Darkmans (80 page)

He exercised his jaw for a moment, ‘my
boat…’

He ducked –
‘Fuck!’
– as a sudden spurt of ocean spray came hurtling towards him, then grabbed for his coat, shoved rapidly past her, stumbled out into the hallway and headed for the stairwell. His feet felt…he looked down, horrified…they felt
tiny,
yet curiously painful and unwieldy – like he was walking on hooves, on pegs, on stilts. He approached the stairs, carefully – still holding the bag, his coat, clutching on to the coin as if his life depended on it – leaning his full weight against the banister as he staggered down.

‘Will you settle your account?’ the receptionist asked as he teetered past her.

‘What?’

Kane paused.

‘Will you settle your account?’

‘Uh…’

Kane shrugged.

‘Mrs Grass is leaving us. Didn’t she tell you?’

Wow…

Kane stared at her, agog, as more ants marched on by.

‘Yes.’

Kane frowned.

‘No…’

He shook his head.

‘Are you all right?’ the receptionist asked. ‘You seem a little…’

‘My feet are very smell,’ Kane informed her. Then he frowned ‘I mean
smel…smal
…I mean
small.
They’re very
small
now.’

He blinked.

Did I actually just say that?

‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I must
gaa
…’

He shook his head.
‘Gaaaaa…’

His mouth was yawning at her, insanely. He snapped it shut. He swallowed. ‘I mean
gaa-n
…’ he said ‘…gone…I mean
go.
I must…’

He smiled, self-deprecatingly. ‘On my small feet. I must
gaa
on my
smell
…on my tiny…’

He pointed. He slung his coat over his shoulder. He staggered from the surgery.

Outside, on the pavement, he gazed around him, blankly. It was freezing cold. He shivered. He tried to pull on his coat, but the bag and the coin seemed to actively disable him –

Just get rid of them

He peered down into the gutter and saw a storm drain nearby. He casually flipped the coin into it –

Chink!

Plop!

Yeah
 –

And fuck you, too

– then inspected the bag, irritably. He glanced up. Directly opposite him stood a neat row of suburban houses, and just beyond those: a wide, clear sky interspersed with welcome flashes of winter green. Kane smiled –

The cemetery

– he recalled Elen mentioning – in passing, the previous evening – how it might be a suitable location for burying the kite –

Fine…

He turned left (the cemetery’s main entrance was on the Canterbury Road – where he’d parked his car), but then thought better of it and turned right instead (following a secret route which he still vaguely remembered from the scant adventures of his Ashford boyhood). He rapidly eclipsed the row of houses, skirted the Mace Industrial Estate and found himself on a small, overgrown pathway which meandered along the cemetery’s tall back wall.

The wall was old, brick-built and rose to a height of around 7 feet. Kane cleaved to it faithfully – for 12 yards or so – until he reached a particular point – a familiar point – where the ground had shifted and the masonry above was cracked and jagged. He stopped – with a wide smile of recognition – hurled his coat over the top, placed the bag’s handle between his teeth and scrambled his way up.

He swung his leg over. Beyond him lay a beautiful, frost-tinged expanse of well-tended, freely undulating grass dotted with a sparse collection of headstones (some large and grand, others much smaller, many lying flat) all interspersed with a rich abundance of mature trees and bushes. Over to his right, a neat path jinked its way through a dramatically topiarised group of ornamental Yews.

He peered down. Directly below him was a giant compost heap –

Ah!

He clambered to his feet –

Whoops!

– wobbling precariously at first, but then steeling his nerve, lifting his chin, puffing out his chest, holding up his arms and leaping into thin air – wildly, without inhibition –

Waaargh!

– landing on the heap, spread-eagled – with a soggy
thumph
– and collapsing into the rotting leaves and weeds and grass cuttings, guffawing lustily, a small cloud of steam ascending around him. He inhaled the heady, dank aroma of slowly rotting matter. He shoved his face right into it – he
bit
into it – groaning his delight as a million bugs sighed and creaked inside the shifting walls of the dark insect city below. He suddenly felt alive – free – unencumbered – ecstatic.

Several minutes passed. Kane lay flat on his belly – blissfully supine. Then slowly but surely his hands contracted and his fingers began to scrabble, to clutch, to
dig.
Pretty soon he was tunnelling into the heap with a sense of real gusto, each handful he ejected growing warmer and moister and denser and steamier.

The deeper he dug, the more frenzied his efforts grew. Before too much longer he was literally
clawing
at the heap – like a frenzied badger – flushed, abandoned, panting, intoxicated – a spectacular arc of muck and soil flying around him.

‘Excuse me?’

Eh?

Kane paused.

‘Excuse me?’

Eh?

Kane rose to his knees. Directly below him, on the ground – holding a rake and pushing a wheelbarrow – stood a gardener. Kane appraised the gardener imperiously. ‘Excuse you?’ he echoed haughtily, wiping
an impatient arm across his dripping brow. ‘But why
should
I, when you don’t offend me in the slightest part?’

The gardener stared back up at Kane, nonplussed.

‘Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’ he demanded.

‘Hmmn…’
Kane considered this question, thoughtfully. ‘I would mind telling you,’ he confided, ‘although if you
must
know,’ he peered down at himself, ‘I’m kneeling – and sweating – and breathing – and
talking
…’

Kane lifted a muddy paw to his lips. ‘In fact I’m talking to
you.
I can feel my mouth moving…’ he dropped his hand, with a bright smile, ‘but now I must dig.’

He recommenced digging.

The gardener – a wiry man in his mid-fifties – scratched nervously at his neck.

‘What are you digging
for?’
he asked.

Kane stopped digging.

‘I’m digging to make a hole,’ he explained patiently.

‘What
for
?’

‘Not four,’ Kane demurred, shaking his head (a shower of bugs and dirt cascading around him).

‘Huh?’

‘Not
four.
I’m not digging
four
holes. I’m only digging one. One hole will suffice. But it must be a whole hole and not just a measly
half…’

‘Well you’re going to have to stop it,’ the gardener interrupted him.

Kane considered this for a second. ‘But what shall I stop it
with?’
he asked. ‘And how might I stop a hole which isn’t even yet dug?’

He paused for a moment before adding, with a shrug, ‘Surely every hole must simply stop itself?’

‘Okay.
Okay…’
the gardener’s patience was wearing thin.

‘Either you get out of that heap voluntarily or I’m calling for back-up and we’ll drag you out.’

‘I’m not
in
a heap,’ Kane giggled, ‘I’m
on
a heap.’

As he spoke his attention was briefly diverted by a slight movement near his knee. He glanced down and saw – much to his joy – that he’d uncovered a hedgehog. The tiny beast was curled up, hibernating, inside a compact, straw-lined nest. Kane drew in close to it (sticking his muddy rump into the air like a playful hound). He drew so close that his nose was only millimetres from it, so close that he
could sense the fleas scuttling through its quills, the salt and grit on its skin, the tickle of its breath, even the blackberry seeds plugging the gaps in its teeth.

He sighed, enchanted, released a cacophonous fart –

Heh!

– then closed his eyes and remembered…

Yes

– blackberrying with his mother as a small child – reaching his tender arms, fearlessly, into those treacherous bushes, plucking gently at the plump, ripe fruits with his purple-stained fingers, pushing them greedily between his lips or gathering them together in a disparate assortment of plastic ice-cream tubs…

Raspberry Ripple
 –

Neopolitan
 –

Mint-Choc-Chip –

He sighed again, wistfully. He smiled. And then –

Huh?!

– he froze –

But what in God’s name…?

Kane’s eyes flew open. He straightened himself up, traumatised –

Did I just…?

‘Is this your coat?’

The gardener was holding out Kane’s crombie. Kane realised that he was absolutely covered in muck.

‘Uh…yes.’

He made a pathetic attempt to slap the soil from his hands. ‘And I actually had a…a
bag
…A white, polythene…’

The gardener scouted around him. ‘What did you have in it?’

‘Nothing,’ Kane responded, perhaps a touch too keenly.

‘Just…just rubbish…’

‘It’s here,’ the gardener interrupted, ‘I have it.’

He retrieved the bag from the foot of the heap.

‘Will you…
uh
…Would you mind passing it up to me?’ Kane wondered, reaching out a tentative hand.

‘Why?’ the gardener asked, suddenly suspicious. ‘What are you planning to do with it?’

‘I just want to bury the contents.’

The gardener appeared signally unimpressed by this idea.

‘You can’t just bury things in the compost heap,’ he said.

‘Or somewhere else,’ Kane volunteered, obligingly, ‘anywhere…’

‘Is it a pet?’

Kane shook his head.

‘Because you can’t simply turn up here, without warning, and expect to bury things, willy-nilly…’

‘It’s not a pet, it’s just something I found.’ Kane leaned over and gently shifted a few handfuls of leaf-mould back on top of the hedgehog to shield it from the cold.

The gardener was peering inside the bag now. He scowled, exasperated. ‘You can’t possibly bury this here,’ he said.

‘Well what else am I meant to do with it?’ Kane asked.

‘I don’t know – take it home again,’ the gardener shrugged, ‘donate it to Oxfam or something.’

‘Donate it to
Oxfam?’
Kane snorted. ‘Are you crazy?’

The gardener delivered him a straight look.

‘But I can’t take it home,’ Kane muttered, starting to shiver as his sweat turned cold. ‘It’s disgusting. Couldn’t I just…’

He pointed ‘…you know…drop it off somewhere? Behind a hedge? In a quiet corner?’

The gardener casually inspected the sticky nimbus of spider’s webs decorating Kane’s hair.

‘I want you to climb down from that heap,’ he announced, matter-of-factly, ‘take back this coat and this bag, and then accompany me on a short walk to the front entrance gate.’

‘Fine,’
Kane grimaced. ‘Have it your way…’

He yanked up his trousers and then set about engineering his cautious descent. He felt hollow, disconsolate.

The gardener offered him a helping hand but Kane sullenly ignored it.

‘Look,’ the gardener took pity on him, ‘you’re obviously feeling the cold…’ he lifted the bag, helpfully, as Kane clumsily slid down –

Ow!

OW!

– ‘…so why don’t you just put this thing
on,
eh?’

‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ Kane demanded, planting his two feet back firmly –

Thank God

– on
terra firma.

‘It’s very simple,’ the gardener humoured him, ‘you just pull it on over your head…’

Kane scowled at him, incredulous, then saw – much to his surprise – that the gardener was actually holding out a freshly laundered jumper.

‘I can slip the book into your coat pocket if you like,’ the gardener continued, removing a book from the bag.

‘Book?’ Kane reached out his hand.

The gardener passed it over. Kane took it and frowned down at it. It was a non-fiction paperback entitled
The Dressing Station
by Jonathan Kaplan – a South African surgeon – which detailed, in grisly detail, Kaplan’s work as a ‘medical vagabond’ in some of the world’s most treacherous trouble-spots.

Kane opened the book up. Inside it Elen had written, ‘Medical vagabond? Sound familiar?’ followed by two kisses. And underneath those, in a bracket, ‘Carpenter?
Nah.
Always secretly thought you had a surgeon’s hands…’

‘Is something the matter?’ the gardener asked.

Kane didn’t respond. The gardener gently took the book from him and handed him his jumper. ‘Put this on,’ he said.

Kane did as he was told.

‘Now your coat…’

The gardener passed Kane his crombie. Again, Kane obliged him, but
as he fastened a couple of the buttons he noticed that the pink ribbon Maude had given him had gone. He glanced towards the ground and saw it lying in some tall grass close by. He bent down to retrieve it, then held it tightly, protectively, in his hand.

Once Kane was properly dressed again the gardener shoved the Kaplan book into the crombie’s pocket and they slowly began the walk to the front gate together. Kane idly inspected the trees as they strolled along, the pink ribbon now looped loosely around his thumb.

‘Is that an Ash?’ he asked, after a minute or so’s silence, indicating towards an Elm.

‘Nope. We only have one Ash…’ the gardener pointed. ‘It’s over there…’

Kane stopped.

‘Could I have a closer look at it?’

The gardener frowned.

‘Please?’

Kane gazed over at him, appealingly.

‘You have a special interest in trees, eh?’ the gardener enquired.

Kane nodded. ‘So how do you go about identifying it?’ he wondered, heading off towards it, at speed.

‘That’s easy,’ the gardener followed him without complaint. ‘In winter, by the hard, black buds, set either side of its twigs and in late summer and autumn by its keys…’

‘Keys?’ Kane echoed.