Lie of the Land

by Michael F. Russell

  Carl shrugged. ‘He’s done a lot for me.’

  Dr Morgan rinsed the cup under the tap, dried it, and hooked its handle on the stand. She picked up her jacket and put it on. They both stood there.

  ‘In about two days’ time, I would say, your daughter is going to come into the world.’

  Carl pursed his lips. ‘I’m staying. Whatever happens. Even if the masts failed tomorrow, where would I go?’

  ‘Good,’ said Dr Morgan. ‘If you hang around for long enough, you might even try to make the best of it.’ She buttoned her jacket, picked up her case, and patted Jess goodbye. Closing the front door, she was off, scrunching down the path.

  Evening came down just as the low cloud lifted, fresher air sweeping in off the Atlantic, warmth in the spring air. Carl sat in Alec John’s sitting room, by the warm stove, listening: to the old clock on the wall, logs settling in the grate, Jess breathing in her basket, the wind outside moving through the hazel.

  He sat for a long time, drifting between regret and uncertainty, watching the wind at work as it roused the awakening earth.

  New Life

  Carl stopped the argocat and crept down into the open depths of the glen, keeping his eyes fixed on the middle distance. He had an idea what to look for now; the telltale signs and likely whereabouts of what he was driven to find.

  After half an hour, he found it.

  Crouching, Carl sank into a bank of heather. A single hind, quite young, was grazing down the slope close to a stream. As if sensing she was being watched, the hind lifted her head and scanned the higher ground. Carl dipped his head, waited then inched upwards until he could see again. She was thin, and clearly not pregnant. She’d come through the whole winter without being impregnated, which was rare, and was on her own, separate from the rest of the master’s harem who were across the glen near the forest. He heard Alec John’s voice telling him what a gift this was, winter-thin or not.

  The lie of the land was such that Carl had to double back a little to the stream that rose on the sodden slopes. It was in spate, and the sound of rushing water would help mask any noise that he might make in his approach. The hind was a good 200 metres away, too far for a kill shot.

  Following the stream down into the glen Carl crept along its hunched banks of rock and thin grass, stopping close to where the water slowed and opened out across beds of gravel.

  There she was, down below, a fair distance away. There was a better way to come, he could see that now. But this was as close as he could get by following the water. Settling into a comfortable firing position, Carl sized up the target.

  The hind was head-on so he would have to wait. It took another ten minutes for her to change her stance. Now they were ready.

  Just above and to the left of the hip joint. That was the spot.

  Now there was the slowing of breath, the emptying of mind; the universe packed into a square inch of grey-brown fur, the dead centre of extinction, where the energies of death and life were interchangeable.

  ‘Thank you,’ Carl whispered as he held his final breath, squeezing the trigger on the exhale. Twelve stone of deer dropped where it stood.

  He clicked the distance function on the deltameter, and started off down the slope. Carl watched the figures mount. He touched the barrel of the .308 to the hind’s staring eyeball. There was no response.

  The reading said 137 metres. Alec John was right – Carl had a talent for this. In a different life, he could have made the Olympic team, but this was his truth now. He found the animal’s carotid and plunged the knife home, indifferent to the blood that gushed out onto the grass. Carl had learned to live in this world. A truce had become uneasy peace. Back when it mattered, there had been different work that needed doing, and he’d done it until long after it became a pointless urge. After years of doing this other work, he’d realised there was a river of shit whose flow he was powerless to arrest. He’d take the odd bucketful, just to show people that what they were being told was pure water was, in fact, tainted. Septic with lies. But there was plenty more where the bucketful had come from. The river never stopped.

  Wiping the lock-knife on his trousers he closed it and put it back in his jacket pocket. He watched, impassive, as the hind emptied her blood onto the new grass.

  He had eighteen bullets left for the .308.

  His work now was pure.

  •

  That evening he lay on the bed in Room 14 and looked at the ceiling. Paint was flaking from the cornices; and there was a dark stain from an oil-lamp that long ago burned by the bed while he burned and sweated in it. The room smelled of dampness now, or maybe it had always smelled like this and he had just never noticed before. On this bed and in this room. With sunlight in the window, shadow creeping along the wall, and that bloody painting. There had been no escape from any of it. But Boat At Rest hadn’t run aground. And neither had he. Afloat, in one piece, but with no great voyage ahead.

  Carl became aware of a presence in the doorway.

  ‘Did you go somewhere?’

  It was Isaac.

  ‘Yes,’ said Carl, lying on the sheetless mattress with his hands clasped behind his head.

  ‘Did you go for a walk?’

  Carl sat up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You remember Alec John?’

  The boy said he did.

  ‘Well,’ continued Carl, ‘he died, two years ago today, so I went to the graveyard to pay my respects.’ He glanced at Isaac. ‘Do you know what that means?’

  Isaac said he did.

  Sighing, Carl got off the bed.

  ‘Are you going away?’

  ‘It’s not far,’ said Carl, closing the window, securing the clasp. ‘It’s just a’ – he searched for the right words, wondering how the boy might react – ‘a little holiday. That’s what people used to do. Take holidays from . . . themselves, sometimes.’

  ‘Have you fallen out with Mum again?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘So, you’re going back to the other house.’

  Carl nodded.

  ‘Oh,’ said Isaac.

  ‘It’s not far,’ Carl repeated, and smiled. ‘It’s where Alec John used to stay. He gave me his house. Do you remember?’

  For a split-second Isaac looked utterly dejected. ‘All right,’ he said, brightening in a flicker, fizzing from the doorway and down the stairs, whooping, ‘I remember, I remembeeerrr . . .’

  Carl went down the hallway to room seven, and sat on the bed for a spell.

  They’d been doomed, him and Simone, from the outset. Instead of all the preliminaries, like getting to know each other and living together, they had gone straight to pregnancy. Hardly an ideal beginning. They had never learned to be a couple, just the two of them, so being parents was just too difficult.

  He picked up his bag, feeling the radiator for warmth, and went downstairs.

  Oh well.

  In the residents’ lounge, George and Isaac had their game visors on and rifles at the ready. Sound effects – squawks and explosions and barked orders – boomed from the wall-speakers.

  Carl left them to their mission and went on one of his own, to the kitchen.

  ‘Is she asleep already?’

  Simone was at the sink. ‘She was tired today. Her last teeth are coming through and she didn’t sleep well, not that you’d know anything about that.’

  Carl shifted in the doorway, saying nothing.

  Stains were scrubbed, angrily, from clothes, and the seconds ticked by.

  ‘Where did you get the soap?’

  There was no emotion in Simone’s voice. ‘A bottle of shampoo from the Mackays. A Christmas present they never used.’

  In the sink, his daughter’s clothes were taking a damn good pounding. There were things that could be said, if he wasn’t careful. He almost said them.

  ‘Go on then – piss off.’

  ‘I’ll be round tomorrow,’ said Carl. ‘If that’s okay.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself out on our accoun
t.’

  Simone threw a rinsed-out sleepsuit down on the draining board. Who was this irritant taking up space in her kitchen?

  ‘Oh, just go away, will you? Clear off to your pied-à-terre and do us all a favour, you self-centred arsehole. Off you go and enjoy your nice easy life.’

  She stormed into the garden with an armful of wet washing.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then?’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ shouted Simone from the hall. ‘We’re emigrating, on the next luxury cruise-liner.’

  Outside, the day was dry, though there was a haze of low cloud wisping over the headland and round Heron Point as Carl walked along the road. He said hello to the folk who were out. Some days he could pass the boatyard and not even think about the guys in there. Today wasn’t one of those days. Part of him enjoyed glaring at Cutler or Casper whenever he encountered them, but the place was silent today. No swearing and shouting, no grinder shrieking against metal. The biofuel generator wasn’t even running. He heard footsteps, light ones, hurrying behind him.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey,’ replied Isaac.

  Carl apologised for not saying goodbye, and they walked on.

  ‘You were busy killing aliens with your granddad. Does your mum know you’ve gone out?’

  Isaac nodded. ‘It isn’t aliens – it’s World at War: Battle of the Bulge. I’m the Germans, and I’m winning.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m in Ostend now.’ He added casually, ‘It’s a town in Belgium.’

  ‘Ostend, wow. That’s bad news.’

  ‘But I’m winning!’

  ‘Well, in that case, Gruppenführer, go for it.’

  ‘I am winning . . . but Granddad’s visor is going fuzzy.’

  ‘Oh. Can you not swap about to make it fairer?’

  Isaac screwed his nose up. ‘Nah. He gets the fuzzy one.’

  They walked on, around the head of the bay, talking and laughing about nothing in particular. Climbing the track to the house, Carl stopped and picked something up off the ground.

  ‘Here’s your knife, you wally.’ He handed the penknife keyring to Isaac.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said the boy, delighted. ‘We couldn’t see it the last time.’

  ‘Sometimes you can’t see things for looking. Then one day, when you aren’t looking, you find stuff that was lost.’

  Isaac opened the two-inch long blade and tested it. ‘It’s blunt. Will you sharpen it?’

  Carl shook his head. ‘It’s sharp enough.’

  ‘Will it cut into a deer, through the ribs, into the guts?’

  ‘No,’ said Carl, smiling. ‘Not that you’d want to cut through ribs anyway, and not into the guts.’

  They walked up towards the house.

  ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘How to cut through the ribs.’

  ‘What is it with ribs? Leave the ribs alone.’

  ‘You don’t cut the ribs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘Show you what?’

  ‘Where to cut into a deer and how to do all the cutting. You can still do all the shooting, if you like.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. But you shall go to Oxford, young man, get debagged, sent down, then take over at the old man’s firm. No cutting ribs for you.’

  ‘Oxford – is that a place?’

  Carl stopped walking. A lump came to his throat as he looked down at the boy. Oxford may as well be on the moon; the outside world was just a concept, unknowable and unreachable. In all probability, Isaac would reach adulthood before having the chance to get within ten miles of Oxford, or any other town for that matter. The thought stuck in Carl’s throat.

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, picking up the pace. ‘It is a place.’

  There were kids down at the shoreline, one of them carrying what looked like an oil drum.

  ‘It’s Pavel and Kieran,’ said Isaac. ‘We’re building a raft.’ He bolted back down the track, then turned and shouted, ‘Bye.’

  Carl raised his hand.

  Sometimes he got the yearning for a cup of tea or coffee. People had become dependent on caffeine, of course, and some couldn’t function until they’d had at least two strong hits in the morning; it would be nice, though, just to get a little lift every now and again. Thinking about good coffee, he looked up the slope to Ben Bronach, and along the dark line of the basalt ridge, and tried not to think about what he had to do today. Isaac was keen to learn, so that was good. Carl went inside. Maybe he should trim his beard.

  Sometimes his heart felt so heavy, like it would sink down into his boots. Sometimes the old pain would take hold, and a black awareness would come over him. But he made it pass. It took effort, to shake off the mood, though these episodes were rare now. As memory pressed down on him, he would rise to meet it, strong enough to bear the weight. There was no reason why he couldn’t exist like this way for years. It was possible. It could be done. For so long as he could imagine an end, when something better would arrive, he could go on without too much trouble now that he had acquired a way of living.

  But that kind of thinking only took him to one place.

  Clearly, it wasn’t going to work out with Simone; it was Alec John’s anniversary; the Oxford thing with Isaac; and earlier on he had thought about Howard and Eric; it was a witch’s brew of all the negative stuff. But then there was his daughter’s smile of recognition, her soft, pink feet in the cot as she slept; that was like mainlining an antidote to misery.

  That kind of thinking took him to a better place. If she were lucky, she would grow up with all the good stuff that a parent can give to a child. Everything grows from inheritance.

  There was also a carcass in the cold store, waiting to be butchered, some weed in the house, and a 1,000-film cine-viewer that someone had lent him. The accessible half of Inverlair estate could do without him for one afternoon.

  In the upstairs bedroom he’d already prepared the essentials: fresh white sheet pinned flat to the wall; heavy dark blankets pinned and taped to the window, a big comfy chair, and speakers in the corner. Now all he needed was the stepladder from the shed.

  A problem presented itself.

  The best position for the ladder and cine-viewer was behind the comfy chair and against the bedroom door. The door would have to be closed to keep out the light from the landing, and that meant that if anyone came into the house they’d come upstairs, maybe without him hearing, and barge into the room. In all likelihood, the bedroom door would push the ladder over, and that was not good news for the cine-viewer sitting on top of it.

  Simple: he’d lock the front and back doors so that no one could come in.

  He fetched the metal folding ladder from the shed. As he turned the key in the front door of the house, he stopped. Locking a door. Turning a key. Keeping something out.

  ‘What the hell,’ he muttered, turning the key. He needed some time to himself, some harmless escapism.

  He bounded upstairs for three hours and eight minutes of The Fall of the Roman Empire, Alec Guinness giving good stony Stoic Emperor. Marcus Aurelius wasn’t afraid, if you believed his Meditations. Maybe the fear simply hadn’t made it into print, and all that the emperor left to posterity was a carefully polished image of himself, redacted in all the right places and purged of all weakness.

  About two hours into the film, Carl heard a banging from downstairs, at the front door. He groaned.

  ‘Pause,’ he said. A two-metre wide, impossibly beautiful Sophia Loren froze.

  ‘Coming,’ he shouted. ‘No need to break the bloody door down.’

  He should remain stoic, accept with equanimity the fact that his film, his time off, impulsively taken, had been interrupted.

  It was Old Bead-patch himself at the door, and Carl felt his anxiety return.

  ‘Didn’t see you head up to the ridge today,’ said Terry. ‘Thought you might be ill or something.’

  ‘No,’
said Carl, leaning on the door jamb. ‘Christopher Plummer is up to no good.’

  Terry looked blank.

  ‘Watching an old swords-and-sandals classic. The Fall of the Roman Empire. Alec Guinness plays . . .’

  ‘. . . Marcus Aurelius,’ said Terry. ‘The passing of an empire. It happens. Now we can start again.’

  Carl nodded, one hand on the door handle, closer to closing it than to throwing it wide in welcome. That much he made obvious.

  Today, Terry’s eye patch was orange with green beads. Earlier in the week it was white beads on black. Maybe the guy really had made one for every day of the year, like Carl had heard. He’d have come from the village hall, where his young flock gathered to hear their shaman’s drug-fuelled gibberish.

  ‘Will I leave you in peace, brother?’

  ‘No offence – but yes,’ said Carl, keeping his voice level, his eyes scanning the horizon. ‘It’s been ages since I’ve had a bit of downtime. Absolutely ages.’

  ‘That’s not a problem,’ said Terry. ‘Are you staying here now?’

  Carl ignored Terry’s sudden grin. ‘For a while, at least.’ He bristled, feeling he should downplay the significance of his living arrangements. ‘We’ll see what happens.’

  Jess waddled up to the door, nudging Carl’s legs.

  ‘Right,’ said Terry, his wry amusement fading. He nodded. He understood how things were, finally, after weeks of trying to inveigle his way back into Carl’s company. Or recruit him to the cause, as Carl suspected. ‘I’ll catch you later then.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll be along at some point.’

  As Terry walked back down the track, Carl felt relief, and a surge of guilt. A line had been drawn, and it was obvious now on which side each belonged. Unless he apologised for not inviting Terry in, and quickly, the insult would harden into a barrier, a permanent separation. Perhaps that’s as it should be. Best leave Terry to his sordid little arrangement with Hendrik and Maganda, and his new religion that involved Gemma and a few other kids, and peyote, although Carl didn’t know for sure what was going on. He didn’t want to. Bizarre what some people would believe when there was nothing left to believe in. Carl ruffled Jess’s ear, then closed the door. He turned the key in the lock.