by Ali Shaw
He had sold the dogs then, all bar one puppy from each litter. In truth he no longer required them in order to hunt. Tracking, trapping and sniping had all become so instinctive that he fancied he could do all three sleepwalking. When those two puppies had matured and born mongrel puppies of their own, he kept only the runt: a serious, black-furred little pup with a blind eye and a wrinkled nose. This he christened Mole.
Mole was different from the other dogs he had owned. She was like his shadow. Those other animals he had looked after well, for sure, but only in the way he might look after the upholstery of his house, or polish some inherited antique whose history he had not learned. Mole was quiet, like her hunting ancestors, but thoughtful and sombre like her master. There were times when Daniel and Mole would sit side by side on some rocky parapet in the mountains and look at each other with such reflected heaviness that he would touch his face, expecting it to be canine, and Mole’s to be his reflection in a mirror.
He’d been surprised, then, when Betty met Mole and the two had been madcap together. Betty would chase the dog around the yard, and Mole would bounce after Betty, the pair creating such a tumult of yapping and laughing and rolling about on the floor that Daniel could only gape and marvel.
Now here he was, on his hands and knees, pushing a bowl of gruel closer to Mole’s elderly snout, wondering if, finally, the day had come when he would need to take up his shovel and pierce the earth of the Fossiter pet cemetery.
‘Mole,’ he whispered, nudging the bowl even closer, ‘Mole, can you hear me in there?’
Her blind eye stared blankly back at him. That eye had never shut. A strange prophecy, he supposed, of the moment when the other would become its empty equal.
She opened her good eye and he breathed out with gladness. ‘Mole!’ He wiped his forearm across his face.
Mole climbed groggily to her feet, whiffed the gruel for a moment, then clumsily plugged her nose into the bowl and snaffled at the food.
‘Mole,’ exclaimed Daniel, ‘good old Mole!’
Somebody cleared their throat.
He spun around, still on his knees. A man in a raincoat and cap stood in the doorway looking down his nose at Daniel. He had a flabby pink neck which he had tried to bind back with a tight collar. Likewise his belly had been squeezed by his belt into two bulges, one above and one below his waistline. He took off his hat and smeared into place the combed hair that covered his baldness.
‘I see you are hard at work, Mr Fossiter, keeping the weather at bay.’
‘Mr Moses,’ said Daniel, gruff and embarrassed, climbing to his feet while Mole slurped behind him. Sidney Moses had, of late, taken to keeping tabs on him.
‘The door was open, so I let myself in.’
‘I see that you did. And to what do I owe the visit?’
Sidney cocked his head, and his jowls wobbled down to the collar. ‘To the town, Mr Fossiter. You owe it to the town. In whose employment, I might add, I see that you are currently serving.’
He smiled sarcastically and looked down at Mole, who belched upon completion of her meal and sat down in a lump.
‘I also see,’ continued Sidney, ‘that you are still utilizing the fittest, most valiant hunting hounds available to a man of your profession. I’m certain that the goats of the mountains would throw themselves from a precipice rather than face a beast such as this.’
Daniel’s nostrils flared. ‘What do you want, Mr Moses? I’m sure we would both prefer it if we made this brief.’
Sidney raised his hands. ‘Now, now, Mr Fossiter, you know I only jest. But if you want brevity I will cut to the chase. I was expecting your report at the beginning of this week.’
Daniel glared away down the length of the hall, along which his family in portraiture expressed their disdain. He wondered whether they were frowning at his guest or at himself, for none of those men would have suffered a bureaucrat like Sidney Moses.
Thunderstown was full of busybodies, but Sidney surpassed all the rest. He had recently obtained a high-ranking position at the town offices which, much to Daniel’s chagrin, had given his interferences an air of legitimacy. Daniel had as little time for him as he would have for a mosquito, but lately Sidney had proven that he had the power to withhold the culler’s bursary and had implied he might revoke it entirely.
Daniel stared down at his boots and mumbled, ‘I forgot to write the report.’
Sidney sighed. ‘You and I,’ he said, ‘are either going to work through this or come to a head. It is perfectly justifiable that a man financed exclusively by the town be asked to file a weekly report on the results of his working activities.’
‘I have shot thirty-eight goats, trapped sixteen and brought down four for meat and hides.’
Sidney rolled his eyes. ‘Why is it so difficult to commit that to paper?’
‘Because it is unnecessary. The townsfolk know I do my duty.’
‘Nobody is calling that into question.’
Mole harrumphed, and Daniel agreed with her.
‘I simply wish,’ said Sidney carefully, ‘to make things better. How can I explain? Perhaps by asking you: when was the last time you went out into the world beyond Thunderstown?’
He shrugged. ‘Once. Thirty, maybe thirty-five years ago. That was enough of seeing the world.’
‘Well ... it’s changed a good deal in that time. Shrunk. And it will come to Thunderstown before long.’
Daniel thought of the American girl who had confronted him in the square.
‘Thunderstown,’ said Sidney, ‘will change. Old ways of doing things will slip away. You, for example, have not taken on an apprentice.’
‘I have no son.’
‘Quite. But you must have given thought to the question of who takes over when you are gone.’
The truth was that he’d thought about it less than he should have. He could not imagine Thunderstown without a Fossiter. His family had been culling here since the first foundations of the streets were laid, and it seemed impossible that it would fall to him to terminate such an ancient tradition.
‘Whether we like it or not,’ said Sidney, ‘we are approaching a moment when our old ways of doing things will be challenged. That is why I’ve been pressing you, Mr Fossiter, for reports and schedules. Not to question your sense of duty, but to make the most of it. What if we harnessed this moment of transition, and used it to our advantage? What if the great work of your family could be concluded?’ He gestured to the grim-faced oil paintings. ‘Think how proud you would make them.’
Daniel shook his head. He knew where this was going. Sidney always came to it eventually.
He looked down at Mole, who was staring into space, and wished she were still young enough to bite and growl. For when Sidney started talking about the future, he became like a fanatic in a trance. Where before he had only irritated Daniel, now he unnerved him.
‘Old Man Thunder,’ said Sidney in a half-whisper. ‘The catch to end all catches. The one that eluded all of your forefathers.’
‘Old Man Thunder is a bedtime story.’
‘Is he, though? Only last week, somebody told me they’d seen a bald man walking on Drum Head.’
Inwardly Daniel cursed Finn for being so careless. Outwardly he did his best to be indifferent. ‘None of us are getting any younger, Mr Moses, and half the men of Thunderstown have watched their hair desert them. It was probably just Abe Cosser, searching for a lost sheep.’
‘Abe Cosser was the man who saw him.’
Daniel shrugged. ‘If he were real, one of my fathers would have caught him. But not one of them ever even saw him.’
‘But what if your fathers never caught him because they never had the tools? If we organize, Mr Fossiter, and if we bring in the newest technologies, I believe we can flush him out. Then, at last, the town will be safe from the weather.’
Daniel stared across the room at the picture of his grandfather. Painted before his hair had turned white and his skin had wrinkled from the bone
, he looked in the portrait the spitting image of his grandson. As did every other man glowering from the hallway walls. He remembered his grandfather concluding wistfully that Old Man Thunder did not exist, just as each and every Fossiter before him had concluded it, after hoping it was true and searching for him in vain. Old Man Thunder, the legend went, was a storm cloud that had become a man. He was the master of the wild dogs, the rider of the brook horse, the herdsman of the mountain goats, and more. It was said he once lived, bald and wizened, on the spot where Saint Erasmus now stood, but he had been driven up into the mountains by the first of Thunderstown’s settlers. There he still roamed, inciting the weather, scheming to reclaim the land from the townsfolk.
It was said that if the culler were to put a bullet in Old Man Thunder, then the weather would stop forming into devilish beasts and the town would be reprieved. As such, each young Fossiter had dreamed about being that gunman, then in old age called time on the fantasy and declared Old Man Thunder to be nothing but a bogeyman.
Unlike his family, Daniel had been content to dismiss the story of Old Man Thunder from an early age. He had believed in his grandfather’s rebuttal, and seen nothing in the mountains to question it. Only when Finn was born did the details of the legend creep back into his thinkings. In the first months of his life, Daniel had watched nervously as Betty nursed this bawling, wizened creature, and he had thought that it matched very well the angry, bald-headed devil of folklore.
Clearly he had done a bad job of hiding such fears, for one night Betty had sat him down and held his hand and said, ‘Nothing in the world is ever like you think it’s going to be,’ and that maxim had dropped into his thoughts like an anchor and he had again put Old Man Thunder out of his mind. Yet here was Sidney Moses, dragging him back out again.
‘No,’ said Daniel. ‘It is a waste of all our times to look for him.’
Sidney had been watching him studiously. For a moment his mouth looked full of venom, but then he managed to smile and gently laid a wad of papers on the homestead table. ‘I disagree,’ he said, ‘and I hope to bring you round. For now, please consider these documents a favour. To help you file your reports.’ He put his hat back on his head and tipped it. ‘Good morning, Mr Fossiter.’
Daniel nodded, and Sidney left him. He closed the door and bolted it, then took a cursory look at the papers Sidney had left. He had prepared row after row of boxes he expected Daniel to tick. Records of goats shot and trapped. Wild dogs sighted. Expenses incurred. Daniel spat on the sheets and prayed for a rockslide to tip down on Sidney, his report books, and eliminate every final trace of him.
After making sure that Mole was comfortable, Daniel filled a sack of groceries and with this and the fifty sheets of rolled white paper headed out for Old Colp. He did not take the direct path from Thunderstown, but instead embarked south into the Merrow Wold. Only once he was some distance from the town did he turn northwest and climb Old Colp’s slopes from that oblique direction. This was his habit whenever he visited Finn, for he did not want a man like Sidney Moses to know where he was going. Should Sidney discover Finn, well ... he feared how things would turn out.
When at last he reached the bothy, the sun and the banded clouds dropped stripes of shadow across the dirt and the bluff the cottage backed up against. Crickets rattled in the grass, and when he knocked on the door a yellow bird shot up from the eaves and flew away with a corkscrewing bent.
He crossed his fingers and hoped that Finn would not be home. Then this awkward duty would have been avoided once again. He would leave his delivery of groceries and paper by way of a calling card.
Today he was unlucky. He heard the handle turn, and then the door to the bothy opened.
A lifetime spent tracking beasts had made Daniel keenly observant, so he did not miss the enthusiasm on Finn’s face when he answered. It promptly dropped away, as if he had been expecting someone else. They greeted each other civilly, but when Daniel entered the shelter he sniffed the air as if he might smell an intruder. Nothing, and he wished Mole were young and well and with him. He took the groceries straight to the kitchenette corner, wondering why on earth the two of them still did this. Neither could conceal their disdain for these occasions. He dumped most of the supplies directly into Finn’s cupboard and vegetable basket, then selected two plates (remembering how he and Betty had once eaten off these plates amid laughter) and carried them to the table along with a bunch of carrots still speckled with soil, a loaf of bread that yesterday had been fresh and springy but today had staled, and a tub of a vegetable pâté he had bought from Sally Nairn in Auger Lane.
They sat down to lunch at the table, but both positioned their chairs askance to it, so that they didn’t quite face each other.
‘Well,’ said Daniel, ‘are you going to tell me how you’ve been faring?’
‘Good, for the most part.’
Daniel nodded and broke the bread. ‘Dear Lord,’ he prayed, ‘bless this our sustenance, for which we give thanks.’ And, he added in his head, make this wretched hour speed by.
‘Amen,’ they both said aloud.
Daniel dipped the end of a carrot into the pâté, sighed, and took a bite. Sally Nairn, he thought, was a fine woman – but whether she laboured over a spread, a pickle or a jam, the result always tasted of chalk and cauliflower.
‘And you,’ asked Finn, avoiding the spread, ‘how have you been keeping?’
Daniel spared his palate with a mouthful of dry bread. ‘Little has changed. There is still this business of Sidney Moses.’
‘I’m sure you can deal with Sidney Moses.’
‘Of course I can.’
The crunching of their molars on carrot was the only sound. Daniel liked to bring carrots to these meetings. Time spent chewing was time rescued from trying to talk. In the early days they had filled such gaps by reminiscing about Betty. She had been their intermediary before she had left, and without her they were like two foreigners abandoned by their interpreter. They had stopped talking about her for two reasons. Firstly, because the time when they expected her to return had passed. Secondly, because they discovered that their memories of her were so very different.
‘Someone visited me,’ said Finn, out of the blue.
Daniel swallowed his half-chewed mouthful of carrot. It wedged in his throat and he spluttered. ‘Who?’ he demanded when the coughing had settled.
‘An American girl. She was nice.’
He pushed his plate away from him. He was no longer hungry. He had pictured in an instant the light in Sidney Moses’s eyes were he to discover Finn. ‘I don’t much care whether she was nice. Surely we don’t have to go back over the reasons for being up here. For keeping your own company.’
‘I knew you’d take it badly. It doesn’t matter, though. She won’t be coming back.’
‘Good. But really, Finn, you should not have opened the door to her.’ He tapped his fingers nervously on the table until his memory finally offered up her face and name. Elsa Beletti, who had objected when he killed the wild dog. He became anxious. ‘What did you tell her? What did you say about why you are living up here?’
Finn picked at a piece of bread. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘Good. That was wise. Nevertheless, I should speak to her.’ He combed his fingers through his moustache and beard. ‘Yes. I shall warn her not to blab to all and sundry about you.’
Finn frowned. ‘She won’t blab.’
Daniel bit his lip. And now he remembered the look of excitement on Finn’s face when he had answered the door. ‘You know who she is and who she is not, do you? You were hoping it was her when I arrived here today!’
‘So what if I was?’
In an instant Daniel’s head was full of blood. He gripped the table for support. ‘So what? Damned well remember what you did to your mother!’
Finn shrank in his chair.
Daniel stood up and took a deep, controlling breath. He brushed with chopping motions the crumbs from his hands. ‘I should see
about her right away.’ He took his broad-brimmed cap from the hook on which he had hung it. ‘Good day, Finn.’
Yet even as he charged back down the slopes towards Thunderstown, he discovered that he was oddly grateful to Elsa Beletti. He told himself it was because she’d given him an excuse to cut short his visit, since his other reason unsettled him. Sometimes his thinkings presented him with sudden emotions or opinions that he did not recognize as his, as if they were intrusions from some other mind, carried like a tune into his own. This had been just such an unasked-for feeling, which he now snuffed out: he had been pleased to know that Finn had found somebody to smile about, for when he smiled some angle of his lips reminded him of Betty’s.
8
THE LIVES OF THE CLOUDS
Five o’clock in Elsa’s office arrived as slowly as Christmas morning to a child. When it came she hurried at once along the winding roads that led to Candle Street and the path out of town. From there she was soon climbing Old Colp, en route to Finn’s bothy. As she walked, tiny yellow birds flittered in pairs or trios around her, enjoying the softening heat of the evening. The sky remained a lazy blue, save for a scattering of cumuli in the east and a white band of aeroplane contrails disintegrating high overhead.
‘Hi,’ she said when Finn opened the bothy door. ‘Me again.’
He was wearing a ropey old tank vest and a pair of shorts that had seen better days, as well as his bashed-up shoes with the holes in their lips. ‘It’s hard to get rid of you, isn’t it, Elsa?’
She laughed nervously. ‘I didn’t really like the way we finished things last time. I thought I should come to apologize. For, you know, freaking out a little.’