Landed

by Tim Pears

  The hill of sheep is like a landscape painting on a huge canvas, so many sheep so motionless, except that as they get nearer Owen becomes aware of a restlessness in the painting. No single sheep is motionless for long but moves imperceptibly forward in the direction in which it happens to be facing, to bend and take another mouthful of grass then raise its head and munch for a minute before edging slightly forward once more.

  They are walking towards the slope. Owen hears the sound too, and Josh must have, because he curses his sister under his breath and she says, ‘I did hear it.’

  It is a pleading. Not one or ten but hundreds, maybe thousands of ewes and lambs bleating. It is a weird cacophony, dissonant and harsh upon the ears, yet in this multitude there seems to be some underlying musical tone trying to rise through the din. Plaintive lament for their sorry lot, these ungrateful animals living as wild as any husbanded beast may be permitted to, but it seems to Owen it is the sound of angels, choirs of angelic ruffed and white-wool surpliced animals singing into the valley, a comic anthem of misery and hope.

  Owen understands in this moment why his grandfather hated music. The incessant bleating through each and every one of his days. What he craved was silence.

  When Mel was breastfeeding her son, Owen remembers, she complained of sore nipples. She brought Josh home from a visit to the health visitor and announced that she was suffering from mastitis. Owen’s first reaction was one of bewilderment. The word opened a trapdoor and he was lowered into that summer of his childhood: the smell of lanolin in sheep’s wool; of chemically enticing organophosphates in the swilling dip through which they pushed five hundred ewes; the pungent tobacco, kept moist in the tin with a scrap of fruit peel, with which Owen was allowed to roll his grandfather’s thick cigarettes. How, in Birmingham’s urban sprawl, he wondered, could Mel have caught an infection from a sheep?

  ‘Some of the sheep is asleep,’ Josh says, keen to assert the acuity of his eyesight, at least.

  Now Owen can see that some lie on their backs or on their sides, not sleeping, and others stand beside them, bleating like mourners. But others graze, pulling teethfuls of grass, moving some inches, working their way around the fresh carcasses of their brethren, some hearts still beating, and the grieving beasts.

  Owen stops. The children pause too. As he watches, he sees some amongst the great flock that covers the hillside totter, stumble, and fall in ripples of wool.

  ‘Come on,’ Owen says. ‘Let’s keep moving.’

  Owen recalls that first summer on the hill, how much time he spent alone. He’d forgotten, really. An only child, living with his grandparents, the things he didn’t do with his grandfather: a bow he made with a switch of hazel, arrows with pigeon feathers in the shaft. They were toys, not tools, and he hid them in the place he played, a copse below the farm, on the side of the hill above The Graig. There he was a Welsh warrior prince, on a raiding party along the English border, or hiding out from soldiers hunting him. A wooden sword, a spear whistling through the branches. In his fantasies he conjured companions, other boys who joined him in his games. With gestures, whistles, he told his comrades to separate, fan out, surround their enemies. Bird calls that his grandfather taught him, Owen in turn taught his imaginary men.

  The loneliness of that summer.

  He’s always been a loner. Has found it hard to make friends, to connect with other people. He never really had much to say. Seeing other men in a pub, chatting, he could not imagine what they talked about. Garrulous men. Gasbags.

  He was simply shy, that was all it amounted to. Words felt unnatural in his mouth. Owen was only comfortable in the company of people he was already attached to: his grandparents, his mother, his children. And Mel. Desire had propelled him over his own barricades. Mel. Where is she now? She must be frantic with worry, despite – because of – their telephone message. They should call again. He does not want to hurt her. He never has done.

  They walk along a lane for a while. Passing a field, they smell horses before they see them, a pair, the sweet tangy scent they give off. Each pony is clad in a grubby kind of old blanket. They look uncared for, vagrant. ‘Like horsey tramps,’ Josh says, chuckling to himself.

  Many fields are uncultivated, ungrazed. How quickly they are lost, it seems to Owen. Grass grows wild and tough, thistles thrust up from the ground like soldiers, deployed across a slope. Trees, shrubs, weeds self-seed. Scavengers circle overhead. Birds of prey watch for movement in the long grass. At lambing time on Owen’s grandfather’s hill crows not only stole the placenta, as if it had been delivered to them, but were drawn to and would pluck a newborn lamb’s eyes.

  A field in which, perhaps, carrots or potatoes recently grew, is covered over. Man withdraws, the chaotic greed of nature reclaims the earth.

  The fat man in the wheelbarrow looks suddenly at Owen, as if he’d forgotten where he was, and says, ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful. I am. I always will be.’

  Owen tries to smile, but he knows it emerges as a grimace. His neck and shoulders in real pain now. He’s not sure he can carry on doing this for much longer. ‘Where are you from?’ he asks the man, attempting to distract himself.

  The man stares at Owen for a while before answering. ‘The earth begat me.’ The gluttonous man laughs, a greedy chortle. ‘And all of us,’ he adds.

  No more is said. Owen does not wish to expend effort on words, especially if they make no sense.

  The fat man gazes at everything and nothing they pass by, like some bored maharajah. Owen realises that Holly is growing tired behind him, and he decides that he has been a slave for long enough. He lowers the handlebars of the barrow, till the legs sit on the ground.

  ‘We rest,’ he says. ‘Then we reconsider.’

  Owen knows he must find substantial food for the children soon. A pair of brown deer break from a stand of silver birches, bound across the grass some way ahead of them; they look delighted with themselves. The dog ignores them, but dashes off into a copse to their right. Ahead of it a blur of movement, another animal it will not catch. The dog, Owen suddenly realises, is flushing game out all the time.

  Amongst some trees Holly kneels beside the dog, holding it round its neck. Owen, Josh and the man stand across the clearing, some yards apart. Each holds a wooden club of sorts. Owen whistles. Holly lets the dog go, it comes across the clearing, nose to the ground, there’s movement in the undergrowth, leaves, branches, being brushed aside, Owen runs forward, it happens so fast, the bird rising, slowly at first and for a moment there’s hope, but then its wings have room to flap, noisily, desperately, the pheasant rises, it’s quickly out of reach. Owen puts his hand over his shoulder and hurls the stick. It misses the bird, spins in a desultory arc across the clearing, lands near Holly, missing her by no more than a few feet. That would be really clever.

  He finds a different spot, they prepare a repeat performance. Owen knows the fat man is slow and useless, Josh too small and weak. If the dog brings out anything it has to come to him. It’s ridiculous. He’ll give it one more go.

  This time the dog is desperate to go, quivering beside the girl. Owen whistles and it shoots forward. Out of the long grass between them one, two, three rabbits bolt crazily. Two veer off to Josh’s side but one comes straight towards Owen. He raises his stick. As the rabbit passes he brings the stick down hard across its back, catching it just short of its hindlegs. It twists over, rolls, gets to its feet, before it can take off again he clubs it across its neck, once, and knows he has killed.

  In the next ten minutes, Owen kills two more.

  Josh and Holly gather dry grass, twigs, branches. The man searches for metal, refusing to go far. Owen takes the knife from his rucksack, sharpens it on the stone, lays it on the ground. He lifts the skin of the back of the first rabbit, pinches it in his hook, picks up the knife and cuts into the skin. He puts his fingers into the cut and tears the skin apart down the back and then away off each side of the rabbit. It slides easily away from the flesh, to the
neck and the four paws. Owen cuts off the head and the feet. He slits the rabbit down the front of the ribs and pulls out the innards, then cuts off the legs, and cuts the meaty little body in two.

  The man comes back and stands, watching Owen repeat the preparation with the second rabbit.

  ‘What’ve you got?’ Owen asks. He stops and looks up. The man has a short length of wire mesh, with small round holes of a size that might allow a golf ball through. ‘Looks perfect,’ Owen says. ‘Fold it over a time or two.’ He yells to the children, ‘We’re going to have ourselves a barbecue.’

  The fat man watches Owen deal with the rabbits. ‘One sharp knife,’ he says. Owen says nothing. The handle is made of black wood. The blade has been utilised and sharpened so often that it’s been reduced from an inch and a half at the handle chamfering down to a long thin blade. It’s clear to the man, watching Owen skin the rabbits, how sharp the thin blade still is. ‘Odd knife,’ he says.

  It looks like a butcher’s knife that the butcher can’t bear to let go of. ‘Inheritance, like,’ Owen says. He wipes the blade on grass and returns it to its leather scabbard. ‘Tidy tool,’ he says. ‘Use in it yet.’

  They build a fire. Dry grass crackles, the kindling catches, flames work at the thick dead branches. While the fire burns Owen drives four sticks into the ground and lays the grill of wire mesh across them. When the flames have died down he sets the six portions of meat on the wire. At one side he lays the skin of a rabbit with all the entrails in it. The fur on the skin burns off with a sharp odour.

  They sit and watch the meat cook as if it’s some kind of oracle, auguries revealed by barbecue, their hunger a kind of fascination. Owen, the children, the man salivating noisily, sucking the saliva in his mouth, swallowing it. The dog waits spellbound. The meat is lean, muscular; sporadic drops of fat fall, spit in the fire. Owen unsheathes the knife to turn the little steaks, each time wipes and returns the blade to its home. As if he doesn’t trust himself, or the knife, if he were to leave its razor’s edge uncovered.

  The meat is unbelievably delicious. The men sigh and groan. The children hum as they eat, Holly squeals, once. Only the dog swallows the hearts and livers as she would any other food, gulping them down in seconds, then crunching and chewing the uncooked legs.

  They sit in long dry grass at the edge of a field. The hedge nearby is ramshackle and full of overgrown brambles. Amongst them large ripe blackberries grow. There they are, months too early, ripened in this warm April day. Owen plucks one and tastes it, expecting its appearance to be a deception and to find it hard, dry, sour. But it is sweet and juicy. He makes a cradle out of his jacket. The other three lie in the grass while he picks, and periodically takes a palmful of them over.

  Though it’s only midway through the afternoon the children, having eaten, lie back and fall asleep. Flies, insects, a drowsy buzz and murmur like a summer noon.

  ‘Need to move on when they wake,’ Owen tells the man. He feels drowsy himself, can sense his body diverting its interior attention to the food in his gut, to its digestion. He should let it go about its work, so that he might have energy later on. The organic mechanism in operation beautifully intelligent.

  ‘I’m ready,’ the man says.

  ‘We have a long way to go.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ the man insists. ‘I have money. Silver. I’ll buy you food when we find it.’

  ‘Don’t need money,’ Owen says. ‘You’re a burden, see. I’m sorry to say. Slow us down.’

  ‘How much?’ the man asks, pulling a grubby purse from his chest pocket. ‘Fifty? A hundred?’

  Owen looks away, trying not to laugh.

  ‘You can’t say I didn’t offer,’ the man says, petulance in his voice. ‘If you leave me, I’ll be lost.’

  ‘You’ll survive.’

  The man looks aggrieved, though not as innocent as he would like. ‘This is wild country.’

  Gazing towards the ground, Owen shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’ve been fed. Be grateful.’ He feels so sleepy. ‘We’re in a hurry, see. We have to be somewhere.’

  Owen sits beside the fat man. On Owen’s other side, Josh and Holly doze. The dog snoozes beyond the girl. Owen lies back. Fruit seeds between the teeth. Purple tongues, purple fingers. The final berry is so ripe it melts in Owen’s mouth. He dreams that he is wandering through an orchard. Wasps gorge on fallen fruit. Plums. Apples. He has to watch where he treads. Someone is with him, he isn’t sure who, she asks him what his favourite smell is. ‘Autumn,’ Owen replies. ‘Rotting fruit and woodsmoke.’

  He wakes, wondering whether or not what his dream self said was true. Are they his favourite smells? Mel, he realises, was with him in the imaginary orchard.

  Owen sits up. Josh and Holly are still sleeping, the dog beside the girl. The man is snoring. Owen leans over and shakes him awake. When the man opens his eyes, Owen says, ‘Come on. I’m going to give you a lift.’

  It is downhill all the way, first across a field then down a track, Owen trundles the fat man in the wheelbarrow, the man jiggled along, but he doesn’t complain.

  A piece of music comes to Owen’s mind, it has a chugging, driving beat which helps distract him from the pain in his shoulders and even adds a little confident velocity to his carriage. After a while a voice emerges in the sound and he recognises ‘Silver Machine’, by Hawkwind. It was on the jukebox in the pub where he and Mel met, but a memory comes from years before: his parents were drinking and dancing in their front room. When the Hawkwind track played they mouthed the words and gyrated ever faster, kind of together and separate both. It was late at night and Owen watched from the door as his mother reeled to the sofa and his father fell to the floor, laughing. Trying to get up, he couldn’t, it was hard to tell what was stopping him, the laughter or the drunkenness.

  His father, Owen reflected, was rarely cruel, only useless; unable to stay the course.

  The track joined a lane which led to a village. A few yards short of the first dwelling Owen set the wheelbarrow down. Breathing hard, he said, ‘There you go,’ and turned and began striding back the way he’d come, the man’s shouts – ‘Will you not help me out of this? I’m stuck!’ – fading behind him.

  Holly is still asleep. Josh is gone. Owen looks around, yells, ‘Josh! Where are you?’

  Owen dashes in one direction, shouts his son’s name, runs in another, casting about him, looking into the distance. He cups his hands to his mouth to amplify his voice, forgetting for a second that he lacks one hand, and lets his hook fall. ‘Josh!’ Owen shouts. ‘Come here. I’m back!’

  Holly clutches her father’s arm. She is sobbing with anxiety. ‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘Daddy?’

  He pulls her to him. ‘You stay here,’ Owen says. ‘You stay with the dog, you understand?’ Owen looks at the mongrel, standing quietly by. ‘Stupid bloody dog!’ he curses. ‘Why didn’t you bark?’

  Owen runs around the side of the slope they’re on, and looks to the north. There is no sign of his son in the empty landscape. He sprints back, past Holly, who sits on the ground hugging the dog, and looks south. What is Josh playing at? Surely he wouldn’t have left his sister? Owen keeps going until he has found vantage points from which to see a portion of the landscape in every direction, and he cannot see his son. He yells into the wilderness. Eventually he stumbles back to where he left Holly. He has lost Josh. The emptiness inside him throbs with fear. He is worse than nothing: he does more damage than if he had not existed.

  Holly is holding something towards him. A note. ‘It was in my pocket,’ she says. Owen takes it from her with shaking fingers. ‘Josh did put it there.’ The note reads, Don’t worry, Dad. See you on the hill. Trust me. Josh.

  Owen feels Holly’s hand take his. They turn and walk towards the west. The dog trots on ahead, at the prow of their diminishing entourage.

  They walk on in the afternoon. The day is still lovely, the sky an unblemished blue, but there is something else now, not ye
t apparent, but approaching.

  Owen thinks about the note. He realises he must have told Josh of the plan, of the hill, and where it is. The boy has the compass. As he walks it comes to him that he can trust his son. Eleven years old, Josh is the same age Owen was that first summer.

  Owen remembers how last night, waking in the freezing dark in the stone room, he embraced his trembling boy. He felt, through the boy’s T-shirt, his skinny ribs, his puny frame, programmed to grow into the body of a man. Owen inhaled the scent of his sleeping son. He could not absorb Josh into him, that is what he would have liked to be able to do. Owen had put his hand on the side of Josh’s face, cupping his cheek. There was so much more of Mel than of himself in Josh’s face, that could not be denied. He’d kissed his son’s head. After some time the boy stopped shivering; soon Owen went back to sleep.

  Now he walks with his daughter. There is a taste in the air in the late afternoon, a flavour. Not damp exactly, though no longer the dry dustiness of the heat of the day. A change in the weather. It feels as if something’s looming in the atmosphere around them, hiding, waiting to break.

  hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling; hold not thy peace at my tears

  The caravan stands on its own in a remote field. Could it be usable? Owen approaches. Although one could just about believe that it was once white it is now mottled green with moss and mould; it looks as if it has spent some portion of its existence underwater. Dusk. All is quiet. The dog makes a circuit around the caravan. Holly goes on tiptoes, jumps up, attempting to see inside. Owen tries the door: as it opens it feels like he’s breaking a seal. He fancies there is an audible hiss, as if the caravan has been vacuum packed. Inside, all is in order. Opposite the door, a bench. To the left, in the front third of the caravan, a bench along each wall and a table in between. Owen lifts the long mattress which is also a lid on the bench ahead, and there below is bedding. Everything is miraculously dry. The faint musty smell is less of damp than of long neglect.