Bête

by Adam Roberts

  I went through to the kitchen. The floor under the table seethed with woodlice. I rummaged through the cupboards, and put two tins of peeled plum tomatoes and one of chickpeas in my rucksack. There was a loaf in the breadbin but it looked like a woad-painted bust of the elephant man. The fridge was unplugged and empty; somebody had already cleaned it out. In another cupboard I found a pack of supernoodles in blue foil next to a miniature bottle army of half-empty and empty spice jars. I left the spice jars, telling myself that I wasn’t about to start haute cuisine-ing it; and the bread was obviously beyond the pale. But I took the rest. That was the whole of my haul.

  It wasn’t a large cottage. The sitting room was a dusty sofa and a dusty easy chair, a television in the corner and a bookcase. From the latter I took an 1890 prose translation of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, because I liked the dignified old royal blue binding, and because I fancied having something to read when the boredom became overwhelming. The other volumes were all sermons, commentaries upon the Revelation of Saint John, preacher’s autobiographies with smiling black-and-white photographs of their authors’ phizogs on the cover. A strange hoard, really. There was a low table in front of the sofa, covered in dust, and upon it only one thing – the triangular blade of a sheep’s shoulder bone, clean as a whistle. A paperweight, maybe. Strange to find it there all on its own.

  For some reason I was reluctant to go upstairs, but in the event I figured: in for a penny. So I stepped up the loudly complaining wooden stair slats, and put my head into the little bedroom that was all that was up there. Somebody was in the bed, and although they were very obviously not breathing I called out ‘Hello? Hello?’ in a quavery voice. I felt my own foolishness quite sharply as I did this; for even if she had been alive, how would calling out ‘hello’ with a question mark at the end defuse her panic at a stranger crashing through her bedroom door?

  She was lying on her back with her arms outside the duvet, and her head on the pillow, and she looked about two hundred years old. This, looking back, may have had to do with the scleritis, since the scar tissue chews up a fatal proportion of a person’s mucus membranes and this tends to dry the body out. Blackness had seeped from her nostrils, and the corners of her eyes, and had left dried snail trails down the sides of her face and on the pillow; but the eyes were completely occluded with scar tissue, and the lips looked like they had been repeatedly cut up and stitched back together.

  This was the first victim of scleritis I ever saw. Only belatedly did I feel the jolt of panic in my breast. My own foolishness again. She had clearly not died of natural causes; and whatever she had died of might very well be contagious. I went down the creaky staircase like a boot avalanche and burst out into the daylight, gasping.

  My panic soon left me, and I felt doubly foolish – first for blundering in without a second thought, and then for over-reacting so stupidly. I returned to the cottage later that same day. I wanted to see if there were more things inside worthy of salvaging; I wanted at least to be thorough. But I was reluctant to go straight back inside. So I retreated to the edge of the woodland, fifty metres from the cottage back door, and slung my tent between two fat elms, far enough into the forest to be invisible to anybody looking inside. It is a little hard for me to remember exactly why I did this; except that I wanted neither to leave the cottage nor, yet, go back inside it. Hunger was doing my thinking for me. My brain was not.

  I stayed there three days. Every now and then I left my tent to draw water from the cottage’s external tap, easing the hose off its spigot like a dairy farmer decoupling the milking machine. I was no longer a farmer. The first time I filled my billycan from the tap I worried whether the mysterious disease that had destroyed the woman inside was also in her water supply. But I hushed my paranoia and drank, and I was fine. I opened my haul of tins with a knife, one one day, another the next, and ate the contents cold – the chickpeas were particularly filling. I slept in the afternoon. I was woken by the sound of a telephone, ringing inside the cottage. I listened to its chirruping insistence, softened to a pleasant kind of washboard rhythm by the distance. Eventually it stopped. The telephone rang twice more, once that evening and once again the following morning.

  On the second day I ate fresh-picked mushrooms and one unwary hedgehog, which I cooked in my usual way by rolling it in mud and baking it in an open fire. There’s not much meat on a hedgehog and I finished the meal still hungry. But I was holding off the supernoodles as a special treat, so I sucked a pebble to take the edge off my hunger.

  The third day was bright, and I felt a weird febrile joy rising from my hollow, complaining stomach. I stared at the way the leaves looked in the brightness: fin-shaped, ten thousand of them. Breaking sunlight into a web of brightness that trembled on the ground. It seemed almost an omen, so I sneaked back into the kitchen to steal a saucepan, and took it outside. I cooked up the supernoodles in that pan over an open fire, and broke my fast with them. What a meal they made! I felt like a cow at a salt lick. It wasn’t the noodles as such; it was the little pouch of salinated curry powder. My head nearly imploded with the delight of it. I could have wept with joy. Scalloped patterns of shade on the forest floor. Afterwards I slept and woke up feeling refreshed in a way I had not for months.

  The success of this persuaded me back in the house yet again. I had, clearly, been neglecting my salt intake; and even if there were no more good food in the cottage I had seen spices and table salt in those cupboards. So I braced myself and went back in the musty-smelling kitchen, and put a cylinder of Tesco own-brand salt in my backpack. I searched amongst the spice jars but all were empty, save only a quarter-full vial of cinnamon, which I took.

  I searched the rest of the ground floor. There was a half-sized wooden door that opened onto some down steps, which in turn led down to a tiny cellar – perhaps six foot square. This smelled strongly of earth and decay, and the light didn’t work. By the small amount of illumination coming in from outside I saw nothing edible down there. I was hoping for wine, but there was no wine.

  Coming back up I heard the distinctive fizzing noise of an approaching car, and hurried through the back door in time to see it turn from the main road onto the overgrown driveway. The wheels of the vehicle puffed up, or otherwise expanded, to accommodate the shift from tarmac to turf. A large-framed, rectangular car, white-coloured. The windshield was darkened against the bright sun, though the side windows were clear. I had evidently been seen. There was no point in making a run for it. So, I zipped up my backpack and stood placidly.

  The car turned broadside to me and stopped, the electric motor shifting low hum to high-pitched whine as it transferred its momentum to its gyro. The driver’s door opened with a sigh, popping out before swinging wide. Inside was a woman in her thirties, and just beyond her a man of about the same age. Two dogs occupied the rear seats. Both the canines poked their heads out the open door, over the top of the driver’s seat, to take a look at me. One of the two quickly grew bored and drew his head back inside, but the other continued staring at me with a peculiar focus that told me what it was.

  The woman addressed me: ‘Norman?’

  Living in the woods had driven a kind of placidity into my soul I suppose. I neither denied nor acknowledged the name. I simply stood and looked at her.

  Behind her, the man spoke: ‘Good God, Norman. What’s with the beard ?’

  ‘Hardly recognized you!’ The woman hopped lightly from the driver’s seat. ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Norman,’ said the man, popping the passenger door and climbing out with considerably less grace than his partner. ‘Is she all right? We’re braced for the worst. We’re braced.’

  I shook my head, slowly. The woman opened her mouth a little way, and pushed her knuckles inside.

  ‘Were you with her at the end?’ the man asked.

  ‘She was gone,’ I replied, ‘when I got here.’ I spoke with that croaky quality any voice acquires when it has not been used in a while. The sound of my speaking f
ailed to disabuse them of their idea that I was Norman.

  ‘Oh God,’ said the man. ‘Ghastly.’

  One of the dogs had eeled between the two front car seats and poked its head outside. It was staring at me. It put its head a little to one side.

  ‘Did you park on the far side of the copse?’ the woman asked, evidently bothered by the absence of any motor vehicle she could ascribe to me.

  ‘Stop grilling him, Sandra,’ the man snapped, stepping towards me and holding out his hand. I shook it, and he cast a puzzled glance at my grimy fingers and palms.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Sandra. ‘I’m sorry Norman. How beastly – to find her already gone. We called and called. I told Phil she shouldn’t be left out here on her own.’

  The man – I made the assumption he was Phil – had his phone out. ‘I’ll notify the … well. I suppose the authorities. I wonder who to call?’ He put the phone to his mouth. ‘Siri, who must we notify of a death in the Swithley district?’

  ‘Dialling the number now,’ replied the phone.

  ‘Have you seen Phil?’ Sandra asked me. I looked at the man, now intent on his iCell, and when her gaze did not follow I realized that he was not the Phil to whom they had referred. This was the point at which I thought of informing them of my true name and identity. But things had gone too far for that. I considered the likely possibilities for Phil, and deduced he was a man charged with checking-up on the woman inside the cottage. Given her state it was clear nobody had been to see her in a while. ‘Not for weeks,’ I said.

  ‘I never quite trusted him,’ said Sandra bitterly. ‘But Tark insisted upon him. Scan suggested three others, you know, and one of those was a woman. But Tark said: no, no, Phil’s ex-army, he’s the one.’

  ‘Ah, hello,’ said the man, evidently ‘Tark’. ‘I’d like to report a death. It’s my great-aunt. Great-aunt-in-law actually. She lives at Mod Cottage, yes, yes. That’s right. I’m there now, co-ords, that’s right. Cause of death?’ He glanced at me, but carried on smoothly. ‘Old age, she was very old.’

  ‘I never trusted him,’ said Sandra again. ‘Never saw why ex-army was a recommendation. When you think of the types who go into the army in the first place.’

  ‘Discipline!’ Tark said forcefully. ‘That’s what the army teaches.’

  The other dog, the non-bête one, squirmed fully out between the front seats, eager to exit the car. In a moment it was free, and galloping through the long grass of the cottage garden into the trees. My stuff was there, and I almost went running after the creature; but I would never have caught it. ‘Toby,’ the man yelled, holding the phone away from his mouth. ‘Tobee!’

  ‘Oh let him go, Tarquin,’ said Sandra. ‘He’s been cooped up in the car.’

  The second dog was still looking at me. There was no doubt in my mind as to the respective loquaciousness of the two hounds.

  ‘It wasn’t actually me who discovered the body,’ Tarquin told the person at the other end of his phone. ‘It was – yes, he’s here with me now. Yes. Called Norman Speight. Ee-eye, yes. Ee, eye, gee, etch, tea, that’s. Oh he’s an old family friend. He—’ A pause. ‘Do you need to speak to him? Oh. Yah. Nah, OK.’

  ‘We should probably go inside,’ said Sandra. ‘Have a cup of tea. But it feels odd, the idea of sitting in there and drinking tea whilst she’s—’ She gave me a queer look. ‘She is still in there?’

  I nodded. ‘In bed,’ I said.

  ‘When did you find her?’ she asked me. ‘I mean, when did you get here? Where did you park, by the way?’

  ‘They’ll send someone,’ Tarquin called, slipping his iCell back into his jacket pocket. ‘Doesn’t have to be an actual coroner. A GP or even nurse can sign off on the, you know. My God,’ he added, noticing the damage for the first time, ‘the door!’

  He disappeared into the cottage, complaining noisily about vandals. Sandra was giving me more and more penetrating looks. ‘Are you all right, Norman?’ she asked. ‘You seem—’ When I didn’t reply she supplied her own explanation. ‘I suppose it is a shock. I mean, it’s not like she was young, but.’

  ‘Sandra!’ called Tarquin from inside the cottage.

  Sandra went inside, and I heard her going up the creaky stairs. I sat down on the ground. I’m not as young as I used to be, and I was tired of standing up. The second dog slid slinkily out of the car, and padded over to me. ‘You!’ it gasped. ‘Not! Noh! Man!’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ the dog growled, ‘yah! name!’

  ‘Bully for you.’

  ‘Womoh!’ the dog barked. ‘Womoh! Sacer!’

  ‘How cross would your owners be if I wrung your hairy neck?’

  ‘Hah!’ the dog said. It didn’t laugh; it spoke, or rather growled, the syllable. ‘Hah! Hah!’

  The sound of Tarquin and Sandra coming precipitously down the stairs was clearly audible through the wall. ‘My God, Norman,’ Tark shrieked, emerging through the back door. ‘Why didn’t you say she had the sclery?’ He had the lapel of his jacket turned up, and was holding it over his nose.

  ‘My God!’ Sandra cried. ‘We were in the same room! I almost touched her! ‘Oh God!’

  The dog drew his black lips back and grinned knowingly at me, letting his beef-coloured tongue loll. I experienced the sensation of dawning realization without knowing what it was I was realizing. Something going on, a profound insight into the way bêtes and humans were interacting. Something had changed. What was it, though? Sandra was washing her hands and face at the outside tap, gasping with the coldness of the water. Tark was on his phone again, calling back. ‘Norman why didn’t you say?’ he called across to me, accusingly. ‘Hello? Hello? Yes, I called a moment ago.’

  ‘I see why you’re being so,’ Sandra said standing up, her sweater damp down the front. ‘So shell-shocked or whatever. My God, Norman! I didn’t know.’

  Tarquin’s bray: ‘Hello, yes I said natural causes, I said – hello?’

  The dumb dog came galloping out of the forest, looking absurdly pleased with itself.

  ‘I reported natural causes but now it seems – yes—’ and he gulped, like a frog ‘—Sclerotic charagmitis, yes.’

  The dumb dog came to a halt by it mistress, and began licking her wet hand. With a smooth motion she caught it by the collar – I saw now that the dumb dog was collared, and the bête’s neck was naked – and swept it into the car. ‘Norm,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. Call, yeah? You have my number. Yeah?’

  The bête jumped neatly into the car, after its companion. In a moment Sandra and Tark were inside. The last I saw of them was them both rubbing something (sanitizer gel, I suppose) onto their hands. Then the doors whumped shut, the gyro gave up its tight-turning velocity and the engine buzzed into life.

  In a moment they were gone.

  I sat for a while in the sunlight. Then I went back into the trees, and I rolled up my tent, and I loaded up my backpack, and walked off.

  I am drunk

  I left because of the way the dog had been looking at me. It had not been at the forefront of my mind for a while, being so isolated; but it didn’t do to forget it – bêtes were at that point connected to one another, thanks to the facile internet. The old internet. The dog seeing me meant that a great many other bêtes were aware of me. I needed to remove myself.

  I hiked for half a day. Walking through a wood is a particular sort of perambulation: the way everything crowds around you makes it impossible to orient yourself with respect to the larger landscape by sight. Everything seems the same; you appear to make no progress – except by noting the upward, or downward, slope of the ground. Not that it mattered where I was going.

  Speaking to other human beings seemed to have tripped some switch in my brain, because I was chattering as I walked. ‘First sign of madness, eh, Anne?’ I said. ‘Can you even hear me? I wouldn’t blame you for pissing off – afterlife, nirvana, either’s good. Why would you stay in amongst all these trees? Oh here’s a derelict c
ar, Anne. You think they happened to leave a crate of beer in the back, Anne? No – no. Of course not.’ I explored the old Ford: white metal covered all over by the autumnal blossom of rust. The windscreen was gone, and the footwell full of years-old leaves. There was nothing in the back. ‘I know, I know,’ I said to the air. ‘My liver is grateful. You’re right, you’re right.’

  The trees all around shuffled their leaves like a croupier readying a deal, only to scatter them all carelessly on the floor. The wind that moved up there didn’t reach to the ground. I moved on.

  I only later became acquainted with the name of the disease Tarquin reported to the authorities on his phone: sclerotic charagmitis. The scary sclery. That was my first encounter with it. It was obviously bad news, though. I found a good tree and set up my tent. Foraging brought in very little by way of food, though; and in a few days the weather turned cold once again. The clouds were black. The occasional blue-white flake of snow span in the breeze like a cinder, although snow didn’t settle.

  I decided to forage again. The next day I explored my new area. There was a row of empty houses maybe half a mile from my camp, but these had been properly boarded up – metal shutters over the windows, crossbars on all the doors. I could perhaps have broken in, but it would have been effortful, and the odds were the people who secured these properties had emptied them first. So I passed on.

  I walked along the road between two overgrown fields and came at last to a pub, standing in the midst of nowhereness. Autumn fields, ungrazed, bristly with man-high grass.

  There was one vehicle in the customer car park, and another tucked away behind the external architecture of the air con, so I deduced the place wasn’t likely to be too crowded. I still had a little money on my chip, and I figured I could fill my belly, and enjoy my first taste of alcohol in months, and then slip away again. Still, I had to brace myself to go through the door. I summoned up my courage.