See How They Run (16 page)

Lou kept quiet. The man wanted to have his say. Let him rant. Let him put the world to rights. That’s what old men did when they couldn’t chase women or carouse any more...

Lou regarded the man uncomprehendingly. His size and obvious power created a mesmeric forcefield around him. Lou had met only one man like him: a Russian cosmonaut, Colonel Alexander
Volkov, hero of the Soviet Union, who’d spent a
year circling the Earth in Mir when the USSR disintegrated, leaving him to watch from above, unable to return until someone at Star City paid the bills. He’d gone up a Soviet citizen and come down a
Russian. Lou had met him at a university party when
Volkov had been on a British tour, and like everyone else he’d been drugged by the man’s presence. As everyone had agreed later, Volkov’s mass had seemed different; he had his own forcefield, you could almost feel the magnetic rings pulsing around him.

The scene changed again as they sat there mutely. The dawn had established itself, but at the same time the atmosphere had become opaque and whispy. Soon they were sitting in a thick cool sea mist which muffled the world and erased the landscape below them.

‘Oh bloody hell,’ said Big M wearily. ‘Not the
sodding mists again. I thought they’d gone. I can’t stand the thought of walking around in skimmed milk for another year.’

The birds and the animals, which had just started
their morning chatter, fell silent again. Only the smash
and swash of the distant sea serrated the silence, threading in and out of their white linen world.

‘Look, a mouse,’ said Catrin. She didn’t fall into a panic, as she surely would have at home, thought Lou. Why was she different here?

The mouse was poised on the edge of a bale, sniffing the air, moving its uplifted head from side to side. Slowly, deftly, Big M moved his hand behind it and closed on it, then took it round for all to see. The mouse seemed unfazed; it sat in Big M’s massive paw, looking at them unseeingly with dark, clear little eyes, its whiskers tremulous and hyperactive.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ said Big M. ‘The harvest mouse,
Mycromys Minutus.
Makes a marvellous little ball of
woven grass high among the corn stalks for its
summer home.’

He turned it over gently and moved a finger aside,
to show them its white belly. The rest of it was
covered in a soft brown fur, tinted with russet.

‘It’ll take some of our seeds and store them in a winter larder underground. Isn’t it wonderful?’

They admired it, snug in his hand, apparently
unaware of its vulnerability.

Big M moved over to Lou’s bale and sat beside him. Lou felt a warm, solid form press against him but detected no menace. Looking sideways towards Big M, he noticed the mouse tattoo on his chest, under his shirt on the left pectoralis major; the trademark badge of the old Welsh rugby teams. It looked faded and mystical; a warrior’s scar, a man’s story etched on his skin. Lou felt a pang of nostalgia for this other man’s history; he heard the voices of a massed sepia crowd on the wind, and saw the blurred faces of his countrymen as they hurried in their thousands towards the field of battle. They were old or dead now, those people; their memories of Wales had seeped away into the past.

‘Open up,’ said Big M, unfurling Lou’s hand and transferring the mouse onto his palm before closing his fingers over the tiny body.

‘There,’ said Big M, ‘what does that feel like? You’re a god now Llwyd, you can do what you like with the mouse. Anything. You can kill it quickly, you can kill it slowly, or you can let it go. Up to you now Llwyd. Look how massive you are, how tiny it is. One movement from you and it’s dead. You can decide its fate Llwyd, you have the power of life or death over it. Decide!’

Lou sat on his bale in the mist, with the beautiful little mouse in his closed hand. Such a nice warm feeling. He raised and flipped his hand round so that he could look directly into its face; again, the mouse seemed unperturbed, or at least resigned to its fate.

Two little mouse eyes looked into his, and they stayed like that for a minute or so as Lou examined the face and the quivering whiskers, the implausible little mouth.

‘It’s the acrobat of the wheatfields, swinging through the corn stalks,’ said Big M. ‘It drinks from droplets of water on blades of grass. Such freedom. Such licence to roam and destroy our crops, but it takes only what it needs, Llwyd. It doesn’t destroy for fun. Only man does that on a regular basis. So do it, kill it if you feel like it. Break its neck and throw it into the hedge. You’re in control now Llwyd...’

Lou continued to look at the little face for a while, then he straightened his hand, lowered it to the ground, and opened it. The mouse stayed stock still for a few seconds, as if awaiting the rasp of the guillotine, then it vanished into the mist.

A round of gentle applause rippled behind Lou’s back, and he turned to see a group of about twelve people ringed around him. They were smiling, and a couple had glistening eyes.

‘There you are, Llwyd, now you know what it feels like to be a god. And you’ve learnt a lesson that all country children learnt in the old days – that the best feeling of all is to spare the mouse, to let it go,’ said Big M. ‘Don’t you think so, Llwyd?’

As he spoke, two figures came looming out of the mist, startling them. It took a few seconds for anyone to recognise them, because they weren’t expected, then Big M leapt to his feet, saying: ‘Pryderi! Rhiannon!’

Lou stayed silent, head bowed, his eyes still on the mouse’s path to liberation, as the people around him embraced each other, clasped hands, cried, all those things you do when you’re reunited with someone important to you after a long time. It was pretty emotional, figures moving in and out of the mist, throwing their arms around each other, filling the air with human feeling. They took a while to settle, then Big M introduced him to the assembly and told something of the story, beginning with the memory sticks and Lou’s quest for academic fame. He didn’t mention Lou’s attempt to eradicate Big M.

With an obliterating mist chalking out their
features, Lou was reminded of a school production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, in which he’d played the malign Puck; and here they were again at the play’s ending, with Big M as Oberon the king of the fairies reunited with his queen Titania in her bower deep in the forest. It was uncanny.

Then, Big M asked one of the group to take Lou
into one of the huts so that he could get himself
together and prepare for whatever he was going to do next. And what was that? Go home, presumably, thought Lou, though his mind was blank. He hadn’t a clue what might happen next. And he needed to know what Catrin was likely to do. Was she going to stay here? Should he insist that his wife accompany him home, with their unborn baby still inside her?
He’d never done alpha male before, and it was
probably too late now. They’d all laugh at him probably, so he’d have to beg her. But on the other hand he wasn’t all that bothered if she stayed. She seemed happy with these people, and he sensed that their marriage was effectively over. He’d find someone else in no time anyway. The Polish cleaner perhaps, she could live in the attic.

‘Show him my collection,’ said Big M as Lou was ushered away. This time he was taken behind the hut where he’d lain earlier, to the centre of the
settlement. He noticed that there were nine huts in all, grouped in threes: a sort of democratic round table of huts, since none was bigger or more prominent that the others. In the centre, however, there was a different structure: it was a tall square building, set on four stanchions so that the first floor was a good metre above the ground, leaving an open space underneath.

‘That’s to prevent the mice from getting in, and to allow a flow of air to dry the grain,’ said his guide, a young man of about twenty-five, dark and lean. ‘We were experimenting this year with native cereals – the first field you tried to destroy had einkorn in it, the second had spelt, so it looks like we’ll have to rely on emmer this winter.’

Lou mumbled an apology as they climbed a flight of steps to the first floor.

‘There’s a viewing area above, and this is where we keep the crop,’ he said, pointing to a pile of empty hessian sacks and a couple of full ones.

‘We’ll have to salvage what we can from the two furthest fields, you’re lucky that Big M is an easy-going guy, the rest of us wanted to kill you.’

Lou felt miserable, but remembered his mouse
deliverance and felt a bit better.

From the ceiling hung a festoonery of boots and shoes, including a couple of rugby boots.

‘Big M’s collection of footwear, it’s a bit of a joke among us. That’s the only place where they’re safe, away from the mice. But Big M likes to have his tootsies well covered, he likes a bit of style in his life.’

They heard a shout from outside, so they joined the rest. The mist was clearing quickly and the air around them was warming. Wafts of wheaty smells and hedgerow vapours began to flow on the air. The landscape below them was clearing, and they all seemed to be relieved.

‘Come into my hut Llwyd,’ said Big M. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

They went inside one of the buildings, just the two of them this time, and sat down on facing bales. It was nice in there, with bunches of herbs hanging from the rafters and a drift of flower petals, mainly rose, on the floor between them.

It was a homely kind of place, sweet smelling and comfortable, with a couple of exquisite rugs hanging on the walls. In the centre, between them, was a low wooden table which held a large bowl filled to overflowing with fruit. In between the apples and pears and plums, Lou could see objects glinting in the growing light. He watched them, and wondered what they were.

‘Memory sticks, Llwyd. Flash drives, whatever you want to call them. I think you know what they are,’ said Big M. ‘Take a closer look.’

He was sitting in his usual pose, with his feet
resting on the table. He had changed into a pair of brightly coloured moccasins.

Lou dropped to his knees and shuffled up to the bowl. He dipped his hands inside it and picked up some of the memory sticks. They were all identical, pearly white with the same silvery innards as the green, red and blue sticks which had led him such a merry dance. He piled them up in his left palm and played with them, then raised his eyes towards Big M, who said:

‘You tried to destroy me, Llwyd. Is that right?’

Lou returned his look.

‘I wasn’t really trying to destroy you, I was trying to kill off everybody else’s version of your life so that only mine was left.’

‘And then you’d get all the credit, right?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘Llwyd, you can murder people, you can kill them off, but you can’t kill off their stories. It’s impossible.’

Lou looked down at the memory sticks and wondered what was inside them. He had some sort of idea.

‘How many versions of my life do you think there are?’ asked Big M.

He answered his own question. ‘Dozens, hundreds, thousands... there’s a version of me for everyone I’ve met.’

Lou allowed the memory sticks in his hand to
cascade slowly back into the bowl.

This time it was Big M who dropped to his knees and shuffled to the table.

He fingered through them, picking fruit out of the way as he went, until he found one particular memory stick. He held it up to the light and grunted softly. Then he handed it to Lou.

‘That’s the one I like best. It’s the most complete. I wrote it myself, actually. Of course, it could be the least reliable of all the versions. You yourself will have to decide on that.’

Lou held it reverentially and stared at its inner
corridors. He imagined the treasures inside: the whole story, unexpurgated, warts and all. Big M’s mythologial childhood, his great rugby days, his life afterwards as celebrity cook, comedian, style guru, all-round nice guy. Big M, the great giver of gifts, had probably given him the most valuable gift of all.

‘You know Llwyd, it’s actually much easier to be laid back and pleasant. It takes so much less energy, and you don’t have to spend half your life looking for alibis or avoiding people. It really is better for everyone, and you get to enjoy life more. Why not give it a try?’

Big M was back in his familiar pose. He looked content, at ease with himself.

‘It’s yours if you want it, Llwyd.’

Lou’s head jerked upwards, shocked.

‘What, this?’

Lou held the memory stick in the air between them.

‘Yes, my life story, complete. You can have it. Use that stick to write the story yourself. You can claim unprecedented access, original sources, the story as never told before...’

Lou began to splutter, but Big M waved aside his protestations.

‘No Llwyd, don’t bother with all that stuff. Just
take it, do it. It’s my present to you, but on one
condition.’

Lou knew immediately what that was.

‘Of course Big M, I won’t destroy it, I won’t mess around any longer. I’ll play it straight, I promise.’