Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke

by Peter Benson

  “I never do.”

  “Good lad,” and he went to make a cup of tea.

  After milking, I ate a sandwich and went to look for Spike. There were two places he could have run to. The first was his sister’s. She lived in Wellington. It didn’t seem likely: the last time I heard they weren’t talking, but I called in anyway.

  She answered the door with a kid on her hip. She had her brother’s wiry look, but this was doubled by her tired mouth, the rings around her eyes and her thin, spidery hands. As she looked at me she was joined by a huge dog. It had a bandage on its head and weird, crossed eyes. It looked at me, showed its teeth and growled. “You’re kidding,” she said, when I asked if he was there. “I wouldn’t have that bastard here if you paid me.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “No. Not for months.”

  “OK.”

  “So what’s he done now?”

  “Oh you know…”

  “No I fucking don’t. If I did I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” I said. “He… he said he’d meet me for a drink, but didn’t show.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  She shook her head at me, the kid started to whine, and I could see she didn’t believe me, but I didn’t care. “Look,” she said, “I’ve got stuff to do. You run along, and if you find him, don’t say hello from me…” The dog took a step towards me. It looked hungry, and for a moment its eyes glazed over.

  “OK. Thanks.”

  She looked at me in amazement. Maybe no one had said “Thanks” to her for years. Or maybe they had. But whatever. She said nothing in reply, and slammed the door in my face. I stood for a moment and listened as she disappeared into the house, and then went back to the bike.

  I rode on, out of Wellington towards Milverton. The road was quiet and twisty, the shadows were long in the parched fields, and there was a corner near the turning to Langford Budville where a little whirlwind of dust suddenly appeared, spinning over the hedge. The dust was curling and rising like a ghost, a thin woman in a yellowed dress, her features blanked by trouble and loss and death. Spinning towards whatever hell she thought she was due, lost at the edge of what I could see and what I didn’t want to know. I slowed down to look, but as quickly as it had appeared it – or she – disappeared behind the hedge, leaving clear air, blue sky and the outline of a pear orchard. I heard a dog bark, I accelerated, I leant into the corner and headed down the hill.

  Milverton was a smart little village with rich houses, tidy gardens, roses growing on honeystone walls, a trimmed churchyard and neatly parked cars. The place smelt of money, but here and there were places where money and tidiness couldn’t get a grip. One of these places was behind a raised terrace on the Taunton road, a filthy cottage with rotting windows, holes in the roof and the sound of bad music booming from an upstairs room. Rubbish was piled in the garden, and a broken bed was leaning against the front wall. This was home to some of Spike’s smoking friends, a crowd of crusties who rented the place and didn’t do a lot else. I knocked on the door, but there was no reply. I yelled towards the upstairs window but it didn’t open, so I went to the pub in the main street and found one of the crusties sitting at the bar. He was as drunk as fuck, and when I asked him if he’d seen Spike, he said, “Who wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  “And who are you?”

  “His mate.”

  “Spike’s got a mate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I don’t want to fool anyone.”

  The crusty looked at me, tried to sit up straight, slumped back, stuck a finger in his ear, pulled it out, stared at the crud he’d found and said, “Are you fucking with me? Cos if you are I’ll fuck you.” He belched. “And when I fuck you you’ll stay fucked. Got it?”

  “Hey…”

  “And don’t fucking ‘hey’ me!”

  “OK.” I took a step back and said, “Thanks. If you see him, tell him Elliot was looking for him.”

  “Tell him your fucking self.”

  I took another step back, then turned and made a swift exit, jumped on the bike and was out of Milverton before anyone had a chance to spot me, chase me and whack me on the back of the head with a mallet.

  I rode without knowing what I was going to do next. I headed towards Bathealton, slowed to look in pull-ins and green lanes and copses and hidden gateways, and when I reached the top of the hill on the road to Stawley, stopped and stood and scanned the fields below. I wasn’t expecting to see him, but I thought it was better to look than not.

  The sun was setting, and it coloured the land green and gold. A flock of crows was heading to its roost, and cows, fresh from milking, were fanning through the meadows. The woods looked cool, the single trees looked right, the farms and houses were safe. It was easy to feel fooled by the scene, the peace and quiet and beauty and dying heat. Easy to think that here was the secret of calm, here you could find the end of some rainbow. Some place where leaves drifted and water lapped, and the earth folded like sheets over sleepers. Quiet guitars could strum, a flute could warble, rabbits could skip and jump from their holes. A paradise of colour and quiet, a place where worried people could meet and leave their worries behind.

  And people did leave their worries behind in this place. They walked footpaths through the fields and over the hills. They held hands, they talked in low, quiet voices, they laughed. They had picnics in the shade of green trees. They leant with their backs against gates and shared bottles of beer. And when they’d finished eating and drinking and talking, they closed their eyes and let warmth and comfort bathe them.

  I sat and stared and smelt the air for half an hour. A couple of cars drove by, and a tractor, and in the distant lanes I saw other cars and other tractors, but no white van. I heard a motorbike, another motorbike, a buzzard high over my head. A bee. A squad of pigeons. Another bee. Some walkers crossed the field below me and disappeared into a copse. I waited for them to appear again, but they didn’t. They were probably bird watchers or maybe they were looking for a quiet place to fuck. It’s impossible to tell what people are planning or thinking when all you can see is their backs from half a mile away, so I got back on the bike, rode on and stopped at The Globe for a pint. All the talk was about the fire at Spike’s place, and how he was an accident waiting to happen. Someone said, “I went down there one day, and the place was a pit. Shit everywhere. You wouldn’t sit on the sofa. He had a gas fire that looked like it had come out of the ark, and his cooker… I don’t want to think about it.”

  “He wouldn’t be told,” someone else said.

  “Wouldn’t be told what?” I said.

  “To tidy himself up.”

  “All he has to do is make an effort.”

  “Not a bad worker though. Always puts his back into it. He doesn’t look it, but he’s as strong as an ox.”

  “True.”

  “But that’s not everything, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got to have some discipline, a sense of responsibility.”

  “True.”

  “Talk of the Devil…”

  I looked out of the window as Spike’s van slowed down outside and pulled into the car park. I left my pint and went outside to see him. He parked and sat with his hands on the wheel. He was pale, and his lips were cracked, and had a mad, hunted look in his eyes. He was shaking and sweating, and biting his nails. I’d never seen him like it before. He looked like some sort of mirror of the friend I used to know. Life had been sucked out of him and something blank had been put in its place. I got in the van and sat in the passenger seat. The smoke was stacked in bags in the back. It was sweating and it stank. I said, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t know where else to go. I went up to your place, but you weren’t there. I’ve just been driving around. I’m scared…”

  “You’re scared?”
I thought I’d never hear him say such a thing, but there it was, the words bare and out. “I’m not surprised.”

  “Fucking scared, El.”

  “I got your note. There are some heavy guys looking for you, Spike.”

  “I know.”

  “And they’re pissed off.”

  “More than pissed off, El. They burned my fucking house down. I’ve lost everything. All my clothes. My records, the telly, the stuffed badger.”

  “The stuffed badger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck. You’ve had that for ages.”

  “I know. And my pictures.”

  I put my hand on his arm. He looked at it as if it was a surprise. “But you’ve got your van…” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “And the smoke. How did you manage that?”

  “I’d put it in the van last night. I was going to see my man in Exeter.”

  “You were going to see your man in Exeter…” I said the words slowly, like I couldn’t believe I was saying them.

  “But I got paranoid.”

  I shook my head. “You know what you’ve got to do, Spike.”

  “What?”

  “Get away. Disappear.”

  “Disappear?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how the fuck am I going to do that? Whatever I do, wherever I go, they’ll find me. They’ll hunt me like a fucking dog.” He put his hand on mine. It was hot. “I should have listened to you…”

  “You should have what?”

  “Listened to you.”

  I didn’t believe what he’d just said. “That would have been a first.”

  “But I didn’t realize, I didn’t think it would end up like this.”

  “You never do think, Spike.”

  He shook his head. “OK, El. Tell me. Tell me what I’ve got to do.”

  “Only if you listen. And only if you do as I say. No arguments. Can you manage that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that, Spike. A lot better.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Try?”

  “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “Good. And you’ll have to trust me.”

  “Trust you?” He scrabbled in his pocket, pulled out a packet of fags, put one in his mouth and took half a shaking minute to light it. He inhaled deeply, blew the smoke at the windscreen and said, “OK.”

  “And do everything I say.”

  “OK.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  “To start with, we have to hide the smoke. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “So get this fucking van started and follow me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place.”

  “But…”

  “I said no arguments, Spike…”

  “But…”

  “Spike!”

  He put his hands up. “OK.”

  He followed me. It only took ten minutes to get to the farm, but it was a long ten minutes. They could have been anywhere, waiting in a gateway, behind a wall, in a barn or at a crossroads. They didn’t take a day off. It was obvious. They could be spying from a hedge or the top of a tall tree. They could be in that car or that van, or waiting on bikes in a lay-by. Behind the curtains of a rented cottage, through a crack in a fence, or watching from a shepherd’s hut in the middle of a small field. Hiding like a vole in a hole, whiskers twitching and nose going, tongue licking its little lips at the thought of a fat worm. So when we reached the farmyard we parked by the caravan and I told him to stay in the van. He nodded and sat with his hands on the steering wheel, looking this way and that, licking his lips. Mr Evans was in the house, watching the television. I knocked on the front door, and when he answered I told him that a mate had turned up. I thumbed towards the van. Spike nodded and tried a smile. I knew Mr Evans didn’t like strangers on his land, so I said, “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “Worry? Me?” he said. “What have I got to worry about?” and he went back to his programme.

  We stepped into the caravan, sat down for half an hour and drank a beer. We tried to talk about things that wouldn’t panic us, things we’d done when we were kids, places we’d been, scrapes we’d avoided, but whenever there was a silence I knew what he was thinking, and he knew what I was thinking, and we’d lock eyes and I’d shake my head and I’d think he was about to cry. I opened another couple of beers, another half-hour passed, and then I saw Mr Evans’s downstairs light go out. I checked the time. It was ten. He was going to bed. “Give him twenty minutes,” I said, “and then we’ll get going.”

  Another beer, a couple of cigarettes for Spike, an upstairs light went out and then the house was dark. When I thought it was safe, I said, “OK. Do exactly as I say.”

  I went back to the yard, sat in the driver’s seat with the handbrake off and the gears in neutral and told Spike to push. Once we had it out of the front yard, it was easy freewheeling past the hay barn and into the sunken lane that skirted the top meadows and the field where Mr Evans grew winter kale. An old barn stood in the bottom corner of this field, a place where we kept an old trailer, a set of harrows and some other broken bits of machinery. It was hidden by a high hedge and surrounded by clumps of old coppice. I got Spike to open the field gate, started the van, gunned it up the track, swung it round and stopped by the barn doors.

  We spent half an hour making a space for the van, pushing the trailer to one side and pulling the harrows into the field. Then we pushed the van inside, covered it with an old tarpaulin, and rolled the trailer back inside. The harrows stacked beside the trailer, and we tossed a few old hay bales on top of the tarp. When we stood back, the van was invisible. I closed the doors, slid the bolt, and while Spike wasn’t looking I tucked a stick of straw behind the bolt.

  “Job done,” I said.

  “Thanks El…”

  I faced him. “You’ve got to promise me something, Spike.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t come up here. If I see you snooping around, this is the last help you get from me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Swear. Swear you’ll keep away.”

  “I swear, El. I don’t want to see that stuff again.”

  I stared into his eyes, and I thought he was telling the truth. He had to be, otherwise he was lost to me. “OK,” I said, “where are you going to stay?”

  “Well, I was wondering, seeing like you’ve got a spare bed and…”

  I put my hand up. “Not a chance. I’ll drop you somewhere, but after that you’re on your own…”

  “OK. Maybe my sister’s.”

  “I don’t think so. I went to see her when I was looking for you. She said she wouldn’t have you there if you paid her. What did you do to piss her off?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re such a fucking liar, Spike. And your mates in Milverton weren’t that pleased to hear your name either.”

  “You saw them too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I suppose I could try someone in Wiveliscombe. I’m owed a favour.”

  “OK. Wivey it is,” and when we got back to the farm, I got him on the back of the bike and we left. I rode carefully and slowly, let the panic settle in my stomach, and avoided a fox in the road at Bathealton. I felt his heart thumping against my back, and for a few minutes I thought that this was how friends should be: joined, attached, travelling through a night for a reason that had something to do with anything but running away from fright. We should have been able to ride slowly and not have to look around every corner, and we should have been able to laugh. The lanes should have held no threat, the fields should have been gold and hedged and voled. But we didn’t laugh, and we didn’t talk, and when we reached Wivey he directed me to a place on Golden Hill. It was a quiet street. No people, no dogs, no cats. A few pieces of paper blown in air, but that was all. I sa
id, “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep my head down.”

  “I think that’s a good plan.”

  “I might read a book.”

  I couldn’t remember Spike ever reading a book, but the idea that he was going to try was a good one. I said, “Have you got one?”

  “Jim’s got plenty.”

  “Jim?”

  “My mate. He lives here.” He thumbed at the front door of a cottage.

  “OK. Well, choose a long one.”

  “I might do that.”

  He held out his hand. Another thing I couldn’t remember Spike doing before. Shaking hands. We shook. “OK,” I said. “You take care. I’ll come and see you in a day or two.”

  “Will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Take care, Spike,” I said, and I watched him until he was in the house and I thought he was safe, and then I turned back the way we’d come, home to some sort of peace and shelter.

  ‌14

  In the morning I milked, did my chores, and after breakfast I walked down the sunken lane to the kale field, and checked the barn. The stick of straw was still tucked behind the bolt, and when I put my eye to the crack between the doors I could see the trailer, the harrows, the tarpaulin and the hay bales, but the van was hidden well. I couldn’t see any part of it, or smell the smoke. I tapped the doors for luck. Back at the farm, Mr Evans fetched some creosote from the store, and I helped him to paint the yard fence.

  He was in a talkative mood, and when I told him where I’d been with Spike he told me that in the old days he used to walk to Wivey to go to the Saturday dances. “Those were the days…” He’d meet up with friends along the way, and by the time they reached the town there’d be five or six of them. “We could be terrors,” he said, “but the girls liked us.”

  “I bet they did.”

  “Oh yes,” he said, and he let the words kindle something in his head, something stronger than a quiet and simple memory. Sometimes he could look smaller than he was, and weaker. His eyes went misty and he wiped his nose with his sleeve, and he said, “Oh yes,” again.