“That’ll do nicely.”
Picking the stone up, Pol took a tentative sip of water, swilled it around his mouth before swallowing it. Decided it tasted fine, so he swallowed and took another, larger drink.
‘Mmmm.’
“Maybe a bit earthy, but it’s probably because I’m drinking it off a stone.”
He downed the rest of the water in one go.
After making sure the fire was completely out, Pol retrieved his boots, which were full of water, from the river, and hung them around his neck. Next, he discarded his fire-making bow-drill under the tree. Picked up the concave stone, plus his new spears. With the two shorter spears in his left hand and the stone firmly clamped under his left armpit, he carried the long spear in his right hand, holding it in readiness, in case he was attacked on his way back up to the cave.
Pol carefully crawled out from beneath the umbrella tree, made sure the coast was clear. Stood up, and, full of a newfound confidence, he purposely headed uphill. This time, he did not bother darting from boulder to boulder such was his belief in his ability to defend himself. All he had to do was try to avoid stepping on any of the thousands of sharp stones, most of which were half buried, or completely buried in the sand, whilst keeping his wits about him.
With only his socks to protect his feet, he could feel every little rock and pebble. Luckily, the socks he was wearing were thick walking socks, not thin nylon socks like the ones he normally wore with his trainers.
It still took Pol a good five minutes to reach the cave where he placed his boots full of water and the two spare spears just outside the entrance. He sat down by the side of his boots and removed his socks before gratefully massaging the soles of his feet. Every little stone he had stepped on had felt like a boulder, even more so than those occasions when he had had a tiny bit of grit trapped in one of his trainers. Funny how such a small piece of stone could feel like a large rock.
“Oh, my poor feet. I‘ll make sure I wear my boots in future.”
Stretching his legs out in front of him Pol wriggled his toes and exhaled a long contented sigh. As he stared down towards the river, his eyes began to water over.
‘I wish Tinker was here.’
The thought caused an involuntary sob to escape from his lips but he fought against the urge to let the tears flow. Feeling sorry for himself, or the dog, would do him no good whatsoever.
Breaking from his thoughts, he forced his mind to return to the moment
“Right...”
‘...Now what?’
After a quick look at his watch—almost eight o’clock—he glanced up at the sky through slitted lids, half-expecting to see the sun dipping down towards the far horizon. To his surprise, it had not. The yellow-red sun was still high in the sky.
‘Funny.’
“This’s silly.” He frowned at his watch as if he was accusing it of being wrong. “It should be heading towards dusk by now. What’s with this stupid sun? It ought to be on its way down by this time.”
A worried frown formed deep furrows across his forehead. One good thing though, at this rate, he would have plenty of time to make the entrance to his cave a bit more secure than it was.
“Bugger it.”
His boots were full of water, he was thirsty, his feet were sore. He could not spare the time to boil any more water or nurse his feet. Both could wait a while longer. First, he needed to collect a lot of suitable stones. The flatter the stones were the better they would balance on top of each other.
Pulling his socks back on, Pol clambered to his feet and stretched his aching back. Carrying two boots full of water whilst holding a stone under one armpit and dancing between hundreds of sharp stones had proved to be more tiring than he had thought it might be.
‘Not as fit as I thought I was.’
A quick look around told him he would not have to go very far to find the stones he needed to build a rudimentary defense around the entrance to his cave. There were plenty of suitable rocks, large and small, scattered around the immediate area.
He was soon engrossed in his ‘project.’
Just over an hour later, he was relatively satisfied with his efforts. He had managed to construct something, which looked like half an igloo around the entrance to the cave, leaving a low opening on the right-hand side. He would use this opening as a doorway. The way he had built around the entrance meant any animal trying to get into the cave would have to make a sharp right-hand turn inside his new porch in order to get to him. That is, if the beast managed to get past the sharp spears he was going to set up as an inner barrier.
‘I can make some kind of wooden door for it tomorrow. If anything tries to get in tonight it’ll get the sharp end of a spear in its face.’
Happy with what he had done Pol eased down onto his hands and knees and crawled into his igloo-cum-porch. Turning around, he carefully inspected the new porch from the inside.
“Mmmm. Not bad, even if I do say so myself.”
Ok. So. It was not perfect by any means, but Pol was more than happy with its layout.
“Now,” he sighed, “I gotta sort out another drink.”
Outside, he retrieved one of his water-filled boots and lugged it to one side.
‘Fireplace.’
No problem. There were plenty of windblown twigs lying amongst the rocks and it did not take him long to collect enough leaves and twigs to get a fire going. Collecting a few smaller rocks, he quickly built a small circular fireplace.
Now he needed to make a new bow-drill. Good job he had had the forethought to stuff a wad of hairs into one of his pockets.
Once he had sorted out a bow-drill, Pol soon had a decent fire burning. Pity the tough hair had sawn through the main stick again.
Examining the water in his boot, Pol discovered a few dead insect-like beasts drifting around atop a thin, scummy green film, which had formed on the surface.
‘Yuk! I’ll have to find another method of collecting and storing water. Can’t have this every time.’
Using his hand, Pol carefully scooped the insects and most of the scum off the surface of the water, before pouring some of the water into the concave stone. Then he balanced the stone on top of the rocks around the fire, and made a satisfied chuckle.
“At least I know there are insects living here. Means there’s got to be some insect-eating animals as well as those silly-looking birds.”
‘Hope they’re good enough to eat.’
He had forgotten to bring his lifting sticks with him and had to make a new set.
When the water was ready and had cooled sufficiently, he took a sip, and immediately made a face as he spat it out.
“Shit!”
It tasted vile; a mixture of sweaty-socks, and something indescribable.
“Oh Christ! It’s bloody awful...!”
Chapter 45
Feeling drained and completely knackered, Pol crawled wearily into his small cave. He had never done so much hard work in his life and it had taken its toll on his body; every muscle, sinew, or whatever, ached. His body was crying out for rest.
Sleep.
After arranging the two shorter spears in such a way, propped up with rocks, with their points towards the entrance to act as a barrier, Pol lay down on the bare floor of his cave with his head resting on his rolled-up fleece. He had put his sweatshirt on again thinking the weather might get cooler during the night. He kept the longest of his spears by his side firmly grasped in his right hand, and pointed it towards the inner doorway.
By his watch, it was almost ten o’clock at night, being the second ten o’clock of the day it should be getting dark by this time, but it was still daylight. According to the angle of the sun, it must still be somewhere around midday.
‘There’s definitely something funny going on here,’ he thought as he turned onto his side and curled up but bravado pushed his concerns to one side. ‘I can’t go by the bloody thing in the sky. I don’t know how it works. I know I haven’t missed a whole
night, and got mixed up. Got to find some way of telling the time in this Godforsaken place.’
Within minutes, he was fast asleep and did not hear the angry cawing of a bird somewhere away in the distance...
Chapter 46
Tinker snarled at the large bird standing no more than ten feet in front of him. The bird made cautious. Watched the dog with its single eye as it made two short hops to its left.
A low growl rumbled in Tinker’s throat.
“‘Grrrrrr.’”
He made ready to defend himself. The bird made three more hops to its left, as if it were trying to circle around the dog, one hop at a time, whilst at the same time sizing up its opponent.
Tinker bared his teeth, the warning was clear.
The bird canted its head to the left. Tilted it to the right. Jutted its head forward and hissed before it issued a challenge to the dog.
“‘Caaawww!’”
Tinker replied loudly,
“‘Woof! Woof! Snarl! Snap!’”
The bird, clearly taken aback by Tinker’s aggressive retort, hopped backwards, lengthening the distance between them.
“‘Caaawww! Caaawww!’”
Tinker, his muscles tensed, poised to attack, made two steps towards the bird.
“‘Growl. Woof! Grrrrrr.’”
Nah.
The bird decided it was having none of it. With a sharp cry, the bird turned, hopped away for a short distance before spreading its wings, and flew off to land in a nearby tree where it sat shouting at the dog.
“‘Caaawww.’”
Tinker sat down and stared up at the bird. No way would he be able to reach it. Too hot to even try. His mouth opened, tongue hung out, and he began to pant.
Far too hot.
Suddenly,
The bird spread its wings. Launched from the branch it was perched upon and made a beeline for the dog.
Tinker responded to the attack by leaping up and snapping his jaws as the bird reached out to grab him with its claws. As luck would have it, Tinker’s teeth clamped around one of the outstretched claws. The bird screeched in pain and veered away from the dog, lifting him off his feet until the claw was wrenched from the bird’s foot. Tinker fell to the ground but managed to land on his feet. The bird flew high, screeching loudly as it did so.
“‘Caaawww! Caaawww! Caaawww!’” Which might have translated as something akin to; “‘Ow! Bugger! Shit!’”
Tinker dropped the bloodied claw and shouted at the bird,
“‘Woof! Woof! Woof! Grrr.’” Which probably meant something like, “‘Now sod off. And don’t come back. Or else...!’”
Chapter 47
“Eleven days and still nothing,” Joan moaned as she stared unseeing at the ancient threadbare carpet on the floor, her eyes half closed. Her face was drawn and pale, more so than normal. Looking closely one could see she had become a shadow of herself. Waiting for news of her errant son was beginning to tell on her. Every time she had been down to the Police Station, the answer was the same; nothing yet, let you know when we hear something.
Useless sods.
Ted had already tuned her out, closed his ears, and buried his mind in the racing pages of his newspaper.
This meant, she was talking to herself, as usual.
“I mean,” she continued. “He could be anywhere for all we know. He might be lying in a ditch somewhere. Injured or dead. And nobody knows.”
Her body visibly shuddered at the idea. Her precious son, the one she had treated so badly all these years, laying all alone, undiscovered, dead in a ditch! And, what was the bloody dog doing about it?
‘Shouldn’t the dog have made his way back home on his own by now? Surely he would come and let us know something’s happened to Appollinaire?’
“Stupid bloody dog.”
‘No bloody good at all.’
The TV made a noise when a hidden audience suddenly burst into laughter. Joan glanced half-heartedly at the screen. Some second rate comedian whose named she had forgotten was grinning at the camera.
‘Twat!’
She turned her head and threw a hate-filled look at Ted. Knew he was deliberately ignoring her.
‘You’re as bloody bad, you lazy good-for-nothing asshole.’
“Suppose you wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea?” she asked.
“Love one, thanks,” said Ted.
Joan’s lips formed a snarl.
“You heard that plain enough. Why won’t you talk about Appollinaire?”
Ted shrugged.
“Nothing to say.”
“He’s your son!”
Another shrug.
“Big enough to look after himself.”
Joan gritted her teeth and growled,
“So are you, you fat pig. Get your own bloody tea.”
Ted glanced at the clock. Too early for the pub. There’d be no one there yet. He would be the only sad old shit in there. Pity. He promptly tuned his wife out again and mentally watched his chosen horse charge past the winning post at odds of five thousand to one.
Yeah. Right.
If only.
Joan gave up trying to reason with her husband and she pushed her weary body out of the chair with difficulty and padded unsteadily towards the kitchen.
‘Not getting him anything. Lazy shit.’
Once in the kitchen, Joan leaned against the sink and tried to remember why she was there. Could no. Did not matter anyway. Whatever it was would wait until later. Could not have been important. Maybe she would remember later. Maybe she would not.
Tough.
The sun was shining. Quite pleasant outside.
‘I’ll go to the station and see if there’s any news yet.’
Although she knew, there would be no news. Never was.
She shuffled outside and turned towards the front gate unaware she was still wearing her slippers, the fluffy pink ones with a hole in the right one where her big toe poked through...
Chapter 48
Pol crumpled forward. His knees buckled beneath him and he instinctively put his hands out to prevent himself from going ass-over-tit.
“Bloody hell!” he shouted in surprise as he rolled over onto his side and fearfully looked up at the sky above.
‘What the heck was that?’
Seeing nothing, Pol clambered onto his hands and knees and pushed up into a crouching position. Held his spear at the ready. Again, he scanned the sky before daring to rise further.
All clear.
“Phew!” he puffed as he struggled up onto his feet. His heart was pounding as it pumped adrenaline around his body and energy surged into his muscles, ready for whatever.
Spotting a receding black shape as it soared up high into the sky, Pol shuddered at the way the beast had almost caught him unawares. If it had not been for some deep-rooted primeval instinct warning him about the attack, he dreaded to think about what might have happened.
‘It’s another one of those bloody big crows!’
Or the same one.
Big?
No.
What Pol meant was; it was huge. Massive. Even, gigantic! If the bird had been standing by his side, its head would be about level with, or slightly higher than, his shoulder. With its evil looking, eagle-like beak, and those razor-sharp talons, Pol was under no illusion the thing would easily be able to rip his head from his shoulders. Slice the meat from his bones.
‘At the very least.’
But,
He doubted whether one of these birds would have the strength to lift him bodily off the ground and carry him away. He would be much too heavy for it. In a fair fight, he would stand no chance. But shit, who cares? He did not intend to fight fairly. Having been the victim on too many occasions during his school years, Pol had learned how cheating was not only good, it was necessary. Even more so, since his life might depend upon his being able to kill this beast, before it managed to kill him...
Chapter 49
Tinker crawled forwards on his belly
. Halted when he reached the edge of the tree’s protective umbrella-like branches. He peered out. Turned his head from side to side. Seeing only the empty grassland, he decided to venture back down to the river for another drink. His instinct was to stock up before he continued on his quest to find the Pol-creature’s whereabouts.
Whilst he waited for the water to settle in his stomach, Tinker hungrily eyed up the fish swimming about in the shallows. He was in two minds whether to take a chance. Was about to lunge into the water when he heard the screeching cry of one of those flying creatures he had encountered a short while beforehand. He turned his head and peered up at the sky. Sure enough, he could one of the large black birds circling overhead.
The first thing to come to mind was, “‘Dinner!’”
To his little doggy mind, and his empty belly, meat was better than fish any day, and might be easier to catch.
Now we’re talking...
Chapter 50
Pol had earlier decided to venture out to gather some of the tough grasses with which he would try his hand at making a couple of baskets, plus a pot or two, and maybe a straw hat, with which he could shield him from the sun. Yes, ok. He might have been getting ahead of himself. He had seen a few programs about natives in Africa who made basketwork using grass. How hard could it be? A bit of woven grass, lined with a thick layer of mud, allowed to dry out in the sunshine, and voila! There you go. A large clay pot. Something in which he could store some water. A smaller pot in which he could carry water up from the river.
Because one of his boots was still almost full of water, and the other was half-full, Pol had had to pick his way across the bare ground with only his socks on his feet until he reached the first expanse of grass. Once there, he had tied a clump of grass to the sole of each foot using strands of the tough hair as laces, to act as a pair of temporary shoes. Not perfect, but they served a purpose. At least he did not have to hobble about in his stocking feet, like a cripple, reeling in pain every time he stood on a sharp stone.
Appollinaire: (The Other Side of Nowhere) Page 13