Hawthorn and Child (14 page)

I turn my head more suddenly than I should. The railings, and the envelopes of wood and the dark. I look down. A shape moves on the ground. I freeze. It’s a cat. Is it? Yes. It’s a fucking cat. It looks at me and its eyes are like drops of neon, and they turn away, and the cat wanders off. I am sweating again.

They’re talking about a car now. Somehow. They have moved on. About an exhaust. They talk about a transmission. They talk about car things. I know nothing about cars. I glance back a couple of times but the cat is gone. I wonder if I should just leave.

– You hear anything?

I freeze.

– The wife was on again. She hasn’t a clue.

– You sure?

– Course I’m sure. If she knew where he went or what’s wrong with him she wouldn’t be on the phone to me every fucking day crying her fucking eyes out.

– Not putting it on?

– Nah. No way. Not like that. Not with her tears. He spends all day in bed, she says. Is up all night, mostly sitting in the garden.

They’re talking about Ashid’s wife. Surely. Who else could they be talking about? So one of these men must be Palmer.

– I still think something happened to him. You know. Some sort of mental thing. It doesn’t make any sort of sense otherwise. So solid for so long. Good bones. He has a lot to lose you know?

I am pressed up against corrugated iron. I think. I am trying to think. I am trying to remember the manuscript.
Good bones
means something. I remember wolves in the snow after midwinter, gathering by a stream to howl, in a ceremony, at the very edge of the city, the ceremony having something to do with marking the new edge of the city, the city expanding, and the ceremony is mournful and angry. Something moves to my left. By my feet. I turn my head. I look down. It’s a rat. He sniffs. He seems to look at me. I am remarkably calm. Where is the cat? The rat seems to sit there. Considering. Behind him it is dark. Outside the doorway it is dark. Everything is dark. I move my foot, slightly, gently, just shifting the sole to the right. The rat moves. He lopes off out towards the railings.

– What’s that?

– What?

I freeze.

– That thing.

– Oh. Piece from the Volvo what we had in Tuesday.

I don’t know what to do now. I am sweating profusely. I decide I need to leave. I want to cough. It’s sudden and
irresistible
. If I don’t do something with it I will splutter. I cover my mouth. I crouch down and turn to my left. I worry about the rat. Or, I think that I should be worried about the rat, but in fact I don’t care whether the rat is there or not. I cough. It is tiny. I know that it echoes in my head like a car crash and in fact it’s nothing like as loud as that. As it seems. My throat relaxes. But I need water. I really do.

There’s no talk. Silence. What are they doing? Are they likely to be armed? What does it matter? A wrench. A tyre iron. What is a tyre iron? There is clanging. Clanking. The first one is working still. The other one watching. I hope that is what is happening. I hope that they are not in fact moving slowly towards my hiding place, armed, carrying things. I stand up. My head spins a little and I see lights. One of them stays where it appeared.

It’s a small hole. To my right. My eyes have adjusted to it. It is a rip in the iron, at the crest of a wave, the tip of one of the corrugations has been punctured, the hole’s edges are a little frayed. If I put an eye to it will it look like an eye? I move a centimetre at a time to my right. I glance behind me. Nothing. I move some more.

– I was up at the sister’s at the weekend.

I freeze.

– Oh yeah? How’s she getting on then?

– She’s good. You know. Good.

I move a little more. The hole is tiny. Smaller than a penny. A bullet hole? It’s a bullet hole. I’m being stupid.

– Makes a change from the last place I’d say?

– What, Gibb’s Court? Different world mate. Different world. Kids don’t know what’s hit ’em.

– Oh yeah. How they like the new bloke?

I shift my head over the hole. I lean back from it. Slightly. I can’t see a bloody thing. I lean forward. There are colours. Metallic surface. A gap. Some movement. I stop. I’m looking at the side of a car. Or a van. The two men are to the right somewhere.

– They’re at that age, you know. Everyone is going to be, you know, viewed with suspicion. And he’s a fucking estate agent. You know. He’s all patter. They’re not used to it are they? Sally’s a quiet girl, always has been. So now they have this gobby bloke around all the time and I think if it was up to them, you know, on their own, they’d hate him.

I move my head closer. I can’t see them. The car, or the van, is blue. It gleams. I can see nothing to the left. To the right there’s this gap of light. They’re there somewhere. Further than I’d thought. Movement. I pull back. Relax. There’s
movement
. I don’t know what that is. An arm. A leg.

– But they have this thing for their mum, you know. Fierce loyal. Thick as thieves, the three of ’em. They want her happy. They’re protective. And he’s all right really. He’s no dope. He’s doing it right. You have to be honest, you know. Kids are smart. They’d spot the bullshit before their mother would.

You smell bullshit. You don’t spot it. You could I suppose. My nose touches the iron. It’s cold. It makes me jump. Not externally. Internally. Where I am. I’m seeing more blue. I imagine overalls. Blue overalls. I have no idea. Movement. In the gleam. In the blue of the van. Car. Van, I think. A
reflection
. I’m seeing a reflection of a movement. He’s, one of them, working on something. On another car. Van. A different one.

– So they put up with him. And he’s no fool. He’s not trying to win them over, you know. No taking them on trips or buying them presents or any of that. He’s taking his time.

– You’ve warmed to him.

– Have I?

– You hated him.

– I didn’t hate him. I just wasn’t sure. She’s my sister, you know. What she’s been through. I was …

– Alert.

– Alert, yeah.

He laughed.

– I was alert, all right.

I am learning nothing. This banal banter seems so completely unconnected to anything I know about that I wonder if it’s coded. Why would it be coded, you idiot? They’ve just drifted off into life. Nothing about Trainer. Not even a mention. Nothing to suggest they even know about Trainer. I take a step back. I account for all of my limbs, and I gently turn around.

The rat and the cat are sitting by the railings, looking at me.

I swear to God.

Suddenly my nose is running and I think it’s blood.

Can’t be blood. Why would it be blood?

They’re just sitting there, side by side, two cartoon
silhouettes
. The rat and the cat. Deep black against the grey railings and the envelopes of wood, their eyes like four bright ghosts – two small ones on the left, two slightly larger higher up on the right.

– You done?

I freeze. I’m already frozen. Nothing moves. Behind me there’s more clanging. The sound of a sliding door sliding shut, as on a van. There is the clanking of tools dropped in a toolbox. A cleared throat.

– That for Gull?

– Yeah.

Nothing else. They say nothing else. Gull. At least I heard Gull. Something for Gull. A package. Money perhaps. Drugs. The four eyes look at me. They don’t blink. They don’t move. Maybe they’re not eyes. What am I looking at? They are eyes.

Banging behind me.

Clanging.

Banging.

Lights go out somewhere.

The rat moves. He ducks his head. Sniffs the ground. His eyes swoop down and disappear. I see him moving. His body moving. The cat just sits there. I swear to God. Looking at me. Now the cat looks at the rat. Everything I see is a sludge of dark and darker patterns, shapes, movements. I might as well be in oil, underwater. The slightest shift of my gaze alters everything, so the rat is there, then there, and the cat is over there, or moved now, over there.

I hear the voices to my left. Quieter. Further away. More outside than inside. I hear the big doors, the metal doors, the double doors.

The cat looks back at me. The rat is at my feet. The rat is sniffing my feet. My shoes.

A slam. Slam. I jump. The rat jumps, runs off. Runs back to the cat. The door in the doors. The step-through. I hear fiddling with locks now. Chains.

Then. This. Noise close to me. Still on my left. Gate. The gate. The gate in the railings. It’s slammed shut. Shit. More chains, locks, keys. They’re locking the gate. They’re locking me in. The rat is beside the cat again. The cat hasn’t moved. Well they don’t, do they? I could step out. Hello. Crikey, how embarrassing. Could you just let me …? No? No. They’re at the car already. One of them is. Now there is a high-pitched squeaking, regular. The cat and the rat seem to stiffen. I look at them. They are painted black. Their eyes are buds. It’s the alarm. They’re putting on some sort of alarm. Damn it. There is one long beep to finish. Then a pause. Another car door opens. What if there are sensors? Movement sensors? Lights that come on? A car door slams. Another one closes. The engine starts up. The rat suddenly scampers off, as if to see them go. If there is a light … I press back into the doorway. The cat disappears. Its eyes go out. It’s not there. No light. The car rumbles, turning, and is louder for an instant, and then it quickly fades and a silence comes up out of the dark black ground where I cannot see my feet.

I want to blow my nose. I run my hand over it, and my hand is wet, with either snot or blood. Snot, obviously. I take a step. It will be like this for a while. I want to shit.

Traffic in the distance. Tyres. I think I can hear them go over that little bridge. That lovely little bridge. I can’t see any bloody cat, or rat. I look at the sky and it isn’t there. Everything is dark. The grey railings stutter through the black like tracks, and I follow them, my feet finding mud and pools and soft accumulations of God only knows, and getting out will make a mess of me, I know it. They will have such a puzzle, Child and his partner, if I die here, impaled on the triangular tops of the railings, my neck broken, my face chewed off. I shudder and swallow and look for a
handkerchief
. There’s a tissue in my coat pocket. I wipe and look at it and I can see nothing. The white of it seems just as blurred and grey as when I started. There is a light ahead of me
somewhere
, in the centre of the compound. Yes, compound is about right. Are there dogs? Jesus.

I miss you.

The gate is chained, padlocked. The railings are high. This gate. To the side of this building. Which is now alarmed. Which has a rat. If I get out of this I will still have to get out of the compound proper. The whole thing. Maybe …

I look behind me. The other end of this enclosure borders on the world. Only one set of railings. Then what? What is there? Waste ground. Brambles and trees. The rat. The rat and his brothers. The wolves. The wolves and their voices. Their eyes in the dark. I want to laugh. On the ground at my feet there is a tin can that’s been stamped on. A 7UP can. The dent has raised points in the aluminium. The light glints off them. Like eyes. I look back at where the cat was. There is nothing there now. The railings run into the darkness. Behind them on the left the dark wood of the cabin next door, like a prison camp. At the end, through the grey rack, is just
blackness
and bright dots like gaps or non-gaps, like absences, presences, and rustling and movement that could be there, or here in my head, which is where I am whatever I do and which appears to me now – look at it! – a fetid dark place full of shit.

I have never killed anyone in my life.

There were no dogs. No guards. No wolves.

I think my finger is broken.

My coat is torn in three places. It is smeared in mud and at least two different sorts of shit. My shoes are caked and scratched, and there are pebbles and gum and a bottle cap stuck to the heels.

On the bus a woman sat beside me and then moved.

There is a small cut on my forehead, and a rather larger one on my left cheek. I stand in the bathroom watching myself in the mirror as I take off my clothes. There is considerable bruising to my chest. There is a scrape across my back, which curls around my hip and plunges into my groin. The are patches of dirt in impossible places. And a surprising gash on my thigh with no corresponding tear in my trousers that I can see.

The chief sources of pain are my finger – the ring finger of my left hand – and my ankle, my right ankle, which is swollen. It’s a sprain I think. I went over on it when I landed –
immediately
after injuring my finger by almost leaving it behind, trapped between the spurs on the top of the fence.

I can see no reason for anything. Certainly not for any of this.

Trainer must have had exposed beams in his ceiling. Or a hook, or something like that.

Sitting on the bus all the liquids running out of me started to dry, and I was unsure which trickle was blood, and which was sweat, and whether I had pissed or shit myself. There is less to it than I felt there was and I am disappointed.