Beneath the Skin

by Sandra Ireland

  ‘There’s no one in the house, kid. I sleep like a tripwire, I would have heard them. Want me to take you upstairs?’

  William nodded fiercely.

  The attic staircase was a scaled-down, flimsier version of the main one. Though it began on the landing outside his own bedroom door, Walt had never had call to venture up there until now.

  Walt sighed. He suspected this might be a ploy so the lad could witness the fitting of the prosthesis, something to tell his classmates. We’ve got this guy staying and his leg got blown off and I’ve seen the stump and everything.

  He strapped himself into the false leg. William was fascinated.

  ‘State of the art titanium that.’ Walt gave it a slap. ‘Fifteen thousand quid’s worth. Only the best for Her Maj’s troops.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be cheaper if they sent you somewhere where there’s no bombs?’

  There was no answer to that. Walt got to his feet. ‘Look, kid. See my coat over there, on the chair? Go in the pocket and there’s something there of yours. You left it behind when you were going through your stuff.’

  William dived on the coat, rifled through the pockets and held the button aloft.

  ‘Wow! Can I keep it? It’s awesome!’

  Walt chuckled. Should he put on his jeans? Mouse would have a fit if she saw the two of them parading around the house and him in his boxers. ‘It’s yours anyway, you clown!’

  ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘But it was on the chair, in the sitting room.’

  William shrugged. ‘Definitely not mine. I know my collection.’

  Walt seized the button. The Imperial Eagle winked at him in the light.

  21

  He went on his third tour without Tom.

  The place was hotter, dustier and tenser than he remembered. Home seemed further away and the jokes were blacker than they’d ever been before. Into the gaping Tom-shaped hole wandered Scoff. The mongrel was the same shade as the desert, and in those first days, when he lay down in the shade, his ribs were sharp as coat hangers, his flanks concave. Half of one floppy ear had been torn off, his fox’s nose was tattooed with bite marks, and when Walt picked him up to take him to the vet, he peed himself in fear.

  The Afghanis had no love for dogs; dogs were unclean. The Taliban had banned dog fighting but the ban was seldom enforced. All the most powerful local officials were said to be involved in it. Out on foot patrol, Walt would see the big barrel-chested Kuchis, the native breed, growling at the end of their chains: a warrior dog for a warrior people. The matches were staged mainly in the winter months, when the dogs were more energetic and their wounds healed faster. It was about money and respect. But most of all, money. Even in the tiny villages, with the men crouched in a circle and the dogs locked together in battle, the stakes were high: money, cars, reputations. A village elder had told him once that the dogs were fed on sheep’s feet and eggs to build them up and make them aggressive, while in the same tent sat three tiny children, thin as sparrows.

  The dogs that lost were turned out to fend for themselves. He couldn’t work out which was the better option.

  In a land of no pets, Scoff, as the lads dubbed him, quickly figured out how to be one. He chose Walt’s bunk to sleep on, stretching out like an electric blanket, and waited for him coming off patrol, eyes like chocolate, tail whipping up the dust. Every ten minutes spent with Scoff was ten minutes of not being on the front line. He felt his heart scab over one lick at a time.

  Scoff took to going on routine patrols with the unit, riding in the Mastiff like he’d been born to it, his tongue lolling and eyes shining. The day it happened, there’d been a heavy fog. They didn’t leave base until 1000 hours, sharing the usual banter as they got their kit together. They stopped not long after to do a vulnerable point check, assessing the threat of IEDS. Walt jumped out with his second in command; he went to the right, Mac to the left. The place, usually bustling with market traders and livestock, was quiet. Something cold fingered the back of Walt’s neck. He walked carefully around the piles of rubble and garbage that littered the road, his hands sweating on his rifle. Something didn’t feel right. He turned to Mac.

  He may have got the words out before the bomb detonated, but he wasn’t sure. He was still trying to speak when the others rushed to his side. Someone was doing something with a tourniquet. ‘You’re all right, mate,’ said Mac, ‘you’ve still got your crown jewels.’ He wasn’t in pain, not then, but he could feel something warm under his leg. His eyes were full of dust. It was much later, when they flew him back to England, that he found out Scoff had jumped out of the Mastiff after him and taken the full force of the blast.

  22

  Alys slept all the next day. Walt looked in on her once; she was curled up under the white cotton duvet like a princess. Her skin was waxy, lips parted as she breathed softly through her mouth. Mouse must have been in there: everything was neat, ordered in a way that Alys could never have achieved. Her clothes – the bloodstained sweater and skinny jeans – had been laundered and folded and placed on a chair. The long brown boots she always wore stood to attention, heels together, at the end of the bed. He could imagine Mouse pottering around in here, taking control because she could, with her sister sleeping like a baby. She could clean and tidy and make it all okay.

  With Alys wounded in action, it fell to Walt to man the fort. He was never keen to be alone in the basement, but there was a delivery to be put away. He’d placed the order himself, according to Alys’s instructions: tow and raffia for stuffing and fixing, preservative and artificial bird feet, almost as cutting-edge as his own. ‘Suitable for jays and magpies’, the online description had said. Opening the studio door and flicking the light switch, he found himself daydreaming about rows of prosthetic human feet in some secret warehouse. Maybe they’d have labels attached to their big toes: ‘Suitable for lesser-spotted, dark-haired Aquarian.’ The idea made him chuckle.

  He’d left the boxes behind the till, and he was already rooting in the drawer for a Stanley blade when he realised the floor was clear. He was sure he’d left them there: six cardboard boxes.

  Still gripping the knife he went through into the workshop, automatically sniffing the air. The whiff of dead bird had faded, but it had been replaced by something else: a sort of school-dinner-hall fustiness. The skin on the back of his neck crawled and his grip tightened on the knife. He remembered the boxes. How could six boxes disappear? Would Alys have moved them? She certainly wouldn’t have emptied them and put them away. Then he noticed the pink invoice, flattened out on Alys’s workbench and weighted down by a small pair of scissors. He scouted round the room, bent to look beneath the workbench. There they were. He counted to make sure: six boxes. He straightened up. Had Alys risen from her bed and moved them? It hardly seemed likely. He was suddenly afraid to touch anything. He needed to get up to the surface, to remain in the light.

  Brain fizzing with the possibilities, he ended up in the kitchen, mechanically raiding the fridge. There were a few cans of beer left; he’d bought a load in specially, much to Mouse’s disgust. Snagging them by the plastic tag, he slammed the door shut. It was only as he was passing the table that he smelled the coffee. Alys’s place setting was, as usual, untouched, but the mug, her special mug, was filled with coffee.

  His breathing went funny, became lodged high up in his throat. Alys hated coffee. She liked tea, milky, with two sugars. Baby tea, William called it; even he didn’t drink tea that weak. So who was drinking black coffee from Alys’s mug? He dipped in his pinkie. The liquid was stone cold, as if it had been hanging around for hours; a pre-dawn caffeine fix.

  With the beers banging against his thigh, Walt exited the kitchen. Had Alys had another episode? Had she been up in the small hours, consumed by a mad notion for strong coffee? He dropped the beers at Shackleton’s feet and jogged up the stairs. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar, and he paused to catch his breath. He always experienced this sick lurch of the stomach before entering Aly
s’s vicinity. It was disturbing. He saw himself in her damaged eyes, and he knew he would leave here the worse for it. He’d brought back all sorts of shite from Afghanistan, stuff you couldn’t pack in your kit bag, and he didn’t have room for any more.

  He pushed open the door. Alys was still out for the count. He couldn’t imagine she’d had a mad midnight coffee break after moving six boxes of taxidermy supplies.

  Creeping back downstairs, he collected his beer and shut himself in the cold green sitting room. There was rugby on TV. Mouse had taken William to the cinema, and the house was too quiet. He’d grown used to the sound of William jumping down the stairs two at a time, speaking to the great polar bear or the cats. Mouse sang along to the radio in the kitchen, when she thought no one was about. She liked Ed Sheeran, knew all the words. He wanted to ask her about the coffee (Mouse would never have used Alys’s mug) and the boxes, to share this anomaly with her. He missed her, and the realisation hit him hard, like a punch to the abs.

  He turned up the commentary and tried not to think.

  Later, he went down to the basement again. He’d look at the date on the invoice; maybe it was an old one that hadn’t been filed. He felt like a kid, scrabbling to slam on the lights before the bogeyman got there. The trouble was, he realised, the bogeyman had been there before him.

  A sharp stink of something wild and musky alerted him to trouble. There was a dead fox lying on top of the glass display case in Alys’s workroom. It was stretched out and moth-eaten, like a vintage stole. The little birds underneath looked haunted and trapped.

  He couldn’t see the fox’s face. There was no way of knowing whether it was stuffed or simply deceased. The only thought that invaded his head was that it didn’t walk there by itself. Someone had brought it in.

  He went as close as he dared, trying to block out the smell. If he was looking for clues he could find only one. The red baseball cap was now on the workbench beside the invoice.

  23

  When he went down to the basement on Monday morning, Alys was already there, looking composed and freshly showered; even just standing in the doorway, he got the scent of peach. Her hair was damp, scooped up into a neat knot. Perched on a stool, she was leaning into the display case, adjusting a fine detail of moss with a pair of tweezers. She was bathed in a warm glow from the solitary lamp, but there was something else about her, a sort of suppressed fizz, like she was lit from inside.

  He’d made no sound, but she glanced around anyway. Her skin was still pale, washed out in the bright light, but her eyes were clear. It was impossible to read her mood, to know what to say for the best. He had never mentioned to Mouse about the coffee, the fox, the red cap, the unexplained delivery. There had to be a rational explanation.

  ‘Sorry we had to dump the birds,’ he said. That sounded lame, and even a bit brutal.

  She shrugged. ‘I have a contact in the country. He’s going to bring me some more birds. A wren too!’

  ‘Is that the contact who brought you the dead fox?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Does he have a key?’

  She looked more like her old self, although he wasn’t too sure, now, of the real Alys. He didn’t know her well enough, and anyway, that’s what happens when your mind starts playing up. You lose sight of who you are and so does everyone else. Even the people who know you best, who love you, don’t know how to be around you any more.

  How did someone fulfil a large order for birds? He shied away from the thought.

  Ignoring his questions completely, she said, ‘So in the meantime, I’ve sketched out what’s in my head. So I don’t lose it.’

  Lose the idea? Or the plot? She fished a large piece of cartridge paper from under the table and held it out to him. He moved closer to take it from her. She was talented. The whole tableau, the vision that made her go crazy, was set out in detail worthy of a Leonardo sketch. In frozen, wintry colours she had captured a band of birds: a crow in a periwig, starlings in neckerchiefs and blackbirds with muskets; sparrows, goldfinches, even a robin in a Dick Turpin hat. And in the centre, the wren, lolling dramatically from Moodie’s gibbet. To be hanged by the neck until you are dead. No mercy.

  Walt thrust the page back at her, and if she noticed anything she didn’t let on. Instead, she flashed her lightning smile and said, ‘I love starting on a project! Love it, I get so excited opening up a new specimen my hands shake!’

  ‘Your hands shake?’

  ‘Yes – just imagining the anatomy inside! The colours, the . . .’

  He had to stop her. He put his hands on her, on her shoulders, felt his palms close over the bones. ‘Don’t, Alys. Jesus, you’re weird.’

  She was still smiling. Her teeth were very white, like she never chewed anything with colour in it. He imagined them biting into his skin. Her breathing was shallow; he could see it pushing at the little bones in her neck. Her arms grew warm under his palms. She was whispering something, her lips dry like bruised leaves; she slid off the stool, deliberately bumping into him, into his hips. He hadn’t meant to be that close but, like the wren, he’d been too slow to move. She rubbed against him like a cat. Belly to belly. There was something wildly intimate about it: that they weren’t even touching or kissing but she’d closed the gap between them just the same. He was shocked at his reaction; he felt the twitch of his erection and so did she, and she grinned all the more and this time closed the gap all the way, pressing against him and looping her arms about his neck. There was something greedy about the way she pressed her mouth to his. The scent of peaches was overwhelming. He knew he should push her away from him, but he felt like jelly. Or his knees did anyway; everything further north was rock hard.

  She whispered, ‘I want to ask you something,’ and he replied, ‘What, what do you want to ask?’ and their voices intermingled like their breath.

  ‘William told me about your leg.’

  Kiss.

  ‘Mm?’

  She pulled back an inch, stroked his face. ‘You never told me about your leg.’

  ‘My foot. It’s just my foot.’ Like it really mattered – even though it did. He’d slept with a girl since it happened, just to affirm life, but he was afraid of the pity face, the sympathy. Alys kissed him again, hungrily; he could feel the shake in her and he was shaking too.

  ‘I want to see it.’

  ‘What?’

  She leaned back, licked her lips. Really licked them, and that light in her eye . . . He should have known Alys would be different.

  ‘I want to see it – the scar, the stump. Show me.’

  An icy chill shaved through his bones. Alys held his gaze. Her hand travelled to his waist, to his groin. Her touch burned through the denim of his jeans. Alys, who always avoided eye contact, was looking into him like he was empty, a vacant skin for her to probe, to play with.

  ‘No.’ He pulled away from her quick, clever fingers.

  ‘Alys, have you seen the . . .’ Mouse suddenly appeared in the doorway. ‘The phone bill.’ Her voice dropped away. Walt pushed Alys to one side, kept his back turned, embarrassed. Alys was unfazed.

  ‘Thought you were at work.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Don’t give me that look, Mouse!’

  Walt risked a glance at Mouse. Her mouth set in a tight line and she was blushing furiously, and he felt himself going red. Why the hell was he embarrassed? He was a free agent. Don’t get involved, he told himself. Jesus, Mouse made him feel like a naughty schoolboy.

  ‘It could have been William coming through this door!’ Mouse snapped. ‘It’s not on.’

  Walt had an inappropriate urge to laugh. The bulge in his jeans was subsiding, so he turned around and tried to reason with her.

  ‘Sorry, Mouse. It wasn’t what it looked like.’ For some reason he wanted her to believe it was meaningless, but Alys was getting all uppity.

  ‘Sorry? Don’t apologise! This is my house. Mouse, if you don’t like it, you know what to do.’ She flounced back to the display case.
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br />   Mouse stormed out.

  Walt dithered between them. ‘Why did you say that?’

  She didn’t answer. On impulse he followed Mouse back to the house and caught up with her in the hallway. She stood in the shadow of Shackleton and turned on him, eyes spitting fire.

  ‘When did my son see your leg?’

  He’d been rehearsing what to say about Alys – I was fighting her off, honest – but he wasn’t expecting that.

  ‘Um, couple of nights ago, I think. He came into my room.’

  ‘Into your room?’ Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. Above her the polar bear looked down his lofty nose and snarled.

  ‘He thought he heard something. It was late, I’d been sleeping . . . I took him back up to bed.’

  ‘And he saw your leg.’

  ‘He was curious. Look, let’s stick to the problem.’

  ‘You are the fucking problem!’

  He flinched. Her hair was wild, her face in shadow. He didn’t know this person any more. She was a cornered bear.

  ‘We were fine until you rolled up,’ she spat.

  ‘You weren’t fine!’ he shouted back. ‘You’re trapped here playing nurse, cleaner and fuck knows what else to a woman who needs some kind of diagnosis. You’re bringing up a child in a place where there are so many secrets he thinks he can uncover them by turning the place over like a cat burglar. All I did was switch on the light!’

  He was breathing hard and so was she, like they’d been for a hard sprint together. Her eyes glittered like ice chips.

  ‘Stay away from Alys,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I intend to. You heard what she said about my leg?’

  Mouse shook her head slowly.

  ‘I thought she was going to ask for the blown-off foot so she could stuff it and add it to her little shop of horrors.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Mouse slipped a hand across her stomach.

  ‘Don’t? If you distrust anyone around William, it should be her, not me.’

  ‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’