Landed
Page 18
At the back of the caravan is the kitchen. Tiny stainless-steel draining board and Formica surface. Owen opens cupboards: below are plates, pans. Above, jars of Camp coffee, sugar, Marmite, tins of beans, fruit, evaporated milk. Corned beef, spam. There’s a drawer of utensils and cutlery, and candles. The can opener is of a kind Owen remembers, possessing a sharp point with which he punctures a tin of tuna; he clamps his hook around the tin and levers the opener around the top with a series of jerky manoeuvres. A tin of sardines has its own key attached to its side: he slides the key’s aperture over a tab of metal, and unpeels the lid.
Dessert is tinned pears and evaporated milk. Holly eats little. The dog gorges on a plate of bully beef. Every now and then the caravan shifts in the evening breeze. Holly lies down on the bed, sighs, and is asleep. The dog curls up at the foot of the bed, on the floor of the caravan. Owen understands that the dog will not let him or anyone else hurt her.
Owen goes back outside and finds a blue Calor gas bottle beside the towbar, and a connector hanging on a piece of rubber tubing. Clouds are gathering, the wind is picking up. Owen attaches the connector to the top of the gas bottle. The connector‘s needle opens the valve in the top of the gas bottle with a sigh. Inside, he turns on one of the oven rings, holds his lighter. At first only air comes through the pipes, which blows out the lighter’s flame. He keeps clicking it back alight, until suddenly gas comes through and ignites: the invisible assumes shape in four curving arcs of blue and purple flame. Soon Owen drinks his first coffee in days, made from liquid from the jar. It’s disgusting. He suspects there’s no caffeine in it at all, opens the top half of the caravan door and hurls the liquid out of the cup, into the dark. He leans against the bottom half of the door. He would love a drink. He would devour alcohol, the craving is in his mouth and throat, it’s in his brain. His body would eagerly absorb a glassful, a bottle. He’s aware of the slight twitching in his fingers – merely thinking about booze makes them tremble just a little more. But then he realises that he has no phantom limb pain, and that he had none the night before. Surely, he decides, he has no need of alcohol.
Behind him, he’d moved the table and shifted the benches and cushions, slotting this piece here, resting that one there, to make a double bed. There were white sheets, blue woollen blankets, pillows and pillow cases, upon which Holly now sleeps, fitfully.
The grey sky is shot through with flecks of yellow and gold, suggesting beyond the clouds a shimmering perfect world, if only one could get there. Then the grey clouds close over every last tiny opening, and all is dark. Buffeted by the wind, the caravan trembles. The wind smells of rain.
The town, Welshpool, was founded beside the River Severn. Owen’s mother threw a picnic together, sandwiches and crisps, Kit Kat and Coca-Cola. They didn’t go far, out past the railway station, through the industrial area and along Leighton Road. When they reached the river they turned right and followed it on its west bank, Owen wary of farmers who might yell them off their land, his mother unworried. The kind of woman men forgave.
The river snaked through the valley, nosing its way between stone and sand in the soft earth of the fields. Owen floated downstream. His mother curled up, dozing on a rug. Owen was a star in the water, lying on his back in the sun, carried by the slow river. The log must have been travelling that little bit faster. The boy was unafraid of watersnakes, or pike, but the log was a torpedo he’d not considered. It struck his head with a dull kiss.
The boy lost consciousness. He knew this when he came to, however many moments later, still lying on his back, having floated unaware, dead to the world. There was pain at his left temple. Understanding what had happened, what had almost happened, a chilly nausea swam through the boy, and he floundered. He scrambled to the bank, and stumbled alongside the river back to the picnic spot, nearer than he’d expected. He felt sick though he ’d swallowed no more than a mouthful of water, and trembled with fright and relief. He lay shivering a long while, wrapped in a towel in his mother’s arms, before he could tell her what had happened.
Owen is woken by his daughter moaning beside him. He gets up and lights a candle, leaves it burning on the sideboard at the far end of the little caravan. Holly is feverish, her forehead on fire. Her ear hurts. He gives her two spoonfuls of the Calpol in his rucksack. He strokes her arm, pats her. She sobs until the medicine takes effect, then sinks into sleep.
Four hours later he wakes again. Holly is tossing about the bed. A spasm of movement, then she’s still for ten or twenty seconds. Suddenly her legs jerk, her body twists, then she’s still again. It’s as if her restlessness is choreographed; performed, not by her but upon her, her body the medium in which another force operates. She wakes, in pain. Owen gives her more Calpol. Holly speaks in a voice thick and syrupy as the medicine.
‘Does Mummy know I am sick?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Will you tell her?’
His eyes ache with tiredness, but it’s no trouble to stay awake. ‘We’ll tell her. We’ll send her a message.’
Holly’s breathing is congested beside him. ‘Have you had a sore ear, Daddy?’
The caravan shivers in the wind, too exposed alone here in this field. ‘Earache is horrible, isn’t it?’ Owen murmurs. He fears tomorrow. Will they have to find a doctor? He thinks he can hear rain fall, whispering, out in the darkness; then he hears it above him, pattering on the roof like a thousand fingers.
‘Can you die or anything?’ Holly asks.
‘No,’ her father whispers, stroking her forehead.
‘Good,’ the girl breathes. ‘Good.’ Her voice is already falling away, and in a moment her breathing becomes regular, less sinusy, once more asleep. Owen closes his eyes. The rain is drumming upon the roof of the caravan.
Morning. Holly sleeps. Owen lets the dog out, steps outside after her. The rain falls soft but distinctly. He thinks he can sense each tiny drop upon his face, each momentary, pleasant sensation. He wonders how much rain fell during the night. The ground in the field feels spongy beneath his feet. Returning to the caravan, raindrops cling to its tarnished plastic surface like beads of perspiration.
As he straps on the hook, Owen registers that it feels increasingly uncomfortable, unwelcome. There used to be an old man in Welshpool Owen would see around, his jacket sleeve pinned to the shoulder, the sleeve like a sling of air.
Holly is awake, and hungry. Owen concocts a breakfast of tinned mandarins followed by a tin of baked beans and sausages, sweetcorn and mushy peas, with a cup of hot Marmite. He describes it as holiday food. To his somewhat surprised relief she eats everything, delightedly.
‘How’s your ear?’ he asks.
Holly frowns as she chews a mouthful of sweetcorn. ‘What ear?’ Then she remembers, shaking her head at her silliness. ‘Oh, yes.’ The night just passed already history. ‘Fine,’ she says, and giggles. As if he might not believe her, she says, ‘I’m all right, Daddy.’ He knows she’s not: her eyes are wide, she looks a little startled by her own high spirits. A brittleness.
Owen folds up the bedding, returns the disconfigured furniture to its original layout but leaves a mess in the kitchen. He puts half a dozen fresh tins in his rucksack and they set off from the caravan, westward.
They cross a field, go through a gateway, across another field. No animals graze the rich green grass. Small, soft raindrops alight upon their clothing. Like kisses, Holly says. Sinister ones, they accumulate, slowly soaking fabric. Owen is glad when they are able to get under some cover, out of the open.
First they climb a steeply wooded spur of what looks like a range of hills. The summit is a plateau of bare moorland, where they would be exposed, both to view and to the elements: sheets of rain drift back and forth across the moor. So they skirt around the top. Stopping for a drink, they look down on squares of yellow. Owen stares until they suddenly make sense. Daffodil fields. Black soil.
Rain falls with a steadily increasing intensity. Reaching the western side of the range
they begin to descend through trees, slipping and squelching in leaf-covered mud. Water oozes and gurgles at their feet, around the trunks of alder trees, the roots of brambles. As they descend, the trickles become rivulets, with a sound of small coins tumbling. Rain falls through the trees, plopping on dead brown leaves. Here and there water collects, damned by an upturn of earth; there are ferns and sedges, and the water swells and eddies.
‘My feet’s wet,’ Holly says. Owen can see her jeans stained up to her knees. Her hair is wet from the rain. He wonders how waterproof her jacket is. They are descending the wooded hill between runlets of water which alter course and veer loudly one towards another, joining forces or even speeding straight across each other and carrying on their separate journeys. Water bubbles up as well, out of the mountain as if it’s regurgitating water it swallowed higher up. Owen and Holly slosh and slide, part of a great surge downhill. Rippling currents of water converge, in bubbling congregations, gathering into a stream that has cut into clay. The deluge of water, its gurgling rush, makes Owen feel hectic, hurried. He grabs Holly’s hand and they run slithering down the hill.
The stream shoots over a bank of clay and unites with another coursing across the wood at a diagonal. There is no sound now other than this hurtling roar of water. It feels to Owen as if they are cut off from outside, from beyond the few yards around them, by the noise.
The ground flattens out. They carry on running, beside a thick turbid stream, a deep storm drain into which water gushes and cascades. The brook makes less noise now. Owen realises the dog has been barking with excitement, it jumps around them, he couldn’t hear it. He and Holly are both soaked through. She is falling ill beside him. His irresponsibility is shocking, even to himself.
Flooded fields reflect the thick, slow clouds. The rain falls intermittently. Holly sits on Owen’s shoulders. He suspects she is shivering. ‘My ear hurts, Daddy,’ she says.
They come to the river towards which all the water is heading. It is in spate, inundated, almost overflowing, the great watersheds of the Welsh hills pumping into it. Grey water churns south with an unanswerable power. Owen turns right and follows the river upstream. Holly says, ‘Look, Daddy,’ and he can feel she’s pointing north-east. He sees half a dozen swans, floating on bright green water. His course takes him between the river and the swans. At a certain point he realises that their field is not flooded. They are grazing on the grass. Seagulls are the only birds in the air.
They come to a road, and a bridge across the river, which surges below them. A little way further on they come to a T-junction. Owen remembers that the village referred to on the signpost as being two miles away to the right is large enough to have a bed and breakfast, probably. Or a pub with a room to stay. He has to risk contact now. Somewhere for Holly to get warm, dry her clothes. They are less than a day’s walk from their destination.
They walk through a housing estate, identical brick houses, slate rooves. Aerials on the top of every house. Satellite dishes. Buddleia grow out of chimney stacks, their drooping stalks, the colour of their flowers – yellow, blue, purple – against the drab bricks and grey slates. A small, rural version of the estate Mel lived on when they met. He remembers the first time he walked her home. She spoke so readily to him, words tumbled out. He listened, calculated, summoned courage. At her door he kissed her on the lips. Her mouth was warm.
Some houses are boarded up with plates of gunmetal grey, perforated steel. Others have no doors or window frames, they look toothless, their black interiors open to the wind and rain. Cows graze on the front gardens, wander across the road, pausing to drop their pats of soft dung.
There is no pub or shop or B & B. Some cottages appear inhabited. Owen senses that their passage is watched by unseen eyes, but he could be wrong.
On a hill outside the village stands a cluster of masts, enormous white dishes, one huge globe. Some kind of listening station; plaintive instruments, receivers pointing, Owen imagines, at the ether, hoping for a signal from beyond. A message from the deities of space, presiding a little out of reach, unknowable but imaginable, hiding as gods will do, awaiting us in the fields of infinity.
It is raining once more. They walk through the valley and Owen knows that if it were clear he would be able to see in the distance the hills amongst which is the one they’re headed for. But the rain is colder than this morning, and seems to be falling less as drops now than as pins, painful, penetrative. He lifts Holly down off his shoulders. She’s trembling, barely conscious. Her teeth are chattering and strange noises issue from her mouth in her delirium, syllables without sense, like someone blessed with a holy spirit, babbling in tongues. Owen takes off his jacket and wraps her on his back, puts the hood on his head so that the jacket drapes over her, and resumes walking.
The dog has lost its appetite for dashing here and there, content to traipse along behind them. Bedraggled, her hair plastered to her lean frame, she looks half the size she did. Owen thinks he could carry Holly forever. She’s surely lighter than a soldier’s backpack. If she were lame he would be her means of ambulation. As she grew heavier so he would grow stronger; would acquire the nobility of a horse.
They must make a detour, he realises, to the small market town two or three miles south-west of here. The rain falls like a cloudburst, a monsoon, with a great roar that must be the accumulation of each one of millions of drops hitting the ground but feels like the sound of the rain itself falling through air. They must stick to the lane now, with visibility reduced to feet, inches, in front of them, a darkness of water. Where the lane is flat it becomes a long puddle; on each incline or declivity of tarmac water courses, made dramatic by gravity. A rider on a horse approaches: a torch attached to saddle or bridle illuminates a beamful of plummeting needles of rain, as if to reveal them rather than clarify the way forward for the rider. Owen backs onto the sodden verge and hides in the hedgerow. What would he look like if the rider could see him? A hunchbacked tramp and his dog. An idiotic rambler. The horse does not stop but trots on past.
Owen knows he needs all his strength and determination to push on, to carry his daughter through this torrential, punishing downpour to safety. Then a song comes to mind, and within a moment he is singing it inside his head. An American folk song.
Lay down, my girl
Lay down with me.
Let us lie on the ground
Long grass all around.
We’ll hide there, we’ll play,
In the night
And the day.
He thinks there may have been another verse before that one, but it doesn’t matter. He is lost in the song, as he imagines that he sings it. Oblivious to the rain.
Lay down, my lady,
Lay down with me.
Let us lie on the ground
Our children around.
They’ll hide and play
Into the night
And the day.
Owen hears it in a voice in his head that is an imitation of the voice of the singer, one of the last songs the man recorded. This man made each line last longer than one expected, strumming on his guitar then going on little unpredictable runs of plucked notes, then strumming again. The man’s voice in Owen’s head is hollowed, his body and all it has lived through resonate in every word, the voice of an old country singer, a dying man.
Lay down, my love,
Lay down with me.
Let us lie in the ground
Black earth all around.
We’ll hide and we’ll play
Through the night
And the day.
The rain batters the earth. Tumultuous, the river behind them will burst its banks; there will be chaos and destruction. The animal kingdom huddle in their burrows, fold their wings, curl up and hope the deluge will spare them. Owen trudges into the town. No one is outside on the main street but lamps are on in small shops. He enters one and asks the way to a doctor. Someone gives him directions to the health clinic, some streets away. Someone else says
they just saw Dr Green go into his house around the corner.
Owen knocks on the door of a large house. A woman opens it. ‘Dr Green?’ Owen asks. The woman looks horrified at this lunatic. She directs him two doors away.
A man opens the door.
‘Dr Green?’
‘Yes.’ The man frowns. ‘The clinic’s on Market Lane, just along—’ he begins, but Owen interrupts.
‘My daughter,’ he says, turning around, taking his right arm from beneath her buttocks and unhooking the hood of his jacket off his head. The jacket falls to the floor. ‘Please,’ he says.
‘Come in,’ says the doctor, stepping backwards and to one side. Owen enters the hall. The dog stays in the porch as the doctor closes the front door and then, as Owen relinquishes his good hand from holding Holly, the doctor takes the unconscious child and carries her into a sitting room.
Owen heels off his shoes, peels off his sodden socks. At least the water has washed off the mud. Barefoot, Owen follows the doctor, who has laid Holly on a sofa. He calls a woman’s name, ‘Anna,’ over his shoulder, as he removes Holly’s sopping clothes. A woman appears in the doorway. ‘Towels,’ he says.
Owen stands, watching, grey water dripping and seeping from him, his clothes, onto the doctor’s carpet. He thinks that he ought to be the one to take off his daughter’s clothes; he’s not even assisting the doctor. Anna returns with an armful of towels. Holly is semi-awake, half helping her damp shirt peel off her. Her pale body shivers, her face is red, she is trying to talk. Sounds come out of her mouth but they are barely words, certainly not sentences. She moans or gasps disconnected syllables, delirious.