The Dig (9 page)

 

For a moment sunlight had come tipping in through the slats of the barn again but it was gone now and the golden pool with it and Daniel traveled the length of the troughs with armfuls of hay as the ewes hefted round him to feed; and it was then, as he unfolded the hay, that he found her cloth.

It was just a thing she had, like a comfort thing—a bright piece of pink patterned cloth that was variously a hair tie, a headscarf or bandana, or was worn about her neck to stop the dust and grime tracking down her collar. It was as much a thing of her as the Stanley knife she always carried for snipping the bale bindings or a hundred other purposes. It was a difference between them that she always carried a few specific things—her cloth, the uncomplicated Stanley knife, an old strapless wristwatch —to meet the simple repeated questions of their daily processes while he relied on brute strength, guesswork, or the availability of some thing he could make use of. He felt it important that there were solid differences between them, whether, as he knew, she was right in some things or not.

They were haymaking and she was wearing the cloth as a headscarf against the beating heat inside the tractor cab.

They were in the new field at the top which they had acquired that year and that had been historically part of the farm before his parents had sold it off. For a few years
it had been grazed by a handful of sheep the hobby farmer put there, and on and off Welsh Cobs had come and gone, cropping the grass to a baize turf. But for a long while the field had been untended and had gone feral.

Over the winter they took off some of the bramble that balled chaotically about the field, and tore up the sentinel blackthorn and gorse that advanced off the hedgerows, burning the cut stuff down into two or three impossibly small piles and there was a childlike enjoyment in the way the various thorn crackled and flamed so ferociously.

Later, they took a scarifier over the grass to scrape out the dead, yellowed stuff and let the new growth come and they let the field become meadow.

In the way things gather names, the field came to be called
cae piws
, the pink field, as cleared of its wild growth it burst into a display of red clover and tufted vetch, with sprawling beds of fumitory. The field then seemed to stick to its scheme as ragged robin appeared and isolated cuckoo flowers, and shyly, in the damper corner a rarity of orchids. Into this they even let the thistles come, their stiff, pinnate leaves turning brittle in the sun as they cut them down before their buzz-cut pink crowns turned to seed.

Naturally, as the months wore on, the grass outgrew the flowers and it was into September before they cut the hay, when she lost the piece of cloth, as if the field had taken
back this piece of pinkness into itself in return for what was cut. And there it was, as if she had only just dropped it, stiffened and bleached with hay dust, as if she had left it on the radiator as she always did and it had slipped quietly down.

For a while he could not touch it. The sheep pushed in against his legs and he braced them, like being in a strong current, and held on to the bar of the trough. It was impossible that she was dead because his feelings for her had not diminished at all. It is the ability of a person to bring a reaction in us that gives us a relationship with them, and for the time they do that they have a livingness to them.

He remembered the sight of her in the cab of the tractor while she drove along the rows of bales and he stacked them on the trailer as the boys threw them up. He remembered the sweat and the itch of seed, the burn of the baling twine inside his fingers, the bales grazing his knuckles, the diesel air about the tractor. He remembered her with the bright splash of color of the cloth worn on her head, how they had joked that she looked girlish and Alpine. Heidi they had called her that day, and how he had wanted her in the rich way we can want a woman we physically work with, and how he was glad it was his wife he wanted this way.

How many reminders will there be? he asked. How many times will this happen to me? There is so much of her
about. He was on the verge of anger, but then he had this sad, hopeless glow of warmth for her. I can hold on to her, he thought. I can hold on to her inside.

chapter two

T
HE BIG MAN
drove off his place just before dark. In the back of the van he'd built a kind of keep with the straw bales and palettes and the badger was hidden amongst it. From the outside it looked like the van was filled with bales. The policeman had unnerved him and he could not shake the thought that they would come back as they had last time.

He had the six-month-old Staffy in for the ride. He needed a more stubborn dog and the Staffies were a good breed for that and were powerfully strong and he hoped to make a good tool of her to pull out the badgers and foxes. He thought about crossing the Staffy with something more mobile. Like Messie. He wanted to begin a breed of very sought-after and envied dogs.

He took it steady. The road was relatively easy, and he was pleased to be going south, the other carriageway filling and thickening with weekend traffic coming out to the second homes and caravans on the coast.

Two hours down the road he pulled into the lay-by they'd told him about and a while later another car pulled up.

It flashed its lights twice, turned in the lay-by and he followed. After a while, they turned off the main road.

The track seemed unnaturally wide for just a farm track and you could tell it had been tarmacked a long time ago and then it widened out further into a concrete road which met the yard. A number of cars were parked.

Where you would expect a farmhouse and outbuildings there was just yard and to one side a huge tin barn more like a hangar. You could see all this in the floodlights that lit the place off the big barn.

He got out of the van and could see two old buses to the side of the barn, their windows gone and the bonnets off and in the silver light that caught them there was something about them as of gutted big fish. He left the pup in the seat. He could see the faded paint of a sign that said Daycross Buses over the doors of the barn and understood the big parking yard now. The other guy got out of his jeep and came over and as he did there were the sounds of other men from the barn strangely muffled.

They opened the van and took out the palettes and then unbuilt the keep of straw.

He dragged out the badger in the sack and put it on the ground. He emphasized the effort.

Boar, he said. It's heavy.

The other man rolled the sack with his foot testing it and the sack seemed to react shapelessly as if it were a collapsed drunk. He had old army boots on. He was ratty and bald and pinched and extruded, the opposite of the big and gruff man. Let's take him in, he said.

There was a side door in the barn and they went through that and there was an explosion of light and noise. Around the walls were bales four or five deep to hold the noise the way a big crowd would. In the center of the depot was a mechanic's pit for working on the buses. Around this the men had built stands to watch from.

The pit was lit with inspection lights and was a well of brightness and the noise of the twenty or so men in there was like before an amateur boxing match.

The door shut and some turned round and there were cheers, seeing the sack. A dog barked as if it could scent the badger.

At one end of the pit they had set up a trestle table and the man behind it was obviously the boss. He had the money tin in front of him.

The big man took the sack over and dumped it on the table which shook the badger into life so it scuffed on
the table and rocked it. A can of beer went over to laughter as they held the table steady and then he punched the badger and it seemed to go still and there was a sense of immediate respect and dislike for him. It's a big, heavy boar, he said. Then they tipped the badger into the pit.

There were extra patches of black on the badger from the coal.

It fell awkwardly like a thing of weight and quickly righted itself and shuffled to each wall then backed itself into the corner in the blind light.

It lifted its head and scented the air, smelt the dogs that were setting off in the contagious excitement. The badger looked somehow unreal in the direct white light of the floods, its snout making little small circles. Any first bets? the man shouted.

A guy had come up and held a dog to the stand and the dog was frothing through its muzzle and was bright-eyed and you could see the movement of its heart quickly in its chest.

There were men leaning on the stands and weighing up the badger and some waiting to lay down bets until they'd seen a dog go in. Other men were bringing dogs around. Most were lurchers, but there were also other big dogs.

The badger moved in the pit and stood up on its hind legs against the wall like a bear and jogged about and tried to dig and the dogs frenzied and this seemed to transfer to the men. Then they put in a dog and it went at the badger.

The dog was a terrier and they put it in just to assess the badger before the big dogs started. He heard one man say that to another, and it was as if they were explaining it to him.

The terrier yapped and nipped and the badger put down its head into its front legs and relied on the thick hide and tough skin to take the nips and the men booed and hissed and the big man felt inside this anger at the badger and cursed him to fight.

A man hovered by with the tongs and prodded the badger as the dog darted in and the badger lifted and snapped back at the dog to a great cheer and the dog dived out of the way of the snap which had been like lightning.

The terrier bounced in and out at the badger, yelping and banging at him and trying to get in a nip and every now and then the badger uncoiled and snapped back to a great cheer. Then the badger stretched itself up and went at the dog with great ferocious energy and immediately caught the dog under the chin and tore open the side of the dog with its paw before the tongs smashed down on its neck and it let go of the dog which was whining and bleeding
and dragging itself pathetically hurt around the floor of the pit. And there was a crazed sound from the men then.

First dog, called the man. Any bets?

The tongs had been welded for the job and were seven or eight feet long and they dragged out the badger and held it. While the bets went down they tore out its front claws. Then they held up its head and held its jaw open with a jemmy and smashed the front teeth. The badger was bloodied and struggling and the whole forty pounds of it trying to resist but the three or four men held it down while they did this and then they put it back in the pit.

The dogs were incensed now and in that deafening noise and light the big man looked down at the badger with a slow glee. One of the men had knelt on its back while they stretched out its legs and used the fencing pliers to tear out the claws and some of the claws had splintered and split rather than come free.

The man on its back had knelt hard on it while it struggled and grunted and humphed underneath him and he seemed to get something carnal and delicious from that. There was a steady buzz. There was a bloody smell in the room now.