Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Concentration was increasingly difficult. “You didn’t have that wart before I went to sleep,” Primo accused. “I would have noticed. I could hardly have missed it.”

  Wilmot the magician lovingly caressed the tip of his very long hooked nose. “This one? I added it recently. I thought it added a touch of nobility.”

  “You’re trying to distract me,” noticed Primo with sudden concern. “This car wreck is going to be a right bastard, isn’t it?”

  “Death is always legitimate,” said Wilmot, “but I thought I might hold your hand through this one.”

  “Then I ought to give some comfort to Daisy, oughtn’t I?” said Primo. “I mean, I know it’s all alright, but she doesn’t. I already feel fucking guilty. I don’t actually cause this crash in some way do I? That’s it, isn’t it? After all those fucking weird thoughts of murder, I end up causing the accident that kills us both. Bugger. I can feel it coming.”

  “You are distracting yourself from hearing the thoughts of the living,” Wilmot said, but Primo was already caught into the partial memory.

  “Shit. I’m actually scared.” Primo stared through the dusty windscreen over the shoulder of his living self, who was watching the sudden flight of a raven high on the wind. “This is so stupid but I honestly do feel frightened. It doesn’t make sense. I’m fucking glad you’re here. I suppose the little prick that I was, will just think of himself, but I’ll try and hold onto Daisy. Comfort her, you know, cuddle her up or something. And she was just doing me this favour. I feel so fucking guilty.”

  The flat road continued and the dust kicked up beneath the tyres and the chug chug of the aged engine droned like a tired worker bee, never reaching its hive. The old woman, careful and diligent, travelled slowly, eyes wide against the glare.

  On the other side of the road, partially obscured in the haze of the rising dust and the sun, the traffic passed them, an acceleration of noise, then gone. Not so much traffic on a sparse and rural highway, but some. Enough.

  “What did that prick-turd want here?” demanded Sam, struggling from the blue fluffy baby-suit which had recently so embarrassed him.

  “Eat your mashed banana,” insisted Daisy. “A growing boy needs his vitamins.”

  “I’m not doing it no more,” Sam shook his curls. “It’s fucking boring.”

  “Wilful, naughty boy.” Daisy flounced, her own curls far superior. “If you’re going to be bad, I shall send you away.”

  Sam glowered, the blue suit quickly fading at his feet. “I’ll fucking go then. I don’t care.”

  “And I’ll tell Daddy to give you a whupping when he gets home from work.”

  “Fucking try it,” Sam glared. “Silly old bitch.”

  Gregorio, who, not surprisingly, was not at work, strode in from outside, slamming open the door of the hut. “Arguing again? I can’t make out what you want a bloody baby for, when you just fight with him all day. Living here is nearly as bad as being alive again. I used to beat my wife every Saturday. I reckon it’s a habit worth going back to.”

  Daisy whirled around in fury. “You just lay one hand on me,” she dared, “and I’ll slit your bloody throat.”

  It was into this domestic scene of family bliss that Pigseed made an entirely unexpected entrance. “Fuck me,” roared Pigseed, though it was by no means an invitation, “what’s going on here? And it’s supposed to be the shitting fourth up one plane? It’s pissing noisier than my camp fire any day.”

  Daisy stared, open mouthed. “What are you doing here?” she wailed. “This is my house. All I ever wanted was my own little baby.”

  Pigseed did the one thing that was utterly natural to his nature. He turned his head, spat loudly, and raising his arm, brought his large hand down on the side of Daisy’s face. She was flung backwards and began to sob, holding her palm to the welt across her cheek. Gregorio sprang forwards and began to grapple with Pigseed. Sam found an unoccupied corner, curled up and watched with genial interest.

  Then Pigseed discovered that his usual satisfaction was missing. Every blow he dealt Gregorio, and they were many since his experience in dirty fighting gave him a considerable advantage, went straight through the body as if either his hand or his opponent were made of sand.

  Pigseed stopped with his boot lifted halfway towards a kick. “Something’s fucking wrong,” he complained loudly.

  At the same moment, with a shattering noise of gale and storm and creaking, breaking wood, the small house within which they grappled, lifted from around them, rose vertically into the whirling winds and was flung with titan force over the edge of the precipice.

  They all stood shaking on the rocky ledge, looking first downwards to where the remains of the hut was still tumbling and throwing out its splinters, and then upwards to where the first spit of ice cold threatened further collapse.

  “Run,” screamed Daisy, grabbing Sam’s arm.

  Gregorio grabbed Daisy. “Don’t run,” he yelled. “Fly.”

  The snows fell in an avalanche of cascading peaks as if all the mountains were descending into the depths. The magical cascade of mist over the huge water fall became a violent, tossing torrent. The whole ledge on which Primo had built his first home in the Summerlands, was destroyed. The cliff sides began to crumble. The sounds of cataclysm were stupendous. Then, as the fogs rolled in with sleet and knives of ice, the four souls hovering, trapped by the fury, were flung in opposing directions.

  Pigseed was thrown forcibly back into the last levels of the third plane. He landed with his feet in the air and his head against a stone. With a roll and a somersault, he splashed into the gravely shallows of a narrow stream, and felt his head go under. Spluttering, struggling to raise his nose beyond water, he remembered that he could not die again. But he was quite alone. There was no campfire, no gang. No friends. He lay back, breathed deeply, saw the fishes explore his gasping trout like gape, and lost consciousness.

  He did not know it but Sam was not far from him. Sam had been flung into the upper branches of a tree and was hanging there upside down, wondering what he had done wrong.

  In the lower levels of the fourth plane where the gentle meadows swayed with buttercups, poppies and ferny grasses under the rising sun, Gregorio landed on his feet with a jolt of pain but with everything, including his thoughts, intact. He did not look back. He looked towards the great open spaces of the fourth where the sun was dawning in glory, and he started to walk.

  Daisy found herself sitting on another level of the mountains, with snow on her shoulders and icicles in her hair, fog in her eyes and her borrowed home gone. She sat there for some time as the chaos settled and the waterfall became beautiful again and the sun came out and the mists went away. Then she stood up and brushed herself off. The first thing she saw was the scarlet macaw. He had flown in on the early sunbeams and was sitting, scratching under one wing, on a small twiggy bush.

  “Oh well,” said Daisy to no one in particular, “I suppose I’ve just got to start again.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Primo was roused by the insistent, insidious whine of electrical equipment. A dentist’s drill or a vacuum cleaner stuck on one awkward spot. He managed to open his eyes but it took time because the lashes felt glued. When he got the lids open a crack, he saw the little old lady. She was bending over him. Her perm was askew. She looked worried.

  He tried to apologise for falling asleep but his lips were swollen and his tongue was cleaved to his gums and he could only mumble. He kept trying. His thoughts were slipping too, drunken repetitive thoughts in weird slow motion. He wondered, as he was often apt to wonder on waking in strange places, if he had tried to strangle someone after all, and been caught. He thought perhaps he should apologise for more than just being drowsy. He wondered, more urgently, just what the fuck he might have done.

  He took a deep breath, which made his throat burn, and realised he couldn’t have done anything. After all, the old lady was alright. He wasn’t. This was, he assumed, a hospital. H
is back seemed split into five pieces, limbs paralysed. He was badly hurt and some electrical pump was keeping him alive.

  Then as he got his eyelids a little wider he saw the barn. It was an ordinary barn, large with rafters and straw and rusty piles of metal. An abandoned barn then. It smelled of old urine and rotting meat. He thought there were flies, and perhaps it was them he had heard droning and not electricity at all.

  He managed to remember the old lady’s name and somehow got his tongue out of the way and even licked his lips and mumbled “Kate,” though it didn’t sound like a word at all by the time he managed to get it out.

  If there had been an accident in the car, then someone had managed to drag him out of the sun and into shelter and keep him breathing while waiting for the ambulance. It had been a bad accident because he was in a lot of pain and couldn’t move. So he hadn’t been asleep, he’d been unconscious. But the old lady wasn’t injured because she was leaning over him again.

  Then he realised something very suddenly, and in spite of the sluggish ramblings of his brain, he knew there had been something wrong with the lemonade.

  The electrical whine was a small buzz saw.

  He was lying flat on his back, tied to the twisted remains of some sort of rotary hoe, and spread eagled. His back hurt like fuck and as the effects of the drug wore off, his head hurt too, so much in fact, that he even wondered if the old witch had used the buzz saw to scalp him. His hands were tied and he couldn’t reach up to find out.

  Primo took one very deep breath of utter hopelessness and closed his eyes again.

  “So, you won’t leave me this time,” said the voice.

  Involuntarily he opened his eyes again. “Leave you?” His voice was still thickened into saliva and guttural whispers.

  He could roll his eyes sideways now, though it hurt. Everything hurt anyway but then some element of pain had always seemed like a natural part of his life. Now he could see the clapped out old car he’d ridden in up until he fell asleep. It was parked beside him in the matted straw, doors hanging open. He supposed she’d dragged him out as soon as arriving, with him already comatose. For a fraction’s insanity he felt sorry for her. He was thin enough but wiry and still fairly heavy. She was little and bent with the beginnings of a hunch. It must have been hard work to get him from the car to the hoe and rope him on. She’d have struggled with him for some time. Thick stiff rope and good knots too. He could barely wriggle either wrists or ankles.

  But whatever had been done, had been done by her. There was no one else there. Just her and him. Her voice interrupted his pain. “Yes, and now you’re here to stay. No running off anymore. No leaving your poor little wife to cope with the baby on her own. You’ll stay for good. I’ll see to that.”

  This time he managed to spit out the words. “What fucking wife? You’re fucking mad.”

  “Filthy words Tom, and no good denying the past. You promised to love and be true, you promised in the sight of our Lord, until death do us part, and me so trusting. Pure and untouched I was, and ready to obey. Then you went running off with that slut Vivien soon as my back was turned. Vivien the vixen, the vile seed of Gomorrah, but you chased every slut in the bar I reckon. Whores, all of them, and you the worst. Well, you won’t be leaving me again.”

  Her voice trailed from sharp to plaintive, from grumble into a half cracked wail. Self-pity turned to angry complaint, from moan to busy decision.

  Primo swallowed bile. His eyes were on fire but his voice was working a little better and his brain was working too. As his senses cleared, he could see better, hear better, smell clearer. Dirt, fusty, musty and hot. Something else rotten, some decayed animal long unburied. Still born lamb, dead rats, snakes or a mange riddled marmot. “I’ll stay,” he croaked. “Just let me go. I promise I’ll stay.”

  Kate Askey came to stand over him again. She looked down at him and shook her head. Her eyes were big and sorrowful and looked kindly, just as they had when she’d offered him sandwiches and lemonade. “Too late to trust you now Tom.”

  “A second chance,” begged Primo. He’d tried struggling but hadn’t the strength. The poisoned drug was still in him.

  “And what second chance did you give our beloved Billy?” said the woman. Now she was brisk, stern and impatient, but the noise of the saw had clicked off. “Our baby boy, and I loved him so. No second chance for our sweet cherub. Your fault, Tom and you know it well enough. It was you I left to watch him, and me just gone to the store for supplies. God will never forgive you Tom Askey, for what you did to me and our little Billy.”

  “My God,” whispered Primo. “I’m not Tom for God’s sake. You’re old enough to be my pissing grandmother. I’m not your fucking husband.”

  “It’s true enough you’ve no right to be,” the woman said, lips tight pursed. “You and your black hearted ways and your wicked, blasphemous words. If I wasn’t a God fearing woman I’d have divorced your miserable hide years back. But I know my duty, if you don’t know yours.”

  The twisted metal holding the ridged blades was cutting into his back and shoulders. His wrists and ankles were bruised and stinging. His boots had been removed. Hell, they’d been falling apart anyway, but why take them off? “I know my duty, lady, I swear it. Let me go and I’ll stay. I’ll stay forever.” Primo closed his eyes and then opened them again, but nothing had changed and the nightmare hadn’t gone away. “I’ll look after you. I promise to look after the baby, if that’s what you’re talking about. Just give me a chance.”

  She squealed then, leaning so close that he felt the spray of spit across his cheeks. “You devil. How can you torture me so? Our dearest boy will never forgive you, and nor will our Lord.”

  Primo wanted, very badly, to be sick. Bile was swelling up from his gut into his gullet but he was frightened. If he spewed, he’d choke on it. “I ask your pardon,” he begged. He spoke low and steady, judging his words carefully, but panic made his voice tremulous and he tasted vomit. “For pity’s sake, get the boy then. What did you say – Billy? Send for him now. I’ll ask forgiveness.”

  The woman began to cry noisy, gulping sobs. Still crying, she wiped her nose on her sleeve and the tears with her thumb. “And him dead and buried all these years, poor little mite. Left all alone to suffocate in his cot while you went creeping out the kitchen door to see your lady friend. You’re a wicked man Tom Askey, and a black hearted devil.”

  “Dear God,” Primo whispered. “What happened to Tom? Did you kill him?”

  “Couldn’t face the guilt, could you, and ran out on me you did.”

  She paused, distracted, looking away as if she had momentarily forgotten he was there. Then, as if too weak for further effort, she flopped to the ground where she sat in the dirt, skinny legs outstretched, rocking herself and sniffing. Neat lace up shoes with the leather peeling away and the soles all cracked and worn through, the helpless signs of years of poverty, which Primo recognised so well. He stared in dreadful silence. In all his dreams of imagined strangulation he had seen dying, vacant eyes staring back at him. Kate’s eyes were vacant. But it was the drifting focus of the demented. When at last she stood again, she hauled herself upright against the hoe where Primo was roped. He lurched sideways. The metal clanked dully, then shuddered flat. He watched her fingers grip for balance beside him, hardworking, bony fingers jointed in arthritic knuckles, the fingers that had twisted the ropes and tied the knots. The nails were stubby and yellowed, broken jagged and untended. Old sun leathered, liver spotted fingers practised in bitter insanity and the slow business of repressed misery and revenge.

  She stood again, staring away from him, straw sticking to her clothes and her hair. Then she turned with a snarl. “Forty years you’ve left me to fend for myself. Alone at our Billy’s funeral and not one cent for flowers. I cut daisies from the roadside and laid them on his grave. A hundred wild daisies I laid there, and more I’ve planted since. But I couldn’t pay the mortgage. I couldn’t manage the farm. I swear you won’t
get away this time Tom. This time you’ll stay and answer for what you did.”

  “So forty years you’ve been stark staring mad,” Primo said softly. He tried to prepare himself, closing off his mind. He’d managed to put up with pain before, all through the years in the reformatory, through the hobo years of drifting, little food and no company. So he tried to block what was happening, to do the things with his head that would send awareness away. To create unconsciousness, he would first have to be acutely conscious. But he thought he knew what was coming and this would be a worse pain than most.

  It was while he was thinking about it, desperately hanging on to a rational coherence, that the electrical whine switched on again, a high buzz that made him bilious with terror. She cut through his right leg first.

  In spite of his mental preparations, the shock kept him conscious. He didn’t know if he screamed, though he must have done, while all his concentration was on the incredible, monstrous agony. Then it was, mercifully, more than he could bear and as the spinning blade struck bone, he fainted at once.

  He was floating above, watching in horrified paralysis as she sliced through the right leg just above the ankle, and then, without pause or reflection, began on the left, leaving the bone white and stark and neat with tiny splinters flying out like stars, and all the flesh and sinews curling away in red and white worms. The feet fell, like meat for the butchers. The rest of the imprisoned body lay quite immovable. Blood pumped out and soaked into the straw.

  Then the body twitched. It wasn’t dead. Above, in the thick shadows up by the cobwebbed rafters, Primo hovered and stared. So much blood. It looked thin and watery where it dripped, then thick and black as it soaked the straw below. He was discovering that an unhampered spirit could still feel exceedingly sick.

  From where he was now he could see the entire barn. It was cluttered, the battered car in the middle beside rusty old farm implements long discarded. Bent metal, the bald tyres of a tractor, parts of a plough and a boom sprayer, spades, rakes and buckets, a one wheeled barrow and a roll of chicken wire. The big doors were wedged shut, a sliver of sunshine glaring in through the planks from outside. There was the scuttle of something, mice perhaps. There was other stuff too. Heaps of old blankets. Hanging bridles and the remains of a saddle. Coiled rope.