by Robert Ford
‘I’ll shoot you! Fox!’
Sam sat on the snow and watched; what else could he do? And besides, such errant activity provided great theatre - to watch a man rushing about a field at six a.m., trying frantically to shoot an imaginary fox with an antique musket, is to be entertained.
It was some minutes, however, until the full scope of proceedings was revealed, as Sam realised it wasn’t a fox that Hal was chasing, it was a bear. A small black bear.
His Bear.
Sam sat up, amazed. The Bear was running for his life, his tiny legs sprinting across the snow in order to evade the attentions of this madman. Sam could not believe it. This was brilliant. Amazing.
‘Hal!’ he shouted, tears beginning to streak his face. ‘It’s a Bear. Shoot the Bear!’
‘Yes! Shoot the fox! Shoot the fox!’ bawled Hal, punching at the sky with his free arm before falling forward onto his front in the snow.
‘No! It’s a Bear. Shoot the Bear, Hal!’ bellowed Sam back.
It was no use, Hal was oblivious to his calls.
‘Shoot the fox!’ He cried again, lurching back to his feet. ‘Shoot it! The fox!’
This strange confrontation continued for some time, but the stamina gifted to Hal through the anaesthesia of the alcohol he had consumed had to wear off eventually, and so it did in a fashion that resembled the unwinding of a clockwork toy, his manic limbs slowing, slowing, slowing until he reached the final limit of his reserves, a swaying standstill in the middle of the field. His arms dropped, the musket swinging to his side, and then, bereft of further energy, he fell backwards onto the snow.
Sam jumped to his feet and loped the short distance over to where he had fallen. ‘Hal? Are you alright?’
Hal opened his eyes, staring straight up towards the sky, the man who fell to earth. ‘Did... I get him? Did I get... the fox?’ drawled Hal in between hearty coughs.
‘Think so, yeah,’ said Sam, looking up to see the last trace of the Bear, his outline disappearing, terrified, hobbling across the fields and into the distance.
‘Yup, you got him.’
The car was stuck. Despite the meagre plastic constituents of the build, it was impossible for just the two of them to lift her clear of the ditch. It was obvious that they would have to return on foot, and so they set off in silence across the fields in the rough direction of Edge Hill, a slow meander that would take an hour and a half cross-country. By this time it was nearly eight o’clock, the magic of the dawn light having given way to the cold clear grey of morning. They stood for a moment and looked ahead from the main gates towards the house, the first signs of life appearing ahead: lights coming on in rooms, curtains opening and, just caught on the edge of the wind, the unmistakeable smell of Meel being cooked in the kitchens for the breakfast feed.
‘Guess I’ll have to arrange a tow for the car later in the week,’ said Sam.
‘You will. Good luck with that,’ said Hal as he started off home.
Sam smiled to himself; he knew Hal would be no help retrieving it from the ditch, not last night, not next week.
‘Yeah, thanks, old man,’ he called after him.
Hal stopped and turned, hoisting the musket in the air triumphantly.
‘Shoot the fox, Dickie, shoot the fox!’
And with that, the King of Spain turned and staggered off into the distance, the musket slung across his shoulders, his arms raised up and round so as to hold it fast, a hero in his own small way.
AND SO THE WORLD DISSOLVED
The idea of working shift patterns had never appealed to Sam, had always seemed out of step with the natural rhythm of life, too irregular. However, that morning he could have been called upon as a confirmed advocate of the system, this due to the fact that he did not have to report to the rink until midday; he could sleep a little, could rest - a sensible idea, but one that Sam was forced to re-evaluate several hours later when he woke feeling close to death. His eyes were bloodshot, head pounding, tongue a rough cardboard flap.
Of all the days at Edge Hill supervising the rink, this had to have been one of the worst. Sam arrived on the stroke of twelve and took up his usual seat on the nearside next to Rachel. Across the way sat Spike and Ted, mouths open, fast asleep. There would be trouble if Morris were to catch them, or Kirkham even, but neither seemed inclined to care. Not today.
The shift was to last six hours, a portion of protracted time, every agonising second drenched in a draining, limp monotony. Indeed the more Sam sat and watched the residents go round and round, the worse he felt, as if his body was rebelling against the banality of it all, the genteel gliding and what not. At least there were no crashes that day; blood-soaked ice was more than he could have dealt with in such a condition.
Of course Hal was nowhere to be seen, not for the entire shift. Sam presumed that he would be in his room, asleep. And why not? No one was going to go after him; it simply wasn’t worth their while.
So when the shift was at last over, Sam sloped away from the rink and the East Wing, back along the cloisters towards his room. And as he went his mind drifted, his thoughts turning to Megan. He wanted to go to her, to collapse. But on reflection, when faced with reality, he decided this was a terrible idea. He looked bad, like a moulding plum, his face bloated and ruddy, not to mention his hair, which now sat a bursting, matted coil of curls which smelt of hake and rhubarb. No. Presented with such a marginal sight he could only succeed in giving this young woman a mental snapshot of himself that might be emblazoned upon her memory for all time; a paranoid perspective, perhaps, but one he felt safe clinging to. And besides, the shitgunner prank was perhaps still too recent to expect all that much in the way of sympathy.
Sam’s room was dark and warm and cluttered, a perfect sanctuary from the world. He shut the door behind him and lunged inside, across the detritus to the safety of his single bed. Kicking off his shoes, he rolled onto his back and looked up towards the tatty swirls of patterned plaster that decorated the ceiling. Although the sprung mattress was antique, an awkward lumpen truckle ordinarily, to Sam it was heaven-sent; never had he sampled anything quite so deluxe. And as he lay there in the dark, as his body began to relax, so the events of the last few days unfolded through his mind, a highlights reel drawn from memory. All seemed well with the world, or at least with Edge Hill. Hal was back, fished out from beneath the funk that had overwhelmed him of late, and Megan didn’t hate him, rather she seemed to quite like him, despite the fact he had publicly humiliated her father. Even the Bear had gone, chased away, shot at.
More than that, though, Sam felt, for perhaps the first time in his life, calibrated towards the world, more complete, certain of himself. The isolation of his formative years, the absence of his father and the controlling influence of his mother - these variables had rendered him malleable, able to sublimate himself at will, leaning always towards the fleeting demands of circumstance, not wanting to rock the boat. In a way this was a fine skill, but it came at the expense of his own identity. Sam never gave himself the chance to formulate anything that equated a personality, a sense of self that was definite and true. However his time at Edge Hill had delivered some small shift, a change in perspective; it had been a slow process, a gradual eking out or evolution perhaps, barely discernible, like the heliocentric movements of a plant, turning tiny increments towards the light. But lying there alone on the bed, Sam felt the strangest sensation: he felt like himself. He felt real.
It seemed impossible, but by the time Sam woke up the next morning he felt even worse; his hangover had mutated from the common-or-garden variety into something much more sinister in form: a tremendous lethargy combined with a rank internal tenderness. Sitting up in bed he tried to summon the energy to move, to get up, get going to his shift, and while he sat there he made a tacit agreement with himself that the drinking had to stop, or abate for a time at least.
Heading to work, Sam looked out through the windows lining the cloisters of the East Wing. They afforded a fine vie
w out over the grounds as they fell away, sloping down towards a small dark copse nestling between a rough patchwork of pastureland. The wind had changed, a milder breeze blowing in from the west, and as such the snow had started to melt, water dripping like tears from the branches and hedgerows and from the guttering of the house.
‘Morning.’
Sam looked up to see Morris approaching along the corridor.
‘Sam,’ he said as they neared each other.
‘Morris,’ said Sam, stopping short by the gallery ladder so that they could speak.
‘Hal wasn’t here yesterday.’
Sam stalled, not wanting to give his friend away.
‘I know Hal wasn’t here yesterday,’ said Morris, tired and certainly in no mood to be playing games.
‘Right.’
‘One day I can live with. Two, starts to take the piss. And anyway, Kirkham has asked me to crack down on staff absences. Hal’s not his favourite person right at this moment in time either so it would be... very nice... if he deigned to join us today.’
‘He’s not down yet?’
Morris snorted, bullish. ‘No, Sam. He’s not come down yet.’
‘Right,’ said Sam, the mechanism of his brain turning over at a lag.
‘So would you like to fetch him down for me, please?’
‘Right. Sure. Morris. I’ll go and get him then.’
‘Yes, please.’ With that, Morris began the climb up to the gallery, his thunderous size causing the slight metal frame of the ladder to quake and shudder. Sam watched with interest for a little while, wondering how the struts could accommodate such a load. Then he turned on his heel, starting back along the cloisters to the staff area of the house.
The slim yellow corridor outside Hal’s room was deserted, the only audible sound the constant, insectile buzz from the pale strip light above.
Sam knocked three times.
Nothing.
He tried again.
‘Hal?’
Sam craned his head towards the door, hoping to hear some kind of response.
‘Hal?’ he said again, this time louder.
Still there was no answer.
‘Hal? Time to get up now,’ he said as clearly as he could - thinking in some way that more definite articulation might help.
Silence.
Such was Sam’s complete lack of energy that day that he was already beginning to tire. He considered sitting down there in the corridor, lying even, but he doubted very much whether he would have the resolve to get up again. Instead he decided to give it one last go, knocking hard on the dark grey door, hard enough to disturb the latch and open the door inwards by just a fraction.
Sam paused, looking down at the gap that had appeared and then along the corridor in both directions.
‘Right, Hal. This is ridiculous. I’m coming in.’
The door squeaked a little on its hinges as Sam pushed it aside and crept into the room, an affectation that he soon realised was at odds with his task to wake Hal up.
Inside, the room was dark and warm and well ordered, just as it had been on his last visit. And despite the gloom, Sam could see Hal lying on top of the sheets, still dressed in his handler’s uniform.
‘Hal, you old goat!’ Sam hissed, starting to find this a little fun at last. ‘Oi! Spaniard! The fascists are here!’
Amazingly there was still no reaction from Hal. Nothing at all.
Sam edged closer until he was standing over the bed. Hal’s eyes were closed, his skin a little wan.
‘Hal? Hal, wake up.’ Sam reached out an arm to nudge.
There was a coldness to his body, a strange solid weight.
‘Hal?’
Tears began to prick Sam’s eyes.
‘Hal?’ he said, his voice cracking now, desperate, leaning forward, listening for a heartbeat, searching for a pulse.
‘Hal!’
On the floor next to the bed was a bottle of pills. Sam bent and snatched them up - sedatives, most of which had gone.
For a moment he stared at them in disbelief. As the awful truth crystalized, so Sam loosened his grip around the bottle, his hand numb almost by association, until at last it slipped from his grasp, the dense plastic pot falling on to the floor with a spare clatter - a sound that acted as a catalyst, underscoring the need for urgency.
Sam tore out of the room and into the corridor.
‘Help! Help! Somebody help!’ He roared, but it was the middle of the working day and the staff rooms were empty. No one would come.
Sprinting through the corridors, he came to the landing and the main staircase into the atrium, which he took five steps at a time, tripping on the way so that he landed in a heap at the bottom. Sam picked himself up and continued on, barging his way through the main door of the house, running left through the slush, across the heavy lawn to the infirmary. His heart pounded as he ran, almost as if it might burst, tears streaking his face, blurring, the world suddenly nebulous.
The duty handler behind the infirmary desk jumped out of his seat with surprise as Sam shot into the reception area.
‘What is it? What’s going on?’
Sam put his hands on the top of the desk, trying to catch his breath.
‘There’s been an accident... in the main house... It’s Hal,’ he managed to force out in between huge gulps of air.
The handler stood for a moment, confused.
‘Come on!’ roared Sam. ‘Now!’
Within a few short minutes the medical team had assembled, led by Dr Fell, who for once seemed focussed and, to an extent, professional. Sam led them at a pace back across the grounds to the main house and up to Hal’s room, where they set to work in order to ascertain what was to be done, what assistance could be performed. From the doorway the situation suddenly seemed hopeful; Sam watched, open-mouthed, tense, fearful, hoping. The idea, the concept that Hal might be dead was unfathomable, an impossibility. He was invulnerable, only just back to his best, but at his most robust and full of spirit. And yet, looking down at the bed, his limp body did seem so fragile, his skin bearing a strange sheen, a pallor that seemed to have transmuted his features, lending them a softness Sam could not fully recognise.
‘Right chaps, that’s it,’ the doctor said in a low, flat voice, a voice that seemed practised in pitch for occasions such as these.
The activity around the bed subsided. Dr Fell turned around and stepped across towards the doorway, into the light that shone in from the corridor.
‘Unfortunately, Sam...’
The doctor stalled, looking for the right words; this was, after all, a more personally affecting scenario than he was used to.
‘Look...’ he continued. ‘Hal’s dead. He’s been dead for a little while now, maybe since late last night. There’s really nothing we can do.’
Sam stared straight ahead, trying to fight the reality of the situation. His heart ached, a desperate, physical pain. Why hadn’t he been to see Hal that evening? If he hadn’t just gone to bed, if he had been there...
‘We’ll move him in a short while. I thought you might like to take a minute.’
The medical team had half-opened the curtain, allowing cold white winter light to drench most of the left side of the body. Indeed the illumination was such that, standing there at the end of the bed, to Sam the scene looked monotone and as such faintly unreal; a wood cutting or inked illustration, a design, not flesh and blood. Not death.
Sam felt detached, and yet at the same time hurt, inclined towards a great and savage misery. It was all too much to process, the shock of the discovery permeating like some awful, seeping chromatographic process, the truth of which would only be shown later, and then only as indistinct traces of the actual whole.
Sam took one last lingering look at his friend. It was strange and upsetting that he could not recognise him, shocking the speed at which the dead become unknown to those that are left behind. Then, without a word, he turned and walked away, out along the claustrophobic corridors wi
th their drab yellow walls, through the empty house to his own quiet room. Sam shut the door behind him and closed his eyes for a moment, fighting off the violent lachrymal waves which rose from deep within his abdomen. Dropping to the floor he tried to find some way of gaining control, of harnessing his mood, but of course it was useless; his friend was dead and his heart demanded this of him. And so the tears came once more, evolving until his whole body was given over to the process of crying, a loud sobbing lament that was impossible to contain. Again and again he tried to stop, whipping a sleeve across his eyes, drawing deep breaths, only to start again seconds later, an overwhelming, physical ordeal.
THE NOTE
A knock at the door, a reluctant patter that was only just audible. A few seconds later the same rhythm, louder this time.
‘Sam? Sam are you there?’
It was Megan’s voice.
Sam blinked, trying to drag himself back to reality.
‘Sam? Can I come in?’
Sitting up on the bed, he tried to clear his head. Really there was no one else in the world he wanted to see, that he would have let into his room at that point. He stepped across the carpet and opened the door, squinting at the light, raising an arm to shield his eyes. ‘Hello.’
Megan looked as though she had been crying too, the skin beneath her eyes puffed and red. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
They stood and looked at each other there in the doorway for a time, lost for words. Then Sam moved back and to the side so that she could pass into the room. He closed the door and turned towards her, his large eyes catching what little light there was, shining in the darkness. Megan stepped forward, throwing her arms around his waist and pressing her head against his chest, pulling him towards her with a touching urgency, a need to comfort and be comforted. And there they stood in the centre of the room for what seemed like an age, locked in a most wonderful embrace, the kind of contact that can make the world dissolve and soothe the heart.