We Are Animals

by Tim Ewins

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Jan’s father, this time less convinced. ‘Maybe he’s scared of the responsibility,’ he offered, as an alternative to his wife’s frankly absurd suggestion. ‘A lot of responsibility there. He might be scared of it. Running from it, as it were.’

  ‘He’s not a runner,’ scowled Jan’s mother sharply, shooting her husband a look. ‘Jan is no runner.’

  ‘I’m just saying, maybe he was hoping for something less important than box-packaging specialist and so on. Maybe he wanted to be a regular box-packer, less of the technician, none of the specialist.’

  ‘Perhaps the socks are in one of the kitchen cupboards,’ Jan’s mother wondered out loud.

  ‘We’ll find them,’ said Jan’s father, reassuringly touching his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘I never lose anything,’ she said to herself as she stood up and walked to the kitchen.

  ‘I just worry about our Jan,’ Jan’s father mumbled, trying to steer the conversation back away from the missing socks.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ called Jan’s mother from the kitchen, between the sounds of cupboard doors shutting and flour being knocked onto the floor, ‘he’s resting his specialist brain. He’s not scared, and he’s certainly not a runner.’

  * * *

  Jan ran away from the dock and away from the water. He ran through a small town he didn’t recognise, past people he didn’t know in a country he was yet to discover, and as soon as he was out of England Mike’s sight he started to enjoy himself. All his fear escaped into a flurry of excitement. He kept running – he had to keep running to release his joyous energy lest he explode with it. He ran straight into a large lady.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Jan yelled behind him as he carried on running.

  ‘No no, I’m sorry,’ the lady shouted back, even though they both knew he had run into her. What lovely people, Jan thought.

  The town was quaint and cobbled with bunting zig-zagging from one shop front to the next. It was still winter wherever he was, and he could see his every breath each time he exhaled into the white frosty air, before running into it. He could hear a folk song being played on banjos as he ran past one public house, and people were cheering and laughing in another. Wherever he was, Jan could tell it was a magical country, full of opportunity.

  He ran past a fish shop and a small arcade, taking in everything he saw as best as he could, until the road started a steep incline and the buildings became fewer. He wanted – no, he needed – to know what would be at the top of the hill, but he noticed his pace was slowing and the white from his breath was becoming somewhat thinner. A man in a tracksuit casually walked passed him, and then so did the man’s dog. Finally, Jan decided to stop.

  He bent forward, put his hands on his knees and panted down at the floor. The town he’d run through was behind him, and had he looked, he would’ve seen past the rooftops of the houses and out to the most beautiful clear winter sea. But that’s the thing with travelling; you always end up missing something.

  Eventually, after he caught his breath, he started up the hill again, this time walking slowly so he could properly take in the first of what he decided would be many countries that he would visit. The trees were mainly bare with a frost tinted white on their few remaining leaves, and the road sort of disintegrated into soil at both sides. The scene wasn’t a million miles from how the one and only road out of Fishton looked, but for a reason Jan couldn’t quite put his finger on, this road was better. He’d earned it; it was his. It looked and it smelled like adventure. Crucially, it did not smell of fish.

  It dawned on Jan at this point that he didn’t know what people did when they were travelling. When he’d fantasised about it, he’d never really pictured himself; he’d always seen a muscular person (which little Jan was certainly not) with wavy red hair, because that’s what true travellers looked like. They were brave, too. Jan couldn’t gain muscles right now, and his hair was a dark brown, but he could be brave, so he turned off, away from the road, and walked between two trees. This was exploring. He was ‘off-roading’.

  He kept ‘off-roading’ until the trees stopped, and he found himself on top of a cliff. He couldn’t see the town that he had just run through. In fact, he couldn’t see a town at all. Along the coast there was nothing but white grass and the occasional short stone wall separating the land into fields. Every now and again there would be a flutter of movement from a squirrel or a fox, and at one point there was an eruption of birds taking off. It was mesmerising. Jan sat down, soaked up the scene and completely lost time. He thought of very little, except that it had all been worth it: leaving his parents’ house; the fish; the not-really-a-tidal wave; even his fear of England Mike. It had all been worth it, for this.

  Jan was so lost in his own personal moment with nature that he barely noticed the large balding man who came and stood behind him, also admiring the view.

  ‘Whacountryeh?’

  Jan jumped, and then scrambled in the frosty ground, trying to stand up.

  ‘Onlyplonearthtis. Onlyplonearth’. Jan looked at the man. He wore a thick brown cardigan and old jeans. He looked pudgy, but it was hard to tell because he was wrapped-up warm from his feet to his neck. His head was mainly hairless except for the insides of his ears and the grey halo connecting them around the back. Jan thought it curious, given the weather, that the man wasn’t wearing a hat. He hadn’t understood a word the man had said so he figured that he was in a non-English-speaking country. The man was smiling though, and he seemed friendly, so Jan decided to try to introduce himself. He spoke slowly.

  ‘My…name…is…Jan. I…am…from…England.’ The man frowned at Jan and nodded his head slowly. He grunted a grunt that universally means ‘yes’.

  ‘What…’ Jan started again, ‘country…is…this?’ He waved his arm towards the cliff edge when he said ‘this’ to signify what ‘this’ referred to, and the man responded ‘Aye, s’tinglan.’

  ‘Icetingland,’ Jan repeated.

  ‘Aye,’ said the man with a short pause. ‘S’tinglan.’

  ‘Icetingland,’ Jan said again, and then bowed as a thank you.

  The man put his hand on Jan’s arm gently and turned him towards the cliff. In a soft and heavily accented, presumably Icetinglandish language, the man started to talk at length to Jan, occasionally pointing at something on the horizon. Jan picked out words he understood from the man’s speech here and there (wild, them hills, berries, eats, car), but for the most part he just enjoyed the gentle tones in his accent and his persistent attempts at communication.

  The man was clearly proud of Icetingland, and Jan was more than happy to share the view with him. The fear of England Mike had long vanished now, and Jan was feeling a lot more confident in his travelling abilities. He waited for the man’s Icetinglandish monologue to end rather than interrupting.

  ‘What’s…your…name?’

  ‘Hey lad? Name?’

  ‘Hello Hylad. My…name…is…Jan.’

  The man that Jan took to be Hylad laughed to himself but not in a rude way, and then said something else in his mother tongue. Once more Jan could only pick out a few words (mother, father, and car again) but he sort of got the jist from the man’s movements. He was being invited for a lift in Hylad’s car, presumably to meet his mother and father. Jan nodded gratefully.

  ‘Thank…you,’ he said, with another bow.

  They walked to the car side-by-side in relative silence. The man had parked in the same place where Jan had started ‘off-road travelling’, and he had obviously just come to look at the view. They got in the car together and the man started the engine. Jan could barely put his feet down for all the crisp packets and old newspapers, and there was a surprisingly familiar smell of vinegar in the car.

  ‘Ok,’ said Hylad, and Jan was surprised to find that he understood. ‘Thiyon wesson fesant?’ And Jan was unsurprised to find that he had
stopped understanding. He nodded anyway, as whatever Hylad had said had been a question, and happy with the nodded answer, Hylad turned the key, released the clutch and jerked the car forward.

  Jan looked out of the window. The country he was in certainly was different to Fishton. Bunting adorned the streets, wildlife had the rule of the land for acres, and people offered lifts to people despite the fact that they couldn’t even properly talk to each other. Jan wondered what Hylad’s parents would be like, and what would he say to them? Presumably they wouldn’t speak English either, and Jan definitely couldn’t speak Icetinglandish (with the exception of maybe the words ‘wild’, ‘mother’, ‘eats’, ‘them hills’, ‘father’, ‘berries’ and ‘car’). He started trying to make sentences out of these words in his head but found he couldn’t get much further than ‘wild mother eats berries’. He’d just smile and hope for the best.

  Through the window he saw that the trees were beginning to clear, and there was a small ruined building made of stone that said, ‘Bus Stop’ on it. Well I understand that, Jan thought, and then he saw a sign that read, ‘School – Slow Down’. He understood that too. He looked at Hylad, puzzled, and then back to the road. As it was getting more built-up around him, everything became more familiar. There were several fish shops and there was an arcade with pirates in the window. There was Dean. Jan knew Dean.

  ‘Hi Jan,’ shouted Dean as Jan and Hylad drove past. Jan sank into his chair as the familiar smell of fish filled his nostrils.

  * * *

  The doorbell rang at 31 Western Crescent and Jan’s mother answered.

  ‘Owsbeleib?’ said Hylad. Jan’s mother looked at Hylad, and then she looked at Jan, who was standing next to him. She put her hands on her hips.

  ‘What have you been up to, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Pickimupfoooor,’ answered Hylad on behalf of Jan. Jan’s mother looked again at Hylad, and then she leaned her head backwards, still maintaining eye contact with Hylad, and called for Jan’s father. They all stood in the doorway for a few seconds, quietly waiting for Jan’s father to join them. When he came, Jan’s mother whispered to him privately, although completely audibly to everyone present, that she’s never understood why people still talk Old Fishton any more because no one understands it these days anyway, and that Jan’s father would have to take over while she went to look for five single unmatching socks.

  ‘Yusson,’ said Hylad, who Jan’s father recognised as Nigel from two towns across.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jan’s father. ‘Jan, go upstairs.’ Jan did as he was told while Nigel started another gentle monologue. Jan’s father understood about half of it.

  ‘I think I’m glad I’m home,’ Jan said to his mother as he threw his stick-and-bed-sheet bag onto the kitchen table, ‘I wanted to come home when I saw your face in a dying fish.’ Jans mother sat down, feeling both offended and loved at the same time.

  Upstairs in his room Jan realised that he really wasn’t sad that he was back in Fishton. He looked at the ceiling, and at that moment, he didn’t long for lands afar, and he didn’t care about what was over the North Sea. Instead, he found himself dreaming of Fishton. The Old Fishton language, the town with the bunting that was about a mile down the road, and the wildlife that he never knew surrounded him. He dreamed of Nigel (but in his dream Nigel was called Hylad), and he knew then that he did want to travel one day, but first, he needed to travel Fishton, and for the next five years, that’s exactly what he did.

  * * *

  Downstairs, Jan’s mother picked up the makeshift bag to wash the bedsheet. Five single and unmatching socks fell out onto the table. She nearly fainted with relief. She sat down and checked that they were the right ones, twice.

  Three times.

  They were. Jan’s dad came into the kitchen to find her leaning back exhausted on her chair.

  ‘Are they the socks?’ he asked, nodding towards the table, and Jan’s mother gave him a proud smile.

  ‘It’s been an adventure,’ she said.’

  6

  An insignificant dog

  Goa. India. 2016.

  The DJ had attracted a small crowd of vests. They were sitting in a circle on the sand with a little mongrel puppy jumping around between them, though none of the vests paid much attention to the puppy.

  Some of the vests were bobbing their heads in time with the music and some had their mouths slightly open, but none of them were looking at the DJ and no one could be said to be truly dancing. Instead, they were discussing how they’d never really appreciated music until they’d come to Palolem, and how, actually, now that they thought about it, each thud sort of felt spiritual. They had all fully immersed themselves into the sound of India, they agreed.

  One of the vests stood up, narrowly missing the puppy’s tail with her sandal.

  ‘Bucket, anyone?’

  She walked to the bar, passing the DJ (making the peace sign with two of her fingers for him, and he did the same back), ignoring a cow (which was still nodding its head in time to each spiritual thud) and up to the barman with the other three of her five fingers now held up.

  ‘Five buckets and one COCK-tail,’ she said, and then, ‘namaste,’ as a mistaken word of thanks.

  Manjan watched all of this, still impressed with the cow’s ability to adapt to her surroundings compared to his own. Shakey will leave in a couple of minutes, he thought, surprising himself to find that he was disappointed at this thought.

  Shakey had also been watching, well aware that it was getting dark and he’d been selling a silent disco to the only person on the beach who would consider it too loud. He needed to get rid of some of these flyers and the group of vests did seem like the ideal takers. He looked at Manjan, shifted his legs as if to stand up, and then he settled again.

  ‘Why don’t I help you look for Jan?’ he said. There was a brief silence between the two of them before Shakey’s legs shifted themselves again. ‘Ladyjan, I mean.’

  Eventually Manjan replied, a little less than halfheartedly.

  ‘Mm,’ he said. Then he thought for a minute and told Shakey to look to his right. Shakey did. Next he told Shakey to look to his left. Shakey did that too. Then he asked, ‘Did you see Jan?’ before correcting himself for Shakey, ‘Ladyjan.’

  ‘I don’t know what she looks like.’

  ‘No,’ Manjan responded, ‘but that is not why you didn’t see her.’

  Shakey felt sad. He understood that his offer, as good-natured as it was, wasn’t going to bring Ladyjan to Manjan. It was a hopeless situation and there was nothing he could do to help. In all honesty, he wasn’t even sure why he cared, but he did.

  ‘I have a bad neck,’ Manjan said flatly. ‘I find it hard to look behind me, towards the bar. Ladyjan, as you’ve dubbed her, could, I suppose be over there. It’s unlikely, but it’s possible.’

  ‘Behind us?’ Shakey asked, ‘At the bar ?’ He’d been talking to a madman. ‘OK, sure, I’ll check.’ He stood up and looked behind him with an overly exaggerated twist of his hips. He raised one of his hands above his eyes and scanned into the distance of the small and very-easy-to-see-in-one-quick-glance bar. Next he took large, over-the-top steps towards the barman. He wasn’t trying to be sarcastic, but he wanted Manjan’s obviously senile mind to see that he was trying.

  Manjan turned his neck to watch Shakey’s performance. Sarcastic so-and-so, he thought.

  As Shakey dramatically twisted his hips to come back he saw that Manjan was looking at him and tapping his empty glass.

  ‘Might as well, while you’re there.’

  * * *

  The barman down the beach had finished making the girl vest’s order of drinks. She’d been telling the barman how in touch with nature she’d become since she’d been in India, although the barman made no response except to let her know the price of the drinks. She picked up the five buckets easily, usi
ng the handles, but she struggled with the COCK-tail, as it was presented in a long, tube-like glass, had off-looking cream on top and was served with two large, spherical biscuits either side. ‘Namaste,’ she called again as she tried her best not to drop the phallic masterpiece by clenching her elbows and – for some reason – her knees together.

  ‘The next two COCK-tails are free,’ muttered the barman, inaudibly.

  On her way back to her fellow vests, the girl once again gave the peace sign to the DJ (who, once again, gave it back) and went out of her way to avoid the cow. The cow had now been joined by the puppy, who was repeatedly jumping up at the cow’s nodding head, but finding himself just too little and insignificant to the cow to be noticed. It’s a shame because the puppy had a lot to say to the cow, if only she would look down and listen.

  ‘Drinks,’ the girl said, and all the vests looked at her attentively while she handed them out. ‘I’ve just been having the most amazing conversation with one of the locals,’ she said, ‘all about nature.’ All the vests agreed that India had made them all very in touch with nature.

  The puppy barked at the cow, the cow mooed to no one, and the vests started their mating ritual.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Shakey returned to Manjan with a fresh glass of red wine and a new small bucket of vodka and Red Bull.

  ‘I was only offering to help you,’ Shakey said, emphasising the word ‘you’.

  ‘How would you have seen her, anyway?’ Manjan mocked. ‘You said yourself that you don’t know what she looks like, but I thank you for the drink.’

  ‘Is she fit?’ Shakey asked, which Manjan decided to take to mean the much more polite, ‘what does she look like?’

  He told Shakey at great length about the colour of Ladyjan’s eyes and the shape of her face. He told Shakey about her numerous different hairstyles, before trying to rank them in order of his favourite and failing because, come to think about it, they were all perfect. Then he told Shakey in an even lengthier manner about her personality. How she used to laugh at the things he’d said, even though he didn’t always understand why, and how the strength within her had left him awestruck. He told Shakey all of this in much greater detail and length in fact, than the pages of this book will allow. He could simply have said that she had very dark brown eyes, good cheekbones, ever-changing hair (sometimes short, sometimes long, often parted at the side and of varying colours) and an adventurous and caring personality. But he didn’t just say that; he really didn’t.