The art of drowning, p.12
The Art of Drowning, page 12
‘When I was a boy,’ Donald said, ‘you got a man with a ferret in to deal with rats.’
‘So did they, on the farm,’ Sam said dreamily. ‘My father is always reminding me that his father was a farm labourer. He thinks that’s part of my heritage, and he thinks I ought to rediscover it. They want to drag me back there. Into that lake. My mother would drown me. She tried hard enough. Why should I want to know her?’
This really was getting off the point. Or maybe not. The lad smelt clean, no dope, just kind of volatile. Donald cleared his throat.
‘We might have found someone with the right kind of grudge against your father,’ he said. ‘Someone he sent to prison. Can you think of anyone else who might hate him? After all, you know him best.’
Sam was making more coffee. Donald reflected that it was his own, desperate ordinariness which was the talent most overlooked by his employers. People told him things because he was indistinguishable from the man who came to read the gas meter. And because, after all, he looked like everyone’s dad. Not everyone’s dad, to be fair. Sam continued the process of making the coffee.
‘Know him? I doubt if anyone does. He’s a hard bastard who drives himself hard and thinks everyone else should do the same. Work, work, work. He doesn’t need anyone threatening to kill him to make him miserable. He can’t even get himself a woman. Wish he would.’
There was a quick grin in Donald’s direction.
‘He moans at me, you know? Like you all do, right? Other days, I tell you, he’s a laugh a minute, a fucking gem. He needs a bit of teasing, know what I mean? It’s just sometimes I wish I wasn’t the only one loves the silly sod. He deserves better than me, really. A real woman. Have you ever seen him laugh? It’s a treat, I tell you.’
No.
‘Has he ever done anything he’s ashamed of? As far as you know?’
Sam shook his head, then reconsidered.
‘No. I very much doubt it. Unless you include shooting the swans.’
There were great advantages to a big, blank face.
‘Oh, he can shoot, can he?’
Sam poured water into the new jug, releasing the coffee smell to which Donald remained addicted, even when he shook with caffeine shock.
Sam’s hands were steady. Donald admired anyone who could move from temper tantrum to calm as if cleansed by it.
‘My father can bring in the harvest, pick apples, climb trees and shoot,’ Sam said proudly, counting off these talents by clapping his hands together in slow applause. ‘Which gifts he would like me to share. But …’ He moved across to the countertop, depositing the coffee before going back to wash his hands beneath the tap. No way this boy ever handled a dead rat. ‘That was a long time ago. He was taught by his father, liebling, and his father was a soldier. So, copper, don’t go looking for guns around here. All that was down on that bloody farm. Where Mummy came from. I can hardly blame my father for learning about murder. Animal farming’s all about killing things. And shooting the swans was a terrible thing, because his father had done the same. Blah, blah, blah.’
‘Do you think,’ Donald said, ‘we could go back to the beginning?’
Grace took the gun in both hands and shot into the wall. The sound always surprised her. The blind cow which was never going to have a calf skittered at the sound of the shot, but without spirit. They were in the far barn, away from the others. The cow, which was smaller than the rest, was tethered to the wall with a rope halter, and it was not the rope which steadied her. She knew. Grace was talking to her. Your daddy bought you without a passport, silly sod, because he thought he could see promise in you. Do you wonder no one ever gave him the money to buy a racehorse? And you have to go, because the others shun you. They know you’re never going to come on heat. You are causing ripples of discontent. Cows have feelings; they are capable of bearing grudges, fearing for the future, knowing one of them is under a death sentence and wanting it to be over.
There was something horribly moving about an unseeing head, swaying, ears twitching away flies, tongue working, digestion rumbling, all of that muscle supporting that flesh and mammoth quantity of weight, even her shrivelled udders. This one was so small, she was no bigger than three large men welded together. She allowed herself to be led. She would not eat, she would not grow, she would not reproduce. Her infertility rendered her undesirable even to those dumb females, herded together, mounting the one in heat in order to satisfy some primeval itch, mimicking the bull. No heat, no insemination, no pregnancy, no calf, no milk. That was that. If only she did not look so ashamed. She reeked of the sweet, bad breath of unproductivity. At least she was blind.
Grace raised the gun, steadied it. The shot made less sound than the practice shot which had hit the wall. Guns like these were only useful at close range, about three feet. Better this way, darling, than being herded on to the lorry with everyone else. So much more distinctive, and quick.
Grace was angry with Ernest. Ernest should be doing this. Ernest had agonised about the beast, as Ernest did, and she was sick of it. Ernest could not kill anything. He had bought the animal out of sentiment, and he could not even kill her. They could buy cattle and raise them, but not kill them, unless they had slipped the bureaucratic net, as she had. They could nurture but they could not kill humanely; they must pinion a bovine beast in terror and make it wait its turn for transport and ignominy. They could not kill, or bury decently, their own stock, raised on their own hay, on their own land. Piglets, yes, cattle, no.
The cow had buckled, gracefully, like a performer taking a drunken bow, collapsing on stage with a little elegance and scarcely a tremor. Grace eyed the size of her. Too big for the incinerator. Too much for the freezer.
She wandered off for a minute, smoked a cigarette; leave it a minute or two, let the blood settle. Tried not to get cross with Ernest for leaving her to do this. It was always her, or Ivy. Woman’s work. Ernest could use the guns to scare rooks from trees, was all. He could use his knife to slit the twine on bales. Grace stubbed out her cigarette, grinding the stub into the mud.
She found the axe and swung it down. If she could take off that great big head, and sever the legs at the knees, the torso would fit, although it would take a long time to burn the bone. Hack it and make it manageable. He could do the rest. He was the butcher. Once a thing was dead, Ernest ceased to mourn. He could not kill, but he could pick up pieces. He was still as strong as the ox he would refuse to slaughter, with the memory of the elephants he had never seen in reality. If ever he watched TV, it was wildlife programmes.
She had stood to one side to sever the head with the long-handled axe, and still got splattered. It took practice. You could not kill things without practice; it was a skill, slow in the learning.
She put the head inside the incinerator, temperature at max, left the rest for him, and took the tether she had rescued first back to the house.
They knew: the cattle knew, the Polish herdsman knew what she had done. Beasts and humans. They were all in there, straight after milking. Looking at her as she went into the barn under the scrutiny of all those bovine eyes. Huge eyes, above slow-moving, chewing mandibles, staring as if fixated with accusation. Instead of ignoring her, letting her walk through, they turned on her and moved towards her, as they did with someone new, frightening in their fresh, accusatory curiosity. A hundred tons of flesh and bone, barring her path. She shouted at them: they stood back a step, and then came forward. Grace ignored them.
She peeled off the oversized, splattered overall outside the kitchen door, carried it in with her at arm’s length and stuffed it into the washing machine in the alcove. Licence to kill meant licence to wash. Kill, wash, kill, wash. She hummed over the preparation of the late breakfast. Omelettes today; toast; cereal. No bacon, although, as she thought, she had never had the least sentiment about pigs. She hummed as she worked.
My young love said to me, your mother won’t mind.
And my father won’t mind you for your lack of kind,
And she stepped away from me, and this did she say,
It will not be long, love, till our wedding day …
Ernest came in, shyly.
‘You’ve got to cut her up,’ Grace said gently. ‘You should have cleaned the gun. Oh darling, what are we going to do?’
‘Wait for Ivy,’ he said, then corrected himself, in the face of her stare.
‘Wait for him?’
His eyes were still the same, pellucid, far-seeing blue. Paler now.
The guests trooped in for breakfast.
Ernest told them about the lake. He had told them about the lake yesterday.
They looked around for the cat and the dog they considered mandatory in a farmhouse kitchen.
Grace missed them too. And the chickens they had had when Ivy was small.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pets were an indulgence, Grace explained. They did not need a dog to round up sheep, since there were no sheep. They did not need a cat to catch mice; chemical poisons did the trick.
What about rats? one of them said. You must get rats, on a farm. Grace opened her mouth to deny it. After harvest or haymaking, surely? the guest asked, with the wise look of one who knows such things from years of walking across other people’s fields. She guessed he must have seen one: the next step would be to ask for a reduction in the bill. There was often a method behind the most artless of questions.
Ernest shook his head. For those you get in the rat man, he said. With his ferret. That’s his job. Have you seen any ferrets? There’s lots around here. You only see them at night. Beautiful things. Now that’s what I’d call a worthwhile pet.
She had been aware of the rat in the house for the last three days. Their appearance was a mystery at certain times of year, although she was sure there was a logical explanation. I can’t stand the rats, Ivy would say. Can’t kill them either. She missed her daughter with a sudden, sharp pain.
As they scraped back their chairs, thanking her for omelettes and toast and fruit compote, an extra figure loomed in the doorway. Ed did not deserve the sobriquet of village policeman, although he looked as though he could audition for the role because he was fat, wore an unseasonal uniform and played the part of a weary paterfamilias. He usually arrived to check licences or the occasional stolen car left abandoned in a field, and Grace regarded him as simply another lazy bureaucrat with an alien accent. He smiled at the paying guests like a time-worn uncle, wished them a nice day, and wasn’t it a good one.
It was, if she had time to notice. Bright and warm, but not too warm, just right for walking about in shirtsleeves. A good day, following rain, with more rain promised in the afternoon. Obliging weather for the hay.
‘Make it quick, Ed,’ she said, handing him a mug of coffee and banging about behind his back. ‘Because I’ve got a lot to do. Like go out for a walk with my husband. You can’t have come to check gun licences. You know we haven’t had a rifle here for years.’
Ed sat down heavily, with the right ponderous manner for a serious errand.
‘Not even an old one, I’ll bet. No, Mrs Wiseman. It’s about one of your B and B people. Do you recall a bloke who stayed here for a week, earlier on? Middle of May or thereabouts? Young man from London? He came on his own. They remember him in the pub.’
‘I remember them all, but none of them in particular. Why?’
‘Only it seems he went missing, back in London, or so they thought. Took a couple of weeks after he left here for anyone to notice. Then this body turned up, off the coast, six miles down from Wethering. Taken them all this time to put the two together.’
Grace was clearing the table. Ernest sat quietly.
‘What’s that got to do with us?’ she said.
‘Don’t rightly know, but it looks like his last night staying with you was the last time anyone saw him. There was a party at the pub.’
‘There’s always a party at the pub, if someone’s willing to buy the drinks,’ Grace said crossly.
‘He was in the pub most nights, they say.’
Her face cleared, she nodded and sat down.
‘Oh yes, that one. I do remember him. Jack something. Jack the lad … No, it was Joe. Having a holiday because he’d split up from a girl or something. Remember him, Ernest? He was the only one I’ve ever had who wanted a quiet, healthy week in the country for the express purpose of getting drunk every night. Poor soul. What happened?’
‘Don’t know. He drove back to London, for sure. Put his suitcase inside his house, and that’s all he did. They say in the pub that Ivy was in that last night.’
Grace nodded, trying to remember. ‘So? Yes. I’ve got it now. She was home that week, wasn’t she, Ernest? We were both in the pub that night. I’m allowed out sometimes, you know. They give me free drinks, for all the people I send there. We’re good for trade.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘He was a bit obnoxious, to be honest,’ Grace said. ‘My God, he was even flirting with me. I’d mothered him a bit. Now I remember. It was that little heat wave we had, like we sometimes do in May. I got him back here, he went to bed. He was packed and ready, wanted to go early in the morning, to miss the traffic. And he did. Not so much as a thank-you. I thought that was funny, since he’d really enjoyed himself. Made friends, he said.’
Ed got up. ‘Is that all? You’ve no idea why he might have come back to the coast?’
‘You want to ask them in the pub. They’d have known him best. We’ve no idea. He said he’d definitely book for next year. I don’t know, I just don’t know.’
They all bowed heads in silent sympathy.
‘Ah well,’ Ed said. ‘I was asked to ask. I’ll let you get out for your walk. Lucky for some. How are you keeping, Mr Wiseman?’ he shouted, as if Ernest was deaf, the way he did with anyone old.
‘Fine.’
It was not true.
It was an old habit, walking round the farm, or further afield. The courtship of Ernest and Grace had taken the form of walking, getting away from scrutinising eyes. What could not be done in a house could be done in a field or a copse. He could buy her a drink in a pub, once borrowed his dad’s car for a drive somewhere else. The permissive, expensive hedonism of the 1960s had simply not applied here, only the same old rituals. The first time he had ever seen her semi-naked was by the lake. Grace in a swimsuit had taken his breath away; Grace being the better swimmer had alarmed him. She had been born by the sea a few miles away; she loved the sea. He had offered her the lake of which he was so proud, as if he had created it for her pleasure, presented it to her as a substitute for the sea. I made this with Carl, he told her. Carl was with me.
Ivy swam here, every summer day, only after Grace taught her first in the sea. It was easier to learn in the buoyant salt water. Even after the enormous expanse of the sea, the lake seemed romantically large to a child, from a child’s height. In reality it was a hundred yards long at most, dwindling to the point where it became river, then stream, with a narrow breadth between the bank and the woods on the far side, where the swans nested. A swimmer could treat it as a pool and do laps. It was safe and sheltered, and semi-secret, because it was so far from a road, there was no official footpath, and people were lazy. Locals knew; kids with bikes knew, but it never featured on a map. It was supposed to have died. There was no toilet, no coffee shop, and no games to play except sitting and eating picnics. There were occasional campers, who asked at the house first. There was no easy access to the water, which was muddy near the edge, and the place had a reputation for contamination and danger. The Wiseman family did not own the water, although everyone assumed they did because it was Ernest who picked up the litter. But it was his. It was their starting point and their nemesis.
Grace had fallen in love with the idea of a pond on the doorstep far sooner than she had fallen in love with Ernest. Carl was always there, then and now.
The habit was to walk, and sit, anywhere, including here, to talk about what was important, or not. Sometimes the point was not to talk at all, and then whatever it was which was festing cured itself and could be dealt with later. Or never, because it had ceased to matter. The presence of the lake was indeed his gift to her. Grace had sat in the field above, paused at the curve in the track, sat on the bank, swum herself into exhaustion, and chewed the cud here, and in the process had submerged all her greatest resentments without actually burying them. The fact that it had turned against her, and that the place itself, as well as its reigning swans, had delivered up to her the corpse of her grandchild, was a temporary aberration, a defection and betrayal held deep, but usually forgiven. The impact of that event went far beyond. She wondered now, as they sat on the bank in high summer, if Ernest saw what she saw, or if she could see what he did through his dark glass, and how long ago it was since they had lost the knack of telling one another the truth, or at what point she had decided he could not stand it, any more than she could. Or quite when it was he had begun to fade. All she knew was that when they looked at the lake, he had memories longer than hers, different visions of happiness and horror. And that he had never once had an ounce of her cunning or her acumen, or her passion, for which she thanked what passed for God, and loved him more, because he was still beautiful and he could always surprise her. As long as he would do as he was told.
‘Why did you lie?’ he said to her, absently, as they lounged in the grass.
‘About what?’
‘About who brought who back from the pub. That poor, silly boy. What a pain in the neck he was.’
‘I didn’t lie. That’s what I remembered.’
‘You lie all the time, lovely. Thank you for dealing with the cow. You were singing in the kitchen. Can you do it again? You might bring them out.’
Grace hummed.
She stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair.
