The Beautiful Indifference (3 page)

I hated all the passages up to the city; that eerie twenty-five-minute slew. Something always seemed to be at our backs along there. These were the original badlands you were taught in school, if you didn’t already know. You wouldn’t want to linger. You wouldn’t want to be caught alone, moving slow and obvious in the lowland. This was where the raiders met, coming south or north. This was burnt-farm, red-river, raping territory. A landscape of torn skirts and hacked throats, where roofs were oiled and fired, and haylofts were used to kipper children. And if you rolled down the window you could just about hear it – the alarms and crackling flames, women split open and screaming as their menfolk choked on sinew pushed down their gullets. The houses in the Borders, if they weren’t fortified, were temporary, made of spit and cattle shit and wattle, easy to dismantle, because when the reivers came you either held fast behind eight hewn feet of rock, or you packed up and ran.

The van leaned hard round chicanes, forcing my cheekbone harder to the glass, with Aaron singing away to the Roses. Manda seemed fearless on the ride. She seemed to trust the run of things. But I imagined terrible events – wrecks and busted spleens. Adrenalin cleaved my brain wide open, and the giversum old county clambered in. It was said by trainers that up here the gentlest horse could nostril the smoulder of years gone by, taste clinker and burnt skin on the haunted vaults, and it might rear and toss its rider. And for all the Roman straightness, cars would often overturn. There were countless places where wreaths were laid. Even my dad, usually sedate behind the wheel, leaned hard on the accelerator with his mucky welly through these stretches, not checking the rear-view mirror. He’d fail to indicate when moving lanes; swerve hard as the Land Rover was swiped by gusts from the Pennines. Long-distance drivers, returning home to London and Birmingham, Stafford and Manchester, would often find franked letters from the Cumbrian Police, with points for their licence and a hefty fine, and they couldn’t quite fathom why they were clocked going over ninety.

On several occasions Aaron Slessor almost killed us driving to Carlisle, and on every one I hated him a bit more. He kept the music loud and ignored us, except for the odd glance at my legs now and then. He went after hares on the tarmac, terrorised other motorists by sitting on their bumper until they moved out of his way. He’d take the back road along the moors, by the Caldew river, brackish as old copper, because it was straight and hummocked and he could try to get all four wheels of the van off the ground. He dropped me home late after each trip, where my dad would be asleep on the sofa with the telly turned low. Aaron didn’t complain about ferrying me to and fro, he seemed just to like the drive, the fords and hairpins through the villages. Once or twice he’d ask for a kiss as I was getting out and I’d shove him back and say get lost.

You’re pretty enough to lick out, he’d say. Stop being spooky.

At nineteen he was the youngest of the Slessor lads, and he’d an almighty chip on his shoulder about that, a desire to be the belted champion in the family. Geordie never got weak enough in his later years not to batter him. If anything he brayed him all the harder – the old family bull recognising his fighting days were close to over. That his youngest son took less interest in the horses than the others, while driving the Heltondales tighter on each racecourse’s slalom, riled him no end.

Gudfernobbut twat, he called his son. Runty mutt. You’ll amount to fuck all in this life, except laying rugs round fucking bogs.

Amateur brawlers from the town sought Aaron out, because it was said that to beat him in a fight was to take title over the town. He’d left school not a day after hitching sixteen, and started work at the carpet outlet. He was a looker, with the royal swagger of his old man. I’d seen him go to work on a lass. He had the ability to cut through what little pride she had, to strip her of common sense and condition her to waiting by the phone, waiting outside a pub in the rain, waiting for the characteristic bastard’s alba a few weeks later when he’d got bored – telling her she had a dry quim, old biddy skin, fat belly, or spots on her arse, and that’s why he no longer fancied her.

Nor was he discreet about his conquests. The details of them – the gasps, the games and sexual proclivities – were the chatter of the town for weeks after. How it had been in a horse-trailer and she’d knelt in fresh shit to suck him off. How he’d had her right after her sister in the same evening, a double-dipper. So that his circle of friends had the knowledge of any of his exes they needed before asking them out. And Aaron would occasionally revisit them, Friday nights, if something interested him enough in a bare leg or split skirt, a new look, a haircut. And they’d let him.

It wasn’t common that I stayed home. They liked company, the Slessors. They liked having noise and new faces about them. I never felt unwelcome. But the summer after I got to know Manda my father started to notice me being gone. And he said it was a shame, him losing my mam and now me. The guilt made me hang around for most of the holidays, even though he was out rounding and clipping all day, the house was too chill for the season and it made me fidgety. In the mornings I’d phone up Manda, or she’d phone me.

Oh bugger, Kathleen, can’t you come in? she’d say. I’m lonely. I’m going to get some new lippy. Fine, alright, ta-rah.

Then I’d go walking along a scrubby lonning in the village and up the Scar, knowing she’d soon be off into town, having a good time with someone else. From the summit I could see the beacon in the distance, trains dribbling down the main line, and the ponds of the trout fishery glimmering. On the way home I’d pass by a dilapidated farm, littered with rusting metal-seated tractors, derricks and machinery, tarpaulin strewn about in the yard. The owner of the place was a rare bastard. He could be heard in the evening yelling obscenities at his dogs and throwing their bowls at them. There’d be howls and yips and yelps. He had any number of hounds and collies, all rangy and greasy, and half-mad with the frustration you see in workers not put to the flocks.

The farm lay just past a dolt of brambles; I’d pass it after coming through the thorny lane, unsnagging my jeans with a twist of the hips every other step, my arms held overhead. It smelled of Swarfega and slurry, dirt and iron, and something sick, like industry and arable wrongly mixed. The man was known in our village for his bad treatment of animals, though he didn’t keep many past the dogs, a handful of bantams, and the occasional pony or scabby penned-in pig. No one reported him to the RSPCA, for doubtless then they’d have to look into their own barns.

But one morning, near the holiday’s end, I was walking past the farm’s corrugated shed and I noticed the door was open. Usually it was shut and chained, with a thick trestle leaning against it. A dead horse was lying on the ground between the metal cattle chocks. The ground was slick yellow-brown, like concrete covered in piss and diarrhoea. I stepped closer, in under the gable, and a stink rose.

A shaft of sunlight lit the horse’s body. The thing was a mess, shorn of its coat, with sores under its legs and keds crawling all over it. Its ribcage angled up through its flesh like the frame of a boat being dismantled. It had not stood for a long time for its hooves had twisted into thick discoloured spirals, like the nails of a Chinese emperor. For a moment I stood, stupidly looking at the creature. My brain began to flurry. It had not stood for a long time. It had lived on the floor; its hooves not wearing down from grazing and cantering like a properly upright creature. It had lived as it starved.

I took another step in and the horse snorted and moved. It lifted its head and rump together, tamping its torso down on the ground as if meaning to get up, and as it struggled its hooves clicked together and scraped on the floor like flints. It snorted out a pink foam that was lathered in its nostrils, and dragged its back legs again. Click-click. Then it was still.

I cast my eyes around for a pot of water, a blanket, some feed, and saw nothing of any use or comfort. I knew the farmer might be in the bothy, or bent in a shadow nearby, for the shed door would not have been open otherwise, but I couldn’t see him. The horse lay unmoving again, as good as gone.

It’s alright, girl, I whispered, to myself, or to the animal, I wasn’t sure which.

Then I walked away. And then I ran.

With every stride, gall rose in me against the man. A dead horse I could have taken. I’d seen much worse – lambs stumbling on the howse, their eyes and arseholes pecked out by the crows; hinds and heads stacked up inside the abattoir. A dead horse was not a problem. But I couldn’t stomach a foully living one. My heart harried my blood as I ran. I pulled myself on through the blackthorn, tearing my arms off the burrs without untangling them. My mouth seemed filled with salt and seeds and pellets, though I tried again and again to spit them out along the path.

This farmer had driven one wife to alcohol, Valium and public breakdowns, and finally a bathtub overdose, it was said. The second had died after falling into the silo. Neglect. Suicide, maybe. But a patient killing in a reeking shed? No. A wife could up and walk away. She wasn’t starved. Her feet weren’t bound. This rotted, lying-down horse was worse than anything I’d known. It was something from a middle-forest fairytale, where the dark branches lift and in a clearing is Knife-Hand Nick, his children’s heads bubbling in a pot above the fire. It was like meeting Nelly Wood in your dreams, when she stitches your skin to the hem of her cloak and flies away, dragging your pelt behind her, so in the morning you wake up flayed.

I stopped in the briar and leaned over and was sick.

By the time I got back to the village I was patch-worked with bramble gashes, and blood was dripping off my elbows. In my head I could still hear the skeltering hooves, scraping and clicking and scraping on the ground. I thought I’d go to the top field and tell my dad to fetch the vet. I thought I’d go into the house, take the shotgun from its rack above the mantel and kill the horse myself, or kill the man, or kill them both. But, like a reprieve, the blue Slessor van was parked outside the Fox and Pheasant, by the village green, and I saw Aaron climbing back inside from a delivery, or a pint, whatever reason he’d been there. He rolled the window down as I walked up.

Now then, Kathleen. What have you done to yourself, you daft tuss? he asked, looking me over.

Nothing. Just come with me, will you? I said, and he laughed.

Aye, aye.

It’s not a joke, Aaron. Come with me now.

He tucked his bottom lip under his teeth and had me stand there against the blue bore of his eyes. Then he opened the door and climbed down out of the van. Maybe he came for curiosity about the blood on my arms, already drying in black gobs from the summer heat. Or for the chance his sister’s friend would let him move her knickers to one side, like he’d been after for weeks. Or maybe it was my tone, the bite of it, for I’d never spoken so assuredly to him before. Any other day I’d have been ignored, or he’d have flustered me with a tease. But he followed me through the ginnel, calling me a dippy bint, complaining he’d torn his shirt on the briar, and saying it better be worth it.

When we got to the corrugated shed the door was closed up and trestle-jammed again.

Give us a hand shifting this.

Dirty little spot you’ve got in mind, he said. You’re a surprise, girlie.

I was shaking as we moved the timber, and breathing hard. He must have thought I’d become a lunatic, some lusty version of the girl he’d seen knocking about his house so many times. When I pulled the metal latch off its snick he put his hand on my back and gripped my vest into a ball of cloth, untucking it from my jeans. He stepped in close behind me and held my hips. I pulled open the door. The sun had moved over and it was dark inside, all spooled with shadow. The smell was throaty and rank, like something from a tannery, or a dog pound before the cages are hosed.

There, I said, as soft as I could. Can you see it?

Oh, in a minute you know I will.

He pulled me back harder against him, one arm belted across my stomach, one hand at the zip of my jeans. There was a pause. In my ear I heard a grating sound, like a piece of machinery slipping its driving gear. Aaron let go. He stepped round in front of me. Then he turned and drove me backwards out of the building, his palm splayed on my breastbone, pressing my nipple in painfully. I tripped on the concrete slab behind and went down.

Fuck off. Right now.

I looked up and he was standing above, pointing, his face in a twist, looking kiltered as if to hit me.

Fuck off home, Kathleen. It’s not your business, this. It’s not your concern.

Get. The fuck. Away, he said. Go on! Now! The muscle in his arm jumped.

I stood and stumbled off, thinking myself so horribly soft-minded, and only then did I feel my eyes begin to speckle and sting. I waited for him inside our cottage, with my cheek on the cold larder wall. I waited. But he didn’t come. When I looked out of the upstairs window the carpet van had gone.

The next week I heard nothing at all from Manda. When I phoned the house Vivian said she was out and she said it in a tone that made me not inclined to ask anything else. Manda never phoned back. I stayed indoors. When I walked it was in the opposite direction to the farm.

The summer went on, and then it ended. By then I was sure they all must have taken against me for what had happened, for my babyish behaviour, and that was my worst fear. I thought about those times Manda had fought someone; the wet sound of knuckles against cartilage; the rows of double stitches required above her victim’s eyebrows after she was done.

I took the first few days of the new term off sick, though I had no fever and my dad suspected it. Then I worried this would make it worse. I imagined Sharon Kitchen and Stacey Clark huddled round Manda before registration like rooks on their desks, cawing in her ear that I was always a too-clever bitch, or they’d heard I’d called her a slag, and she should pull me down a peg or two. I knew all some girls needed as an excuse to start hating you was your absence, your lack of defence.