A buzzard soared overhead, away from the sun, but Gabriel ignored its invitation and continued westward along the ridge, the bike rolling more easily now on the firmer ground. He had lost sight of the two figures he had seen previously and, after a couple of miles, he knew that he was lost. This was a part of the moor he had never been to before. The wind was rising. He had gone too far. Something told him he ought to turn round and follow the watchful buzzard back towards civilisation. He hesitated. There was a swift chill in the June air; he could feel it now and he wished he had brought his pullover. A single sheep bleated forlornly somewhere nearby and was answered from afar. He felt with the tip of his tongue along the fine fuzz of his upper lip and sighed. At times such as this, his natural instinct was to give up, to walk out and pretend it didn’t matter. No one ever asked him to explain his actions. Gabriel’s relationship with his mother had grown even more distant lately. Most things about him were either conveniently forgotten or brushed under the carpet, and so he reckoned that what he did or didn’t do was of no real consequence. Slipping away was easy. And yet, on this particular evening, he felt a sudden urge to explore the moment – just as he would have done as a boy, charging over the moor with Michael at his side. He was aware that Michael had once made him braver and that the weakness inside him was all his own doing. He was the wrong one, the one who must try to set things right. And yet he seemed utterly unable to better himself – he remained a coward.
Cycling on, he felt a rush of excitement. His new-found bravery was followed by that familiar tightening in his groin and he had to brace himself not to reach down to his fly and touch it. There had been other times on the moor. Hardening. The smell of gorse flowers – sweet, sticky. The shame of it. Why would it not leave him alone? Instead, he pushed on over the heathland. The exercise felt good and eased the compulsion for the moment. The wind found its way into his cotton shirt, filling the fabric over his back like a spinnaker. He stopped and listened. He could hear music on the air. Turning his head, he followed the failing notes off the high ground and into a narrow valley where a stream had once been channelled away to leave a dry riverbed. There, hidden in a grove of stunted oak trees, was a dilapidated granite farmhouse. It surprised him that he hadn’t seen it before, it had been so close, but then the moss-covered walls merged seamlessly into the surrounding vegetation, and the roof, a muddle of turf and rusting corrugated iron, further camouflaged the building. The small windows were all boarded up, but the notes from a piano escaped through a gap between the wall and the roof, where a small part of the drystone wall had crumbled. A dribble of damp smoke leaked from a broken chimney.
Gabriel felt confused. Why hadn’t he smelt the peat on the wind? He did not usually miss signs like that. Just then, he heard a noise to his left and drew in his breath as a large Alsatian bared its teeth in a snarl and growled at him, its tail stuck out like a standard. ‘Shush! It’s okay,’ Gabriel whispered in his broken voice, holding up both hands as if threatened with a gun. The dog stood tensely and looked at him through narrow eyes. Thankfully, it was safely tied to one of the miniature oaks and, perhaps for this reason, realising it was mastered, it decided not to bark. Gabriel lowered the bike softly into the tall grass and walked up to the house. The door hung loosely on its hinges and, as he pushed it open, a gust of wind forced its way through the narrow passage to announce his arrival.
The single room was dim with smoke and thick with alcohol fumes. Vague grey light sieved through the broken roof in places and a couple of hurricane lamps were hanging from the rafters. Rough-looking men, hardened by years of labour and drink, were seated at a couple of trestle tables made out of old doors. Cards and dice were spread in front of them. Others were slumped on mismatched chairs – probably brought along by the drinkers themselves – drawn up to a damp hearth where a peat fire was struggling to take hold. Still others seemed to be leaning against the wall, asleep or too drunk to move. A few men looked up from their drinks with a flicker of interest as Gabriel entered, but most continued their silent gaming as if nothing had changed. There was only one woman in the room, no more than a girl, really. She moved through the shadows carrying a tray, picking up ashtrays and abandoned glasses. She was pretty in a freshly scrubbed sort of way – a pink and white waitress uniform hugged her small body. She looked dangerously out of place, like a pastel toy dropped on a motorway.
Gabriel was stunned. His eyes were drawn to the source of the music – an upright piano in the middle of the room, a burning candle melting on to the polished wood. He might have seen a ghost. Draped over the piano, hardly able to stand up, was Uncle Gerry, wordlessly humming along to a hectic ragtime dance. Clinking away at the battered keys, dressed in black tie, the suit too large for his thin frame, and with kohl painted around his eyes, was Michael. Gabriel recognised him straight away. His dark hair was pasted back with water or oil and his feet, which tapped frantically to the rhythm of the music, had been squeezed into what looked like the shoes he had worn for Mr Bradley’s funeral. Surely they couldn’t still fit him? Sweat was trickling down his temples and there was something manic in his eyes. The two figures at the piano seemed to be isolated from the rest of the men, as if they were part of the room itself; they might have come with the rest of the interior of the dilapidated barn, the same way a good pianist becomes part of the furnishings in a high-class cocktail bar.
Abruptly, the music stopped. A couple of the men applauded absentmindedly. Uncle Gerry had slumped forward over the piano, like a marionette with cut strings, and Michael sat motionless, dazed and panting and looking down at the keys as if they might reveal to him what was going on. Suddenly, he stirred and looked up, straight at Gabriel. A crazed smile spread across his tragic face, where the kohl had melted on to his cheeks. ‘Gabe, my man!’ he shouted in a high-pitched voice. ‘Come over here and dance with me.’ He held out his arm, as if for a waltz. A couple of the men laughed and jeered. The shame of it made Gabriel shrivel up inside. Why had he not followed the buzzard?
Michael stood up, steadying himself with a hand on Uncle Garry’s shoulder. ‘C’mon, have some moonshine,’ he said elatedly, pulling a grimy bottle from out of Uncle Gerry’s coat pocket. ‘It will soften you up … You have become so … wooden.’
‘No, thanks.’ Uncle Gerry and Michael – together – here. Why hadn’t they told him? For how long? Without him.
‘Ah, go on,’ Michael pleaded jovially, taking an unsteady step closer to Gabriel. ‘It’ll do you good.’
At that moment, Uncle Gerry groaned loudly and slipped rather elegantly on to the earth floor, where he remained, curled up like a foetus. The soles of his shoes were worn through, Gabriel noticed, and then, as he looked on in horror, a puddle slowly formed around his uncle.
Michael turned, precariously, to follow his gaze. ‘Oh, dear me,’ he slurred. ‘Looks like Uncle G has pissed himself again.’ He swayed around again and, leaning closer to Gabriel, whispered conspiratorially out of the corner of his mouth, ‘He’s such an awful lush, you know.’
‘Shut up!’ Gabriel wheezed, clenching his hands against the tears. ‘Just shut up, will you?’
‘Oh, dear me,’ Michael said again with emphasis, looking suddenly downhearted.
‘Why are you doing this, Michael? Why are you dressed like that?’ Gabriel asked in a thick voice.
Michael shrugged his shoulders. ‘They wanted me to.’
‘Who are they?’
‘King Herla and his roaming demons.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Gabriel felt a great wave of irritation. He noticed a cluster of angry spots on Michael’s chin and, for a moment, he felt relief that his own pimples were not as bad as that. They wanted me to.
Michael smiled charmingly and nodded towards one of the gaming tables. There, seated at the head, in a crude carver chair, was Jim of Blackaton. He was leaning back into the seat with his arms crossed over his chest like a medieval king. As Gabriel met his gaze, he grinned and raised his eyebrows. It w
as obvious that he had been observing them for some time.
Gabriel turned back to Michael. ‘Are you still doing everything they tell you to do?’ he asked with a mix of horror and contempt.
‘Yeah, why not?’ Michael answered defiantly and took a deep swig from the bottle. ‘And why should you care?’ he added with force.
Gabriel ignored him. ‘Let’s get out of here. We must get Uncle Gerry out of here now. Please, Michael …’
Michael stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘But I can’t; I only just started playing.’
‘Please. He might die here. Can’t you see he’s not well? How long has this been going on for?’
As if that was the next cue in a terrible tragedy, Uncle Gerry groaned again and rolled over on his back, blinking once, like Lazarus. There was a streak of vomit down his shirtfront. He might have been hurled back from Hades.
‘Ah, a gathering of old friends – how nice.’
Gabriel felt a chill along his spine at the sound of the familiar voice. He had not heard it in years – not since Jim of Blackaton dropped out of school shortly after the incident at the Giant’s Table. He froze inside and the old terror gripped his heart and tightened around his throat. Involuntarily, he raised his hand to his upper lip and touched the seam, but was rocked forward as Jim of Blackaton clamped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
‘Hello, Jim,’ Gabriel muttered, trying to sound offhand, and then, his eyes swivelling back to Michael: ‘Let’s go, Michael; you don’t have to stay here.’
‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Bunny-boy; Michael is under contract, you see. He has signed up for the whole summer. All of his precious posh-school holiday.’ Jim strolled over and put a protective arm around Michael’s thin shoulders. ‘He seems to like it well enough though – as long as we supply him with moonshine and a tuned piano – don’t you, Fluffy?’
Michael tilted his head meekly and smiled a coy smile at his tormentor.
‘And precious maman thinks that you’re back at school, revising for your exams over the summer, doesn’t she?’ Blackaton laughed and patted Michael’s back. ‘We send her weekly letters back to Frogland, no?’ Turning back to Gabriel he said, ‘It’s good for business, you see. My customers like knowing that there’s somebody in the room making a bigger fool of himself than they are. Makes them feel good about spending their money here. And, my God, they spend it – the Moor Cross Inn is one of my more lucrative side businesses at the moment.’
Gabriel cast a dubious glance around the room and frowned, desperately trying to make sense of it all.
‘You have grown, Bunny-boy,’ Jim of Blackaton said, gaily, menacingly. ‘I like that thing … your moustache – suits you.’
Once again, he felt the tremor in his upper lip. He wanted to touch it, but held back. He turned to look at Jim of Blackaton. They were the same height now.
‘Let him go.’
‘A deal is a deal,’ Jim replied in a tone that indicated boredom and perhaps bafflement at the simple-mindedness of the demand.
‘We don’t mind, do we, Gabe?’ Michael asked, anxiously, in a small voice.
Gabriel looked at him miserably. He stared at the angry pimples, but could not face those brown eyes. He could not think of anything to say.
‘Gabe?’ Michael seemed suddenly weakened and grabbed hold of the piano.
Why hadn’t Uncle Gerry told him that Michael was here? Why had they left him out?
‘Oh, how sweet. The dumb brothers are of the same mind!’ Jim bawled to the rest of the room and was rewarded with a few laughs.
At that moment, Gabriel’s mind went black. He could feel the chill spreading though his arteries towards his heart. ‘He’s not my brother!’ he shouted, desperately, through the swoop of darkness. ‘He is … He is a freak!’
‘And how easily they deceive each other. Again, and again … and again.’ Jim of Blackaton sighed and tutted theatrically, shaking his head deliberately from side to side.
Gabriel stumbled. The room was awful, suffocating. Something in there was strangling him. He needed to get out. As he made for the door, he stumbled over a bundle on the floor. He kicked at it in order to get free. He kicked and kicked into the soft mass until he realised it was Uncle Gerry he was hurting. He kicked some more. Tears were streaming down his face now. The drinkers and gamblers had grown quiet. They were watching this new spectacle with vacant excitement, the way they might watch a soft-porn movie or a second-rate dogfight. From the corner of his eye, Gabriel glimpsed something bright in the sullied room. He looked around and met the eyes of the waitress girl; they were round and of an unusual violet blue. For a brief moment she returned his wild stare with a look of such sadness and compassion that it made him sob.
Then everything was silent – the only sound the dripping of damp soot from the rafters and the oil hissing in the hurricane lamps – until Michael cleared his throat and grinned apologetically. ‘I think I’ll play another tune – a soft one this time,’ he said, lugubriously, whilst continuing to smile away his sanity, love and faith.
*
And so, as Gabriel escaped at last into the light evening, Michael played; he closed his eyes and played the secrets in his closed heart. He played the firmness of the Giant’s Table, the infinity of the sacrificial pool, a blue hull over a red keel, the wind in the great elms and the flimsiness of the streamers of gold and scarlet, which had once flamed from his handlebars; and, at the end, he played the death of the gods in a night full of sharp-edged stars and a sickle moon slicing the sky in two.
8
Mrs Sarobi decided to take the bus, as if by chance, to Stanton’s Cross one afternoon. It was a Tuesday, which somehow made it seem less conspicuous. As the bus climbed the steep hill out of the village, she wondered why the idea to pay Doris Ludgate a visit had come to her. She fingered the small brown paper bag in her lap; it contained two jars of blackcurrant jam. She didn’t care for the stuff herself, but she had had an abundant harvest of blackcurrants that summer and jam was, at least in her own opinion, preferable to jelly, so it seemed an appropriate offering. One jar would have been meagre, three slightly over-enthusiastic.
In the seat in front of her, a couple of teenage girls were sharing the earphones to an iPod, swaying in unison to the inaudible music. It was obvious that they were bunking off school, but they were content in their girls’ world, linked by the earphone lead as if by an umbilical cord. Mrs Sarobi sighed. What did it matter if she befriended that preposterous woman Ludgate? Could it be that she felt a need to be liked by one and all? The thought made her smile. No, she was long past that kind of sentiment, she realised. This was a different kind of compulsion – at once emotional and inevitable. There was something about Mrs Ludgate that she could not quite put her finger on … Something which had made her cook that jam.
As she stepped off the bus at the crossroads and walked down the track, which was signposted to Blackaton, Mrs Sarobi felt that she could at least afford to look at the landscape. It was bleak. The bracken had already started turning to rust and the granite outcrops were steely-grey structures, abandoned there by some conflict of nature. An image surfaced in her memory: driving with Father through the pistachio forests around Qala i Naw. They too were gone now, of course, replaced by the tragic faces of deforested hills.
After a mile, the tarmac track petered out into gravel and the wind increased. With no hedges to stop them, the gusts seemed to want to push her off the track. Sheep huddled against each other with bewildered looks in their yellow eyes, as if this was all new to them – a cruel trick they had never been prepared for. She wound her scarf closer around her head and tucked the ends into the neck of her Gore-tex jacket. She was pleased to have it on a day like this; it made her feel strangely invincible. Come rain or shine. Just then, she saw the farm in the valley below. A small stream passed behind it and the whole area looked waterlogged. At once, she wondered if it was not the right place; after all, there was such a withdrawn air about the lonely gr
anite house. The small windows were dark and unseeing and the gate to the yard was swinging in the wind. It might have been creaking, but wasn’t. Mrs Sarobi shuddered involuntarily. As she drew closer, she saw a pink rose climbing towards the eaves. An overgrown orchard flanked the house, the gnarled trees protecting it from the worst of the westerly. She noticed a patch of blackcurrant shrubs amongst the trees – and a black crow snatching at clusters of rotting fruit.
She held the brown bag with the jam jars against her chest and entered the yard, closing the gate behind her. A dog started barking somewhere inside the house and she thought she saw someone move in one of the windows. She noticed that moss covered the damp thatch in places where the sun would never reach. Uncertainly, she took a deep breath and walked up to the porch.
The door opened almost immediately after her hesitating knock. There was nothing unusual about Mrs Ludgate, except her hair, which looked as if she had recently been lying down, and there was something else, to do with her eyes. They looked bare, Mrs Sarobi realised, not prepared for the outside world. Mrs Sarobi thought she saw a bruise on the other woman’s chin, but it might just have been the way the light fell.
‘Hello,’ Mrs Ludgate offered, huffily, and put a hand to her hair, trying to make it right.
‘You must wonder,’ Mrs Sarobi began, ‘why I have come.’
Mrs Ludgate only stared.
‘You see,’ the foreign woman continued, ‘I wanted to introduce myself properly, seeing as we have a common acquaintance. And to bring you these.’ She held out the little brown bag. It dangled helplessly from her fist.
‘Oh,’ Mrs Ludgate said, a glint of avarice in her eyes, and she took the bag from the outstretched hand. ‘I suppose you’d better come in for a while; the wind is a bit harsh today,’ she said as she withdrew into the shadows of the house, leaving the door open.
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