Leisure Centre
– appraised it, kicked it over, grabbed the loosest supporting metal pole, yanked it free (it took some while to give entirely – the base was weighed down with concrete) carried it over to the fox –
God bless you
Hit
And hit
– killed her.
Another car drove over the bridge, caught him in its headlights, braked, then sounded its horn. He tossed the pole aside, shuddering, picked her up and slung her warm carcass across his shoulders – her blood sweet on his neck, his back, his fingers – and headed for the long grass on the opposite siding. He crouched low there, laying down the body gently, waiting for a while and then emitting a sharp and ghostly bark into the icy early morning.
It must’ve been half an hour before the first cub appeared. It was shy of the stranger; hesitant. Wesley made a crying sound; a kind of whining. He had inadvertently smeared some of the vixen’s blood onto his cheeks. He had cut off her tail with a piece of broken glass and tied it to his wrist with a bundle of tightly-wound grass.
The small fox drew closer.
‘Your mother’s dead, little man,’ Wesley whispered, ‘come on over here and have a smell of her.’
The cub was thin. His coat was coarse and uneven. His ribs protruded like the individual struts on an old-fashioned, oil-fired hospital radiator. He came close and sniffed tentatively at the corpse of his mother. He licked some of the blood from her. He emitted a tiny squeak. He pushed his nose to her teat – selfishly, almost angrily – and tried to suckle there.
Wesley made a series of gentle cooing sounds until the cub had finished and pulled away, then he picked up the vixen again, lifted her over his shoulders, turned – but very slowly – holding the vixen’s four feet together in his one good hand and trailing her tail onto the ground behind him, still affixed to the other.
He walked on; over the makeshift wooden bridge (slippy with ice – treacherous) and onto the mud embankment which snaked alongside the river. He did not look back to check if the cub was following. He looked forward, and from side to side, struggling – in the darkness – to locate the vixen’s spore.
He paid special attention to any large rocks or tree-stumps (although there were precious few in these snow-peppered, mud-splattered flatlands) where he imagined the vixen might’ve left territorial markings. He found several. But the first was goose – he bent down, sifted through the snow and pressed the frozen faeces loosely between his fingers, sniffed. Clucked. The second was badger. The third –
Ah
He glanced back. Two cubs now, both following anxiously, ten, maybe twenty paces behind him. Ahead lay the dawn – he drew a deep breath – but only the faintest suggestion of it, and the concrete flyover; arching its long back and yawning resignedly into the possibility of morning.
Beyond that?
What a question
Beyond that?
The future:
Pissed-up
Blood-smattered
Blister-raw
The flyover – when he reached it – was still all but deserted and pitch dark underneath. But he remembered from walking here before (and could tell by the smell; deadened by the snow, but still perceptibly there) that the den was very near. He waited for his eyes to adjust, looked around for the give away pile of dirt. Found it.
A truck rumbled over.
He staggered out the other side, straightened up (his back protesting – his fingers numb now, his nose, his lips), peered behind him –
the cubs were close together, shoulder rubbing shoulder, entering the den, joggling for first access, for precedence. He shifted the weight of the mother, put one foot onto the stile and stared ahead.
White had made everything brighter. And he’d turned a corner. The snow was now hitting the left side of him. He half-squinted into it. He frowned. He stepped onto the stile for added height. He stared. He swore. He glanced up onto the roadway –
Quiet
– he felt around inside his pockets, located the agent’s mobile, turned it on, pressed the first digit, experimentally.
Ted’s aunt answered –
Hello?
He cut her off.
The second –
Work
Ted’s voice.
‘I need you,’ Wesley said, ‘bring me some rope. Heavy rope. At least twenty foot of it…’ he paused, ‘and a box of eggs, and the librarian. Meet me by the flyover.’
He completed his instructions and dialled another number. He tapped his foot, impatiently. The set of his expression indicated some kind of call-answering service. He did not seem surprised by this. He waited for the beep, then spoke.
‘I’ve got your message, Gumble
Inc,
’ he said, bending forward slightly as he spoke, clutching his stomach, his lips white with fury, ‘that was my
father’s
boat. I know exactly what you’re doing. We had a
deal.
Doesn’t matter how things turned out.
Fuck
the bloody
context…
’
He paused and gazed at the boat awhile, and then something strange suddenly struck him. ‘Arthur’s not
playing,
’ he said, his voice quite astonished, ‘
is
he?’
He chuckled, shook his head, then focussed again. ‘Back off, or I’ll do as I threatened. I don’t
care
about the Old Man. I’ll
sacrifice
the Old Man…’ he paused, squinted towards the boat, saw it move –saw it shuddering –as a choppy incoming wave hit a supporting strut.
He swore under his breath, cut the line and tossed Ted’s phone into the river, adjusted the vixen and jumped over the stile, butting his head like an angry ram into the flurry of snow as it fell on him.
She had thought it might be the postman, or Wesley, even –
Had Ted actually given him a key?
– but it wasn’t either of them. It was Bo.
He was standing on her doorstep, cheerfully exuding his own special kind of vitality (the kind male models cultivate on the back of wholegrain cereal packets) and he was smiling widely at her – gloating, more precisely – larger than life, smugger than hell, thicker than shit – and that was the worst part of it –
The ignorance
So she smiled right back at him, wished him a hearty good morning, kicked him hard in the gonads (was pleased by the accuracy of her attack, considering she was wearing her slippers and they were liable to fly off without warning) watched calmly as he bent over, clutching himself, squeaking (you’d think a man of his stature might produce a better sound than
that),
then (never one to let an opportunity pass) she lifted her knee, brought down her hands (meshed forcibly together), united these two disparate body-parts in a sterling manoeuvre, heard a
gnuff,
then his nose crack (or at least she hoped she had – hoped it wasn’t a tile on her front step), shoved him off her porch, told him to watch out for her
fucking
hydrangea (he didn’t) clucked her tongue furiously, glanced up, saw Dewi walking out onto his verandah, snorted, showed him the finger, went back inside and slammed her door shut behind her.
Have I gone too far?
Two minutes passed.
Silence
Then the shouting commenced.
Bo’s voice – in the road – but directed away from her; towards another…
She did it HERSELF!
– he yelled –
You fucking love-lorn IDIOT
She wrote it HERSELF
And she MAINTAINED it
All these fucking YEARS
She MAINTAINED IT HERSELF
D’you HEAR me?
She maintained it HERSELF
I HAD NO BLOODY PART IN IT
Katherine burst out laughing – a loud laugh, violent, almost hysterical – then turned, smacked her head into the wall – her clenched fists flying out behind her – and commenced crying so fiercely that her snot ran in a waterfall down onto the floor.
The rope had been the easy bit – he was on good terms with the local chandler (sold him his premises, August 1997), and the eggs were a cinch, but the librarian – the fragrant
Eileen –
proved a trickier proposition altogether.
He was lucky to catch her. She was half way up her street, picking an unsteady route along the icy pavement in some exceedingly inappropriate footwear – little lime green boots with spiky heels (at the sight of their inappropriateness, his mouth twisted up at its corners). Not dressed for the cold particularly (a lemon-yellow raincoat, a pale yellow cashmere frock, a silk scarf with seashells on it). Ted pulled up and hailed her from his old, white company Fiesta.
‘I’m a little late for work, Ted,’ she lied, turning her face away and flapping her hand at him like he was a persistent middle-eastern child beggar who’d – quite meanly yet miraculously – detected some unfathomable sign of weakness in her.
Ted knew for a fact that the library didn’t open for a further two hours. But she looked exhausted –
Hollow
His heart went out to her.
He noticed the scratch on her cheek. Just one scratch. Yet deep. It trickled down stickily onto her neck, like the viscid tail of a sweet, raspberry jam pip. Her nails were clean, though, and neat and newly painted. She was holding a yellow mesh shopping bag dotted with perky plastic daisies.
‘I have a message from Wesley,’ Ted murmured, almost swallowing the name whole he was so anxious about offending her with it.
Eileen glanced sharply into the back of his car (perhaps Wesley might be hiding there, ready to spring out at her, unprovoked?) and saw the rope, coiled up, like a boa constrictor. She put her hand to her throat, automatically. ‘Why?’ she asked distrustfully, ‘what does he want with me?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve arranged to meet him just out of town. He asked me to bring you along. And some rope. And some eggs.’
Her eyes immediately filled with tears. ‘Does he plan to humiliate me again?’ she asked tremulously (as if humiliation was all she deserved, all she could ever really hope for).
It suddenly dawned on Ted what kind of a picture his shopping list had painted for her. He winced. And yet…
‘Did he humiliate you before?’ he asked, battling to evict the image of Eileen in awful bondage, her yellow cashmere sweater dress irrevocably yanked asunder…
The gradual drip of the yolk down the front of her cleavage
The slither of the albumen down her pale, porcelain shoulder
She nodded. Sniffed. Lifted her glasses. Patted at her eyes with the knuckle of her index finger.
‘Did he
hurt
you?’
Ted’s hand clenched his leg. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. But he enjoyed the tantalising pinch of his thumb and his index finger.
She nodded again, lifted her bag, looked inside it for a tissue to try and salvage her mascara.
‘Did he…’ Ted indicated towards her cheek.
She glanced up and shook her head.
‘No. A beak,’ she muttered.
‘Oh.’
‘He hurt my pride,’ she said, then shrugged, modestly, ‘that’s
all. And I probably deserved it. I’ve let things… I’ve let things
slide…
’
Ted couldn’t work out whether her modest shrug made things better or worse. He did note however, a corresponding – an
unexpected
twitch in his genitalia.
Eileen removed her purse from her handbag along with a powder compact, a bone-handled hunting knife, some throat pastilles and a heron’s head preserved for posterity inside a transparent plastic bag.
Ted’s gentle erection immediately subsided.
She finally located her tissues, took one out of the packet, and dabbed softly at her injured cheek with it.
‘Isn’t that Wesley’s knife?’ Ted asked, eyeing the decapitated bird’s head, worriedly.
She looked down, almost aghast, automatically opened her hand and dropped it.
‘I don’t know why I took it,’ she said, panicked (as if she’d only just that second committed the theft – had been caught red-handed), ‘I just wanted to stop him from… from
hurting…
’
Ted climbed out of his car and retrieved the knife for her. He handed it back, blunt-end first. She thanked him and thrust it into her bag.
‘Leo said he’d called the police,’ Ted said, glancing over his shoulder.
Her eyes widened behind her glasses.
‘I don’t think you’d want them to find you with that…’ he indicated towards the bird, ‘I believe they’re protected. Wesley was very…’
She looked down, shaking a little.
‘He was very
specific
on that point,’ Ted concluded.
‘I was intending to bury it somewhere,’ she explained.
‘We could do it together,’ Ted heard himself saying gently, ‘I could drive you to the beach or to… to the flyover, underneath it, where the soil is soft. We could bury it there.’
‘Are you laughing at me Ted,’ she suddenly asked, ‘just like he did? And just like the
Turpin
girl did? Is there something… something
funny
about me? Am I
very
silly?’
Ted’s gut told him to put out his hand and touch her hair. He put out his hand. He touched her hair.
It was
unbelievably
stiff.
‘I think you’re magnificent,’ he said, leaning forward, as if to sniff where he’d touched (what was the logic in that?) but he kissed her, instead. On the ear. This wasn’t exactly the place he’d been gunning for. But it was a start –
Wasn’t it?
Eileen hiccuped – quite unromantically – turned her nose sharply into his cheek and then dropped her bag, heavily, onto his feet.
Beyond the quick and the dead
Lies Sirius, First God of Dogs,
Who stood up
51 times
Who fell
Only 8,
But who spawned
Sweet Beauty and his Angel
So the gone might gander