Fruitful Bodies

by Morag Joss

  ‘Oh come on! You think Joyce poisoned her own dog, the only living creature she cared about? And what did Yvonne have to gain? And why on earth would your father knowingly have fed contaminated food to his patients? Forgive my bluntness, but I really do think it’s time to stop looking round for a scapegoat and start facing up to a huge, tragic accident for which you are at least partly responsible. It’s quite bad enough, without you behaving like a little boy casting around for some sensational explanation and someone else to blame.’

  Ivan said meekly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I do honestly want to get to the bottom of it all. I do want to do my part. You can count on that.’ He turned to her with a guilty and apologetic smile which partially worked its blue-eyed, small-defenceless-creature magic.

  She smiled ruefully back. ‘Let’s keep our heads, then. No wild theories. We’ll stick to the facts. First we’ve got to look at the rye, haven’t we?’

  They were now driving into darkness that stretched out on all sides below the buzzing, sodium-lit main road, a country of dark fields separated only by paths and lanes between farms and hamlets. The land lay open and still under the moon, yet secret, its mysteries deep and centuries old. These fields would have once produced rye. And when the fields were ploughed and the good seed scattered on the ground, it was not God’s almighty hand nor the devil’s, nor any human alchemy or skill that determined whether the crop would be sweet and plentiful, or sour with the black, toxic ergot. It was the rain, the cold and the ready spores meeting in a dire configuration with the seasons, a precise admixture of water, temperature and time that would draw up from the ground a crop so casually lethal that households and whole villages would be wiped out. Yet as it grew it would look the same, waving palely under the sun, a blight year masquerading as a good one, and the crop would be harvested with gratitude. And the same fields had been planted again this year by people who had never heard of ergot. It was as if the earth had now been turned over so many times that all the old stories of the land’s arbitrary evil were buried too deep for telling.

  When Sara parked and switched off the engine she was startled for a moment by how completely the darkness surrounded her. Her eyes adjusted as she clambered out and joined Ivan at the edge of the smallholding. He pointed to a long low concrete building on the far side.

  ‘See it? You’ll manage, won’t you? Let me go ahead and switch the lights on.’

  ‘Don’t you have a torch in the house? It’s so dark.’

  ‘It might freak out Mrs Heffer to see a torchbeam down the field at this time of night,’ Ivan whispered. ‘And it would be a kindness to keep quiet, so we don’t wake her up. She’s been very shaken up, with one thing and another.’

  He walked ahead. Just as they reached the door he said, ‘Damn! Just remembered, the key’s in the house. You wait here, I’ll only be a minute.’ He turned and tramped back down between the rows of vegetables, leaving Sara outside the hut. She watched lights go on in the house, as she moved from foot to foot and hummed a tune that came into her head. The lights went out. After a minute she was surprised to hear, and then to see, two figures returning. Walking directly in front of Ivan was Leech, the shabby man. Before Sara could say anything Ivan unlocked the door, pushed Leech in ahead of him and pressed switches on the wall just inside. The entire shed was flooded inside and out with a burst of light which revealed the building in its almost overpowering ugliness. Sara was standing on a shallow concrete ramp which sloped up to the door of the breeze-block building. From the central doorway, where a flat, cheap, interior door with an aluminium handle now stood ajar, and through the flat metal-framed windows, the bleaching light from a double row of fluorescent tubes mounted on the ceiling shone out. Ivan’s head appeared. ‘C’mon, hurry up. Aren’t you coming in?’

  Sara stepped forward into the brightness, bewildered by the idea that such a visually polluting dump could be used for anything as healthful as an organic food store. She looked around. Wooden staging ran the length of the back wall, on which stood labelled cloth and paper bags of varying sizes. She read onion, celery, runner, dwarf. Gardening tools were hung on a side wall, along with netting, canes, wound up hoses, sprinklers and watering cans. Several trugs and wooden boxes containing what looked like onion sets and seed potatoes stood about. On the far side of the room the outline of small round objects could be seen laid out under sheets of brown paper. Tomatoes, perhaps, or onions. Two small, thick sacks stood under the staging.

  Leech was sitting on a mound of cloth on a camp bed in one corner. Pushing both hands through his hair, he stretched, nodded at Sara and Ivan and looked round without the slightest curiosity. Then he leaned over to take off his shoes, lay down and pulled the assortment of blankets and old quilts over himself. He was shivering.

  ‘I told him he’s to come down here. I just woke him up and now he thinks he’s going back to bed. No grasp of time, not much grasp of anything. He’s been staying down at the house, in my attic, eh, haven’t you? Keeping you safe, haven’t we, eh?’ Ivan said, with what sounded like amusement in his voice.

  ‘But the police want to talk to him. About Warwick. Do you mean you’ve been hiding him?’

  Ivan appeared not to have heard her, but Leech did. He got up and stood by his bed, looking at her.

  ‘No grasp of time,’ Ivan repeated. ‘I think that’s why he likes the trains. They’re nice and regular. Isn’t that why you like the trains? You like the trains, don’t you?’

  ‘Is he deaf as well?’ Sara asked, because Ivan had raised his voice, insultingly she thought, to speak to him. And strangely, mention of the trains brought to mind something that Andrew had said. He was coming down from the embankment just after the 9.23 went past. But he had not been talking about Leech. Leech was now grinning grimly at her as he scratched extravagantly at his long torso, pulling his clothes around and revealing the white, frail skin over his ribs. He was still shivering, and the sight of his, to her, unbearably vulnerable, cold and uncared-for body created a slight tugging feeling in Sara’s throat.

  ‘Here Leech, put this on.’ Ivan had pulled a blue checked shirt from a peg on the wall. ‘You can wear my shirt, you like that, don’t you?’ Leech smiled and caught the shirt clumsily as he flung it across. He pulled it on, but still shivered.

  ‘Leech, get the rye, would you? The sacks of rye, over there,’ Ivan said, not unkindly, gesturing with his head. Sara watched, puzzled that Ivan should be making what amounted to a ceremony out of the dismal business of inspecting the rye. He was standing very straight now, his back to the wall where the garden tools hung, his hands clasped behind his back. His face had assumed an almost military formality and the chin, usually soft, was thrust forward. Sara watched as Leech shuffled to the staging at the far side of the room, bent down and brought the two sacks from under it to the table in the centre. He pushed aside the courgettes laid out on newspaper, the mugs and teabag box, the folded newspaper and biscuit packets and placed the sacks in the space he had cleared.

  ‘Leech, go back and sit on your bed,’ Ivan said. Leech’s submissive turning and doing so was craven, and Sara realised that he was familiar with the tone of voice Ivan was using. She said as much.

  ‘But he likes clear directions,’ Ivan replied, slightly irritated at this digression. ‘He likes to know what’s expected of him. He’s quite happy. Now, shall we get on?’ He nodded towards the sacks but remained where he was, standing by the wall, as if afraid of what they might contain. ‘Sara, open them, would you?’

  As she stepped forward and did so, a sharp, damp, rotting yet not quite rotten smell rose from the sacks. She brought out a handful and stared at the grains in her palm, turning them under her thumb. When she looked up and saw Ivan’s face she could see that beneath the formality he was frightened.

  ‘Let’s see, then,’ Ivan said. ‘Come on, I might as well know the worst.’

  Sara advanced, her hand held out. Ivan grabbed her by the wrist, scattering the grains in her palm o
ver the floor. With his other hand he had reached to the wall behind him, and was now holding a small scythe. Sara gasped. Leech was sitting wide-eyed on his bed, his mouth opening and shutting. He rose with a frightened moan and made ditheringly for the open door, wringing his hands. Ivan moved swiftly and stepped across his way, dragging Sara with him, his grip on her wrist tightening. ‘Get back,’ he commanded. ‘Leech, get back over there.’

  Leech did so, sinking with a creak on to the bed from where he continued to stare at Ivan and through the open door behind him into the dark. Sara tried with her other hand to free the fingers digging into her wrist, until the scythe swung over her arm. ‘Let go or I’ll slice you up,’ Ivan told her. She had no doubt that he would.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she gasped. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘Leech. Stand up.’ Leech did so. ‘Leech, go and get the other scythe. Behind me on the wall, hanging up. Go and get it.’ Leech seemed relieved to be given instructions, and obeyed. Sara heard a clatter and rasp as the scythe came off the wall and the shuffle as he returned to the camp bed where he stood, scythe in hand.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she whispered. ‘What about the rye?’

  Ivan said, ignoring her, ‘Remember the Jap lady, Leech? See? He doesn’t. Remember the little Jap lady you lifted over the hedge so she could get to the towpath?’

  Leech was nodding mechanically, without recognition.

  ‘He doesn’t remember. But she took photographs of the rye to show her husband. Very serious, you see. She wanted his opinion. She was prepared to meet him to tell him, even though she’d left him. Because an ergot outbreak is a natural disaster and we must be quite, quite sure before we go burning crops and raising the alarm, mustn’t we?’

  ‘She knew? She told you?’

  ‘Of course she did. She didn’t have to go into detail. I know enough pharmacology to know what ergot does, once she pointed out it was all over the rye.’

  ‘But what do you mean? You’re making a mistake. You must be ill.’

  ‘Leech could tell you, if he had any sense, which he doesn’t, of course. He doesn’t mind me saying, do you, Leech? Leech? Leech, come on, you’ll do anything for me, won’t you? See your sleeping bag there, Leech? I want you to cut it up. Now. Go on. Cut it up with the scythe, like I tell you. Just do it, Leech.’

  Leech wavered, whimpering, looking from Ivan to Sara. She said, as gently as she could, ‘Don’t, Leech. You don’t have to. It’s all right, don’t get upset.’

  Leech lifted the scythe and began slicing. The blade split the fabric like skin and white clouds of stuffing escaped. Ivan sniggered.

  Sara turned her eyes away and tried again to free her arm from Ivan’s grip. She said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove. Mrs Takahashi didn’t find ergot on the rye at all, did she?’

  ‘Of course she did! You’re nearly as stupid as Leech. And she’s desperate to tell her husband. All I had to do was tell her he rang on Friday night after she was asleep to tell her to meet him at 9.00 instead of 12.30. And then I bike it in along the towpath, find her outside the RPS and tell her there’s been another phone message and she’s to meet him outside Photo-Kwik instead, so they can develop the pictures she’s taken to show him. And of course I can show her a little shortcut. We used to supply herbs to that place, you know, before it was the Snake and Ladder. Side entrance in the alley always open, first thing.’

  ‘Let me go, please. Please.’ Sara looked round desperately. Under the stark light the bags of rye sat on the table and Leech whimpered from his bed like an unhappy dog.

  ‘Isn’t nature wonderful? A lovely organic way of wiping out my father’s fucking clinic and his fucking reputation. Sad really, she didn’t deserve it. But my father deserves to lose his fucking patients and his fucking clinic. You know he lies to his patients? He fakes tests and lies to them. And you know he’s impregnated my fucking wife? My wife!’ Ivan’s voice had risen and now carried the screech of a guilty, thwarted child’s defensive zeal to be understood. Tears of rage were running down the baby face.

  Sara’s legs were trembling wildly. Her voice, when she tried to speak, was lost in gulps of panic because the diminishing portion of her mind that was still rational was telling her, almost detachedly, that she was being told these things because Ivan was confident that she would not have an opportunity to repeat them.

  ‘That’s nonsense. Absolute nonsense. As if your own father would—’

  ‘He did! The pair of them have been at it for months, to get her knocked up! It’s just the kind of thing they’d do, they’re shits! Alex Cooper heard them at it—oh of course she didn’t realise, she thought it was Yvonne! But I knew who it had to be! I knew!’

  Sara’s voice was remarkably slow and calm. ‘You bloody fool. Oh no, it wasn’t Yvonne. Maybe it wasn’t anybody. Maybe Alex Cooper made the whole thing up, can’t you see? Your father turned her down. Maybe that’s why she left, because she came on to him and he turned her down. She was just spreading her bit of poison before she went. Maybe it made her feel better. She fooled you.’

  ‘That’s a fucking lie! A fucking lie! My father—my father—’ Ivan’s mouth twisted on the word, ‘he never kicked anybody out of bed in his life! He had it coming! It would have got them all in the end, except for stupid fucking Warwick and his butter. I was mad when Hilary told me about his butter. I had to go and look it up. It’s the vitamin D in butter, it stops the ergot working, did you find that out, you smart-arsed bitch? So I took direct action with Warwick, on a nice busy day when the place was full of strangers.’

  ‘Ivan, I don’t believe you. You’re making up some awful story and I don’t know why, please let go of me …’

  ‘Interesting about the vitamin D, don’t you think? I’d forgotten it’s in butter. That’s why my father wasn’t ill, he takes vitamin tablets. So he was just sitting on his well-toned arse in his fucking clinic watching them die. That was so funny. And he couldn’t do a thing about it. That clinic’s not really his anyway, it was my money as much as his, my mother’s money. Then you come along talking about ergot and compensation, you bitch. Nobody else had a clue.’

  ‘But Leech does, now,’ Sara said, softly. Her eyes were burning into Leech, willing him to make a run for it. But he did not move his gaze from the open door.

  Ivan snorted scornfully and turned the scythe slowly in the air. ‘Leech comes in very useful. Warwick is killed and Leech disappears, and later, when he’s found dead, everyone will think it was Leech. Because when we arrived here, or so I will say, Leech leapt on us with the scythe. He injured me first.’

  Slowly he drew the scythe down along the outside of his thigh. The denim fell open; blood seeped out of the sliced flesh. He shifted his weight on to his other leg, panting. Then he cut again. And again. He swallowed hard and gave a deep, groaning sigh which Sara thought, sickened, was one of relief. Although tears were running down his cheeks, his wincing face wore a smile of gratification.

  ‘Oh, bloody painful. Bad business. But eventually, of course, I manage to overpower Leech and get the scythe from him, which I use to defend myself, unfortunately killing him. But not before he’s hacked you to bits, tragically. A frenzied attack, the third person he’s killed, do you see? Bad business.’

  ‘But, Ivan, I don’t know what you mean,’ Sara managed to say. ‘Ivan, listen.’ She could hardly bear to look at him. His face was twisted with the effort of speaking through his pain. Blood poured from the three wounds on his leg. ‘Listen to me. You know none of this is true, don’t you? Ivan …’

  Something she had heard about using a person’s name to reduce tension swam into her brain. ‘Ivan, just stop a minute. I’ve got this all wrong, so have you. The rye—the rye over there on the table. I looked at it. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s perfectly okay. It’s clean.’

  Ivan snorted and adjusted his grip, glanced at the rye and back at Sara’s face.

  ‘Honestly, it’s not contaminated, th
at’s what I was trying to show you. There’s nothing wrong with it. Honestly, I swear, it’s perfectly all right.’

  She was wide-eyed, bewildered, terrified. ‘Ivan, I’ve made some sort of awful mistake, jumping to stupid conclusions. It’s because I’m so upset about James, I suppose. I wanted some kind of reason for it. Only please, let me go.’

  Ivan stared at her distrustfully. He did not let go.

  ‘I’ve just grabbed at an explanation and it’s wrong. The rye’s fine. Go and look.’

  Still he did not let go. Sara tried again. ‘You’ve done the same thing, jumped to the wrong conclusions, made up all that stuff and got us all scared for nothing. Come on, let me go. Leech wants you to as well. There’s no need for this. Let me go. I promise you, look at the rye and you’ll see for yourself. It’s fine. Whatever made people ill it certainly wasn’t the rye. The rye’s fine. You can just sell the clinic and put all this behind you.’

  Leech’s whimpering had stopped and he was gazing past Ivan into the darkness beyond the open door. It was impossible to tell whether he stared with longing, hopelessness, or complete insensibility.

  ‘Leech, come here,’ Ivan shouted. ‘Come here, you stupid bastard. Cut her. Cut her, Leech. With the scythe. Go on!’

  Leech raised the scythe and grunted as he lurched forward. His eyes were wild with incomprehension. He swung the scythe once, whined in desperation and let it fall back to his side. He looked at Sara blankly.

  ‘Just fucking do it, Leech! Cut her!’

  Leech nodded. ‘Kind,’ he said. Then he swung the scythe up again into the air behind him and brought it down hard on Ivan’s shoulder.

  Sara’s scream came like an explosion as Ivan’s blood hit her face. She pulled herself away, screaming to Leech to run, as she made for the door and dived into the darkness. But instead of the open, empty ground, the night air and safety, she ran straight into the hard, upright wall of someone’s chest.