Sixteen Horses

by Greg Buchanan

  After a moment, she found a photo of Alec and showed it to him.

  Again, a head shake.

  ‘He was in his mid-twenties, I think.’

  An image of Simon produced a similar shake of the head, but Michael stiffened. ‘The missing boy?’

  Cooper nodded.

  ‘I would have said something if I’d seen him.’

  ‘How far away was the man standing? Where?’

  ‘Near the old cinema.’ Michael handed Rebecca’s photo back to her. ‘Just the first ride. I asked the girl why he didn’t join in, but she didn’t . . .’

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked tired. ‘She might have said he was afraid of them.’

  ‘Might have?’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know. It was a year ago . . . and honestly, I’m not sure I’d know his face to look at.’

  He took his cigarettes out again and this time he lit one, shuffling a small distance away from her.

  ‘Did that man . . . did he do this?’

  Cooper did not know.

  ‘Did he hurt those animals?’

  She nodded.

  They talked and they talked, the cold day getting colder.

  ‘I was thinking of leaving, you know.’ He turned back to the water, smoke rising into the guilty air. ‘Everyone’s been leaving my entire life, and I never thought – I never thought I’d want to.’

  He dropped ash down onto the sand.

  ‘This town . . . it was always waiting for someone like this.’ His voice was thinner, now, and he coughed.

  ‘Someone like what?’

  ‘No one wants to continue,’ he said, no longer listening. ‘No one’s going to live here, not in ten years, not in five. I wouldn’t be surprised if this . . . if this was all of us. Most of us. Hurting each other. Hurting ourselves.’

  There was a long silence.

  Queen Bee. Under the tree.

  The sound of bingo made him laugh, though Cooper did not smile, did not understand.

  ‘We’ll disappear. The process . . . the human process . . . it will be over, one day, and we’ll disappear. It will be as if we’d never been here. We’ll be like we were before we were born. And it will be over.’

  After a few moments, he got up and went inside his caravan.

  Cooper remained on the sea-wall, looking out.

  After a few minutes he came out again, his clothes changed, and left down the shore towards the pub. There was no goodbye here, either.

  And her phone buzzed once more.

  A message from the hospital, wondering why she hadn’t come.

  Wondering if she wanted to rearrange for the next day.

  Yes, she said, and sent it. Early afternoon.

  She went back to her hotel room.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Frank sat in the vet office alone, Halloween decorations taken down, sitting in a box on the far table. Dirty mugs sat around the sink. Crazy for Ewe, drawn in ink on the side of a blank cup.

  The police had torn the business apart. Drugs had been confiscated, pending an investigation of Kate’s illegally sourced ketamine, the wires stolen from their shed, sedatives used without oversight or control.

  He left and locked the door.

  Their customers fled to the next town over. The only work left was emergencies, and even then, numbers had declined.

  People he’d known his whole life avoided him in the street.

  This had been his father’s business.

  He went out to the river.

  The director of the vet practice tried to find beauty in the world.

  He watched the birds. He loved this spot, had come here when he was young. There were white swans back then, but he had not seen any here for a while. Just ducks.

  Everyone and everything that had come to this place, a part of them remained in the water, in the soil. Evidence of life. Whispers of knowledge. Collections of voices, caught at the edge of all meaning, like a machine of people, like history in a jar.

  He imagined them all as they must have been.

  Warriors step off boats on the beach more than a thousand years ago, their faces full of salt and spray.

  The king’s men ride to pillage monasteries, to eradicate European influence, to ensure all loyalty to the crown.

  Planes drop bombs for a distant state.

  The River Sedge starts eighty miles to the west of Ilmarsh, it runs through the town, and it ends far to the south, spilling out to a different bay despite its proximity to the sea itself. From the hills it flows in three directions, but only one runs to its mouth.

  The River Sedge runs through everything.

  The Norse called it Garsecg, spear-man. The river itself was shaped like a trident, twin spokes trickling from the hills and going nowhere while the central stream carried on.

  The Tudors called it Sedg or Sedge or Sege. They were not particular.

  The Luftwaffe, they called it nothing.

  The vet sat for a while longer, wondering if what he had thought was worth thinking. He did not know what to do with his thoughts, sometimes. His face grew red with embarrassment.

  He threaded along the trail. Light shimmered from a break in the clouds, dancing on a small group of shivering branches.

  He thought of phoning her, of going to see her.

  He was a man in love.

  PART THREE:

  A BIRTH OF SMILES

  Day Twenty-Seven

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  When Alec dreamt, he dreamt of his boy linking paper clips across their lounge, his wife making spaghetti in the dark.

  He dreamt of arguments and fights, of disappointments. He dreamt of picking his son up from his maternal grandmother’s. The first Christmas alone. He’d been lonely. They both had. Out here in the country, you really needed a car. When Simon was old enough, Alec had bought him lessons for Christmas, and the boy never passed, of course he hadn’t, he hadn’t applied himself, had never taken it seriously, perhaps because it had been a gift, because it had been from him. Alec would say he loved him. One day, the boy who’d played with paper clips stopped saying it back.

  Alec dreamt of these things. He dreamt of wanting him to go.

  When he woke up, Cooper was there.

  They said nothing, not at first. Alec stared at her – her red, sleep-deprived eyes, her hand and the cup within. She put it down on the table.

  ‘They let you bring coffee?’ Alec croaked, his throat dry.

  ‘It’s not coffee.’ Her voice was soft.

  ‘Can I have some?’

  The air was slightly cold and artificial, pumped by hidden engines.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He thought back to walking through those fields, to leaping over the ditch and splattering his legs.

  He thought of driving along a road at night.

  ‘No one’s visited me,’ he said. ‘Just . . . just people asking questions.’ He hesitated. ‘Anyone visit you?’

  ‘Doctors.’ She didn’t say much more.

  ‘Doctors aren’t visitors.’

  ‘I’m a doctor. I’m visiting you.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t get sick. They checked me out, but . . .’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, trying to sit up. ‘That’s lucky.’

  She said nothing.

  He smiled, briefly, and then he remembered. He remembered he had not smiled in weeks. ‘I didn’t—’ Alec’s vision blurred as he shook his head, not quite sure what he wanted to say. ‘I don’t—’

  She paused, her expression softening.

  She got up with a sudden movement and poured some of the mug’s contents into an empty glass by his bedside. It was red. ‘Have this.’

  Alec nodded and drank, the motion hurting his arm. He’d thought, briefly, that it might be alcohol, the way Cooper was guarding it.

  But it was just some kind of fruit cordial. That was all. It was strange. It reminded him of being a chi
ld again.

  He didn’t know why he expected much else. It was a hospital. She wouldn’t be drinking. She wouldn’t be allowed to bring spirits in here.

  Yet he’d hoped, all the same. He needed something.

  He did not feel like himself.

  ‘What happened to us?’ he asked. ‘What—’

  She showed him the letter.

  You—

  You could have saved him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  She watched him as he read.

  These things I did I did and no one knew until I let them. I have held the dancing plague. I blossom, now.

  His face was tired more than anything. His eyes drooped, barely recovered from their bruising. His cheek now bore a fresh scar. His hair had only just started to become more than a buzz cut. There was so little of the man she’d so briefly known. She’d made more of him from three weeks of reading than three days of partnership. She had mythologized him, just like she always did.

  Here he was.

  He didn’t cry.

  He didn’t even shake, not much.

  He just held the letter loosely, like he couldn’t remember how to read.

  After what felt like an age, he began to speak, his head turning slowly, the paper still held in his hands.

  ‘They think Simon’s dead, don’t they?’

  Cooper said nothing.

  ‘They think the person who wrote this letter took him.’

  There was laughter in the hallway. The silhouettes of nurses moved past the translucent glass. There was no indication they had seen or heard any of their conversation. They were just happy.

  ‘Why are you still in town?’ he asked.

  A light was blinking, now, across the chamber.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Cooper said, and Alec opened his eyes again, not realizing he’d closed them, not realizing he’d almost dozed off. But there would be no true sleep there, not now. It had taken a car crash and anthrax to cure him of his long insomnia, and she – she’d brought it back. ‘This number.’

  She passed him another piece of paper.

  He took it, sitting up fully this time before looking down.

  ‘Whose number is this?’ She hesitated. ‘Why was this in your handwriting?’

  ‘Because I wrote it,’ he said, his voice gaining some of its old strength. ‘You found this in my home.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I asked you a question, Cooper. Why are you still here? You were supposed to – you were going to be here for four days. You—’

  ‘Tired of me?’ She tried to smile, and he surprised himself by smiling too. He liked the way she smiled. He liked her.

  He didn’t say anything back, and her smile faded.

  ‘Your son phoned that number,’ she said. ‘And the person with that number phoned him.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Over the last year. Hundreds of calls.’

  He noticed it then, in Cooper’s face.

  It wasn’t just sympathy. Wasn’t just pity.

  It was curiosity.

  She wanted to see how he responded. Releasing information every so often . . . seeing how he coped . . . seeing what he gave away.

  ‘Are you telling me everything?’ he asked, and after a moment she nodded, but it was there, wasn’t it?

  A delay.

  A flicker of an eye.

  ‘The phone number – I got it from the farmer and his daughter. I brought it back the night we found the horses. I didn’t – I didn’t have time to follow up, it didn’t seem like a priority. I tried a couple of times, but—’

  ‘Who did the number belong to, Alec?’

  ‘It was the mother’s number. Grace Cole.’

  ‘You did nothing wrong.’

  She sat, shivering.

  ‘You did nothing wrong, OK?’

  She did not look.

  ‘This is the beginning, not the end.’

  A hand touched her face, touched her tears.

  ‘It’s not over. It’s—’

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  ‘I love you.’

  Day Twenty-Eight

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  (Woman, 36)

  He pulled Rebecca out of school a few days after his wife left him. We tried fining him for the absence, but he had her registered as home-schooled and that was that. There was nothing I could really do, I suppose. Nothing that anyone could have done. It was a shame.

  (Man, 49)

  Most companies around here, they run on account, usually – farm supplies, vets, shearers – you don’t always have to pay immediately, everyone understands how things can be. But I don’t know a single business around here who’d let him buy on credit. Fool me thrice, shame on both of us. That was all it was.

  (Woman, 35)

  Portugal or somewhere. I think Grace is happier now. It’s hard to know. It must be nice. She posts these lovely photos.

  No one had seen Grace Cole for over a year. Phone calls to her number had all reached a full voicemail box, the line most likely disconnected. Attempts to communicate with her on dormant social network accounts also failed.

  All that Cooper could find of the woman were the memories of others, recorded in phone-ins and reports about the whole family in those early days of the quarantine. These accounts focused more on the farmer than on his prodigal wife.

  It was plain to many, the poison of marriage.

  (Man, 28)

  I don’t want to talk about this. He’s dead. People are dead. This is—

  (Woman, 35)

  Was it him? People are saying it was.

  (Man, 49)

  I know he sold a lot of his flock out there a while back. There’d be way too many animals to a field, just way too many – not sheared, too, June and full fleeced – not enough water, not by a long shot. He was struggling, I think, when Grace went.

  (Man, 23)

  Is his girl OK? There’s not been any news.

  (Woman, 41)

  I don’t gossip.

  Local officers interviewed Grace’s old employers from those few brief jobs and extra shifts she’d taken since the farm had begun to fail. A launderette out near the Wooden Bridge. One of the arcades on a day shift. They’d let Cooper come with them, thankful for the new spirit of shared information.

  It was difficult finding anyone to talk to at the arcade, the halls dim and dark, but a manager had finally emerged and answered their questions.

  ‘We have a lot of staff turnover,’ he said. ‘Hard to keep track.’

  No one seemed to know the woman.

  Like Simon, like the farmers, like Alec . . .

  They had been apart.

  They had been alone.

  (Woman, 53)

  No question it was that farmer. No one knows who he is. He’s been here, what, seventeen years? Eighteen? And no one knows him. No one can say what he did before any of this, why he even came out here. His wife leaves him. He hurts his daughter – God knows what he did to her, what he planted in those fields . . . And then he goes and kills himself, just walks out of hospital like that? I know what sickness is. It’s guilt. I know guilt. It’s guilt.

  (Man, 28)

  A lot of people are making assumptions.

  (Woman, 53)

  I heard Albert hit her, the police got called out . . . took a few hours, of course. The wife denied everything. The daughter, she kept her mouth shut. It’s just a tragedy.

  (Man, 49)

  I hope the girl is OK. I don’t know about her dad, that’s not for me to say, but . . . I hope she gets through this. We all do.

  (Man, 32)

  Men like him . . . personalities like Albert’s . . . they’re what grow, what always grow, in places like this. A certain kind of person, alone with their thoughts. Something ends up giving. Something sort of . . . fake, happens, for you to keep going. And everyone around you knows it, they know something’s wrong, even if they can’t name it.

  (Woman, 35)

&n
bsp; You can’t rescue yourself.

  The daughter had woken, just a few days before.

  When asked by the doctors about her mother, Rebecca had just repeated what she’d already told them: she’d left a year ago.

  Did you ever see her with a boy?

  They showed her a few photos of Simon Nichols.

  And Rebecca just stared at them, and told them no, she’d never seen her mother with a boy, with anyone.

  Grace Cole did not go out much, not in the end.

  She wasn’t well before the end.

  Her medicine had been – it had been making Grace unwell. She hadn’t been herself.

  Rebecca had looked down at the photographs again before they’d left.

  ‘Who is he?’

  He’s lost, they told her.

  They told her to get well soon.

  (Woman, 36)

  She’d tell me about them, those final months before she left school. She wasn’t always so distant with everyone. All the teachers, all of us loved her.

  She’d play games on her computer all the time. Tried to do her class project on one of them. Worlds where you didn’t watch a story, but you made your own decisions.

  I think the escape appealed to her. I think that’s what it was . . . well, probably what all stories are. They’re escapes into the lives of others. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We’d die if we couldn’t escape.

  That girl had dreams. And maybe . . . I don’t know if she kept playing, but maybe it wasn’t enough any more.

  Maybe whatever was happening to her, maybe she couldn’t escape it. Maybe no story was enough. You consume media where there are heroes . . . where beautiful people win the day and, you know, do the things beautiful people do . . . You start viewing life like stories. More than a year of that, alone, her mother gone, that awful man her only friend . . . What if it stops working?

  What if the things keeping you alive, what if you’re numbed to them? What if they break? Who’s going to save you then?

  Her dad tried to kill us.