by Stuart Evers
‘You sound like a right old man,’ he said. ‘Oh, me knees.’
‘Oh go on, mock,’ he said. ‘I’ll remind you of it when you’re half crippled.’
He sounded old, felt old, looked old. Drum looked at himself in the mirror sometimes and remembered something Gwen had said about W. H. Auden. If that’s his face, imagine his scrotum. He’d look at his scrotum then, the tucks and folds, no more wrinkled than he had ever seen it, though grey hairs grew there now, his cock at slumber for weeks on end. At first, on retiring, they’d made love more than in the previous ten years. Three or four times a week, morning sex mostly. Then that had worn off. Gwen or him, unsure who cooled first.
‘When are you off to see Carter?’ Nate said.
‘End of the month,’ Drum said.
‘Looking forward to it?’
It was going to be hot; his knees would flare. There would be day trips and wine tastings at vineyards, dinner by the pool. There would be Carter, tanned and toned and strange without the cigarettes. Not his Carter, but another Carter, somehow spritzed and cleansed, somehow unencumbered, no longer with a tight rein, snapping Drummond back to him. Drum had the farm, but for the price of Carter’s intimacy. Once the money was sorted, once everything had been settled and the capital built back up, off Carter went. Had always promised Daph a life in the sun, Carter had said, but it was something Carter had never expressed to Drummond. Not once and never.
‘It’s relaxing there,’ Drum said. ‘A beautiful spot. Lovely restaurants and stuff. Couldn’t live there myself, mind.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure Carter and Daphne are missing this plenty.’
Nate smiled, dumb smile he had, stupid as his laugh.
‘How’s Carlie?’ Drum said.
‘Fine,’ Nate said. ‘I think she wants to let Molly stay over, but she’s worried what her parents will say.’
‘Always blame the parents,’ Drum said. ‘Easiest thing in the world to do is that.’
‘They were good to me,’ Nate said. ‘Always were.’
Drum had been jealous of the car. Jealous of the suits. The sudden ease of Nate’s life. Left him in the lurch for a time, had to get a new farmhand and none as good as Nate. But he came back. At least he came back. No choice, but he came back at least.
‘Just got to keep on, son,’ he said. ‘Just got to keep proving yourself.’
Hated himself for that. Winced at the words. Spent now, unable to help anyone, unable to make intelligent contribution. Perhaps never had. Perhaps always had said the wrong things. Once they looked to him, but not now. Just Dad. Just Drum.
Gwen called from the kitchen, dinner ready. Nate got up and Drum walked backwards, watching the ticker, hit the remote just as he reached the sitting-room door. Then stopped. He turned the television back on. Crowds outside the Edgware Road. He squinted, something spotted just before the screen turned black. Somewhere behind the reporter, he was sure he’d seen Annie. For a split second her. No doubt it was her. Her there, in the crowd, a purple top, a black shoulder bag. Walking past camera, surely her. And then not. No. Not her. Not Annie. Not his girl. Just a woman, a purple blouse, a black handbag, walking the road, not looking at the wreckage.
4
She was a good eater, Molly, a joyful eater, picking up sandwiches, deconstructing them, eating them discretely: cheese, then bread, then ham, then bread. Were she her child, Gwen would have told her not to, told her not to play around with her food. She’d had those arguments with Annie over the small kitchen table: don’t pick up peas, don’t eat just one thing at a time, hold your knife and fork correctly. It mattered so much then, but what difference did it make, ultimately? So many rules; so difficult to understand why so important. No singing at the table. No you can’t wear a tutu to the shops. No, you can’t read one more chapter. No, you can’t go round to Lissa’s house. No, you can’t babysit, you can barely look after yourself.
‘Did I tell you Granny Gwen and I are going on holiday, Molly?’ Drum said. ‘We’re going to Spain.’
‘Will there be a swimming pool?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Am I coming too?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just for grown-ups.’
Why mention this? Something to say, yes; but why this? Inevitable, what would happen. The crumple of Nate’s shoulders, the excited eyes of the child, a holiday he cannot give her. No holiday, no home of his own, and his father goading. Still something of the grand game between them. Look at what I’d done by your age: two kids, a uniform once worn, a business of my own. And you, a driving ban the only thing the world knows you even exist. All said and unsaid.
Gwen excused herself and went to the bathroom, called Ray but got a message that his mailbox was full. She called again and got the same message. They had not kissed. All the years and not a kiss, not once. Close sometimes, very close sometimes, but not. No Rubicon crossed, no line drawn.
When she’d been tempted, she’d reminded herself of fairy-tale kisses, how they bestow a contract. The frog becomes prince and claims the kisser; the prince kisses the sleeping woman and she belongs to him. Whatever the magic of the kiss, what ensues is practical, mundane, masculine. A marriage, a future, a goodbye to the fantastical. Once Ray had said, I will kiss you whether you like it or no. She’d been surprised, then replied. I will like it well enough, but whether you will is another matter. Suitably gnomic to give him pause, that.
How different could it be, she thought, with someone else, someone of the same vintage? Would he do things to her that Drummond could not? How much we will do for an orgasm, a few moments of pleasure. Take over kingdoms, sack cities, cut off oxygen, abduct queens. For a few seconds. A few seconds and then over. And again to need it, to do it once more. Again and again. So no kisses. No lingering hands.
She washed her hands and went back into the kitchen. No one seemed to notice she had gone.
5
Molly had made him name all the cows. Jemima, Jane, Joyce, Jennifer, Jody, Jessica, Joan, Joni . . . occasionally Molly shouting no, that’s Jemima, look the black circle round her eye. And he would laugh and say how silly he was.
Twenty years, off and on, with the cows and not once feeling as a farmer, not once feeling that kinship with the beast, with the land. It just was. In Chris Birch’s autobiography, which Nate read as soon as it was available at the library, Chris Birch wrote candidly about being a footballer; what it was like as a boy, what it was like as a former player. What it was like to not love football, but see it as a job.
After Chris Birch had retired from a career that never quite lived up to its promise, Chris Birch was in a bar and a City supporter started talking to him about his playing days. The fan knew more about his career than Chris Birch did. Eventually, Chris Birch lost his patience with the fan and told him he didn’t give a shit. He hated football. Hated playing it, hated talking about it. It was just a fucking job. The fan threw a punch. Chris Birch wrote that, afterwards, more people were sympathetic to the fan than they were to him. When forced into situations with other farmers, Nate wanted to have the courage of Chris Birch. To just stand there and say, they’re just fucking cows, mate, they’re just fucking cows.
It was worse since coming back, tail between legs, after Les sacked him from his company; worse since his father retired. Dad still watching over him though, when he could, checking for error, for lateness, for a chink in the routine. They were being squeezed; money tighter than ever, madness to be in dairy still. He’d started planting vegetables over by the fields, applied for approved organic status. They’d survived foot and mouth, but some nights he was kept awake by the image of cows aflame, knowing it would have wiped him out it if it’d ever made its way to him. He wished it had sometimes.
‘Daddy,’ Molly said.
‘Yes, darling.’
‘When are you coming home?’
This the same every week.
‘Soon, I hope. I need to stay here to look after the cows, you
know that.’
She looked doubtful, but was distracted by a fine arc of piss from either Jocasta or Jolene. Saved by urine. When a dog dies, parents tell their kids the dog’s gone to a farm. They said the same about Nate to Molly.
With her help, he herded the cows inside the sheds, showed her the milkers, showed her how to milk by hand, same as always. Each time like the first time, the wonder of the milk spurting from teat, the spatter as it hit the metal pail.
‘Well, all done,’ Nate said. ‘Must be time for tea.’
She shook her head.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘You will be,’ he said. ‘Race you back to the house.’
And they raced, and she won, as he always let her, though sometimes he wanted not to. Just to show her that you don’t always win. That winning is something rare and special.
6
Drum went into the spare room, scrolled through the BBC News website. No real news, nothing really to report, but he read it all: the roundups and the what-we-knows and the timelines. He looked through photographs and could not see any footage of the woman in the purple T-shirt. Of course not there. Of course not.
‘It’ll make you go blind,’ Nate said, standing at the open door.
‘I was just—’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’
‘I thought I saw her,’ Drum said. ‘I thought I saw her in the crowd.’
Nate sat down on the bed, the spare bed only ever used by Gwen. Resented that bed. Drum had repurposed the room, made it his study; added further bookshelves, a new desk and a new computer, a broadband connection not much faster than dial-up.
‘It’s understandable, Dad,’ Nate said. ‘Something like this plays havoc with you.’
‘Havoc?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Nate said. ‘Havoc.’
‘A strange word, havoc,’ he said. ‘A strange word, that one.’
That room had been havoc. Havoc and then its opposite, Annie’s obsessive tidiness, the rigid order of her wardrobe and drawers. Once he had sat in there, looking through her things while she was out; opening drawers and fumbling under the bed, looking for something. Unsure what. A diary, something to explain the distance, the rowing out from the shore. He never found anything, just T-shirts folded tightly, knickers crossed at the waistband.
‘When I worked at Ford’s,’ Drum said. ‘We talked of revolution. All the time, we talked of that. The red rising, the taking over. Like fairy stories, they were. Like Bible stories. It’s the same with the stories these lads are told. The older you get, you see the truth, the boring, everyday, normal truth. They’ve tried, the communists, the fascists, but ultimately, people just want a quiet life. This’ll pass too, this whole jihadi thing. And we’ll be on to the next terror, the next panic. Because all we want is a quiet life, a home, a family. There’s always something like this. There’s never anything not like this. Bird flu, Al Qaeda, the end of oil, the millennium bug, climate change, there’s always something. We’re used to it. It doesn’t change people. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘And yet you watch it all the same.’
Drum laughed. Yes, he watched it all the same. On the shelf, the books about the Taliban, the rise of the Right in Europe, voices of modern hatred.
His son stood from the bed.
‘You really think that?’ Nate said.
‘Today,’ he said. ‘I think that today, yes.’
‘And tomorrow?’
‘Maybe you’ll find me cowering in the bunker again.’
Nate put his hand on Drum’s shoulder. Drum put his hand on his son’s. Nate mussed the remaining hair on his crown.
‘Don’t stay here too long,’ Nate said. ‘Molly’ll miss you.’
Drum refreshed the page, heard the door click. A good lad, despite it all; a good lad. Shared experience, shared conversation. Like on the factory line, the way you knew someone without even really speaking. Could see into their thoughts, their daydream fantasies. Knew them better than themselves.
This why Nate had found him on Millennium Eve; why Nate had found him though others were looking. They’d checked the gardens and the farmhouse, the bedrooms, assuming him drunk, having seen him set an alarming pace with his drinks. But Nate knew exactly where to look, knew also to give him some time alone there. Communion ahead of midnight.
Carter had thrown a large party, a local band playing the greatest hits of the last thousand years, hundreds of guests, cigars and champagne, the aching fug of perfume and aftershave. Drum watched Gwen and Daphne laughing with one another, giggling like schoolgirls. He felt erased, light in his body. Everyone laughing, no one thinking what would happen at midnight, the system errors, the catastrophic failures.
At half past eleven, he could take no more. He ducked down into the cellar, turned on the light and startled a young married woman and an older married man. They did not apologize, hurriedly pulled up or pulled down their garments, and silently filed past Drum. They’d spend the rest of the night worried they would be busted. To worry about such trivia.
The wheel was stiff, or he was not as strong as he once had been. It took several efforts before the door gave, opening up to the corridor, to the other door. He sweated as he did battle, and eventually won. The decontamination chamber smelled musty, like caves, and there was mould beneath the waterspouts, a lime-green pus.
He pushed through the double doors and into the living quarters, turned on the lights, all but one now dead, just the one holding on. How was this possible, if all bulbs installed on the same day, turned on for the same amount of time? He was thankful for it; for it not giving up.
The furniture was covered in sheets, clumps of dust on the linoleum, the same cave smell, but underpinned by something decaying. He breathed through his nose and took a bottle of whisky from the almost-empty box by the bookshelves. He removed a dustsheet from a chair and sat down, cracked the seal on the bottle. He put his wristwatch on the arm of the chair, the second hand counting down. He saw the bombs in their silos, the erecting launchers, the haywire codes and the looks of panic, of terror, as the military realized what was happening.
Not his wife, not Carter, but Nate. Nate finding him. Coming down, telling him they were looking for him, best look smart. Drum proper drunk then, Nate helping him above ground, half dragging him like one of Doom Town’s sack-men. Nate deposited him back at the party, in the large dining room, as though he’d never left.
They counted down the seconds. Drum and Gwen and Daphne and Carter. The fireworks exploded in the garden. The sky erupted in violets, pinks, silvers and golds. There was no big blast to end the spectacle, not even a flicker of lights, not even a power surge. Just the fireworks and the cheers, and the kisses, and the hugs, and his son keeping quiet, his son saying nothing, saying nothing the best way he knew how.
7
Gwen hugged Molly close, that just-bathed smell, mint toothpaste and bubble bath, pyjamas washed in a pungent detergent. Taking off the slipper socks in the kitchen, putting them by the coats and shoes. For safekeeping, Molly. She would like to buy a pair for Femi, his slipper socks bright, red, gold and green, a touch of Christmas about them.
‘I love you, Granny Gwen,’ Molly said, kissing her on her cheek without prompt. Such sweet moments. Unexpected and still surprising. I love you, even though you’re not my blood. Were you taken from me, I would miss you like I miss Femi. The same clawing ache, yes. But different. Where does one go for forgiveness for such thoughts? God, do not be listening. Be with the bombed and the blasted. Be not with me. Nor you, Old Nick.
‘I love you too, Molly-moo,’ Gwen said.
‘I don’t think I got my kiss,’ Drum said and pushed his face into the girl, pretended to gobble her up, big-bad-wolf style. Molly loved it, as she always loved it. Jealous of that. Were Molly able to write a diary, Gwen would be missing from it too. Another excision from another life. When Carlie remarried, which she would, she would be excluded again. She would be a half-memory, a spec
tre on the farm, lost amongst the cows.
At night, unable to sleep, Gwen sometimes imagined there was a device that would alert you whenever someone thought of you. A terrifying invention. A kind of hellscape. The filtered rage of her daughter, the frustrations of her husband, the pity of her son. The sordid thoughts of men she had perhaps met only once. Ray only imagining her twenty years younger. Or worse, the machine registering no thoughts at all, eventually pointing to a true and inevitable death, one reached even before you’ve drawn your last.
‘Bye-bye, Molly,’ she said.
‘I’ll be back later,’ Nate said. ‘Going pop in the Wolf on the way back.’
‘Drop the car here first,’ Drum said.
‘I always do,’ he said.
He did not always do that. It was a miracle he’d not been killed on those roads. The future machine would tell Nate she thought about him all the time. This she hoped. This she was sure was true.
8
Nate knocked on the door he’d painted a cherry red, a good solid door, well hung, tight against draughts. Carlie opened up, bed-headed, tousled. Once he’d woken with her looking like that, like a French film actress, he thought, something natural, sexual about it.
‘You want your men men, and your women women,’ Billy had said. ‘They need to be hypermasculine, hyperfeminine.’
Always thought a lot, did Billy. Too much thinking. Nate did not think on it almost at all now. When his parents were out, when alone, he didn’t think, but used the computer. The images there. Everything he wanted. But no thinking.
‘She’s asleep,’ he said. ‘Nodded right off.’
‘How much cake’s she had?’
‘Just the one slice.’
‘No chocolate?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a little piece when Daddy wasn’t looking?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. I’ll bring her in.’
He checked the night nappy was correctly cinched, held Molly carefully and laid her down on her bed. He’d read her stories here, badly, but with effort; here he’d lain beside her when Carlie went out, Molly screaming for her, screaming in his face for Mummy, Mummy don’t want Daddy, and that continuing for hours some nights. The screams like she was seeing the content of his mind, his thoughts of striking her, beating her, punching her in the throat to just stop her from screaming.