Just Before I Died

by S. K. Tremayne

  I realize, too late, that I am shouting. The wolfhound lifts a lordly muzzle, sniffing the tension amidst the peatsmoke. The pub is silenced: the fire is probably going out. I have caused a scene. I never cause scenes.

  For a moment there is deep embarrassment. The silence is shrill. Then someone says, ‘Hey. That’s all right. I’ll take ya.’ It’s Jack, again. He comes across, puts his empty glass on the bar. Grins at me. ‘I’ve got to go that way anyway, gonna see a mate about some feed. Thanks, Ron.’

  Ron looks at the two of us, he squints unsurely at Jack, and he shrugs in my direction. ‘You’re more like your mum than I thought, Kath. She loved taking risks.’

  Jack grasps me by the arm. Ten minutes later I am jumping from tussock to tussock and squelching through the foggy mire, with Jack at my side, guiding me carefully.

  Ron was completely right. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to go in this mist. I’d have wandered off track immediately, got stuck knee-deep in a marsh, fallen head first in a leat, knocked myself out and drowned. Oh look, she tried to kill herself again. And this time she succeeded.

  Meh.

  Jack tells me he farms sheep, though I knew this already. He tells me all about sheep, as we hike through the fog.

  ‘You know they say sheep are stupid,’ he says, helping me over a wooden stile. ‘Well they’re right. Only thing sheep is good at is dying. You name it, they get it. Lice, ticks, scabs, big fat worms as long as a toddler’s arm.’ He laughs, his hand firm on my arm, or sometimes, rather too warmly, right around my waist. ‘Foot rot, braxy, tetanus, pulpy kidney, blackleg, lamb dysentery, black disease, pasteurella. And if that isn’t enough, if they haven’t managed to kill themselves eating ragwort, or drowned themselves down at Black-a-Tor, they go and stick their heads in wires. I sometimes think they are naturally suicidal.’

  I try not to react. Does he know my story? Is he winding me up? I’m pretty sure Adam doesn’t like Jack Bryant. Some ancient family argument.

  That arm strays to my waist again.

  Squeezing.

  ‘Then there’s the devil-worshippers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Jack, steering me over a little clapper bridge. ‘Get a lot of that all over: weird patterns, burned circles, tortured animals. Adam deals with it all the time.’ He pauses, in the mist, looking at me. Smirking. ‘There was this one case, with a foal. Jeez. Did he not tell you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Guess he doesn’t want to bring it home, scare that little girl of yours, Lyla?’ His grin is very wide, like he finds it all funny. ‘Anyway, yeah. Last autumn he found a foal. Bloody odd, it was surrounded by these patches of charred grass.’ Jack chuckles loudly. ‘He called me and asked me to help. What a job. That poor bastard foal. They’d cut its tongue and eyes out, and cut off its, you know, genitals, cut ’em all off, and sliced off an ear. And there was this weird white paint on one leg, some symbol, a star or pattern.’ Jack is scanning the horizon, though all I can see is fog, then he puts his hand on my hand. ‘And the weirdest thing of all was, they’d dragged the bleeding corpse, when the animal was likely still alive, they’d dragged it round and round in circles and stars, making these crazy patterns of blood in the frost. Demon symbols, I heard. Strangest thing I ever saw. Sent a fucking shiver right down me. Happened over near your place, Pete Bickle’s farm. Not far from Hobbyjob’s and Huckerby. Which I thought was kinda funny, cos your mum would have loved the spookiness, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘What?’

  I gaze at him. Those blue eyes so like Adam’s, but colder still. ‘My mum? You knew my mum?’

  ‘Sure I knew your mum, Kat, way back, when we were all kids, all of us cousins, lads in Chagford. And she was all into that pagan stuff, wasn’t she? You do know that? I don’t mean she tortured animals, nothing like that.’ He laughs. ‘All I mean is that she was into those symbols. Spells. Spirits, spooks, deadly nightshade, wacky mushrooms, whatever. Dancing naked around stones: all stuff they used to do on the moors back in the day, all the hippies from Totnes. Amazing she didn’t die of flu, your mum, amount of time she was starkers up the tors. They did like a party.’ He stops abruptly. As if he is teasing me.

  ‘There’s Adam.’ He pauses. ‘At least, I think it’s Adam. This mist is a right fucking job.’

  Vitifer Leat

  Monday afternoon

  Adam emerges through this chilly fog, as we must emerge, to him. He is standing next to a wire fence, his face hard and blank. I see a sheep, panting, lying on its side, its head stuck in horribly tangled wire. There’s mud all over the shaggy fleece, there are blood smears on the wool, around its neck, where the wire bites. A back leg kicks, feebly, repeatedly.

  Jack steps forward. ‘Hello, Adam, your wife was trying to find you. So I delivered her. Hope that’s all right with you, like.’ Adam says nothing; simply nods.

  Jack stares down at the ewe. ‘Ah, fuck, these stupid animals. One of Ryan Thorne’s, is it? Hard to tell with the mud.’

  He stoops to the animal, brushes some of the mud away, showing that it has a purple stain on the fleece.

  ‘Yep, Thorne’s.’

  This is how they identify sheep on the open moors. Coloured blotches of dye on the fleece. Lyla likes to play games with these coloured sheep, one point for a red sheep, two for a blue, five for a pink. Sometimes we play this game with Lyla simply because it is the only way she will engage when she is lost in her reveries. The only way she will talk is with a very structured game, or with numbers. Making patterns. Like that pattern of rubbish from my bedroom in Hobajob’s.

  Jack and Adam make small talk. Chat about the weather. I look at the sheep, my thoughts straying back, to Hobajob’s, and Huckerby.

  I still can’t work out if Lyla took the old hairbrush and hid it there. It’s also possible I dumped the brush there, along with my tissues and tampons, when my memory was at its worst – yet I have no idea why I would do such a thing, I can’t even be entirely sure the brush was mine – they sell identical ones in supermarkets.

  What disturbs me is the lipstick smear. And the stain of blood. And the hair. Pieces of me. It felt ritualistic. I suppose this is mild paranoia, my temporarily unbalanced mind, but it keeps me awake at night, staring at our fifteenth-century ceiling, as Adam gently snores besides me, through the winter nights.

  Jack and Adam have stopped chatting. Adam has turned, and is glaring my way. Silent. Jack clearly senses the tension. Offering a forced smile and a brisk cheerio, he strides off into the fog, disappearing in seconds. Even though I’m not taken with Jack Bryant, part of me wants to call out, Don’t go!

  Adam speaks. ‘What are you doing here? With Jack Bryant?’

  Not even a hello. The hostility is palpable.

  ‘He showed me the way. I came to see you. He was telling me all about sheep diseases, and talking about Mum.’

  Adam grunts. I seek his angry eyes, needily.

  ‘I think it’s time to talk, Adam. I mean talk properly.’

  Again, he shows me no warmth, just looks down at the stricken sheep. Assessing.

  The politeness of our life in Huckerby is gone, the appearance we keep up, for Lyla, is torn away. This is the first time I’ve been truly alone with him since Tessa’s visit. Now I see the rawness in him. The contempt. And I’m not sure I can blame him. What if he had done this to me, tried to kill himself, for no reason, leaving Lyla without a father, a vulnerable girl growing up knowing her dad didn’t love her enough to hang around. I would hate Adam for that. Hate him. A part of me would probably wish him dead all over again: that his suicide had succeeded.

  But I must think of Lyla, and get through this for her. There must be an explanation, for what I did before New Year. I am not mad, and I am – or I was – rarely illogical. I must have had a reason for driving into Burrator. I can’t remember because I have mild to moderate brain trauma, Glasgow coma 13–15. Yet the answer will come.

  ‘Adam, please. I can’t cope with this, c
an’t cope with pretending it didn’t happen. Not one moment more. I know I supposedly did something terrible, but we need to talk about it.’

  He shrugs. ‘Whatever. Have to deal with this sheep first.’ He doesn’t look at me. ‘It doesn’t want to be dying. It didn’t try to kill itself.’

  He is stroking the neck of the sheep, which looks oddly peaceful, its eyes glistening, resigned to being stuck, resigned to dying: the wires are hideously tight and tangled.

  ‘Must have been struggling here all night,’ says Adam. His eyes flick my way. ‘Spoke to her owner, Ryan, up at the market in Tavistock. He said I must do what I’ve got to do.’

  Now I realize what is happening.

  ‘But – no – you can’t. Can’t you cut the wire?’

  ‘Could’ve last night.’ His handsome head is tilted, with a hint of pity, but not that much pity. ‘But she’s too far gone now, she’s been fighting it, made it worse. Wires are deep in the neck, half garrotted.’ He trudges to the shape of his Land Rover. I hear him open the back door: sorting, seeking, as he goes on, talking loudly. ‘Some drinkers down at the Warren said they heard her, late last night. Screaming. You ever heard a sheep scream?’ He returns carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, broken over his forearm. His cold blue eyes meet mine, a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘Have you, Kath? Ever heard that?’

  ‘Wait. Please.’

  ‘Terrible sound. Very human, like a little child.’ The mist is so thick around us, ten yards’ visibility at most. ‘Sound of real human anguish. A little child hearing that her mother is dead.’

  ‘Stop it, Adam. I’m sorry – that’s why we need to chat – to talk this through—’

  The sheep bleats, interrupting me. It is fighting for life It surely sees Adam’s gun. Perhaps it knows what that means. I kneel next to the gently panting animal, stroke the oddly clean, domestic fur of its bleeding head. To me it seems the metal twine is not so deeply embedded.

  ‘Wait, Adam, I think we can save it.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody stupid.’

  ‘No, look – you don’t have to kill it. The wires are looser?’

  He gestures, angrily. A tall man, with a gun, in the thickening mist. A hand that looks ready to slap me. ‘Step away. You’re always so sentimental. Isn’t any hope for it.’

  ‘No, Adam.’ My defiance rises. My urge to resist. This sheep doesn’t have to die. ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘This is my job, Kath, you don’t understand. You never understand. This is the moor!’

  We stare at each other.

  ‘Get back!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Get back!!’

  I know he isn’t really arguing about the sheep. This is his contempt for me, emerging.

  Yet for me this is the sheep, at least in part. Why does he always have to be so brutal, so ruthless? I know he grew up on a moorland farm; I know he sees the moor as a working place. I know his family history has made him harder. Yet sometimes it goes too far, I’ve seen the cold glitter of his blue eyes when he’s breaking the neck of a pheasant hit by a car up at Houndtor: sometimes the icy glitter looks like a kind of appetite. A pleasure in killing, fulfilling an instinct, a relish for blood.

  ‘Step away. Now. This sheep is suffering. You’re only making it worse. You’re not yourself. Be logical!’

  Now I hesitate. I falter, and wonder, deep inside, if he is right. Am I thinking rationally? I am the one who drove into the water. I am the one who has amnesia. I am the one who did everything wrong.

  Meekly, I step away. Adam nods. Halfway satisfied, he steps closer, focusing hard as he swings the gun around, filches two cartridges from a pocket, and slots them into place. He snaps and locks the barrels with a fat-sounding click.

  ‘Stand right back. If I get this wrong, it could get messy.’

  Adam aims. I still don’t know if the sheep is aware of what is coming: the big, lazy eyes – lashes fluttering, almost flirtatious – look vaguely up at Adam. They do not flinch: perhaps the sheep knows it is going to die. It accepts. Right at the end I wonder if we all accept.

  The muzzle of the gun barrel is poised, Adam squinting down the gunsight, breathing firmly, calmly.

  Time slows in these mists. I gaze.

  The other sheep are like an audience gathered around. Grey shapes in the mist.

  Meh, meh, look at him, meh, he doesn’t care. Meh, she’s mad. Look at them.

  I put my hands over my ears, preparing for the horrible noise: like my daughter when she hears motorbikes revving or loud applause, or people shouting in crowds. Sometimes even the rattle of the cattle grids can freak out my daughter. Lyla says the sounds are black and red, scary colours: her favourite sounds are blue and silver. It’s called synaesthesia. I’ve looked it up. Another symptom.

  The sheep is waiting. I want this to stop. I want Adam to hurry up; I want to close my eyes, yet I can’t.

  I have to watch.

  Adam squeezes the trigger. And as he does, the sheep abruptly shifts, bleats desperately, and loosens itself, entirely, from the wire, wrenching itself free—

  ‘Adam!’ I move closer, protesting. ‘Adam, stop! It’s free! Stop!’

  The gun explodes. The noise echoes and reverberates, silencing the onlooking ewes, scattering them across the soaking grass. I feel a ghastly, sudden wetness: there is blood splattered all over my jeans. I am flailed with the blood. I stare down, appalled.

  ‘Jesus Christ, you daft woman!’ He is half laughing, half angry.

  I shake my head, dazed, fighting my revulsion. I am drenched with blood, and the sheep is dead, its head cracked completely in two, skull and meat and bone in pieces, mixed with the sludge of brain. There is a tinge of burning which taints the air, and I look as if I have waded through a mire of gore.

  ‘Adam.’ I put a shuddering hand to my mouth, regaining myself. ‘Adam, it was free, you shot it for no reason.’

  ‘It was going to die. The wires had cut too deep.’

  I have both hands over my eyes. I don’t want to look at the sheep, or my husband. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say at last, because I am so very tired of fighting. ‘I’m sorry. You were right. Look at me, my jeans. Ah.’

  ‘It’ll come out in the wash. Blood does that.’ He offers me a brief, sympathetic smile, the first hint of real warmth in days. ‘Look, Kath. I’ve got to bleed this ewe, that’s a lot of good mutton. Can’t go to waste. That would be wrong. Do you really want to talk right now?’

  I really want to go back to the car and drive home, sit in a hot bath for an hour. But I must be stronger.

  ‘Yes. I came here to talk to you.’

  ‘OK.’ He grunts as he stoops to the sheep, the shotgun replaced by a knife. ‘OK. Please. Carry on talking as I work.’

  ‘While you butcher a sheep?’

  ‘You’re the one that came up here, Kath. You’re the one that interfered. You’re the one that—’

  … that drove yourself in the water. But he doesn’t go there. He shows mercy. Instead he puts the knife to the throat of the sheep and with one practised, deft movement, opens a violent red gash. The head is yanked back and the blood pours out, glistening and hot, ready to be drunk by the receptive earth. Red pools form on the sods: a pink, steaming foam.

  ‘Talk,’ he says. ‘Talk to me now, if you want.’

  ‘All right.’ I kneel down next to him. The cold earth seeps through my jeans. ‘I want to go back over those days, Adam. I’ve been racking my brains. I can’t remember anything. I mean, I can remember Christmas, Boxing Day, then nothing. My first memory is waking up in the hospital. But I can’t trust those memories, Adam. Because I know I invented others, like – like the patch of ice. Like the idea it was an accident.’

  ‘What do you want me to tell you? If you can’t remember.’

  ‘How was I found? After the crash?’

  ‘I told you that weeks ago.’

  ‘Tell me again!’

  He wipes the knife with a cloth. The bleeding has almost stopped so th
at tiny scarlet drops form and fall, one by one, with a jewel-like delicacy.

  ‘You were found at Burrator, by some waterworks guy, helping the search, in the middle of the night. You were very wet, must have fought your way out of the car, underwater, swum to the banks. Climbed out.’

  ‘But why would I do that if …’ I can barely say it; yet I have to say it: ‘If I wanted to die?’

  He sighs. He rubs his forehead. Perhaps rubbing away the pain, the sadness, the grief that I could do such a terrible thing.

  ‘I wish I knew, Kath. I really, really wish I knew why you did any of it.’

  He might not know anything, but I do know something. I’ve been researching suicide, Googling it. Suicide. Survivors of suicide bids, people who jump off bridges, buildings, cliffs, but who do not die, talk of regretting it even at the moment they leap, the first moment when it is too late.

  And perhaps that was me: perhaps I regretted it as I drove in, as I watched the dark waters crash through the windows. Maybe the image of Lyla came to me at that final moment: Lyla alone in her little den with her chains of paperclips, looking at a card she made for Mother’s Day: a drawing of a dinosaur saying rawr and a big red heart for her mummy – her dead mummy, who drove into the water and left her behind.

  I am shuddering with the cold, and the remorse. The pain of contrition, and yet the burn of doubt, too: I still cannot believe I would kill myself. There must be some other explanation. Yet all my thoughts are gurgling into blackness, like a moorland stream disappearing into a marsh down at the Belstones. Where the villagers used to sleep with bibles on their chests, such was their fear of the fogs and the mires.

  Sometimes, these days, I begin to understand their superstitions. And their rituals.

  Adam puts a hand on my arm. ‘Hey. Kath. Please. Whatever happened, you’re still here, and Lyla needs you to get better. Come on.’ It feels as if he is throwing me a lifebelt.

  ‘Let me walk you back to the inn, Kath. I’ve got to skin the sheep, it’s a horrible job, but it can wait. Foxes won’t get her, I don’t think. Go home and have a bath, and get yourself changed.’ He lifts me to my feet. ‘We can talk more as we walk back, if you want.’