Animal Lovers

by Rob Palk

  I was tired and for the second time in a year I’d almost died. I didn’t need to be critiqued again. I sat up, feeling a twinge in my skull as I did. ‘It wasn’t me that was lying to her. You can’t put the blame on me.’

  ‘George had already told her,’ she said. ‘You don’t think he wouldn’t have done that? He’s back with his mum now, best place for him. He told her the lot a few months back.’ Well this was unexpected.

  ‘She didn’t believe him?’

  ‘Not at first. Not ever, not entirely. She came to me about it. Always first person they come to. I said are you happy? And she was. She loved him. She’d thrown herself into him. I told her, leave it then. There’s some things always best left.’

  It didn’t make any sense. He was betraying the badger cause.

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘But then he’d do that anyway whether she had him or not. She made her choice and it was him. Plus, soon after, there was the other thing.’

  I asked her what about the other thing, and before she’d even told me I had guessed just what it was and why Marie was looking so healthy, so content. I asked Irene to leave me alone, thanked her again for coming and put my eye mask on.

  Fifty-Three

  They cured me in the end. My eyesight remains the same. I still get tired easily, though they tell me that will pass. I feel pacific, muted, locked in a blissful lull. I wonder if this is permanent. It’s nice to be alive. I remember how I laughed at Marie’s tears, I remember choosing the knife and it feels another person, a person with claims I’ve abandoned. Now I wish everyone well. I smile in a bland and tolerant way, and yesterday a dog came to snuffle at me and the owner said they can read character, they can tell I’m a nice man. I feel that they’re right: I am nice. But I’m not so sure that I’m me. I’m a blunted, kinder person, a person without claims.

  A few months back I caught up with Kerry and was told politely not to bother again. She had a new man, a fellow protester, who she said was very kind. The way she said this sounded like a rebuke. She was considering joining the Labour Party. After coffee we went for a walk but found we had little to say.

  One morning I got a letter telling me I had to return to Queen Square. Strange to be there again. I spent a night on the ward, reading, with one eye closed to help me focus. I hadn’t told anyone I was going back into hospital. It seemed very important that I have this done alone. They came for me in the morning and they led me down to the cold room where they operate, basement level. One up from the mortuary.

  I was wearing one of those backless gowns they make you wear to remind you of your vulnerability, your closeness to death. I took off my specs and lay down while a blurry doctor plunged a needle into my brow. The needle contained anaesthetic which just about covered the pain of having the injection in the first place. Once they’d woken me from the faint I fell into at this invasion, they started hammering a four-sided brass cage into my head. The cage had thick-spaced brass bars. It was heavy around my face. I asked if I could go to the loo. A nurse had to lead me there, a cautious hand on my arm. I stood in the sponge-floored bathroom and put my face close to the mirror. I was a head in a cage. A monster from a circus, a mediaeval torture victim. The sections where it was screwed into my forehead were rimmed with drying moats of blood. I was quite proud not to faint a second time. To do what I was told.

  ‘Ready when you are,’ I said. They led me to a chair and nailed the cage to a headrest behind me, trapping me in position. ‘This only takes half an hour,’ they said. ‘You might find yourself with a little bit of a headache.’

  ‘Used to it,’ I said. One day soon I would be able to romanticise all this. The illness. The divorce, which had come through the week before. The adventure with the badgers. The look on Marie’s face when I told her about Henry. I’d be able to dress it up, cheapen it into anecdote. A hard luck story, but would you look how well he is now? Made the best of it, didn’t I, came out softer, gentler? I might miss out the look on Marie’s face. Might miss out my laughter and where it came from.

  ‘This across from you, this is the gamma knife. We’re going to need you to keep as still as you absolutely can which is why we’ve strapped you in. We’re going to be using the gamma knife lasers to operate on the damaged parts of your brain. It’s vital you don’t jerk your head. Tell us if you feel a sneeze coming on.’

  ‘You expect me to talk?’

  ‘Haha. We get that quite a lot.’

  ‘Get your hands off me you filthy ape.’

  ‘That isn’t really relevant.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. I’m scared.’

  When they took the box off my head, I felt like how I’d always imagined the bends to feel. The world pressing at my head, trying to squeeze inside it. It felt an awful lot better inside the cage.

  Fifty-Four

  Three months later, I was back at Marie’s, as a visitor, a supporter, a payer of respects. A promise I’d made and wanted to keep.

  Mrs Lansdowne opened the door. She greeted me with a perfectly measured frostiness. I sensed my visit was a matter in which her wishes had been ignored. Marie was in the front room. Sitting on the armchair with a rug over herself, one of the family cats upon her lap. Back in the safety of home, she looked both as young as when I met her and impossibly experienced. I’d always felt that for rich people experience can be bought off, transferred onto others. Her appearance didn’t confirm this. She stood up and let me kiss her, awkwardly on each cheek. I got her left ear and right eye. ‘Shall we go to the garden?’ she said.

  We sat out in the sunshine, at a white cast iron garden table and drank elderflower cordial and didn’t have much to say. I still couldn’t look at her stomach.

  ‘You all set then?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. I think so. Daunting, but I always wanted it. And you . . . if you’re honest, you didn’t. You didn’t want it at all.’

  ‘I wanted you. That was the main thing.’ She didn’t seem to hear this. She looked tired but beatific, like a knackered Renaissance Madonna. There was no way of telling her anything. ‘I still would like to help.’

  ‘I know you would,’ she said. There were butterflies and flowers that I would never know the names of, creeping to the sky. I had thought I would spend a lot more time in this garden.

  ‘I still don’t get why you did it,’ I said.

  ‘I just hope it never happens to you,’ she said. ‘I hope you never love like that.’

  I wanted to tell her I had but I wasn’t sure it was true. It might have been true at that moment though. It might have been true right then.

  ‘I think we should go back inside,’ said Marie, frowning at the clouds. We walked through to the house. I could hear Judy and Frank murmuring from his study, talking about us.

  ‘You going to be okay?’ I said. As if there was any truthful answer you could give to a question like that.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I think it might be good.’

  ‘You know I’ll be around, right? You know I’ll always be around for when it comes?’

  ‘I know you will,’ she said.

  We went into the front room where I’d left my bag. There were still pictures up I remembered, of us on our second date. My hair shorter, no bags under my eyes. Her smiling, no lines on her face and her arm stretched out, holding the camera. Both of us grinning.

  ‘I keep meaning to take that down,’ she said.

  ‘I’d better be going,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know, I couldn’t believe how I felt about you back then? I went around telling everyone. I couldn’t believe how I felt.’

  ’Yeah, I suppose you did,’ I said. Not much but all I had.

  ‘There is something you could do for me.’ She reached out for my hand. ‘A favour you can do. Something I can’t manage.’

  Fifty-Five

  I went back to the woods. It seemed the least I could do; after all, she couldn’t go herself.

  George was also absent. He was still back with his folks. I hoped h
e was being forced into education or education being forced into him. It was hard to see any other hope for the lad, talent for manipulation notwithstanding.

  There had been no sign of Henry, but then I expected that. Marie had received an email from a friend of his telling her Henry was abroad but would contact her on his return, whenever that was. She assumed the ‘friend’ was Henry himself. She hadn’t replied.

  Margaret was there and if she knew about all that had happened she did a good job of not showing it. Everything not directly connected to badgers could be safely filed as trivia. Brian was there, too. He loped over, slapped me on the back. ‘Stu mate. Good to see you. I didn’t expect it what with, well you know.’

  ‘Well, you know,’ I said. I had been scared of a hostile reception. I almost wanted to hug him, although there seemed less of him than before. You could hug him just using your hands.

  ‘I know mate,’ he said. ‘Once you get caught up in this badger thing you can’t keep away, believe me.’

  ‘It isn’t really that,’ I said. He looked at me as if he understood exactly what I meant. I was pretty sure he didn’t.

  There were a couple of newbies with us. A woman about my age who worked for Boots as a buyer and had caught animal-politics from the cull the year before. A clerical looking man in his forties who kept rubbing his spectacles and talking about the ‘war on wildlife’.

  ‘Kerry not been?’ I said.

  Brian smiled in a way I was sure was rather wistful. ‘Nah, mate,’ he said. ‘Shame that, would have been nice to see her. Spoke to her the other day. Checking on my sobriety. She’s seeing some bloke. One of them climate fellers. Good lads. Sorry, not treading on old feelings there, am I?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sure he’s a lovely guy.’ Sure he was very kind.

  ‘Jammy sod I reckon,’ said Brian.

  We took our torches out, following the familiar route I’d used to traipse with Marie. But it was dark and we walked for miles and soon enough I found myself alone. I kept going, torch in hand until I found a sett. I could be of use right there. I sat down, popped a mint in my mouth and started guard duty. The sett had the wonderful cosiness that badger homes give off. Who would want to hurt them? Splendid creatures, minding their own business.

  My buttocks ached. I wanted to lie down but I was worried about the cold. Not that it was very cold. Climate change working its magic. While we worried about badgers the earth was roasting up. Would badgers go first or would we? The country would go before the city, I think I’d read. People would traverse the globe, some would even leave it. Ponds would frazzle into salty patches of muck. A billion unread books would sit on unused computers, quietly humming. Goodbye Frank Lansdowne, but also goodbye Chaucer, ta-ra Dante. Goodbye Alistair, goodbye Raoul. Goodbye to Kerry, to love, goodbye Marie.

  Pale stars acned the sky. The moon peered over the trees. I wasn’t sure I was helping much. My lids began to close. The next morning my joints were stiff, my eyes were bleary and the sett that I’d been guarding turned out not to be a sett. It was only a hole in the ground. I needed to get out of the woods. I stood up, brushing the twigs and soil off my jeans. Around the corner I almost stepped on a badger.

  I knelt close and looked at it. A red gash in its shoulder, if badgers even have shoulders. The blood had spilled onto its fur, dirtying the white. The wound was open, pulsing. The animal was breathing as though it were fighting off three enemies at once. A war-creature, I thought, built for combat, armoured and sturdy. Its lips were a leathery black. Teeth on display. It would snag my fingers if I touched it. It was also dying.

  What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have the vet’s number or a phone signal if I’d had. I was going to have to kill the fucking thing. With what? My bare hands were no good. I no longer went near knives. A branch would have to do.

  I went to the nearest tree. Whispered an apology to the badger and to the woods. Felt the branch’s weight, picked one that seemed the right size. If I got a suitable swing on, I could dash out the animal’s brains. What would they look like, dashed brains? I had never seen them before. I wasn’t a violent man. Still, I knew I had no choice.

  I couldn’t even get the branch off. A tug and it came, scratching my palm in the breaking.

  I walked back to the badger, hoping it had died. The breathing was softer, less laboured, but the animal was grabbing hold of life. Okay, it was time for the dashing. I practiced on a clump of grass, focusing on the patch I wanted (the head, I decided it was) and bringing my stick down. I missed the hoped-for spot and the impact felt feeble, undeadly.

  When I tried again I got the right spot and the landing sent soil scattering on both sides. I tried a last time and this hit hard but missed the point. I walked back to the badger.

  Its breathing was calm now. Calmer but still there. The blood was clotting and I could see a bit of bone, with the flesh quivering around it.

  The animal’s eyes were bright, glassy buttons. It was still alive, still beautiful. The eyes probably weren’t imploring me. They probably couldn’t see me at all. And what were they imploring anyway? To be left to die in peace or to be aided into silence, with dignity and a broken branch? I had it held above my head although this wasn’t the angle I’d practiced. I swerved my arms back, bent one leg. I had it raised, raised, and I tried to drop it, bring it down upon the head, and I couldn’t do it.

  ‘Stand back,’ came a voice. There was a man in a red cagoule standing next to me. He had a gold necklace, cropped gold hair, boozy, bestial handsomeness. Somehow I noticed all this before I noticed his gun. ‘You’re going to have to stand back mate. If you want me to finish the job. Mate, I can’t shoot him if you’re standing there. Mate, will you clear the fucking path and let me finish?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said and dropped my branch. I have a horrible feeling it landed on the badger. I saluted the marksman, trying to look like a country squire giving orders rather than an urbanite too weak to euthanise an animal, and set off in the wrong direction. The shot, when it came, made me jump, although I had known it was coming. I started walking off and then ran back to him, saying, ‘I couldn’t kill it, I couldn’t do it, I really don’t have it in me. I’m not capable, I’m not.’

  ‘It needed fucking killing,’ said the man.

  The road from the woods took a long time to get to and when I eventually found it, there was still a long way to go to my bed and breakfast. I skipped the distance, ecstatic, proud of not having hurt. It had been alive and I couldn’t have harmed it. I laughed out loud. Life was a wonderful thing.

  I thought for a second I saw Kerry, searching for me, in a car, but it was someone else who only looked like her.

  When I got back I ate a just-in-time breakfast and sunk into my sheets, asking not to be disturbed for the rest of the day. By the time I left it was dark again and the cullers were setting out, carrying their guns to the woods.

  Acknowledgments

  Writing books is a much more collective endeavour than writers let on and this book has many parents beside myself. I will try and remember as many as possible below.

  Mark Watson acted as midwife of this book, giving advice and support throughout. It is very unlikely this novel would have been finished without his input. Any flaws and errors of taste in the book are of course entirely down to him.

  Everyone at Sandstone helped shape my manuscript into the book you have just read. Special thanks must go to Keira for her excellent edit and Ceris for telling the world this book exists. I am also grateful to Catherine Taylor for recommending them to me.

  Sophie Buchan did a fantastic early edit and has been a valued source of gossip, advice and stories about bears.

  I have been lucky to find some wonderful trusted readers of this book – Emma Townshend, Poppy Toland, Lee Cheshire, Becks Jones, Amber Massy-Blomfie & John Osborne. If I’ve forgotten any others then I apologise to them. During the writing Helen Underhill gave support that was critical in every sense and for which I am very grateful.
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  Peter Kirby-Harris gave me a roof over my head and the inspiration for one of the characters.

  My parents and sister have been wonderful throughout.

  Lastly to the Poets of the Bamboo Grove: Will Buckingham (who also provided a roof and more wisdom than it’s fair for one man to have), Hannah Stevens and most of all Sarah McInnes for being the funniest, smartest and most beautiful person in the entire history of the world.