Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke

by Peter Benson

  One day we went down there even though we hadn’t planned to. I think we started by going for a walk in the woods below Belmont Hall to look for dormice nests, but before we knew it we were standing in the field above the ruins, and then we were running down the field, laughing and chasing each other. “Dare you!” yelled Grace, and I didn’t need daring twice.

  The walls still had scorch marks, and when I stepped through the place where the front door had been, I tripped over a blackened plank of wood, part of the old collapsed roof. I turned around, waited for Grace, but she didn’t appear.

  “Grace?”

  No answer.

  I laughed. “Please yourself,” I said, and I started to explore.

  I think I would have liked to have been an explorer. I don’t know how people become explorers, what they need to do at school or who they need to know, but if I’d been a bit more adventurous and brave I’d have taken myself off to places like Mongolia or Patagonia, and searched for something that no one had seen for centuries. Treasure buried by dead monks or a dead king, jars filled with coins, tablets with secret writing on them, an odd-shaped object hidden in a cave. Then I’d have bought my finds back to England and written about it for the National Geographic magazine, and had my photograph on the cover, me smiling with a beard, bright eyes and a big scarf.

  “Grace?”

  Still no answer, so I started exploring the ruins. There were some people in the village who said that Professor Hunt had never done evil experiments on a woman, so maybe I’d find proof. Maybe I’d find a bottle of the stuff he injected her with buried in the floor, and I’d be able to take it back and show it around and tell everyone that the stories were true. I picked up a stick and started digging at the floor in front of the hole in a wall where the fireplace used to be. I found stones and a piece of broken china, more stones and some cinders, but no bottle. I picked the piece of china up, licked my finger and rubbed it. It was blue and white, with half a little flower painted on it. I heard a footstep on the other side of the wall, then another and another, light steps like you’d make if you didn’t want anyone to hear. I said, “I’m here, Grace.”

  “I know,” she said, from behind me. I stood up.

  “How long have you been there?”

  “A couple of minutes.”

  “Liar.”

  “I am not,” she said.

  “Yes you…” I started to say, when I heard the footsteps again.

  I froze and Grace froze, and I dropped the piece of china. “Who’s that?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know…”

  We stared at each other. I didn’t know what time it was, but the sun was starting to sink, and long shadows were gathering around the ruins. I heard a scratching in the wall. A mouse. Grace said, “It’s getting late…”

  One more footstep.

  I said, “I don’t like this…”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Grace went first. We went the way we’d come. She looked around the corner of the wall, looked back at me and nodded. “It’s OK,” she said. Then she disappeared around the corner. A moment later I heard stones crashing over each other, the scrabble of feet, Grace’s scream. I ran after her and, as I did, a sheep shot past me, leapt over the remains of a fence that used to go round the old garden, and disappeared into a ditch.

  Grace was sitting on the ground. She looked up at me. “Bloody hell,” she said. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard her swear, but it didn’t bother me. All I wanted to do was run home, sit in the front room and watch something nice on the telly. “Bloody sheep. Half-frightened me to death.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Give me a minute.”

  “OK.”

  So she sat for a minute and I stood next to her, and I watched the sun. It turned orange as it sank, and crows smudged its face with their filthy wings. They called their dirty caws, they flapped and they dropped, and they disappeared into the tops of some old trees. I suppose they sat in their nests and rearranged the sticks of their nests, scrapped with each other for a while and then settled down for the evening. I don’t know if they slept and I don’t know if they tucked their beaks beneath their wings; maybe they did, and maybe they pecked for fleas and ticks in their feathers. Something to eat before the night came, something to keep them occupied, something to keep for their dreams.

  I dreamt about crows. Big birds with ragged wings and long beaks. They bothered me in my sleep, and when I woke up I was lying in a bed, and a doctor was shining a light in my eyes. I tried to sit up, managed to get halfway and flopped back onto the pillow. I said, “Where am I?”

  “Hospital, Elliot. In Taunton. You had an accident. You were on your bike…”

  “An accident?” And it came back. It came back like a punch. A winding punch from a big man with a fist like a hill. I remembered. It wasn’t a dream. The car in the lane, the other car, the gate, the bike twisting in the air. The ambulance. Sam. Beautiful Sam. Sam with the free eyes and the sweet voice and the fingers that smelt of onions. “Sam,” I said. “Where is she?”

  “Who’s Sam?”

  “The girl I was with. She came in the ambulance.”

  “Ah…” said the doctor. “She’s being looked after now.”

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t like the way he said, “Ah…” It was like he’d invited me to die. “I want to see her.”

  “You can’t. Not at the moment. Not for a while.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s quite poorly. We’re operating on her now.”

  “Operating on her? Why? What do you mean?”

  “I think you should try and get some sleep now, Elliot. Do you want us to call anyone?”

  “No, why? Why are you operating on her?”

  He looked at the floor and looked back at me and shook his head. “She took a knock on the head.”

  “But she was wearing a crash helmet.”

  “I know.”

  “And that didn’t help?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “But she’s going to be all right?”

  “We’ll know in a few hours.”

  “A few hours?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, and I slumped back in the bed, looked up at him and said, “Could you call my mum?”

  “Of course. Where is she?”

  I told him and then I closed my eyes, turned on my side and watched the lights in the dark as they twisted and faded. Some of them were shaped like snowflakes, others looked like cows, others made sounds like bells chiming underwater. And then I let the lights disappear, and I dozed.

  I dozed for a while. I think I dreamt, but it was difficult to know what was happening in my head; was a dream a dream or was it really happening? When I saw door after door opening and faces swimming from the walls, were they the faces of people I knew, or people I hadn’t met yet? And when I joined these people on a flying bus, did they feed me food or dust? So when I heard a voice calling my name I couldn’t decide if it was coming from the room or my mind, or even if my mind was in the room.

  “Elliot?”

  I opened my eyes.

  “Elliot?”

  My mum and dad were standing by the bed. She was holding my hand and he was standing to one side. They both looked grey and old, older than I’d ever seen them before. I had one of those odd thoughts where you think nothing is real. Maybe I was looking into the future, and they really were old. I tried to hold my hand up and look at it. I wanted to see if it was lined and wrinkled and covered in liver spots. I opened my mouth to say something, but I was dry. Blank. Empty. Nothing came out.

  “You want some water, Pet?”

  I nodded.

  Dad picked up a cup, gave it to Mum, and she put it to my lips. The water tasted sweet, and as it trickled over my lips and down my throat, my body lightened and the pain in my leg faded. I wasn’t looking into the future at all. I was there. Real was the thing.

  “Th
ank you,” I said.

  “What happened?” said Dad.

  I shook my head. “I got into a skid. Smashed through a gate, ended up in a field.”

  “I always worried about you and that bike,” said Mum.

  “My girlfriend… she was on the back.”

  “The doctor said something about her.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That she’d been hurt.”

  “I know that…”

  “She’s in intensive care.”

  “Intensive care?”

  “That’s what he said, but he wouldn’t say anything else. But he did say you’re going to be as good as new.”

  “But Sam…”

  “I know, Pet…”

  “I have to see her.”

  “I don’t think you can. Not yet, anyway. All you can do at the moment is be quiet and rest.”

  “Rest?”

  “Yes.”

  Rest? I couldn’t rest. I felt hot and fevered, and my head was raging. I had to get up. I had to move. I had to see her. I had to see her and help her and tell her I was sorry and hold her hand in the day and the night. I had to, and that was all I had to do.

  Mum and Dad stayed for a while and tried to cheer me up with stories about home and when I was a kid and the ways I used to wind Grace up, and how she used to get back at me, but nothing they said made me feel better. I asked Dad to go and see Mr Evans, and tell him what had happened, and I asked Mum to give Grace a kiss from me, and when they’d gone I stared at the ceiling and listened to beeping machines and snoring patients and burbling nurses. Half an hour of this began to drive me mad, so I sat up, swung out of bed and looked at my leg. It had been cleaned and bandaged, and when I put weight on it, it hurt, but was strong enough. A nurse came to me and said, “What are you doing?”

  “I need the toilet.”

  “I’ll fetch a pan.”

  “I don’t want a pan. I want to get up. I want to do it myself.”

  She picked up a board hooked to the end of my bed, looked at it, looked at me and said, “OK. You know where it is?”

  “No.”

  “End of the ward on the right.”

  “Thanks.”

  It felt good to walk. It felt good to go to the toilet. And when I’d finished, I splashed my face with cold water, and that felt even better. Then I thought it would be good to take a longer walk. I couldn’t lie in bed. I couldn’t rest. I wandered down to a long corridor, and stood at a window.

  Dawn was breaking, streaks of pink and orange and blue filled the sky, birds were singing from bushes and trees and roofs. I thought about the cows. They’d be coming in for milking. I thought about all the people who were sleeping in their beds. They’d be dreaming. I thought about Sam. I thought about her beautiful face and her hair tied in bunches, and I thought about her head. I went to look for her.

  I walked down the corridor until I found a map of the hospital. Intensive care was on the floor below me. I followed the signs. It was easy to follow the signs.

  When I pushed the door open, a nurse looked up from her desk and said, “Can I help?”

  “Sam. My girlfriend. She’s here.”

  She stood up. “And who are you?”

  “Elliot. I was with her on the bike.”

  “Well, Elliot, you shouldn’t be here, and you can’t see her. She’s asleep.”

  “But…”

  “No buts, Elliot. It’s the rules.”

  “Can’t I just…” – I felt a bit faint, reached out and held onto the edge of the desk – “…just look. Look at her. Please?”

  The nurse stood up, took my arm and said, “Listen, it’s against the rules. But I suppose… I suppose you could have a minute. Just one, mind you. No more…” and she led me to a window. “She’s in there,” and she pointed.

  Sam was lying on a high bed. Her head was wrapped in bandages, and she had tubes up her nose. Drips were stuck in her arms, and a frame kept the sheets and blankets off her body. Machines beeped, lines danced, a nurse in a mask came and stood by her, checked her pulse, ticked a chart and walked away. I said, “Oh God…”

  “We’ll know in twenty-four hours…”

  “You’ll know what?”

  “If she’s going to make it.”

  I felt my blood ice.

  “Are you her next of kin?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Do you know where we can find them?”

  I shook my head. “I know where she lives. Her other friends will know.”

  “Good. I’ll leave you for a minute, but give me an address before you go.”

  I nodded, and when the nurse left me I pressed my face and hands against the glass and watched her sleeping.

  What was going on in her head? Did she still have a brain? Was she dreaming or was her mind a blank, a place where nothing would do nothing for the rest of her life? The bits of her I could see, her arms and her face, were white and shiny under the lights, almost transparent, almost lost. And as I looked at her, the last week began to collapse inside me, all the stupidity and blood tumbling through my body like stones and wire. I felt heavy and lost and smoky, and all I wanted to do was break through the glass and bleed to death on her dying body. Too much dying, too much endlessness, and all the world did was carry on its selfish way.

  ‌19

  I’d visited hospitals before, but I’d never been a patient. I didn’t like it. The food was watery and the air smelt sick, and the other patients snored and moaned. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave Sam, didn’t want to leave her lying so alone and drifted, like a piece of wood at sea.

  I lay in my bed and stared out of the window at the tops of the buildings on the other side of a car park, and I watched the nurses as they did their work. And I slept a dozy sleep, one that slipped in and out of vague dreams and thoughts and fears. One minute I was imagining Dickens appearing in a doctor’s coat, leaning over me with poison in a syringe, the next I was seeing Spike in a dream, struggling in the waves of a sea storm, lifted up and dropped down again, always just out of my reach. Then I’d see Sam’s smiling face, blood trickling from a wound in the top of her head, her mouth opening and closing, and her eyes black. And slowly, as the hours went by and the thoughts curdled in my head, I began to hate myself, the things I’d done and the weakness I’d shown. I tried to think of a way out of the mess, but couldn’t, and every time I tried to think of something else in an attempt to chase away the bad thoughts, I failed. I was cursed and haunted.

  The next time I went down to see Sam, a man and a woman were sitting by her bed. The nurse told me they were her parents, and I could wait to talk to them if I wanted. I stood for a moment and looked at them as they sat and stared at their daughter. Her mother was holding a handkerchief in her hand, screwing it slowly this way and that. Her father was leaning forwards and resting his hand on hers. He had a grey face, hers was wet, Sam’s was white. I couldn’t look for very long, and I couldn’t stare. I was a coward. I didn’t know what they’d say to me, but I knew they’d blame me and want me to answer questions I couldn’t face, so I said to the nurse, “I think I’ll come back later.”

  “You want me to tell them you were here?”

  “No. Don’t do that. I haven’t met them before. I don’t think this would be the right time.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose it would be.”

  “I’ll come down later.” And after a last look at Sam I went back to my ward and the smell and my thoughts.

  A doctor came to see me in the afternoon, looked at my leg, read some notes and said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Not bad. I’d feel better at home.”

  “Well,” he said, and he scribbled something on the notes, “I think we can let you go in the morning.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you ride a bit slower next time.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him that riding slower had nothing to do with why I was there. I just nodded and
watched him walk down the ward to the nurses’ station, and then turned my face away and stared at curtains that hung around my bed. They were yellow and gave me no comfort at all.

  I got no comfort when I went to see Sam again. When I asked how she was, a nurse said, “She’s in a coma, but we think she can hear us. So sit with her for a bit and talk to her. She’ll be able to feel you too…”

  “A coma?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s like she’s sleeping, but she’s not…”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She could wake up in a minute or she might…”

  “Might what?”

  “Not wake up for weeks.”

  “Or months?”

  She nodded.

  “Or ever?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  I didn’t want to get angry, but it was difficult to bite my tongue. I was going to ask if the nurse knew anything, but then I told myself to stop it, leave it, just be quiet. If Sam could hear me, I didn’t want her to hear me shout or swear, so I nodded, sat down, touched the top of her hand and said, “Hello Sam. It’s Elliot…”

  I looked at the nurse. She nodded and smiled and went back to her desk.

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt awkward and guilty, so I just let the words hang in the air and stroked her hand and stared at her for half an hour. That, I thought, was enough. If she could hear me, she’d know I was there, and if she could feel, then she’d know my hand was warm. And if she could see something in the dark, then maybe she could see a field of flowers and birds in the singing sky, and a river running through the woods, and a place where we could sit and dangle our feet in the water. And maybe all these things could take her pain away and make her better, and form themselves into a promise she could hold in her coma, and in finding her way back to real life.