No. It’s just me.
HIM:
Good lad.
HER:
Promise he’s not telling you what to say?
ME:
Yeah, I promise.
HER:
Swear on your mum’s life?
ME:
[. . .]
HIM:
She doesn’t like you doing that.
ME:
She doesn’t like me doing that. It’s tempting fate.
HER:
Okay, you’re right. But I need to know he’s not there telling you what to say to me.
ME:
He’s not, Janet, I promise. Why would he do that?
HER:
You don’t sound very convincing.
HIM:
Tell her you’re fine but you’re bored of me. You want to come home.
ME:
To be honest, I’m fine and everything, but I’m getting kind of bored. My dad can be a pain sometimes. I want to go home.
HER:
Oh yeah? How come?
HIM:
He only cares about himself.
ME:
He only cares about himself.
HER:
Yeah, he’s as selfish as it gets. We know.
HIM:
His idea of fun is playing pool. You hate pool.
ME:
His idea of fun is playing pool. I hate pool.
HER:
Where’ve you been playing that, Dan? In a pub or something?
HIM:
Yeah.
ME:
Yeah. More like a hotel, really. It wasn’t so bad. They had a good jukebox.
HIM:
Good. Keep that up.
HER:
Where?
HIM:
In the countryside somewhere. You’re not sure.
ME:
Somewhere in the countryside.
HER:
Where in the countryside, Dan? I’m going to tell your mum to pick you up.
HIM:
You’re not there right now.
ME:
We’re not there any more. That was yesterday.
HER:
So where are you now? Where are you calling from?
HIM:
Somebody’s house.
ME:
Someone’s house.
HER:
Oh yeah? Whose?
HIM:
Maxine Laidlaw’s.
ME:
[. . .]
HIM:
Go on.
ME:
Maxine’s. You know—from the show?
HIM:
Good.
HER:
What you doing there?
HIM:
She invited the whole crew. To watch the first cut and celebrate.
ME:
She invited us to watch the first cut. And celebrate.
HER:
The what?
HIM:
The first cut of episode one.
ME:
The first cut of episode one.
HER:
Oh . . . And where is this house then exactly? I’ll let your mum know.
HIM:
Berwick-upon-Tweed.
ME:
Berrick on Tweed.
HER:
Blimey. Isn’t that in Scotland?
HIM:
You think so.
ME:
I think so, yeah.
HER:
Have you got the address, then?
HIM:
No. Why?
ME:
No. Why?
HER:
’Cause you seemed a bit funny, Dan, earlier. Your mum played me the message.
ME:
Oh that. I was just . . . bored.
HER:
She’s been tearing her hair out since she heard it. She’s on her way to Leeds now, took your grandpa’s mobile just in case. Let me give you the number so you can ring her. Don’t worry about the cost, we’ll sort that out.
HIM:
Take the number.
ME:
Okay. Let me get a pen.
HIM:
Nice.
HER:
[. . .]
ME:
Okay. Ready.
HER:
It’s 0958 . . . 256 . . . 457. Got it?
ME:
Yeah. 0958 256 457.
HER:
I’ve been sitting here manning the house phone in case you rang, but now you’ve got the mobile, you can phone her whenever. Are you really telling me—God’s honest truth—that you’re fine?
HIM:
Tell her yes.
ME:
Yeah. I’m fine, Janet, honest. I’m ready to come home, though.
HER:
Okay. Will you ring your mum on that number then?
ME:
Yeah. I promise.
HER:
All right, good. Put your dad back on. I want to tell him something.
ME:
Okay. Bye, Janet.
HER:
Bye, Dan.
HIM:
[. . .]
HER:
[. . .]
HIM:
Hi, Janet. You satisfied? . . . Nah, don’t bother . . . Well, I could, but why? . . . Yeah, but why does she need me to? . . . In about ten minutes, I reckon . . . Just a pub. And it was only for a night . . . Thing is, I’m needed down in Wales tomorrow for a shoot. Last minute thing, so I’ll have to bring Dan with me now, unless she wants to come and get him . . . Well, I don’t know, we could meet somewhere halfway. How long ago did she set off? I’ll get her on the mobile, if I have to. What’s the number?
First he gave me duties to perform. I was instructed to bring the medical kit from the cupboard underneath the stairs—it was a lidded wooden box with a hand-painted red cross, stocked with enough curative material to treat a decade’s worth of minor farming injuries. Some of the crusted tubes of ointment must’ve been in there since before my father was born. He rinsed his arm under the kitchen tap, keeping the shotgun trained on my granddad, and then he made me pad the wound with paper towels, apply a glob of Germolene and two square cotton dressings, and wind a bandage tight around it, sticking it all down with a giant fabric plaster. I had to retrieve one of the old man’s cardigans from the airing cupboard and help my father put it on, an arm at a time, while he held the gun. Next, he told me to unplug the telephone connectors from the wall sockets, and I did—I went into the living room, where the TV was playing adverts about accidents at work, removed the wires from the base unit of the cordless phone and, just to demonstrate my full commitment to his orders, detached its warm 9v adaptor from the mains. When I came back in, he was pushing the gun’s muzzle to my granddad’s temple. The old man was tilting at the sharpest angle to relieve the pressure. My father threw me a roll of parcel tape and commanded me to coil it round the old man’s ankles and the chair legs twenty times, one foot then the other. I looked at my granddad in apology, and he gave a long blink in acceptance. Once his feet were secured, the old man put both hands behind his back and I was ordered to tape them at the wrists.
‘Don’t argue with him, Daniel,’ my granddad said. ‘I’ve always known this sort of thing was coming. His mother used to tell me different, but I knew.’ For this, he got the steel nose of the gun stabbed hard against his ear. ‘Ach, fuck you, Francis, you ungrateful rotten bastard. I take it back. She never even talked about you once.’ For this, he got the butt-end to the face. The old man’s head sagged.
‘Don’t, Dad! Leave him! Please!’ I said.
When my granddad straightened up, his mouth was a cluster of split flesh, bilging with blood. He spat out a tooth. My father kicked at it until it skittered to the baseboard. ‘Nothing ever came out of that head worth a penny,’ he said. He brought the gun down, one hand on the forestock, and went to plunder the cupboards. Underneath the sink, he found a blue plastic washing line. ‘That
’s about right,’ he said. It was still in its packaging, still bore the price tag. He bit off the wrapper and tied the blue line round his father and the chair, tugging it so tight it dug into the old man’s chest and arms the way that butcher’s twine indents a joint of beef. ‘Whose hay is that out in the barn?’ my father said. ‘Don’t tell me you mowed and baled all that on your own.’
Paul Hardesty glared at him. ‘It’s mine for now,’ he said.
‘So nobody’s coming to shift it?’
‘Not that they’ve told me.’
‘You sold the sheep but not the hay?’
‘Didn’t have the hay when I sold the sheep.’
‘Then why’d you mow it?’
‘It needed mowing.’ My granddad spat a clod of blood, wincing. He tried to straighten in the chair. ‘If you think I’d let good hay spoil and go to waste, you’re even more stupid than I took you for. It only adds more value to the farm now. You wouldn’t believe the price I’m getting from these incomers. It’s more than twice what—’ The butt of the shotgun shattered his nose. He let out a guttural noise from his belly, an agonised roar.
‘You never used to talk so much,’ my father said. ‘I liked you more that way.’
The dogs were curled up on the path when we came out. I had to step over them. He made me walk two yards ahead, directing me. The shotgun was back in its case and he carried it with both hands across his chest like gathered firewood. I could hear the zips tinkling against the leather as he strode. When we reached the drive, where the Volvo sat with its windows fogged up, he told me to stop. He scuffed a line into the gravel with his shoe. ‘That’s your mark. Stand there and don’t move,’ he said. ‘I’m going to check on Barnaby.’ I waited while he traipsed towards the car and peered in through the boot, his face right up to the glass, eyes blinkered by his hands. He went around to the driver’s side and looked in through the back window for good measure. It seemed he was contented. He came marching back along the gravel. ‘Follow me,’ he said, going by. I didn’t pursue him right away, so he turned and glowered at me. ‘Come on.’ And as I caught up with him, he gave me a soft little shove up the slope.
He guided me around two outbuildings—they were large stone sheds, empty but for scatterings of straw and sawdust, metal gates and hurdles with no livestock in them. The next building was more like a corrugated iron hangar, full of mechanised equipment: rusted shafts of metal, spiral blades, wheeled trailers, forked apparatus with curling tines. We walked beyond them, through an in-bye of tired grass that inclined up the fellside, towards a long stone wall fringed with pink-headed flowers. The earth was dry and solid underfoot but the dirt cleaved to my toecaps. ‘Keep walking,’ he instructed. ‘We’re going just up to that wall.’
By the time we got there, my calves were sore, burning. The wall was not much lower than my eye line. He made me sit down next to it, then did the same, placing the gun-case onto the grass and weeds. ‘I wanted you to see this before we get out of here,’ he said.
‘Are you taking me home?’ I said.
He shrugged off the question and my eagerness. ‘Have a look at this, first.’ He touched the face of a mossy grey stone in the wall, brushed it with his thumb. A daub of red paint, long-faded, was visible under the muck. The stones above and around it all had the same marking. I told him I didn’t understand, and he said: ‘That’s becoming a catchphrase of yours.’ I didn’t know what this meant, either.
He leaned back against the wall and huffed out a breath. Out came the Wintermans tin from his jeans. He lit one and sat there drawing on it thoughtfully, the smoke trailing off in the breeze. ‘When I was growing up here, your grandma liked to paint,’ he said. ‘It was just a hobby, nothing she thought she’d ever do full time or anything, but I used to like watching her. Everything she painted was outside her window, you see—she never had to go far for inspiration. Down to the lake or some beck, looking up at Scafell or Great Gable. This place was all she needed. She used to pick all these campions and fill up the house with them, but foxgloves were her favourites.’ He sipped on his Wintermans, sighed at the landscape before us. ‘Anyway, I’ve always felt like I never quite belonged round here, I don’t know why. It’s like some people say they’re born into the wrong skin or whatever, or they’re a man when they’re really a woman, but for me, I don’t know, I just felt like I was meant to be somewhere else. All the time. It used to bug me, this little voice in my ear the whole day. I tried to ignore it, get past it, but no. It wouldn’t leave me alone. And everything your man in there asked me to do for him, I just wasn’t very good at it. I always fucked it up, or fumbled it, broke it. Do you know what that feels like? I hope that you don’t, I really do. ’Cause it’s horrible. You get a what’s-it-called, you know, a thing about it. Nothing you do’s ever good enough. Nothing works out. I was useless with the sheep, couldn’t gather them if my life depended on it. I was even bad at mucking them out. I put diesel in the elevator once and it exploded. It made me feel like a curse. I hated this place so much, and I’d go complaining to her all the time. And my mum, bless her heart, could only stand so much of me whining—I mean, after a while, she must’ve started to think I was complaining about her, what she did for me. But that wasn’t it. I went to her one day to whinge about something the old man had said to me—this would’ve been around clipping time, when he was at his narkiest—I think he called me a waste of space, or something like that. You sort of forget the particular insults after a while. Now—’ He held his finger poised, inviting me to wait for him to ash his cigarillo. ‘Now, this time, my mum was out painting in the meadow here, and she doesn’t say anything at first, just hands me this tube of red oil from her box, and I ask her what it’s supposed to be for. So, d’you know what she tells me? She says, See that wall up there? Your great-granddad built that wall, did you know that? And I said that I knew, though I don’t think I was sure about it. And she goes to me, Here’s what I want you to do, Fran, okay? Instead of running to me every time you get a thought in your head about not belonging here, or wanting to be somewhere else, I want you to go up and put a spot of red on one of those stones. It’ll be like you’re writing your name on it. And when it gets to the stage where you’re coming back to me for another tube, well, then we’ll have a serious conversation about it, and we’ll see how you feel about that wall. Does that sound fair enough to you?’ My father stubbed the Wintermans out on the sole of his shoe and flicked it away. ‘So that’s what I did. I suppose she wanted me to feel connected to this place somehow, and that was just her way of doing it. I was marking my territory, I suppose. But d’you want to know how quickly I finished that tube?’ He gestured to the entire wall. ‘I painted every stone along here before it got to clipping time again. If you don’t believe me, check.’
I got up, because I didn’t trust a word he’d told me and wanted to be proven right. But there was no doubting what I saw when I inspected that wall. The face of each stone bore the same red disc of paint, almost washed out but perceptible. There were hundreds of them, thousands even. I must’ve walked half the length of the meadow before he whistled me back. When I turned, he had the gun-case over his shoulder. The sun was purpling on the crags beyond him, and he was just the same Fran Hardesty as ever. As I returned to him, he said: ‘You believe me, then?’
‘Yeah,’ I answered. But I understood those paint marks were just more tricks of perspective, another thing that he’d appropriated for effect. Maybe he had lied so often to himself he couldn’t tell the difference any longer.
My father started down the hill. ‘Problem is, we never had that conversation like she promised, and I still don’t feel connected to this farm or anything round here. But that’s not the point. The point is that she wanted me to. It was important to her. It’s never meant anything to my old man, though, what I want. Selling up without even asking—well, it doesn’t hurt, ’cause I expected it, but it’s like another lump of shit the universe has kicked at me, another thing I probably fucked up
somewhere along the way. So there you are.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve got nothing I can give you any more, son. That’s it.’
‘I don’t care,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Well. I care.’
We passed back through the field in silence. I had not eaten since the dire English breakfast at the White Oak—I felt hungry and ashamed of it. He must’ve thought that I was walking crookedly down the hill and needed to relieve myself, because he called: ‘Oi, you’d better make use of all this space while still you can. Go against that gate here. I’ll wait.’
‘I don’t need to,’ I said.
‘Trust me,’ he said.
I stared back at him.
‘Go on. I’m not asking, I’m telling.’
He lurked behind me for what must’ve been five minutes, until a line of dry dirt fattened beneath my feet, steaming. ‘See,’ he said. ‘There’s always something in the tank. I knew it.’
We came around the back of the machine shed. One of the dogs was staggering on the path, rebounding from the flank of one outbuilding to another like a fly with half a wing. ‘Hang on, we’re going a different way now,’ he said, when I went right.
We crossed the front yard of the house where the old man’s clothes were airing on a whirligig and a congregation of old wellingtons sat upturned on a rack by the door. I could see the flicker of the TV in the living room. Around the side, across a gravel path, was the hay barn. My father urged me forwards, through the vast open entrance.
A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better Page 18
