Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke (4 page)

Stupidity is as stupid weeps, and as weeping leaves the broken-hearted on a carousel of another’s making, so stupid speaks to itself in a language it cannot spell. I stared up at the smoke, and for minutes I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? Words come, words break and all they leave are shards. Broken things swallowed by the earth and dug up centuries later, brushed off, studied, valued, put in glass cases. Stared at by bored kids. Wondered at by dreamers. The things I wanted to say queued up in my head and pushed against my memory, but I couldn’t let them out. It was like I knew what was going to happen already, like I could see into the future, see the ropes, the blades, the pain and the screaming in a wood, and all I could do was stand and stare and look at a garage strung with rows of plants and the smell of the plants – and the reckoning.

And the reckoning. I thought about the reckoning. I could feel it there, feel it turning and twisting in the air, and I could hear it whispering. It was certain of its place in the scheme and the story and Spike’s life, and although it was impatient it could wait. It could wait as long as it wanted, as long as it took, even as long as the stars shone and tumbled in the sky.

I said, “Oh fuck, Spike.”

He didn’t look at me. “Brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Fucking brilliant. You’re a genius.”

“I know…”

“What did you do?” I said, and he laughed.

“My ship came in.”

“Yeah. HMS Fuck-Up.”

He didn’t stop laughing. “Fuck you.”

“Yeah?”

“This is what I’ve been waiting for. I reckon I’ve got twenty grand’s worth here.”

“Twenty grand…”

“At least. Maybe more.”

“And more trouble than you can imagine, Spike.”

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.”

“And how’s that? Only you and I know about it, and you’re not going to say anything, are you?”

“Are you kidding? Any money you like you’ll have a couple of pints, start bragging about it and before you know it…”

“I’m saying nothing.”

“And I’m the Pope. I’m the fucking Pope and I’ve got a balcony the size of your house.”

“Have you?”

“I’ll put money on it.”

He shrugged. “This time next week I won’t need any of your money.”

Right then I just wanted to hit him. I wanted to hit him hard, walk out of the garage and not go back, get on my bike and ride as fast as I could to some distant place where no one knew my name. Somewhere like an island in Scotland. Hole up in a rented house on the edge of a quiet village, wait for the mayhem to go away, wait for however long it took. Stare from a top-floor window at a place I didn’t know, watch people who didn’t know me, say hello to no one. Send a postcard to my mum telling her not to worry, and that the smell of fire would go away, find a job on a fishing boat, grow a beard. Walk along a deserted beach, feel the sand sting my face. Lick salt off my lips and watch my skin turn to leather. Sit in a pub at a corner table and drink slowly. Meet a woman with black eyes and hard hands, an honest woman who wasn’t afraid to gut a fish. Grow vegetables in a hard garden, keep a rabbit in a warm hutch. But friends are friends and, whatever they do, if they remain friends you have no option but to hold your hand up and say something about standing next to them or by them or whatever.

“When,” I said, “did you do this?”

“This morning. About five. It didn’t take long.”

He said he’d watched the place for a couple of days, and once he’d worked out the routine of the bloke who was growing the stuff, down to check the crop and water at half-eight, midday, half-three and nine in the evening, he made his move. “It only took me a couple of hours. I was going to leave a note, but then I thought that might be pushing it.”

“Yes Spike. That might have been.”

He walked down the garage, weaving his way around the plants, stroking them as he walked. He looked like he was in love – or, if not that, in a trance. His face shone and his lips glistened, and when he spoke there was a little catch in his voice. “Every time I think about them, I can’t help laughing. I reckon I’ll have them dried by the end of the week.”

“Do you?”

“I know someone in Exeter who’ll take them, and then it’s…” he made a swooping move with his hand, a taking-off-in-an-aeroplane move and flying to Spain or Thailand or some other place where he could get jumped by gangsters and have his fingers removed as a starter.

Now, rather than just walk out of the garage, I wanted to run and never see Spike again. Forget ideas of hiding in Scotland or making a new life in a place where no one recognized my face, so I put my hands up and said, “Spike, this is mad. Either you get rid of them or I’m going.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Going where?”

“Anywhere but here. I mean it, Spike.”

“OK then. Fuck off.” He turned away and walked back to the plants, stepping through them like they were curtains, letting them swing back and over him until all I could see of him was his legs and feet. I thought about saying something else, but it was pointless, there was nothing left to say, nothing to do, not a lot more to think, so I turned away from my friend and walked out of his garage, jumped on the bike and rode away.

I didn’t know where I was going, and for ten minutes I didn’t care. I wanted the illusion that I couldn’t be seen by anyone. The evening had darkened, and when I reached Ashbrittle I stopped at the village green, leant on the handlebars and stared at the lights of the cottages. Tired, happy, content people eating their supper, drinking a beer, thinking about having a bath or going to bed. People dozing in armchairs in front of the television, people who didn’t have the nag of collision in their heads, people whose only worry was whether they should eat some bacon or a tomato. I could have visited Mum and Dad and sat with them and pretended that I’d just called in to say hello because I was passing and hadn’t seen them for a day or two, but I got back on the bike and rode to the pub at Staple Cross. I’m known in the pub at Staple Cross, but I’m not a regular. For me the place is a hideaway, somewhere I can sit in a corner and be left alone. Once, one of the walls whispered with the voices of people who had been there centuries before, and for years people thought the place was haunted. But then scientists came and looked at the walls and discovered that the ancient paint contained iron, and as the years had passed this had become magnetic and started to act like recording tape, picking up, capturing and holding snippets of conversation. Farmers arguing about the price of sheep, barmaids telling stable boys to keep their hands off, potboys laughing at gypsies, the squire remonstrating about idleness. Now the walls are quiet. Someone bought the place and stripped the old paint from the walls before anyone told them he was stripping the old voices away. He put fresh emulsion up, he hung pictures of haystacks and horses pulling ploughs, he cleaned the windows. I sat in a corner with a pint and stared at the regulars, and tried to quieten my mind. It was difficult, but by the time I was halfway through my second, I was getting there.

I was at the bar ordering a third when a couple of the Ashbrittle hippies appeared. Two women. The barman knew them, called them by name and started to pull two pints of cider. They looked at me, nodded, smiled and turned back to look at the cider. One had short red hair and freckles, the other had brown curls tied in bunches. The redhead was wearing a check shirt and jeans, the one with bunches a striped skirt and a sleeveless blouse. They looked like they’d come from the fields or a garden, their hands were rough and dirty, and their faces were flecked with earth.

Some of the people in Ashbrittle said cruel things about the hippies, said that they never did any work, that they sponged off the rest of us, that they spent all day smoking smoke, that they never used soap. Some of the people in Ashbrittle are ignorant and only see what they want to see, lost in pouring misery into complaint and back again. I liked the hippies. I liked their colourful clothes, I liked the music they listened to, and I liked the way they didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about them. I suppose difference was different back then and ideals were easier to gather and hold. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Years have passed since the events that stitch this story, and although the dead cannot fight their wars again, at least the hippies can appear in my dreams and smile and laugh at the memories.

I went back to my seat, and a minute later the hippies came over and the redhead said, “Anyone sitting here?”

“Help yourself,” I said.

They did.

For a couple of minutes I drank and listened while they talked. One of their goats had escaped from its tethers and broken into a neighbour’s garden, where it had eaten six cabbages and some plums from a plum tree. They’d chased it out of the garden, into the churchyard, over the wall at the bottom and into a field. They’d spent the next two hours trying to catch it. Without thinking or excusing myself I said, “My Gran used to charm sheep…”

The hippies looked at me, and the one with bunches said, “She did what to sheep?”

“She used to charm them. Cast a spell on them, I suppose. Sheep, goats… what’s the difference? I reckon she’d have got your goat back.”

“So,” Bunches said, moving closer to me, “How did she do that?” Her eyes were very brown, like conkers peeping from their shells, and her lips were wet. She smelt of hedges and earth.

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell anyone. I think she used to sing them a song.”

“A song?”

“Yeah.” I was a bit drunk. “Can you sing?”

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“How much I’ve had to drink.”

“Or how stoned you are,” said her friend.

I laughed, they laughed, and we spent the next ten minutes batting stuff between each other about where we lived, what we did, where we’d come from and what our names were. Bunches was called Sam, and the redhead was Ros. Before Ashbrittle they’d worked in a bar in Bristol. Now they were planning to save enough money to buy the old bakery next to their place, renovate the ovens and set up a business.

“I remember when the bakery was still working,” I said. “They used to sell their stuff all over the place. Their doughnuts were amazing.”

“We’ll do doughnuts,” said Ros, and she went to the bar to fetch some more drinks.

When we were alone, for a second I thought the old walled voices came and hang their words and laughs in the air. I don’t know if Sam heard them. She didn’t say, but when I caught her eye for one of those odd moments that pass between people who are prowling around each other, I saw something I wanted. I suppose I could have said that the drink was talking, spooking me, giving me ideas. I opened my mouth to say something stupid, but stopped myself. It’s too easy to be stupid, and too easy to wake up in the morning with the feeling you said something that had more to do with want and despair than need. And at that time all I needed was a drink, and despair was just a word I’d heard on the radio.

We left the pub at half-ten. Sam and Ros asked me back to their place, but I had to work in the morning.

“You work every morning?”

“I get Sundays off.”

“Then come round Saturday night. If you want.”

“OK,” I said, “I will,” and I rode back to the caravan under a clear, warm sky. A full moon was showing, and when I got home I sat on my bed and listened to the beer in my stomach and the rustles of little beasts in the grass below the window. I suppose I’d been sitting for half an hour when I heard a distant noise, something unfamiliar and out of place. I opened the window and stuck my head out. The noise faded and then it reappeared, closer this time, weaving through the lanes, between the hedges and over the hills. A siren. The farmhouse door opened, and Mr Evans came out and stood in the yard. He cocked his head towards the sound, and then shuffled towards the caravan. He stood under the window and said, “Not a sound you hear round here.”

“No.”

“Sounds like they’re heading towards Ashbrittle.”

“It does.”

“Police.”

“I think it is.”

“Or ambulance.”

“Who knows?”

He coughed and shuffled on his feet. He was wearing slippers and a dressing gown over a shirt and long johns. His marshy eyes were cold, and his lips shone. He said something about the noise of sirens making milk curdle in the cows’ udders. He asked me to go down to the grazing field and check the herd were settled. I knew they were, but the idea of a stroll in the light of the moon was a pleasant one, so I pulled on my boots and headed off. I said, “See you in the morning,” and he said, “You might,” and he turned and went back inside.

I carried a torch. The batteries were low, and its light was too weak to make a difference, so I switched it off and walked slowly, picking my way, the moon shadowing and failing. A cloud passed over her face, an owl called, the sirens and lights had faded into the dark. The world smelled of drought and failure, iron and dust, and the fields were crisp. The herd were in the sidling fields above the river valley, and as I approached them, they shuffled in their sleep. Some of them were standing, others were lying.

When we were at school, Spike and I used to go cow-tipping. It’s a cruel game, but in those days we were both stupid and selfish, and didn’t care who knew it. Although some people have said that cow-tipping is impossible because cows don’t sleep standing up, and anyway they’ve got great hearing and are always aware of their surroundings, I can tell you that cow-tipping is something anyone can do. Though it helps if you’ve got a friend with you. A cow is a heavy animal. One night, drunk as goats on pig wine, we managed to sneak up on a Red Devon slumbering in a field outside Greenham. Usually, Red Devons are more alert than the average cow, and more likely to butt you a good one in the back, but this one was slow. Slow as a tree or Spike on a good day. We were at the cow’s side and had her over before she could moo, and were out of that field and back by the river bridge before you could blink. Now I wouldn’t go cow-tipping and if I caught a kid tipping one of Evans’s cows I’d have him and bang his face more than once, but in those days we didn’t know better. Come to think of it…

I stepped carefully through the herd, counting as I went. I’d reached forty-two when my eye was caught by something in the woods below the field. A beam of torch light flashed against the trees, then another. They disappeared for a moment and then came back again, steady this time. I crouched down and watched. I saw figures in the shadows, then the figures disappeared. I heard a muffled scream. The sound of people struggling. A quick shout. A crack. Another shout, muffled, like it was coming from under a blanket.

A moment later the torches went out, and for a minute there was silence in the night and another cloud cut across the moon. Some of the cows looked towards the sound of the shouts. Easy, calm animals. They chewed, turned their heads back towards their shoulders and settled down again.

Now the torch lights came back again, and the shadows were slow and methodical. I could have stood up and made a move towards them, walked the two hundred yards to where they were, asked what they were doing, told them to move on, get off the land, you’re frightening my animals. But there was danger there, menace at work, and watchfulness. I could see two people standing on the boundary of the field and the wood, sentries if you will, or watchmen. Tall figures, black against the black, with the black above and the iron smell of a broken draught in the air. I lay back and rested my head against the side of one of the cows, listened to her stomach rumble and watched the moon. She was impassive, and gave nothing away. The ground was hard, and the grass tinder. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, then twenty. I think it was twenty, because I dozed for a while, and when I woke up the cows were still around me and the moon was still strong, and the woods were still.

I stood up. I waited. No torches shone. No voices. The sentries had gone. Suddenly, the headlights of a car swung through a lane half a mile away, shooting up the hill, around the first corner and away. I waited until I couldn’t hear it any more, then started walking down to the place where the torches had been.

I didn’t hurry. I was alert and on edge. I could hear my heart beating, but I didn’t make any noise. I was careful. I was like the vole avoiding a lively owl. I didn’t walk tall. I kept low and rolled my feet slowly over the grass like a Sioux warrior in his moccasins. I stopped. I listened. I moved on again. Stopped. Started. Listened to my breathing. I reached the edge of the wood. Stopped again.

There was a low barbed-wire fence between me and the trees. I stepped on it with my left foot, pushed it down, lifted my right leg over, stepped down, lifted my left leg, stood still. The woods rustled with bugs and leaves and birds. I flicked the torch on, saw an opening that led down to a narrow path, flicked the torch off and followed my nose.

As the moonlight cracked through the trees, it left crazed splinters on the ground, and my shadow danced and spun as I walked. Every minute or so I stopped and listened for voices or footsteps. Nothing. I shone the light for a second. I snapped it off. I walked on. I shone it again. Nothing. I looked up towards the place where I’d been sitting with the herd. They were ahead of me. I walked on. Torch on. Torch off. Stop. Listen. A smell in the air.

Can you smell fear? Is that possible? Or smell fear that’s passed? Mum would say it is, and she’d be right. It was there. It was hanging in the air, musky and rank, copper and rust, fire and cotton. I could have reached out and taken a piece of that fear and broken it off, put it in my pocket, kept it for ever. I could have used it to scare someone I didn’t like, someone who’d threatened me in a pub, someone who’d shown me a knife. It would have chased them away and kept them away.

I stepped on a stick. It cracked. A leaf, broken from the branch, twirled into my face. The moonlight showed something odd in the trees, something out of place, a failure in nature. I stood still, very still, like I was forgotten. The moment froze its place in the present and flattened it through time. If you could have seen it, it would have looked like a still stretch of black water, reflecting nothing, absorbing everything, willing the future into its arms. Nothing moved. Nothing moved, except… Nothing moved except something in the trees ahead of me, twenty feet ahead.

I shone the torch, swung the beam through the trees, and the swinging caught the movement of another swinging. Slow, quiet, almost gentle, maybe like the pendulum of a fine clock. A clock built by a man with the finest fingers and the keenest eye, a clock that kept perfect time and chimed the hours with an easy bell. But this was not a very fine clock, and I didn’t want to see what I could see, and for a moment I forced the sight away. I pushed it towards the edge of a cliff in my head and left it waiting there, but that’s as far as I went. I couldn’t push any further, and I couldn’t take any more steps. For here, in the lovely woods with the sweet birds and the dancing leaves, I saw a pair of feet, legs, damp-stained trousers, a check shirt, arms limp and muddy, a twisted face above a roped neck. A hung man, a fresh hung man, the man Spike and I had seen at the hoop house in the woods, the beast of a man with hands like bricks and tiny eyes, dead in these woods now, swinging like a decoration on a Christmas tree. Bad tree, bad Christmas, big boots on a very dead man. And as I stared at him, I felt the frozen moment crack and bend and snap, and all the breath rushed from my body and I reached out and grasped a tree trunk and heaved, but nothing came out, nothing at all, not a drop of anything at all.