by Laura Beatty
Direct debit was abracadabra. Direct debit would get rid of Ranger.
It was winter, Anne’s worst time, so she was in no hurry to get up. She lay under Steve’s coat, in bed, sifting things slowly through her head, things that had been and things as they were and things that needed resolving.
Everyone had worked at the poultry plant. How obvious was that? She couldn’t remember whether her dad had looked like a chicken before he started the job, or whether looking like a chicken was something that came after, with exposure. But it was unforgettable, the end of his first week at the plant; the first time he brought back one of those polystyrene trays and the pale mound of its contents, that glistened even after the cling wrap had been removed. The celebration they’d had, a golden dawn that heralded a new era, and that smelt of frying chicken.
It was just as obvious now, so obvious that she sat up in bed, her eyes wide, and smacked her forehead with the flat of her palm. The abattoir. It was what she had always planned after all. She couldn’t think how or when she had forgotten. She lay back panting with exertion. How lovely the soft and permanent dusk of her hut seemed then, its thick and ashy air. She rolled her head to take it in. Her hut, her bed. She was sure of that suddenly and she touched the side of the bed with one hand, her stove, her food hanging in the smoke that filled the room. Her collectibles crowding the shelves, racked like a library along the back wall, at angles of slide and balance. The totems of dummies and teethers beading the stakes, the individual books, bottles, soft toys, sweet wrappers that had caught her eye, baby mittens, socks, bonnets that hung over all the walls, on binder twine, or wire, or plaited sedge.
Anne raised her other arm upright, waved it slowly and in an arc of inclusion, My place, she whispered to herself, not his; and round her arm, as she moved, the dusty darkness swirled and closed, like soup. All day Anne basked in her solution. It was enough just to have had the idea. The execution of it was something for later. So she lay, at ease for the first time in she couldn’t tell how long, and let her idea filter through her and absorb.
Afterwards and in the days that followed, Anne tried to think how it would be. It was difficult. She wasn’t good at imagining and she had to steel herself against encountering other people, against talking and working with people every day, after so long, against the smallness and business of the world outside. While she adjusted to the idea, she practised. She walked through the wood towards the edge in the direction of the abattoir and she smiled and said, Hello, over and over again, as she went, to nothing, to the jays that flirted their tails at her and screamed across the rides, to the small birds that blinked at her and jinked their heads in the high-up branches, to the fallen leaves underfoot and the winter boles of the trees. Hello. Hello. Hello. I’d like a job.
Every day she went a little further until finally, one day, she found herself on the edge of the wood, facing Smarty’s fields and beyond them a new housing estate that was still under construction and that she hadn’t seen before. She stared at the half-finished houses with their eye sockets and their gawping mouths, and they stared back. She was horrified. So many and so soon to be finished. Then they would be filled, she supposed, with people and the people would all want jobs and where would they find those? In the abattoir, that’s where. Everyone went to the abattoir sooner or later. It looked like there wasn’t a minute to lose. She stood a moment and then turned to go back into the wood. She could go tomorrow for instance. But then, You got to, Anne, she said to herself facing round again. You got no choice. It’s now or never, and she plunged forward, across the sodden field. Direct debit.
♦
Hello. I’d like a job.
She said it in what she hoped was a casual way, leaning on the fence of the layerage pens and smiling her practised smile. Then, as an afterthought, Why are you not wearing white?
The man stared at her. You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?
Anne felt the old confusions. Was he friendly or not? She couldn’t tell. He was looking at her jumper. She tried a little laugh, in case having a laugh was the right thing to be doing, but he didn’t join her and the little laugh strangled itself in her throat. The man rolled his eyes and went back to hauling the partitions of the pens. Anne waited for the answer to her question. After a while she tried again: I’d like a job. Please.
He looked up, irritated, jerked his thumb in the direction of the buildings. Well, fuck off to the office then. No good asking me, is there? He faced her with his hands on his hips. His forearms were covered in coloured tattoos. Sheffield Chapter, Roxy, Hell. He shook his head. You gotta be having a laugh, you have.
The buildings were shiny and brand new. They had signs on the doors that said, Gut Room, Offal Room, Packing. It was nice. Anne walked between them, in her ragbag assortment of clothes, a funny tiptoeing walk, not her usual lope. Where the entrance road forked there was a little signpost, like on a real road, Fridges to the Right, Office Left and an arrow. Anne went left. She stopped outside, smoothed down her tyre-marked jersey, readied herself. The office had a high counter made of shiny veneer with a buzzer on it. Please ring for attention. Anne rang and waited. No one came. In a room behind, she could hear a radio and people discussing something that was more important than Anne, a grievance that bordered on outrage. After a while a girl emerged from the back, still talking over her shoulder. She had nails like Suzie.
Here goes.
She’d already told her, the girl was saying, to someone Anne couldn’t see. She’d already told her, she didn’t want anything to do with it and if they couldn’t sort themselves out then frankly they could get stuffed.
Hello. I’d like a job.
Afterwards it occurred to Anne that perhaps she hadn’t timed it very well, her enquiry. She should have waited for the girl to turn round before she started speaking, but the man in the layerage pens had knocked her confidence. Blurting it out, at someone’s back, how stupid was that.
When the girl had turned round Anne tried again, bared her teeth in a brave smile, repeated her request as brightly as she could.
The girl’s eyes popped. Louise! she called without taking them off Anne, Louise! Someone here wants a job.
Louise had a bad smell under her nose. That’s how it looked to Anne. Anne would need to see Personnel. They didn’t have many women working there, what did she want exactly? Anne didn’t know Personnel and she didn’t know what kind of jobs there were. She began to feel panicky. It was so much worse than she’d imagined. She didn’t know what to ask for, what to say. She cleared her throat and then said nothing at all.
But Louise didn’t have much time. It wasn’t her day for being kind.
Behind Anne the safety hinge on the office door wheezed and a boy shouldered in with his hands in his pockets. Louise’s attention shifted. He had his mouth inside the zip top of his fleece. Come about a job, he said without removing his mouth. Louise picked up some papers from a shelf under the counter. She had a bored sing-song voice and looked neither at Anne, nor at the boy, but between them, at a picture of a poppy meadow on the back wall. There were no vacancies in packing, or evisceration, slaughtering was men only, or fridges. No vacancies in the office and some part-time slots only in the layerage pens. She handed the boy one of the papers and paused, then she passed one over to Anne too, as an afterthought. She might as well have one, shrugging her shoulders, still smelling the bad smell. Fill in the forms and come back next Tuesday for an appointment with Personnel.
Outside, the wind smacked Anne in the face, for nothing. Come back on Tuesday? When was Tuesday for goodness’ sake? Anne looked at the form in her hand. Name, Address, DOB. NI number. It wasn’t even written in English. You are required to provide a doctors certificate. The boy hadn’t looked at his, just pushed it into a pocket along with his hands, and walked off. She could see him ahead of her, shoulders up, fleece over his nose now against the wind, which, unable to get at his face, was pointing out what thin legs he had. Anne would have liked to ask him what he was going t
o do. Was he going to try, despite Tuesday, despite the foreign form? But he was too far ahead. Good luck, she thought to him sadly, as she set out behind him at a slower pace.
♦
No one would have been able to tell, had they looked at Anne, as she left, the dead weight of disappointment that she hefted under all those strange and ill-assorted garments, belted in under the ragbag layers, crushing the breath out of her so she had to move even more slowly than usual. Anyone who happened to see her would have thought that she looked almost normal, for a weirdo. You get some strange ones, they might have said to themselves, or, It takes all sorts. They would have looked at her and carried on, into the offal room for instance, or packing, checking their watch to see how long till tea, noting that the rain that was forecast had held off after all.
♦
Anne shuffled down the abattoir’s toy roads, back to the entrance. Two hours it had taken her to walk here and that was with hope urging her along. By the layerage pens she stopped for a rest. The man with the tattoos was still working, his brown overalls strained across a back as wide as a bullock’s. I didn’t get it, she said to him in her head, so I’m definitely not having a laugh now. No way. Then she added, to herself and in passing, it isn’t like Christmas, not at all.
By the entrance, turning in as she turned out, Anne saw Suzie. It didn’t surprise her. It was a small world, she knew that already. Suzie was pushing a buggy and sucking on a cigarette. She looked grey. Oh Suzie, Suzie. Anne was suddenly excited, flapping her big hands, forgetting. She didn’t see that Suzie’s eyes were as hard as her nails. She didn’t see the past, or Suzie’s scrabbling future. She saw belonging. That’s all.
That your baby, Suzie? Is it? Is it a boy or a girl? Is it Barry’s baby?
Suzie stepped back at first, when Anne approached. She had her mouth open like a fish. Next minute she was leaning right forward over the handles of the buggy, eyes screwed hard at Anne.
Who the fuck of all the crazy cows – is that you, Anne? You mind your own business, yeah. And keep your trap shut. What’s it to you whose kids I fucking have?
Suzie had a way of spitting out her consonants as if they were pips. And what do you think you look like? She moved her head from side to side to see if anyone was watching.
Even as it all went wrong, as she saw Suzie’s realisation give way to revulsion, Anne couldn’t help herself. The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.
I’ll help you Suzie. I’m good at looking after. You still got nice hair Suzie and your nails painted.
Suzie wasn’t having any of it. She was disgusted; Anne could see that. Anne stepped back from the buggy, holding her hands together now, her head on one side and down. I’m living in the woods Suzie, she faltered, apologetic. Where you living?
But Suzie didn’t want anyone to see that she knew Anne; that was clear too. She banged the buggy round, hissed at Anne, Yeah an you look like it. I don’t know you, get it? I got to get a job here see and I’m on a list for a council house so I don’t need you coming and spoiling it. You stay away from me from now on. Twat. And she clip-clopped away pushing the baby, which stared at Anne with eyes like marbles, its fat cheeks working at a comforter.
♦
In another life Suzie would have been pleased. Anne would have said, Come in the woods with me, Suzie, bring that baby, and Suzie would have said, Thank you, Anne, I will, and they would have gone home together. Taking it in turns to push the buggy, but Anne pushing most because she was so strong and Suzie wasn’t.
On the outside, crawling in the cold along the limits of the abattoir, Anne took out the forms, looked at them and then threw them over the fence into the last of the layerage pens. Some surprised bullocks bucked in panic. She shouted over her shoulder, to no one now, You’ll fit right in there, Suzie. It’s just right for you, you’ll see.
When she’d been walking about an hour, Anne stopped in a mud-clogged field. Slowly and out loud, she said, Auntie Anne. It was dark when she reached the hut.
♦
No direct debit after all. So Ranger was there to stay. Anne felt his presence like the electric pressure of thunder. Sometimes when she heard him drive into the clearing she would lie down in the dark, wherever she was, on the floor, anywhere, and wait for him to go. Once or twice – the cheek of it – he leant in the doorway, undeterred by her silence, and asked what she was doing on the floor. Were his hurdles ready and he’d fancy some of those veggies this week. So next time he came Anne shouted out, from where she was lying, Not ready yet – in the hope of stopping him coming in. It didn’t work. She never looked round but she saw the square of light that the doorway threw on the back wall of the hut eclipsed by his bulk. She wanted to get up off the floor, do some work for a change, that’s what she wanted. Or was she ill? Anne didn’t answer.
For a while Anne went, every morning, to the old bank by the road, where she lay, whatever the weather, and watched her father go to work. It soothed her to see him, like a long rhythm, and it gave her something to hold on to. Dad, she said to herself, like learning a language, mum, auntie. She was lonely now. Suzie had a baby. A baby was something of your own. No one could say a baby wasn’t yours, if you had one.
♦
In the clearing Anne lay on the ground, face on a level with the floor of the pen. Another Steve, cocking it, separate, flexing his wings and flapping chest forward. He took no notice of the mother and her brood. In her hand Anne held an egg. It was amazing an egg was. She held its warmth in, testing it against her cheek absent-mindedly while she watched. What if she hatched it herself? But it wouldn’t be the same – it would only be a chicken after all. It was spring. The chaffinches had come back to the wood. Between the trees the tit flocks were turned extrovert. Sky-skating, watch me, watch me. Swank at speed, tumbling in pairs.
Everything was coupling, reproducing, all around her. The birds clattering on top of each other and against gravity in the trees overhead. On the ground animals exploded into activity, foxes, buck rabbits, badgers bungling it in the twilight. Anne sat with her back against the pollard, looking at the slim trunks of the next generations. How many of these are yours? she asked it. Things everywhere pushing into leaf and flower, the oaks’ diffident tassels, the showy chestnuts, tarting themselves to the bees. Honeysuckle, old man’s beard, clasping the boles of trees, the dog rose’s loose and punishing embrace. I love you, everywhere. Only Anne alone and unproductive. She thought about Leanne, about Rosie. How long had she been away? How old was Leanne? Already a little girl by this time, probably. She wouldn’t recognise Anne either.
She half thought she’d go home; pay a call like a visitor, polite on the doorstep. Hello, it’s Anne – your daughter? – I was passing so I thought I’d pop in. Only Suzie’s reaction at the abattoir still haunted her.
♦
Then she did go, but not as a visitor. She went at dusk and stood by the old tree that used to have their swing hung from its lowest branch, a monkey swing that you sat astride and twizzled on. The lights were on. She saw her dad shuffle past the window with a plate of something, his bedtime snack most likely. She saw the old front garden and the little gate. She saw the side of the shed, where she used to see Suzie with her men, and she saw John at it now, the dirty beggar. Pushing his luck with Ally Thompson, she thought it was. She could see him grabbing at things he shouldn’t, breathing and wheedling. Then the dark got up proper and there was nothing but the old cheesewire moon, grinning its glinty grin, cutting her.
She sat under the swing tree most of the night, silent, till she was numb. There was no one out there, none of her nighttime familiars, except a fox that she didn’t know, which came skulking round the bins.
Oi! her father would have shouted if he’d seen. Oi! Get out of it. What d’you think you’re doing, fox? Nothing. I’m not doing anything. Well, do nothing somewhere else. The old phrases coming back to Anne. She looked up at her window. Who had her room now? Leanne probably. Another little gi
rl to lean her elbows on the sill and stare and grow as big as the moon too quick. Where have I gone? Anne asked herself under the tree. Where have I gone?
In the morning Next Door’s cat came back, knackered. It rubbed itself against and round Anne’s legs, tail up, showing its anus. Purring. Gett losst, it said.
Stiff and misshapen, Anne lumped down the hill. A couple of cars honked her, in a hurry. She was cross enough to flap one of her great arms at them, swatting as if she was walking through midges.
She ducked back into the wood, down one of its green throats. Everything looked so fresh and the birds were celebrating. Was it only the trees, and the moon, who were allowed to get young again? All dressed up, as if it was the first time. Anne had nothing new to wear. She stopped after a bit and opened the hazel’s little concertina leaves. She spread one over her thumb, a perfect party dress. All the way back to her hut she picked leaves, one hand pulling out the front of her jumper to hold them. When she got back she lay down and threw the leaves up in handfuls so they fluttered over her. Now I’m decked, she said.
♦
Nights spent watching the moon swell. Now it was radiant, heaving itself up the sky, its fullness swathed for modesty, reaching its arms out round its belly.
And then days when she felt really bad. She lay on the bed she’d made herself, and just watched the light move its blade around her room. When it got too bright she spread her fingers out to canopy her face, and wished she had fruit or flowers. Then she’d go to sleep and dream herself a man to match her, or a baby with glass eyes and a comforter. How long? she asked herself for the first time. How long?
Ranger came more often, swerving into the clearing with unnecessary vigour. He stood over her and made a variety of noises with his tongue and the back of his throat. This is not working out, he said, on a number of occasions. This is not working out at all. Anne lay on her back and stared him out.
Mr Stallard was coming down soon. This wood was designated rural infrastructure now. Mr Stallard had a lot of ideas for it, for its enhancement. She wanted to think about that.
