by Ross Raisin
We were nearing the end the line of coaches and we slowed up, our Heartbeat Pullmans slopping and slapping inside us stomachs. We rested up against a wall on a quiet stretch past the mass of tourists, laughing like ale-partners.
Greengrass! She said it the same way I had, drating graaass all slow and drawn out. Sam, you’re a mentalist – what was all that about? Greengrass! I just laughed, and we carried on out of Goathland, walking slow as the crowd thinned and our breathing steadied to normal. There was a souvenir shop on the side the road, all manner of trunklements in the window – model police cars, records, tea towel displays of Greengrass and the policeman, even one of James Herriot, sat in a field with two hundred dogs on his lap. Tourists weren’t fussed this wasn’t Herriot country. They’d buy anything. Then I saw, at the bottom of the window, lined up on the sill, the mug I’d got for Father. Exact same mug, it was, Greengrass grinning away with his red neckerchief tied aslew. Probably this was the same shop me and Mum had come in that time, I wasn’t sure, it was so long back, all I remembered was we’d searched through every article in the place for something to give him.
We trod on, past a row of houses with viewsome gardens, flowers bouncing out of hanging baskets and chimney pots. What did he care if I’d run off over the Moors and wasn’t coming back? He couldn’t care a shite, was what, except there’d be more work for him. He didn’t think I was any use anyhow. He was probably up on the tops now, burning the dead ewe, if he’d not seen to it earlier. Wheeling it up the path, mawnging each time the barrow jammed in a rut, until he got to the charred patch of ground we used for the burnings, where he’d soak the wool with fertiliser and set it ablaze. He likely thought it was my fault. Not paid heed early enough when it took bad and now he’d lost a decent two-shear, fuckin’ boy’s even done a band-end jacketing on t’ lamb, that’ll need doing again.
The houses were spreading apart now as we made for the Moors, and there weren’t hardly any tourists about. There was only one left, coming otherways down the street, a man with a babby perched behind him on a rucksack seat. He gave me a queer look as he came past. Probably thought I was going to steal the babby. He had a gleg round once we’d crossed, checking it was still there. I just laughed, the tosspot, and I looked round at her, she was smiling away, lost with herself. He could give me all the queer looks in the world, for all I cared, I felt so bruff my innards were near bursting their pipes. He was a mentalist if he thought I was bothered about him.
♦
We walked another hour or two, until it was getting late and we were powfagged after our adventures. The sky had dimmed to dusk and a giant shadow spread over the Moors, turning them russet to dark brown, like a mighty beer stain soaking through a carpet. The train had took us east and it was more populated these parts, with small villages and hamlets hidden in gullies winding through the moorland. The sea was closer now. It was clear visible, bearing down on the coastline five or six miles off, craggy islands of rock specking black in the far ocean. Then, when the light got too weak, all you could see was a great black band brooding under the sky. She wanted to doss down anyplace, she was that tired, but I kept us walking, because it was fain important we searched out the right spot. It wasn’t too dark when we found one – a small wood, set apart on a plain of barren, quiet moor, no people or farms or villages around. I found us a dry plot between two trees and we settled for the night.
∨ Gods Own Country ∧
19
I slept a fair time, not waking until the sun was high above, bawling at us to get risen. I stood up and paced crammocky circles around her, getting my legs working as she slept on, balled up, her elbows tucked behind her knees and what seemed like the mention of a smile on her lips. Greengrass! Greengrass, get back here you nazzart! I had a little smile myself, watching her from above, then I strode off into the deep of the wood for a piss.
She was still asleep when I got back. She was like a whelp, gathering her energy with a mighty deep slumber to get herself full recharged, ready for more adventures. I stepped soft toward her, and lowered myself next her body. She didn’t stir, so I inched up closer until we were lying aside each other, snug as chicks in the nest, and I could feel her breath touching against my face. I stayed like that a time, watching her. What was queer – it wasn’t the times she was away from me, like before the lambing when I hadn’t seen her for weeks, it was these times, cosied up, or laughing together like barmpots, that my insides frammled knots from wanting to be closer still. Course, there was time yet, we had a whole future of day trips ahead, once we’d done with being convicts. All we needed was to think how to steal Sal again, then we’d be set. I looked at her a moment longer, then I edged away and sat a yard off, perched on my rucksack, until a few minutes later she stretched out with a yawn and opened her eyes.
What time is it?
Past eleven.
Is it? She sat up, rubbing the side of her face. I’m hungry.
I smiled. Come with me.
I waited for her to get up and follow, and I tried to take her hand but she wasn’t fussed for any of that yet, she was still half asleep, and I led her into the wood.
Where are we going?
Breakfast.
I brought us to a small clearing where the sun poked slats of light through a gap in the trees. She stood observing as I stooped into an old, dead tree stump that a bunch of tall nettles were growing inside. With my jacket sleeve pulled over my hand, I pinched hold a nettle leaf, and with my other hand I teased off the flowers underside of it. When I’d collected a palmful of the tiny, white petals, I held them up to show her. She thought I’d lost my brain, the face she had on her.
Suck one, I said.
She took a nettle flower, unsure, and held it up to her mouth, tightening her lips as she sucked on it.
Mmm, that’s sweet. She took another. Thanks, Nature Boy.
I shared out the rest the flowers between us.
They’re not going to fill you up, course, I said. Just tickle your belly some.
We finished our crop and went collecting some more from the nettle bushes growing round the edges of the clearing. She studied me, the first few pickings, so as to learn how to get them without being stung.
Sam, where did you go to school?
I plucked a flower and moved over to a new bush.
In town.
You didn’t like it either, did you?
School wasn’t so bad – it was the bastards in it I wasn’t so partial on.
She didn’t say anything else and I thought she’d let it by. She went on picking flowers in quiet as I trod off a distance, going behind another tree stump, but after a while she followed toward me, searching the nettle growths other side the stump.
Did you have a girlfriend at school? she said then.
I glegged over the stump top at her, lit up by a shaft of sunlight. She was concentrated on the nettles, waiting for what I’d say.
Yes.
I sucked a flower, the sweet tingle of nectar disappearing on my tongue. Someplace in the wood a bummelkite was buzzing away, searching out his own flowers to sup a drink from.
They weren’t all bastards, then, she said.
No, we got on fine.
She laughed. Well, that’s lucky, her being your girlfriend and everything. What was her name?
Katie Carmichael.
The drone of the bummelkite filled my brain – it sounded like it was inside my head, no matter it was really a way off in the distance, head jimmied up a flower bell, like some floppy white bonnet. That and his stripy black-yellow jumper, he was fetched up proper rambler. Katie Carmichael. I’d not spoke them words out loud for a fair time. I focused myself on the sound of the bee, blanking out all else, imagining him going from flower to flower, well, here’s a fine day for it, summer’s here, for sure, pity someone’s had at all the nettle flowers already.
Sorry, she said. You don’t mind me asking, do you? I was just interested.
No. Fine. It’s been three ye
ars anyhow.
She was looking at me over the stump. Is that when you left, school?
Yes. I lobbed an empty flower case on to the ground, avoiding her eyes. The bee had drufted further away, I strained for a listen of him, but he’d gone too far off.
We used to wag school together, I said.
Did you ever get caught?
Sometimes. We’d get put on detention.
The shaft of sunlight switched off like a light bulb as a hump of cloud passed over, slowly drifting through the clear sky as I watched it through the window, lost with myself, until Wetherill’s shout jarped my attention. Marsdyke! Stop time-wasting. You have an essay to write, I don’t need to remind you. I took up my pen and looked at the sheet in front of me – The Value of Education. All I’d wrote was – Education…and a picture of an alien with its nose drawn out of the E. I sneaked a glance sideways to look what him next me had wrote. Almost a page, was what, though I couldn’t read it – they didn’t let you sit too close in detention, to stop you playing up. I wasn’t heart-sluffened about that, mind, owing as it was an arsehole called James Trott sat next me, who was on detention for writing – Conway’s a spastic – on to his desk, and spelling spastic wrong.
Where to now?
She was back at the entrance of the clearing.
Come on, I said, walking past her toward the bags. You’re still hungry, are you?
Starved.
Come on, then.
We collected up the bags and returned on to the moorland, adjusting our eyes as we stepped outdoors of the wood into the bright. I was heading us east, toward the dull blue frame on the horizon, because that direction, about a mile away at the end this stretch of moor, was Garside – a village big enough there was a pub, and shops, and articles to steal. I didn’t tell her my plans yet. I was waiting until it was time, and she wasn’t in such a quiet study. She’d lipped up, thinking on what I’d told her. Imagining me and Katie Carmichael sneaking behind the back the school, kissing and holding hands and giggling at bollocks. Might’ve been she thought me and Katie Carmichael were still warm on each other, even after so long. She should’ve tried the picture I was thinking – of Katie Carmichael pinned to the desk and the flesh bruising up her arm. That’d cure her.
There was a bridleway we came to, led straight across the moor toward Garside. I wasn’t right sure of my plans yet, but I knew it’d need us both, one of us would likely have to be the distraction, knocking over a pile of tins or something similar. Oh dear, sorry about that, and the shopkeeper coming over to help, all smiles, don’t worry, love, it’s no problem just leave it to me – and all the while I’m stuffing my pockets with punnets of sarnies. She was tailing behind a yard or two. She hadn’t so much dander as yesterday, she was hungry, was why.
We’re going to steal us some lunch again, I said, over my shoulder.
Oh. Is that a good idea?
You want to eat, don’t you?
Well, yeah, of course, just…I’ve got some money, you know.
She’d not told me that. She’d not been so qualmish about stealing the day previous, neither. I thought for a moment whether we should use the money, to buy our lunch, but then I realised we’d be best saving it for the time. We’d have more need of it later.
We won’t get caught, I told her. You don’t need to spend your money. Come on.
As we neared the end the moor, a great, flat plain came into sight down below. Garside was settled in the middle, and the land all round it was coloured bright yellow with fields of oilseed rape, so as it seemed we were looking on some mighty daffodil, the village as its centre. The bridleway took us down the hillside to where the oilseed fields began, and we walked along the edge a while until we found a snickleway path through the yellow, and waded through, the tops of the flowers reaching up to our stomachs, a butter-coloured mass for miles all about us, bulging and writhing with the breeze. I picked the head off one. I wanted to show her how they split open with a squeeze and poured out a spew of greasy, black seeds slippery enough you couldn’t hold a fistful, they fell out your grasp as soon as your hand gripped. She was still in a study, though, and I didn’t tell her. They’d be harvested and ground to oil in a few months, all these crops, bubbling and spitting in skillets from this coast to the other as folk fried up their bacon and their panacalty. I’d learn her about all of that later, after we’d had a feed and she’d got her energy up. She’d see soon enough there was nothing to worry over, we’d be running out the shop with a bagful of food and the shopkeeper chasing after, holding hands and laughing like monkeys, she’d see.
I led her through the oilseed until the path met with a narrow, winding road that took us into the village. Garside wasn’t much – a scatter of houses along a single road, fair similar to Goathland, with a post office, a grocer’s, and a church aside a small graveyard. People who lived here didn’t want for much else. They could live and die and be buried a gobspittle from the house they got bred in.
There was nobody about, luckily, as we followed the bend in the road on to the main part the street, from where we could mark the whole place, deserted, peaceable as a fluffed fart.
That’s the grocer’s, look, I said, pointing her the village store, with its neat boxes of onions, potatoes and fire kindling lined up on a trestle table. All we have to do is you distract the shopkeeper while I get some food. I was talking fast, I knew, getting flowtered because we were about to begin the next of our adventures.
I’m not sure. What if we get caught?
But I didn’t answer her, I started for the shop, and she followed on. I could hear her footsteps behind me.
It was fettled tidier than any shop I’d ever stepped in, you’d think we were the first customers had ever come in the place. Down one side was all stacks of newspapers bound with string, and down the other was drink – a wall of green bottles most the length the shop, that turned white near the counter end where the drink ended at boxes of pills and medicines. They had that thought out right, I’d likely drink myself ill and all, if I lived here. I don’t think it’s a good idea, Sam, she said quiet. I told her it’d be fine and sent her walking down the drink aisle while I tantled near the entrance, examining letter pads and packs of envelopes. I didn’t look up, but I’d glegged the shopkeeper as we’d come in, a bald sod with a band-end wisp of moustache. I could feel his eyes on me. He was thinking – what’s he looking at them pads for? Who’s Lankenstein going to write a letter to? His mother and father? Katie Carmichael? Dear Katie, remember them times sneaking out behind the school, kissing and giggling? Them were good times, weren’t they? But I’ve got a new girl now, so you don’t need to worry about me. All the best, Lankenstein.
I moved down the aisle, among the biscuits. She was far side the shop still, I could see the top her head, shining under the strip light, never mind she hadn’t washed her hair and there were umpteen grimings of muck coated on her. She was stock-still. I couldn’t tell what she was doing. The bald sod wasn’t fussed about her, though, he had his glare my way. I could sneak a watch of him between packets of custard creams, and I saw that, next the counter where he was stood, there was a cold chest stocked with sarnies and scotch eggs. It’d been a calf-headed idea, I thought then, telling her to distract him. We’d got it arse-uppards. It should’ve been me doing the distracting, for who’s more suspicious-seeming—A bonny-faced young lass, or a brazzent-looking farmer in a raggedy jacket, studying letter pads? Arse-uppards or not, though, he was sudden moving off toward her, she must’ve called him over, codding him she needed help finding a medicine for some ailment. He gave a quick glower my direction as he left his spot behind the counter, I’ve my eye on you still, he meant, but I didn’t give a stuff where he had his eye, he wasn’t going to stop me smuggling sarnies now he was other side the shop. I’d bray him if he tried.
I sauntered down the aisle toward the cold chest, scanning the items along the shelves as I passed as if I was thinking what to buy – pasta, rice, gravy granules, no, I�
��m good for all of that already, I think it’ll just be the free sarnies today, that’ll be all. When I got to the chest, I gave a check behind, but I couldn’t see either of them, he was busy playing the quack, telling her which pills she needed to mend her ailments. I cast a look over the sarnie shelf. All lined up in plastic triangle cases, it started my juices running just seeing them. I was about to take one, but then I thought, it was something queer that I couldn’t hear them. If he was informing her on the medicines then certain I’d hear him chuntering, and then it flashed sudden in my head, what if she’d took off? The thought of it took me hold an instant, I hunched for a sight through the lower shelf cracks, and I saw I was being daft, I could see the both of them, they were close by each other and she was saying something to him, too quiet for me to hear. I hurried back to taking the sarnies. It was her fault, all these questions about Katie Carmichael, making me think like that.
I started stuffing them in my pockets – prawn mayonnaise, cheese and pickle, they were the only two labels I saw. I filled two into each the outside pockets, then I crammed the insides as well, my jacket was so swollen around my nethers it looked I had it mighty bad with the haemorrhoids. You have anything for that, do you? Hmm, well, let me see, I might have just the thing.
I tucked a bottle of water in the band of my kecks, and I was about done, ready to make off out the shop, when another thought stole into my brain – most the sarnies I’d took were prawn mayonnaise, but what if she wasn’t partial? There wasn’t sense in it, course, if I’d used a bit of gumption I’d have said to myself, how do you know she likes cheese and pickle, how do you know what sarnies she likes, except for pork and apple? But my gumption wasn’t strong enough to wrestle the thought out, and I started searching for anything different. Behind the counter was empty, they were still other side the shop, so I started fingering through the ones at the back. There were a couple of ham, and I pulled them from the shelf, but as I did it I knocked another packet off and it broke open on the floor, spilling shreds of lettuce on to the spanking clean tiles. Poor bald sod, he kept the place so tidy normaltimes, and I’d gone and made a muck-hole of it, but no matter – here he was coming round the aisle corner, ready to clean it up. He marked the sarnies sticking out my pockets and he clocked right away what was going on, shouting, oi, you thievin’ tyke! but he wasn’t so sure of himself to do anything on me, he just stood dithering, his bald slap gleaming beneath the light. I kicked the fallen sarnie at him and scarpered.
