Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke

by Peter Benson

  “Try the pub.”

  “Which one?”

  “Dunno. Do I look like a mind reader?”

  I stared at the bloke. He was stoned and drunk, and wearing a huge woolly hat. I don’t know what the plaster covered, but he needed to change it. It was curling at the edges and crusted blood was there. He put a spliff to his mouth and took a long drag. He was smoking ragged stuff, and when he stared at me I thought, for a moment, that his eyelids were going to fall off. But they didn’t, and when I told him that no, he didn’t look like a mind reader, he narrowed his eyes as he tried to make sense of what I had just said. Was I playing with him? Was I serious? He couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t going to get any sense out of him, so I said, “Thanks,” and rode back up the hill, parked the bike in the square and went to the first pub I found. As I walked in the door, ten heads turned towards me, stared for five seconds and turned back to their drinks. Owls, I thought. Or sheep. There was old, bad music playing, and someone in a leather jacket standing over a juke box. A waiting air of menace hung in the air, like the time was almost come to give someone a good kicking, and I might be that someone. I looked around, but didn’t see Spike, so I nodded to the barman, ducked out of the door and went to the second pub. This time six heads turned towards me. More owls. Or sheep. There was less of an air in this place, more of something that approached a welcome, so I walked down the bar, nodded to someone I didn’t know and saw him. He was sitting at a table in the corner with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The smoke was curling like hair around him, drifting in the air and settling in clots around the pictures of old Wiveliscombe that hung on the walls. He had a local paper opened in front of him. He was reading about the hung man. I fetched a pint, sat down and said, “Spike.”

  He looked up and said, “El…”

  “How you doing?”

  He shook his head. “Fucking awful. You?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Oh,” he said, and he took a drag on his cigarette and pointed at the paper. There was a picture of a corner of the wood where I’d found the hung man, and some stuff about who he was and what he might have been doing. His name was Fred Baxter, and a local was quoted as saying “He kept himself to himself. He moved into the area about six months ago, but we hardly saw him. There were rumours about what he was up to, but we never thought it would come to this.”

  “I never thought it would come to this either,” said Spike, and he stared into his pint. He looked like he was trying to see something in it, the future maybe, or a way out of his mess. “I don’t know what to do. But I did have an idea,” he said. He didn’t look me in the eye, and I knew what that meant. It meant he knew it was a bad idea, and he was about to prove that he was a twat.

  “What is it?”

  “My mate down the road knows some people in London.”

  “Good for him. He certainly looks like he’s got his wits about him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just met him.”

  “Right,” said Spike, and he squinted at me. “Anyway. He called them last night. They’ll buy the smoke. Reckons they’ll take everything I’ve got.”

  “He told some people in London that you’ve got half a ton of smoke?”

  “It’s not half a ton…”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you, Spike?”

  “Get what?”

  “It’s over. Finished. It’s not your smoke. You can’t sell it. All you have to do now is keep your head down, forget everything about what you did, take a deep breath and think about what you’re going to do next. This whole thing has gone way beyond you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think I’m going to tell you?”

  “You’re my mate,” he said. He looked into my eyes, and his eyes were wide and pleading and watery, like he knew chances had slipped by and he was hanging on by his fingernails. “Please, El.”

  “Please what?”

  “Tell me you’re still my mate.”

  “I wouldn’t have come out to see you if you weren’t,” I said, and I put my hand on his arm for a second, took it away, picked up my pint and drank. “I was worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the heavies are still out there, Spike.”

  “Still?”

  “They came to the farm. Mr Evans had to chase them off with his gun. And they’re not going away in a hurry.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t suppose they are.”

  “So forget all about thinking you’re going to sell the smoke. I’m going to sort it out. I’ll make everything go away.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  He looked at me again. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Forget it, Spike. You just did what you always do.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but you’re still my friend. My best friend.”

  He took another drink and whispered, “Thanks.”

  Friends are rare, I thought, but didn’t say it, friends you can stick with and who stick with you whatever happens. But what makes friendship? How does it work? What makes one person know that another person is a person you can rely on, call on, talk to? Is it understanding that whatever you say will be understood, or is it wanting for your friend what you want for yourself? I wanted Spike to have what I had, I wanted him to have a job he liked, a girlfriend with a beautiful back and beautiful eyes, and I wanted him to be free of stupid ideas. Being able to say anything to a friend is another good sign of having a real friend, and I suppose if that’s the truth then Spike wasn’t as real a friend as he could be. Because there were things I couldn’t say to him, deep things you might hear people say to each other in a book or a film. But I don’t think you should ever think that something you hear in a book or a film has anything to do with real life. Books and films are false things. They come from imagination, the air of a different planet. And once Spike had said, “Thanks…” there wasn’t much more to say. So we sat for ten minutes, talked about how The Globe was as good a pub as you could visit and how when we thought about it, school wasn’t as bad as we thought it was when we were there. Things we could agree about, things that could remind us that there was a good world out there, things that were straight and easy, and when we’d finished talking about these things, I stood up, put my hand on his shoulder, reminded him that I was going to make everything go away and he was to do nothing, left him at his table and rode back to Ashbrittle.

  I don’t like to think that I spend all my time in pubs. I don’t. But some pubs are easy places to relax, places where it’s easy to feel safe, easy places to hide. So when I met Sam and she asked if I fancied going up to Staple Cross, I said, “Let’s go,” and she slipped on the spare helmet, hopped on the bike, threaded her arms around my waist, held her face against my back and we headed off.

  We sat at the same table we sat at when we first met, and we talked about that night, and how we’d talked about baking and my Gran’s talent for charming sheep. And the same feelings were there, and we talked about them too, how when I was with her I felt as though I was walking in a safe place where no one could touch me. And she agreed.

  Other people came and went, some people I knew and some I didn’t, but we hardly noticed them. We were in our own world. I thought about how I’d sat with Spike earlier and how there was something similar about how I felt then and how I was feeling now, and I tied the feeling down. It was about feeling complete. Spike completes part of me, and Sam completed another part – and that, I supposed, was another thing about friendship. And it was something about lov
e. Until you meet these people you are only part of a person. You need others to make you. So when we left and she climbed onto the back of my bike again and held me tight again, I imagined that she was melting into me, and adding the last bits that made me whole.

  I pulled away from the pub and rode slowly, loving the feeling. I slowed down at a crossroads, turned the corner and stopped, turned and looked at her. She smiled, and I reached back and touched her lips with my fingers. She kissed my fingers and I stroked her cheek, and as I did this, headlights appeared in a gateway. They came on like day had suddenly broken for a second, and a car pulled out, skidded into the lane and accelerated towards us.

  I turned left, and for a hundred yards I didn’t think about the car, but then it was right behind us, too fast, swerving into the middle of the road, pulling back at a bend, swerving out again. A white car. A growing engine. The driver looking straight ahead, his bald head shining and his mad mouth twitching. Dickens. When we reached a short straight, I gunned the bike, took a couple of bends, settled into another straight and Sam yelled, “What the hell’s he doing?”

  “Hang on!” I shouted.

  I’d given myself a couple of hundred yards on the car. It was easy. I was quick and I was slick and I had a choice. The car pulled up behind me. Dickens flashed his lights. At the next junction I could head up towards a fast empty main road or I could ride into the lanes – lanes I knew, narrow lanes, lanes I could lose the car in. I slowed, made as if I was turning towards the main road, watched as the car turned with me, then turned the other way and throttled up.

  The night was falling fast now, a scarf of cloud slow and high across the moon, the high hedges looming and black. For a moment the noise and headlights disappeared, and we were alone and quick. Maybe I’d been imagining and maybe we weren’t being followed or chased or both. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe everything was a dream, and things were simply a fake. Maybe not. The car was back in my mirrors, coming at us again.

  I felt like a hunted animal, adrenalined and head down, eyes wide and feet quick. But nothing was going to catch me. I knew the land. I knew the places to hide, the turnings and dips, and the shadows in the hedges. And I was brave, braver than Dickens and his idiot head.

  A crossroads. A quick left. A house. A farm. I could turn into the yard. I didn’t. Just past the farm I hit a patch of gravel, and as my back wheel spun out from behind me, I eased off, turned into the skid, steadied, kept upright and pulled away again. Headlights cut and flew, the car gunned up close again, howling against the night. Another farm, and then a long straight that led towards darkening woods. Sam held me tighter, and I turned towards her and yelled, “We’ll lose him up here.”

  We didn’t. For a minute we were away, but he caught up again and as we rode under the trees he started blaring his horn and flashing his lights. “What does he want?” Sam yelled, as we flew out from the trees and dipped into a nasty series of bends. “Fuck knows!” I said as the bike caught another patch of gravel and sprayed the car’s windscreen. I heard the stones splatter against the glass, and this slowed him for a moment, a moment to gun the bike again and head down to a place where the road widened and a tractor and trailer were parked in a lay-by. There was a place here where I could turn, and if I hadn’t had Sam on the back I would have, but I couldn’t. The balance was wrong. And suddenly the car was next to me and I was gunning the bike, but it wouldn’t pull away. The road narrowed again, and climbed. The hill was gentle at first, but then it got steep, and as we reached the top I couldn’t see beyond the brow. The car kept coming, and as we reached the top, I saw the brush of the lights of another car coming towards us. They disappeared for a second, and then they were in front of us, fifty yards away. I swerved towards the hedge, the lights flashed in front and the lights flashed behind, and I squeezed the bike through the gap between the hedge and the oncoming car, and as I did, I clipped its wing mirror. Then the bike hit something in the road – a branch, I think – and we were skidding sideways towards a field gate.

  We hit the field gate at sixty and, at the time, I thought we were lucky. The gate splintered and smashed, and we stayed upright, rolling into the field. The grass swished beneath the tyres. I braked. I held it together. We were going to be OK. I started to lose the back wheel. I pulled it back. But then we hit a ridge, Sam screamed, and I felt her arms slip away from my waist. The bike lifted into the air, turned on its side, twisted and crashed into a pile of corrugated iron. For a moment the engine revved, but then it coughed and died, and the only sounds were the spinning of the back wheel and an engine in the lane. The moon shone. The moon shone on like a wish. And the moon took my wishes, broke them in pieces and scattered them across a pool of spreading oil.

  A car door opened. It slammed shut. I tried to stand up. The bike was lying on my leg. I said, “Sam?” She didn’t reply. I couldn’t see her. “Sam?” Nothing. For a moment my mind failed me, and I lost focus. It came back as a figure walked towards me. I heard the sound of bleating sheep. I looked up. A man looked at me. He had a big face and was wearing a bright white shirt. His eyes were grey, and his lips were wet. He crouched down and said, “You all right, mate?”

  I nodded. “I think so…”

  “What was that bloke doing?”

  “Which bloke?”

  “The one that was following you. He was driving like a crazy…”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and the man reached down, pulled the bike upright, and I tried to stand up.

  My trousers were ripped, I’d taken skin off my leg, bruised my ribs and twisted my wrist, but I hadn’t broken anything. I pulled off my helmet, tossed it at the bike and looked around. I saw Sam. She was lying twenty feet away. She wasn’t moving.

  I ran to her and the man followed. I bent over her. “Don’t move her,” the man said. “And don’t take the helmet off…”

  I reached down and touched her shoulder. I leant towards her head and listened. She was breathing – small, shallow breaths like a cat would make in its sleep. A little trickle of blood was running from her nose. “Oh God,” I said, and the man said, “I’ll get help,” and turned and ran back to his car.

  I sat with Sam for half an hour. I sat and listened to her, and every five minutes I said her name, but she didn’t say anything. I held her hand and squeezed it gently, and I cursed under my breath. I cursed Spike and I cursed friendship. I cursed smoke and I cursed greed. I cursed my thoughts and myself, and I cursed fate. And when I heard a siren in the lane, I stood up, ran to the gate and stood in the middle of the lane.

  The ambulance men followed me to where Sam was lying. They had bright torches and a stretcher, and a big bag of equipment. They asked me if I was all right. I said I was. They said, “You sure?” and looked at my legs. I shouted at them to look at Sam. They told me to be calm and stand back while they looked at her, and they went to work. I don’t know what they did, but after ten minutes they gently picked her up and laid her on the stretcher. They carried her to the ambulance, and they spent another ten minutes doing things to make her comfortable. Then they told me to get in beside her and we drove away.

  I don’t know about the rest of that night. When the ambulance man who sat in the back with me looked at my leg, he gave me an injection of something and put a dressing on the skin, and something in the injection made me sleepy. So when I looked at Sam with a mask on her face and a drip in her arm, she looked well one minute and dead the next, and her skin switched between different colours. One minute it was white, the next it was grey, then it was blue, and then it was white again. Or maybe this was real, maybe she was turning into something from a bad film. I closed my eyes and saw her flying through the air and cracking against the pile of corrugated iron, and I saw her bleeding from a deep cut in her head. Her hair was matted with blood, and her skull was showing. And I think I slept for ten minutes. And then I woke up. The ambulance doors opened. People came running from a hospital. They pulled Sam out, laid her on a trolley and wheeled her away. T
he ambulance men followed. Nurses asked them questions. I stood and tipped my head back. The sky was orange and black. The air smelt of diesel. Someone said, “You hurt too?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I am…” I said, and then I felt something sweep through my body, feathers and damp wool, and sharp filings of steel. I tried to stay upright, but my legs had decided they didn’t want anything to do with me. I reached out and grabbed someone’s shoulder, and then everything failed, dark came down and I was gone.

  ‌18

  When I was a kid I used to rush home from school, grab a piece of cake, stuff it in my mouth, swill it down with orange squash and go out on my bicycle with Grace. Sometimes I’d go first, and sometimes she’d go first, and sometimes we’d go together, and sometimes we went to the river at Stawley Mill, walk as far as a place where the river widened to a pool, and play on a rope swing we’d tied to an overhanging branch. You’d take a running jump from a slope on the bank, swing out over the water and scare the ducks. There was a log tied to the bottom of the rope, so you had a choice: you could sit down or stand up. If you stood you could push back and become almost horizontal as you swung, but if you sat down you could lean over and look up and imagine yourself as a bird. In the spring the breeze would tinkle through the branches and play on your face, and in the summer the sun would coin on the water like treasure. When the leaves fell in autumn, they’d drift past your face as you swung, and if you were lucky you could catch one in your mouth. Then they’d float away on the river, down towards Tracebridge and the memory of the witch who lived there, and on and on through the valleys and woods towards Taunton. We had happy days on the rope swing. We were never afraid of anything. We never fought. We were good children.

  If we were feeling more adventurous, we’d forget the swing and dare ourselves to ride down to the ruins of the house at Marcombe Lake. This was the place where Professor Hunt kept his kidnapped woman and did his terrible experiments. He’d turned her skin into snake’s skin by injecting her with a special chemical he’d made, but she was rescued by a man who’d come to value a collection of books for the old Lord Buff-Orpington. I think Professor Hunt went mad when he discovered the woman had been stolen from him, and before he left the place and went back to wherever he’d come from, he set fire to the house. All this happened years ago: there were no firemen to come and put the blaze out, so it burned until there was nothing more than walls and gables and chimneys in the place where a decent house had been. And as the years went by, the walls and gables and chimneys crumbled, and ivy and elder grew in the places where the Professor had cursed and spat, and the woman had screamed.