Winter Damage

by Natasha Carthew

  Butch shrugged.

  ‘There you go then. Dint Mummy put turnip in your pasties?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Course, turnips are turnips and food is food whether it’s out the ground, the sky or a bin, hell.’

  She went and found herself a piece of thick wood from the junk which she hoped to whittle into a paddle for shovelling and she built herself a step at the door out of crates so she could see over the snow and sat with her hunting knife in hand.

  ‘What you kids don’t realise is I’ve seen the world and thereabouts and I know that sailin int as plain as you think. Crisis is whole world or don’t you listen to the news?’

  ‘Course,’ said Butch. ‘Radio won’t shut up bout city riots and good people runnin scared to the country. Said it’s gonna take a whole lot of time to get back to somethin that resembles normal.’

  ‘When you hear that?’ asked Ennor.

  ‘Before I came away.’

  A menacing silence settled between them, interspersed occasionally by Butch’s coughing.

  ‘Can’t we just bed down now?’ Ennor asked Butch. ‘You’re on the next watch and need to rest.’

  Trip and the dog lay fast asleep and Butch and Ennor got beneath the blankets and Sonny added a little of the fence wood to the fire to keep it ticking over.

  Time stopped and drew back and forth through the night and Ennor was aware of the fire crackling with damp wood and of Sonny’s silhouette shaping the paddle through the low dancing flames. She dreamt they all lived in a big house the shape and size of the farmhouse back home but within it echoed the open rattle of the barn. Everything make and mend and almost perfect from a lifetime of living and making do, anything and everything fixed and fiddled and found a use for.

  Ennor could imagine the world changed in her dream and it was no longer anyone’s concern who was or who wasn’t sent to institutions and or whether adults played their part in the lives of their children or if they were out fighting mad. The war that people fought in her dream was like the ones in the history books with guns and uniforms painting the picture and she woke almost believing that those old wars in history were somehow better to have lived through because they had boundaries and sides and everything made sense in a roundabout way.

  She sat up and saw that Butch was now sitting guard and it was Sonny who slept peacefully beside her and she smiled and nodded at him and bundled back down beneath the blankets before the cold had her rattling.

  When it was her turn for guarding she sat and peeked over the snow line and waited for her eyes to adjust to the strange snow light and was glad to see snowflakes had been replaced by fog. She watched the veil lick the stone and slate of farm buildings and pull up short to the door frame to look at her and it filled the half-square with daring front.

  Ennor had an urge to bat it away with the shovel or draw the gun to shoot into the void because it told her that her dad was dead and it demanded she show some emotion.

  She bit back the tears until her face ached with the pain of defiance and it caught in her throat like a bone that had grown long into the flesh.

  One flash of emotion multiplied like spores gathering on the wind and her dad’s voice drowned her ears and she could see his face clear as youth and it filled the square of fog like a painting and smiled and joked and whooshed with a thousand memories.

  Re-enactments of happier times and made-up times merged into fantasy and Ennor slapped her face to keep back the tears but they bubbled beneath her fingers. They travelled down her neck and into her shirt collar and splashed on to her lap and she crawled out on to the level snow just to feel something tangible and outside of herself.

  The fog left her where she lay and moved on to other places and she pressed her face to the snow and waited for the sting of tears to harden into tiny salt crystals on her cheeks.

  If this was grief, she was better off not getting close to anyone ever because it hurt more than you could think or say or know.

  Ennor rolled on to her back and she flapped her arms and legs as a trick way into thinking she was fine but the snow was frozen hard and she merely lay there spent and stupid with anger rising and overflowing inside.

  She jumped to her feet and ran a little way out from the complex of buildings and through the unfamiliar field. The moor was like an enemy and she stamped it dead with all the strength she’d been building and hiding all her life and she screamed and cried until the long-stuck bone snapped and fell from her throat.

  She could no longer hear her dad’s voice but the shrill power of her own and she kept at it until the snow inched back below her feet and the fog retreated to the coast.

  There was nothing left to stamp or scream about and Ennor bent to catch her breath back into her lungs and she smiled at the craziness of it all.

  When her heart beat normal and she stood normal to the world her smile became a giggle and the giggle became healing laughter.

  Ennor Carne’s dad was dead and that was a fact no matter which way she turned to look at it and life would move on the way God intended.

  To the east, light was threatening to rise and a string of muted colour traced the cross-border landscape in an arc from Bodmin Moor to Dartmoor.

  She made her way back to the barn and was mindful to keep her wits close because with the coming light and without the veil of falling snow there was every possibility that she would be seen.

  She walked close to walls and edged her way forward and she realised the snow was planted with everywhere footsteps that a farmer with half an eye and half a brain would notice. They would have to get moving as soon as they were able and she wondered how to say she’d gone for a dawn walk without sounding like the crazy she was.

  ‘The wanderer returns.’

  Sonny sat on a crate outside the half-blocked doorway and she clapped and nodded some kind of appreciation.

  ‘Glad you could join us.’ She smiled.

  ‘Don’t start, I was gone no more than half an hour.’

  ‘More like two and a half. I saw you goin and then heard you runnin off into the night, I was concerned.’

  ‘I needed to be on my own. You goin to let me in?’

  Sonny stood to let Ennor pass and she followed her down into the cubby.

  ‘I had to relight the fire.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have bothered. I made fresh footprints all round, we’ll have to go.’

  ‘I guessed that, but the kid needs to eat somethin besides chicken bones.’ Sonny sat and tended a pan of porridge and she said they weren’t going anywhere until it was eaten because it was their last.

  ‘What are you two hammerin on about?’ asked Butch and he sat up and blinked towards the light.

  ‘Your girlfriend here decided to go for a jog in the early’s and set a trail every which way to our door. You better sit with the gun till we’re done.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Ennor. ‘It’s my problem anyway.’ She sat with the barrel poking and she watched Sonny stir the porridge until it was cement thick.

  ‘What we gonna do with no food?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s a stupid question I won’t be answerin.’

  ‘She’ll steal some,’ said Butch. ‘Break down that farmhouse door and stamp right into the kitchen demandin and goin on.’

  Sonny laughed. ‘Not such a bad idea. You offerin to come with?’

  Ennor stopped listening because they were beginning the first bicker of the day and it was interfering with the calm buzz she’d gleaned from earlier. She sat in the doorway and watched the sky develop and bend into lighter hues of grey outside and allowed herself to wonder briefly if today was the day for rekindling something with Mum.

  ‘You gone over the plan?’ she asked Sonny. ‘You know how to get to that Treburdon place, you reckon?’

  ‘Course.’ Sonny smiled.

  ‘Good,’ Ennor nodded. ‘That’s good.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The ragtag crew of five crept from the barn and went
silently through gates and fields until they were back on open moorland with the morning light a dazzling surprise.

  The temperature slunk below freezing and the group knew it would stay that way. There was no wind coming from the south to push it warm, but neither were there snow clouds rising from the north and that was something to be grateful for. In any case north was where they were heading and they rough-sketched the day’s route in their collective mind.

  The crazies that had Ennor running mad earlier that morning had settled into a warm, content buzz.

  ‘What you smilin bout?’ asked Sonny. ‘Grinnin like an idiot.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are. Big stupid grin slapped across your face like a nutcase.’

  ‘Just happy a while, what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Don’t seem happy. You might be smilin but . . .’ Sonny shrugged and ran off to tease Trip and the dog.

  ‘What’s her problem?’ asked Butch.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s always at you.’

  ‘Just her way. Kind of like havin fun I spose.’

  Butch laughed through a cough.

  ‘How’s you?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Your chest?’

  ‘You don’t have to keep askin, I’m fine.’

  They walked shoulder close and Ennor could imagine them holding hands. They walked slow and steady on the hard frozen snow and were careful not to slip. Broken bones were not an option in the middle of the frozen wilderness.

  Sonny and Trip kept stopping and waiting for them to catch up, their heads shaking and toes tapping in impatience.

  ‘You two slow on purpose?’ shouted Sonny.

  ‘Yep,’ said Butch. ‘We love slippin and slidin roundabout in the freezin cold.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ she smiled. ‘Only if you put some speed into the thing you might find you warm up. Just a suggestion, no offence like.’

  ‘None taken,’ he smiled back. ‘Only mind you don’t go fallin and breakin your back with all your runnin around. We’d have to leave you and you’d soon freeze to death, no offence.’

  Sonny laughed. ‘None taken, hell.’

  ‘Sister, my eyes are burnin out my head,’ said Trip.

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘It’s too bright.’

  They all agreed it was a bright white day. Despite the cloud the sun was up there somewhere, making hollow promises.

  ‘I’ll make you some sunnies,’ said Sonny. ‘Got some pine bark I bin savin.’

  ‘Savin for what?’

  ‘You’ll see later.’

  They stopped for a break while Sonny made sunglasses out of a strip of bark and twine and Butch rolled them a cigarette for sharing.

  ‘How will I see?’ asked Trip.

  ‘Through a slit.’ Sonny unclipped her knife from her belt and cut a centimetre strip in the middle of the bark and tied it around the back of his head.

  ‘It feels weird,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’ She nodded. ‘Suits you.’

  They continued on their journey, occasionally skidding across the sheet of thick ice and using each other as buffers. Ennor’s legs hurt from sliding one foot in front of the other and her feet throbbed where new blisters formed on the old.

  ‘How much longer of this?’ she moaned. ‘It int worse than the snow but still it’s bad enough. Mum won’t believe this when she hears it.’

  Butch passed her the cigarette and she sucked the warm air deep down into her lungs.

  ‘Hope you find her,’ he said.

  ‘Course I will. Why? What you know?’

  ‘Nothin, but neither do you.’

  Ennor dug her heels into the ice and sighed. ‘I got my ideas and leads and stuff.’

  ‘What that old bird told you is probably a pile of bull, you know that, right?’

  ‘Well thanks Butch, thanks for the downer.’

  ‘I int puttin a downer on you, but you got to be realistic, prepared just in case.’

  They watched Sonny and Trip run about up ahead and Ennor wished Butch were more positive sometimes, even if just a little. She knew he had stinking crap in both hands with his dad’s violence and his mum’s ignorance but didn’t they all have their hands full of something they’d rather they didn’t?

  ‘You in a mood with me now?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’ She didn’t look at him because if she did he’d do the eyes that made her forgive him. Ennor didn’t want to forgive him. He was forever dumping on her dreams while she had to bolster him up when he talked about studying and university dreams.

  Since meeting Sonny she’d realised there was nothing wrong with a little optimism no matter how crazy. Life was going to go one of two ways anyway so why not make the best of it? This was what she wanted to say to Butch, but it would have come out at all angles, like always when she tried to be serious.

  Up ahead Sonny shouted that they needed to make progress while there was no northerly wind to push them backwards.

  They continued their journey into the vast blue-white plains of the moor. From a distance they must have looked like a family of hardened travellers as they walked with determination across the changing landscape, but up close they wore the faces of bewildered children, lost between two worlds. They were kids just walking.

  The weather was still at odds with itself with thick bundles of drifting cloud that could answer neither snow nor rain.

  Ennor mentioned the early hour fog that came from the north that morning and they all agreed that if it had come in once it would come in again.

  The north moor lay flat and tired in areas sprawled between solemn tors and Ennor tried to remember what it was she wanted to say to Mum because she had to get it right.

  They stood a moment and looked across at the bubble of granite that burst from across the valley and Sonny said she was sure they were at the highest point of the moor.

  ‘We close to the village?’ asked Butch.‘Cus if you said we were lost I’d believe you.’

  ‘We int lost,’ said Sonny.

  ‘Sure? Cus you know between us all we bin walkin past a week.’

  Ennor put her arm around Trip’s shoulder and they continued to head towards the valley.

  ‘Well done, big mouth,’ shouted Sonny and she stopped him in his tracks. ‘Why you come out here at all is beyond my reckonin.’

  She pushed him to make herself feel better and he fell on to his back. ‘What’s wrong with a little hope or what else is there?’

  She left him sitting in the snow with shock gritting his teeth and ran after the others.

  ‘Sonny, what you done to him?’ asked Ennor when she looked behind and saw him sitting in the snow with his arms crossed over his knees.

  ‘Gave him a little push is all. Don’t worry, I dint hit him.’

  ‘His dad hits him,’ said Trip. ‘Hits him black and blue some days.’

  ‘Well that’s not my fault. Not my problem neither, come to that.’

  They waited for him to appear at the crown of the hill and watched him follow them down into the valley and Sonny shouted to hurry up before the fog had them pinned.

  They followed each other with loose space between them. The dog leading the way, his head barely lifted from off his chest.

  They were heading to the village they’d marked on the map, the village where the old woman had told Ennor her mother lived, Treburdon. The closer they got, the more Ennor’s stomach filled with scree and stones and she prayed and wished and tried to scrape her mood from off the ground. If she’d been on her own, she would have been bursting with excitement and she’d have gone through her mother questions with bouncing anticipation instead of dampened doubt.

  They got to the lane that would lead them to the village and Sonny said from thereon in they should keep their wits about them.

  ‘What are the chances that this village Treburdon has a shop?’ she asked. ‘I mean a shop that’s open. It’s not Christmas yet, is it?�
� Ennor counted the days out from the day she left home and there were nights that she couldn’t remember and others that she counted twice. She looked at Sonny.

  ‘Might be.’

  Sonny shrugged.

  ‘It’s not, is it?’ Trip looked up at his sister and she was reminded of all the things she’d promised him and the weight in her stomach lunged to the ground.

  ‘We got no food or presents or nothin.’ He looked shocked as if the reality of walking blind cross-country had suddenly dawned on him and his cheeks and forehead bunched in confusion around the mask.

  ‘Don’t worry, buddy.’ She smiled. ‘We’re really close to Mum now, I promise.’

  ‘You promised things before and nothin.’

  ‘That’s cus your sister don’t know everythin cus she can’t. It’s just the way of things.’ Sonny smiled and clipped him under the chin and when he said he wanted to go home she told him to grow up and be strong and Ennor was surprised to see her harsh words worked.

  The lane they walked was narrow and meandering with thick high hedges closed to the speeding wind. For the first time that day and for many days they could speak without having to shout above the din and Sonny sang her happy song and marched up ahead with the gun swinging crossways.

  Occasionally they came to signposts forked in the road and through the graffiti they read the miles and Ennor counted them down into single digits.

  ‘There’s no cars or nothin,’ she said to Butch. ‘It’s as if everyone went to bed and forgot to get up again.’

  Butch agreed. ‘You wouldn’t get too far drivin on this ice rink, unless you had chains strapped to the wheels.’ He ran a little to test the road and skidded into the hedge. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a comfy four-wheel drive with chains.’

  ‘A full tank of fuel,’ agreed Ennor. ‘We could get to where we’re goin and back with no worries or anythin, imagine that.’

  ‘We could have beddin in the back and a fridge full of beer,’ added Sonny, who had stopped to add two pennies to the conversation, ‘and a trailer full of firewood so we don’t have to go haulin everythin we find.’

  They walked side by side and Trip and the dog skipped ahead and they smiled because the mood had lifted briefly.