Mercury Falling

by Robert Edric

  ‘Perhaps he did,’ Devlin said, realizing immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.

  ‘Can’t have. Besides, it’s weeks since Harrap saw you at Tattershall. Another day or two to find out about the lorry. The law would have been here then if you’d got that kind of thing hanging over you. You see what I’m saying? My thinking now is that what’s happened here today might just give him cause to think again. What if he went from here straight to the station house over in Donington or Kirton?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Devlin said, but with little conviction. ‘Besides, even if he did, I doubt—’

  ‘Not the point, not the point,’ Duggan shouted at him, causing both Devlin and the old man to flinch. ‘The point now is that he knows you were here. And the last thing I want, especially with so much hanging in the balance, so to speak, is coppers sniffing around on whatever pretext, let alone a shooting. I’m telling you now – they come knocking on my door and I’ll tell them everything I know about you, everything you’ve told me, including the bit about the gun.’ He pointed to his father. ‘You see that eye, that lip, those bruises? Well, they just brought you more trouble than you could ever imagine. None of this is my doing, and none of it’s going to be my undoing either. Are we both clear on that much, at least?’

  When Devlin didn’t respond, Duggan slapped him again.

  ‘Clear,’ Devlin said. He picked at the dry clay on his forearms. The stuff was forever there. He spread his feet and felt the torn pages of the Bible rustle and tear beneath his boots. He watched Alison Duggan wipe the old man’s face again and saw him flinch when she touched his swollen eye. The flesh there looked almost transparent; the liquid beneath the surface made it smooth and free of the wrinkles and deeper lines that covered the rest of his face.

  ‘Tell me what I owe you,’ he said to Duggan without turning.

  ‘Just the money,’ Duggan said. ‘Anything else you do to try and put this right would only leave a bad taste. You might not see where all this is headed, but I do.’

  It was the kind of thing Devlin’s mother had been fond of saying.

  ‘I’ll get it to you.’

  ‘Oh, I know you will. The last thing you want now is someone else following you down that empty lane in the middle of nowhere one dark night.’ Duggan lit a cigarette and blew the smoke over Devlin’s head and across the paper-strewn table. ‘I think you’d better go,’ he said. ‘Before I come to my senses and do something I regret.’

  ‘Can I at least wash?’ Devlin said.

  He was answered by another hard slap to the side of his head. His ear stung and it was all he could do not to cry out.

  Duggan rose from the table and took a step away. ‘I ever hear you’ve been sniffing round within five miles of this place …’

  Devlin stood up. The blows to his head had unbalanced him and he paused unsteadily for a moment before walking to the door, Duggan close behind him. He picked up the sack.

  ‘Everything’s there,’ Duggan said. ‘Such as it is. Not much to show, granted, but it’s all yours. I’ll be in touch about the money.’ He flicked the final inch of his cigarette into the yard ahead of Devlin. ‘Just tell me one thing – did you mean to do it?’

  ‘Did I mean to do what?’

  ‘Shoot the bastard. You even aim the thing before you pulled the trigger? Or was it all like he probably wants to think it was?’

  ‘It wasn’t even a proper gun,’ Devlin said.

  ‘I guessed that much. But the fact is, in my book, you’ve done it once, you’ll do it again, only next time worse.’

  His mother’s voice again.

  Devlin walked several paces ahead of Duggan and then turned to face him. The doorway behind the man was dark, the room beyond and the people inside no longer visible to him.

  15

  HE WALKED UNTIL he could not be seen from the farm and then he sat for a while on the verge to consider his options. Even calling them that made them more than they were. He resented how Duggan had treated him and remembered all the warnings he’d been given about the man. He was exhausted after his day’s work.

  Rising, he circled the farm until he arrived at the outermost of Duggan’s dilapidated sheds. It stood on the seaward side of the farm, and all the time Devlin had been staying there, no one had ever gone to the building. There was no lock, and the weathered timbers that hung from the shed’s frame swung aside at his touch.

  Inside, every panel of the corrugated roof showed the evening sky above. An abandoned, stripped-down tractor stood to one side, an inch of bird shit covering its open seat and seized engine.

  A drift of old straw lay piled against one wall and Devlin pushed enough of this together to form a makeshift bed. The straw smelled of dust and the same dry shit. What he ought to do was to spend the night there and then in the morning set light to all that waiting kindling and burn the place down. But what would that achieve? What sort of revenge would that be? A disused, collapsing barn and an unworkable tractor. Duggan would only profit from the loss and then be even more determined to collect whatever he now considered he was owed. The best plan now, Devlin knew, was to get as far away as possible and then to keep his head down.

  Pushing his sack of belongings into a corner, he searched the small building. A few empty drums, folded seed and grain sacks, wooden fence posts as grey and light as planking, two rolls of fence wire bound in solid red circles. Something and nothing, but mostly nothing.

  He went to the wall facing the distant farm and peered through a knothole towards the light of the place. Pale smoke rose from the chimney. Dim lights at two of the windows.

  He went back to his straw bed and lit a cigarette. He held the match to a handful of the straw and was surprised by how quickly it caught light, causing him to drop the bundle he held and then stamp out the sudden blaze. He was hungry and thirsty. He hadn’t eaten since noon and now it was pitch dark. He went to the doorway and watched the open land. The noise of the road was little more than a distant hiss.

  After an hour, he fell asleep and then woke again to the noise of Duggan’s lorry leaving the yard. He watched it go, waiting until it had turned on to the road and all sight and sound of it was lost. Birds called across the darkness; he could only imagine the time.

  Leaving the shed, he went back across the fallow fields to the farm. He crept to the lighted windows and looked in. Duggan’s father slept in his chair. Someone had gathered up the scattered pages of the Bible and these were now pressed beneath a plate on the table. There was no sign of Alison Duggan.

  Devlin let himself in and went to the food cupboard. A radio played somewhere upstairs – Alison Duggan listening to one of her programmes, or most likely asleep with the thing still on. The old man sat with his chin on his chest and snored occasionally.

  Devlin took another sack from a hook by the door and put food into this. Bread from the bin and tins from the cupboard. A piece of cooked meat sat on a board by the sink and he took this too. Then he quietly drew open the cutlery drawer and took out a bone-handled carving knife and added this to his load.

  Duggan, he remembered, had once wielded the knife and called it a family heirloom. He’d shown Devlin how its blade had been worn to a thin crescent of steel by a century of sharpening and use. After using the knife, Duggan had flicked it in the air so that it fell point first to the table and stuck there quivering. Devlin had tried to repeat the trick and Duggan and his father had laughed at his countless failures.

  The old man shifted in his chair and Devlin froze. The clock on the mantel chimed midnight. Another so-called heirloom. Devlin considered taking that too. Or pushing it to the stone hearth below. The old man settled again, his breathing softer than the ticking of the clock.

  Devlin went to where Duggan kept money, but the tin was empty. Duggan would know immediately who had taken the food and the knife, but so what?

  He left the house and looked up at the bedroom windows. There was no light. The radio still played. Who broadcast music at th
at time of the night? Who listened?

  Quickly enveloped by the surrounding darkness, he made his way back to the shed.

  16

  EARLY THE NEXT day, seeing that Duggan had not yet returned, Devlin walked to the road and left the farm.

  Before leaving the shed, he’d kicked apart his bed and brushed the remains of his cigarettes and the food he’d eaten under the straw.

  Once at the road, his first thought was to return to the drainage work and wait there with the others for the bad news that was coming to them all. But as he approached the pumping station gathering point, he saw in the distance the wintering fairground and went there instead. It was not yet seven and none of the other workers had arrived. Wherever he went in that small world he would leave a trail for Duggan to follow, so what difference did it make where he went?

  Walking beyond the pumping house, he came to the scattered caravans and trailers, and arriving at the compound he was surprised to see Maria McGuire at the gateway surrounded by a dozen horses. He looked around for any sign of her brothers, but there was no one. It was the first time he had encountered her alone. He attracted her attention and she left the horses and came to him. He told her that he’d finally left Duggan’s and that he was on his way to work.

  ‘So?’ she said. She searched the road along which he’d come.

  One of the horses approached and butted his arm with its head.

  He asked her what she was doing out so early.

  ‘Waiting for the slaughterman from Boston,’ she told him.

  ‘What, he’s coming for the horses?’

  Maria continued looking behind him. ‘No, he’s coming for the lions and tigers. Perhaps he might even take one of the elephants.’

  Devlin had seen a solitary lion and two small, deflated-looking elephants at the fairground. The lion looked diseased, its skin bare in patches. The elephants had always seemed to be restless, shuffling back and forth in their shackles.

  ‘I never saw the tiger,’ he said.

  ‘That’s because we never had one. The lion’s on its last legs.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the horses?’ Another of the creatures pushed towards him. They were mostly brown and stocky, all with untidy manes and tails, and all showed their ribs.

  ‘Nothing wrong with them. It just makes more sense to get rid of half of them each winter and use the money to feed the other animals. We buy new ones each spring at the Lynn fair. The slaughterman likes to come early and I usually draw the short straw. He should be here by now.’

  ‘Where are your brothers?’

  ‘Where do you think? They were out most of the night.’

  Devlin went closer to her in the gateway. ‘Duggan kicked me out,’ he said.

  She laughed at the words. ‘Poor you.’

  ‘He still owes me.’

  ‘That won’t be how he sees it. Besides, whatever it is you think you’re owed, you might as well start whistling for it now. Duggan owes everybody money. It’s how he operates. It’s why people keep on dealing with him. Because most of the time they’ve got more to lose than he has.’

  Devlin knew all this, and if he hadn’t known it for certain, then it was what he would have guessed.

  ‘What’s in the sack?’ she said.

  Devlin dropped the bag to the ground. ‘All my worldly goods.’

  She hardly looked. ‘You’ve done well for yourself,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be late.’ She nodded towards the pumping station, where other men were now starting to gather. Vehicles already stood with their engines running in the cold air.

  ‘They’re laying most of us off in a few days,’ he said. ‘Not much point in going.’

  ‘Horses, men, it’s all the same,’ she said. ‘You get through the summer and then you do whatever you have to do to get through to the start of the next one. Everything’s uphill for people like us.’

  There was already talk among the remaining workers of the drainage projects being planned for the following year. It was something, but for the months ahead that’s all it would ever be – talk.

  ‘Most things look better when they’re in the future,’ Maria said, looking back at the road as she spoke.

  ‘You could always try your hand at something different,’ he said.

  ‘Such as? I’m a traveller. What else do you think there is for us? You might as well tell a rat to try living as a swan. Besides, let’s face it, it’s hardly any better for people like you. Like they say, you might have started out with nothing, but at least you’ve managed to hold on to most of it.’

  Devlin offered her a cigarette, which she took.

  ‘Said he’d be here at seven.’ She picked at the matted mane of one of the horses.

  ‘Where does the meat go?’ he asked her.

  She shrugged. ‘None of my business. Animal food, I expect. We always keep one or two back for the lion, though I doubt if the poor bloody thing will see out another winter.’

  ‘Is it here?’

  ‘Skegness. Indoors, with most of the other animals. One of the empty camps. Some of the men get work there. Perhaps you could try your luck. There’s always some kind of maintenance or building going on in the closed season, the better months at least. Patrick and Colm will know a few names. You could ask them. The camps are getting bigger every year, very popular, fully catered, happy families, all that.’ It was another long, tired breath of disappointment.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Devlin said. It was a way forward, a vague, unknown path through the dark months ahead of him. He started to explain to her what had happened at Duggan’s with Skelton.

  ‘Save your breath,’ she said. ‘I don’t care for the man and I never heard of the other. Everything round here ends up with somebody or other getting knocked down or cheated out of something. Besides, that’s all some people ever do, moan and complain about how unfair everything is.’

  Devlin said nothing.

  ‘You’re probably no different from anybody else,’ she said. ‘Men like Duggan can’t help but take advantage, it’s in their nature. In fact, men like Duggan think it’s their right to behave how they behave because the world provides the men for them to do it to, otherwise why would all these others exist?’

  And again, Devlin knew this already. There was no malice or pleasure in her voice as she said all this, but instead something almost comforting, reassuring to him.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said again.

  ‘No “suppose” about it.’

  He wanted to ask her what she believed gave Duggan the edge over all these other men, but said nothing because he already knew what her answer might be.

  ‘They eat horses in France,’ he said.

  ‘I heard that. I went to France once. Calais, if you can call that France. Went with my father when I was a girl to buy an old carousel. Took a transporter over on the ferry. We were only there two hours. A piece of wasteland a quarter of a mile from the terminal. My father was coughing blood even then. He died a few months later.’

  ‘I was in Germany,’ he said. ‘In the war. Towards the end.’ As soon as the lie was out of his mouth he wished he could suck it back in. It was getting harder to remember all those non-existent facts and details. Besides, she was different.

  ‘You and a million others,’ she said.

  ‘It wasn’t anything special,’ he said, a retraction of sorts. ‘Ruins mostly.’ Newsreel footage.

  ‘My father’s funeral lasted a week,’ she said. ‘Longer. When we were in Calais he had his first ever glass of wine, we both did. First and last. Both of us.’ She stopped abruptly at the sudden fond memory.

  ‘Never got the taste for it,’ he said. Ellen’s wedding to Morris. For the toasts, everybody sipping at the unfamiliar drink, Morris making another of his points.

  ‘My father said afterwards that it was the worst muck he’d ever tasted.’ She smiled at the recollection. ‘But he said that drinking it with the Frogs saved him a few hundred quid. I can see the French eating horses.’ />
  ‘And snails and frogs,’ Devlin said.

  ‘You know a lot about the French all of a sudden.’

  ‘Not really. Just stuff I picked up.’

  ‘During the war?’

  ‘I suppose so. Afterwards, mostly.’ More edge chipped off the lie. He looked beyond her to the caravans and trailers, booths and covered rides. Most of the caravans would be empty for the winter.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she said. ‘Nothing to do with me. You’d need to pay your way.’

  ‘You could ask for me,’ he said.

  ‘What difference do you think that would make? They’re a law unto themselves, that pair, especially Patrick. Besides, he’d probably say no just because it had come from me.’

  ‘You’d be doing me a favour,’ Devlin said.

  Before she could answer him she was distracted by the arrival of the slaughterman, whose high, slat-sided lorry came noisily towards them.

  The vehicle drew up and the man climbed out and went immediately to look at the gathered horses. He slapped their bony flanks and held their heads to examine their yellow teeth.

  ‘He’s going through the motions,’ Maria said behind her hand to Devlin.

  ‘I thought they’d have a bit more meat on their bones when I made my offer,’ the man said as he came to them.

  ‘Change the record,’ Maria said.

  ‘Who’s this – your lover boy? Brought him along for a bit of clout?’

  ‘I’ve been running rings round you for the past five years,’ Maria said. ‘No need to stop now.’

  The man laughed and took out a roll of money.

  ‘Give me what you offered or you’ve had a wasted trip,’ Maria told him.

  The man made a point of looking back along the road. ‘Got others queuing up desperate to take them off your hands, have you?’

  ‘Pay her what you said,’ Devlin said to the man, coming closer to the pair of them.

  Both the slaughterman and Maria shook their heads at hearing this.

  ‘He’s eager, I’ll give him that,’ the man said to her.

  ‘He was in the war,’ Maria said, winking at Devlin. She knew.