Everything I Found on the Beach (14 page)

He passed through the changing landscape, noticed the rhododendron begin to grow loose on the hills, and he went on north. In among the evergreens, the bare deciduous trees had the silvery and papery look of wasp nests.

He thought of Danny's shed and then of the nest on the house. They had taken up the old floorboards, exposing the ceiling beams so you could see right through to the roof of the house. They piled the wood outside and watched the wasps strip the paper-fine layers off the boards with this repetitive, constant sound that seemed way too loud for something so small to make, gathering the pulped wood in their mouths.

While they rebuilt the annex they could hear the industry of the wasps crunching in the late spring warmth and they watched the small acorn of nest grow in the gable in the sun. All the time, this thing building that was dangerous and beautiful, but unnerving in its purpose.

By the time they had got the walls of the annex up the nest was as big as a football. When Hold went out there at night and stood below the nest he could hear it humming as the wasps fanned the warm air out of the nest with their wings.

“I want Jake here,” Danny said. “I can imagine us all. Get that garden cleared. You have to have something to be doing things for,” he said. “There has to be a purpose.”

I guess we didn't come far, thought Hold. We grew up playing in that house and making up dreams in it, and we were still doing it in our thirties. He could feel the brick in his hand now, the weight of it, its roughness. The purposeful process of putting one brick down upon another. “They've been the same for thousands of years,” he thought. “The size of a man's hand. That dictates everything—the size of the thing we can handle. What we can build like that.”

“I want Jake here,” Danny said.

In the end, the great robins had taken to battering into the nest to knock the young grubs out. Then the magpies watched, learned, and just came in and hammered it down. All of that constructed because they were programmed that way. All that careful building and something just came along and battered it all down.

“I have to stay focused,” thought Hold. “I have to stop thinking of things.”

For a while he considered throwing the rabbits and their dangerous guts to the side of the road, and of turning
home. “These thoughts are little tests of you,” he said to himself. “You know you have options.” But he was haunted.

He couldn't stop thinking of the Polish woman. Of the distraught tone of her voice. He could picture her too clearly. His mother, Cara. It would be the same scene. The same collapsing.
Checkham. Vrooj prosser. Checkham, checkham.
He thought of the dead man in the boat. It would be out of fuel by now, adrift again with the stiffened body. And then he saw the police car.

His stomach turned over. The car gained on him a few yards and then steadied, keeping a distance behind him.

Why were they out here? This was nowhere. Hold thought of the tires, the brake lights, hoped nothing would draw attention to him. He drove carefully, but felt a nervous hesitancy on the corners that made him seem conspicuous.

“They can't be here for you,” he thought. It was like his thoughts were out loud. “Why would they know? There's just the random chance they'll stop you. Why would they even look at the rabbits?”

He looked at the mirror. There were two men in the car. “I should stop,” he thought. “This is madness. Just stop and tell them everything.” The possibility of it made him feel sick. Then they turned on the lights.

They'd timed it so that he could pull over easily into the turnout that came up on his left and he fought this crazy urge to try and outrun them. He felt drained of focus. Give it up. This is your chance to get out.

He pulled the van into the stop and switched off the engine. “Choose,” he said to himself. “Choose now.”

The police officer knocked on the window and Hold wound it down.

“Afternoon, sir,” said the policeman.

Hold could sense the cooler with the rabbits on the front seat.

“Hello,” he said.

“Do you mind stepping out of the car.”

Hold got out of the van and saw the other policeman checking the vehicle.

“Your van, sir?” asked the first policeman.

“Had her for years,” said Hold.

“And where are you off to?”

Hold veered. “Can I ask why I've been stopped?”

“Oh. Just routine, sir. Just a check. Nothing to worry about, I'm sure. Full MOT?”

Hold nodded. The other policeman was checking the tires.

“Mind if we take a look inside?”

It's your chance, right here, to give it up. You can end this now.

“No. On you go.”

The policeman nodded to the other policeman. “Do you have your driver's license? Insurance documents on you?” The other policeman had opened the back and the doors squealed as he leaned into the van.

“I don't, no.” Hold thought of the box on the shelf
in Danny's shed, had a fleeting image of Cara finding it. Of his being jailed. “They're at home.” I can't let that happen. I have to get back to her.

“Which is where, sir? Your address?”

Hold told him.

“And your name?”

Hold gave him the information.

“Any ID?” asked the policeman.

“No, not with me,” he said. Hold thought of the box again.

“I'll have to ask you to present your documents to your local station within seven days. Just routine, sir.”

“No problem.”

The other policeman came round with a handful of cartridges. “You own a shotgun, sir?”

“Yes. Sorry. They must have come out of their box. I have a license.”

The two police looked a little more thoughtful. You could see this cautious change come over them.

The one doing the talking got on the radio and radioed the information in, asking about the driver and the shotgun licenses.

“You can tell them. You can tell them now,” thought Hold. He waited while the voice through the radio came back with the information. There was this static squeak. The other officer was going round again kicking the tires.

“Where did you say you were headed?” asked the policeman.

“To a friend.” Hold picked a place out of the air, hoping it was far enough from them.

“What's the address?” The policeman had the notebook out and was waiting for the address.

“I don't know,” said Hold. “I couldn't tell you.” He made this huge gamble. “I could drive you there, but I've no idea of the actual address.”

Hold thought of his box of things on the shelf. Had a vision of Cara finding them. Had a vision of him having achieved nothing more than turning himself into a greater burden to her, a dead weight in jail she would feel tied to. The policeman looked at him and closed the notebook.

“We'll need you to present your gun license along with your other documents, when you take them in,” he said.

“Of course,” said Hold. He could feel his pulse smash in his chest now, hoping it didn't show all over him.

The policeman leaned into the window.

“Shoot those yourself, did you?” said the police, nodding at the rabbits on the seat.

“Two-two,” said Hold. “Not a shotgun.”

The policeman nodded as if he understood. There was this rich stream of adrenaline through Hold like he had too much blood.

You've chosen. Right there. That was it. You cannot consider any doubt any more.

“Well, thank you for your cooperation, sir. You can go on your way.”

“That's fine,” said Hold. “Have a good day.”

He got in the van and started the engine and waited for the police to drive off but they flashed him on.

He let a car go past and pulled out and they pulled out behind him and stuck to him again as if they were waiting for him to slip up. He could see the one not driving on the radio.

“They know,” he thought. “They're going to stop you again. They're just waiting.” Then they closed in on him and overtook, and disappeared ahead on the straight.

“Why? Why did I make this choice?” Grzegorz thought. But he knew. “I know why I made this choice. You always have to wait in line. All my life I've been waiting in line. Wait your turn, know your place. That's all there is. I wanted to change something.”

Grzegorz held the compass in his hands and pressed the buttons uselessly. He was totally and absolutely lost on the utter pitch darkness of the sea. Only the compass screen glowed, with this factual light. He felt the urge to cry, like a distant need he still associated with childhood. He felt defiant little angers in him. He felt pricks of hope. Fear. But he could not hold on to any of them, not on to one single emotion. Then it was like he shut his eyes to them.

The sun had seemed to drop quickly.

He waited with the others outside the gates. He had just come off shift, had peeled off the once-white overalls, now, by the end of shift, plastered in blood and tissue. It was cold outside the gates, but a different cold from the deliberate cold inside of the abattoir where the fresh blood was like warm water on his hands and he welcomed that warmth.

Had he known then, waiting there, smoking, that it would come to this? Had he, underneath, the understanding of this? He had felt it. He had ignored it. He had jumped off the bridge.

The sweat dried on his body and he felt the cold go. He thought of the different types of cold, the cold of the fields at home that was so complete it was almost imperceptible until you felt your bones ache, your teeth throb. He thought of the salt-laden cold of the bracing space of the beach, the cold gritty sand between his fingers, the sense of the slow vast fridge of water. Even the way the gulls were colored, in gray shades.

“I have to stop thinking of the cold,” he told himself. He had one or two cigarettes and he lit one.

“They bullied me, but that was fine,” he thought. “It's not my reason for doing this. I can't pretend it is. I just had this hope, that's all. They didn't drive me to this.”

The small sepal of the boat showed up in the glow of the indrawn cigarette.

He thought of fires as a child. There were always fires. He thought of the great stack of dirty straw smoking in the field, the smell of it drifting on the subdued autumn breeze.

“I couldn't have stayed,” he thought. “A man has to try to improve things.”

He finished the cigarette. He felt nothing now. The problem had stopped feeling real. He was at that stage when he believed he had overreacted. Maybe it was the cigarette. It just brought a little calmness. He threw it into the sea and the pitch blackness came around him again.

He took the compass out from inside his puffer jacket where he'd put it to warm, thinking it might have frozen in the cold.

“Can electricity freeze?” he wondered. He had this picture of lightning coming down into the stubble fields, the glorious momentary frozenness of it, the whitening of the air around.

The compass's square of clinical light was mesmerising, hypnotic, the only point of reference in the dark. He used the luminance torchlike to look for anything that might work to press within the tiny reset hole. There was nothing. There was just nothing on the boat.

“Your friend talked to you?”

“Yes, he talked to me.”

“You want the work?”

He'd nodded.

“How much did he say? How much did he tell you?”

“Everything, I think.”

He'd been momentarily distracted by a cloud of egrets that lifted off the beach and flew strangely away, their necks
folded. They didn't seem to fit there in that place, seemed too beautiful, like some anomaly.

“He told you of the risk?”

“Yes.”

“Your family?” The man had repeated the requirements.

Grzegorz looked down at the compass, sure the light was fading, sensing in his hand the battery draining out. He thought of the passivity of the cows, going to the stun plate.

“I understand…”

They watched the trucks come in. As they waited for the driver to pick them up, a long truck packed with lambs came through and went in through the big zinc gates and as they passed, Grzegorz saw the stubborn, incomprehensible eyes. They were mad, somehow.

“I understand.”