by Evie Wyld
‘Bastard kids,’ I’d said to Dog. I smoked to the end of my cigarette and ground it out on the stile where there was a black mark that the other smoker had made with theirs. I collected the stubs and tucked them all into the empty end of my matchbox. We headed down the bridleway and onto the beach as the sun was starting to go down behind the clouds.
There was a rumble that could have been thunder, and Dog lowered to the ground and then stood up again and looked at me. ‘It’s not my fault,’ I had told him. He accepted this and carried on fossicking in the razor grass where he usually found something that had dragged itself there to die. There was no way of knowing how long my sheep had lived for, how far she had dragged herself before she died, what she saw.
We’d walked the length of the little bay quickly, and I emptied my pockets of the dust of bones and hair. In the last of the light we went back up the hill with the wind behind us.
The crows roosted in the trees like unopened buds. My stomach growled and I thought of the chicken I’d bought at the weekend. I should stew it, but that would take time; more likely I’d flatten it with a fist and put it in the oven and eat it with bread as soon as it was done.
I rounded the bend of the pathway and stopped dead. A man stood in the shelter of the hedge with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, staring straight ahead. He had a silk scarf wrapped around the bottom half of his face, and wore a suit. His hair was plastered to his head and he had a polythene bag hanging around his wrist. I kept walking as if I hadn’t seen him, but clenched my fists until my knuckles clicked. I could smell him, like old vegetables. We walked home quickly, the thought of the chicken gone. Dog let out a low growl, but kept close to me.
‘Fucking kids,’ I said again, to myself, just to have something to say. I’d tried not to run. I went home and loaded my gun. I looked at the phone and bolted the door.
‘I’d like to report a trespasser,’ I said, and the policewoman busily entered something into her computer. She looked up again.
‘Can I have your name please?’ She looked me up and down in a way I don’t think she expected me to notice. ‘And, er, your age?’
A policeman came out of a door behind the reception. He had grey hair at his temples and a comfortable-looking jumper on over his regulation one. ‘I’ll take care of this, Gracie,’ he said, with a swagger. A frown passed over the woman’s face.
‘Yes, Sarge,’ she said and tapped more buttons on her keyboard, very quickly.
‘This way please.’ The sergeant opened a perspex gate that said NO ENTRY and ushered me through. The policewoman watched out of the corner of her eye. I felt my bum controlling my legs again.
‘Terrible this cold, isn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘Have to double up on my jerseys.’ He smiled and plucked at the collar of his jumper. ‘It’s been a busy old month,’ he said as he showed me down a corridor, ‘what with Christmas and New Year, and just before that the real-ale festival – literally coach-loads over from the mainland.’
Faces looked out from each doorway we passed, people leaning back in their chairs to look up at me.
‘Oh,’ I said.
He opened the door to his office and gave me a small frown and a chuckle. ‘The problem’s more logistics than anything else.’ He gestured at a chair for me to sit in, and he sat in his behind the desk, and leant back. I noted the window and its view of the edge of Hurst Forest, and the spiny telecom receivers that flagged the prison, hidden deep in the woods. ‘See, the festival organisers don’t provide maps to the place, and I have to send my team out there to direct – to tell the coaches where to park, to answer questions, to direct the whole thing really.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘If you ask me, it’s the fault of the funders – do not have a festival if you cannot afford the proper and requisite means to staff it.’ He chopped his hand on the desk firmly and I shifted in my seat. There was a pause.
‘I’d like to report a trespasser.’
A look came over him. ‘Now there’s an accent we don’t hear round these parts much,’ he said. ‘I didn’t quite hear it before, but it’s there, isn’t it?’
I smiled and showed my teeth then drew breath to carry on, but he cut in:
‘My son-in-law’s an Australian,’ he said, nodding. ‘They met at a conference in Singapore, would you believe. HR she works in.’
I tried to gauge how long a gap was polite to wait before changing the subject back.
‘Over in Adelaide now – course the wife’s always on that we should go, but my thinking is they can come over here – got a thing about spiders me, you see – know how many different types of spiders you have out there?’
‘I—’
‘Close to three thousand. Know how many people get bitten each year? Close to four thousand.’ The policeman sat back in his chair and regarded me. ‘You do the maths,’ he said.
‘Look.’ I smiled. Teeth. ‘It’s just that I live alone and—’
‘Ah. Lonely place to be, on your own,’ he said. ‘Young woman like yourself ought to be with someone. Cheers you right up.’
‘That’s not the problem,’ I said, trying not to stiffen too much. ‘It’s that someone has been killing my sheep, and now there’s some bastard creeping around on my land.’
‘You a farmer then? Sheep is it? Well, don’t hide your light under a bushel, that’s a hard job.’
‘Yes, look, could we . . .’ I felt unreasonably hot.
His face took on an entirely different look. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get a report done, and that way you’ll feel better and we can get you back to your sheep, quick smart.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
He took a pen and paper out from a drawer in his desk. ‘Never could get the hang of computers – I’ll throw this over Gracie’s way and she’ll type it up no problem. Now, what is your name, pet?’
‘What did you call me?’
The air in the room stilled.
‘Eh? What’s that?’ Someone next door coughed. Probably they were listening to us. The sergeant looked at me with mild surprise and a little smile. ‘I just need your name.’
I bit the end of my tongue. ‘Jake Whyte.’
‘Address?’
‘Coastguard Cottage, Millford.’
He looked up, as I knew he would. ‘Ah, it all makes sense now, doesn’t it? You live in old Don Murphy’s place.’
‘Yes. I bought it off him.’
‘Never see you about. We was all wondering when you’d pop your head out.’
I smiled. More teeth.
‘Should take yourself out down the pub, make some friends, that’ll stop you feeling lonely.’
‘I’m not lonely.’
‘Well, if you say so.’
‘Two of my sheep have been killed.’
‘Rogue dog you think?’
‘No – they’ve been gutted, sliced about.’
‘Well, it’s amazing what dogs can do – I seen a lurcher go at a fox one time, and just the force alone of the dog’s snout on the fox’s ribs, ripped him right open – no teeth at that point, but fox is a goner. Didn’t last much longer after that I can tell you, more or less spat his own stomach out. I don’t mind telling you, it was a rough thing to witness.’
‘Kids have been hanging round the place.’
‘It’s not a great place for kids, the island, I’ll give you that – past a certain age anyway. They get bored. Real-ale festival is about all they have to look forward to, and even then they’re not supposed to be there.’ He pointed his biro at me. ‘Tell you what though, I’ll have a word, get them to stop haranguing you.’
‘How will you know which ones they are?’
The sergeant tapped the side of his nose. ‘I’ve a pretty good sense of who’s a troublemaker round these parts. Where’d you find them?’
‘On the Military Road.’
‘Military Road? I thought they were trespassing?’
‘No, it was
someone else, down on the bridleway down to the sea.’
‘Well, that’s not trespassing, is it?’
I fought the urge to knock over his tea, gripped the arms of my chair instead and spoke clearly and slowly:
‘It was dark and he shouldn’t have been there.’
The sergeant narrowed his eyes. ‘What were you doing there?’
‘Going for a walk, but I live there! Look—’
He leant back in his chair. ‘Listen, Miss Whyte, thing is, no one’s done anything.’
‘My sheep.’
‘Sheep die all the time – it’s like they’re trying to get killed, that’s what my uncle always said and he should know, had a hundred-acre farm in Wales, blackface lambs, he bred, you never tasted a thing like it.’
‘I don’t think you’re taking this seriously,’ I said and it felt like the limpest thing I’d said in my life.
The sergeant’s face went soppy. He spoke softly. ‘I am taking this seriously, Miss Whyte. I’m taking your happiness and your health seriously. Living alone with all that responsibility? A woman your age? It’s not right. You need to get yourself into town once in a while, you need to make friends. Pity the festival’s past, because despite my grievances with it, it can be a real laugh.’ He closed his notebook and smiled broadly at me.
I blinked and closed my mouth. I stood up and tried not to fall over my feet as I walked back up the corridor. The sergeant walked quickly behind me.
‘You can always call on us if you just feel a little worried – and if you see the chap again – and he’s on your property – let me know.’
The policewoman turned to watch me fumble with the catch on the perspex gate, which the sergeant had to help me with. He tried to guide me by touching my elbow, and I jerked away from him.
‘Steady,’ he said, like I’d tripped over.
I thudded down the steps of the station and a light rain spat at my hot face.
‘Here’s an idea,’ he called as I climbed into my truck. ‘Bring some chops or a shoulder for the meat raffle – every Wednesday at the Blacksmith’s – that’ll win you friends!’
I was vaguely aware of him waving me off but I didn’t wave back.
It was early, but I could see a light on in the teahouse, and the owner’s car was in the drive. I banged on the door and squinted through my cupped hands against the window to see who was in there. The lady who ran it, who was not all bad, looked up at me and mouthed, We’re closed, but I stayed there, looking at her. She stared at me a while and seemed to give up, walked towards the door shaking her head. I stepped back to give her room to open the door.
‘We’re closed – we don’t open till eleven o’clock – the bus isn’t even running yet.’
The bus was a small yellow job that brought tourists from the smugglers’ caves up to the teahouse, which called itself a beauty spot. It looked out over the grey sea, in the other direction so that you couldn’t see the mainland. If you got there at the wrong time of day or in the summer, there’d be families and children squawking about, making fusses, telling each other off. When I came I always tried to be the first, so that the place was undisturbed, the tables not sticky, the air not filtered through the open mouths of bored fathers and children’s farts.
I didn’t move to say anything, just stood there. I needed it. Eventually the woman sighed and opened the door wider to let me in.
‘I can’t keep doing this you know,’ she said, and I wiped my boots on the mat before going in. ‘I’m not even set up – I was just doing the floors. Jacob’s not brung in the scones yet, so you’ll have to have yesterday’s.’ She didn’t wait for a reply, pointed to a table by the window and I sat. ‘And I haven’t laid the tables yet, so you’ll just have to wait.’ I didn’t say, Don’t worry about laying a table for me, because I wanted it laid. With the white paper tablecloth and the ugly doily to go under the plate and under the coffee pot. I wanted the array of cutlery the woman always put out, as though you might eat a scone with a knife, fork and spoon. Three different spoons, one for coffee and one for jam and one for cream. Tongs in the lidded sugar bowl. A white cup for the coffee that had already had hot water in to keep it warm. All of that and the view of the grey sea and nothing beyond it.
The woman was kind even when she was angry. She cleaned away my footprints on her way back to the kitchen, and came out and laid the table while I leant back so she could arrange things. She disappeared and when she came back she’d tied a lacy white apron around her middle, and had maybe put on a touch of lipstick. But she didn’t take my order, because she knew already what I wanted. When I’d first arrived on the island, I’d embarrassed myself by asking her for a Devon cream tea.
‘I’m afraid an island one will have to do,’ she had said.
The scone was stale, even though she’d warmed it to try and soften it up. It made no difference. I painted on the cream with one spoon, the jam with another and looked out to sea as I crammed it in my mouth. I didn’t like cream but it was okay if you drank strong coffee with it. I warmed my hands around the coffee cup and looked at the empty chair opposite me like it might speak. It didn’t.
As we came up the path to the front door, Dog pricked up his ears, and his shoulders thickened. I licked my lips and pictured my gun upstairs, leaning in the cupboard. I tried to open the door quietly, but Dog shot through, his toenails clicking along the stone in the kitchen and up the stairs. I thought I’d left a good thick walking stick by the front door, but it wasn’t there any more. There was a stink like something that had been squirted out of an animal. Dog, out of sight, barked and snapped and I pulled a pan off the side and went up after him, holding it high over my head.
From the landing by my bedroom came a bang. The banisters shook as I pounded up the stairs. On the landing Dog danced around a large pigeon, its wing bent at an angle that was wrong, a string of blood over its back.
‘Dog!’ I shouted and he looked at me, the fury gone, his tail wagging and a feather hanging off his lip. I dropped my arms and breathed out, leant for a moment on the banister. Dog’s tongue lolled out and I caught hold of the fur at the back of his neck before he went for it again.
‘Okay, bird,’ I said. ‘Okay.’ And it looked at me. I could see its heart moving in its chest, and all there was to do was to go towards it and pick it up. It let me get at it around the middle, carefully avoiding the mashed wing. Its heart buzzed but it was still in my hands. Dog whined.
‘Dog,’ I said, ‘no.’ And he sat down, then stood up again.
One of the pigeon’s legs bicycled out, and there was a ring around the foot. I held the bird to my chest with one hand and unravelled the ring with the other. Just a phone number, which was good – I wouldn’t have to make the decision about whether or not to wring its neck.
‘Get me the phone,’ I told Dog.
We all three went to the phone together and I dialled the number.
The man who picked up didn’t say hello, he said, ‘Esler.’
‘I have a pigeon with your phone number on,’ I said.
The man was silent.
‘He’s hurt his wing.’
‘Is it dead?’ he said.
‘No, just hurt. The wing.’
The man sighed. ‘Pop her in a shoebox, keep her warm and watered. If she makes it through the night she’ll tell you when she’s well enough to fly home.’
He hung up.
‘Dickhead,’ I said to the pigeon. Any shoes I bought came in a plastic bag. I took another look at the bird, saw that its bottom eyelid had closed and its head was slack on its neck, and that talking to the man on the phone, I’d squeezed it too hard and now it was dead.
I took the pigeon, wrapped in newspaper like a fish supper, down to the shore. Dog pranced next to me with a light in his eyes that meant killing, and I tried to keep the atmosphere mellow and not like the disposal of a tame bird that I’d murdered. It was not a beautiful beach for a burial at sea. A skin of seaweed had washed up on the rocks
and jumped with sea lice. Black rocks rose all around it so that if you didn’t know your path back up, you could feel trapped. There was no accounting for the places the English took their children – in the early days I came across a young family in mud up to their thighs, crashing around by the hawthorn stile, lost in the dark with a toddler swaddled onto each of their backs. The woman with tear-streaks down her face and the man white and grateful for the lift back to their bed and breakfast. ‘Not a good place to get lost,’ I’d enjoyed telling them on the drive; ‘you were just a few yards from a pretty sheer cliff-face.’ Which was half true.
My first summer on the island, I’d cooked my tea on the beach, drunk beer wrapped in a blanket, listening to the waves break, watching the lights come on over on the mainland, while my eyes got used to the black sea with the moon tripping off it at the horizon. I had it in my head to do it the next summer, but the breaks between rain got smaller and sometimes there was a smell on the beach around dusk, something between burnt rubber and silage.
Dog ate a dead crab. I heard it being broken apart, turning to dust. A drizzle started and gave a silver fringe to his fur. He finished his crab and saw something in the dry grasses on the bank and pricked his ears. He moved up the slope, his legs bent at the knees, and disappeared over a dune, the back-kick of his leg picking up speed. While he was occupied, and so that he wouldn’t chase the bird out into the water and crunch her up too, I waded out a little way in my gumboots, which, it turned out, had a hole in each of them small enough to be invisible to the naked eye but large enough to let in frozen water, which chafed at my heels and then crept up my socks. I rolled the bird out of the newspaper and let her float into the sea. She tried to come back in a few times, but eventually after some encouragement she floated past the small breakers, her chest white and dry and her broken wing pointing upwards as she went further and further out and then sank, like the sea had swallowed her. I hummed the song from Titanic.
6
Outside Kambalda is a shearers’ pub which isn’t much more than a galvanised shed with a bar and tables made out of railway sleepers. They serve whisky in mugs and everything else is canned. You’re supposed to bring your own cooler, and I make a mental note to pick one up next time we see a shop, which could be weeks from now. I’m at the bar, turning a mug of whisky in my hands and taking longer than I should because a feeling’s come over me like I’m on the outside of myself, and how did I end up at this bar in the middle of a desert with the smell of a barbecue coming in through the open wall of the shed, and with all these men, not another woman in running distance, and how is it that this is a strange comfort, and how long will it last before something finds me again and I have to go somewhere else. One of the younger blokes, Connor, comes and slouches next to me.
