Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke (14 page)

“Am I?”

“Yes. Very.”

“I don’t feel lucky. And my girlfriend’s in intensive care. They don’t know if she’ll live.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be OK.”

“How do you know that?”

“Faith, Elliot, faith. Have some. It’s easy. There’s plenty to go around. And all types. Hard, soft, chewy, melt-in-the-mouth…”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I shrugged.

“Believe me,” he said, and he reached around to the back seat and picked up a folder. He opened it, took out a sheet of paper and said, “OK. We have a plan.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. And you’re part of it.”

“Great.”

“I’m only going to tell you what you need to know: there’ll be things that go on that I won’t tell you about, but that’s because it’ll be safer that way.”

“Just tell me what I have to do.”

“Good lad.”

Apparently it was a simple plan, and Pollock said it had hands and feet and legs and was ready to stroll down the street with a flag – whatever that meant. I had no idea, but I didn’t say anything. Dickens was going to find out that I was selling the smoke to a man from Bristol, and I was so desperate that I was ready to take any price just to get rid of it. As long as I got enough to buy some peace and quiet I’d be happy. The man from Bristol was “someone you’ve already met”.

“Who?”

“Inspector Smith.”

“The bloke who came with you last time?”

“You’re not stupid, are you?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask my friends about that.”

At half-past ten on the day after tomorrow, I was to drive the smoke to a transport café on the A38, between Taunton and Wellington, park and wait. I knew the place. I’d been there before. They did good breakfasts. Two sausages, two rashers, hash browns, tomatoes, heaps of beans and mushrooms and as much toast as you could eat. Ketchup in squeezy plastic bottles the shape of tomatoes and tea in heavy mugs, all served on sticky formica tables. But I wasn’t to be tempted. I was to sit tight and still and stare at my fingernails and the torn posters of foreign places that hung on the wall. A canal in Venice. The Taj Mahal. The Eiffel Tower. I was to listen to the bad music from the crackly speaker over the counter, and smell the old oil as it wafted from the kitchen. Inspector Smith would meet me. He’d be dressed like a big-time dealer, and have a bag of pretend money. There’d be other people there, but I wouldn’t know it. I’d be in the dark. Dickens would meet me too, but he wouldn’t recognize Smith or be expecting anything unexpected. “He’ll have a couple of heavies with him, but you’re not to worry. We’ll have you covered.”

“You sure about that?”

“Cast iron, Elliot, cast iron.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll take the bastard down.”

“You sure about that too?”

“Oh yes.”

“And if you don’t?”

“Faith, Elliot.”

“But if you don’t?”

“Elliot. This has been worked out. Every detail. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

“Nothing?”

“Guaranteed. We’re not taking any chances. We can’t afford to. A lot of people have been waiting a long time for this.”

I stared at Pollock. He stared back at me. I don’t know who he thought I was or who I reminded him of, but he reminded me of someone I’d seen in a film. I don’t know who that someone was or what film it was or where I saw it, but his face was lined, and there were tiny spots on his forehead. His lips were thin, and his eyes were honest and big, and I think he liked me. Maybe I was naive or maybe I was just stupid, but at that time I had no choice. I was trapped in the dark, and the dark folded its wings over my face. I had to believe him. I had to nod when he told me the plan, and as he drove away from the quiet spot and rolled back towards Ashbrittle, I watched the road, and the road became a still and peaceful place where wishes could lie down and dream.

Wishes lie down and dream? Now there was an idea, and when I thought about dreams, I wished I could go back to the time when my dreams were simple and quiet, and the worst they could do was leave me with a dry mouth. When I got home, I sat on the bench beneath the kitchen window and watched the sky and the swallows and swifts, the passing birds of the English season. They filled themselves with flies, they cut the sky to ribbons and wounds and left it crying, and as they sang they left me with my head in my hands and my bad leg throbbing. And what did I do? I sat and waited, and when Dad got in from work I fetched him a beer and opened it and watched him drink and wipe his face of his clean and innocent sweat. And when Grace came back from college, she sat next to me and hugged me and I thanked her for being my sister. “I’m lucky,” I said, and I almost meant it.

“You bet,” she said, and she kissed me on the end of my nose like you’d kiss a pet rabbit, or the back of an envelope before you post it to someone you really love.

“Grace?” I said.

“What?”

“You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“I wanted to check.”

She looked at me as if I was mad. “What are you talking about? Are you mad?”

“No.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“And I do too,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “And when I’m dead I’m going to haunt you.”

“What if I die first?”

“Then I’ll haunt you in your grave. I’ll dig down and stand in front of you and make weird moaning sounds until you wake up.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Oh, it’ll be my pleasure,” she said, and the way she looked at me made me think that she was telling the truth, more of a truth that anything I’d heard all day. And when Mum got back, she ran to me and hugged me and put her hand on the top of my head and I tasted earth in my mouth. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll make your favourite.” So Grace and Dad and I followed her into the house, and we sat at the table while she fired up the oven, fetched sausages from the fridge and mixed up a bowl of thick batter.

In the morning, while the cat played with a ball of wool and the village cockerels chased their hens into the shade, Mum said she’d thought of something, and if I had the gifts she had, and a talent for the old charms, then it was a thing that would work for me. She told me it had done for her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother back then, and who knew how many mothers before them.

“So what do I do?”

“First,” she said, “you have to have faith. You take your faith and swallow it, and then you pick an apple.”

“An apple?”

“Yes. And you take a bite from it while thinking of the one thing you most want to happen in the world. It’s got to be from our garden,” she said, “and the thing you think of mustn’t have anything to do with something you want to happen to you. Think about someone else.”

“And then what?”

“You bury the piece you’ve bitten off outside her house.”

“Her house? Who’s she?”

She squinted at me, shook her head and said, “Oh please Pet. This isn’t a game.”

“And?”

“You keep the rest in your pocket.”

“What if I haven’t got a pocket?”

“You’ve got to take this seriously, Pet. If you don’t, it won’t work.”

What could I do but do as I was told? I went to the apple tree, picked an apple, polished it on my shirt and thought about Sam. I thought about her brain and how it sat inside her skull, the blood vessels and sponge bits and the nerves. And I imagined the apple as her brain, and when I bit a piece out of it I imagined it as the damaged piece of her brain with the memories swilling, the thoughts gone and the ideas dead. And as I carried the bitten piece up the road to her cottage, I asked the thing that gives Mum her power or insight or whatever it is to look down on Sam and do whatever it could.

There was a little curve of earth in front of her cottage, and I could duck down beneath the window and do my burying without being seen by anyone, so that’s what I did. I closed my eyes, concentrated my thoughts, brought them together in a little ball, made the ball even smaller and then dropped that ball into my heart. I let it settle, stood up, opened my eyes, tucked the rest of the apple into my shirt pocket and, as I did, one of the hippy boys came out of the side gate that lead to the other cottages. I think it was Don, but it could have been Danny. I didn’t know what to expect, and as he walked towards me I took a step back. “Hi…” he said. “You OK?”

I didn’t know what to say. “You heard about Sam?”

“The hospital phoned.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault, was it?”

I shook my head.

“We’re going to see her later. Sounds like you had a lucky escape…”

I shrugged. “I feel terrible.”

He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “Fate, Elliot.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s a powerful thing. We can’t change it.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose we can.”

“And Sam’s a strong woman.”

“I know.”

“She’ll pull through.”

We stood and stared at each other, and although I wanted to say something else, I didn’t know what. I think he was thinking the same. “Look,” he said. “Call in any time, you know that. Sam said nothing but good things about you. She’s got a real thing for you, you know?”

“Thanks.”

“No,” he said. “Thank you.” And he squeezed my shoulder and crossed the road to the garden. I watched him stroll down the path to the place where Sam and I had pulled the onions, and then I turned and walked home.

Mum was waiting for me in the kitchen. When I walked in, she said, “See if what you just did doesn’t help,” and then told me to go and see Dad. “He’s out the back, working on your bike.”

Dad’s got a talent for wheels, metal and mechanicals. I’ve seen him mend a water pump with a matchstick and candle wax, and once he fixed a lawnmower with a paper clip and the bottom of a broken light bulb. The only reason our fridge has worked for twenty years is because he knows more about condensers than the repairman, and the reason Grace’s hair drier could blow a dog into the next parish is because he turbocharged it one drunk Friday. He stared at my bike, said, “I’ll have this going for you,” and after an hour and twenty minutes with a screwdriver, an adjustable spanner and a roll of wire, he stood back, cleaned his hands with an oily cloth, tossed it over his shoulder and said, “It might be as good as new.”

“You’re a genius.”

“Don’t say that until you’ve tried it.”

I took it for a spin around the green, and it made a few odd noises it hadn’t made before, but there was no shake in the handlebars, the wheels were true and the lights worked. So I told him I’d take it for a proper ride, and before he or Mum could tell me to stay where I was and not be so stupid, I’d gunned it away from the village towards Taunton and Sam.

I rode fast and on the straights I overtook without thinking. Get back on the horse. Give fear the finger. Stare at the sun. Haul the walrus up the beach. Catch a fly in your mouth. All these things. And take those things, put them in a box, seal the box and send them to hell. It was almost easy.

She was still in intensive care, and the machines were still beeping. I was given a gown to wear, and the nurse said that this time I should try to talk to her properly. “Don’t just mumble. Talk to her. Pretend you’re having a conversation. She won’t answer, but fill in the gaps yourself.”

“It’s hard.”

“It’s harder for her.”

So I sat with her, watched the machines blink, listened to them beep, and I looked at her face. The tubes in her mouth and nose made little bubbling noises. Her eyes were closed and her lips were cracked, and the bandage on her head was clean and white. I felt as though my blood was pouring away like water down a drain. I held her hand, squeezed it, leant towards her and said, “Hello Sam. It’s me. Elliot.”

“I’m sorry. So sorry…”

“I never meant you to get caught up in all this.”

“It’s a mess, but it’s going to get better.”

“And you’re going to get better too.”

“And when you do, I think we should go away together.”

“Would you like that?”

“Have you ever been to Cornwall?”

“I haven’t, but I’d like to go. I think we could find a nice place by the sea. Somewhere where we could watch the fishing boats come in…”

“And go for a walk along the beach.”

“Buy ice creams.”

“Build a sandcastle. Would you like to build a sandcastle?”

“We could fly a kite.”

“Do the sort of things we did when we were kids. You know…”

“Eat fish and chips.”

“Take a trip around the bay.”

“Sit outside a pub and chat to the locals.”

“Whatever you want to do, Sam. We could even go back to Greece.”

“I mean you could go back to Greece. I haven’t been there before.”

“We could find the bar where you used to work. Have a drink. Eat some of that food they eat.”

A nurse came and took her pulse, marked something on a chart and said, “You’re doing a good job, dear.”

“I feel a bit of an idiot.”

“You’re not.”

“Talk about anything you want. Just hearing your voice is good for her.”

“OK.”

So I did.

“I spoke to Don. At least I think it was Don. It might have been Danny. Or maybe it was Dave…”

“Anyway. They’re coming in to see you later.”

“I was afraid he was going to have a go at me, but he was very kind. Very gentle. He said I could call in any time, but I don’t think I will. Not until you’re there.”

“It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

I squeezed her hand again, and watched as the machines made their squiggly blue lines. I looked towards the nurse. She gave me a thumbs up.

“My Dad fixed up the bike.”

“It’s as good as new.”

“But it’s making a few odd noises.”

“So I’ve been riding carefully.”

“I’m not going to crash again…”

“And my mum taught me a charm. She made me take a bite from an apple…”

“And bury it outside your cottage.”

“She said that if I had her talent…”

“That it would work for me.”

I touched my shirt pocket, felt the apple in there and said, “And there’s something else I have to do…”

Beeeeeeeee… and Sam twitched. I say she twitched, but maybe it was a spasm. Her mouth opened and she made a sound like a cat trapped in a piano. A second later three nurses burst into the room. One started pushing buttons while another pulled the bedclothes back and the third rolled a trolley from a corner to the bedside. “Sorry,” she said, “you’ll have to go…” And I was gone.

I stood behind the glass and watched as the nurses worked. They were fast, and they didn’t panic, but whatever they were doing was important and serious and careful. There was a machine on the trolley, but before I had the chance to see them use it, one of the nurses released a blind that came down and covered the window. I stared at the blind for a minute, then turned and walked away from the ward.

I found a drinks machine. I bought a cup of coffee and stood by a window. As I drank, nurses and doctors and cleaners and porters wandered by, lost in their work and lost in the day. I felt trapped and useless. Given a stolen present I couldn’t play with. I wanted to go to bed, pull the blankets to my face and sleep. I wanted the dark, and I wanted to feel safe again. Take me back to the past, I thought, and give me the chance to see the flight of my own life again. Let me swim in my own choices, not the choices other people make and push at me. Let me go.

An hour later I went back to intensive care. Sam’s machines were beeping regularly again, and the nurses had left her bedside. One of them told me they thought she’d suffered a brain haemorrhage, but now it looked as if she’d had a small seizure. I was going to ask them what this meant, but when I opened my mouth to speak, the words I wanted to say collapsed inside me, and I felt the touch of something that rhymed with all my grief.

“Should I stay?” I said.

The nurse said, “I think you should go home and get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

“I am.”

“Then go.”

“OK.”

“We’ll be looking after her,” she said.

The sun shone through the hospital windows, flowers wilted on window sills, patients waited in their dressing gowns. And as I walked down the corridor to the exit, I saw Sam’s parents walking towards me: her mother was being supported by her father, who was carrying an old teddy bear under his arm. It was a faded white bear, missing one eye and with a sad arm dangling down, and as I got closer to them I almost stopped and spoke to them and told them who I was, but then I thought again. They looked worse than the first time I’d seen them, lost in fear and agony, hardly able to walk straight. So I put my head down and walked on like the coward I was, slipped out into the sunshine and ducked around the side of the hospital to my bike. Before I rode away, I thought of the sound Sam had made, the little cat scream. I felt in my pocket for the bit apple, took it out, looked at its browned flesh and tossed it into a bush. Then I was away before I had a second chance to think about what I’d done, out of the car park and back on the road.