Animal Lovers

by Rob Palk

  Oh god, Kerry, I’d miss her.

  I hoped I had time to buy a six pack for the journey. Something to take the edge off my agitation. ‘Quiet carriage please,’ I said.

  I hopped on the train at ten past ten, just before it set off. I would soon be beyond the pale. The pale! I was pleased to find I had a table seat. Just so long as the canteen – the buffet – was open, I would be fine for the journey. There was pleasure even in awful train journeys.

  That despicable swine was lying with my wife. Lying to my wife. You get used to not really knowing the person you love but there has to be some kind of limit.

  I would have to punch him in the face. I had never punched anyone and wasn’t really sure I knew how. Those men who aim for the nose, happy to see it burst. Dislocate a jaw. I wasn’t one of those, unless I was.

  A couple, who had been making a great show of putting their bags in the luggage area came and sat across from me. The man gave a wary nod, somewhere between apology and defiance. The woman didn’t look at me at all. They were my age, or he was. I tried not to stare at her.

  I would go and get a drink. I went down the corridor, jerked by the carriage’s motion, at one point almost falling into someone’s lap. People dozed in headphones, self-encased.

  There was no one at the buffet except the guy behind the counter. He was about fifty, with wrinkles like a Shar-Pei or W. H. Auden. He had one gold ear stud and leathery hands. I bought three cans of Stella. He put them in a paper bag with the train company logo on them. I staggered back along the rattling aisle to my seat. The boy across from me sneered deniably at my purchase. His girlfriend was reading a thriller, which was disappointing. I did not offer them a can. I opened the first one, getting my fingers wet, and swigged a soapy mouthful.

  ‘Alan though,’ said the boy across to the girl.

  ‘My god,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t stop, does he?’

  They began a, presumably rote-learned, conversation about the foibles of this Alan, his love of extreme sports and his richly-peopled love life. I spilt some beer, apologised and dabbed the table with a napkin. They stared at me, or he did. She didn’t look once. She was gloriously pretty. I wondered if I should tell them about my life. What would be the fucking point of that? I stifled a burp, but not well.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said the boyfriend. His bedside manner was unimpressive. There was an unspoken ‘fuck off’ after the utterance. I went and stood in the corridor and when my legs started to ache, I crouched down.

  It was half an hour past midnight when we arrived. Clifton Street was reachable by bus. I felt preternaturally awake, endlessly so, but also as though I hadn’t slept in months. People seemed to be opting for taxis. A bus seemed safer. I saw the train couple, with all their cases, their too-cold summer clothes, flagging down a cab. Back to their beautiful home, back to their beautiful bed and their wonderful, restful lives. I wished that I was him. I would have monetisable knowledge and skills, a gorgeous lover, civilised politics that I easily squared with my personal wealth, and the prospect, ahead of me, of more rewards, more bliss.

  I looked at my phone to see the new unanswered messages. I clicked on the most recent one. Kerry asking me ‘for the last time’ where I was. ‘I love you. Come home.’

  Well, I thought, I love you too. Only some loves are sonnets and some are sagas: too long, boring in places, but not to be ignored. I decided not to reply.

  The only other person at the stop smelt strongly of cannabis and occasionally muttered to himself. I was nervous for a second but the way he shrunk when I turned to him showed me I was now scarier than him. I wasn’t sure if I welcomed this. I stood in my tee shirt and shivered, wishing I’d had time to go back home to get a jacket and a knife. The headlights of the bus veered around the corner towards us.

  Perhaps Marie and Henry would be out. Or so satisfied from whatever night they’d had together they’d be impossible to wake up. Unlikely, I thought. Between Irene and George and that bastard and my wife there was sure to be someone in.

  The bus was fuller than I expected. Five young couples spilled over the back and adjacent seats, passing a bottle of something pungent back and forth, talking over each other in loud excited voices. They’d be off to a party, I imagined. I found myself envying them a great deal. I wondered what would happen if I tried to join them. Introduced myself, extended a paw. The best case would be a night of being treated as a comic interloper who, as they sobered, would become increasingly a person to be rid of. The worst case would be an instant shunning. It was best I stuck to my job.

  I focused on the facts. Henry was a cop. Henry had – let’s not hide in euphemisms here – raped my wife. Was quite possibly doing so right then. Because she was fair game. He’d encouraged her in this badger mania at the expense of my marriage, my home, my life. I was exactly right to go and tell her. I was morally right to get revenge.

  Although I was beginning to have doubts about that. The adrenalin starting to sap. I wasn’t sure I was the sort of person who killed with a straight face. I should at least chin the usurping sod. And while my thoughts repeated all of this, again and again and again, another voice said, what if it isn’t true? What if Kerry got it wrong? And what, the voice said, is your motivation here exactly? Yeah, she has a right to know, apparently. But what if she’s happier being lied to? I’m not convinced you have her best interests at heart right now. Who exactly are you getting your own back on here? Because let’s be honest now. All this chasing her around, all this trying to get her back. Saving her from herself. I’m not sure it’s all that romantic, after all. It’s punishment, is what it is. Punishment and spite.

  This snide sort of insinuation was exactly why I needed more beer. I was going to rescue her. I was going out of love.

  It was probably too late for beer. The bus was at my stop.

  I hopped off, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. An old impulse made me check my phone. Kerry had tried to call again. A text message too, telling me how scared she was. Her anger would start later, once she knew that I was safe.

  More missed calls and texts too, and these were from Marie. ‘Stuart, Kerry says you ran off in a state and might be coming to me. Worried about you darling. Call me.’

  Obviously Kerry was going to call Marie! Why hadn’t I thought of that? The two of them had been protest-pals way back. I was amazed she hadn’t called her straight away. Probably hoping that I wouldn’t do anything as daft as head to Bristol. And now I was at the door.

  There was no sign from the message that Kerry had told her what she’d told me. The lights were on in the house. In a state, indeed. Kerry trying to discredit the things I’d come to say, brand me as disturbed. She’d stolen my surprise. The curtains had opened and Marie was standing there. Looking entirely radiant, I saw, fuller, more herself. Was I really going to do this? I pictured Henry touching her. The front door opened.

  ‘Stuart,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’ Pretending that I was might not convince. I came to her but I brushed past her offered hug and went through to the kitchen. The knife rack was over by the hob. I went and looked at it, sizing it up. I should offer to step outside with him and pick one up on the way out. I pulled the knives in turn out of their slots, trying to choose the right one.

  ‘Stuart. What the hell?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’m here to protect you, not hurt you. I’m fine. I just have things I need to say. Kerry didn’t tell you about that did she?’

  ‘She said you were unwell. She was frightened.’

  I went into the front room. They were all of them in there, waiting. Irene in a thin cotton nightie with her blue veined shins on show, George in a corner smiling as though this were Christmas Eve, the dog lying on the sofa and Henry over by the old fireplace. He was wearing one of the homemade badger tee shirts and jeans that were baggy for a man of his age. A look of kindly patience on his lying face. A reasonable face, a let’s-all-be-adults face. I still think if he hadn’t had th
at look on his face, if he’d looked knackered and defeated as he sometimes did, I might not have ever done it.

  ‘Stu mate,’ he said. ‘You all right? You look rough. Marie’s been worried about you.’

  ‘Evening all,’ I said. George giggled. I told him to fuck off.

  ‘Stuart, what’s going on?’ said Marie.

  ‘’Ello ‘ello ‘ello,’ I said. I tried to stand like a policeman. ‘What’s all this then?’

  ‘Fuck sake,’ said Henry.

  ‘Should we get an ambulance?’ said Irene. ‘He don’t seem right.’

  ‘I’m fine. For god’s sake why does everyone keep assuming I’m not fine? I’ve got news.’

  ‘Sit down Stuart. Have some dignity.’

  ‘Hahaha. Or what?’ I held out my wrists to be cuffed.

  ‘Stuart, are you going to explain what the fuck this is all about?’

  ‘This fucker,’ I said, pointing, ‘is a policeman.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up Stuart.’ I looked at Marie’s face registering this news and from somewhere inside me came laughter. I laughed until a strange sound left me, laughter from a part of me I didn’t know existed. It wasn’t a nice kind of laugh. ‘Are you really so fucking dumb? You think you can just waltz into the Forest of Arden and everyone can fall in love and change their personalities, but people don’t change like that. Or when they do they have a reason. He’s a rozzer. A boy in blue. The Sweeney, the fuzz. He’s a fucking flatfoot and he knows it.’

  I was interrupted by a slam in the side of the face. Henry had decided enough was enough. I reeled, the pain rushing up to my cheek.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. ‘Come outside.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous Stuart, he’ll beat the shit out of you.’ They were all standing around me, Marie beseeching, Irene hovering in everyone’s way at once. Henry pale from anger or guilt or both. Only George was still seated, chewing on the collar of his tee shirt.

  ‘Oink,’ I said. ‘Oink. Oink.’

  ‘All right. Outside then. I’m a pacifist but I can make an exception.’ Henry set off for the back door. I hadn’t considered that. There was no way I could grab the knife if we were going that way. ‘Can we not go out the front?’ I said.

  ‘Come on outside,’ he said, standing at the door. ‘Take your glasses off.’

  ‘Okay. Okay. I will. Just let me get some water.’

  ‘He’s going to run off,’ said George.

  ‘I’m getting a glass of water, you twelve-year-old cunt,’ I said.

  I staggered into the kitchen. There was blood trickling down my face. Hot, growing colder, stiffening the hairs on my cheek. I pulled out the biggest knife. It was pretty grubby. Marie must have put it back without washing it. She used to do that all the time, it made me horribly cross. I had yelled at her about it once until she’d burst into tears and lay on the bed, not speaking to me, until I’d gone to her and apologised. I hadn’t always been great. I had the knife.

  I hid it behind my back and went through the front door, trying to remember what the thugs in the hospital said. ‘It’s not proper shanking if you see the blade.’ Was I really cut out for shanking? Still, the punch had given me an odd burst of energy. A high it was, almost. Everything seemed distant, spectral, as I marched through the front room, the screams and gasps as they saw the knife seeming to come from miles away, canned horror, easily ignored.

  I was there in the night air and I was in front of him with the blade pointing to his hand and homicide in my face. I hoped that he would see how much I hated him and he would learn before he died.

  I stepped closer and closer and I stood before him, unable to do a thing. Henry took the knife from my hands and threw it on the floor. I didn’t even resist.

  ‘You ain’t a murderer mate,’ he said.

  I was crying.

  ‘I hate you so much,’ I said. ‘I hate you and I can’t even hurt you, you fucking lying cop. I can’t do it because I’m all right. Because I’m not a fucker like you.’

  ‘Someone get him inside and sorted out,’ he said.

  ‘You fucking rapist cop,’ I said.

  ‘Shut up Stu or I’ll hit you again,’ he said.

  ‘You stupid lying bastard, stealing a dead kid’s name. What’s your real name, Henry, you shit?’

  That got him. He was next to me with his nostrils wide and his breath hot and he was standing back and lifting his elbow and he was going to swerve round and punch me hard in the face, so that I could almost feel it before he did, I could feel the pain coming up to greet his fist and my eyes were sore and I knew then that this was something else, that I was falling and the punch never met my face, that he was above me, looking scared, and Marie was panicking, saying, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, this happens to him, it probably isn’t a stroke,’ and before I blacked out once and for all I managed to say, ‘It is.’

  Fifty-Two

  I was on the sofa and Irene’s stubby fingers were pressing paracetamol into my mouth. She had laid me out pretty well. Henry was nowhere to be seen. George had vanished too. That said, I couldn’t see much – my glasses seemed to have gone. I could hear Marie crying in a corner but I couldn’t make her out.

  Irene touched my brow lightly and told Marie to go to bed. Her tone was commanding in a way I hadn’t expected. ‘I was a nurse for thirty-odd years,’ she said. I smiled, said there was nothing wrong with me, and passed back out.

  The next thing, I was being raised onto a stretcher by firm professional hands, Marie fussing by my side. I realised I was happier, calmer, than I’d been in a long time. I stretched out and felt her answering hand. She said she’d got hold of my specs. Perhaps we were back together now. Yes, I expected we were. Henry seemed to have gone, anyway.

  I was in the back of an ambulance juddering along. Marie had tears in her voice and I wondered if they were for me. I was in a hospital and West Country accents were telling me to keep calm and still. I was sleeping and they would have to operate soon.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. Are we getting back together?’

  ‘No,’ Marie said. ‘Oh god, should I have said yes? What if he dies?’ And she started crying again.

  I had my share of visitors. Alistair and Rupa came by. Were they a couple now? This was absolutely the sort of thing I didn’t want. On the other hand, they looked very happy together. I hadn’t spotted before how attractive she was, the freshness of her looks. He looked well too, rejuvenated.

  They asked me what happened and I told them as best as I could. Rupa told me I needed to look after myself. Marie had been so upset, she said. She was back home now and recovering. I had been a bastard, they said.

  I asked them to tell Kerry she didn’t have to visit me, that I didn’t think I deserved it. I hoped she would ignore this prohibition but she didn’t, and never came.

  Most of my time, I spent sleeping. Confused, memory-heavy dreams. The old flat with Marie. Malkin on my chest. The old uncomfortable bed we shared. Alistair intoning, covered in greasepaint and sweat. My parents. Only they were actually there, I realised, ruffling my hair too hard, squeezing my hand till it ached. A doctor’s voice telling me I would live. I tried hard to feel grateful.

  After this, delirium, frantic dreams. An unexpected amount of sex in these. I hadn’t lost that, it seemed, although it would be a long while before I could do anything about it. But sometimes there were badgers all over me. I was Gulliver, pinned down by tough black claws. Wiry fur scratched against my face. I was moaning. This continued for a while before blankness happily came. The dreams stopped playing. Instead there was heavy slumber, dark and comforting. I woke to ring for morphine, then lay back. And one day it was especially bright on the ward and I realised Marie was there, sitting with her arms folded over her stomach, the sun on her face. The sunlight made her younger, so that she looked exactly how she was the day I met her, that first time in Foyles.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I suppose I owe you an apology.’

  ‘Probably
. I suppose I owe you one too. I’m only flying by – Frank isn’t very well.’

  I told her I was sorry to hear that. Was there anything I could do?

  ‘Doesn’t look like it, now, does it? Concentrate on getting better.’

  I wanted her to come across and place her hands on me but she stayed sat at a distance, as if to come closer was dangerous.

  ‘Henry,’ I said. She told me to change the subject. ‘I went for him. I went for him. I’ve never been so angry. But I couldn’t do it. Could I? That has to show something.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it does,’ she said.

  I did walking exercises, to prove that I still could. I pressed the hands of nurses, to show I knew how to do that. Hands from Africa and the Caribbean, slender hands from Eastern Europe, older hands from Bristol. I struck up conversations with the others on my ward. Tried to take comfort from being the youngest person there. I listened to my mum as she warned me, again, to give up on Marie. ‘Not after all this,’ she said. ‘Not after what she’s done to you.’ There was no point explaining that in my mind we were evens. That I had done my worst to her.

  One afternoon, the day before I was due to head back home, Irene came to visit. She sat where Marie had been sitting, dressed smartly as though for church. She asked me a lot of questions about my treatment. Funny, I’d had no idea she was a nurse. There were reservoirs of capability in her, after all. Disaster seemed to have given them something to do. She didn’t seem befuddled or adrift.

  ‘We haven’t heard from him. Ran off the night it happened.’

  I took this as proof that I was right. He’d be back at Scotland Yard, training up to infiltrate the Women’s Institute or Crufts.

  ‘He might be,’ Irene conceded. ‘But then, he might have just thought that he’d killed you. Wanted to get away if the police turned up. I don’t think we’ll see him again.’ She coughed to herald the introduction of weighty matters. ‘She’s heart-broken, Marie. She didn’t deserve that, she didn’t, whatever she did to you.’