by S. C. Howe
‘What the hell is that thing?’ Barratt asked peering into the cage.
‘I thought Alice would like it,’ said Tom. He was glad it was dark; he didn’t want to see anyone’s expression.
‘Oh,’ said Barratt as though that was answer enough. A swath of mist had settled on the marshes, visible as a wafer of light in the growing dark. From the left of the path came the busy murmur of the Stour. They walked on. Going underneath the bridge and up the steps of a lock, they headed off into sandy fields, woven by tracks, to the halt. The chaffinch had become quiet in the cage, was sitting on its perch, watching. Waiting.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The mist stayed over the marshes and, as they walked higher, it was as though they were stepping into black velvet from a cobweb greyness. The air, in the growing dark, smelled pungent with the promise of summer after this day of unseasonal warmth. Appearing by the second was an increasing wash of stars. Walking along the lanes one could feel, just for a moment, that nothing was amiss, which made recollection the more painful. As lights from solitary houses became fewer, they followed the course of the railway track, all of them looking ghostly pale, and soon reached the halt outside Kidderminster. Within ten minutes, they were sitting facing each other in the illuminated carriage, which restored colour to their faces, even banishing Barratt’s earlier drunken pallor. Walking down the track from the halt at Heathend, they saw a light in the kitchen. Tom stepped out in front and the others joined him.
‘I can’t remember leaving any of the lamps burning,’ he murmured to Joss. They quickened their pace, all too aware of Joss’s clumsy gait and all trying not to show they were accommodating him; in turn, he pretended not to notice their allowances. As they entered the gates to the courtyard, the main door swung open and Sykes stood leaning against the doorpost, arms folded.
‘And where the hell have you lot been?’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve been here hours!’
Tom stood back, open eyed.
‘Your place is easy to break into,’ Sykes said confidentially to him. ‘You need to look at that.’
‘You bloody old swine!’ Barratt shouted, striding over and patting him on the back.
Sykes grinned. ‘Even the pigs got fed up with me and let me out,’ he said. ‘Actually I think it was that they couldn’t get the henchmen to cough up, couldn’t find the buggers from all accounts, so they had to let me go. I see our Whis has made himself at home.’ Sykes jerked a thumb over to the old sofa where the greyhound was fast asleep, paws skyward.
‘So you’re out for good?’ Barratt asked.
‘They’ve dropped all the charges. Anyway, I just wanted to pick up Whis, think we’ll go on our wanderings for a while. What the fuck, is that?’ he exclaimed, staring suddenly at the chaffinch fledgling throwing itself up and down the bars of the cage. In a quick movement, he flipped up the catch and the bird shot out and away into the darkness, its wings momentarily whirring in the dark. For several moments they stared after it, no-one saying a thing.
‘Anyway,’ said Sykes, ‘I’ve got my things, and I’ll be on my way.’ He humped a kitbag onto his shoulder. In a flash, Whistle was at his side, and, without another word, they melted into the night without a sound. Joss stared after him. Tom could see the tension in his jaw. Alice glanced at Barratt and he shrugged in response to her unuttered question.
‘That’s Sykes, it seems,’ Joss said. ‘I would imagine the last few days banged up have made him more restless than usual.’
The night fell completely and the lamplight in the kitchen drew them back in. Joss cooked up bacon, and fried eggs from their hens, and they sat companionably eating and talking until late evening. They had laughed, especially at Alice and Barratt’s vaudeville act in which Barratt rolled up sheets of newspaper and held one against Alice’s stomach and asked ‘Ello, Ello, Ello?’ to which she answered triumphantly through her trumpet ‘What’s all this then?’ For some reason they all found it hilarious. Probably the drink. Barratt and Alice retired after eleven, and Joss sat with Tom on the old sofa.
‘We’ve told Sykes he can stay here for as long as he wants,’ Tom said, reading Joss’s expression.
‘I know, but that felt like a goodbye to me,’ Joss murmured.
‘You know enough about Sykes to know he’ll turn up when he’s ready.’
Joss filled his beer mug. ‘Yes, I’m just tired. It’s been a busy day,’ he said, and they left it at that.
A few days later, Tom walked again over the heath on the plateaux above the farm as dawn was breaking. He had done this for the last few mornings as Joss had been sleeping soundly. Now Muffin was snuffling ahead of him in the dewed grass and Tom sat and watched the day re-emerge as the last stars fade. When he had woken earlier, there had been the first uncertain sounds of birds in the darkness, so the sound seemed curiously detached, spectral even, but now with the growing light, came the beginnings of a chorus sung with...joy. Yes, that was the only word that fit – joy; no memories of the past, no anxieties about the future. And it felt just then as though the world was being reborn and, with it, hope and contentment would be its new riches. There was a sudden movement in front of him and a fox ran between the scrub, like a fish around river weed, a ginger and amber flash. The sun edged up over the horizon, its rays filling the small valleys, shining like pewter off pools and streamlets, driving off the mist like the last exhalation of night. Tom remembered dawns like this over the battlefields, recalled how the promise of life back in England had sustained him out there through all those wretched months. It could be part of his life and he could share in it again. It was here, and would be here, regardless of his choice.
A sun’s ray caught the trumpet of a small wild daffodil nestling in the rough, tussocky grass. It was short-stemmed and its trumpet a light greenish-yellow. Its purpose, or lack of it, was all that mattered. That was enough, and Tom knew every day now could be like this one. He did not have to justify his life; he could accept his mortality, his transience and, by it, realise freedom. Even through the most hopeless, darkest days, he had never doubted Joss’s commitment or his love – or his for Joss – it was the bedrock of his life now.
Walking on, Muffin trotted after him, snuffling in the long grass. Nico has stayed with Joss, asleep on the bed. Stopping by an oak, he thought of the shade in the heat, its shelter in the dark and rain. Nodding to himself, he called the dog on, then slowed to watch a hedgehog shuffling along, with Muffin close by, each aware of the other, but unconcerned. He felt his mind washing itself, of the anger and fear that had blighted him like a canker. Until then, whatever he had tried to do to change it, it had always insisted itself within him. There had been no way round it, or so it had seemed. For over twenty-five years, he had been groping through life, apologising, stumbling, but all this could change now.
Muffin came back with a rabbit in her mouth; it was still alive. She threw it down enthusiastically for his praise. Tom could see it was not going to live as it writhed grotesquely. Leaning down, he picked the rabbit up, and, looking away, snapped its neck. For a few moments, he gagged with the revulsion of what he had just done, and looked at the limp body hanging from his hands. It was like a slap in the face. The rabbit was perfect. In the dawn sun, its fur gleamed and its large brown eyes were clear. He felt its flank – it was warm, but still. Death-still. Putting the rabbit down under a thicket, he walked onwards towards the sullen marshes glinting darkly in the distance.
From the other side of the heath, men watched and listened, watched as Tom’s pace quickened along paths that were still whitened with dew, watched as he crept through thickets and copses, and, again, one man smiled.
Clouds began to roll in. The moon disappeared and the sky sagged as though made from old, greyed cotton wool. The marshes stood out dark and sullen with natural oil filming the surface and showing up watery hollows like the sunken orbits in a skull. The whole smelled of decay, of threat. Tom tried to picture it in the summer, triumphant with grasses and rushes, with the yello
w swords of flag irises standing proud and flame-like, with dragonflies and damselflies flitting and hovering in the still heat of a hot afternoon, but the picture would not stay. A wind was getting up and sight and sound was becoming confused as trees and branches lashed together. He started to hear things. The birds had stopped singing as though someone had thrown a switch, and the silence was immense. Lonely. He stood still, straining to listen for the slightest sounds, aware how deadly quiet it had become. Tom walked on, but Muffin shrank back, sat obstinately whining, and only joined Tom as he moved on without her. As they passed a coppice, she started whining in a low tone. Tom turned to her but she ran off into the open of the heath and circled in the path between them. Tom caught her up.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked, stooping down to reassure her. Muffin gave the same low agitated whine and walked out, then back the way they had come, stopped and looked up at him expectantly.
‘Come on!’ Tom said. ‘We’re not having this–’.
There was something standing close by in the thicket of trees, where exactly he could not guess, but there was malevolence in the air, as though the place was crackling with some odd energy. In town, one might be attacked for money, but out here, in this uninhabited, secretive place, there loomed the danger of some unnamed horror, a primeval dread of faceless, terrifying bulks, which were usually consigned to nightmares. The next second he was rebuking himself. If the war had taught him anything, it was to keep walking in the face of the most intense fear, to keep going, to overcome it and survive. He had faced this sort of fear before, many times in the trenches and he could do it again, here. He began whistling then started counting to one hundred. There was a crunch of a splintered dry twig behind him. He began to run, his breath tearing at his lungs. Then he was thrown forwards to the ground, being pushed face-first with bodies piling up on him. A sharp knee thrust into his back. There was the terrible screaming of fighting dogs. A loud crack. Another piercing animal scream and Muffin sank to the ground.
Roger Deerman, lowered the gun and smiled cruelly into his face.
‘I have you,’ he whispered triumphantly, pushing Tom backwards with the gun, his finger was off the trigger. ‘Get up!’ he ordered.
Tom got to his feet, saw the two rough-looking men he used to talk with in The Market Arms. They stared back, startled. Backed off.
‘Get hold of him!’ Deerman ordered, pushing Tom forward roughly so he fell onto his knees. ‘Tie his hands!’
Tom heard them muttering, but no-one moved.
‘Do you understand an order!’
There was a clank of something falling to the ground, then something else.
‘I am ordering to you to tie him up!’ Deerman repeated; his voice was icy, furious.
‘Fuck you!’ the one man spat.
‘Yeah, fuck off!’ shouted the other.
There was a pause, then the sound of footsteps splashing through the pools.
‘Come back here! Now!’ Deerman roared.
The footsteps quickened to a run. Muffin slithered along the ground out of view.
For a moment the pressure on Tom’s shoulder from the gun relaxed, and he looked up sideways to see Deerman staring after the running figures, mute with humiliation.
The next thing Deerman was on him, straddling him, staring around, as though momentarily confused over what to do next. Then he punched Tom.
‘My family have all but disowned me,’ he hissed into his ear. ‘It’s all your fault. You’ve spoilt everything.’
‘So you told them you’re a rapist.’
Deerman stopped still, looked startled for a moment, but a sneer crept over his face. ‘So how can you explain away an erection if you weren’t enjoying it?’
‘I don’t have to explain.’
‘You should show me respect.’
‘Why?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Why should I show you respect?’
Deerman looked thrown. ‘Because I’m you’re superior,’ he said, lamely.
‘Bollocks.’
Tom reeled as Deerman leapt up and kicked him in the back. Tom struggled, gasped as Deerman’s arm pressed on his windpipe.
‘I’m going to have you again, Fielder,’ Deerman said thickly. ‘I have nothing to lose.’ He undid his own belt with a rough, practised jerk and dragged his underclothes out of the way, then leant down, started to tongue Tom’s neck, then kissed it greedily as he released his arm, Tom heaved for breath – his face contracted with disgust.
Arching up, he momentarily toppled Deerman. But Deerman flew back in, got him by the throat, was choking him so he started to lose consciousness. As the grip on his neck eased so Tom drew in urgent ragged breaths, in gasps that Deerman mistook for sounds of sexual pleasure so he fondled him. That was it for Tom. All the fury that had been bottling up came raging out. With every last bit of energy he threw Deerman to one side, kicking him savagely in the guts. Deerman clamped up, gritting his teeth in pain as Tom jumped over him to the shotgun, which he flicked up with his boot and grabbed in his hand. Deerman was moving towards him. Tom kicked him in the chest so he fell back, supine, his engorged nakedness making him look peculiarly vulnerable.
Tom stood over him, cocking the shotgun at him.
‘Do yourself up,’ he said. Deerman sat up, sullenly pulling up his clothes, fastening his belt. The next, Tom was flung back against one of the rock outcrops that littered the marshes like dried-out bones beneath watery flesh. Then the pain hit him and his anger flashed back. Punching Deerman in the face so he staggered backwards, Tom hit him, again and again, saw trickles of blood seeping from Deerman’s nose, from his mouth. Then he punched him violently in the shoulder as Deerman moved forward to get the gun. Tom snatched it up with his uninjured arm, snapped the gun open, emptied the cartridges and flung it into the nearest pool.
Deerman’s eyes widened. Blood smeared his skin and ran down his shirt. Seconds later, they were fighting like animals. As he threw Deerman away across the marsh with one last gigantic effort, Tom collapsed and passed out.
A strange silence descended over the marshes. A fine rain began to fall. Two prone heaps lay helplessly. Tom came to with a sharp rip of pain. His eyes flicked open as he heard the sound of suppressed crying, like a whimpering, wounded animal. He raised his head, listened. He had heard it before in no man’s land; the lost, hopeless sound of someone who knows the fight is over and they have been left. The rain grew heavier, rinsing the blood away from his eyes so he saw Deerman crumpled up, like a vast broken bird, a darker outline against the heath. Moments later, the bulk uncurled and began crawling over to him. The next, he put a clammy, unsteady hand against Tom’s cheek, as if to reassure himself he was still there. Tom held him away. Deerman moved forward, kept sobbing. Tom watched him, his expression slowly changing from loathing to pity.
Tom came to in their old bed at the farm with Joss sitting, asleep, by his side in a chair. Nico was snoring at his feet. It was a sunlit afternoon but the curtains were drawn. Tom tried to move, gave a gasp of pain. Joss’s eyes snapped open.
Tom heard his name whispered. Then a lamp was lit and Joss’s face looked into his.
‘What’s happened?’
Joss sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Muffin came crawling back to the yard,’ he explained gently. ‘Nico and I went out–’
‘Where is she?’ Tom tried to sit up.
Joss stroked Tom’s forehead. ‘She’s all right. She’s at the vets. She was shot but they operated and she’s all right.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘About thirty-six hours. The doctor saw you. Cleaned you up, strapped your arm and sedated you for the pain.’
‘And your brother?’
‘In hospital, then he’s going to a convalescent home – that’s the family’s euphemism for a mental asylum.’
Tom’s expression darkened.
‘It’s being called a mental collapse,’ Joss said.
‘Really?’
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br /> ‘Roger’s owned up to what he’s been doing against you...stalking, lying in wait for you, the whole lot.
‘Oh.’
‘It’s pretty obvious he was obsessed with you from the start.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Actually I think it was more than that. I remember thinking the first time I saw him with you that he was uncharacteristically clumsy, unsure of himself. I’ve never seen him like that before. But in true Roger fashion it became all mangled up and twisted.’
Tom considered, but shook his head.
‘But that’s his problem,’ said Joss. ‘Roger’s first priority is himself, in fact that’s probably his only priority.’
‘I’m sorry Joss. I really am.’
Joss looked at him, startled. ‘You’ve no need to apologise!’
Tom shook his head. ‘Not that. I mean I can’t believe I walked off after the first attack.’
‘You weren’t well.’
‘And in the process I hurt you, and that was unforgivable.’
‘I understand.’
Tom’s eyes bleared up. ‘I love you. I always have.’
‘I know.’ Joss’s tone answered every question. That simple, honest certainty.
A few days later still, when the sun had been up since sunrise and it was as warm as a summer’s day, Tom eased himself to sit on the stone bench in the suntrap at the back of the house. His arm was throbbing painfully, and the bruises on his face had deepened and ached with a dull, unwavering pain; the gashes and cuts to his arms and legs stung. The pain was so widespread it was difficult to tell which bit hurt where.
Joss brought him out a mug of beer and sat by him. Tom manoeuvred himself round. ‘I’m serious about wanting to keep the farm low-key,’ he said.
And so they talked. Tom talking about his previous fear of the farm failing financially which had spurred him to grow more, push more, profits over happiness, worldly success over content, until his world had spun away from Joss’s increasingly inward-looking life where there was no threat, no worry, no challenge. They discussed how they should continue, and agreed on a compromise. They would work together in the glasshouses or out in the fields as they had first done, not work apart and become islands. They finished talking as the evening sun shone with an amber glow over the spindly copses and fields. It burnished the barns and the stable, and touched the face of the placid horse who peered out of his stall as though at immense peace with the world, and the evening sun fingered the renewing green of the trees and hedges to set finally with flame-red energy over the heath.