Desire Line (47 page)

Crook, the old enemy.

‘Yori, he remembers you!' To the girl she said, ‘This is my son. Can you believe it, he learnt to ride on Crook?' She went forward to start the petting. ‘You loved him, didn't you?'

Crook.
His withers bone protruded as if threatening to burst out of the skin and the stick legs now housed knees swollen by arthritis like bulges in lead pipe. The hooves that had been prone to deliver sharp kicks to my shins were ridged and flaking away. The chocolate muzzle was grizzled. He stared fixedly at Eurwen while the girl gently ran a soft brush over his ribbyness. Clouds of hair and scurf from each stroke danced in the sudden patch of sunshine and my mother stepped into it with a morsel of something to be slipped under his hideous smoker's teeth. They ground together while she ran each of the ridiculous ears through her fingers. The whole creature was rank. ‘We adore him don't we, Zade? He's a great age— we're not really sure what— but even for a donkey he's veteran-class. Isn't he clever, Yori? He
knows
you.'

‘I know him.'

How was he here? But of course Eurwen had kept track of him. Crook, the undeserving old devil, got a tickle from his attendant who was dressed almost identically to Eurwen and was as slim. A dark girl, she was a prettier Kailash, but unlike Kailash would've been, wasn't scowling at the donkey, scurf laid down on her clothes, nor the way he turned his big head and used her body as a scratching post. In fact it looked like a sensual exchange.

‘Everybody dotes on Crook. Jay was asking about him only—'

‘When?'

Eurwen rolled her eyes. ‘When I saw her in Rhyl of course.' She went ahead, away from the house to a solid galvanised gate that let out of the yard. It swung easily on oiled hinges and she was through. ‘Come and see! Feel how warm it's getting. A pity to be in. I've not forgotten your model— as soon as we get back, I promise. It'll be soft underfoot but the grass is short—'

‘Wait!' My sharpness made Crook snort. ‘Just tell me, will you? You came to Rhyl?' But she would
never
stop— off now onto stony pasture that widened to the size of a football pitch. The hedge surround here had been recently ‘laid', raw wounds from the blade standing out, flayed bark hanging in ribbons. Then the sun broke through a swipe of cloud again and dewdrops glittered like gemstones on the back of Eurwen's head and I had no choice but follow if Zade wasn't to be part of the conversation. ‘When did you?'

That exaggerated raised-hands
oh please!
thing she did before relenting. ‘Jay still lives there. Neil's long gone. May be dead, I think.'
Why would I care?
‘She married somebody very different afterwards and went to work for the coroner's office. Janine Preece? In fact she must be retiring soon. But she's still selling her mushrooms!' Getting no response – ur-rgh, my face! nothing I could do about it— she tried to pass all this off as trivial. ‘Oh there's
llym
as Jay would say. Don't be hard on me Yori, when for once I did the right thing. No, no— listen first. Keep walking. It's good for us. I always get on better walking, not sitting. Dad's the same. Watch there—' I let her steer me away from a deep mud-filled rut. ‘I heard about Mum being found, probably when you did. Jay called. I didn't get in touch because believe it or not, I couldn't. I just couldn't. I had no idea what I'd say. Give me some credit, Yori. Everything I told you last night was true. It wasn't news that her
body
had been found— rather than her, you know? But it still hurt. A physical pain.'

‘That's what Tomiko thought.'

‘Yes, he would. We were quite close at one time, believe it or not.'

I ignored the sarcasm. ‘Right. But
Rhyl?
'

‘The next day, after I'd heard, as soon as I could arrange things for the animals, I travelled up there. As luck wouldn't have it, Henri was away with the vehicle, so Jay met me at the station and— but it wasn't a good visit. Jay's still Jay. She asked about you. But
the town!
' Did she have any clue as to how she was mirroring Sara, in tone, gesture, the tilt of the chin? ‘And then, by the time I came to see you—'

‘I'd gone to Ireland.'

Yet another bigger field through another industrial gate— in contrast to the area round the bungalow the grazing here was well-maintained. Aggregate floored the entrances and any thinner runs of hedge were lined with post and rail. A pair of almost white draught horses cropped the turf in here. As they mowed their hooves came off the floor unwillingly and thumped back down like foundry hammers so you expected to feel the shock. From this distance they were quite picturesque against the green background— if you liked that sort of thing.

‘That's Ant and Dec,' Eurwen said at my shoulder. ‘It's a joke! Ant and Dec were two very little men on the television when I was small who— never mind. Don't look so serious.'

We followed the progress of the horses that, even I had to admit, had great dignity and presence despite coats dull with damp and stained with earth. I found it hard to picture them heaving their great weight back up having once lain down. Following each tear/crunch they'd step forward almost in unison into a mist of their own making and great dark eyes checked us out— we were no more than dogs to them, puny, possibly dangerous. ‘You were in Rhyl
,
' I accused her.

‘To touch the bones. I had to. Surely you can understand?' She shivered. ‘I did come to see you but—'

‘I was with Josh.'

‘Which was probably for the best.' The Eurwen that swept in and out like a squall was back and I couldn't trust myself even to agree with her. ‘I don't do lamentation. You were very kind on the phone and we said it all then, didn't we?
So—
everything you can see between where we stand and the river is mine. There's been a lot of machinery on in the past and we're still trying to sort the drainage out— Oh Yori, your face! What's the matter? Worried about the inheritance?'

‘Hardly,' I reminded her. But things were edgy and I wasn't sure why. Or she was right and I did resent her squandering— not money but time and energy and attention on
this
. Difficult, inconvenient, uncooperative, anarchic animals. It had puzzled Sara as well, Eurwen's championing their cause. Not with sentimentality, either, but more like the ferocity of a guerrilla leader. Nothing in the family gene-pool had prepared them for that.

‘We may as well do the circuit.' She chattered on. Across and along— I was offered a look through the hedge of a wired-in, steep-sided hole, half-filled with last night's milky runoff. ‘Ah— nothing on there today,' she said balanced on top of the wooden stile. When she made way, I saw the nature of the land changed radically here. The industrial agriculture that's taken over the county isn't picturesque but what we stepped into now was a Marscape, a plateau more extensive than the sum of all we'd walked through so far, a rough bowl of maybe ten hectares— and literally Martian from the prevailing ferrous oxide tint. The crater bottom was scattered with metal piping in lengths and various lumps of complex metallic objects that I couldn't classify but had been parts of either a single huge machine or a medium-sized processing plant. There were also what must be hundreds of corrugated iron sheets in the process of crumbling to rust. It was virtually stripped of vegetation and the odd tuft of bile-yellow grass explained why. At the extent of vision a chainlink fence seemed to mark out my mother's kingdom but the closest concrete posts were rotten and her security non-existent. Three kilometres away, Didcot Power Park, having cheered up my last night's ride, now poked into a sky wide as Rhyl's. The only other vertical was the falling-down sectional barn that – if he'd lived – Egon Schiele might've been tempted to sketch and colour. It was his palate and his mood. ‘Well this is the awful bit,' she said, trying to speed me up. A handful of crows flapped from their posts at our intrusion, complaining. Nothing else lived here.

I stopped and toed a corrugated sheet. ‘What did the environmental report say? More importantly, what was their estimate? For clean-up and de-tox?'

‘Space is space.'

I'd landed a hit. ‘You mean you just went ahead and
bought it?
'

‘There was very little else around. And I wanted it. We'd found nothing too terrible.'

‘Well that's lucky.'

Don't tease the bear.
‘Yes! We'll get it back. Henri's convinced.'

Good for Henri. Once through Scrapmetal Meadow, it was a relief to be onto a pure sloping gravel bed that ended in a flooded pit, a real lake this time. Eurwen stopped to stare, biting her lower lip. The stark edge showed gouges down to a grey subsoil where the last huge machine had left off. She said, ‘The water's incredibly deep.'

I picked up a rock and lobbed it in and got the muted splat of a wet mop hitting a floor before the surface recongealed.

‘This is where Henri's hoping we can start in the spring. Next door will take a massive effort,' she conceded, ‘but around the pit area we'll buy new topsoil for it from the next Reading expansion.'

Good thinking. But, ‘That's nearly finished,' I said.

‘I mean the
next
next Reading expansion they haven't announced yet. Ten thousand apartments. Henri can tell you herself— we did oppose. She may be back from London tomorrow. She been on the Species March— it's the last chance for so many things, Yori! And the rescue side of the work here is brimming over and we've only just opened officially. Henri knew how it would be. She's the practical one. Can turn her hand to most things.'

Such as lying well enough to scam Fleur. That's what she did for you. No, I don't know where Eurwen is!
‘I've got a present for Henri,' I said. ‘A mug. A special mug. She collects them, I remembered.'

‘Have you? Anyway, come and see what you get for a quarter of a million these days.'

Even after what we'd just seen it was less than impressive— and I thought I knew the price of land. We'd wandered in a long curve, a clear sky brightening all the time over our heads. The bungalow must be getting close judging from the girls' voices, calling to each other in the yard. Our shadows had switched sides though and, getting my bearings, I found my brain automatically charting Animal Farm as an island of workable ground with a diseased interior. Now Eurwen showed me it petered out in a tongue of coarse grass dipping into a morass. This brought us to a stop. The new field was smaller than the rust crater, still several football pitches in size though and more carpark post rained-off event than sportsground. To gain us perspective, a high-sided van appeared now and followed my last night's approach and after that dead maize stubble stood waiting for the plough right to the horizon. And this was the healthy land. ‘We can get into the lane from here,' she suggested, sensing my disengagement. ‘The feedman cometh.' She chose the oblique route for firmer footing, me trailing, my ankles getting a thorough workout. ‘Come on!' she encouraged and grasping the top of a post she was over the fence in a single, smooth movement. Eurwen's vault – my mother never bothered looking for a way round anything when long arms and legs could get her across twice as quick. She turned, her eyes ablaze, her lips forming, ‘Oh-h! That was only just!'

‘Don't think so— well clear, in fact. You're keeping up with your A?'

‘Do I look as if I am?'

‘You look fantastic,' I said.

I was about to straddle the rickety top rail when it caught my eye as any movement will, a clay shape that was detaching from the sodden depression where it had lurked. Too low for horse— a bloated, near legless pony, maybe, struggling and stuck? Eurwen had mentioned the depth of mud here, the ruined drainage— but no pony was ever— surely?— and the hide! Folds of hairless rind, or no— this wasn't organic, make that armour plate..

What was it?

Properly on its feet now the thing let out a long low note to celebrate.

‘Hello Marvin,' Eurwen called. ‘I'd forgotten you were there.'

‘What's that?'

‘He's a Gloucester Old Spot.'

Two metres long. At least a metre and a half at the shoulders. More if it ever got out of the swamp. ‘Yes?'

‘
A pig.
What did you think he was?'

The
boar
was thirty metres away but pointing straight at us. I could see a snout the size of a dinner plate pierced by twin black holes, expanding and contracting as they sucked in our scent. A pair of tiny eyes down in the canyons of its face were insignificant in comparison.

‘We've just walked through there! With it. It looks like a rhino.'

‘Rubbish. He's
heavy
,' she conceded. ‘They're not so big normally. But only because they're never allowed to live long enough,' Eurwen's tone was severe, suddenly. Towards me. ‘He came from one of those so-called farms outside Newbury. The woman running it had saved him as a piglet. He was sickly so she got him well and I don't think even she knew why. And then— this is the unusual part— she couldn't send him to slaughter.' Leaning forward enticingly, not caring that the rail under her hands was wormy enough to collapse with a breath, she called, ‘Mar-r-vin,' in a sing-song voice.