Jago (23 page)

* * *

Rivendell was a good place for Badmouth Ben, but they killed him just the same.

It was his bike. Someone opened the upholstery and pulled out the foam. Ben knew his authority was being symbolically defied, and took it seriously. When he was younger, he’d read paperbacks about Hitler and the Gestapo. He knew how important smart uniforms and imposing machines were to the potency of the Third Reich. Ordinary men couldn’t help but feel like shit when they compared themselves to the SS in their black and silver. It made the Nazis like gods.

From Gareth, he learned where there was a garage that could fit him a new seat cover. He left Chris and Gareth to take care of finding out who was responsible, and drove off immediately. It was about to turn cold. Though the sheepskin kept his torso warm, his extended arms froze.

On some dirt track between two hills that wasn’t even a road, his engine packed up and his bike went over. He skidded a couple of yards into the grass, and put his knee out. He got himself and the bike upright, and checked for damage. One of the flames was scraped off the petrol tank. It was still half full, but when he opened it he saw things floating inside. Lentils. Hippies wouldn’t let sugar within a mile of them. He swore, and kicked the ground with knee-length black boots. He couldn’t leave the bike here, and it would be hours to anywhere. When he got back, some people were going to get seriously damaged.

He took off his helmet and gloves, pain in the back of his neck. Two people on bicycles came round the hill. Wendy and Derek. Great. They could push the fucking bike.

‘Hey, you,’ he said, ‘give us a heave-ho.’

‘Got a problem, Ben?’ said Derek. ‘Let’s see.’

Ben realized the shit was going to go for him, and braced himself. Even with his knee out, he could put holes in Derek. But it was Wendy who lead-piped his head. He felt part of his skull go concave, and knew he was leaking. He went down, reaching for his head, probing for the places where the bone would give under his fingers. It started to hurt.

Wendy pushed the bike over on top of him, and his knee exploded again. Petrol slopped out of the uncapped tank and soaked into his jeans and sheepskin. Derek had a small jerrican strapped to the carrying basket of his bike. He gave it to Wendy, and she poured it out. It was like being pissed on by a petrol pump. The stream sloshed against the bike and over Ben. She made sure to pour the last of it out on his face. It got in his eyes, up his nose, into his mouth. He spluttered and shook his head.

Fat, with her head neatly shaved now, Wendy looked like a nutter Buddhist. She had a little box in her hands, a box of matches. The first three broke or went out before she could use them. The fourth didn’t. Flame grew along the splinter, almost to her fingers, before she dropped it. She stood back. The fire grew in a ring. The dead grass caught easily. Wendy and Derek went away, but Badmouth Ben had to stay. He was surprised dying took so long.

T
he sky was grey, but pregnant with a blinding blue that would come later. Up even earlier than usual, a good hour and a half before
Farming Today
came on Radio Four, Maskell walked across his lands. He wasn’t sure why he had bothered.

Bothered trying to sleep, bothered getting up.

The heat murdered his nights, making his bed a gritty sweat bath, keeping him wide awake beside Sue-Clare as she turned in shallow slumber. It ruined his waking routine, making most of the daily tasks of the farm redundant. His animals needed tending; the merciful attention you grant any dying thing, not the profit-minded nurturing he was used to. If the cows were not milked, their udders would distend and they’d be at risk of infection. But this summer’s milk was thin, bitter and unprofitable. Most of it was literally down the drain.

The earth was spongy with minuscule dew and rotting grass. The farm smelled like a stagnant lake. Maskell might have been walking through an alien landscape, the surface of Venus or a stretch of earthquake-raised seabed. He didn’t feel the sense of proprietorship that usually came when he prowled his land.

Insects buzzed louder than the beginnings of the dawn chorus. There were a lot of bugs this summer. Something was thriving. The last few weeks had been increasingly frustrating. Everything had been building up inside him, knots tightening. Usually Jethro walked with him on his early-morning tours of the property, but the dog had taken to hiding under his old blanket, abandoning his master. Even before sunrise, Maskell was sweating into his old check shirt. The knees and groin of his jeans were damp, and he could feel droplets trickling down his calves into his socks.

He saw a mound ahead, dun-coloured against gloom-grey grass. A cow, lying down. There was no doubt it was dead. Insects were already there, swarming around its yellow eye bulges. He walked over, stomach turning. White and red froth hung from the animal’s twisted mouth. Its hide was already stiff and stinking. Standing over the carcass, he looked around and saw other fly-buzzed mounds. At least seven. More than had been sick yesterday. He tried to think pounds and pence, but saw only useless meat. Flies licked the stickiness around his eyes, and he brushed them away.

If Danny Keough were here, the daft old buffer would be blaming hippies. Maskell would have to get these dead things shifted if this field were to be an overflow festival car park.

Last night, they’d tried to watch a James Bond film on video. Maskell had been unable to concentrate on the exploits of 007. Sue-Clare had embroidered fiercely throughout the picture, and he’d found the absurdly simple storyline impossible to follow. Scene followed scene without logic. People fell from incredible heights but were unhurt. He wondered if the video people had got the reels in the wrong order.

A rind of sun hit the horizon, and he was dazzled. The heat fell upon him like a heavy curtain. As the sun edged higher, light spilled across the farm. In the next field, Maskell saw a figure, standing with its back to him. It had long, tangled hair and an unmistakably feminine curve. Light broke around her and the shape shimmered, outline indistinct. He called, but she didn’t turn. She stretched out her arms like a scarecrow, as if bathing in the newborn sun. He assumed she was a Druid come early for the festival. He crossed a ditch bridge to the next field and looked for the woman. She was gone.

His fields were separated by ditches, not hedges. Locally, they were called rhynes. Even if the woman had left the field, she should be nearby. There was no cover. He walked to the middle of the field, where he was sure the woman had been, and found a circle of bare earth. There were no footprints in the soft soil.

Tired, he slumped to his knees. The heat was pounding down seriously. Maskell settled on the ground, letting his bottom sink to his heels, throwing his head back, presenting his throat to the sun. He felt the earth shifting slightly beneath him. He was precisely in the centre of his estate. One of Sue-Clare’s crystal-worshipping friends claimed there was a confluence of ley lines here. He wondered if the stirrings he felt were related to the invisible courses of power in which he’d never believed. He shut his eyes and watched light traces darting in the darkness, imagining the woman he’d seen hiding behind the glowing squiggles.

The sunlight on his face and chest sank in, carried throughout his body by sluggish blood. Quiet heat seeped up from the earth into his legs and blossomed inside him. He was the focus of the field, receiving the feelings of the wounded land. Warmth filled out his penis, and an erection strained his jeans.

Last night, infuriatingly, he hadn’t been able to manage. Sue-Clare had worked on him with her hands and mouth for minutes, but nothing had happened. She’d been decent about it, and gone to sleep leaving him hot, flaccid and awake, balls tingling uncomfortably. He’d been furious with himself, and lain with hard-clenched fists and clenched teeth, cursing everything, knot tightening.

He sat up and unzipped his fly, letting his swollen knob out. He waved flies away from his erection. His vision was blurring, grey blobs circling. Painfully hard now, he grit his teeth as his glans threatened to rupture, skin stretched tight.

His father had farmed this land, but before him the family had no history in Somerset. The Major simply made a shrewd investment after the war, and capitalized on the hungry 1950s. Others in the village had ties to the earth that went back for ever. The churchyard was full of Starkeys, Gilpins and Shepherds, with only a tidy corner plot for a couple of Maskells, his parents. But, apart from the Agapemone, his was the largest estate around Alder. He had the most to lose as the land died. He was charged with responsibility for it.

His head swam, and the earth rose all around him, closing over him like a fist. It was rancid and rotting. For a moment, he was panicked, afraid he wouldn’t be able to breathe, but the movements settled. He was all right, cocooned in a thin shell of dirt that caressed and cared for him. Clods shaped like lips kissed him, and a tongue of twigs forced itself into his throat, scratching avidly inside his mouth. Pebbles like fingertips gently raked his back, loosening his clothes. He rolled over and stretched, breaking the surface, and held his head up out of the loose, grasssmelling, earth. The land was roiling beneath him, pushing and sucking, cajoling and scolding.

He made love to his land, knob ploughing into a barely moist cleft, arms sunk up to the elbows in the brown mulch. Flies gathered around him, coating his back, filling his hair. He ate dirt, swallowing rich, gravelly mouthfuls. He pressed his face to the ground and, eyes shut, pushed into the earth. He was joined permanently with his land, knob deeply rooted, aching balls planted like vegetables. His genitals sprouted, sending out tubers under the earth. They sought the fertile spots, the tasty eggs that remained despite the death. He felt his entire farm as if it were his body.

The land loved him, and whispered to him. The land was a woman,
the
woman. It told him what he must do. She had old knowledge for him. The future was failing the land, so he must turn to the past. He understood her and responded. He pumped faster, straining his hips, torn skin leaking. Twigs scratched his sides, and he grunted like a rutting hog. He shoved at the earth with the heels of his hands, slapping it with his pelvis, stabbing deep with his knob. He felt himself coming, first in the soles of his feet, then in his ankles, then in his knees. The earth cracked apart beneath him. His knob-end burned like a dying star, and thick, creamy milk gushed from him, seeping into the dirt. Maskell fertilized his fields.

T
here were hands on her body, gently massaging. Her eyelids, still shut by sleep, moved but didn’t open. The hands moved slowly, heavy and warm. She felt as if she were floating in syrup. She was losing sensation. All she could feel were the hands. They were large but soft. They stroked her hair, brushing out her tangles. They swept over her face, smoothing away her features. It would be easy to lie as she was for ever. Lie, and let it all come to her.

She felt a kiss on her forehead. Cool lips thrilling. The hands shaped her clay, wiping her face into a smooth mask. Her eyelids were thumb-erased, burying her eyes. She was in the dark, but it was a comforting dark. Her nostrils closed, and her mouth was kneaded back into clay. She didn’t feel the need to breathe.

Gradually, the hands reshaped her face, pulling out a new, longer nose, pinching more generous lips, opening more widely spaced eyes. Fingers eased open her mouth and gripped her foreteeth, forcing them apart, then back into place, overlap gone. She was being changed, but the changes were not just in her face. Her spine stretched as her ankles were pulled, the vertebrae swelling as she became taller, knees popping as her legs elongated. Her stomach drew in taut and her breasts grew heavier. She felt stronger, and flexed her newly soft, newly supple fingers.

Still, her eyes were sleep-glued. She began to hear sounds. There was something that might have been the crash of distant surf, or the dulled noise of an audience applauding. Perhaps seabirds squawking. As a little girl, she’d loved the seaside. Then her parents had moved there and spoiled it. There was nothing drabber than Brighton when the beaches were cold and empty, the sky a wedge of grey through double glazing.

The touch that reshaped her wasn’t a disembodied thing. When the fingers were doing close work, delicately pushing up her cheekbones, she could feel an arm pressing against her. The hands were a man’s. She felt short, stiff hairs on his forearms. Her skin goose-pimpled at their brush.

How was she being changed inside herself? Would she wake up more intelligent, a better potter, a stronger person? The hands Loved her. The hands were not Paul’s. Not any of her old boyfriends’. The hands were new. The touch was withdrawn. She lay, desolate, alone. Then, fingertips pressed below her ribs, reaching into her, sharply cold like icicles…

* * *

Hazel sat up on the couch in the front room, sleeping bag falling away, the memory of the dream fingers still shivering in her chest. She was sweat-filmed, heart rapping like a knuckle against a door.

Somewhere near, people were chattering. She was in herself again. She felt her face, the same. She slipped a finger into her mouth, rubbing the overlap between her front teeth. She wasn’t disappointed, really.

She’d gone to sleep late, several teas after brushing her teeth, and her mouth felt scummy. She’d pulled off her boots and jeans, and slept in knickers, socks and a T-shirt. Her head throbbed, but she knew she’d not been drinking last night. Well, one glass of wine with dinner.

She ran through the whole thing, fast-forwarding, from dinner till bed. Going upstairs with Paul, the smoke over the hill, Paul dashing up into the dark, the fire brigade, Susan Ames, people, noise, damage, tea, Dr Sweet, Paul hurt, more people, exhaustion, putting Paul to bed, making do on the sofa…

She stood up and wriggled from the sleeping bag. It fell around her ankles like a soggy chrysalis. The front room, gloomily orange-lit through the roller blind, was a mess. There were mugs, half-full of cold tea with floating milk clots, clustered on the coffee table, brown rings on the bright faces of girls on magazines. The doctor, and some of the firemen, had smoked, and the ashtrays were full of butts, the stink of stale tobacco hanging in the air. She’d have to clean up. At some point someone had turned on the television, and the news was droning. A government spokesman was arguing with a weather man in front of a rainfall chart, refusing to implement emergency measures. She turned the set off. The house was suddenly quiet.