96
After dark he starts a fire, waits for it to die down a little and, using a sharpened stick rammed through the ex-squirrel’s middle, he roasts it over the flames. Not blackening the meat is tricky in the dark, but he does his best, and wow, as well as smoke, there’s an actual smell of cooking in the den, which explains why his mouth is watering.
When all is said and done, this is all he is.
Hell, it’s all anyone is.
Every one of us needs to eat.
And eat he will.
The squirrel – his squirrel! – is cooked.
Possibly overdone, in fact.
Never mind: this calls for a celebration.
Since he borrowed the whisky, he’s not touched it for not-touching-another-drink-ever-again reasons, but now, as he takes the first hot bite of haunch – which tastes as much like tuna as it does sausage or chicken, or anything burned on a barbecue, in fact – he decides he needs to wash it down with something other than pre-boiled stream water, which, in any case, it seems he’s out of. That was careless. But never mind! He pulls the bottle from its cardboard tube, peels the metal foil from around the lid and eases out the cork.
Oh, familiar squeak!
It almost makes him upend the bottle in the dirt.
But he doesn’t. He sniffs the whisky instead, clocks the sharply different smokiness and immediately drinks, as in takes a gaspingly long pull on the bottle, flushing himself full of fire, thinking: there you are, and here I am.
Another gulp, and a bite of squirrel, and another gulp, and more of the stringy meat, and another, and the chargrilled squirrel is pretty much gone now, seen off with a few more gulps.
And …
He’d carry on but it seems his throat has swollen shut in protest for now.
Oh well.
The booze cannot have had time to work its chemical magic yet, but the brain – his brain! – is a funny old thing, meaning it’s already relaxing at the prospect of its own relaxedness. Relaxing? Ha! From relaxing he’ll advance swiftly through carefree to couldn’t-care-less and beyond, towards the foothills of don’t-give-a-shit and into the land of who-gives-a-fuck which, of course, borders the sparkling ocean of oblivion.
Great place to have a paddle, swim, little boat ride even. Once in a while. Not as often as he got used to during the ‘you really have to confront this, Joseph; it’s eating you up’ year.
It being what, though?
As far as Naomi was concerned, though she didn’t know the specifics: those kids in the oven, plus the baker with the triangular hole.
He takes a swig.
She was probably righter than his ‘I’ve dealt with it’ warranted.
But on top of that: the fearful disease, the state of things Big Beast-wise, the stupid costly shiny stuff.
All the ingredients very clear and obvious to him now, taking another gulp.
He settles back against the dirt wall of the den, pulls his woolly hat low over his ears, and hugs the bottle to his chest.
He’s not about to drink all of it, is he?
No, because he’s not an idiot.
Right now that would probably kill him.
There’s a thought.
Ha.
He looks the other way, mind’s eye-wise, and enjoys a mashed-up fuzzy collage comprised of things like Zac’s hair lifting from his head as he bounces on the trampoline, the smell of Naomi’s scarf, the word Gujarat, the idea of Lara on a horse, plus, weirdly, the glistening innards of splayed squirrel.
All good stuff.
Here they come round again: glistening scarves and the word trampoline and Gujarat opening its gates to let in Lara on a horse that smells of Zac’s just-washed hair.
Once more: scarf-innard, Guja-squirrel, horse-smell, hair-gate, glist-oline.
Still lovely.
But what’s this?
A dressing gown.
Ugh.
Joseph takes another killer gulp, but the image won’t go away.
In fact, two more swigs down, eyes firmly shut, he sees the gown more clearly. Look at its stupid stripes, that monogram, the gold towelling belt loops and bulging pockets.
What’s in them, then?
Of course: razor blades.
Gulp.
Hard to see the exact level of liquid in the bottle, the night being so dark above the roof-hatch, but when he swishes it about there seems to be more space than whisky.
No need to waste the torch battery: his hands know their way along the cot edge to the little recesses he’s dug in the wall up at the head end of his bed. This one here has the knife in it, with the whetstone in the sheath pocket. Joseph clamps the whisky between his knees to free up both hands, so he can spend a pleasant few minutes sharpening an already sharp blade. That may sound a bit pointless, but if he’s going to do the job he wants to do it properly, doesn’t he?
What job?
Isn’t it obvious?
The whisky alone might work, but this here knife tip would cut out the conditional, so to speak. Never mind that damn razor, Joseph tests the edge of his own blade – so sharp now it feels sort of sticky – against his fuzzy cheek.
That Gujarat headline looked promising: he can shut out the light knowing he’s done something good, can’t he?
He pulls up his left sleeve and lays the pale shape of his wrist across his knee. You’re supposed to cut along as well as across it, aren’t you, to be sure of bleeding out quickly?
Yes, well, that then.
He’s already six feet under, give or take.
But possibly best close the grave-hatch first?
Good plan: actually inter himself …
He reaches to pull the little den-door shut and – oh damn – he forgot about the bottle, which flops over between his legs, whatever was left in it quickly emptying in the dirt.
Oh well.
He’s shivering, and yet he feels so warm! He’s very serious, very clear, and yet everything is also shades of stupid. He has to admit he’s pretty sad, and yet, you know what, he’s also quite happy.
They might not find him here for ages, years, aeons.
But what if they do?
And who might ‘they’ be anyway?
Some poor dog walker, in search of dog.
What have we here, then?
Oh my Lord.
Or, worse still, a child. One of the kids from the school. Imagine if he, Joseph himself, thirty-five years ago, when having a mooch around beyond the rusted iron boundary fence, had stumbled upon a desiccated man in the woods.
Is he sleeping?
No, dead!
Boom: nightmares, kid pretty much scarred for life, walk-in-the-woods-wise.
Although possibly it would also actually be quite exciting?
That’s the wonderful contradiction of life!
Like now: this thinking, this feeling, first one thing, then the next, it’s – still, even now – all so impressive.
The flat of the blade, pressed against Joseph’s inner arm, has warmed up so that he can no longer tell where he ends and the knife begins, and while that’s lovely it’s also not good at all and, Christ, his head is swimming, meaning he has to concentrate hard to slot the blade back into its sheath without nicking a finger or slicing his palm, because, well, who was he ever kidding, that’s where the damn knife belongs, obviously.
He doesn’t bother putting it back on the elf …
Shelf
Or indeed climbing fully inside his sleeping bag, because he has no boots to take off, does he, just a gurgling belly and whirligig shed …
Head
So he can simply roll himself up on the rot …
Cot
Not minding that he’s boinked said head quite hard against the dirt mall …
Wall
Because the head is in a hat, isn’t it, and a hat is both protective and worn …
Warm
Just like the whisky smell bitch …
Which …
97<
br />
The hangover is not news.
It’s as predictable as how he would have felt had he, say, run head-first into a wall, namely: an unconsciousness that smells somehow of petrol, plus a stiletto-tip of pain in the centre of his forehead.
When will it stop throbbing?
Also: peak thirst.
That desiccated version of himself he imagined last night? He’s halfway there today, all husk, chaff, dustbowl, whatever. He has known proper thirst in the past month, but everything beforehand feels like nothing compared to his new, blotted, scirocco-wind self.
And sadly, for which read stupidly, his water containers are empty, because they just are.
It’s still darkish.
Lighter when he opens the hatch, but – he checks his watch – only five fifteen.
Tap-shaped necessity propels him from the den. He doesn’t even bother with the de-heeled moccasins, just grabs his bag and sets off at a half-jog, the occasional foot-shriek an almost-pleasant diversion from the metal-on-metal mashing of cogs in his head.
He takes the most direct route to Nine Pines.
And once there he cuts a clear diagonal across the big back lawn.
Because: fuck it.
Meaning, possibly, he’s still stuck in the couldn’t-care-less stage of drunkenness?
Ah, dewy grass, after all those bits of stick and stone-chip, so pleasant underfoot. Something about the lovely coolness of the lawn suggests that there’s bound to be a new box of ice lollies in the freezer, and the thought of them immediately outflanks the tap. He must have a popsicle now. Knowing that it would be sensible to fill the water containers after raiding the freezer cements this decision, which turns out to have been wisely made, for lo, he’s popping packs of tuna steak into his bag, staring all the while at the fresh box of Calippos, sitting just there, next to the salmon en croute.
Joseph shreds the box top, fumbles out a lolly and rips off its foil lid with trembling fingers. Only once he’s bitten an ice chunk from the tube – Jesus Christ, that’s beyond good! – and is squinting with lovely discomfort at the garage floor, does he see his neatly paired boots standing sentry next to the freezer.
Hold on.
Yes, they’re definitely his.
He doesn’t pick them up.
Just drops the freezer lid, sidesteps out of the garage, shuts the door, edges round to the tap.
With one eye on the house he trickles water into his bottle, breathing very quietly indeed. More quietly than that, in fact: sipping so noiselessly that when, from within the kitchen Gordon starts up barking, the harshness of the sound has an industrial viciousness to it.
Joseph doesn’t even turn off the tap properly: he just hobble-runs, barefoot and skeletal and hunched within his pack straps, scuttling across the lawn stripes for the cover of the beech hedge, a cockroach headed for the skirting-board gap.
Once through it, he keeps on all the way back to the wood.
That’s where he’s safe, after all.
And yet, safe enough?
Possibly not.
Therefore, take precautions.
Meaning: recce properly, tool up and dig in.
He skulks round the den a good hundred metres out, then again at fifty and twenty-five. Once he’s sure nobody is nearby, he stows everything in the hole and works his way back around the zone with two things in mind, covering up all signs of habitation and cutting himself a few straight, thick sticks. What for? Sharpening, of course. He’s going to ground for as long it takes, but he’s not about to hide away defencelessly. Once he’s harvested himself three poles, he scouts the den zone methodically, padding through the bracken and rhododendrons, scuffing over footprints and drawing the cover bushes in tight to the hole, paying attention to every fallen leaf and every bent stem. He even manages to pull a fresh clutch of brambles over the hatch as he lowers it from within.
98
All that day he stays put underground, each passing hour a congratulatory – still safe! – slap on the back. They’re properly cumulative, these hours, for the longer nobody turns up, the less likely anyone will come. He doesn’t venture outside at all, not even to relieve himself. The stench belongs to him. So do these sharpened sticks. Each of the three has a lovingly whittled pointy end, and all of them are laid with their noses up near the hatch. He drowns his hangover in tap water and time, not minding that he’s not eating, unprepared to light a fire that first night for risk of sending up a smoke signal, preferring instead the burn of his hunger, its purifying, clarifying, monastic …
Pah, by nightfall, he’s hungry as hell.
Also pretty tired: though he’s intent on staying alert, listening out and so forth, his chin keeps dropping onto his chest, nodding-off-style. Here he is awake, listening to the trees creak, et cetera, but hell, he has to admit it, that hushing sound of the wind through the leaf canopy is somewhat lulling …
It’s lovely when he lets his eyes shut.
But around one in the morning something makes them fly open. He sits blinking in the dark. What was that? Some new – snuffly? – noise. Did he hear it or dream it? The latter: there it is again! And is that crackling to do with it as well? It’s an animal sound, coming closer. Yes, something is moving above ground, ferreting through the undergrowth, but bigger than a ferret, louder: Christ, he can hear its this-way-and-that footsteps, paw-steps, whatever, very near by.
A sharp barking starts up, coming from directly above him, he’s sure of it! Once, twice, three times.
Joseph wraps his hands tightly around one of his spear-sticks, crouching beneath the hatch. He’s utterly awake, about to burst from the den, intent on scaring the thing – fox, dog, wolf?! – away, or even killing it when, as abruptly as the barking started, it stops.
Whatever’s up there moves away.
Joseph stays very still indeed, listening intently, but the trees just shush to themselves for a long, long time and, as the hammering of his heart subsides, he convinces himself that the idea of a stray dog up there is as absurd as a wolf or polar bear: the big-sounding bark must have been his ears playing tricks on him, amplifying a fox yip or badger grunt through the drum-skin of the den.
The distraught mind: it’s a tricky bastard.
Unfathomable, in fact. Not a quarter of an hour ago he was ready to kill, and now, again, his eyelids are heavy as hell, he’s tired to the core, on the brink of falling asleep.
Just give in to it.
He’ll have to rest eventually.
Blissful, to lie back, accept the inevitable, allow himself to drift off, up, away.
He sleeps too deeply for dreams.
99
And wakes – what the—? – to a strange smell.
Bacon?
Ha, ha, ha.
He doesn’t bother lifting his head from the cot, much less sniffing deeply: why give his cruel imagination the pleasure? In a while he’ll get up, build a fire, cook his own actual real three-dimensional tuna steaks. Still, he has to hand it to himself, the deep dark bit of his brain that’s conjuring this full English breakfast is doing a pretty convincing job of it. As well as the smoked bacon smell he can just about hear the sizzling and spitting.
It can’t be.
But it is.
He is not imagining anything at all: those are the real sounds and that is the actual smell of someone – close by – frying bacon in a pan.
His mouth is watering.
That, there, was the metallic rip of someone peeling the lid from a can. It says one thing as clearly as the speaking clock: baked beans.
And Jesus Christ, that’s the chip and hiss of an egg being cracked open and slopped into the grease.
What next, the growling of a cappuccino machine?
Joseph does not know whether to laugh or ___.
Try.
No, cry.
He does neither, just gathers himself in the base of the pit, spear to hand, electrically confused.
What is going on?
Something cooke
ry-related, that’s for sure.
Yes, he’s absolutely certain that his senses are not deceiving him, but why not do a sort of pre-flight check on them all the same, angling the point of his stick towards the hatch so that he can look hard at it wobbling there in the seam of morning light, to note that yes, the tip, having lain against the dirt wall, is greyly discoloured, but the rest of the whittled part is still a lemony yellow, which proves he can see clearly, and the solemn ache of hunger in his gut is no illusion either, it’s just as real as the taste of his unclean teeth, and his nose and ears are likewise working perfectly, meaning everything is tuned up sense-wise, which in turn means what?
This: within thirty feet of where he’s hiding, someone’s cooking a fry-up.
Should he sit it out?
No, because whoever it is must know he’s there; there’s just no way this can be a coincidence.
Joseph levers up the roof-hatch.
There are stems and bracken shoots in the way, and a bit of the camouflaging bush kind of slumps forward off the half-raised door to block the view further, but through it all Joseph can still make out the shape of a man, and he’s more like fifteen feet away than thirty, and he’s sitting next to a larger gas-fuelled camping stove than the one Charlie bought Joseph, and there’s a red pan on the stove, and the flame beneath it is sky-blue, and the man is pushing the bacon in the pan with a spatula.
Lancaster.
100
Lancaster doesn’t seem to have spotted Joseph, who suffers an out-of-body experience, which runs as follows: he, Joseph Ashcroft of Airdeen Clore, is about to emerge from a hole in the woods, unless of course he lowers the lid again and retreats back into his hole in the woods.
Sadly, he doesn’t have a chance to choose because without apparently looking up from his stirring Lancaster says, ‘Morning, Joe.’
‘Good morning.’
Lancaster waves at him: the gesture is clear despite the camouflage. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ he says, ‘but I thought a bite to eat might help?’
Escape and Evasion Page 24