My Life as a Man (14 page)

It came from the nearest building: a wail, a gasp, mingled into one sound. It was unlike anything I’d heard before, but I knew at once what it was: a child distressed at being trapped in
the barn, and I knew he’d been there so long that he was exhausted and giving up hope. Moved by the thought, I went and pulled the sagging door. Held by the ground, it resisted and then gave
suddenly. As it jerked towards me, I had an image of the child crouching behind it, so that as I stepped inside I was looking down at the floor. Nothing there but dust and straw.

My first impression was of a couple embracing. Then the man stepped back, turning towards me, and I saw something hung behind him bound and struggling for its life. The barn was unlit, its dim
air streaked with light from gaps in the walls.

‘Yes?’

I saw that he was holding a knife.

‘I heard a noise.’

‘Not much of a one,’ he said. ‘It’s tired. It’s hung there for too long.’

The pig hung upside down. Blood from its throat was coming out with a sucking sound and dripping into a bucket on the floor. I wondered how long ‘too long’ was.

‘I’m sorry. It was your notice. We saw it and turned in.’

‘I heard you.’

‘But I can see the van isn’t in use.’

‘What brought you up here? I can’t think of a reason.’

‘We saw your other notice.’ And when he said nothing, I explained, ‘The one on the road down below, by the farm gate.’

‘You can still read it? I don’t even see it’s there any more.’ He wiped the knife on a piece of rag. ‘Nobody ever came.’

I wanted to be outside in the open air. There was a heavy, greasy smell which might have been the pig or its shit, and under that a sweet nastiness, which I got into my head was the smell of its
blood. Muttering some kind of an apology, I backed towards the door.

Outside, I filled my lungs. I stared at the closed door behind which Mrs Morton had disappeared. I even went and peered into the car to check she hadn’t come back, which was stupid since
from where I was I could see perfectly well she wasn’t there.

I didn’t hear the door of the house opening but I heard it close. Beside me the man had come out of the barn and was watching Mrs Morton where she stood on the step with a tray in her
hands. He’d moved quietly for such a big man, six foot, not much bigger than my height, but he’d have made two of me, beef to the heels and a neck to match. He had a round face that at
first glance looked placid. The eyes, though, seemed somehow too large, bright and blue.

Mrs Morton called to him, ‘Your wife said it would be all right if we ate outside. She said there’s a nice place along by the stream.’

‘You paid for the food.’

She answered as if it had been a question, though it hadn’t been. ‘Oh, yes, I paid for the sandwiches.’

‘You can eat it wherever you want, then,’ he said and went back inside.

Walking ahead of me on the path, she glanced back at the tray I was carrying and said, ‘She made them on egg and honey. They’re rather doorsteppy, the slices. And I’m not
entirely sure her hands were clean.’

We followed the directions she’d been given. Going between the house and one of the barns took us to a path that went through a line of trees and along by a stream. At one point it was
like sand under our feet, which seemed strange since we were nowhere near the sea. The stream was too wide to jump and the water ran quickly – even a fallen tree didn’t slow it. The
tree lay in the water and long strands of grass had woven themselves through its bare branches. The water had to make its way tight to the bank and slip past, but on the other side it ran as fast
as ever, swirling round rocks and over lines of stones, each miniature waterfall filling the air with chimes. All I wanted was to eat, but she kept on until she found a place to sit on a bank above
a pool.

‘Mugs with lids,’ she said. I thought she was complaining, which would have been a bit much considering I’d had the discomfort of carrying it all. ‘They must have bought
them specially,’ and she smiled. I gave her one and opened the other. She took a sip and exchanged them. ‘Yours has sugar.’ The tea was strong and sweet. There were four pieces of
bread. Two slices with the sliced egg between, cut into neat quarters; the other two coated in honey. All of it arranged on a plate. Mrs Morton took a bite, and then licked her fingers.

‘The bread’s cut too thick. But the honey’s good. Local, maybe.’

‘They might have their own hives.’

‘I suppose. Honey from last summer.’

‘Why last summer?’

She looked at me. ‘Too early for flowers and pollen.’

I stopped myself asking what pollen had to do with it. In fact, I knew. Born and brought up in the city, though, it was easy to identify food with the label on the jar or tin and forget how it
got there. Like the playground joke: it can’t be easy squirting the milk into the bottle.

‘You’re right about the bread,’ I said. It was hard talking with a great wad of it in my jaws. She had put her sandwich down again with only a tiny nibble out of one
corner.

I thought of asking if she felt unwell still, but she spoke before I could organise the words. ‘Perhaps she bakes it herself,’ she said.

‘I like shop bread. A pan loaf out of the Co.’

But she was busy with her own thoughts. ‘Hidden away here, just the two of them. You’d have to get on well together.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with shop bread.’

‘I don’t think I said there was.’ The angle of the sun threw leaf shadows that scattered like patterns on a carpet across the grass. There wasn’t a breath of wind. The
stream dropped like a twist of rope into the pool. The noise of the water and a bird singing somewhere only made it seem quieter. It should have been worth the walk. ‘It’s not something
I have any opinion on.’

‘You don’t bake yours?’ For a moment she’d looked relaxed, and I’d spoiled it but couldn’t stop myself. But where did she get her bread? Where else but a
fucking shop?

It was as if I’d forced her awake; only that wasn’t it, she hadn’t been in a dream, just letting her mind run on idly. A look of disgust contorted her face. She didn’t
like my tone. She didn’t like being forced awake.

‘A loaf from the Co,’ she repeated. ‘Two thick slices, eh? With chips. Or one of those flat sausages. Plenty of grease. A nice Sunday-morning
greasy
sandwich.’

I got up and started to take off my clothes.

From the minute I began, I didn’t look at her and she didn’t say anything, so I couldn’t guess what she thought was going on, though as I folded my trousers and laid them
tidily beside my shoes, socks tucked inside, it occurred to me she might have been expecting something like this all along. Wasn’t that what women were usually kidnapped for?

I was down to my underpants when something else occurred to me. Sleeping rough. Toilet paper wasn’t there when you needed it. White underpants.

I fled from her, down the bank at a run and jumped into the pool.

The sun was warm on my shoulders when I came up out of the icy coldness of the water. It was one of those days that sneak up on you and you realise summer’s going to come round again, same
as every other year. Four long pulls took me to where the last twigs of a drooping branch scratched the back of my head like fingers. I’d learned to swim in the baths at Maryhill, where the
pool was heated; I’d never been in water as cold as this. Pride alone stopped me climbing out at once.

Swimming back across, I threw up my arms without warning and went under. It was deep and I went straight down, deeper than I’d expected so that I came up gasping for breath, but waved both
hands in the air and let myself go down again like a stone. Same daft game as often when the class was taken to Maryhill baths, old Sammy yelling at us from the edge. Down until my toes sank into
soft mud which wouldn’t let go until I kicked up out of it, and overhead the water exploded and a dark cloud spun like a leaf down through its boiling whiteness towards me.

In the end it wouldn’t have been easy to tell which of us rescued the other. I lay on my back watching the clouds go by and listened to her breathing until it slowed.

When she sat up, the wet dress stuck to her so that you could see the mound of flesh between her legs.

‘You were under for a long time,’ she said. ‘I thought you weren’t going to come up.’

The sun had gone behind clouds as we lay there, and as we walked back she began to shudder, though it wasn’t all that cold. There wasn’t anything to do but ask at the house if she
could dry her clothes before we went on.

Inside, the house wasn’t what I’d expected. For one thing it wasn’t dark and for another it wasn’t poverty-stricken. There was a pine table, the kind of table you might
see in a picture of a farm kitchen in a magazine, and the whole room was like that, a place for cooking and eating and just sitting around. I thought at first there wasn’t a wireless, but
there was, tucked away on a small table beside one of two armchairs set facing each other on either side of the fireplace. It was true not much light came through the little windows, one at the
front, one at the back behind the sink, but it was getting late anyway by this time and the woman had lit the lamps – oil lamps, she told me later – three of them, each with a tall,
clear flame. And there was a fire, logs of wood smouldering in a grate. Mrs Morton was sitting at one side of it in a coat I suppose the woman had given her and with a blanket round her
shoulders.

‘You’ve had a fright,’ the woman said to her. ‘You should lie down and rest while your clothes are drying.’

That seemed to me a very bad idea. She could sleep in the car. All we’d asked was a chance to dry her clothes. Hang them in front of the fire, then; it couldn’t take that long.
Knickers and all – wouldn’t bother me.

‘Your clothes won’t be dry until the morning,’ the woman said.

They were flapping from a line I could see through the rear window.

‘I have others,’ Mrs Morton said, ‘in my case. If you could give me somewhere to change.’

Her voice alarmed me. It was so faint you had to strain to hear it, even in that small room. I went and fetched the big case from the boot of the car. The woman led the way up a narrow length of
stairs to where two doors faced each other across a tiny landing. I left the case in the room on the right, putting it just inside the door so that I had only a confused impression of a little room
with a sloped roof and a skylight. Then I went down and waited while she took Mrs Morton upstairs. After a while, she came back and said, ‘Your mother changed her mind. I made up a bed for
her and she’s lying down.’

‘For how long?’

She looked at me. Maybe she’d expected me to sound like a worried son. Then she said, ‘I don’t think she’s very well.’

The man didn’t look any better pleased than I was when his wife told him we’d have to stay the night. He’d been coming in and out, bringing in logs for the fire, standing
about, not saying anything. He actually shook his head at her, the lean woman, who was tall, too, though thin as a rail, but there was nothing he or I could do. The thing was, once Mrs Morton had
agreed to lie down, she slept. Slept until it was taken for granted by the woman we’d no choice but to stay for the night. That decided, she fed me at the table with the man, a silent meal
since he said nothing. She made eggs again and served them with slices of cold ham. The ham was amazing, thick and full of juice, but after what I’d seen in the barn I had no appetite for
it.

When we were finished, the man got up and settled in his chair to read a book by the light of the lamp. When the woman sat opposite me and made her meal, I stayed at the table because I
didn’t know what else to do. It cost her so much effort when I tried to make some kind of conversation, I gave up and sat with my chin on my hand watching her eat. In the glow of the lamps,
her face looked soft and round, and in fact she wasn’t so old, thirty, I decided, or even in her late twenties, and he might be half a dozen years older. By the time she’d finished,
light was fading from the little windows and I was wondering where I would sleep. I knew there were two rooms upstairs; Mrs Morton was in one, so I supposed the other must be the one they used;
and, downstairs, there was only this room.

When she went out, I thought she might have gone to bed, leaving me at the table. She came back, though, with blankets and a pillow gathered up in her arms, and made up a bed on a couch in the
wall recess opposite the fire. All this time, the man read on, never raising his eyes from his book. Finished at the couch, the woman paused at the door to assure me my mother was sleeping
comfortably. It seemed likely from her tone that she, too, was off to bed. When I was sure she wasn’t going to come back, I took off my shirt and trousers and lay down. As soon as I did, even
though I couldn’t stretch right out, every muscle in my body sagged as if I’d collapsed at the end of a race. Yet I was tense, too, and lay with my eyes slit watching the shadow of the
reader on the wall. Then I was falling, tumbling through the air with outspread arms, and started awake to see him turning off two of the lamps and go out carrying the third.

In the middle of the night I woke up soaked in sweat, and staying the night didn’t seem just a bad idea, it seemed a terrible idea. Mrs Morton had bribed the landlady in Aberdeen to find
out where my mother lived; last night we’d paid for the room in the boarding house; we’d used up coins to pay for the tea and the egg and honey sandwiches we’d snacked on by the
pool. I had no idea how much money we had left and now we’d taken a night’s lodgings without asking how much it would cost. I lay worrying about money and watching the last sullen glow
of the fire until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I found my clothes by touch and memory and pulled them on. In the lobby, the outside door opened at a touch.

It was hot and still in the yard, hotter outside than in, with clouds so low I reached up a hand as if to touch them. At the first step, I walked into a bucket that rapped against my shin, fell
over and rolled away. I could just make out the shape of the car against the barn on the other side of the yard. It seemed a long time since I’d fetched in the big case.