Animal Lovers

by Rob Palk

  ‘I’m here for the badgers,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah and I’m here for the food and the company.’ She flicked her towel in my direction. A lump of mud spun off and hit me on the shin. Kerry’s pessimism annoyed me. That afternoon I’d been talking to Marie for an hour, about her new passion for this cause. I’d told her I could see it, I really could. She had even squeezed my hand.

  ‘Some of the company here is okay,’ I said. Kerry smiled in a way I couldn’t decipher.

  ‘Henry though,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t fucking get it,’ I said. ‘I mean okay, he’s not bad looking if you like that sort of thing. But he’s dull. He really is. And that measured calm voice he does.’

  ‘I’m not his biggest fan,’ she said. ‘I think he’s a bit of a twit. But obviously he’s not bad looking.’ There was wistfulness in her tone I didn’t like.

  ‘You’re all wrong about him,’ I said. It irked me she saw him that way. ‘His fucking voice, that monotone. I don’t get it, I really don’t.’

  ‘Best not to obsess,’ she said. I told her I wasn’t obsessing. She grinned in a way I didn’t care for. ‘Hope you’re on the right track,’ she said. ‘Have you thought about how it would be if you and Marie get sorted? Have you thought how much you’d both have to pretend never happened?’

  I’m afraid that I flared up. I told her she had no idea about forgiveness. I told her that once Marie was back then we would find our rhythm again. I asked her what it had got to do with her. She shrugged, muttered something about having hit a nerve and focused on her boots.

  Marie was right about Kerry, I thought. At least I had a reason for hanging around this place. Her being there didn’t make sense. I went back to my tent and sat inside, in a huff. Rain came, tapping the canvas, preventing sleep. Henry, outside his van, started chanting to show how spiritual he was. ‘Om,’ he said over and over, the rain dripping down his chest.

  Thirty-Two

  One evening, to our surprise, Alistair told us he was thinking of marrying again. ‘Her name is Su,’ he said. His voice was husky and reverent. ‘I met her last night. She’s Korean.’ I had sometimes heard Alistair refer to all women from Dover onwards as ‘exotics’, gifted with hereditary sexual skills. ‘She’s twenty-one, studying here. She’s astonishing. Not like any other girl I’ve met.’ I tried to picture how someone could be unlike every other girl he’d met, and what this said about her or all the others. ‘She’s into—’ he leaned forward ‘—the occult.’

  Raoul made a feeble squeak, the subdued ghost of centuries of inquisitions.

  ‘Forgotten wisdom. Cabbalism. Paganism. Arcana. Freaky business. Astral goings on.’

  ‘What do you mean, dude? What does any of this mean? She’s a Wiccan or something, is that it?’

  ‘She charts horoscopes.’

  ‘Wait, this is your wisdom of Atlantis, here? Horoscopes? She reads the star signs? Talks about being a Libra at parties? You made her sound like Crowley, man.’

  Alistair beamed at Raoul, glad to have annoyed. He told us how he’d seen her in the smokers’ garden of a nearby pub. She had tattoos on her wrists and skin the colour of a half-sucked toffee. Her hair was thick and black, it plunged out from her skull. Eyes that spoke of potential violence, her belly button bare before a yellow winter moon. It was very clear to Alistair that he had met his match. He had fixed his gaze in hers, like a man trying to tame an emu, and stridden across the stub-scattered AstroTurf to meet his destiny. He told her, as an introduction, that he planned to make her his wife. Her lips had parted, in excitement and in shock. He had bought her a lime and soda. He told her he was a poet. But also a man who can chop wood, make fires, handy with a fishing rod, useful with a spanner. He was, he said, a maker. He undid the top three buttons of his shirt. She stroked her hair with one hand, the rim of her glass with the other. He allowed her mind to linger on the details of their love. He would write and that would always come first. She would be his muse. They would make, or probably buy, a gypsy caravan and paint it in the gayest of colours. Blue and red and green. Perhaps some other colours. She would be pregnant or else becoming so. The children would run wild but also become poets and painters themselves. She said that he was funny and asked him for his star sign. He said he was Sagittarius, stopping himself, as he did so, from quoting the old advert for Creme Eggs.

  ‘They’ve changed the recipe,’ I said.

  ‘Capitalism, man,’ said Raoul.

  Alistair told Su he was not like the other men in the bar. He looked at them, the lumberjack narcissi, and congratulated himself on this difference. They had tattoos, as she did, and beards, as did he, but they were aspiring to be what he and she had already become. Complete people. Makers. The free, the authentic ones. He said he would like to have sex with her but only when she had agreed to be his second wife. She said she had to go and talk to her friends but it had been fun listening to him and that he should maybe go on the telly or something. He did a magic trick involving her cigarette but told her that when they were married she would really have to stop smoking. She said she had to go now. He said he understood but that he knew they would meet again. He would not take her number, even if she tried to give it him. The fates would make them meet. It was supposed to happen and so it would. She said okay and went off.

  ‘You didn’t get her number?’ said Raoul. He seemed to be quite relieved.

  ‘Asked one of her mates for her name. She’s on Facebook, I’ll message her today.’

  Thirty-Three

  My dislike for Henry grew larger. It captured my mental space. Swaggering around camp, explaining animal rights in the tone of a patient Sat Nav, eyeing me with, admittedly justified, mistrust. His habits were appalling. He would tell us that his dog was wiser than most people. He would habitually strip to the waist. He referred to the women on camp as ‘chica’ or ‘my good lady’. He cried at baby animals. He mended things with his hands. He would exercise, right in front of us, or start chanting mid conversation. Sometimes he wore eyeshadow.

  There was no excuse for Henry. Was my Marie falling for this man? I tried, on the whole, not to think of their closeness. Whenever I accidentally did – at five in the morning, with my work alarm two hours away, and images of his hands on her body rampaging through my skull – I’d palpitate and reel, the world would spin slightly faster. It was not to be considered. There were all the flashes of hope she had given me, the moments when our marriage had still seemed a living thing. There’d been vows. I had written them. Vows ought to hold some meaning. George certainly seemed to think so.

  I was wary about putting trust in George but I needed someone to tell me I was doing okay. Alistair laughed at me for wasting my time, Rupa flat-out called me a stalker and Kerry could barely hide her giggles.

  Only George had faith. He told me, if anything, that I needed to try harder. ‘She still hasn’t slept with him,’ he’d say. ‘Until she does there’s hope.’ I still had a lot of it, hope. It kept me buying tickets to Gloucester every weekend until we got to March. Everything went wrong one day in March.

  Thirty-Four

  It might have been Kerry’s fault, now I look back on it. Yes, some of the blame lies with her. A quality of mischief she had. Recently, in the camp, whenever Henry got sententious, which was often, Kerry had started grimacing. Subtly, just for me. I enjoyed it, having an ally who wasn’t George. It was late on a warm Saturday morning and we were eating our hash browns and beans. Henry was there and Marie. Brian must have been elsewhere, as he wasn’t talking. It was Henry’s turn to talk.

  ‘Okay guys,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking.’ Something frisky crossed Kerry’s face. Something that egged me on. ‘What we need, right, is a propaganda blitz.’ Marie nodded in a grave way. I wondered if the idea came from her. ‘Like obviously the media don’t want to know. But ordinary people, the ordinary people, they need to know how simple it is. Because the arguments are all . . .’

  ‘The arguments are all on our side,�
� said Marie.

  ‘Right. So we need to spread the message. We need to tell them that this is a black and white issue.’

  Kerry had her fingers over her mouth, shaking.

  I couldn’t stop myself. ‘Sorry, a what is it?’

  ‘Black and white. Issue.’

  ‘A black and white issue. Badgers.’

  Kerry let out a sort of yelp. She was shaking and twitching with glee. I was laughing now too.

  Henry stood up very fast, knocking over his chair. I worried for a moment he was going to hit me. ‘Fuck off, the pair of you,’ he said before stomping away.

  Kerry and I were left chuckling. I laughed more than I had in a very long time. Until Marie cleared her throat, I had forgotten she was there.

  She said we should go into the village for a coffee.

  Thirty-Five

  It was odd, being out together again. Hard to get the walk right when you can’t put your arm over a shoulder, crane your neck for a kiss. You can’t walk with someone in an angry way, not that I was angry. So we ambled around Newent, neither enemies nor a pair. She’d been in Gloucester long enough not to have to stop and look in shop windows, point out things of interest. Maybe there was nothing that interested her any more, nothing outside badgers. We’d got a cab into the village. It was our old driver again. He asked us if we were married and we’d muttered, staring at our feet. Things were going to be said. She was going to say things and they would be unpredictable and have the power to alter my life.

  Our lives. The essential unit, us.

  ‘There’s a tea room just down here,’ she said, looking up at me. I tried to read her eyes but they gave nothing away except nervousness. We trotted down a little path and I remembered our first visit to Newent, both of us looking like weekenders, for all our trying to be anarchists. Now we looked like anarchists trying to go straight. She’d brushed her hair and I’d changed into a less muddy pair of jeans, but the outdoors had got to our skins in the last few months, our hands were roughed and chapped and both of us seemed to be looking at other humans as potential enemies. I pushed open the tea room door, ringing a bell, and a few eyes darted to us. Querulous, aged glances, wondering at these scruffy campers. A radio played lulling music, post Elvis, pre-Beatles pop. Tea rooms being amiable places, I felt that we were safe. I wouldn’t, in my current get up, have wanted to risk the pub.

  I ordered a frothy coffee and a slice of chocolate cake, and waited for Marie while she asked if they had anything vegan. They hadn’t, despite her having previously requested almond milk. I had hoped they’d think we were hikers – a hiker couple, say, a married hiker couple – and she wasn’t playing along. In the end she ordered a black coffee. There wasn’t any food there she could eat.

  ‘So,’ she said.

  ‘So,’ I said back at her. Her eyes luminous, unreal.

  ‘Sorry about. You know.’

  ‘That man has a real problem,’ I said. ‘He’s wild, a wild man, he is. I know I’m biased but I don’t get it, I really don’t. This power he has, I don’t get it.’

  ‘He has his preoccupations. I don’t always get to know what they are, of course.’ Was that frustration I heard? Maybe they were in trouble. I could see Henry not wanting to burden her with his problems, and Marie feeling shut out. Given a good few months I could nurture this situation into something really huge. I’d given up hoping for the cull to be called off and for her to come back to her senses. The cull could run and run for all I cared, the longer it took the better. Or maybe she’d latch onto hunting or animal testing and I could tag along with that. The process could take months, it might never reach an end. I could go on like this forever, not knowing if I was with her or apart. Schrödinger’s marriage. Let it go on forever, I thought. Let it not reach the crisis now.

  ‘I’m going to have to make a decision,’ she said. I raced through the available options and settled, quickly, for tears. But when I tried to cry I couldn’t. ‘It’s absurd us being married in this way, me living in a camper van with someone else. The thing is I do love you both.’

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but yes, I do.’

  ‘You love me?’

  ‘Maybe, in a different way.’

  ‘The Bloomsbury lot, the bohemians. They’d have taken this in their stride. I don’t own you and jealousy, jealousy, is a kind of a caveman emotion. I don’t see why you shouldn’t go and live in the woods with someone but still come back when you’re done and be my wife. I don’t see why we can’t do that.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t keep on like that, can I? And even when the cull is off – if the cull is ever off – this is what I do now. I protect animals. That’s a lifetime’s work.’

  ‘I could join you,’ I said. But the thought of another factory farm to picket, all those lorries of geese to obstruct . . . No, she would have to come back. She would have to be normal and mine again. Henry, Henry, Henry would have to go.

  ‘You don’t really want to join me. I’m different now. Protecting animals, it’s my life. It’s funny, I should have been a nurse. Or a vet I mean, maybe. Wasting my time trying to act when there’s all this work needs doing with actual life. I enjoyed my time looking after you. I felt very close to you after, you know, what happened. I mean, you nearly died. And when you didn’t you had this attitude, this sort of reverence. Everything magical. It was infectious. But then you turned your back on that, really quick, and after you just seemed anxious. Anxious and obsessed with your book when there were real things to care about. And I started to drift away. I was still full of that enthusiasm and you seemed to abandon it.’

  ‘I was ill. I was really ill. My brain was just reacting. You learn that, after what I had, how so much we think of as natural is just a chemical response. That’s what it was, I think so.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s how people function. I like how you’ve been nice about this though. I like how you haven’t been jealous. I would have been.’

  ‘I am madly jealous. I am blind with jealousy. The thought of you without me makes me sick. Who would you have been jealous of?’

  ‘I don’t know. Kerry.’ Her eyelids down, avoiding.

  ‘I wish you’d eat,’ I said. I wasn’t sure why or where it came from.

  ‘You have to drop all this food stuff. You don’t get to control that any more.’

  ‘I don’t think it is controlling.’

  ‘Is this why you come here? To check on what I eat?’

  ‘I come here to try and get you back. Come on, it’s not for the badgers, is it? I’d cheerfully kill a whole family of badgers if I thought it would win you round.’

  She took the smallest of sips of her coffee before placing it down on the table. ‘How,’ she said, ‘would killing a family of badgers win me round?’ I’m not saying there was definitely a smile there. But there might have been a smile. I thought I could win her over. It would only take one more push.

  ‘I know you and Henry aren’t fucking,’ I said. She looked at me as though this were somehow not my business.

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘I’m . . . it’s obvious,’ I said. ‘If you’re a physical person, like me, it is easy to tell these things. And all I’m saying is don’t. Take some time to make sure. Think it all through. If you love him and don’t love me, if that’s truly the way it is, then fine. But until then, please, for me.’

  ‘Oh Stuart, this is terrible. This is really terrible, Stuart.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can love him. He isn’t a nice man, I would say.’

  ‘Do you actually want me,’ she said, ‘or do you just want to prove me wrong?’

  We finished our coffees and I bolted down my cake and we wandered along the high street. I asked her if she ever missed acting. She said no, that it was a relief not to have someone constantly telling her to act.

  ‘I didn’t really do that.’

  ‘You did. It was really important to you that I become an actress. Not enou
gh to have my family at it, oh darling, you must be creative, it’s such a marvellous life on the stage. You were like that too. The weird thing was you never thought I was any good. You’d sit there when I was in anything and the look you had, this sort of rictus of embarrassment, you really should have seen yourself.’ She did an impression of me, a gargoyle of aesthetic unease.

  ‘I don’t remember that. I remember being encouraging.’

  ‘Oh, you were encouraging. You were encouraging because you wanted to be with an actress. So you could exhibit me while still feeling modern and supportive.’

  ‘I remember feeling very proud of you.’

  ‘Do you remember when we’d make love and you’d squeeze onto my waist? I always felt you were trying to squeeze me into someone else. Not the person I was.’

  ‘That’s just fucking weird. It’s fucking weird and not true.’

  ‘I keep coming back to that moment with the chair. That look on your face, of impatience. I don’t know if that will change. And I know that’s not the whole of you. It’s just. I used to cry all the time, remember?’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Call you at work and I’d be crying. I was lost, I think, really lost. Looking for somewhere to be and then I met, I got into animals and now I don’t cry any more. I’m sorry, Stuart.’

  The driver picked us up at the war memorial. Magic FM on the radio, Fisherman’s Friends in the glove-box. This time he knew not to interrupt the silence.

  We sat in the back and watched the trees and hills go by. I hoped that we weren’t coming to the close of love. Although, as always happens, one person had got there first, was sitting, patiently waiting for the other to arrive.