The penknife I’d had for years. Like all penknives around the world, it had a small blade that was difficult to open and a large blade that was blunt. The herbs were mixed herbs, from the supermarket. I wasn’t going to spend weeks drying and powdering shrubbery when you could get the same effect from a shelf.
The canals in Dudley and the surrounding area – Netherton, Oldbury, Stourbridge and the rest – pass through many locks and several tunnels. The Black Country is hilly and cold. The navigators strove to dig straight lines, but hills and valleys got in the way. They bored tunnels through crumbling banks of poor rock, using existing caves if they were conveniently placed. Long stretches of the canals run underground.
You can follow their line from above. Here and there, in small bleak fields behind warehouses and factories, you find small circular buildings of dirty brick. They’re six feet high, no more than that, and perhaps ten feet across. They are topped by black painted railings, which curve in forming a dome. If you climb up, holding the railings, and look down you find there’s nothing inside: a long dark shaft of nothing leading straight down out of sight. You’re at the top of a ventilation shaft. Somewhere down there are the dark cold waters of the canal. If you drop a stone between the railings it’ll fall and, after some time, you’ll hear a splash.
The first time you do this, or see it done, the splash takes an age to come. It seems as though the stone falls miles.
Whenever you repeat the exercise the splash comes more or less immediately. It never seems to take so long again. It is as though these shafts, now unused, have only one trick and can only play it once. After a few more tries you stop dropping. You spot the brick enclosures now and then, from the top deck of the bus, perhaps. They’re always in small fields of pale grass. They share the field with thin ragged ponies; the ponies, like the enclosures, always seem to be the same. It’s as though one field has been copied onto the landscape several times over, fading a little each time.
We stopped at the bottom of the embankment and looked at the mouth of a tunnel, into which the canal ran. There was enough of a breeze for the canal to have small waves rippling along its surface. The light of the quarter moon fell outside the tunnel. It wasn’t going inside. Neither were we. I’m not one for tunnels. I’m sure Freud would have found that interesting, when he wasn’t thinking about fucking his mother.
The tunnel is cut into a rock face that rises sheer out of the small valley. It’s of some porous stone that is no use for anything. When the tunnels were excavated, the navigators would sneak away chunks of rock, thinking they could sell them to builders or sculptors. No one wanted the stuff. It crumbles under pressure; it will not break cleanly. Laid down as gravel, it becomes dust and blows away. You can’t climb it because it will give way and change shape.
A hollow had formed close to the mouth of the tunnel. It was just large enough for the two of us to crouch inside. On our last visit we had arranged a small pile of bricks there but someone had scattered them. Between us we found enough bricks to put the altar back together. The rest would be in the canal under three feet of dirty water.
The details aren’t as important as you’d think. If you read about magic, you get the impression that everything must be exact. Everything must be exactly as stated in the recipe. It doesn’t work, of course. A cat won’t always behave when you’re putting a knife into it. A dog might bite you. Your apprentice might throw up. It might not be possible to get fresh basil; sometimes, you just have to make do with mixed herbs and initiative.
We knelt down either side of the altar. It wasn’t solidly constructed and it wobbled. Jack folded his arms and closed his eyes and inclined his face. I put the matchbox, the penknife and the mixed herbs on the altar.
‘This is the beginning, and the end.’
The words do seem to make a difference. You can skimp on the ingredients, but you need the vocabulary. You feel something with the words. It’s as though something else is speaking through me. Something much bigger, much older. I told Jack about that and he told me not to be so fucking stupid.
‘You can’t lay the blame on other forces,’ he told me. ‘You’re the psycho. Deal with it.’
He might have a point.
The castle has been used for rituals since it was built. I’m not big on history, but castles go back to what, the eleventh century? Earlier? They were rebuilt and extended for a few hundred years and then phased out. They’re still there, though. That’s the thing. History is under us, around us. It is us. And it doesn’t go away.
Things don’t stop happening. Nothing is finished.
‘Here are our gifts,’ I said. I opened the matchbox, leaving the cover to one side. The woodlouse began to climb out of the tray.
‘Here is our pain.’
I opened the penknife’s small blade. I used to keep it sharp. You need a sharp knife for this stuff, really you do. I kept an eye on the woodlouse as I cut Jack’s left hand.
‘Fuck,’ said Jack. I cut the back of my own left hand and flicked the woodlouse back into the matchbox. It began to climb out again. I opened the mixed herbs and sprinkled them into the box. I intoned the names of a few minor demons. You don’t need to know their names. They know yours. I guided Jack’s left hand over the box and let him drip into it. I added some blood of my own. Then I put the end of the knife through the centre of the woodlouse, which stopped its escape attempts. Its antennae drooped and it curled up and died. I put a fingernail against its shell and pulled the knife free. I put the cover back on the matchbox.
‘We return here.’
‘Every fucking week,’ said Jack.
‘It’s probably best if we keep to the script.’
He opened his eyes.
‘It’s probably the same either way,’ he said. ‘What’s in the box?’
‘Dead woodlouse,’ I told him. ‘Open it and have a look.’
‘I’ve seen a dead woodlouse before.’
‘This one isn’t staying dead. In there, this one is coming back.’
He looked at me.
‘I had my eyes closed. How do I know you killed the little fucker?’
‘You know because you had your eyes open because you’re sneaky. If you’re going to peep, do it less blatantly. Just friendly advice, you understand. It’s nothing personal.’
‘So you stabbed it. Way to go, big white hunter. Now we’ve got a matchbox with a dead woodlouse in it. And you cut me. That’s not normal.’
‘You watched me cut you and you didn’t do anything about it. I don’t know if that’s normal where you live, but round my way that’s weird.’
‘Round your way, everything’s weird. It hasn’t worked, has it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
I wasn’t feeling too bright. It was cold and I had muddy knees and a bleeding hand. I felt sorry for the woodlouse. I opened the matchbox. The breeze carried off flakes of dried rosemary and shredded sage. The contents had settled to one end, a pulpy mass of wet red leaves. The woodlouse had sunk out of sight. I shook the box.
‘It never works,’ said Jack. ‘Come on, admit it. You make it all up as you go along. You do all this performance stuff, waving the hands and kneeling at angles, and then nothing happens. You’re making it all up, aren’t you?’
‘I’m adapting.’
‘That’s nice for you.’
He looked at the matchbox. The breeze was pulling thin red tendrils of damp herbs out of it. A hair’s breadth of thyme stretched out, curved over touched the bricks of the altar. Another tendril folded itself out and joined it.
‘Sam?’ said Jack, looking less sure of himself. ‘Is that supposed to be happening?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Our little friend is back.’
‘He’s put some weight on.’
‘That’s a vegetarian diet for you. All the nutrients you need.’
More tendrils – legs, we now knew – made their way out. A lot more. I don’t know how many legs woodlice have, but it wasn’t that many. B
esides, these were big. They were an inch and a half long. They curved out of the mixed herbs on both sides of the matchbox drawer. They pushed the lid away. They looked as though they were made out of a mixture of shredded leaves and chitin. There was more of it emerging, glimpses of ragged shell, little twitches. It reared out of the mulch and chittered.
‘Jesus jumping fuck,’ said Jack. He was out of the hollow. I hadn’t seen him move. I was standing next to him and I didn’t remember standing. The matchbox tore down one side. The thing in there began to drag itself out. It seemed soft.
‘I brought it back,’ I said.
‘That’s not a woodlouse,’ explained Jack. ‘It’s half fucking herbal.’
‘It’s healthy.’
‘Yeah – considering it used to be dead.’
I couldn’t work out the shape of the new arrival. It seemed to be asymmetrical. One side was overendowed with legs. There was no obvious front. It was, as Jack had said, half herbal. That’s what you get for skimping on the ingredients. It opened an opening – I’m not going to say it was a mouth, and if you’d seen it, you’d know why – and chittered again. It was a horrible noise.
‘I’m fucking off,’ said Jack. He was already halfway up the embankment. The insect stopped struggling, half free of the box. It began to extrude antennae. I followed Jack.
By the time we got to his house he’d turned the whole event into something else.
‘Dark down there,’ he said. ‘Gloomy. Damp and that. The wind blowing through the tunnel. I’m not ashamed to say it: I was a bit nervy for a minute there. Woof.’
I let him have that thought. It might have been dark, but it hadn’t been so dark that you’d mistake a small insect for a swollen and pulpy one that chittered in its birth pangs. That had been a success. I’d got one right.
After that, eternal life would be a doddle. There was only a difference in scale; one life, against five. One woodlouse, against five people.
Just a matter of scale, really. That, and the fact that the people wouldn’t be coming back.
PART THREE
Sam, aged thirty
Chapter Six
I
Jack was wrong. I’d never murdered anyone. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do. I’m naturally timid or, as Judy puts it, a coward. I once ran away from a spider. This was back in my days on building sites.
It wasn’t a small spider. I want to make that clear. It was a big hefty aggressive one. I turned over a board, getting ready to dig another length of trench, and there it was. It squinted in the light and trundled at me. It was all legs and teeth. I could see its teeth. Honestly. I climbed out of the trench and shouted to Spin. Darren saw the spider and ran off. Spin made signs that Darren didn’t have time to translate. The spider made signs back at him. Then it ran after us.
My mother used to tell me that spiders were as frightened of me as I was of them, but I’ve never run at a spider in my life. They always run at me. I ran away from this one.
‘Where are you off to so scared?’ Mr Link asked us as we passed him. ‘Is there danger of work in this area?’
The spider topped the edge of the trench and scuttled at him, gnashing its mandibles. He trod on it.
‘There we are,’ he said. ‘What have I always said? How do spiders get into buildings? Through holes. Through doors and windows. Buildings are about solidity. Buildings are about uninterrupted lines. If you have openings, creepy crawlies get in. And then lazy big girls’ blouses, such as your good selves, run off and do no work.’
There. Mr Link could kill a spider and I couldn’t. I’m not a life-threatening person. Unless I unplugged a life support machine by accident while I was trying to plug the Hoover in or something. I’ll admit clumsiness, but that’s different.
So Jack’s accusations upset me. I kept remembering things he’d said while I was drunk. The gist of his claim was that ten years ago, when we were twenty, we had murdered several people in Dudley. This upset me. Even people from Dudley had the right to live. Not the urge perhaps, but certainly the right. He claimed that it had all been my idea and he’d gone along with it to avoid hurting my feelings, because he was ‘sensitive that way’. He was clearly wrong. I’d have remembered murdering people. I could forget what Judy had just told me easily enough, but that was always about cushion covers or wallpaper, and those things forgot themselves.
I went to work with a head full of hangover and bad thoughts. On top of being accused of murder by my best friend I had to give a talk to my team. The council were going to subcontract the work. Another company was getting ready to buy our department out. I had to let my team know what this meant for them, while at the same time not letting them know what it meant for them. I also had to avoid mentioning that we were being bought out, although everyone knew about it already.
Companies keep buying each other. I’ve noticed this. Sooner or later there’ll be one big company, which everyone will work for. Then it’ll have to buy itself out.
There were rumours at work. Clerks sent each other email. They met in corridors and whispered. The council did not approve of people talking to one another. The official line was that it led to rumours and supposition. Rumours and supposition were not allowed. Clerks were only barely tolerated. If the council could have replaced the staff with emails and memoranda, it would have done. Instead it used a different tactic. It put all of the stroppiest people in my team. Then, to fill in the gaps, it added the ugliest ones and left me to it.
My team of stroppy and ugly people had reached the meeting room before I got there. Of course, they would have had plenty of time. They wouldn’t have been held up by work. As I entered they were talking in low, conspiratorial tones. I heard my name mentioned, along with some words you wouldn’t use in front of your aunt. Not, that is, unless she habitually swore like a motherfucker. When they saw me they stopped talking and looked at me instead. A couple of them looked at me with vehemence, another one or two looked at me with terrible disdain. The others looked at me the way you look at a timetable on a windswept and unsheltered platform when you know no train is due. I stood in front of them and tried to look like I belonged there.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said, ‘I know you’ve all got a lot on. I just wanted to get you together to say thanks for all you’ve done so far, we appreciate it –’
‘We’re getting the sack,’ someone muttered from the back of the room.
‘This is just a little chat to let you know what’s going on with the organization,’ I said.
‘Right then,’ said Steve Timmins, a known agitator who had made his way to my team by doing something unspecified in the stockroom which had left another, meeker, member of staff needing counselling.
‘Yes, Steve?’
‘Are you going to tell us what’s going on?’ asked Steve.
‘Yes. As I was saying, I’ve got you here to tell you what’s going on with the department, if you’re interested.’
‘Of course we’re interested,’ said Steve. He had a creaky leather jacket and an oily quiff. He always wore black drainpipe trousers. Either he had a lot of them, each with stains in the same places, or he only had one pair and wore them all the time. I wouldn’t have put it past him to put stains on the same parts of several pairs of trousers. I wouldn’t have put mass murder past him. I’d have put matches well out of his reach. What had he done in that stockroom? From time to time I’d hear people mentioning it in quiet voices in quiet corners, but I never got close enough to find out any details.
‘I’m glad to hear that you’re interested. Now, with regards to the department –’
‘Interested, yes. But are you going to tell us what’s going on, or are you going to tell us that something might be going on but that you can’t tell us what it is or when it might happen or who will get the sack when it does?’
He leant back on his chair, which balanced reluctantly on its hind legs. I had an urge to give it a kick. He lowered his head and looked at me from under his quiff
. I discovered that I didn’t like his quiff. Then, I didn’t like anything about him. I didn’t even like his ears. It’s not often I dislike someone so much that their ears annoy me.
‘It’s true that I can’t give you all of the details at the moment,’ I said.
‘Well can you give us any of the details?’
I shook my head, readying an explanation.
‘What are we in here for, then? I’ve got the filing to sort out and Kath needs to do something with her binders before they get out of hand. Why do we have to waste our time coming in here and listening to you not telling us something? You could not tell us without us being here. You could go home and not tell us when we weren’t there. That’d save everyone time and trouble.’
There were murmurs of agreement from all corners of the room. I felt that the meeting might be slipping from my control. I thought back to my team leader training: a wet weekend in the Pennines when we had to eat worm omelette and slither down potholes holding hands and crying. What had they told us? It came to me. I ought to isolate the troublemaker. I should give an indication of my authority. I needed firmly to set out the limits of acceptable behaviour.
I had no idea how to do any of that. There were no potholes in the room.
‘I can’t tell you what I know,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ asked Steve.
‘Because it isn’t something that you need to know.’
‘Then why are we in here listening to you?’
‘To put minds at rest and put a stop to any silly rumours,’ I said. This was what I had been told the meeting was for, but I had an idea I hadn’t been supposed to say so.
Seeing the Wires Page 8
