The Man Who Rained (27 page)

He rubbed salt into the newly removed goat skin and hung it up to cure. He chose another cleaver and chopped briskly through the meat and bones, separating out the body into joints and chops.
Then he could go on no more.

He twisted around and flung the cleaver through the air. It whistled as it flew, then slammed into the woodwork of the door frame. He kicked over the bleed trough so that its liquid mix of
innards and viscera sprayed out across the workshop wall. His hands were shaking and he screwed up his eyes and yelled into the darkness of his thinkings. After yanking free the cleaver he headed
back into the homestead. The first thing to hand was his father’s bookshelf, which he broke from the wall with one powerful blow, so that all of the books fell in a mess to the floor. He
dropped after them on to his knees and one by one slammed the cleaver through their covers until the floor was snowy with paper. Then he sprung up and swung the cleaver at his grandfather’s
favourite armchair, hacking through the arm and ripping open the cushions until he spluttered on the dust and the feathers flying forth. He kicked over the table, and butted his head against a
painting of his great-great-grandfather so that the canvas smashed in. He slashed and scored his way along the wall of portraits, until he came to his old trunk in the corner. Greedily he threw it
back open – and then stopped.

The paper birds turned his rage into a ceremonial fury.

He lifted from the trunk his grandfather’s violin and his father’s weighty Bible. He righted the table and placed both objects on it, the instrument on top of the book. He regarded
them for a moment, then raised the cleaver over his head with both hands and slammed it down with all of his might. It carved cleanly through the violin, sending frayed strings thrumming to both
sides. It split the Bible in half like an apple and wedged into the wood of the table.

He crashed back on to his rump and sat there panting. After some time had passed he began to realize the wreck he had made of the homestead. Filled with sudden doubt and superstition, he reached
out and touched the nearer half of the violin. To his surprise he saw that there was a folded piece of card taped inside it. His grandfather must have secreted it there by sticking it into the bole
of the instrument. Daniel removed it and unfolded it cautiously.

A photograph of his mother and father.

His mother, Maryam. It was the first time he had seen her since he was seven years old.

He gasped at the sight of her. ‘Look at you!’ he said, pawing at her. He had always considered his looks to be yet one more product of the Fossiter lineage, but he marvelled to see
that he also looked like her. She had his severe brow and dark eyes, and hair as black as his, although hers was long enough to reach down to her elbows. And there was something in her eyes he
could not quite place, a cold kind of knowledge. She looked as if she were withholding some immense secret. ‘Look at you,’ he whispered, tracing her outline with his finger.

Her gauzy dress was tailored from a translucent cloth, and at the moment the photograph had been taken a wind had puffed and the dress had billowed and flapped out along with her long black
locks and she looked half woman and half mist. For a while he didn’t blink, in case this image of her would prove as fleeting as the ones in his dreams and vanish under other memories.
Eventually his eyes were swimming and he had to refresh them, but to his delight the photo remained when they reopened. He slid on to the floorboards and lay on his back, gripping the photograph
tight. He felt cut off from the man he had been yesterday, even from the man he had been one hour ago. Cut off and stranded, lost in a chill dark. He began to shiver. It was a hot day and the
sunlight flaring in through the homestead’s windows lit him directly. Even so he felt icy cold.

Then he realized that he could see his breath hanging in the air.

He got up and retreated on all fours, but his next exhalation, and the next too, hung where he had breathed it. A trilogy of sparkling clouds, as if the warm air of the homestead were freezing.
Terrified, he dared not breathe further. He clasped his hands over his mouth until he turned red-faced and his veins began to throb in his neck and forehead. Still the clouds of breath hung there
glittering, until reluctantly he gasped and his heart fluttered with relief because his next breath was invisible again.

The three clouds dispersed gradually in the air. He puffed out several times, just to be sure. Nothing. He pinched his cheeks, wiped his palms across his shirt to remove the cold sweat that had
formed on them, then pressed a hand to his chest and felt for his heartbeat. To his relief it did not boom with thunder, but with the powerful pump of ventricles.

He did not know what to make of what had just happened, so he turned again to the photograph of his parents. He collected the cleaver with which he had destroyed his house, and carefully scored
a line between the couple. His father he left amid the destruction of the homestead. His mother he regarded for a long minute, then slipped into his shirt pocket, to walk out with her into what
promised to become a fine summer evening.

He stood for a long while in the yard, leaning on the fence, staring upwards at the azure heavens and feeling as groundless as the clouds that passed above.

When he looked down he was surprised to see a man approaching from the west. He moved with such zip that it took Daniel a moment to realize it was Finn. Even when he reached the homestead,
Daniel did not know what to say.

Eventually Finn said, ‘You look different.’

Daniel looked down at his hands, dried in places with blood from his earlier butchery, and stuck here and there with bits of debris from the chaos he had made of the hall. He cleared his throat.
‘I feel different.’

‘We need to talk. Can I ... I mean, are you going to invite me in?’

Daniel nodded sideways at the front door. ‘Lead the way.’

Finn took a few steps inside, then stopped to gape at the damage. ‘Daniel ... what have you done?’

Daniel rubbed his beard. ‘I don’t know why I did it, but I think ... it was the right thing to do.’

Finn approached the ruined portraits. The top half of one sitter’s face remained in the frame, but a sweep of the cleaver had slit the canvas beneath the nose and the bottom half of the
painting had flapped away. ‘This was your grandfather!’

‘Yes.’ He stood beside Finn to look into the oil of the old man’s eyes.

‘You ... you have nothing but respect for your grandfather.’

Daniel reached up and tore out the top half of the canvas, which he discarded on the floor.

Finn was astonished. ‘Daniel, what’s happened?’

‘The past,’ he said, sweeping an arm through the air to indicate the entire contents of the room, ‘became the past. And you,’ he raised a commanding finger, which to his
dismay Finn flinched from, ‘are owed a thousand apologies.’

‘What for?’

 ‘I let my fear get the better of me.’

‘Daniel, this is all ... really unexpected. And ... and ...’ He smiled nervously. ‘If it will make you feel better, then apology accepted.’

If only,
thought Daniel,
the two of us could start anew from here.
He relished, for a moment, the way the destruction had made the two of them unguarded, then he turned away from
Finn and with a sigh took the letter from Betty off the table. ‘Here. It was meant for you. Back on the day she left us. I hoarded it because ... I loved your mother deeply. I know I had the
wrong ways of showing it, I ... I do not acknowledge your acceptance of my apology. Not until you have read this letter, when I suspect you shall be glad of the chance to retract it.’

Finn received the two sheets as if they were halves of a treasure map.

When he had finished reading he folded the letter but continued to stare at its ageing paper. Daniel steadied his ankles and locked his knees, as if bracing to be crashed into by a great wave.
At least,
he thought,
I deserve this.
He wrung his fingers, and waited.

Finn threw his arms around him and embraced him. He squeezed his shoulders tightly, while Daniel could do nothing but gawp.

‘All my life,’ said Finn, stepping away, ‘you have seemed so invincible. When I was a child you were terrifying. I thought I might wake one night with your hands around my
throat.’

Daniel looked down and screwed up his eyes. ‘Is there anything I can do to make amends?’

‘I think you have done it. And if there’s anything I should know it’s this: people can change, just like the clouds. I forgive you.’

‘I do not deserve it.’

‘If you didn’t deserve it, I wouldn’t need to forgive you.’

‘I will be better to you, Finn, I swear. For the rest of my days.’

Finn looked away. ‘I thought coming here would be difficult, but not because of this. It was because I’ve got something to tell you and now I don’t know how, but... I’m
leaving, Daniel. I’m leaving Thunderstown.’

Daniel stared at him blankly, expecting a punchline. When none came he swallowed and asked, ‘Is that the truth?’

‘Yes. Elsa and I, we’re going away. Together. It feels like we’re meant to.’

Daniel righted a chair he had thrown over in his earlier fury, and slumped into it with his hands between his knees. ‘I had hoped for the chance to make amends to you.’

‘Yes. I can see.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Somewhere. Anywhere. Not having a destination is sort of the whole point.’

For a moment he pictured Finn wracked with lightning in some busy street of the bustling world, and he opened his mouth to forewarn him, but then stopped himself to let the fear go. To his
delight he was able to do so. Unanchored, it drifted away from him.

‘You must do as you see fit,’ he said, ‘although still there are practicalities. There are things you will need.’

Finn shrugged. ‘We’ll muddle through.’

‘I had hoped to make up for lost time.’

Finn puffed out his cheeks. ‘I never thought we would have a conversation like this.’

Daniel got up and paced over to his trunk, untouched amid the debris. ‘As you know, I have never been a spendthrift.’ He removed from the trunk a clasped wooden box. ‘So I have
saved up some money, as well as the sums that I inherited from my father and grandfather.’

He popped open the box and inside were squeezed wads of bank notes, tied together by string.

‘Take these with you, and all practicality is dealt with.’

‘Daniel, it’s too much; you might need it.’

He held up a hand. ‘On the contrary it is too little. Besides, I like the thought that my forefathers’ savings will be turned to the purposes of romance. It will be a kind of revenge
for me.’

Finn sighed and accepted the box. ‘We’ll come and see you before we leave.’

‘I would be grateful for that. I will try to get the place in better shape before then. I have some mess to clear up, and a bonfire to make.’

Finn laughed, hesitated, then hugged Daniel again. Daniel could not remember ever having being clasped with such affection.

‘Finn,’ he said when they stepped apart, ‘there’s something caught on your ear.’

Finn reached up and retracted his hand with a scrap of mist looped round his fingers. More of it formed out of the side of his head, blowing in clumps as light as blossom.

‘This keeps happening,’ he said. ‘I think it means I’m happy.’

Daniel pointed to himself. ‘Because of what we just said?’

He nodded. Daniel’s mouth opened and closed, but since it seemed their earlier words had been such marvellous things, he chose not to risk muddying them with any more.

‘For now,’ said Finn, ‘I’d best be on my way. Elsa is telling Kenneth Olivier that we’re leaving, and then we’re going to meet each other in the square.
We’re going to take a goodbye tour of Thunderstown.’

Daniel walked out with him and stood in the road. He waved to him as he walked off towards town, and marvelled at the faint haze of happiness that glimmered in Finn’s wake.

Elsa took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaving Thunderstown.’

They were in Kenneth’s front yard, where she had found him sitting in a polo shirt of many clashing colours, and rereading one of his well-thumbed almanacs. At her news he slumped back
with a puff. ‘Oh,’ he said, and looked lost for words.

The day had reached an in-between hour, neither afternoon nor evening. The sun was still trying to shine, but so many pinched rows of cloud were moving from west to east that the sky looked like
an upside-down sea, and the sun some great sunken orb glowing underwater.

Kenneth looked up for inspiration. ‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘can I ask why?’

‘I met someone.’

Kenneth was too genial to let his disappointment hold back a smile, or to prevent that smile from turning to a chuckle. ‘I might have known! A Thunderstown man?’

‘Kind of. His name is Finn. Finn Munro.’

Kenneth frowned. ‘Hmm, I can’t put a face to that name.’

‘That’s because he, er, well ...’ She wanted to tell him the truth, and reckoned he had been good enough to her to deserve it. She cleared her throat. ‘This is going to
sound strange,’ she began, and then told him everything in a hurry, every detail of all that had happened: the way she’d first caught Finn dissolving into cloud; the sneaked visits to
the bothy and the way he’d shown her air in his veins instead of blood; their trip into the cave and the paintings there; the reasons Dot had given for Finn’s strange body; the way, now
that he was happy, he became prone to a hazy lining. When she’d finished talking she was breathless, and waited for him to announce his disbelief.