‘We don’t have to go,’ Gabriel suggested.
Michael glared at him and trudged on.
‘Michael?’
‘We are not some bloody cowards, are we? My dad says the cowards were the worst culprits in the war. They deserved to die.’
This was enough to shut Gabriel up. He had no heroes in his own family. Uncle Gerry had often said of himself that he was not to be relied upon. Had he been a coward in the war? Gabriel felt the bracing wind on his bare arms and wondered whether bravery ran in the blood. His own tactics, worked out in his early years, had always been escape. At least, in this way, he had stayed alive.
‘And, by the way, we’re in this together, right?’ Michael demanded.
‘Right,’ Gabriel answered weakly.
The Giant’s Table was a large stone slab perched on three megaliths. Legend said that it was where the giants of the moor would gather at summer solstice to feast on bulls stolen from the paddocks at night. They would use the discarded bones as toothpicks and drink from a nearby pond until it was almost dried out and took an entire year of rain to fill up again. The dolmen stood by itself in a remote field about two and a half miles from the village, but could be seen from some distance. As the boys approached, they could make out four people hovering under the upright stones: Jim and Billy and the two bullies from Hogleigh, who had been present in the lane the night before. They were laughing and drinking bottles of pop. Perhaps it will not be so bad, Gabriel thought to himself. He glanced sideways at Michael, who stared straight ahead. His face was closed and white and you could not tell what he was thinking at that moment.
‘Hello there!’ Jim shouted cheerfully as they approached. ‘Would you like a drink?’
Gabriel suddenly realised that they were not drinking pop at all, but real beer. He shook his head. Jim of Blackaton seemed taller, as if he had grown overnight – blown up, over life-size, by the wind and the beer in the brown bottles. He was holding a wooden stick in his hand. When he had finished his beer, he lobbed the bottle into the air and smashed it with the stick so that tawny shrapnel splintered over the grass around them. Billy and the Hogleigh boys cheered and clapped.
‘All right, give me my vase.’
Gabriel closed his eyes as he heard Michael’s defiant voice beside him.
‘Alright,’ said Jim, convivially. ‘But first we’d like to carry out a little experiment.’
Michael sighed and was about to say something when Jim interrupted him.
‘Lads,’ he said and gestured with his stick towards the two boys from Hogleigh. They all put their bottles down on the ground and fetched a bucket that had been hidden behind one of the stones. One of them was carrying a thick rope. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced you properly,’ said Jim. ‘This is Pete, and that’s Ash.’ He nodded towards the boy with the rope. ‘Lads, I believe you already know Bunny-boy and Fluffy, the Poofters of Mortford.’ Everyone laughed, apart from Michael and Gabriel, who did not know what a poofter was.
‘Now,’ said Jim of Blackaton, ‘we all know that poofters are dirty little pigs that need to be scrubbed, and we are going to help you with our special concoction.’
‘Michael, let’s get out now, please.’ Gabriel could hear that his voice sounded pathetic. But just then Billy Dunford and the two Hogleigh boys grabbed Michael and pulled him towards one of the stones. The three of them held him tight as Billy and the boy called Ash wound the rope twice around Michael’s upper body and arms and then around the stone, where it was pulled into a tight knot, leaving him limp and lifeless. Gabriel remembered Michael’s voice from many years ago, on that first day in the schoolyard: ‘Why did you just take it? Why didn’t you try to get away?’ Now he wanted to ask the same of Michael; he wanted to scream at him and wake him up, but a little part of him knew what Michael was doing, that he was leaving his body so that whatever was going to happen to him would happen in another reality – a reality where acceptance becomes a long, dreamless sleep. Gabriel’s knees had begun to tremble and he felt like sitting down. But, for the moment, nobody seemed to mind him.
Jim of Blackaton stood again, like the towering executioner, perfect within his limits, contained and hard like a marble statue of an ancient tyrant or a medieval knight in armour, lance in hand – immaculate, irreproachable and safely surrounded by his henchmen. Suddenly, he opened his flies and started pissing into the bucket. A thick steaming line of urine streaked through the sunny morning. When he was done, he buttoned up his trousers and burped.
‘Right, now it’s your turn,’ he said, casually, and pointed at Gabriel – who could not refuse. Nor could he obey, because, however much he tried, nothing would come. He held his aching penis over the bucket, knowing that, if he didn’t do this, things would only get worse, and knowing at the same time that it did not matter. That it was already done. All the badness was already out in the air around them and there was no way of stopping it. It was too late to be brave. He should have been brave five minutes ago, ten minutes ago – an hour ago. Then he might have been able to save his friend, but now there was nothing left but his betrayal, which made his skin prickle in the wind and his penis shrivel up between his fingers. And, in all the horror of it, there was a terrible, irresistible warmth deep inside his stomach and a tightening in his testicles. He was no longer the victim – or was he?
Gabriel was looking deep into the bucket, his neck reddening under the strain. He could see that it was half full of rosehips, which had been crushed into a mush with the seeds – which would make your skin itch – exposed in the red pulp. Billy Dunford was impatient and pushed him aside to urinate into the bucket himself. Gabriel noticed that Billy’s dick was large and there were ginger hairs around it.
‘Now stir it,’ Billy said, and gave Gabriel a push. Gabriel looked around for something to stir it with, but Billy shouted at him again: ‘Just use your hand and give it a good old stir.’ Gabriel did as he was told while the others watched in silence.
‘Urgh!’ exclaimed the boy called Pete. ‘It stinks!’
‘That’s right,’ confirmed Jim, smiling broadly. ‘Now get his pants off.’
Gabriel thought, at first, they meant to take his own trousers off, but realised that they were moving towards Michael, who was slumped against the stone, temporarily forgotten. But, when they started to unbutton his trousers and rip off his pants, he came alive again and started screaming and kicking.
‘Gabe! For Christ’s sake, help me! Don’t let them do this!’
‘The pig is screaming. We’d better scrub him quickly before anybody hears,’ said Jim, and he slapped Gabriel’s back rather hard. ‘You, rub this stuff into his cock and then pour the rest over him – it will give him a real itch.’
The others laughed and jeered as Gabriel grabbed the bucket and walked up to Michael.
‘Don’t do it, Gabe. Throw it back at them. Or pour it out at my feet – please.’ The words came slowly and painfully through Michael’s mouth.
Gabriel looked around at Jim and Billy, who had made his childhood hell. He could hardly remember it now. It seemed like a long time ago.
‘Are you a little poofter, too? Would you like a good scrub yourself, perhaps?’ they yelled.
Gabriel swallowed and closed his eyes as he reached into the bucket for a handful of the stinking mush. Michael did not flinch as Gabriel pushed the muck on to his genitals and rubbed it in, almost tenderly, making sure every inch was covered and reaching behind to push it in between the cheeks of his bum, where he knew the itch would be particularly bad. He did not look at Michael’s face, but kept staring at the small prick and the red testicles between his own fingers. He closed his eyes but his eyelids no longer protected him. There had been a time when Gabriel could not tell their bodies apart – when they had been one and the same. But now they were completely separate, like strangers who had just met for the first time.
Michael’s body was still and tense, but Gabriel could hear him sobbing and felt some wet drip on t
o his arm. He looked down at the shattered tear drying into the skin that had tanned all through the spring of their shared childhood. He stood back then, heaved the bucket up with both arms and poured the rest of the content over Michael’s bent head. He was aware of the clapping and jeering behind him, but did not turn round. He stood straight and looked at Michael, who spluttered and spat and finally raised his head so that they stood facing each other, the best of friends, each in his own space, and Gabriel knew that there was more than a world between them. And to have Michael looking at him like that with his eyes …
He was hardly aware of Billy Dunford slapping his back before untying the knot at the back of the stone. He saw Michael stumble forward with the red rosehip mush still in his hair and the white seeds too, and his trousers curled around his ankles so that he could not walk properly but fell on to his hands and knees so that Gabriel saw the stuff on his bum that would itch and itch, and he did not notice the others until Jim hooted again and threw something into the air, splitting it with his stick, so that the parts fell hard on to the grass, and it was the blue vase for Mrs Bradley, breaking, breaking.
He thought, for a moment, that there was nothing left to destroy. For one wonderful moment he believed that their shared shame, his and Michael’s, could not be any greater. But, when he breathed in, when relief made him try the air again, he knew at once that he had been wrong. There was a new threat all around them, blacker than before and denser, smelling of bull and something sweeter, like red carnations.
‘I’ll teach you fucking bum boys to do as I say.’ Blackaton’s voice had changed, too. It was deeper. The image of the cow drowning in the mine ripped through Gabriel’s mind. It made him flinch.
‘Hey, Billy, help me hold this bastard down. Put your foot there on his neck so that he lies still.’ The last thing he, Gabriel, saw before closing his eyes was Michael kneeling, the trousers trapping him at the ankles, with his head pushed down into the grass and his bum in the air and Jim of Blackaton stooping over him, gripping the stick hard in his hand. ‘And you two, make sure Bunny-boy sees all of this. Make sure he hears the piggy squeal.’
Gabriel felt their arms reaching across his body from behind, like tentacles. Hard fingers tensed around his upper arms and pulled at them and locked them behind his back so that he cried out in pain.
‘Shut up, you freak, and watch Jimmy play with your sweetheart!’ His head was jerked back. It felt as if the hair was coming out of his head.
‘This is how you take it, you filthy bum boy.’ Hissing, panting between his teeth. ‘Up your arse. Like. A. Fucking. Beast!’
Keeping his eyes shut, he couldn’t close his ears to Michael’s screams, tearing at the air. No, no, no, no, came from inside his own head and, almost as close, the quickening of somebody else’s breath and the pick, pick, pick of his captor’s heart, beating against his own back. To think that there’s still a heart somewhere in all of this; that hearts are still beating. And, outside, what was happening was the singing of a blackbird.
And then his eyes opened to blackness and he knew that he had become the black beetle, looking out.
‘Bloody hell, Jim – leave it, now. We’d better get out of here, quick.’
Soon, I shall break the thin thread that’s still holding us together, he felt, as it was happening. I’m doing it now, he thought, as he managed to break free from those arms, which were not so sure of themselves anymore, and started running, stumbling blindly across the moor, with only the shadows from the stones chasing after him this time. The shadows, and that look in Michael’s eyes.
Who would know that he was responsible? Who would even recognise him? He was no longer the same, after all. The solid, immovable lump above his stomach was not his heart, the wordless noises that came out of his mouth were not his voice, and his own face was replaced by the face of betrayal.
He felt the pain stabbing his side, but ran on, leaving Michael behind. Leaving Michael alone.
*
That night, he could not cry but, as he lay face down on the aching bed, tears fell like rain in his room. All through the night he could hear it falling. ‘Please, Gabe, don’t do it,’ Michael said again, and he answered from the darkness: ‘You’re safe with me. I’ll protect you, like you protected me in the beginning.’
He lay there in the grieving dark, trying not to breathe, and thought that perhaps this was true – that it was still somehow possible to turn it all back and start again. And then he would be right as rain.
5
Mr Askew stood in the hall, wearing his gabardine coat, and listened to the pendulum of silence swinging backwards and forwards. The boxes in the corner were covered in a fine layer of dust, but the tiles, at least, were still perfectly geometrical and their contrast of black and white was comforting. There were only two outcomes, two ends, Mr Askew felt: either he would be destroyed or else maybe he would be completed. Yes, there was still that chance.
He shrugged and recalled his purpose for the day, which was the village market. Sighing, he felt for the keys in the prolapsed pocket of his old trench coat and looked around a final time, hoping that there might still be the possibility of escape. He caught a glimpse of himself in the dark mirror and looked away at once. Reaching to switch off the lights, he remembered that the bulb had blown and needed replacing. Once again, he patted his pocket to make sure the keys were there. He took a deep breath, almost choking on the smell of dust and something brown and gloomy – a dead mouse, perhaps – but it was faint enough that it could be dealt with at some later date. He opened the door and stepped out into the blustery wind. The trees at the end of the garden were agitating against each other.
Parked cars were lining the street in the centre of the village and the narrow pavement was congested with young women pushing prams and herding children. Mr Askew stepped into the road and waited next to a parked Land Rover. He looked on, appalled, as a family of holidaymakers pushed past. They were each dressed in what looked like the gear a pirate, stripped of his finery, would wear on the way to the gallows: beige knee-length trousers, thong sandals and cotton vests in fearful colours. One of the children was carrying a toy gun, as if he was still prepared to defy the law.
Continuing to avoid the pavement, Mr Askew hobbled along the street, past the churchyard with its old, reassuring stones that watched wisely over the valley to the east. The market was held indoors, in the Jubilee Hall by the pay-and-display car park.
He cursed himself for having agreed to help out at Mrs Sarobi’s organic vegetable stall. What had possessed him? He had, at least, washed his best shirt in the bath the previous night and pressed his trousers under the mattress. The jacket was still good and the tie … The tie might be quite wrong for the occasion, but that idea had only just struck him. He pulled it out and looked at it closely. There was an old spot of grease – a vestige of a college dinner – béchamel, perhaps, or just ordinary gravy. Putting it back inside his jacket, he sighed and pulled at the belt of his trench coat. He wanted to look good today. At least my breath does not stink of cigarettes or some awful gum disease, he thought to himself as he entered the hall.
There were women everywhere and the decibel level was high. One or two prosaic-looking men hovered amongst the stalls, timidly waiting to give their opinion of some object they generally did not care for – or pull out a wallet. Children, balancing dangerously on the cusp of eagerness and boredom, were cluttering the passages and Mr Askew was beginning to feel quite keenly that his being there was a mistake. Just then, he heard somebody calling his name. He looked up to see Mrs Sarobi waving at him from a stall at the back of the room. Her voice had given his name a gentle but distinct substance, for which he was grateful. She made it sound like a river, sleeked with silver and green.
Apologising as he went – but managing to avoid unnecessary attention – he made his way through the crowd towards Mrs Sarobi’s table. There was sweat on his brow when he got there, but he achieved a smile. ‘This is quite somethi
ng …’ he said, feeling slightly less outlandish.
She laughed, but without irony or malice. ‘Yes, almost like a souk. You’d better come behind the table, where there’s a bit more space.’ She was wearing a white linen tunic and black slacks and her hair was swathed loosely in a bright ochre-coloured scarf.
He followed her advice and squeezed past the adjacent stall. Her vegetables were laid out in plastic baskets and labelled neatly with wooden plaques. To one side, there was a vase with posies of pink and white poppies. He admired them closely and smiled at her. ‘They are the simplest of joys, aren’t they?’ Her eyes, he saw, were very dark out of the sunlight.
She nodded. ‘Yes, they can be …’ But sometimes, she felt, they represented the greatest of threats.
He looked at her curiously. ‘You’re not so sure about them?’
‘Sure about them?’ She laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know … Where I come from, the poppy fields used to be the most beautiful things you have ever seen.’ She could see them now; each poppy was so fragile, but together they bled like silk through the valleys – a natural beauty that contained a threat so deadly and so powerful that a succession of soldiers took charge of the cultivation, tainting it with the smell of metal. It was the greatest of ironies and, for a moment, the thought of it threatened to draw her back into that sheath of darkness. She felt she was losing herself. Not here; not now. These vegetables in their baskets protected her against all that.
‘Mrs Sarobi?’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’ He touched briefly the white fabric of her tunic, his hand resting on her back. That warmth.
‘Yes,’ she said, steadying herself against the table. ‘Yes, of course.’ She laughed brightly, feeling the touch of his hand.
He did not quite understand, but he had seen the shadow on her face and wanted to say something consoling. Instead, he uncovered himself, as if offering a kind of gift.
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