Landed (24 page)

He pulls her to him. ‘You stay here,' Owen says. ‘You stay with the dog, you understand?' Owen looks at the mongrel, standing quietly by. ‘Stupid bloody dog!' he curses. ‘Why didn't you bark?'

Owen runs around the side of the slope they're on, and looks to the north. There is no sign of his son in the empty landscape. He sprints back, past Holly, who sits on the ground hugging the dog, and looks south. What is Josh playing at? Surely he wouldn't have left his sister? Owen keeps going until he has found vantage points from which to see a portion of the landscape in every direction, and he cannot see his son. He yells
into the wilderness. Eventually he stumbles back to where he left Holly. He has lost Josh. The emptiness inside him throbs with fear. He is worse than nothing: he does more damage than if he had not existed.

Holly is holding something towards him. A note. ‘It was in my pocket,' she says. Owen takes it from her with shaking fingers. ‘Josh did put it there.' The note reads,
Don't worry, Dad. See you on the hill. Trust me
.
Josh
.

 

Owen feels Holly's hand take his. They turn and walk towards the west. The dog trots on ahead, at the prow of their diminishing entourage.

They walk on in the afternoon. The day is still lovely, the sky an unblemished blue, but there is something else now, not yet apparent, but approaching.

Owen thinks about the note. He realises he must have told Josh of the plan, of the hill, and where it is. The boy has the compass. As he walks it comes to him that he can trust his son. Eleven years old, Josh is the same age Owen was that first summer.

Owen remembers how last night, waking in the freezing dark in the stone room, he embraced his trembling boy. He felt, through the boy's T-shirt, his skinny ribs, his puny frame, programmed to grow into the body of a man. Owen inhaled the scent of his sleeping son. He could not absorb Josh into him, that is what he would have liked to be able to do. Owen had put his hand on the side of Josh's face, cupping his cheek. There was so much more of Mel than of himself in Josh's face, that could not be denied. He'd kissed his son's head. After some time the boy stopped shivering; soon Owen went back to sleep.

Now he walks with his daughter. There is a taste in the air
in the late afternoon, a flavour. Not damp exactly, though no longer the dry dustiness of the heat of the day. A change in the weather. It feels as if something's looming in the atmosphere around them, hiding, waiting to break.

T
he caravan stands on its own in a remote field. Could it be usable? Owen approaches. Although one could just about believe that it was once white it is now mottled green with moss and mould; it looks as if it has spent some portion of its existence underwater. Dusk. All is quiet. The dog makes a circuit around the caravan. Holly goes on tiptoes, jumps up, attempting to see inside. Owen tries the door: as it opens it feels like he's breaking a seal. He fancies there is an audible hiss, as if the caravan has been vacuum packed. Inside, all is in order. Opposite the door, a bench. To the left, in the front third of the caravan, a bench along each wall and a table in between. Owen lifts the long mattress which is also a lid on the bench ahead, and there below is bedding. Everything is miraculously dry. The faint musty smell is less of damp than of long neglect.

At the back of the caravan is the kitchen. Tiny stainless-steel draining board and Formica surface. Owen opens cupboards: below are plates, pans. Above, jars of Camp coffee, sugar, Marmite, tins of beans, fruit, evaporated milk. Corned beef, spam. There's a drawer of utensils and cutlery, and candles. The can opener is of a kind Owen remembers, possessing a sharp point with which he punctures a tin of tuna; he clamps his hook around the tin and levers the opener around the top with a series of jerky manoeuvres. A tin of sardines has its own
key attached to its side: he slides the key's aperture over a tab of metal, and unpeels the lid.

Dessert is tinned pears and evaporated milk. Holly eats little. The dog gorges on a plate of bully beef. Every now and then the caravan shifts in the evening breeze. Holly lies down on the bed, sighs, and is asleep. The dog curls up at the foot of the bed, on the floor of the caravan. Owen understands that the dog will not let him or anyone else hurt her.

 

Owen goes back outside and finds a blue Calor gas bottle beside the towbar, and a connector hanging on a piece of rubber tubing. Clouds are gathering, the wind is picking up. Owen attaches the connector to the top of the gas bottle. The connector‘s needle opens the valve in the top of the gas bottle with a sigh. Inside, he turns on one of the oven rings, holds his lighter. At first only air comes through the pipes, which blows out the lighter's flame. He keeps clicking it back alight, until suddenly gas comes through and ignites: the invisible assumes shape in four curving arcs of blue and purple flame. Soon Owen drinks his first coffee in days, made from liquid from the jar. It's disgusting. He suspects there's no caffeine in it at all, opens the top half of the caravan door and hurls the liquid out of the cup, into the dark. He leans against the bottom half of the door. He would love a drink. He would devour alcohol, the craving is in his mouth and throat, it's in his brain. His body would eagerly absorb a glassful, a bottle. He's aware of the slight twitching in his fingers – merely thinking about booze makes them tremble just a little more. But then he realises that he has no phantom limb pain, and that he had none the night before. Surely, he decides, he has no need of alcohol.

Behind him, he'd moved the table and shifted the benches and cushions, slotting this piece here, resting that one there, to
make a double bed. There were white sheets, blue woollen blankets, pillows and pillow cases, upon which Holly now sleeps, fitfully.

The grey sky is shot through with flecks of yellow and gold, suggesting beyond the clouds a shimmering perfect world, if only one could get there. Then the grey clouds close over every last tiny opening, and all is dark. Buffeted by the wind, the caravan trembles. The wind smells of rain.

 

The town, Welshpool, was founded beside the River Severn. Owen's mother threw a picnic together, sandwiches and crisps, Kit Kat and Coca-Cola. They didn't go far, out past the railway station, through the industrial area and along Leighton Road. When they reached the river they turned right and followed it on its west bank, Owen wary of farmers who might yell them off their land, his mother unworried. The kind of woman men forgave.

The river snaked through the valley, nosing its way between stone and sand in the soft earth of the fields. Owen floated downstream. His mother curled up, dozing on a rug. Owen was a star in the water, lying on his back in the sun, carried by the slow river. The log must have been travelling that little bit faster. The boy was unafraid of watersnakes, or pike, but the log was a torpedo he'd not considered. It struck his head with a dull kiss.

The boy lost consciousness. He knew this when he came to, however many moments later, still lying on his back, having floated unaware, dead to the world. There was pain at his left temple. Understanding what had happened, what had almost happened, a chilly nausea swam through the boy, and he floundered. He scrambled to the bank, and stumbled alongside the river back to the picnic spot, nearer than he'd expected. He felt
sick though he 'd swallowed no more than a mouthful of water, and trembled with fright and relief. He lay shivering a long while, wrapped in a towel in his mother's arms, before he could tell her what had happened.

 

Owen is woken by his daughter moaning beside him. He gets up and lights a candle, leaves it burning on the sideboard at the far end of the little caravan. Holly is feverish, her forehead on fire. Her ear hurts. He gives her two spoonfuls of the Calpol in his rucksack. He strokes her arm, pats her. She sobs until the medicine takes effect, then sinks into sleep.

Four hours later he wakes again. Holly is tossing about the bed. A spasm of movement, then she's still for ten or twenty seconds. Suddenly her legs jerk, her body twists, then she's still again. It's as if her restlessness is choreographed; performed, not by her but upon her, her body the medium in which another force operates. She wakes, in pain. Owen gives her more Calpol. Holly speaks in a voice thick and syrupy as the medicine.

‘Does Mummy know I am sick?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Will you tell her?'

His eyes ache with tiredness, but it's no trouble to stay awake. ‘We'll tell her. We'll send her a message.'

Holly's breathing is congested beside him. ‘Have
you
had a sore ear, Daddy?'

The caravan shivers in the wind, too exposed alone here in this field. ‘Earache is horrible, isn't it?' Owen murmurs. He fears tomorrow. Will they have to find a doctor? He thinks he can hear rain fall, whispering, out in the darkness; then he hears it above him, pattering on the roof like a thousand fingers.

‘Can you die or anything?' Holly asks.

‘No,' her father whispers, stroking her forehead.

‘Good,' the girl breathes. ‘Good.' Her voice is already falling away, and in a moment her breathing becomes regular, less sinusy, once more asleep. Owen closes his eyes. The rain is drumming upon the roof of the caravan.

 

Morning. Holly sleeps. Owen lets the dog out, steps outside after her. The rain falls soft but distinctly. He thinks he can sense each tiny drop upon his face, each momentary, pleasant sensation. He wonders how much rain fell during the night. The ground in the field feels spongy beneath his feet. Returning to the caravan, raindrops cling to its tarnished plastic surface like beads of perspiration.

As he straps on the hook, Owen registers that it feels increasingly uncomfortable, unwelcome. There used to be an old man in Welshpool Owen would see around, his jacket sleeve pinned to the shoulder, the sleeve like a sling of air.

Holly is awake, and hungry. Owen concocts a breakfast of tinned mandarins followed by a tin of baked beans and sausages, sweetcorn and mushy peas, with a cup of hot Marmite. He describes it as holiday food. To his somewhat surprised relief she eats everything, delightedly.

‘How's your ear?' he asks.

Holly frowns as she chews a mouthful of sweetcorn. ‘What ear?' Then she remembers, shaking her head at her silliness. ‘Oh, yes.' The night just passed already history. ‘Fine,' she says, and giggles. As if he might not believe her, she says, ‘I'm all right, Daddy.' He knows she's not: her eyes are wide, she looks a little startled by her own high spirits. A brittleness.

 

Owen folds up the bedding, returns the disconfigured furniture to its original layout but leaves a mess in the kitchen. He puts
half a dozen fresh tins in his rucksack and they set off from the caravan, westward.

They cross a field, go through a gateway, across another field. No animals graze the rich green grass. Small, soft raindrops alight upon their clothing. Like kisses, Holly says. Sinister ones, they accumulate, slowly soaking fabric. Owen is glad when they are able to get under some cover, out of the open.

First they climb a steeply wooded spur of what looks like a range of hills. The summit is a plateau of bare moorland, where they would be exposed, both to view and to the elements: sheets of rain drift back and forth across the moor. So they skirt around the top. Stopping for a drink, they look down on squares of yellow. Owen stares until they suddenly make sense. Daffodil fields. Black soil.

Rain falls with a steadily increasing intensity. Reaching the western side of the range they begin to descend through trees, slipping and squelching in leaf-covered mud. Water oozes and gurgles at their feet, around the trunks of alder trees, the roots of brambles. As they descend, the trickles become rivulets, with a sound of small coins tumbling. Rain falls through the trees, plopping on dead brown leaves. Here and there water collects, damned by an upturn of earth; there are ferns and sedges, and the water swells and eddies.

‘My feet's wet,' Holly says. Owen can see her jeans stained up to her knees. Her hair is wet from the rain. He wonders how waterproof her jacket is. They are descending the wooded hill between runlets of water which alter course and veer loudly one towards another, joining forces or even speeding straight across each other and carrying on their separate journeys. Water bubbles up as well, out of the mountain as if it's regurgitating water it swallowed higher up. Owen and Holly slosh and slide, part of a great surge downhill. Rippling currents of water
converge, in bubbling congregations, gathering into a stream that has cut into clay. The deluge of water, its gurgling rush, makes Owen feel hectic, hurried. He grabs Holly's hand and they run slithering down the hill.

The stream shoots over a bank of clay and unites with another coursing across the wood at a diagonal. There is no sound now other than this hurtling roar of water. It feels to Owen as if they are cut off from outside, from beyond the few yards around them, by the noise.

The ground flattens out. They carry on running, beside a thick turbid stream, a deep storm drain into which water gushes and cascades. The brook makes less noise now. Owen realises the dog has been barking with excitement, it jumps around them, he couldn't hear it. He and Holly are both soaked through. She is falling ill beside him. His irresponsibility is shocking, even to himself.

 

Flooded fields reflect the thick, slow clouds. The rain falls intermittently. Holly sits on Owen's shoulders. He suspects she is shivering. ‘My ear hurts, Daddy,' she says.

They come to the river towards which all the water is heading. It is in spate, inundated, almost overflowing, the great watersheds of the Welsh hills pumping into it. Grey water churns south with an unanswerable power. Owen turns right and follows the river upstream. Holly says, ‘Look, Daddy,' and he can feel she's pointing north-east. He sees half a dozen swans, floating on bright green water. His course takes him between the river and the swans. At a certain point he realises that their field is not flooded. They are grazing on the grass. Seagulls are the only birds in the air.