Beneath the Skin (2 page)

4

When the smoke cleared he found himself looking up at the sky, blue as a bairn's blanket. This is heaven, he thought. I've died and gone to heaven. But the blue was so bright it hurt his eyes and when he tried to close them that hurt too, as if the skin of his face had shrunk. The noise phased back in: yelling and gunfire, someone groaning.

He
was groaning. It woke him up, and he lay there staring at a plain white ceiling. Breathing hard he counted the cracks around the light fitting. His mouth was dry. He was afraid to swallow in case he tasted blood again. The skin beneath his clothes was damp with that dread sweat that prickles like iced water. Every pore was alert to the contours of the room, the temperature, the sounds; his inner radar scanning for clicks and creaks, sinews taut as tripwires. He couldn't place himself. He was in no man's land, dangerous territory where your oppos can't hear you shout. Reaching for all the things that he couldn't live without; his firearm, his ammo, radio, the clumsy comfort of his helmet. All vaporised. His hands found only jersey and cotton and lightweight civilian things.

After an eternity of two seconds he realised where he was, lifting his head from the soft pillows. He felt groggy and disorientated, his heart thudding painfully.

Real life was happening outside the window. It was open a crack and the nets were shifting; he could hear endlessly shrieking seagulls and the ripped-rubber roar of taxis on cobbles. He swung his legs to the floor; he hadn't even removed his shoes, not intending to fall asleep, just to lie down for a second and process this new twist his life had taken. He limped to the window, cursing a new sore spot that had sprung up on his knee. He'd have to check that out later. Beyond the window, everything was grey: the street, the tenements, the light. A thin mist was hanging over the place. If he pressed his burning forehead to the glass he could just see the top of the flaky railings that led down to Alys's basement studio. As his body began to settle he thought over the series of events that had led him here; just a few days before, though it felt like longer.

It had been so easy. No references, nothing; he couldn't quite believe his luck, if luck was the right word. Screw that. He didn't believe in luck any more; it was all about surviving, and doing what it takes to survive. So here he was, getting paid cash in hand by the most unlikely taxidermist he'd ever met. Come to think of it, he'd never met a taxidermist before, and Alys had been quick to point out that she was so much more. She was an
artist.

There was an intimacy about the dim studio, the way they were, a man and a woman, standing alone among the lifeless. It was only natural that they would eye each other up, all casual, picking up on the little sexual clues. By the end of their first conversation, he had felt that she'd warmed to him. She'd even offered him accommodation, a room in her house, above the studio. Though he still didn't like the way she looked at him. He pulled back a little from the window. The paint on the sill was white, glossy and squeaky clean. His fingers brushed against some trinket on the ledge. It was a piece of artwork, obviously created by Alys. An old bird's nest, a lovely piece of architecture, round and solid, the dip in the centre lined with down and moss. Alys had reimagined it, adding a rat nibbling on a broken egg. Another three pearly eggs nestled in the crook of its tail. It was surreal and slightly repulsive. He supposed he'd better get used to it.

Alys's house was squeezed between student tenements on one side and a low-roofed dance studio on the other. Standing on the pavement in front of it, you'd think it was a doll's house: the six steps up to the glossy green door, the sash windows and the dull red brickwork. Walt imagined taking the front off, exposing all the rooms and their dark little secrets. You'd see Mouse reading in the attic, William building Lego; Alys's plain white bedroom. The first-floor bathroom, big enough to dance in, with the claw-foot bath tub and the heavy showerhead in its cradle. You'd be able to hear the burbling of the old boiler, the purring of the four cats in the airing cupboard and the faint creaky respiration of the house itself.

It was the sort of house that breathed a sigh of relief after dark. You could imagine the rafters sagging like Victorian ladies loosening their stays. Already Walt was learning the sounds of the place. The letter box shivered in the wind; the seventh and ninth steps dipped and groaned as he walked up the stairs. His bedroom door had a worn brass knob that never quite caught, causing the door to fly open in the middle of the night.

There were cold spots on the landing, cracked panes, flaking paint and cobwebs that no one could reach. If Alys's house were a doll's house, you'd probably just replace the front and tiptoe away.

Alys had four cats. Five, if you counted the stuffed grey one in the basket down in the basement. He'd been formally introduced to
that
cat on his first day, when they were locking up for the night. Though he had since learned that Alys never really shut up shop, but roamed around the building like a ghost.

‘This is Hector. I put him outside during daylight but I bring him in at night,' she had said, cradling the basket under her arm.

Walt had tickled the oblivious feline chin. ‘So is he . . . glued to the basket?'

‘Certainly not.' She had snatched the basket away. ‘I would never glue him into place. He's free to . . . be.'

‘Be?'

‘Hector
is
.' The cat had continued to gaze at some distant horizon. Almost like a regular cat, but for the dust on its eyeballs. Walt's shudder had taken him right back to the desert, to open-eyed corpses half buried in sand. Why the fuck was he putting himself through this? He must be crazy, getting caught up with someone who found dead things so appealing.

Walt stepped away from the window and stretched out his stiff leg, noting the dull ache around his knee. The days so far had been uneventful. He spent a lot of time doing admin. Alys never seemed to answer the phone or reply to emails. He had busied himself wading through a backlog of enquiries, chuckling at the odder requests – ‘How much would it cost to mount a pine marten?' – and contacting potential clients who were either used to Alys's eccentric business style or had given up and gone elsewhere.

In the evenings, when he had the chance to review the day, he thought about Alys a lot. He supposed she was eccentric, although some might have a different word for it. Her attention was on a timer; her eyes would slide away as you talked to her, her thoughts already on a different loop. People seemed to bore her, including her sister and nephew. She yawned when things got emotional, like she couldn't be arsed with complicated stuff. Hunger, cold, boredom – these were the things that preoccupied her. Anything heavier, like William crying over some playground spat, or Mouse stressing over an unpaid bill, had her heading for the hills – or rather, the basement. Even the cats weren't petted like regular cats. She stroked them as a chiropractor might, fingertips second-guessing their internal workings. And the cats were passive with her, draping themselves over her arms, wiping their chins against her face. It made his skin crawl, the way she clutched them to her body, letting their tiny paws knead her flesh like the hands of a suckling baby.

The cats were a ragbag of colours; black, two tortoiseshell and a fat white one, called Alaska, who was deaf. The other three had old women's names which Walt couldn't quite recall; Abigail or Enid or something. They all responded to a generic ‘Cats!' and a toe up the backside when Alys wasn't looking. Mouse, on one of the few occasions their paths had crossed, said primly, ‘I take it you're not a cat person, Robert?' No, he'd said, he was a dog person. Definitely dogs.

Mouse was always so formal with him. He'd told her twice to call him Walt, that everyone did, apart from his mother. Maybe, being a mother herself, it was all she could manage.

He wanted to know why Mouse was called Mouse, but it didn't seem the sort of thing you could ask without having some kind of dialogue first, and Mouse made it obvious she didn't want to start a conversation. She did her best to stay out of his way and the child, William, was ushered quickly up the stairs between spells of school or whatever. Mouse worked in a pharmacy, so sometimes the lad was looked after by the dance teacher from next door. Alys wasn't babysitter material, Mouse said.

The way Mouse hustled William past him in the hallway was the way his sister-in-law, Natalie, had been at the end. His niece and a nephew were younger than William, and he loved them both in a vague sort of way. It was pointless trying to remember birthdays, he was always away, but he made sure he bought them huge presents when he got back: giant teddies, Scalextric, computer games. Like Mouse, Natalie had subtle ways of letting you know you'd messed up: a tightening of the mouth, maybe, or a clipped word or two. When the wheels really started to come off, he'd seen her whispering to Steven. After that, Steven would put on a certain face when Walt offered to babysit. ‘It's okay, man. We don't have the money to go out anyway this week,' he'd say, or, ‘No worries, kid, Natalie's mum's already offered.' Stuff like that. And Natalie would squeeze the kids closer, as if he might infect them with the crazy bug.

Anyway, the cats ignored him, unless he had a can opener in his hand. They prowled every surface, lurked under the table and raided the bins. Every bin in the house seemed to contain a collection of feathers and unclassified bits of gore – fur, claws, tiny bones as sharp as needles and endless streamers of bloodied kitchen roll on which Alys had wiped her hands. Mouse had told him that part of the taxidermist's skill lay in stripping the skin from the carcass, never opening the body cavity. Someone should have told Alys.

Mouse had also revealed, with a certain pride, that Alys had sold a piece to a famous American collector. She'd told him all this breathlessly, as she scrubbed the downstairs cloakroom sink with bleach. Walt watched dried-on smears of blood disappear beneath her cloth, and realised that Alys paid her sister to clean. How convenient, he thought, having someone there to clean up your mess.

5

He trudged down the stairs to the basement, butterflies dancing in his belly. It wasn't the work that made him uneasy – though it wasn't exactly enjoyable – but the atmosphere of the place. He felt claustrophobic, shut in with all those dead animals. The air was cold and heavy, a constant pressure on his neck and shoulders, prickling his skin.

Thankfully, his new boss didn't seem to care if he went missing from time to time, so frequent fag breaks, a chance to come up for air, helped him get through it. He'd draw out each cigarette for as long as possible, his skin crawling at the thought of once again descending the stone steps into the basement.

He shook his head, told himself to get on with it. He'd been lucky to get this job; it meant cash in hand and a place to stay. He took a deep, final breath of the outside air and stepped back inside.

Later on, while preparing to finish up for the day, he decided to ask Alys about the mess. It was a taxidermist's job to preserve, he thought, so why all the scraps?

‘I do a bit of butchery on the bodies,' she said. ‘I eat them.'

His stomach went cold. ‘You eat them?'

‘It would be a waste not to, wouldn't it?' She was working on a gerbil, leaning over her workbench with the lamp pulled down. She was lost in her own little bubble of light, leaning in, her nose inches from the scalpel. Even from several feet away, Walt could smell the blood. He could detect it, these days, unfailing as a mother scenting her newborn. He watched her for a moment, mesmerised by the deft, restless action: little feathery shaving strokes, shucking off the skin to reveal a poor, pink mouse-shaped blob. The sort of thing cats leave behind.

He said it again. ‘You eat them.'

‘Yes. Well, not these, obviously!' She held the remains up to the light, flesh the colour of a bruise, glistening. ‘How lovely it is . . . When you cut into an animal, the colours . . . Purple, silver. Beautiful.'

He had felt that he was intruding, that she was speaking as a lover might.

‘Our best bits are beneath the skin.' It was no more than a whisper, but that whisper cut through him like that icy blade, and his own skin shrank in on itself, the hair on the back of his neck bristling. The cold spot in his belly began to swell and he clapped a hand to his mouth.

She put down the corpse and giggled like a child, picking up the bloodied skin to fit it over two fingers like a glove puppet. Affecting a high, silly voice, she made it dance after him.

‘Hello, Mr Walt! We're having pheasant for tea. Will you join us?'

Walt was already heading for the door. The curtain wrapped itself around his face and he fought it. Sand was choking him, getting into his eyes, his nose. Blackness closed in on him, but he could still smell blood. He could still hear Alys laughing.

Time seemed to slip and jolt, and he was back on the battlefield. He spun away, in slow motion, one hand gripping the back of his neck, trying to anchor himself, and when that didn't work, he crumpled to the floor. His hand came away from his skin slick with sweat. Or was it blood? Painted masks danced in front of his eyes. He was in the desert, exposed, falling to his knees in the sand. He felt the grains between his fingers, white hot, blistering. There were bodies in front of him, and parts of bodies. The smell made him gag, flies buzzing around his head – he was going to be next. A medic, stooped over the nearest corpse, looked up at him with eyes of yellow glass. In his hand he held a bone knife, a fleshing tool. As Walt watched, the glass lenses burst; liquid dripped onto the sand like tears and it was Alys's face he was looking into. She smiled, face wet, licking her lips.

Hands gripped his elbow, lifting him. Had he screamed? He looked up. It was the child, William, grave-faced.

‘Are you okay? You don't look okay.'

Walt scrambled to his feet. His top was damp, sticking to him. He wiped the sweat from his upper lip, slightly surprised not to encounter the grittiness of sand. ‘I'm fine. I'm all right, kid.'

The boy stared at him sadly. ‘They're dead, the animals. They can't feel anything any more.'

Walt snorted with humourless laughter. ‘Aren't they the lucky ones?'

Mouse was drying her hair in the kitchen. The hairdryer was plugged into the socket beside Alys's freezer. Her eyes were half closed, hair fanning out around her, but when she saw Walt she flicked the off switch and everything returned to normal. Hair limp, eyes wary. That was her habitual expression, like she never knew what was coming in through the door.

‘You look like you've seen a ghost,' she said. She unplugged the appliance, wrapping the cable round it with jagged little movements that reminded him of Alys.

‘There must be fucking hundreds of them in here. Little animal ghosts living in the walls.' He pulled out a chair and collapsed into it.

‘Stop it,' she said. ‘Stop it. I'm just going to start the tea.'

‘You know she uses a hairdryer?' His eyes were fixed on the one she'd just laid on the worktop. ‘She uses a hairdryer to dry out the skins.'

‘You can join us for tea, if you like.' Mouse was busy somewhere behind him. He heard a knife on a chopping board and winced.

‘I'll pass, thanks. I've lost my appetite.'