by Glen Duncan
Augustus watches the taillights disappear. Certain reflexes of the imagination still fire—the wind is God moving His hands—but come to nothing. The world’s emphatically literal. Appositely literal since he’s leaving it soon. You know where you’re goin’ now, Mr. Rose? the driver had asked as Augustus alighted. Yeah, I’ve got it, thanks. But alone in the billowing rain he’s not so sure. Without the bus his sense of direction dissolves; he feels it going—then it’s gone. Is the lane on his left or his right? He takes a few steps up the hill—then catches himself, shocked at how crazily the fever’s working him: The road hugs the coast; for Christ’s sake there’s only water on your left. The lane’s across the road on the right. Follow for a quarter of a mile, then the stile on the right, dry stone wall, footpath, another stile and you’re on Maddoch’s land. Come to the croft from the opposite side. Go now before…go now and get the stove—or even light the fire if they’ve finished the…go now.
The wet road passes under him in many more steps than he would’ve thought necessary, but still, there’s the lane in front of him where the trees meet overhead (mourners consoling each other, Selina said in the preliteral days) or so he thought but is wrong because with no idea how such a thing could be possible finds himself pitching forward in what feels like slow motion (he has time to equivocate between reason’s ditch and the fever’s portal to another dimension) before sudden contact—a terrible flash of pain in his left knee and right shin—brings physics back.
At his first convulsive reflex—to get to his feet—the pain sears, yanks a cry from him, a pure sound of himself he hasn’t heard since Harper, who for a split second he expects to see standing over him. Don’t try to get onto your knees because the knee and the shin are pressed against something sharp and can’t take any weight. The knee and the shin now have the luminous importance. Despite the pain he has to think the maneuver through. Use your hand to feel where the edge of whatever it is is. Farm tool or car part. Some sort of blade. There. That’s the edge. So now you roll, take the weight on your elbows.
The ditch bottom’s flooded but for a few moments he has no choice but to lie with his right side partially submerged. No idea how he could have gone so wrong. And so many more opportunities for going wrong between here and the croft. Is this it? Found dead in a ditch? Why not? Why’s he come here if not to discover the manner of his dying? Isn’t this earth and water, iron and stone? What other graces was he expecting? He imagines Maddoch’s black-and-white collie tomorrow morning drawn by its nose, never smelled a dead man before, then Maddoch coming up, get ewt there Sam assuming fox or sheep or badger or whatever. The dog not sure how to be, what signal to give, circling away and back as Maddoch’s long owl face registers. Fuck me it’s the coon, which he’ll pronounce khun. And there the farmer will stand in the silvery morning amid the sunlit puddles, breath visible, hands hot in his pockets, already around the core shock the vague fear that this, whatever the explanation, won’t be good for him, for his scheme of things. Christ almighty. Christ almighty.
Augustus breathes easier, locates his stick. No denying the temptation to lie still, close his eyes, go out, go out, quite go out. The ditch smells of waterlogged earth, an unbankruptable freshness, the planet’s thrusting monomania for renewal. If the dead weren’t dead this is the force they’d feel pushing through eye sockets, ribs, jaws, the upheaving freight of microbes and nitrates. Sorry, can’t stop: life.
Suddenly the rain comes down harder. He rolls onto his side, gets up on one elbow, shivering. Footage of the sun reveals fire tearing itself off in giant strips; this is the fever now, agitated and profligate. He’s not, apparently, to be given peace. The pain in his knee and shin is as if the blade or whatever it is is stuck in there but when he reaches down feels only a small tear in his soaked trousers. Lean forward and grab a fistful of grass, haul and use the stick to take as much weight off the legs as possible, but even so it’s going to hurt—
With a twist he rights himself flush to the bank that slopes down from the roadside. Possible fracture of the shin, possible chipped bone in the knee, nothing broken but enough damage to double the distance home. There are times when the islanders send out their collective spirit to harass him. Look at you: old one-eyed black man lying in a ditch at the edge of the world. What the fuck are you doing here? Tell us or die but for God’s sake put an end to this.
A sodden fox trots past, a vision of urgent purpose from tail-tip to snout that hasn’t changed since the species arrived. Without God there’s only the richness of the accident and it makes no sense to praise accident; still, creatures have the beauty of being undividedly themselves. The restaurateur, Gianni Cardillo, who fell in love with Juliet, and who was a very peripheral Mafioso, had a passion for animals, and for wild animals an infantile rapture. This is the glory of God, he’d say, watching television lions strolling the savannah. How can anyone say there’s no God when you see somethin’ like that? Jesus, people are fuckin’ blind. Augustus had of course begun with and for many years maintained a hatred of the man whose money supplemented him through college (my mother’s ass is putting me through college, he told Selina, in a tone that conceded his own disgusted willingness to take the arrangement if the alternative was having no life on a scholarship) and whose connections after college spared him the draft. But eventually in spite of himself came to see there was more to it than that. Cardillo went to women for the answer to the question of his secret worth, to be told whether, apart from the knack for getting on in the world, he was any good. Once she’d given him that, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her or those she loved. In his honorable moments Augustus knew casting his mother as whoring strategist was bogus. She was genuinely drawn to Cardillo, who had warmth, quick understanding of people, delight in the world’s contradictions and a doglike nose for pleasure. Augustus could see the change in his mother, that for the first time in his life she wasn’t worried. I know this is going to be hard for you, baby, she said, once it was apparent Cardillo wasn’t going away, but all I’m asking is that you give the guy a chance. You want him to be a lousy bastard, I know, but remember just because you want something to be true doesn’t mean it is. He wants you to be a lousy bastard. Doesn’t mean you have to be. Augustus had had a dreary feeling she was right, that his soul was being confronted with a signal to grow, and, with bizarre clarity, that Cardillo’s was too. Still it took years for both men to see the war between them was a reaction to the shock of having liked each other from the start.
The fox is gone by the time Augustus drags himself up the bank onto the road and struggles to his feet. And miles to go before I sleep. Or one mile, but there remains the question of what just happened. The lane’s ten feet to his right. How did he go so astray? The rain hammers down with continuous urgency. The downpour’s added twenty pounds to his clothes. He suddenly realizes he’s unbearably hot and begins wrestling his overcoat off, imagining himself seen through a thermal imaging camera, the observer going, Jesus this guy’s on fire.
At his second attempt the lane really is the lane, overarched with black mourning trees just the way the illusory version had been. The darkness at least is a comfort. His time with Harper had been brutal with light. You’d never think you could feel such grief for the loss of darkness. He’d thought of it then as a lovely young goddess who used to come and lie on him but never would again. Sometimes woken in the night by a dream (the same dream, always, that he’s back in the interrogation room) he wraps himself in his sleeping bag and steps outside. Darkness now is pure phenomenon, nothing to do with him. This is the final relationship with the universe: you find solace only in things that offer none.
But his current state makes the darkness unpredictable, gives it an occasional twist or flake of light. The two new injuries, knee and shin, are rich power sources for the fever. At one point he wakes up on the cratered tarmac with no memory of passing out. His teeth and scalp are full of prickling confusion. When he reaches what he thinks is the second stile (in fa
ct it’s the wrong stile altogether) he’s shivering so violently it takes him several attempts to grab the post and pull himself onto the step. Mud clutches and sucks, he twice loses his stick, falls, vaguely recognizes beguilement but wills himself down to a deep geography that corrects his errors and brings him as the last of his strength goes to within sight of the croft.
A hundred meters, he thinks, no more. That poor bastard who collapsed just before the marathon finish line and got helped up, made it, then got disqualified because of the help. What a dream the stadium must have been when he waltzed in, a softly roaring otherworld. These are gorse bushes. Those grayish masses sheep. And Maddoch leaves the key on the windowsill round the back. What happened to your eye? Well, son it’s like this: I imagined them doing it and they did it.
The last thing he remembers before he collapses is Harper’s voice in his head saying: The world’s not what we thought it was, the world’s what it’s always been.
He wakes to the sound, smell and light-flicker of fire. For a moment he lies still—on his back, dry, warm, with aching skin—knowing nothing, where he is, what happened, who he is even. His mouth’s parched. He turns his head on the pillow, an animal looking for water.
“Well then.”
It takes a second for recognition to gather (with it the rushed reassembly of his history) then he has the face and the name: Maddoch. The farmer stands in the doorway, rolling a cigarette. Beyond him blue-gray fleecy light that could be dusk or dawn. Dawn, Augustus thinks; there’s a hint of burgeoning. The rain’s stopped.
“How’re you feelin’?”
Augustus swallows, tastes bile. He remembers seeing the croft pale and distinct against the dark hill and being surprised he’d thought home. “Thirsty,” he says, swinging one leg down off the cot. Bare leg: he’s been undressed and put in dry underwear and a clean sweater, imagines the horror that would’ve been to Maddoch and the wealth of gossip the scars will provide. Scars like you wouldnie believe. Aye, all over. There’s a wad of toilet roll tied over his kneecap, same arrangement for the shin.
“Hold your horses, man,” Maddoch says, moving forward. “Stay put fra minute.”
“Just need some water.”
“Stay put, I’ll get it.”
Maddoch goes to the sink, picks out and rinses the tin mug (part of the camping set Augustus has relied on since coming here) then fills it with water. Augustus remains half up, sleeping bag clutched over his loins. The drink, when Maddoch passes him the mug, gives him a joy so simple and pure he could weep.
“Another? Give it here. I’ll ring the doctor’s in a minute. Surgery doesnie open till—”
A shift in the light makes them both look to the doorway, where the girl from the bus shelter appears, peering in, one hand on the door frame, the other in the leather jacket pocket.
“Oh, sorry,” she says.
Maddoch hands Augustus the refilled mug. Augustus stares at the girl.
“’S’yer guardian angel there,” Maddoch says. Which doesn’t move them forward. Despite everything Augustus is aware of the fire shimmying in the hearth, its claim on a radius of domestic life from a contract forged half a million years ago amid a ring of red-lit moist faces. The change it makes to the croft’s interior hurts his feelings, as if he’s been cheated: a transformation like this should have been his decision.
“What happened?” Augustus says. “Where are my clothes?” He’s seen his mud-spattered trousers draped steaming over a chair near the fire, his filthy overcoat on the back of the door the gun the gun the gun—but neither Maddoch’s face nor the girl’s says they know about it.
“She found you,” Maddoch says. “Pole-axed, legs stickin out the door. Thought you were deed!”
The girl takes a step inside. “Only for a sec when I first saw you lying there,” she says. Her eyes flick from him to Maddoch and back again.
“Let me get dressed,” Augustus says. “No need to call the doctor. I’m fine.”
“Take it easy, Mr. Rose. You’ve had a bad turn there and a nasty knock. You seen the state of your legs, man?”
People here, the fire’s transformation of the room, his feeling of overfullness—the world’s done all this behind his back. He forces himself to speak calmly. “I’m sorry. I’m grateful for your help. Mr. Maddoch, if you could just pass me my bag there I can put something on.” Pointing, he realizes he’s still visibly, comically, shivering.
“Hen, just give us a minute will you?” Maddoch says.
“Oh aye, sorry.”
When the girl withdraws Maddoch slides the rucksack over to Augustus then turns his back and busies himself with the unfinished roll-up. “I’ll tell you what,” Maddoch says. “You’re lucky she came along there.”
“What time is it?”
“Around eight.”
“What’s she doing out here at this time?”
“Lookin for work if you can believe it. Lassie’s half cracked if y’ask me. Anyway we’ve nothing. Christ knows why she’s not away to the mainland.”
Putting the clothes on hurts. Augustus clamps his jaws to stop his chattering teeth. By the time he’s got the sneakers on he’s faint, knows if he tries to get up he’s asking for trouble. He sits holding the edge of the cot. Give her something. The figure fifty pounds suggests itself. He has a fifty, unbroken from God knows when, in his wallet. Assuming the wallet’s still in the coat. And the gun, Jesus he could have dropped it anywhere. There’ll be the tedious clambering of her saying no no I don’t want that and him having to persist. He could get Maddoch to do it if he didn’t see the farmer pocketing the cash.
“You’ll need a whatsit jab,” Maddoch says. “Quack doesnie come out now that I think of it, but I can run you in later.”
“It’s fine,” Augustus says. “Don’t worry. Tell me what happened?”
“Best ask herself,” Maddoch says, going to the door and opening it.
The girl’s not, Augustus decides, “half cracked,” but something’s not right. Too much energy and not enough education, yes, but also a flipping between awakeness and abstraction. How old is she? Nineteen? Sixteen? He infers prematurely swallowed chunks of experience. The pull on his dead interest’s like the itch in a phantom limb. He could groan and roll away.
“Prob’ly shouldna been walkin down here but I just thought there was something funny—you know how you get a feelin? Anyway sorry.” She says “sorry” a lot. She’s got instinctive generous curiosity but there’s some painfully ingested knowledge that checks it. “Recognized you from yesterday at the bus stop when you gimmie that fright.” Pronounced freight. She laughs easily but it’s always partly a plea not to be hurt. She can’t stop looking at him but looks away if he looks back. After dead loss in the village Maddoch’s was the first farm she tried for work. On her way to the next she’d seen the croft and wandered down to take a look. Augustus, unconscious, soaking, had been sprawled across the threshold, legs bleeding. She’d run back and got Maddoch.
“Lucky for you, Mr. Rose,” Maddoch says. “I was just about to go in for the wife’s prescription.” Throughout he’s avoided Augustus’s eye. The scars have unbalanced him, confirmed the croft arrangement’s a mistake. Augustus foresees the clipped attempt at eviction, the thought of which, the effort it’ll require to talk Maddoch down, makes him dizzy.
“I came here f’ra holiday when I was little,” the girl says. “Always thought I’d come back one day.”
“I’ve told her,” Maddoch says. “There’s no work. Summer, maybe, but not now.”
“Best be off anyways,” she says, standing suddenly. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know?” This is her catching herself. She relaxes into things, makes quick friends—then snaps awake, remembering you don’t relax into things, the friends turn out to be not friends. Best be off anyways.
Augustus knows the timing for the fifty pounds has to be right if he doesn’t want Maddoch interfering. He waits till they’re both out of the door then gets up and, after a m
oment’s adjustment to the floor’s pitch and swing, goes after them. Moving’s a succession of cattle-wire shocks, dull bites in the bones. The wallet’s in the overcoat where it should be, as is the gun. At the croft’s threshold cold air surprises his face, neck and hands, sets the fever’s pins-and-needles off again.
“Just a second, Miss.”
Her face when she turns shows a reflex fear that she’s to be called to account, smothered quickly in a smile. Augustus beckons her, aware as he does so not just of Maddoch observing, realizing he’s missing something, but of the wet land and low gray sky, the sheep nibbling the hill. This place avers the planet going on without people, the giant facts of rain and sunlight, the sculpted bulk of deserts, fish-heavy oceans, a wealth of spectacle for no one and nothing.
“Have a drink on me, okay?”
“Och don’t be daft,” she says. It’s her natural attitude but there’s no disguising the double take and scurry for adjustment when she sees it’s a fifty. Suddenly Augustus knows she spent last night not in a hotel. All these things he knows and doesn’t want to, survival’s gift of vacuous penetration. He shivers.
“Go ahead, take it. I insist.”
She shakes her head but her hands sing from the jacket pockets. He wonders if she’s on drugs. Doesn’t look like a user but you can’t tell these days. “If it makes you feel better,” he says, “I’m loaded.” A gust of wind whips her ponytail forward and what feels like a wet bedsheet against him. He sways, rights himself. Her head’s down, shoulders up.
“Miss?”
She lets out a laugh then sniffs and he wonders if she’s crying. It only lasts a couple of seconds but in that time he suffers a surge of claustrophobia, caught between the hot room and her bowed head.
“You don’t look loaded,” she says, not looking up.
Whatever’s trying to form Augustus doesn’t want it. The room’s heat presses his back. Everything has to stop and he has to put the fire out and lie down and them not be here.