, love. Guess it’s up to you.’
Betsy knows that the words will unleash something in Jude but she doesn’t move quick enough to stop him. One moment he is motionless at the counter. The next he has crossed the floor and wrapped his left hand around the man’s throat, pushing him back into Mick, who cannons back into Sylvia and Val.
They go down like dominos, Jude on top, pushing the man’s face into the floor. He hits him, once, twice, slamming him in the kidneys and ribs with his free hand. He’s saying something as he hurts him. ‘Never again,’ he hisses. ‘Never again …’
Betsy runs towards the melee, the whirl of arms and legs and curses, and tries to put her hands on Jude’s shoulders. He glances back to see who is touching him and the man beneath him squirms an arm free, reaches up and rams his thumb into Jude’s eyeball, pushing as if trying to shove a cork into the neck of a bottle. Jude gives a hiss of pain, and then the man is pushing him over, his hair in his hands, bringing his knees up and Jude’s head down, knocking him to the floor; stamping at his chest, screaming in his face, taking his head in his hands and slamming it into the floor with thud after sickening thud …
‘How you going to keep her safe when you’re in hospital, eh Punch? Who’ll be her big strong man when you’re shitting in a colostomy bag?’
Betsy doesn’t even think. She lunges at him, raking her nails down his face. She takes a handful of his cheek in her right hand and twists. Lashes out at him with her other hand, kicking, biting, doing whatever she can to hurt him. He roars in pain and shoves her away, his strength uncanny, and then there are shouts and men in blue, and Jude is pulling himself to his feet, blood leaking from his forehead, and Mick and his mate are rushing towards the exit.
She stands still, panting, blood thudding in her ears, heart a great fist slamming into her ribcage. The room spins. She has to stop herself from throwing up on the dirt-streaked floor.
She looks across at Jude. He’s staring at her: one eye a burning coal, the other hidden bloodily behind his hand. A security guard tries to put an arm out to help him and he shrugs him off. Looks to where Sylvia is lying, holding her hip, groaning with pain.
Jude shakes himself. The look of pure rage disappears as if beneath the surface of a pool. He crosses quickly to where Betsy stands. Wraps his arm around her waist. Presses his forehead to hers, blood smearing on her pale brow. ‘Thanks,’ he mutters, breathless. ‘He was lying. You know he was lying.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ whispers Betsy. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
And the voice, loud as rushing water: Yes it does, Liz. He’s a killer. You saw. He can’t protect you and he’s a bloody killer …
TWENTY-FIVE
They take the long way home. Betsy drives. She’s never handled a car like this before and the vibrations from the chassis seem to run right up her arms from the steering wheel and rattle her whole skeleton. She feels nervous on this road. Last time she drove here she clipped Campion’s big beast of a 4 x 4 and ended up spread-eagled on the fell. But Jude is in no position to drive. He can’t see out of his right eye. It’s filling with blood; pink tears occasionally seeping out to run down his face. He scowls through the passenger window, saying nothing. His bearing is a clenched fist. He’s barely spoken since they left the hospital. It was Betsy who persuaded the pharmacist and security guards not to call the police. She’d promised to take Jude straight down the corridor to A & E. She’d rather basked in the compliments of the witnesses who said that she’d handled the whole thing brilliantly and had gone for the nasty little thug ‘like a wildcat’. Jude heard some of it. Heard the grannies saying that men were just animals and that it was a good job she was there to stop him from getting badly hurt. She can see how hard he’s trying not to let his ego take control of his personality. He’s trying to be the poet. The musician. The man who brings her coffee and wildflowers and lets her stroke his hair as he lies on her lap and talks about the future. He doesn’t want to be the kind of man who would point out that he’d have won if she hadn’t got involved. Doesn’t want to get into that macho bullshit, even as every cell in his body is telling him to do so.
‘We could stop for a bit,’ says Betsy, and her jolliness sounds strained. ‘No rush for home, is there? We were going to have a walk.’
Jude swivels his eyes in her direction. The bloody red iris looks horrible. He’s necked some painkillers and wiped the blood from his head with his shirtsleeve. He’s pale. She wonders if she would be better off taking him straight home. She knows she was wrong to listen when he said he didn’t need to go to A & E. He has a head injury, that’s clear. He must have concussion. A damaged cornea. He must have at least one broken rib. He’d only said it once, but he’d said it in a way that left no room for argument. ‘I’ve had worse. I just want to go home.’
He gives a tired smile, grateful that she’s trying. ‘There’s a layby a mile or so up the road. Little walk down to the river. Fresh air might be nice.’
‘Great. Tell me when. Are you really sore?’
‘You’ve done worse than this to me,’ he says, trying to make a joke of it. ‘First night together, you left me looking bloodier than this.’
‘Shut up, I did not.’
‘Ferocious, you were. You always are.’
‘You’ll make me blush.’
‘Take me somewhere quiet and I’ll make you do more than that.’
She finds herself smiling. The dark skies have lifted a l
ittle and with sunset still hours away, the day is rallying; the air cold and blue.
‘That’s a red kite,’ says Jude, looking past her and nodding at the big brown bird that turns in lazy circles above them.
‘It’s massive!’ says Betsy, slowing down to peer through the glass. ‘I can’t tell how far away it is because I’ve never seen a wingspan like that!’
‘They nearly went extinct,’ says Jude. ‘Took a lot of work to get the numbers back on the rise and there are still nasty sods who think it’s a great day if they manage to shoot one. RSPB does its best but some people’s instinct is to see something beautiful and smash it. I’ve never understood that.’
There’s something familiar about the bird. She concentrates. Thinks about that first day: the huge feathery mass pinned across the doorway. She swallows drily. Something ignites inside her. She can’t pretend. No more fairy tales, no more hiding away in their castle. She wants to know what he is. What he’s truly capable of.
They drive in silence. Then Jude gives a vague wave. ‘Up that little track, on the right.’
As instructed, Betsy turns the car down a pitted dirt track; a small stretch of grey and brown among the endless green. The car rattles them around like bricks in a washing machine. She sees the pain in Jude’s face and takes a perverse pleasure in it. She jerks them to a stop on the brow of a hill, staring out across a vast expanse of heather-clad hillside. To their right, the green fields are speckled with wildflowers; a confetti of multi-coloured petals. Ahead, a dry culvert: a man-made stream covered over with slabs of stone. Rabbits peak out from the places where the stone has caved in. She wishes Marshall were here. She’d like to see him chase rabbits. Catch them, one after another. Right now she would like to see every fluffy little fairy-tale creature ripped to bits.
Painfully, Jude manoeuvres himself out of the car. Betsy joins him. It’s colder than she’d imagined. They’re high up and the wind cuts like a lash. He takes her hand. Pulls her towards him. ‘You’re bloody hard work sometimes,’ he says, with a smile. ‘You don’t give an inch, do you?’
‘That’s me,’ she says. ‘You’ll never find anybody like me.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘So I’d best do all I can to keep you.’
His face swims in her vision. He’s so close his features are blurry and indistinct; the pool of blood in his eye expanding and dilating. She tries to keep things light. But the fire inside her is rising, growing, threatening to overwhelm her. What she feels is something like hatred. Like fear and rage and an absolute willingness to do whatever she must to keep herself safe. At the same time she cannot understand herself – why take herself somewhere secluded with a man she is beginning to truly fear? Why not drive them somewhere loud and boisterous and full of witnesses? She wants to scream into the sky, to roar at the heavens that she has had enough. She wants to understand herself. Make good decisions, stop being so damnably insane.
She mutters, ‘What he said …’
‘About Maeve? Look, that nasty bastard has been trying to goad me for years. Some people have it in their mind I’m a tough guy and people like him want to test it. He knew her, a bit. Back before my time. She was with a group of hunt saboteurs. Brendon had rounded up some thugs to stop them. It all got a bit out of hand and Maeve got a blow to the head. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. But it led to the seizures and the seizures led to her death.’
‘So how come people are saying you were somehow to blame?’
He sighs. Rolls a cigarette, expertly, despite the biting wind. Lights up and exhales his woes, heading off down the track towards the brow of the fell. She falls into step beside him, still holding his hand. ‘Betsy, you’ve got every right to ask questions. You’ve been through all sorts of hell with Jay and now you’re with a guy who’s got more enemies than friends, but it’s important to me that above all else, we have trust. Can’t you just trust me?’
‘I love it when you tell me my rights, Jude,’ she says, with a nasty little smile.
‘There you go again,’ he says, tiredly. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. I don’t know what I’ve done to make you doubt me.’
She stops, throws up her arms. ‘You don’t know? How about the sheep in the river, the dead deer in your tree, putting me in your dead wife’s clothes, not telling me that you’d thrown Campion’s men out on their ear up at the farm you were working at …’
He sucks angrily on his roll-up, grinding his jaw. ‘I didn’t do that. Those things are happening, but I’m not culpable for that. I don’t deserve to get it in the neck for that.’
‘What?’ asks Betsy, screwing up her face and shaking her hand free. ‘What does that even mean? I’m supposed to weigh all that up before I speak, am I? I’m supposed to decide what I feel, not just feel it?’
‘Of course you are,’ snaps Jude. ‘Thoughts and feelings are worlds apart. I have mad impulses; crazy moments of paranoia, but I think about them before I let them out. They’re just suggestions from some part of your brain, they don’t have to be commands.’
‘That’s insane,’ barks Betsy, her temper rising. ‘Is this how you were with Maeve? If she told you off or questioned you it was invalid unless she could back it up?’
He gives a laugh, thoroughly bewildered. ‘Doesn’t that sound a bit mad to you, Betsy? Of course it’s invalid unless it can be backed up. If you tell me off for being … I don’t know … too fat, or something, and I look down and see I’m a size thirty-two-inch waist, then it means you’re going on about nothing, and it’s not on me to defend myself. It’s just a mad accusation.’
She looks at him, horrified. ‘Who thinks like that?’
‘I think like this,’ he growls. ‘Jesus, the amount of shit that’s been poured in my ears over the years by people who want me to agree with them about the nonsense they’re spouting …’
‘Nonsense? I’m spouting nonsense now?’
‘I wish I could record your voice and play you back so you could hear yourself.’
‘Jay used to say that!’
He turns on her, face close to hers, his eye leaking blood, the stub of his cigarette flaring gold.
‘Jay needs putting in the ground for all he’s done to you, Betsy. Your mother too. They’re fucking things up for us because they’ve left you unable to trust people.’
‘I know!’ she screams, and stamps on ahead up the track. ‘I can’t believe I got you so wrong. You think you understand me, but you just know how to say the right things. I had a house. I had enough to pay the bills. It wasn’t exciting but at least I knew I was somewhere safe. Now I’m with somebody who acts like we’re living in a fairy-tale castle and he’s a knight who can protect me from the dragons. Weren’t much of a knight today, were you? Not when he was smashing your head in the ground …’
She looks back at him as she hurls this final rock. He’s standing on the track, chewing his lip, breathing heavily. She knows she’s right. He deserves this. Deserves to be told. He’s lied to her. Messed her up. Taken her away under false pretences. Jay was boring but he was safe. And Anya. She misses Anya. She shouldn’t have pushed Jay so far. She’s a nightmare. Always has been …
She hears him running up the track towards her. Spins to face him, braced for an attack. He’s trying to take hold of her; to cuddle her as if she’s a child having a strop. He wants this to stop. She can’t let it. She needs this anger. It shows her the truth.
‘So quiet about your first wife, aren’t you. Shame, is it? Why haven’t you taken me to see your family? Are you ashamed of me, or are you just hiding me away? Or maybe you don’t want people seeing how you’re dressing me up in your dead wife’s clothes, trying to recreate her so you can kill her again.’
‘Betsy, please, look at me––’
‘It’s Liz! I’ve been called Liz all my life. I don’t know why I told you I’m called Betsy but I’m not. I’m just Liz. Lizzie, if you like.’
He looks confused. ‘Fine, OK, Liz …’
‘And you, Mr Pu
nch? That doll makes sense now, eh? You’re treating me like a fucking mushroom – keeping me in the dark and feeding me on shit––’
‘Please, just listen––’
‘Sylvia’s in hospital because of you. What if she catches MRSA and dies? And the way Val looked at you, as if she knew what you’d been up to. Who can’t even go to the pharmacy without getting into a fight? You know I was suicidal before we met, you do know that, don’t you …?’
‘Please,’ he whispers, desperately. ‘Just look at me, this isn’t you talking …’
‘Yes it fucking is!’ she spits. ‘This is me. This is what you’ve fallen for. This is what you’ve got forever. Not such a picnic now it’s not all about wildflowers and blowjobs, is it? This is reality …’
She can tell he wants to grab her. To hold her arms and make her listen. He’s fighting with himself. All she has to do is push a little harder and she’ll see the real him, she knows it. This is the part of herself that keeps her safe; stops people getting close, stops her getting hurt.
‘What is it you want from me?’ he asks, almost beaten.
‘Did you kill your wife?’
‘How can you ask that?’
She screams. Throws her head back and roars like an animal summoning the pack. Turns to stamp on up the track. He reaches for her arm, pulls her back.
‘I love all of you,’ he says, his voice steel. ‘I don’t like this bit of you, but I love the whole of you so whatever’s inside, that gets loved too.’
‘Don’t,’ she snaps. ‘Don’t mess with my head. My mother used to do that.’
‘And she was an evil bitch. The people who’ve hurt you, none have seen the real you. I do. And I love it all.’
‘No. Don’t be nice. You’re lying!’
‘I want you – all of you. Betsy, please, trust me …’
‘You’ve got enough problems,’ she says, and she feels her strength going. ‘I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere …’
‘Betsy, you should be with me. Marry me.’
She looks at him like he’s mad. ‘What? How can you be asking that after all I just said?’
