Animal Lovers

by Rob Palk

  No. For as long as she’d not made her mind up there was hope.

  When we got back one of the campers told us that Henry had gone off into the woods to meditate with the dog, this being his usual practice after losing his temper. Typical of Henry that he couldn’t just turn to drink, but had to make his fits of sex-starved grumpiness into something pseudo-spiritual. I had often stumbled across him meditating, bare-chested, his hands upturned to catch the rain or cradle a passing bird. I ventured a grin at Marie and found it half-returned. Smiling at the knowledge I found this funny, but not finding it funny herself.

  At one point she put her hand on mine and let me enjoy it, the luxury of her touch. ‘I feel like I’m always messing you around.’

  ‘You can do that,’ I said. ‘Just so long as we get somewhere. I think we will.’ I think I did think that. All around us half the camp were still in their tents, although I could hear a few murmurs and rustles, the sounds of them starting to wake. We stood outside her camper van and hugged. She still fit snug in my arms.

  ‘It’s good spending time with you,’ I said.

  ‘And you,’ she said.

  ‘I reckon we’ll be friends, whatever you decide,’ I said. ‘We can hang out as much as you like. I’d be a good ex, I think. I can see us when we’re old, sitting in a garden and making each other laugh.’

  ‘I’d like us to be friends. It would help if you stopped coming to camp. If you let me make my decision.’

  ‘Can you promise me you won’t sleep with Henry, if I go away? Because I really don’t think that you should.’

  ‘Stuart. Don’t grab me like that.’

  I leant forward and kissed her. Hard to say how she responded. An answering twine of the tongue but her hands pushed soft on my chest. ‘No,’ she said. And, ‘Henry.’

  ‘Fuck Henry. I’m your husband.’ The words sounded unconvincing.

  She opened the door to the van and I followed her inside. There was a mattress on the floor next to the narrow bed, bare but for two greasy pillows and a tangle of tartan sheets. There were dog hairs everywhere, so that the smell of dog hit your nose on arrival and stayed to scratch at your skin. The plates they brought out for meals were part of a large and dirty collection, lining the sides of the van, giving off a rank sweet smell. But the worst thing was the animal pictures. Dolorous baby donkeys, seals as fluffy as dandelion clocks, meerkats stood to attention. There were soft toys in there too, far too many soft toys, with a look of jumble sales and damp about them, other people’s childhoods. An awful cuteness papering over the mess. I needed to get out. I couldn’t breathe and she was standing there, looking self-conscious as if I’d burst in on her, uninvited.

  ‘What’s that face for?’ she said. She clasped her hands in front of her, shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s nothing at all.’ I wasn’t sure what it was.

  ‘It isn’t this bad,’ she said. ‘Usually, I mean. You’ve caught me on a bad day.’

  ‘Come home with me,’ I said. ‘Leave now. Please. Come home with me.’

  She shook her head, eyes wide. I found I didn’t want to touch anything. I looked at her skin and how miraculously clean it seemed in the midst of all this dirt.

  ‘Oh Stuart, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ Panic in her voice, her eyes.

  ‘Marie, you have to come home. This place is, it’s horrible, it’s really horrible. You have to come back with me.’

  She composed herself in a second. Smiling and brittle, ignoring the mess of the place. ‘Go away now,’ she said. ‘Go away now and thanks. I’ll give you an answer soon.’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ I said. ‘But don’t keep me waiting too long.’

  She turned her back on me and went in there, among the litter and the print-outs of kittens, the dirty pans and the toys.

  ‘I love you,’ I said, to the door. But I couldn’t shake off the mess of the place and how far life had thrown her from me.

  Thirty-Six

  Darkness dropped mid-afternoon, and with it came a cold that snuck under our gloves and through the gaps in our buttons, wrapping itself round our bones. I was assigned to Brian and Kerry’s group, along with a saucer-eyed, silent couple, both with corn-coloured dreads, and a PA from Nottingham who had taken a sabbatical for the duration of the cull and whose friends thought she was mental. Before we left we saw some old comrades, Margaret Clifton and Irene from our first badger weekend. Irene seemed downcast and bloated, her eyes sunk as though she were trying to look inside herself, her skin pale, gelatinous. I’d read her late-night Twitter conversations with Marie, the two of them working each other into deeper aggravations as they thumbed out the cruelty the badgers faced, the panic in the setts, the mothers missing their cubs. I couldn’t understand it, their hunger for further outrage, the depth of their identification, the pornography of animal pain. Margaret seemed as indomitable, as sturdy as ever, solid as an old town hall. She marched through our camp in her mud-scuffed boots, barking out breezy encouragement, spittle flying. It did us all good to see her. The two of them were all that was left of the legal end of the badger army, the part that plodded obediently along the pathways and claimed not to know any sabs. We were the illegals, the paramilitaries. And beyond us the real ultras, the hard-core sabs.

  We clutched at our torches and traipsed. Brian was subdued, muttering. I was quiet too, trying to make sense of that moment inside the van. It felt so far from any kind of life we’d had together, the chaos, the jumble of animal crap. I had backed away, for the first time. But if I quit, I would have to get divorced. I would have to live with Alistair and Raoul. I would be a divorced man in his early thirties. A divorced man with a cat. Always the cats who suffer the worst of it. Maybe I should get rid of the cat. He was freighted with significance, the cat of my marriage. I wouldn’t see Marie as much in future. Eventually I wouldn’t see her at all.

  No, I still wanted Marie. There was a chance, and I must fight for it. But then my mind went back to the van, and something frightened me. I noticed Kerry looking at me with what I was sure was pity. Maybe she would scoop me up and marry me instead. Maybe she’d solve it all. I tried not to entertain this. She touched my arm, warning me of a branch coming on my right.

  It was best not to talk. To trudge on, mouth tucked behind my collar, down lanes and paths I’d started to recognise, to know. Ducking under stray branches, glumly guarding setts. I was used to walking at night now, my eyesight had adjusted. The first couple of weeks I’d had my share of stumbles. And I still hadn’t seen any badgers. All of this fuss for the animals and not one of them had the guts to show its face. You would think, it being my last night, that a badger might pop up. Sorry about the marriage mate and cheers for all your help. But no. There wasn’t even a decent moon for me to sulk under. A shy yellow sliver of a thing, lurking behind clouds. A poor fucking show all round. I thought of a walk with Alistair, weeks before, how enthused he was by nature. ‘Look at the ducks, there, look at the reeds. The moon there,’ pointing it out, a curl of orange peel, ‘looking sexy. Less is more.’ I lived with a man capable of being turned on by the moon.

  It was two in the morning when I saw them. Unless I was starting to hallucinate, my tired brain jazzing up a dull night in the woods. The other four had stopped to roll up cigarettes. I went to stand at a distance, to avoid the temptation to smoke. Cigarettes were forbidden, even on a night like this, but since that moment in the van an old yearning had come back. We were on a soil bank leading up to a gate, just a little off the road. It had been a long time since we had seen any traffic. Even the hired guns were probably in bed by now, sleeping off their kills. I’d gone close to the gate, peering into the field, stroking the torchlight along the grassy bumps and curves. There were cows in there, I think, squatting hotly in companionable rest. I steered the light onto the nearest bush and saw human eyes looking back. A hand raised to a mouth. There were four of them. Sabs, standing tight-knit, clutching each other for balance. The m
oon’s sickly light glancing off them. Self-cut hair and the musty smell of clothes worn far too long. They vanished as fast as I saw them, blending soundless into the shadows. I ran back to tell the others but they shrugged and said there were always a few of the sabs about and they were surprised I hadn’t seen them before.

  ‘You couldn’t make me a rollie could you now?’ It was a few hours down the line and we’d been sitting in a small and twiggy clearing, drinking Red Stripe. Drinking quite a lot of Red Stripe. I hadn’t seen any more sabs, although for all I know we were surrounded by them. We hadn’t seen any marksmen either. We certainly hadn’t seen any badgers. I had decided to allow myself a couple of cans of lager and now I wanted to smoke. One cigarette wouldn’t kill me, unless it did. My comrades had filled up the time, and the air around us, with the rolling and smoking of countless cigarettes. The hippy couple had produced an against-the-rules (we were eager not to give the authorities any excuse) pre-made spliff and I had sucked, without relish, on its throat-scratching dog-end, moistened by four pairs of lips. I had lain back and watched the segment of sky overhead, feeling the satisfaction you get when you’re good and lost and you give up trying to be found. I had no idea what was going to happen next and there was something okay about this. Brian tried to tell us a story about a squat he used to live in with a man who never pooed. Or rather, he did but only once a week, at a set time. A high happy sound filled the woods, the sound of Brian laughing. It sounded close to tears. Kerry went over and put her arm around him and I felt a stab of envy. Brian wasn’t the only hopeless case out here. Her head on his bony shoulder. The hippy couple nuzzled against a tree. ‘Kerry?’ I said, succumbing. ‘Roll us a fag?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said, leaping away from Brian. ‘Hold on. Are you all right with this? With your health, I mean?’ I told her I’d be fine although now she was standing up ready to make one, the cravings seemed to have gone. ‘Your funeral,’ she said. She set about it, dextrous, while I worried what effect it would have on me. I probably wouldn’t immediately drop dead. I would probably survive a few drags. Oh god, I better not have a second stroke. ‘You’ve been gloomy all night,’ she sang, ‘so I am going to roll you a fag.’

  ‘Thinking about it, don’t,’ I said.

  ‘I’m doing it now!’ she said. ‘If it’ll put a bloody smile on.’ We seemed to be at war. Well she couldn’t make me smoke it. Although actually maybe she could. She scampered over and was holding the thing in front of me. ‘Come on,’ she said. She was on top of me, pushing the filter end into my mouth. ‘Time for you to light up,’ she said. ‘Lighten up.’ I spluttered and tried to spit it out but she kept hold of my jaws, with this gleeful look on her face. I wriggled as my mouth filled up with tar. ‘You scared I’m going to tell teacher?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I managed, pushing her from me. ‘It could kill me, it could fucking kill me.’ She shrunk back as though I’d slapped her.

  ‘You didn’t say. You never said.’ I got up, as the moment seemed to call for a matey sort of wrestle, but she had put herself in a hostile stance, arms around her knees. I said sorry, although I wasn’t sure why, and I passed the fag to her.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll come here again,’ I said. ‘I think I need to give Marie some space.’ I tried explaining about the state of Henry’s van but it didn’t make sense as words.

  ‘Good,’ she said. There was quite a pause. ‘I mean, you’ve been torturing yourself. Haven’t you?’

  ‘None of us enjoy it,’ said Brian. Kerry went back to him. There was a hooting sound from a while away, a sarcastic owl watching us. I would definitely not return.

  ‘So, go on,’ she said. An hour had gone by and we were walking a little ahead of the rest, passing the last of our cans from mouth to mouth. By now I was pleasantly drunk. ‘Face like you killed a puppy on you. What’s got your goat?’ Far too many animals. She was marching on, quicker than suited me, so that I kept spilling beer keeping up.

  ‘I’m good,’ I said. ‘More or less. Had a chat with Marie today.’

  ‘Well, she is your wife.’ She stopped walking, waited for me, and took the can from my hands.

  ‘I told her I’m leaving her be,’ I said. ‘It’s scary though. Today has been the first day I’ve not been sure we’ll make it.’ She swigged, stifled a burp. Lives I’d thought would go on together had bifurcated, sprung separate. There would be a lot of evenings apart. More than we’d had together, in the end. Empty evenings, where if you speak it leaves a fingerprint on the silence, silence that shifts around the words before swallowing them, a silence louder than sound.

  ‘Mate, I have to say this, it was over when she moved into someone else’s van. That’s the end of the chapter as far as I see, although I’m maybe a little old fashioned. Once half of your relationship lives in a van with someone else, it might not be built to last. Some serious incompatibilities there, in this van-based lifestyle.’ I grabbed the can back and swallowed. ‘Oh, Stu, are you all right? You look like shite, if I’m honest. Oh look, come here a sec. Come here.’ She stroked my hair, murmuring meaningless words. She smelt much better than she had any right to. ‘That’s right. That’s right. That’s nice, isn’t it? You been in the wars, you daft sod. All for a bunch of badgers. Hey. Come on now, let go. Let me look at you? Yeah, you’ll be fine. It’ll take a while but you will. You know what, I do like you Stu. Hanging round this place like Don Quixote, you mad old sod. I like you more than is clever.’

  Behind us we could hear Brian and the hippy couple approaching, boots crunching the leaves. When they reached us they pulled faces as if something was afoot. There was really nothing afoot, I wanted to say. We carried on back to the camp together, as the sun sneaked over the branches, the can warming in my hand. Kerry’s arm kept brushing against mine.

  Thirty-Seven

  There was a light on in the camper van, telling us we were last to return. Brian said good night with a prepared sort of cheeriness I found troubling. The hippy couple snuck placidly into their tent, to make respectful, tender and hirsute love. There was birdsong over the hills, actual birdsong, not the ringtone mimicry you get in London. I was left with Kerry in the clearing.

  ‘You’ll be wanting somewhere to sleep,’ she said. I must have showed something with my face, fear or excitement or both, because she grinned and punched me on the arm. ‘It’s not the hugest tent but I’m sure we’ll cope.’

  ‘I should probably ask Brian. Although Brian has gone, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I’m not going to attack you, you’ll be fine.’ She slapped my wrist.

  ‘Could you please stop hitting me, I’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen and I’m scared it will make me cry.’

  ‘We better clean our teeth,’ she said. We rummaged for our brushes and a bottle of water and went over to the basin at the side of the camp. She shuffled the brush along her mouth, avoiding eye contact with me. Rabies foam on her lips. Did she want to have sex? Would she want to do normal sex, nice sex, with clean limbs and eye contact, or would she want me to tie her up and hit her with a brick? I didn’t feel ready for bricks. I didn’t feel ready for anything. Only, for god’s sake, if I was going to have sex with anyone it really ought to be with someone like her. I wasn’t going to have sex. I remembered that witch at the party, the one that I didn’t kiss, saying nothing bad had ever happened to her. Something to be said for Kerry, she seemed ready to risk bad things. She’d been out in the woods most of winter and she wasn’t even doing it for love.

  ‘You’ll make your gums bleed,’ she said. I told her I was getting rid of the taste of that cigarette. She looked about to hit me, checked herself and trotted back to her tent. I followed her, watching her walk. As I made my way through the camp I passed by Brian’s tent and heard him talking in a soft, choked voice, about a bear having a picnic. I decided he had finally gone mad until I realised he was calling his children, giving them a bedtime story, first thing in the morning.

  I picked up the sleeping bag from under my ruined tent
and went over to Kerry’s. ‘Knock knock,’ I whispered. She flapped the tent door open and I clambered inside. It was hot, it smelt of canvas and sweaty perfume. Kerry was wrapped in a sleeping bag, taking up the bulk of the space. One shoulder was exposed. It was the nakedest shoulder I could ever remember seeing. There was still time to run away.

  ‘Going to be a bit of a squeeze,’ she said. I managed to arrange myself inside my bag, so that I was bent into foetal position. Far more of me seemed to be touching her than was usually allowed. She asked if I was comfortable. I told her that I was.

  ‘Tired,’ she said. I agreed, at a high volume. She turned to me in a way I couldn’t decipher. I struggled out of my jeans inside my bag, something she seemed to find funny. ‘Night Stu,’ she said. We were going to sleep then. Thank God, we were going to sleep. I took off my glasses, put them in their case next to my head, and closed my eyes. Within a few seconds she was making strange whistling sounds, faint murmurs, dreaming without quite sleeping. It was unbearably hot. I wasn’t going to sleep at all.

  ‘Hot,’ she said and unzipped her bag. I thanked the badger god in his sett in the sky that I couldn’t see much of anything. She turned, so that our faces were almost touching and threw one bare leg across mine. This was going to be difficult. Her eyes were shut, her breathing regular. My mouth was very near hers. She started murmuring again, indecipherable half-sentences.

  My cock was far too close to her, like that game where you run a metal rod along a wire without it touching. She was breathing loud, her face right next to mine. Her eyelids were like clamshells, streaked with blue. What the hell was I going to do now? She was moving a little, in her sleep, faintly back and forth. A millimetre nearer and she would definitely notice me. There were laws against this sort of thing. She would wake up, scream for rescue and I’d be mobbed by the rest of the camp.