Playing for the Ashes (45 page)

At the time I thought, It’s because I intend to show you what’s what. Before this is over, little bean, I’ll have you baying at the moon, I’ll see you so randy that you’ll be grovelling at my feet just to lick my ankle.

And to do that, of course, I had to stay with him on the barge.

I grabbed my clothes from the
flo
or between the Lilos. I stuffed myself into them. I folded my blanket. I ran my hand through my hair to comb it. “All right,” I said.

“What?”

“I’ll show you.”

“What?”

“How fast I can run. How far. And whatever else you’ve a fancy to see.”

“Climbing?”

“Fine.”

“Crouching?”

“Fine.”

“Slithering on your stomach?”

“I expect you’ll find I’m expert at that.”

He coloured. It was the first and only time I ever managed to embarrass him. He toed a piece of wood to one side. He said, “Livie.”

I said, “I wasn’t going to charge you.”

He sighed. “It’s not because you’re a whore. It’s got nothing to do with that.”

“It has,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here in the first place if I wasn’t a whore.” I climbed up to the deck. He joined me. The day was grey, and the wind was blowing. Leaves scratched along the surface of the towpath. Even as we stood there, the first of the rain began to dimple the surface of the canal. “Right,” I said. “Run, climb, crouch, slither.” And I set off, with Chris following close behind, to show him exactly what I could do.

He was testing my skills. It’s obvious to me now, but at the time I assumed he was devising strategies to keep himself from caving in to me. You see, I didn’t know he had any outside interests then. For the first several weeks that we were together, he worked on the barge, he met with clients who needed his expertise in renovating their houses, he cared for his animals. He stayed in at night, reading mostly, although he listened to music and fielded dozens of phone calls that I assumed—from his businesslike tone and the many references he made to both city and ordnance maps— were related to his work with plaster and wood. He went out for the first time at night some four weeks after he’d taken up with me. He said he had a meeting to attend—he said it was a monthly do he had with four chaps he had been at school with, and in a way it was, as I found out later—and he told me he wouldn’t be back late. He wasn’t. But then he went out a second night that week and then a third. On the fourth he didn’t get back till three and when he came in, he woke me up with his clatter. I asked him where he’d been. He answered, “Too much to drink” and he fell onto his Lilo and into a stuporous sleep. A week later, he began the process again. He was meeting with his mates, he said. Only this time on the third night out, he didn’t come back at all.

I sat on the deck with Toast and Jam, and I waited for him. As the hours passed, my worry about him began to curdle. I said to myself, All right, two can play at this game. I dressed in spandex, spangles, black stockings, and heels. I made my way to Paddington. I picked up an Australian film editor who was working on a project at Shepperton Studios. He wanted to go to his hotel, but that didn’t suit. I wanted him on the barge.

He was still there—asleep and splayed naked with one arm crooked to cover his eyes and one hand on my head where it rested against his chest—when Chris
fin
ally returned, quiet as a housebreaker, at half past six the next morning. He opened the door and came down the steps with his jacket in his arms. For a moment I couldn’t see him clearly against the light. I squinted, then stretched quite happily when I saw the familiar halo of his hair. I yawned and ran my hand down and up the Australian’s leg. The Australian groaned.

I said, “Morning, Chris. This’s Bri. An Aussie. Lovely, isn’t he?” And I turned to minister to him, increasing the volume of Brian’s groans. He accommodated me further by moaning, “Not again. I can’t. I’ll be shooting blanks, Liv.” As far as I could tell, he hadn’t opened his eyes.

Chris said, “Get rid of him, Livie. I need you.”

I waved him off and continued with Brian, who said, “Wha’? Who?” and struggled to his elbows. He grabbed a blanket, which he threw across his lap.

“This’s Chris,” I said. I nuzzled Brian’s chest. “He lives here.”

“Who is he?”

“No one. He’s Chris. I told you. He lives here.” I pulled at the blanket. Brian held on to it. With the other hand he began feeling round the floor for his clothes. I kicked them away, saying, “He’s busy. We won’t be bothering him. Come on. You liked it well enough last night.”

“I’ve got the point,” Chris said. “Get him out of here.”

And then there was another sound, a low whine, and I saw that Chris wasn’t holding his jacket at all. It was an old brown blanket with its piping ripped away, wrapped round something large. Chris carried it through the barge to the far end where the animals were. The galley was finished now, as were the animals’ space, and the loo, so I couldn’t tell what he was doing up there. I heard Jam bark.

Chris called over his shoulder, “Have you at least fed the animals? Have you taken the dogs out?” Then, “Oh hell. Forget it.” And much more quietly, “Here. It’s all right. You’re all right. You’re fine,” in a gentle voice.

We stared in the direction he’d gone. Brian said, “I’ll shove off.”

I said, “Right,” but my eyes were on the door to the galley. I struggled into a T-shirt. I heard Brian clump up the steps. The door closed behind him. I went through the galley to Chris.

He was bent over the long work top in the animals’ space. He hadn’t turned on the light. Weak morning sun filtered through the window. He was saying, “You’re all right. You are. You are,” in a tender voice. “Rough night, wasn’t it? But it’s over now.”

I said, “What’ve you got?” and looked over his shoulder. “Oh good God,” I said, my stomach lurching. “What’s happened? Were you drunk? Where’s he come from? Did you hit him with a car?”

That’s all I could think of when I
fir
st saw the beagle, although if I’d been less woozy from drink, I would have understood that the sutures running from between the dog’s eyes to the back of his head were not recent enough to be indicators of emergency surgery performed in the night. He lay on his side, drawing slow breaths with great spaces between them. When Chris touched the back of his
fin
gers to the dog’s jaw, his tail
flo
pped weakly.

I grabbed Chris’s arm. “He looks awful. What’d you
do
to him?”

He glanced at me and for the
fir
st time I saw how white he was. “I pinched him,” he said. “That’s what I do.”

“Pinched? That…? From…? What in God’s name’s the matter with you? Did you break into a vet’s?”

“He wasn’t at a vet’s.”

“Then where—”

“They removed part of his skull to expose his brain. They like to use beagles because the breed is friendly. It’s easy to gain their confidence. Which, of course, is what they need before—”

“They? Who? What’re you talking about?” He was frightening me, just as he had done the night I first met him.

He reached for a bottle and a box of cotton wool. He daubed the sutures. The dog looked up at him with sad, cloudy eyes and ears that clung, drooping, to his wreck of a skull. Chris took a delicate pinch of the beagle’s skin between his thumb and index finger. When he let it go, the skin stayed in place, pinched.

“Dehydrated,” Chris said. “We need an IV.”

“We haven’t
got
—”

“I know that. Watch him. Don’t let him get up.” He went to the galley. Water ran. On the work top the dog’s eyes drooped closed. His breathing slowed. His paws began to twitch. Beneath his lids, his eyes seemed to
fli
ck back and forth.

“Chris!” I called. “Hurry!”

Toast was up, nudging at my hand. Jam had retreated to a corner where he chewed at a piece of rawhide.

“Chris!” And then when he came back to the animals with a fresh bowl of water, “He’s dying. I think he’s dying.”

Chris set the water down and bent to the dog. He watched him, resting a hand on his flank. “He’s sleeping,” he said.

“But his paws. His eyes.”

“He’s dreaming, Livie. Animals dream, you know, just like us.” He dipped his
fin
gers in the water, held them to the beagle’s nose. It quivered. The dog cracked open his eyes. He lapped the drops from Chris’s fingers. His tongue was nearly white. “Yes,” Chris said. “You take it this way. Slow. Easy.” He dipped his hand in the water again, held it again, watched the dog lick it again from his hand.

The dog’s tail
tip-tapped
against the work top. He coughed. Chris stood by him patiently, feeding him the water. It took forever. When he was done, he gently lowered him to a nest of blankets on the floor. Toast hobbled over to snuffle round the edges of the blankets. Jam stayed where he was, chewing away.

I was saying, “Where’ve you been? What’s happened? Where’d you get him?” when a man’s voice called from the other end of the barge, “Chris? Are you here? I only just now got the message. Sorry.”

Chris called over his shoulder, “In here, Max.”

An older bloke joined us. He was bald, with an eye patch. He was impeccably dressed in a navy suit, white shirt, speckled tie. He carried a black bag of the sort doctors use. He glanced at me, then at Chris. He hesitated.

“She’s all right,” Chris said. “This is Livie.”

The bloke nodded at me and immediately dismissed me. He said to Chris, “What’ve you managed?”

Chris said, “I’ve got this one. Robert’s got two others. His mum has a fourth. This one was the worst.”

“Anything else?”

“Ten ferrets. Eight rabbits.”

“Where?”

“Sarah. Mike.”

“And this one?” He squatted to look at the dog. “Never mind. I can see.” He opened his bag. “Take the others out, why don’t you?” he suggested with a nod at Toast and Jam.

“You aren’t going to put him down, are you, Max? I can look after him. Just give me what I need. I’ll see to it.”

Max looked up. “Take the dogs out, Chris.”

I picked their leads from the nails on the wall. “Come on,” I said to Chris.

He would go no farther than the towpath. We watched the dogs wander its length towards the bridge. They sniffed along the wall, stopped frequently to christen it. They rambled to the water and barked at the ducks. Jam shook off, ears flapping wildly, like he was wet. Toast did the same, lost his balance, came down hard on his shoulder, popped up again. Chris whistled. They turned, began to lope in our direction.

Max joined us. Chris said, “Well?”

“I’ll give it forty-eight hours.” Max snapped his bag closed. “I’ve left you pills. Feed him boiled rice and minced lamb. Half a cup. We’ll see what happens.”

“Thanks,” Chris said. “I’m going to call him Beans.”

“I’d call him damn lucky.”

Max fondled Toast’s head as the dogs returned to us. He gave a gentle tug to Jam’s ears. “This one’s ready for a home,” he said to Chris. “There’s a family in Holland Park.”

“I don’t know. We’ll see.”

“You can’t keep them all.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Max glanced at his watch. “Quite,” he said. He fished in his pocket. The two dogs yelped and danced back a few steps. He smiled and tossed them each a biscuit. “Get some sleep,” he said to Chris. “Well done.” He nodded to me a second time and headed in the direction of the bridge.

Chris took his Lilo into the animals’ space. He spent the morning sleeping next to Beans. I kept Toast and Jam with me in the workroom where, while they tussled over a squeaky toy, I tried to organise the boxes, the tools, and the timber. I periodically took messages from the phone. These were all cryptic, like: “Tell Chris it’s yes on Vale of March kennels,” “Waiting on Laundry Farm,” “Fifty doves at Lancashire P-A-L,” “Nothing on Boots yet. Still waiting for word from Sonia.” By the time Chris rose at a quarter past twelve, I’d come to understand what I’d been too thick to see before.

I was assisted by the BBC radio news, which reported what the Animal Rescue Movement had carried out in Whitechapel on the previous night. When Chris came into the workroom, someone was being interviewed, saying, “…have callously destroyed fifteen years’ medical research through their blind stupidity,” in an outraged voice.

Chris stopped in the doorway, a cup of tea in his hand. I examined him. “You pinch animals,” I said.

“That’s what I do.”

“Toast?”

“Yes.”

“Jam?”

“Right.”

“The hooded rats?”

“And cats and birds and mice. The occasional pony. And monkeys. Lots of monkeys.”

“But…but that’s against the law.”