The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  ‘You’re too much a farmer these days, Drum,’ Carter says, smiling an accusation. ‘You’re a traitor to your own kind.’

  What kind are they, he’d like to know. Those he has forgotten, those who sent him off, surprised at his leaving? They’d do the same, given the same opportunity. Every last one of them.

  Gwen wriggles in her sleep and he loves her; in other rooms, his children sleep and he loves them too. Happy all of them. Safe all of them. What else can a man ask than that? Don’t say it though. Not out loud. Never say such a thing out loud. At moments like this, the still of the house, the cows not long awake, the day not yet to begin, he does dare to think it at least.

  There is a problem with one of the pulsators; he should have mentioned it to Joseph. No chance now of sleep with that on his mind. Should not be checking on Joseph and Pete, but unable to just switch off. He dresses by the window, looks out over the fields, the darkness of them, the first brush of sun hours away. He likes it better in the dark; the hum of the electric lights, the covert feel of it.

  In the kitchen he makes tea; the whistle of the kettle bringing Nate downstairs, the growing lad in the tracksuit he always wears.

  ‘Up early,’ Drum says.

  ‘Heard the kettle,’ Nate says. ‘Couldn’t sleep much anyway. A scout’s coming to watch us later.’

  ‘Scout?’

  ‘From City.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘You want a lift? I could watch if you’d like.’

  These are the things he can do now. The things he can give. The look on the boy’s face. Drum can give him that look. It is his to give. A few words and that face.

  ‘You’ll come watch?’ Nate says.

  ‘Come up the fields with me now, and yes, I’ll come watch.’

  They welly-up by the back door, pull on matching wax jackets, walk out into the blast of morning wind. The ground is scrub dry, no rain for a few weeks, a good thing/bad thing. When dry, Drum sees the centuries in the fields; the history in the sod and turf. It is communion and pagan; it is shit and sweat and other excreta. There are four hundred cows now, there are more on their way; the bull in his field waiting to stud. Sex and death. Bullocks sent off for veal; calves suckling unaware of their inevitable fate. The feeding and the milking and the birthing and the nurturing. A production line of his own staging, of his own pacing. They’d kill for that in the factory; they’d riot for that at Ford’s. Ownership, just as Garner said.

  ‘Chris Birch says they’re sending someone from Crewe Alex as well.’ Nate says.

  Nate thinks of little else but football; cares only for the togger and his dog, Harris the German shepherd. Harris hares between them as Nate talks about the scout, words Drum does not really hear. Best not to hear, so he doesn’t say what he thinks: that football fields are a waste of good grazing; that there’s no future in football. Just lets him chatter and chunter; talk of footballers Drum has never heard of. What is an Asa Hartford exactly? Why do City need a new centre half? What even are schoolboy papers?

  In the first months on the farm, when entering the cowsheds, Drum would breathe through his mouth, the smell appalling, but now no recollection of the exact stink. He remembers thinking that smells are particles in the air, breathed in and processed, so he was inhaling spilled milk, flecks of shit, droplets of piss and not caring. Better than oil and filings, fume from the pneumatics. Natural at least.

  He watches Nate lay a distracted hand on a cow’s flank. Always something that, watching his son’s way with the animals; nothing learned, but assumed: same way the road led from school to Ford’s.

  ‘Ay up. Pete,’ Drum says.

  Joseph and Pete are standing by haybales, steam draws from the cows’ pelts above the moody noise of milking. Joseph in his sixties now, canted and broken; his nephew sixteen and covering for his slowing powers.

  ‘Fine morning, Joseph?’ Drum says.

  ‘Aye, fine,’ Joseph says.

  ‘Scout coming today, is it, kidder?’ Pete says to Nate.

  ‘Supposed be,’ Nate says.

  ‘If I were you, I’d wait ’til United come knocking, play for a decent team.’

  ‘They already did,’ Nate says, ‘but I said I didn’t want to show ’em up.’

  Pete laughs, big-muscled Pete; like Popeye, Pete, even a tattoo of an anchor on his taut bicep. Good lad, Pete. Instinctive with the herd; handy with the pumps. Him and Nate, one day. Generations and generations. Watch them now spar and joust with one another; the tick-tock banter, the good-natured laughter. Funny, how Drum’s children carry him inside them, moments when they say things stolen from his mouth, strike poses he knows he adopts; funny the way they are different, Nate a total stranger to shyness. Will stand him in good stead that, on the farm. Dealing with the men from the dairy. All about confidence in negotiation. Ownership and confidence.

  ‘Something’s gone on twelve,’ Pete says. ‘You want to come help fix it, kidder?’

  Nate runs to Pete, and they set about the pulsator. Drum wanted to show Nate the small trick for faulty pressure that Garner showed him. Good that Nate’s learned, but it’s his to show, not Pete’s.

  ‘Hey, not so hard, lad,’ Drum says to Pete. ‘And watch for the gasket, it’ll blast if you stand so heavy. Out the way.’

  Pete stands off, and Drum demonstrates the correct fix, the little jumps to kickstart the pulsator.

  ‘Watch,’ he says. ‘I see either of you lumping on it like that, I’ll take the gasket out of your wages.’

  The pulsator kicks into life; Drum smiles and nods.

  ‘You see,’ he says. ‘Good as new and no gaskets blown.’

  A smile from the boys. Generations. History under foot. Everything working just as it should. A good life.

  2

  It is her father who rings the bell; her father who holds her overnight bag. Lissa’s house is a small terrace, much like the house in which Anneka grew up. Anneka has told Lissa to dress down. If her father sees ripped jeans and punk make-up, he’ll make some kind of excuse, place a phone call later to bring her home.

  Anneka worries the elastic band around her wrist; a strum that brings Lissa to the door, dressed as though wearing a disguise: pastel T-shirt and flared slacks, hair back in an Alice band, all traces of make-up removed. She looks twelve again; same as when they first met.

  ‘Hi, Anneka,’ Lissa says. Anneka not Neka, just as instructed. Neka would rouse suspicion, an eyebrow at least.

  ‘Nice to finally meet you, Melissa,’ her father says.

  ‘Please, come in,’ Lissa says.

  Anneka has told her to say this too; to prove there are no tricks and a responsible adult abroad. A risky strategy, but essential to ensure a night without interruption. A month of solid negotiation, of pleas to her mother and simpering good grace to her father, all for nothing if Lissa’s mother is already slumped in her chair, fuck-eyed and a Valium down.

  Lissa walks them to the kitchen, her mother standing awkward at the sink, hands in yellow rubber gloves, washing something up. She nods down at the water.

  ‘Hi, Mr Moore,’ Lissa’s mother says, ‘Sorry, I’m up to my elbows in suds.’

  A pot of tea on the table, the sound of dishes in water, plates stacked on a drip-dry rack. It is perfect. Domestic, everyday, utterly normal. Perfect, though Janice is washing the same plate over and over, wiping it from centre to rim, then round the circumference, dipping it in and out of the water.

  ‘Please,’ he says, ‘call me Drummond.’

  ‘Janice,’ she says offering him a slightly panicked smile. Lissa has done her mother’s hair, combed it out and coiled it into a bun. She has been dressed too, out of the dressing gown and into a roll-neck and dungarees. Still cleaning the same plate, still smiling panicked, finally putting the plate on the drainer.

  Anneka looks at her father. He leans his weight on his heels as he does when unsure or nervous, but there’s nothing not to trust here; the gas rings unlit, no knives visible, not even an ashtray. The sme
ll of Fairy liquid, of Flash floor cleaner, of PG Tips. So safe it could be a commercial.

  Janice takes another plate and begins to clean it, the same concerted effort. Don’t drop the plate, Janice. Keep it together, Janice.

  ‘Thanks for having her, Janice,’ her father says. ‘You have my number, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Janice says. ‘We’ve got the number.’

  Her father looks around the room, trying perhaps to drag out the goodbye, though he must sense that everyone is wishing him out of the door.

  ‘I’ll pick Annie up at nine,’ he says to Janice, to the room at large, then turns to Anneka. He kisses her on the top of the head, brings her in close to him. He smells of farm, of his own sweat.

  ‘Now be good,’ he whispers. ‘Do whatever Janice says and be polite. No drinking, no going out and please don’t stay up too late.’

  He smiles at her, down at her, pleadingly.

  ‘Promise,’ she says, the word just coming out, its seriousness amongst all the smiles.

  ‘Good,’ he says. And louder, again for the benefit of the room. ‘See you tomorrow. Have fun!’

  Anneka and Lissa walk him to the door. From the living-room window they watch him get into the car, watch him and Nate discuss something; hold their breath until they are certainly, finally gone.

  Janice shuffles into the living room, exhausted from standing, worn out from company.

  ‘Can I have the telly on now?’ Janice says. ‘And it’s time for my pills, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ Lissa says and turns on the television. Janice sits in her armchair, her skin queasy porcelain, glasses now on, stylish frames back from when she cared.

  ‘I did well, didn’t I, Mel?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, Mama, you did well.’

  ‘I didn’t drop anything, did I, Mel?’

  ‘No you didn’t, Mama.’

  ‘I can have my pill now, can’t I?’

  ‘Yes, of course you can, Mama.’

  Lissa goes to get the pill; Janice looks up at Anneka, struggling to focus, eyes at swim, then fixes her by the window.

  ‘So, Neka, your dad, he’s a strict one, is he?’

  Anneka wants to say she thinks he’s a tyrant; that she feels as hemmed in as the cows, as cooped as the chickens. That there’s always an excuse for her not to leave the farm: too far from home, not enough notice, exams to prepare for. That she knows he searches her room while she’s at school, though there’s nothing there for him to find. A betrayal though to say that. Unfair to say that.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve stayed over at a friend’s house,’ Neka says. ‘He just worries, that’s all.’

  ‘For you, or for himself?’ Janice says.

  ‘A bit of both, probably,’ Anneka says.

  Lissa comes through with a tray, a pill on a plate, a glass of water, a pot of tea, places it on her mother’s lap.

  ‘I used to worry,’ Janice says. ‘But I trust my Melissa. Don’t I, love?’

  Lissa puts a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘You don’t have much choice, Mama,’ she says.

  3

  In her bag the book is contraband: she is drug mule, jewel smuggler, diamond thief. It burns in her bag, hot coal inside, firelighters threatening to smoulder. She walks the high street to the car, passing people she knows, hiding the bag lest they ask why her bag is burning so, why smoke hunts from its clasp.

  She could have ordered his book from the library, in keeping with their almost courtship, but she felt a violent need to possess it, as though by owning it the book would no longer exist. Would no longer exert a charge. But it fumes in the bag: it is afire, the book. The small receipt like kindling.

  Inside the car, she takes the book from her bag. Brazen. In full daylight too. Anyone could see. Anyone could catch her holding it, looking at his picture on the inside back flap, his face in front of palm fronds and ash-tipped waves. Same face, same lines on the forehead, same creases at the eyes. Years in a foreign country and no change to the face. To think she’s imagined him, after all those years, still waiting for her in Nuneaton, growing sallow and thin in his hotel room as he gave her another day, another week to arrive.

  Put it away. Let it burn inside the bag. Do not read a word of it. Do not look for yourself in it. It is a travel book and you have not travelled. You cannot be inside the pages. You are not present there.

  Gwen has travelled with him though. Over the years, she has enjoyed several imagined lives with Ray. When unable to sleep, she has plotted an alternative past, one beginning in Nuneaton and taking in more fragrant destinations. Another life, a dark-lit life, of travel and books and money, the scent of jasmine, frangipani, lotus blossom, coconut oil; the feel of fine sand between toes, the warmth of sea water. Notebooks with elasticated straps, cocktails heavy with rum, sex in humid rooms, naked sunbathing beside swimming pools, walking around the Colosseum, the Pyramids, the streets of New York City.

  She looks at the book and it is sickening. To have her private dreams dashed that way, the book an account of all the places she has never seen, all the places they have not been together.

  *

  The house is afternoon quiet, cool in the kitchen, cool in the living room. Anneka is in her room studying; Drum and Nate are at the football. Quiet as Wednesday half-closing, when she comes home alone before heading to Daphne’s for Secret Wine Wednesdays: Daphne’s price for arranging Gwen’s job at the library. But it is Saturday and there are no social calls to make, just the book to read. It eyes her from the kitchen table, dares her.

  Kitchen or living room. Bedroom even. An hour or two before Drum comes back; a hundred pages, more if she skips. She makes tea and decides on the kitchen table, the formality of the hardbacked chairs better than the lounge of the sitting-room couch.

  She opens the book, she flicks past a page of quotations, the title, Frum, the subtitle, A Year With the Cargo Cultists, then the dedication. To A. B. Could be anyone, A. B. Anyone but her though. Not her. Hoping for some oblique connection, a coded message. But no. To A. B. only. The whole book just for them. Relief and upset in four letters.

  The opening chapter is titled ‘Leaving’. She reads descriptions of the preparations to stay in a culture little more evolved than medieval peasantry. She reads of the labyrinthine process of booking his passage, the long negotiations with a man who will be his guide. There is nothing of Ray in these passages. It is just Raymond Porter. She has no idea who that man is. She doesn’t recognize him in the pedantic and fusty prose.

  Raymond Porter is at last boarding an aeroplane when the phone rings. Only two people call, her brother or Daphne, and it is the middle of the day, so not her brother. She tents the book on the table; the crack in its spine.

  ‘Hello, Daphne,’ she says.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ Daphne says, ‘But this bottle of wine simply won’t drink itself.’

  ‘I’m just in the middle of cooking,’ Gwen says.

  ‘Well stop all that, I need you to come help me drink this infernal Chablis.’

  The book like a bird on the table. The flight about to be taken.

  ‘Okay,’ Gwen says. ‘Twenty minutes?’

  ‘Now, my dear,’ she says. ‘Otherwise it might just drink itself and then where will we be?’

  Onto another bottle, most likely. Onto the gin, even worse.

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’m on the way now. Just taking off my pinny.’

  ‘I’ve told you before,’ she says. ‘It’s an apron, not a pinny. Don’t ever say pinny. It sounds like you’re talking about your vagina.’

  *

  The bottle has already drunk half itself, and in the kitchen Daphne is talking about another murder in Yorkshire, another woman killed. The usual saving up of things. She likes to talk of murders, of atrocities, scandals and conspiracies. But there are never enough. Not enough for more than a half-hour, before talk of Carter, or Tommy or Natasha.

  ‘Those poor girls,’ Daphne says.

 
‘Horrible,’ Gwen says.

  Daphne’s blue trouser suit has a drop of wine at the cuff, her green scarf is skewed; she has been crying, or been at the wine earlier than usual. Her heart-shaped face, the thin application of make-up, the effortlessly styled hair, all unaffected.

  ‘That’s why you’re drinking?’ Gwen says. ‘Because of the murders?’

  ‘It could be Natasha dead in a ditch.’

  ‘It’s not though, is it? She’s at horse riding, isn’t she?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she says.

  Daphne drinks and refreshes the glasses, drinks some more of her wine.

  ‘Have you ever had an affair?’ Daphne says. ‘And be honest with me. You’re a terrible liar. Don’t think I don’t know you hate my chocolate roulade.’

  Gwen laughs. What to say to this. To admit anything with Ray would be to admit weakness, to admit her turned head, to admit she is sitting in Daphne’s kitchen but her mind is in Vanuatu with a man not her husband.

  ‘No,’ Gwen says. ‘No, I’ve always been faithful to Drum.’

  ‘Are you sure, dear?’ she says. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me you’ve not. Tell me you’re not having an affair right now.’

  Gwen looks her in the eyes.

  ‘I’m not having an affair,’ she says.

  Gwen looks down at the wine and something in the way the light hits the glass and the cock of Daphne’s head, the alignment of them, speaks of accusation. Daphne is weighing Gwen’s response for veracity; it’s clear she’s found Gwen guilty of something. And then it aligns, the glass and her face and the look, and it becomes as clear as the summer skies.

  ‘Oh God,’ Gwen says. ‘You can’t possibly think—’

  ‘He’s always liked you. Always said what a sport you are.’

  ‘He’s your husband, Daph –’ and a cheat, a liar, a vain, self-satisfied bastard – ‘I would never, never, do anything like that.’

  Daphne’s face collapses, shudders as she cries. Quick, quick, into Gwen’s arms, the thinness of her, her bones through the polyester, the hoik and roll of her ribs and chest.