Beastings

by Benjamin Myers

  Eleven twelve thirteen he continued. Methera-dick is fourteen. And then we’re at bumfit. Bumfit. Fifteen. I love that. And then the rest rolls right off your tongue: yan-a-bumfit tyan-a-bumfit tethera bumfit methera bumfit giggot. Giggot is twenty and that’s as high as it goes. You don’t need to go any higher. Why would you? All you need to do is go back to one and remember you’ve still got that first twenty counted off left over and banked up here.

  He tapped his temple with a bony finger.

  Keep it simple I say. Why bother crowding your head with numbers you’ll never need just for counting sheep. It makes perfect sense when you think it over. Only use what you need. There’s a lesson to be learnt there.

  Only use what you need he said again more quietly this time.

  Tom Solomon picked up a pebble from the ground and tossed it in the air and caught it then rolled it in his palm. Even though the girl didn’t like the taste she sipped at her coffee again. It was the first warm thing to pass her lips in days.

  All that shepherd talk – it’s nearly as old as this stone he continued. Or as old as the stone walls they made with them anyway. Folk have been farming these fells as damn near long as they’ve been living on them. That’s how they survived. And they had to find a way to count the sheep in and out the folds. You’ll still hear it now on the tongues of some of the fellas. Not many but it lives on. And now you know it too. I’ve passed it on to you. Now you can count like a Cumberland shepherd and all. And a Westmorland one too come to think of it.

  The man stood and as he did his knees cracked.

  Find it pays to learn something new every day if you can he said. Even when you’re old like me.

  He looked into his empty coffee cup.

  You know what else I like about these parts? he said while jiggling the pebble in his palm. One of many things anyway. The names of the places. All the name of the little hamlets and fells and dales and crags – they’re like poetry to me. Years I spent rotting away in an office down in London and I think I can say with some degree of authority that they’ve got nothing on our place names up here. Nothing. Down there I reckon they decided on street names and the like by committee. Whereas up here names just emerge over time. They’ve got Burnt Oak and Knightsbridge down there – granted – but up here there’s a plethora of evocative names. So now whenever I hear one that I like I write it down. I collect them you see. Some people like to read literature – me I read maps and make lists. Do you want to hear some?

  The man reached into his top breast pocket and removed a small notepad. He licked his thumb and then slowly turned the pages.

  Oh – here we go. Expect you’ve heard most of them mind. There’s Snarker Pike. Troutbeck Park. The Hundreds. The Knight. Catstycam – everyone knows that one. Then you’ve got The Tongue and The Great Tongue. There’s Seat Sandal and Seldom Seen. There’s Dollywaggon Pike over that way.

  The man jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  I might have a wander up there tomorrow. Lovely views. What else have we got? Oh yes. Lyulph’s Tower. Ponsonby Fell. Prison Crag. That’s a good one. Doesn’t sound very inviting does it. That’s not far from here either – only a day’s walk over past Hartsop way and not far above Hayeswater Gill. Then you’ve got Loadpot Hill. Crookabeck. Beulah. And Tongue Ho. That’s a good one.

  The man put his notepad back into his pocket and then poured the grounds from his coffee pot and shook it off into the bushes.

  Well he said. I best be making tracks. That cliff isn’t going to climb itself.

  He looked at the sky.

  Reckon there’ll be rain this after if not before. Reckon you’d be best to make a move now or bed down in that camp of yours for the day. The sky says it’s going to be torrential and I’ve never known the sky to lie.

  He kicked the toe of his boot into the dirt. The girl looked at his bare legs. His shins were shiny and hairless and streaked with dirt. She could smell him again. It was stronger this time now that the fire had nearly stopped smoking and the coffee was gone.

  Either way if it rains it’ll sure enough stop again. And if you get wet you’ll be dry again. And if you’re stuck you can always come stop in at old Tom Solomon’s cave.

  He pointed over in the direction of the valley beyond the tarn.

  It’s just a gentle couple of miles upstream then when you’ve passed the old mine you take a steep right up into the wood. From there you’ll see two paths. What you need to do is take the top one a ways and – well you’ll find it eventually. There’s only one cave that I know of and only one Tom Solomon. Just listen out for the singing.

  He went to turn then stopped.

  He put down his pack and rifled through it. He removed a blanket.

  Reckon the little one could use this.

  He passed it to the girl.

  The girl stood and took it then dug into the bottom of the child’s sheet and pulled out the potato. She held it out to the man.

  He smiled.

  Well that’s very kind of you young lady but I’ve no call for that. My stores are more than full and what I don’t have mother nature will provide. You keep it for yourself and the bairn. Mind it’s a monster spud that one. It’ll bake nicely in the coals.

  Then he raised his hat and turned and left.

  6.

  THE ONLY THING he feared was sleep-talking. If he spoke in his sleep he might reveal his secrets: might let those soul-locked demons of the subconscious out and incriminate himself. That’s why The Priest knew he would never lie long in the company of another living person.

  The Priest had talked in his sleep since childhood.

  And now in adulthood spaces could be shared and appetites sated but sleep beside another was out of the question. There were things that had gone on that no-one needed to know about and intimacy was the key to unlock those secure secrets.

  It was society. It was cut through with misunderstanding. He knew his appetites were selective. He knew he enjoyed niche flavours. He was ahead of his time that was all. Hadn’t the dignitaries and ruling overlords of the Roman empire exercised and appeased such similar interests two thousand ago? Yes they had. Because it was their right. Their privilege.

  And privileges were the church’s way of rewarding those chosen to do God’s work. Small rewards for a great task: shepherding the sheep into His fold. One day his tastes would be commonplace but until then he would utter no nocturnal revelations if he could help it.

  Was it his fault he was superior to these ingrates illiterates and inbreds? No it most certainly was not. To be a physically mentally sexually racially and philosophically advanced human was why he was chosen to do God’s work. That was plain to see. And this was all part of the test – to be sent to these harsh northern lands and to not only survive amongst the uncivilised but to thrive. To thrive and reign; to control his adopted kingdom in order to spread the word. To tame the flat-tongued heretics. Yes. To tame the lost wild beasts of his flock. Yes. Everything he did he did for the church. Yes. For Him. Yes. He was making the best of it. Yes. And his faith was as strong as it had ever been. Stronger even.

  His interests in the esoteric and the marginal were one of the reasons the seminary had first appealed all those years ago. Because when you are a Priest they elevate you above the commonplace. They lift you up and set you apart and they leave you be. The community respects your silence. They know you’re doing God’s business and that comes with a certain cachet. It brings insight and insight brings burdens and burdens need an outlet. Being one of His envoys takes its toll.

  He had few outlets for these secret compulsions he carried around inside of him but sleep-talking was one of them. Many a night his own words had awoken himself; garbled confessions of things that could never be spoken in daylight. Could never be shared. Heard out loud such descriptions of these desirous impulses had shocked even him and it made them somehow tang
ible and real and confirmed that they not only existed within the darkest corners of his imagination but had sometimes been acted upon too. And yet still he was not sated. And still wanted more. It was a hunger of sorts.

  The Priest vowed never to let himself become so publicly vulnerable. The conscious would take control and the subconscious of the somnambulist world would be kept in the solitude of his bedroom.

  So he sat in darkness and he sniffed and felt the air in his lungs. He watched the Poacher crumple and curl in the bracken no better than the beasts of the fells and woodlands that filled his pantry.

  He felt his lower jaw circulate and his teeth quietly grinding. And he watched the Poacher’s form melt into the night until he was nothing more than a moonlit shape in the dirt and was glad that his travelling companion had finally stopped talking.

  THE GIRL DIDN’T feel like walking. She didn’t know what to make of the strange thin man in his hand-made clothes and his stories and his funny way of talking either; she didn’t know how she felt about him. But for once it wasn’t fear.

  If he could find her up on the hill under the log in the dead of night then he could surely find her most anywhere. He could hunt her and follow her any time he wanted. He could be hiking into town right now to tell everyone that he had found her to tell them that he had located the imbecile girl with the bairn and hurry hurry because she’s up on the lower slopes eating tinned pears. Just look for the wood smoke you can’t miss her.

  But she doubted that. She didn’t know why but for once she just had to take the risk that perhaps not every human wanted to use or destroy her.

  So she would rest and she would eat and then she would be strong and she would leave.

  The baby was making a smacking suckling sound.

  She wondered if that man that smelled bad and gave her the food really lived in a cave like he said and if he did what it was like in there.

  If she had a cave she would fix it up nice. She’d make a bed from bracken and there’d be blankets for her and the bairn and she would have a fire burning all the time. She would see that it never went out and she’d hunt and they’d never grow hungry and then when the baby was a bit older and could walk it could hunt too. There would be a waterfall running down that they could wash under and maybe they’d have a chicken or two running loose in the woods and each morning they would go on an egg hunt for breakfast. She would teach the bairn about life by showing it life.

  And they would be happy.

  After she packed away her things the girl went to the toilet and then smelled that the baby had done the same so she walked back to the tarn’s edge. She moved slowly this time. She took small steps and the baby felt heavy and the smell of its scat was strong. It cried all the way.

  She walked slowly because every bit of energy would be needed for whatever lay around the corner.

  Anxiety ate at her. It’s what stopped her being starving all the time.

  She worried about dogs and the police and the Sisters at St Mary’s and she worried about the Hinckleys and the farmer who had tried to have her in the night and the funny smelly man who said he lived in a cave. She worried about food and sleep and warmth. She worried for the bairn. And she worried about the Father.

  You’re the lucky one the Sisters had said. Being tapped the way you are. That was the way God wanted and don’t you dare to doubt that. Father chose you because you were the quiet one. No other reason but that. He said you’d never be guilty in the language of gossip or hearsay; said the silent can always be trusted because God took their tongues and made them blessed. Said they were gifted in discretion. Receptacles for The Truth. You should consider yourself lucky; your debt to Father is great.

  She felt that debt about her now like the ox feels the yoke.

  SHE GOT TO the tarn and took off her boots and then her socks and she undressed the baby. She walked out into the shallow nearside end and she bent down and washed the bairn. She scraped the excrement from its scut with her fingers then used dry moss to pat it. She wrapped the baby in the new blanket and then washed its sheet in the tarn.

  The water was cold the water was bracing the water set her flesh to tighten. It felt worse somehow being in it up to the knees than fully submerged as she had been the night before. Her feet were sensitive to the water’s bite. Again she thought of nails being driven into them; she thought of Jesus on the cross in the chapel in town. She thought of bleeding stigmata. She thought of eternal martyrdom.

  She scrubbed the sheet with rocks until the stains were gone then twisted and wrung it. She squeezed every drop she could out of it. She cupped some water into her mouth then sat on a rock and put her socks and boots back on.

  She picked more bilberries. She picked for a long time and collected them in the empty pear tin and when it was nearly full she left and walked through the bracken and up the crag and across the clearing and into the scrub and back to her fallen trunk.

  The baby was sleeping so she went back to pick more bracken. She stacked as many fronds as she could. It was warm now and she was sweating but the sky was restless and the air felt tight. She could feel it like a steel band around her head. The sky looked like it could snap at any time. For a few minutes everything was still.

  The fronds were piled so high in her arms the girl could barely see where she was walking but the route felt familiar now so she carefully picked her way back to the fallen tree where the baby lay. For now she would not flee. The sky had spoken and the sky had said stay.

  She took the longest of the bracken branches and wove them into those that protruded from one side of the tree to strengthen the natural canopy that had already formed. It was easy to do and she had soon made a thick green thatch that ran from the backside of the fallen trunk down to the ground. The other side opened out onto the clearing.

  She hurried back to the bracken patch and snapped off more. The stalks scratched at her hands and she wished she had a knife then she remembered the lid from the tin of pears so she ran back to get that. She folded it over and then she had a sharp edge with which to cut the stems at the base. She worked quickly and with purpose. The girl stopped once or twice to look at the sky again then she carried the second load back and laid them down in her den.

  The baby had its eyes open now.

  The girl rolled out from beneath the trunk and walked across the clearing to where there were more rotten branches and she dragged them across to her tree. A breeze was lifting and the sky was tight like the skin of a drum. Somewhere in the far distance she could hear a rumble. Then the valley behind her growled and she stood and saw a breeze ripple across the lake as if a great shoal of fish had risen at once.

  Moving quickly now she stripped the old boulders of the thick green moss that covered them and she put that down into her nest too. Then she broke down branches and stacked them under the tree. She gathered more and she stamped them and smashed them and found twigs for kindling then rolled one or two larger logs across the clearing and then found some stones which she also rolled over.

  Then she was tired. Then she needed to sit down. The sky growled again – a hungry yawping sound. She crawled beneath the tree and inspected the canopy she had made and there were only a few small gaps where she could see through it. She picked the baby up and petted it for a while then put it down and decided to do an inventory of her possessions. She unwound the damp blanket in which she was storing everything and lined up her items in front of her.

  There were the two tins. She also had the potato and the matches and the tin opener; the empty pear tin now contained the freshly-picked bilberries. She also had the bent tin lid and the blanket that the man had given her that the baby was coddled in. It was a lot more than she had yesterday.

  The air became charged. It was almost crackling and everything took on a strange sepia hue. Even the birds stopped singing. Only in their absence did she notice them.

 
The valley boomed.

  She pulled the baby tight. It put its arms around her neck and its chin on her shoulder. The girl ran her palm over its smooth head and combed its fine covering of hair with her fingers. She looked at its features: its small flat shiny nose and wet pursed mouth and the long curve of the protruding forehead. It seemed to have changed since the last time she had looked. It was growing. Forming and transforming. Changing shape. Day upon day it was becoming something else right before her.

  Overhead the clouds rolled and moiled and they looked like great crashing white waves in a storm though the girl had never seen the sea. Only in pictures. All she knew was land-locked rock and stone and slate and scree; sky and grass and streams and fire. A remote farm. A stone dormitory. Blankets on the floorboards of a loveless house.

  The sky. She felt it pressing down.

  There was a flash – a violent blink of purple – then a crack of thunder that bounced between the mountains to create an almighty applause.

  The rain came again first as slowly elongated drops and then it fell harder and faster.

  The baby’s eyes widened.

  It came straight down driving into the ground with force and violence. The girl thought of the forge in town where the men welded and braced and hammered to drive hot metal into shape through brute force. She thought of the clanging and the banging and the hissing as she had passed it and the narrow eyes of the silent men that stared out at her from the darkness. Streaks of dirt on their taut bare chests and their black faces. White teeth flashing between wet leering lips.

  The girl gathered the bracken and pulled the fronds over the two of them then she laid down on her back to let the baby take her teat which had become wet and charged like the sky.