Mountains of the Moon (17 page)

John Nesbitt

“…
M
asai killed the black rhino and all of the lions to prevent that land from being designated as a National Park as well. Say, Lou, would you like a humbug?”

Vernon Pennsylvania USA is talking to me. Would I like a humbug? I would, to rid the taste. I sway forward to get one.

“Thanks, Vernon.”

Something for my nerves to suck on. I go back to my seat. This relentless never-never-ness, our eyes run off with glare. The afternoon sun is scorching in my lap. I close my eyes. Still see red.

I open my eyes. Vernon has left his seat to kneel nearer the front, where he can see the road ahead and talk to Isaac. Margaret is sitting alone. Something’s coming. A feeling, like a double bass bow string. I don’t know what it is, but it is…what? Going to be fine. Something is going to happen. Something always does.

“Margaret.” I move down the minibus to sit beside her. “Margaret. We’re going to the Masai Mara!”

Her small hand punches the air. Then life explodes beside the road, goes off, like flying sparks, like fireworks, like the greatest show on earth. They disappear.

“Very fine!” Isaac says. “Thomson’s gazelles! I have never before see so many-many together as this. Very fine!”

Come on, something, come on in, don’t be shy—pull up a chair.

Hello, Mum—Can I have a cup of tea?

Irene said he would need time. More time. I posted a letter in Nairobi yesterday to say I was here, in Africa.

I’m here, in Africa.

I said I was six thousand miles away, coming very slowly, overland. I think about where it might end. I think about where it began.

“Masai Mara,” Isaac says. “Only five more hours to go!”

C
an’t get the hang of his name: Mr. Mac-Kiddeley-Pullet-Something. Even got it written on the palm of my hand but it’s smudged with nerves. I just call him Mr. Mac and he thinks it’s a sign of affection.

“Explain it to me again.” He shoots at the basketball hoop fixed above the door. Nearly. The ball tips off the rim, drops and sends my crutches flying. I get the ball and hold it.

“You can no longer do your job?” he says.

I shake my head.

“Which was?” he says.

“Running around plowed fields like a nutter with a spade, digging sapling trees in and out of the ground.”

He has to close his eyes to see it. I try to make it vivid for him.

“It’s a winter mail-order business. I’ve got a team of part-time ladies that stay in the shed and pack them. I have to stay outside in the rain and put the orders together. We’ve got two hundred and fifty different makes of tree, in two foot, four foot and six foot sizes, spread out on seventy-six acres.” I wonder if to say on a slope. And all of the roots tangle around your legs. And some people order one of each.

“Go on.” He does a swirl in his chair.

“I have to carry heavy bundles of plants and shift big trees about. Spring, I run around all day with trolleys and unload lorryloads of plants and garden pots and statues and building sand and bales of compost.”

He opens one eye.

“Sounds to me like a penance.”

I close one eye.

“Well, Mr. Mac,” I says, “if I keep my nose to the grindstone it might improve my looks.”

Nothing. He starts chewing gum, even though he int got any.

“Actually, you look fit,” he says. “Like a powerhouse. Fighting fit.”

I wonder if to mind him I can’t actually walk.

“This second operation hasn’t repaired the damage?”

“I won’t know til this cast comes off.”

“I was wondering about that—the cast—nothing is broken, is it?”

It would help if he read the consultant’s notes.

“No,” I says. “It’s the severed nerves; they’ve tried to fix the motor nerve: the one that moves your foot up and down, the cast is to keep all the tendons stretched.”

“Are you in pain?”

“If I’d had a car last night I would have driven it into a chemist.”

“So, we’ve got Pain and Suffering. Expenses. Loss of Career and Income. I take it you’re single,” he says. “Remind me, how old are you?”

“Twenty,” I say.

He wants the ball. He int having the ball.

“Where is your file anyway?” he says. “What was your name again?”

“Beverley Woods,” I say. “W, double O, D, S.”

As solicitors go he’s brilliant, he’s just such a cunt at his job, that’s all. Can’t get these crutches level, odd pair, makes me look like a crippled cripple. I hobble through the market square, know he’s at his winder watching me. Don’t want him to see me drop the paperwork, case I has to crawl about on the pavement. And he says Negligence gainst the Cottage Hospital won’t stand up. They may well have treated the stab wound like a surface cut and stitched loads of grit inside, and sealed in the blood seeping from a nicked artery til my foot was the size of a fucking elephant’s but no medical practitioner will testify gainst another. Don’t know whether to spit or bawl my eyes out, too tired to concentrate on either. I fall down on a grassy bank by the river behind the abbey. Spring is sprung. The grass is riz and damp. Should be looking for another place to stay. I lie down. Wait for my heart to stop bashing, sun shattering through my eyelashes.

Makes me laugh. A white ball of fluff with a pink tongue comes, licks my eyelids inside out. Makes me laugh so rude, I grab the little maniac bundle and hold it up.

“Hello,” I says.

It squeals, hope it don’t piss.

“Panda!” a posh voice is yelling. “Panda. No!”

I squint sideways through sunlight; she’s wearing white pedal pushers and navy pumps. In training for summer.

“The idiot lead wouldn’t retract.” She sounds as clipped as box hedging.

Rapunzel I think cos of her hair, hanging forward over one shoulder in a long fat orange plait, magines yanking it, see if bells start ringing. She seems mused cos the puppy loves me.

“She’d be just the same if you were wearing your best clothes,” she says.

I wonder if to tell her.

“This is much more like it,” she says.

We look up, at blue sky through the blossom branches.

“Aren’t they pretty,” she says, “the cherry trees?”

These are almonds actually, but I nods all the same. She’s got a sailor shirt with stripes and rope bangles, handbag and everything. I sit up and put the puppy down sides me. It goes bonkers in circles trying to get my hand to stroke it, spreads and shuffles all of my paperwork.

“Watch she doesn’t—Oh dear,” she says, “it’s what they call a tinkle.”

“It’s what they call an eviction order.” I look at the piss on the paper. “Soaking in nicely,” I says.

“Oh dear?” She’s on a back foot, intrigued.

“Well, not sactly
eviction
. His Lordship has sold the manor, that’s all. It’s notice to get out of the Gate House, find somewhere else.”

The puppy shoves up under my jumper, comes out at the neck. Finds a mole under my chin needs especial cleaning.

“I’m trying to rent a house here myself,” she says. “Is there a weekly property paper? I need stabling for a horse as well.”

“The
Post
, tomorrow,” I says.

It is warm. I take my jumper off with the puppy still inside it. Dog laughs, loves me more.

“What’s its name?”

“Officially, at the Kennel Club she’s
Pandora’s Ice Star Galactica
but I call her Panda Bear, don’t I? Don’t I—nah?” she says. “So, pray tell, what is the highlight of this town?”

“Leaving it,” I try for a joke.

“Quite,” she says, little and wicked.

She looks at her watch.

“My car is parked on a double yellow. I’d better go.” She says, “I’m absolutely sick to death of getting parking tickets.”

“Bye,” I says.

She drags the puppy, it don’t want to go, like stubborn fluff. On the bridge by the abbey she picks it up, stuffs it under her arm. Can still hear it. Wailing. Terrible. The river is shallow and running fast with yellow ribbons of weed. Duck. Coot. Swan. Kennel? Never heard someone say the word: kennel.

Dog’s house. Pray fucking tell. Can smell witch hazel but there int one in sight. I breathe. I sit and sit by the river.

“Five more minutes, Mr. Nesbitt.” She squeaks way.

So close he is, over my face. His watch is ticking by my ear and his coat smells of roads. Crying, gain. One of his tears drops on my cheek and rolls down into my eye.

“Catherine,” Mr. Nesbitt says. “My princess, my girl.”

I move my head and pour the tear out from my eye, but stead it goes in my ear. Tickles. Makes me laugh.

Makes me laugh. Funny.

Int funny. Can’t stop.

Can’t stop.

“Nice and calm, nice and calm,” the fat nurse says. Her hands is mad as marshmallows. Makes me laugh.

Makes me laugh.

“Nice and calm,” Mr. Nesbitt says.

My policeman starts laughing. Int funny.

“Nice and calm!” He can’t stop laughing.

Mr. Nesbitt pats my policeman on the shoulder.

“Nice and calm,” he says.

My policeman laughs so hard his heels is up on the chair and tears is running down his face. Laughing, can’t stop. Makes me laugh. Int funny. I close one eye, leave the other two open.

“Don’t worry,” the fat nurse says, “it’s just the mushrooms in your mind.”

Int funny. Makes me laugh. Two men come long tending to be doctors. They stop at every bed; one splains it to the other, sounds like bah, bah, bah. The edges of my brain goes frilly.

“Bah,” one says to Mr. Nesbitt.

“Flygaric,” I says.

“Hello.” My policeman moves his chair out of the doctors’ way.

“Catherine Clark, hypothermia—critical, five times we lost her and got her bah-bah back.”

“Riley?”

“Exposure. Starvation. Dehydration. Frost-bah-bah bite.”

Other words whisper behind the curtain. Lions’ whiskers.

“Riley?”

“Loss of liver and kidney function. High measure of pst pst psilocybin in her bah-bah blood.”

“Riley?”

“She’s must be pretty trippy.” He smiles, cos happy to have a sheep’s head.

Makes me laugh. Int pretty. Int pretty.

“Back from the bah-bah brink, Catherine?” the doctor says. “Nice to see you’ve warmed up.”

They done mistakes. I int Catherine. I int warmed up.

“How are you feeling?” the other one arsts.

I has to close my eyes. Cabbige whites fly up. More whiter than green,
more greener than white. Can’t hold them or keep them, if you does they die. I has to go with them. I has to go now.

Blue is moving. Baby Grady finds me, I get his good surprise. Smell of sunshine and calamine lotion. I breathe his skin and feels his elbow in my ribs, got his chubby feets on my hips and his soft weight laid down on me. I know he’s smiling cos I get his little laugh and fingers squashing up my lips. Baby Grady. I open my eyes, spects his little button teefs. Blue starts spinning, I hears the screaming, makes me sick inside, I got the taste.

“I’d run, girly, if I were you.”

Nobody here. The bashing is so loud and so clear. I buries myself and breathes through a straw. A lion gets up on my bed, sniffs around my face. Int sure if there’s anyone here. The curtains move and more lions come under. My policeman tends he can’t even see them.

“I’d like to take a little more blood from you, Catherine, if that would be all right?”

I look in the lions’ eyes.

“Go on then,” I shout but they don’t. They take the lady from the next bed and drag her down the ward, she don’t say nothing, surprise made her heart stop. Mine stops all the time. I lay in a swirl and wait.

“Would it be all right, Catherine, to take a little more blood?” the Blood Lady says case I bite her.

I nod my head.

“Good girl,” she says but I int.

Blood won’t come out cos it’s froze, needle hurts with antifreeze going in my other arm. Starts crying don’t know how come. A man tending to be a vicar comes in holding up his dress, does the cancan at bottoms of beds, steps over the bits what the lions has left. I members what they done to Jesus, makes me chuck up sick.

“Nurse!” my policeman yells.

Curtains is whispering all the time. I hangs on a terrible pain.

I hangs.