Now I Know (13 page)

That was quite interesting because the cottage had been the farmhouse where one of the men had been born and where his father had been born and where his parents had lived all their lives. The place was pretty well unchanged. There were only two rooms. The biggest had an open fire with a huge brick oven behind that you could sleep on top of in winter to keep warm. There was no electricity and no running water. And an outside dry lav that stank. We had to use Gaz lamps and carry water in plastic containers from a modern house a quarter of an hour's walk away.

We camped there for four days. Most of the time the men spent sitting around remembering the old days, telling stories about life on the rolling road in tramp steamers and grumbling about how dreadful it all is now with modern tankers and ships that just about sail themselves automatically and crews that are pampered and don't know anything about real seamanship.

I got fed up with that fairly soon. There was a small rowing boat belonging to the house so I started going off in that and exploring the lake and the shore around it. And 1 would land somewhere and walk through the forest. The Swedes have a law that allows you to go where you like because the land is supposed to be for everybody. So you don't have to worry about trespassing or tetchy farmers like you have to here. There was masses of wildlife to see as well.

Well, one evening I was walking through a wood when I saw a bull elk. It came looming out of the trees into a clearing. I nearly panicked. I'd no idea they're so big. So strong and bulky. They've huge flattened antlers, really amazing in size, that grow out of their heads like the branches of a tree and make them look top heavy. And they've overpowering hind quarters that squash the breath out of you just to look at. Fearsome. But magnificent. Lordly. They really are. Proud. Regal. I could see why people use words like that.

He mesmerized me. I couldn't move, just stood there staring at him and feeling like an idiot. He looked me up and down and sniffed and then stalked off quite slowly as if I was beneath contempt.

When he was gone I felt so weak I had to sit down till I was calm and got my strength back again. I felt like I'd had a shock. I was shaking all over, my heart was beating fast, I was panting, the bones had gone out of my legs, and I couldn't think at all, never mind think straight. And all the time I was grinning inanely. If anybody had seen me they'd have thought I was mad.

As soon as I recovered, all I wanted to do was get back to the cottage and tell Grandad what I'd seen. But when I arrived they were already three sheets to the wind, as Grandad says, and at the stage of laughing loudly and singing bawdy seamen's songs in raucous voices. That made me spitting angry. I was desperate to tell Grandad about the elk and there he was, that stupid with booze he couldn't have understood even if he'd have listened.

There was nowhere I could get away from them in the cottage. And nobody else for miles, except the local farmer and his family where we got the water, but they hardly spoke any English even if I'd felt like going to them, which I didn't. I didn't fancy wandering about in the forest again either. I did think of sitting like a spare part in the car listening to music on the radio till they were all so blotto they collapsed. But they might have taken it into their heads to drive off somewhere, and I'd have been trapped with them, which didn't appeal at all. The only thing left was to take the boat out on the lake. At least I'd be well away from them, and I thought a good stiff row might do me good.

So I ran down the field and pushed off in the boat and rowed like crazy up and down the lake till I was drenched in sweat and was choking for breath and could hardly see for blood pumping in my eyes and my arms couldn't pull another stroke. I felt like those guys look at the end of the boat race every year, the ones who lose. You know—the way their bodies slump over their oars and their faces are twisted in agony and they're gasping. And somehow I felt I'd failed too.

I sat like that, letting the boat drift in the middle of the lake till I got my breath back and my muscles stopped snapping like overstretched elastic, and my mind settled down to being as normal as it ever is, and my ears stopped popping, and my eyes were seeing properly again.

INTERCUT
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The shot of the lake. Zoom in to a close-up of the figure in the boat till he fills the screen, head to middle: Nik. We watch as he does what he describes in a voice-over
:

And it was then the thing I'm trying to tell you about happened.

As I came to my senses, everything suddenly seemed clearer. There were some birds, some ducks, dabbling about on the edge of the lake and their calls seemed sharper than I could ever remember hearing any noise before. They were all I could hear. Everywhere else was complete silence which the noise of the ducks seemed to make intense, so that the silence was like a noise itself.

My hands were resting on the oars and I could feel the grain of the wood, though up till then they'd seemed smooth. The sun had set, there wasn't a breath of wind. It was the time when you can almost see the dusk creeping in. But that: evening everything stood out sharply as I looked, and the colours, though they weren't bright like in sunlight, seemed to glow with a sort of purity I'd never seen before.

And as I looked a deep sense of peace came over me, a calmness that wasn't at all like feeling relaxed, but made me feel full of energy while being quite still inside. And it was as if time was . . . not stopped . . . but waiting. Hanging in the air. I felt I was looking into eternity and that nothing mattered any more because everything was in harmony, like a marvellous tune. Nothing mattered and yet everything mattered, every smallest detail, and all was well at last.

I sat there in the middle of the lake expecting that this strange sensation would pass. But it didn't. I didn't move, just stared and stared in a sort of happiness I didn't want to break. I watched the sky slowly change as dusk turned to night and stars came out, needle-sharp points of light in a darkening, deepening blueblack vastness that made me feel I was shrinking smaller and smaller till a sort of pain came over me, a mixture of joy because of the beauty of it all and sadness because of my insignificance compared with all that unendingness. But I was part of it, however unimportant I was. And I wanted to be totally in it. Absorbed into it, not separate.

And then, when the stars were fully out and it was night, even though there was still light on the horizon because of how far north we were, the strangest thing of all happened.

I started getting a hard-on. Honest! I'm not just being rude. I had an erection! And I wanted it—all that out there, I mean. I wanted all that—I don't know . . . nature. Peace. Eternity. Whatever it was. Like wanting a girl. I wanted to be in it and to possess it. Wanted to belong to it and wanted it to belong to me. And I wanted to hold it in my hands and feel it with my body. And . . . honest . . . I wanted to come in it!

I know this must sound mad. But it didn't seem like that at the time. It seemed natural. I wasn't surprised or ashamed or anything like that. I just felt this overpowering desire. Stronger than anything I've ever felt before.

I didn't think about it. I just stood up in the boat, and quite deliberately, as if I was performing a sacred act, a ritual ceremony, I took off my clothes, one thing after another, folded them up neatly, which I never do usually, and laid them in the stern.

Then, when I was completely naked, I stood erect, everything erect!, and looked around, all around, part of me still expecting this strange mood to pass, but it didn't. The air was cold by then, northern cold, the cold that comes off snow. And the cold of the air felt as sharp and alive to my skin as the colours and shapes of everything were to my eyes and the sounds and silence, the silence most of all, were to my ears.

And I loved it. Desired it. Was randy for it. Wanted to be in it. And there was only one way. I put a foot on the gunwale, pushed up, and jumped.

I went in feet first, straight down into the dark water. The air felt cold, but the water was freezing. God, it was cold! Knocked the breath out of me like a punch. And knocked down what was standing up as well. Like a fist of ice grabbing the goolies!

As soon as I surfaced I started laughing. And the air felt warm so I splashed about a bit just for the fun of it. Then hauled myself into the boat, shivering, all passion spent!

And I tell you, I shall never forget that evening. Never. It's as clear to me now as it was then. And I know it will be all my life. ‘That must sound pretty ridiculous,' Nik said.

‘No, it doesn't,' Julie said.

‘Every detail,' Nik said, ‘still sharp. Especially the feeling of happiness and peace and wanting to be part of the vastness. Whatever the vastness was . . . Is.'

‘God,' Julie said.

Nik snorted. ‘I knew you'd say that.'

‘Sorry I'm so predictable.'

They had arrived at Julie's car. She unlocked the passenger door. As Nik stooped to climb in, she kissed him lightly on his passing cheek. Nik checked himself and turned his head, hoping for more. But Julie was already on her way to the driver's seat.

†

Tom waited. After his talk with Sharkey he'd felt pleased, spending the time since then running and rerunning his performance, rewriting the script where he felt he had done badly, storing away the better moments for use again in future. What excited him most was the prospect of hooking Sharkey as a regular snout. His first, and quite a catch. As ageing leader of the town's least prissy teen squad, Sharkey knew everybody that mattered among the juves, and was well placed with the grown-up pros. He'd be a prime source of hot gossip.

A wary predator, was Sharkey, and, true to his name, always on the move. But, thought Tom, predators can be preyed on. Kept alive, given enough time, enough rope, they led you to more tasty fish. Already there were the makings of a useful relationship. Act the clever weakling, Tom told himself. Let Sharkey snap and bite and play the big man all he wants. Make him believe he can break free whenever he likes, and flatter him. But every now and then give the line a jerk. Then he would spit out the juicy gobbets he'd swallowed, no trouble at all.

There was one thing all sharks and all pack leaders feared: that the rest of the pack would find out their weakness and turn on them. Back-bite time.

As he stared at the view from the Hill Pauls car park, Tom decided that Sharkey's weakness was that he was a romantic.

For people like Sharkey, being a leader, and believing they were champion of a cause, mattered almost more than anything. They didn't really care who they led, or what the cause. Those things were often as much a matter of accident as of choice. Sharkey led the Sharks because that was the best of the gangs that played around the streets where he lived. And he was a villain who thought he was Robin Hood because he'd been born into villainy and taught the Robin Hood garbage by his petty criminal dad. If he'd been born in the plusher parts of town he'd maybe have organized the lads into a computer club and been a gospel Tory. It wouldn't have mattered so long as he was the leader and believed himself in the right, fighting against the odds.

Take away their self-righteous confidence and people like Sharkey were lost. Undermine their position as a leader, or better still, disillusion them about their cause, and they were finished. Not just in the eyes of their pathetic followers, but in their own eyes. Take away their belief in themselves and their destiny and they self-destructed. Romantics love failure as much as—even sometimes more than—success, so long as they fail as martyrs.

Take Sharkey in, send him down for his petty crimes as martyr to the cause of the ordinary bloke against an oppressive system, and he'd survive his porridge proudly, come out a bigger hero than he went in, and be all the better prepared for villainy because of what he'd learned inside. But show him how you can leave him on the streets a reject with no following and he would do anything you want to prevent it. Sure, he would twist and turn and snap a lot, and you would have to slip him some nicely laundered reasons why he should do the dirty on himself and his kind, but in the end he'd give.

And you know what the really chuffing thing is, Tom thought, smiling to himself as the game became clear. The really chuffing thing is you get him anyway. Because in the end he gives himself up. Play him long enough, make him do the dirty often enough, and finally he goes to pieces because the disillusionment about himself gradually corrodes his self-respect. And his romantic soul can't stand that! Then there's nothing left except the humdrum boredom of self-disgust, or the romantic's last resort: a nasty little romantic death. Suicide. The Roman way of getting your own back—on a world entirely against you, and on yourself for being a weak twittish human being like everybody else.

I don't like romantics, Tom thought. Don't just dislike them, I despise them. They're just as dangerous as psychos and worse than straightforward, out-and-out villains whose only motives are excitement and greed.

At which moment Sharkey appeared, his heavy frame hunched, his pasty face puckered, reminding Tom of a nocturnal animal, used to the cover of darkness and tangled undergrowth, that's been flushed out into open country in bright sunlight. Though in fact this was one of those moist grey days that make slugs happy. So, thought Tom, why not Sharkey?

‘Good news?' Tom asked.

‘Sommat funny goin on,' Sharkey said, eyes busy for overseers.

‘Don't look like you're dying of laughter.'

‘Everybody's heard but nobody knows nothin.'

‘Come on, Sharkey, you can do better than that.'

‘No, honest. Nothin. Can't understand it myself.'