Growling, he withdrew his feet under the duvet. None of them was his. They just lived here. His mouth was sour, his head thick. He kicked the cat off the bed and turned over, but it came back again and again, wouldn’t stop, and in the end, scratching his belly in its dirty vest, grunting and sighing, he got up, went downstairs in his underpants and rattled some biscuits into a couple of dishes on the steps outside the back door.
The house, slightly grand a long time ago, was old and square and too big now. In the rains the water dripped downstairs through the night, gurgling peacefully like a mountain stream. After the terrible storms of last week the woods were still, though it had rained hard all night and soft mist blunted the outlines of things. It was his birthday. Sixty-eight, -nine, maybe more, he hadn’t kept track. Also – his mother’s deathday, the day he was supposed to take a bunch of flowers to her grave. He went in and made instant black coffee in his cowboy mug. The tremble in his hands was noticeable when he stirred the grains and it got on his nerves. A swig of Laphroaig quelled it a little. Kicking the back door open again he walked out into the middle of the yard and stood there yawning, looking at Pete Wheeler’s kid’s Venza that he should have had fixed by today. The morning brightened as the whisky warmth settled. A black cat washed itself on the roof, not the one that had sat on his windowsill, another, serene with the morning and the world.
Someone had been at his garden. Something to do with the way the rope on the gate had been looped, too sloppy, not how he did it. Probably kids. Once last week, twice since Sunday. He walked round the side and checked the hives. OK. Mess with them, he muttered, see what you get, you fuckers, tightening the rope on the gate one-handed, coffee in the other. Draining it, he gagged and spat and decided not to go to work yet on the car. He went in and cleaned his teeth, swigging lukewarm water round his bleeding gums. In the mirror, big greasy pores. Sore red eyes. The veins, vermilion worms.
Two paracetamol, two ibuprofen. Another coffee. Put Al Green on the Bose and turn it up really loud.
Around twelve Pete Wheeler came by. Dan had got the bonnet up and was just getting started on the engine.
‘How’s it going?’ Pete asked.
‘Nearly there.’
‘Did you hear?’
‘What?’
‘Big landslip over by Ercol. Last night. The road into Gully’s closed off.’
Dan raised his eyebrows and went on working.
Pete took a squashed roll-up out of his pocket and shoved it in his mouth. ‘They found a body,’ he said, bobbing around on his trainers as if he was a jumpy kid rather than a grandad.
‘Kidding,’ said Dan.
‘Got police tape.’ Pete flicked his lighter with a long double-jointed thumb. ‘All that stuff. They only do that for murder, don’t they?’ Pocketing the lighter, he sucked hard. ‘Murder! Fuck’s sake!’
Dan said nothing.
‘It’s these rains,’ Pete said. ‘It’s all buggered up there. Terrible mess. You know what it’s like, it’s all holes. Doesn’t take much.’
Then he laughed. His forehead turned into wavy ridges. ‘Racking my brains,’ he said, ‘thinking back. Did anyone go missing round here? Back when – when – it’s an old one. The body. Just bones, I suppose. Been there a long time.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well – so they say.’
‘Old how?’ asked Dan, looking up from the Venza’s engine. ‘Old like medieval or old like ten years?’
Pete bent down to stroke a cat but it scooted away. ‘Not medieval like historical medieval,’ he said, rising, fiddling with his stubbly chin. ‘They wouldn’t put up a tape for that, would they?’
‘Might do,’ said Dan, straightening and stretching. Upright he was at least six inches taller than Pete. ‘Keep people off.’
‘Well anyhow,’ said Pete, spitting tobacco off the end of his tongue, ‘it’s a right bloody mess. Bloody mud everywhere. Not surprised. Half them storm drains up there are useless.’
He waited a while, making little blowing sounds through his lips.
Dan didn’t respond.
Like talking to a brick wall, thought Pete.
‘Big mess to clean up,’ he pushed on. ‘All across the road. Gone on the graveyard. Awful.’
He waited a minute or two more, pulsing up and down on his toes, looking towards the edge of the woods that crowded up against the back wall, then he said, ‘Getting foggy.’
When still no response came, he ruffled a hand through his short pale hair and said, ‘So what time shall I pick this up then?’
‘Five,’ said Dan. ‘Ish.’
‘Well then,’ Pete said. ‘Adios, amigo,’ and headed off.
What a terrible thing. As if a faint bad smell was drifting from over there. Made you wonder what else was lying around under your feet. Mud on the graveyard. Well. He was going up there anyway.
He felt like walking in this nice spooky mist, so he threw everything down just as it was and walked off. No dog no more to call, no dog at his heels. An absence. Long time since. Just the cats, and they were indifferent, watching him go. He couldn’t look after things. The cats hunted. He gave them water and cat biscuits from the market, and they came and went through a hole in the wall where a pipe used to be in the side of his house, God knows how many, it changed all the time. They hung about the yard and the field and the woods beyond, and they got in his garden and he chased them out with hoses and shouts, and filled clear plastic bottles half full of water and laid them about the place, and kept
