Annan Water (10 page)

‘What the hell does it matter?’ he stormed. ‘Nobody gives a toss about me. Nobody ever has!’

‘That’s not true, Michael!’

But he was already halfway up the stairs, and her words ran off him like the rain.

H
E HAD ALREADY STARTED
painting when Annie came up with their breakfasts.

‘Your mum said you had a row.’

‘Not really,’ said Michael. ‘She just got up my nose, that’s all.’

‘They do,’ said Annie.

When they’d eaten they carried on painting: two boards white; every third one black. The gloss didn’t cover well; the old colour showed through, like the nicotine stains on a smoker’s fingers.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Annie. ‘We can go over it again.’

‘And again,’ said Michael.

‘Andagainandagainandagain,’ said Annie. She was back to her bubbly best. For Michael, nothing else mattered.

They carried on painting until the fumes built up in the airless space and began to make them nauseous. The sun had gone in, but it wasn’t raining again. Not quite.

Jean was just coming into the yard with a filly on the lunge line.

‘Do me a favour, Michael?’ she said. ‘There’s someone coming to look at that skewbald mare in the morning, and she hasn’t been out of her box for a week. Throw my tack on her, will you, while I grab a coffee?’

It was her way, obtuse as it was, of making amends. Normalizing relations.

Michael accepted the gesture. ‘No problem.’

‘Can I brush her?’ said Annie.

They all met up again in the dairy; Jean returning the lunging cavesson, Michael and Annie gathering tack.

‘Put studs in her, will you?’ said Jean. ‘It’s like a skating rink out there with all this rain.’

The brown and white mare was round the back of the yard, in what had once been a fuel shed. Frank hadn’t got round to putting a half door in yet, and the only light came from a small, cobwebby window.

Annie was slow with the brushes. She didn’t really know what she was doing, and Michael didn’t like to keep correcting her. She had her own style in everything she did. He sat in the manger, sifting hayseeds, while she worked.

When she had been all over the mare with the body brush, she picked a metal curry comb out of the box.

‘What’s this for?’

‘Cleaning the brush.’

He went over to show her; scraped the dusty brush across the comb’s sharp teeth. She nodded, rolled up her sleeves and reached for them back, but Michael put them down and took her hands instead.

She didn’t pull away. He ran his fingers over her scarred forearm. She watched. Then he kissed her.

T
HEY WERE STILL KISSING
, utterly lost in the sensations of their bodies, when Jean called from the yard. They broke apart quickly. Adrenalin mixed with the other hormones already storming Michael’s brain. He flung the tack on the mare and, fixing a dutiful mask on his face, led her out. Annie followed with the grooming kit.

Michael gave his mother a leg-up. She reached under her saddle flap to tighten the girth.

‘You might come down in a few minutes,’ she said. ‘Give us a hand with the jumps.’ She paused. ‘Is there nothing you should be schooling yourself?’

‘I’m giving them a Sunday,’ said Michael. He was glad they’d already had a row. It meant they couldn’t have another.

The minute Jean disappeared round the end of the block, Michael turned back to Annie. She grinned, led him back into the dark shed, leaned back against the lime-washed wall beside the door. They kissed again. Michael tasted the metal stud in her tongue. Her fingers on his back sent tremors through his skin. He pressed his body against hers.

‘Ow!’

She pushed him away and probed in his shirt pocket. Small, heavy pieces of metal moved in there.

‘What’s this?’ She was holding up a tiny spanner.

‘Oh, no,’ said Michael.

The studs for the mare’s shoes. He had forgotten to put them in.

He ran through the yard, Annie close at his heels. It was sure to be all right. Jean wouldn’t be asking the mare any serious questions yet.

She wasn’t. They were down at the narrow end of the flat paddock, away from the jumps, just moving up into a canter.

Michael called. Jean looked up but didn’t stop. He ran on and arrived at the fence just as Jean pushed the mare into her bridle and turned her into a tighter circle. Michael called out again, but it was already too late. The mare’s legs went out from under her and she crashed to the ground.

Jean was thrown clear. She landed on her left shoulder and flipped over onto her back. The mare scrambled to her feet and shook herself, making the saddle flaps rattle. Jean should have been up too. Michael had seen worse falls; plenty of them. But she lay there a bit too long before she moved. As he helped her sit up, her face was as white as the sky.

‘I’m sorry, Mum. I forgot the studs. I was just coming down with them.’

Jean’s jaw was set against the pain. She was already clutching her left wrist in a familiar way, up against her right cheek.

Annie crouched down beside them. ‘Are you all right?’

Jean shook her head, clamped her good elbow over Michael’s offered arm and let out a string of profanities as he helped her to her feet.

‘My flaming collarbone again,’ she raged. ‘That’s the fifth time!’

Annie caught the mare and ran on ahead with her to the yard. By the time Michael and Jean had struggled up to the house, she had a fire lit and the kettle on.

‘I’ll ring Dad on the mobile,’ said Michael. ‘Where is he?’

‘Yorkshire,’ said Jean. ‘Tying up loose ends.’

‘Oh, great,’ said Michael. Jimmy was away as well. There was no one else they knew.

‘We’ll have to go in the box,’ said Jean.

‘I’ll drive, then,’ said Michael.

He had driven the box loads of times in the yard and the fields, and down the long avenue that led to their farm in Yorkshire. He was sure that he was up to it.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Jean. ‘I’m perfectly capable of driving. But I’ll have to get out of this mud, first.’

Michael waited in the kitchen while Annie helped Jean change her clothes. She was used to it, he supposed, after tending to the needs of her own mother. His heart swelled with guilty pride. His girl, his Annie, here in the house, practically part of the family. Helper of mothers, clearer of chimneys, kindler of long-dormant fires.

My Annie.

Michael made a sling for Jean out of a green tail bandage and a red headscarf. It made her arm look like some kind of sick Christmas joke. He sat up beside her and changed gear for her as she drove. Annie sat beside the window, the dogs at her feet.

It was a bit hairy at times. The movement of Jean’s good arm on the huge steering wheel clearly aggravated the collarbone, and there were times when her face was so pale that Michael feared she’d pass out. Sometimes she forgot to tell him to change gear, and once he dropped it into second instead of fourth and nearly had them all out through the windscreen. But they made it eventually, and pulled up outside the casualty department.

While Jean registered, Annie ran off and came back with the cup of tea that they hadn’t waited to make at home. She fitted in so well in everything they did. It made Michael realize something; one of the reasons their lives were so stretched and colourless. There just weren’t enough of them. Not since Fiona left and Joanne died.

A man in a starched uniform shirt approached them. ‘Is that your lorry outside?’

It wasn’t a difficult call, given the mud and the wellies.

‘You’ll have to move it. It’s in the way of the ambulances.’

Jean got wretchedly to her feet, but Michael pressed her down again.

‘I’ll shift it, Mum. Give us the keys.’

The skies had opened again. The gutters outside casualty were swift waterways. Cigarette butts bobbed on their currents.

Michael made a dash for the lorry, hauled himself up over the wheel arch, shook the heavy drops from his hair. The engine started instantly and idled, as it always did, in great, heaving shudders.

The sky was dark and the wing mirrors were rain spattered. Michael opened the window and craned his head through before easing out on to the empty road. The hospital car park looked full. In any case, it wasn’t designed for a six-horse box, the height and width of a bus. He turned in the other direction, past a confusion of arrowed signs, pointing to different wings and departments. All the roads had fresh double-yellow lines.

Just as he passed a left turn which led towards the maternity unit, he saw his chance. A trampled lawn ran up to the edge of the road. If he reversed tightly, he could park the left-hand wheels on the grass and leave the right-hand ones on the edge of the road. It might not meet with much approval, but he wouldn’t be obstructing anybody.

The passenger side wing mirror was doubly obscured, by rain on its surface and on the window. But Michael had already seen that the road was clear. The main thing was to act quickly, before anything came up behind him.

The gearbox grated as he engaged reverse. The clutch, as always, was short on travel. Despite his careful precautions, the lorry went backwards in a series of ungainly lurches. Michael stopped to get his bearings and found that he was sweating. His hands left damp patches on the steering wheel. He leaned over to look out of the opposite window. The front wheels were still out in the middle of the road, but he appeared to have got his angle right. All he had to do was to reverse another few metres.

There was nothing to be seen in the wing mirror. He found reverse again and let out the clutch.

He heard the blare of the horn and his foot hit the brake, but the crash had already happened. Rigid with terror, Michael pulled on the handbrake and got out of the cab. The driver of the car was already beside it, staring at the crumpled wing and bonnet of her smart hatchback.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ she said.

‘You must have come up behind me,’ said Michael. ‘There’s a blind spot in all them lorries.’

She stared at the horsebox as if it had just dropped out of the sky. ‘What’s it doing here, anyway?’

Michael looked at it as well. There wasn’t a mark on it.

She could have been a lot harder on him. When he told her his mother was in casualty she seemed appreciative that neither of them had ended up there as well, and agreed that there was no need to involve the police. Instead, she called over a passing technician to act as a witness while she wrote down the registration number and took the insurance details from a grubby document that Michael found in the glove box. When she asked him for his name, Michael gave her Frank’s. Just in case.

He was shaking when he got back into the building. Annie was waiting for him. Jean had been seen by a doctor and had gone on to wait her turn at the X-ray department.

Michael told Annie about the accident.

‘You didn’t admit it, did you?’ she said. ‘You didn’t agree it was your fault?’

‘Well …’

‘You should never do that. You should’ve said she drove into you.’

‘But she didn’t.’

‘You still should have said it.’

‘It doesn’t matter. As long as she keeps the cops off my back.’

‘I suppose,’ said Annie.

‘Promise you won’t tell my mum?’

‘She’s going to find out soon enough, isn’t she?’

‘Soon enough will do,’ said Michael. ‘Promise?’

Jean was still waiting for her X-ray. She knew the procedure backwards by now.

‘The doctors here haven’t seen my famous collarbone before,’ she said. ‘There’ll be all sorts of palaver when they see those prints.’

‘Shall we get you something to eat?’ said Annie.

Jean shook her head. ‘I couldn’t stomach anything now. You go off, though. Come back in an hour.’

‘You sure?’ said Michael.

‘Positive.’

They walked out for a takeaway and ate it in the lorry while the dogs went out for a run. When they’d finished, Annie climbed up into the transom and Michael squeezed in beside her. They lay in each other’s arms, listening to the downpour on the roof while the day faded away and abandoned them to darkness.

‘I hate this,’ Michael found himself saying.

‘What?’ said Annie.

‘All this. Hospitals. Accidents. I’ve had enough of it.’

‘Your mum’s collarbone?’

‘Not just that.’ He told her, then, about Joanne. He hadn’t intended to. It wasn’t something that he ever talked about. But now it spilled out; the whole story in all its tragic detail.

Annie said nothing until he had finished speaking. Then she held him tighter and rubbed his shoulder. ‘Oh, Michael.’

She was too close now to shut him out again. He ran his hand over her arm; felt the scars like hard worms under her skin.

‘Why do you do it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just get this pressure inside. It builds up and up. The only way to get rid of it is to cut myself.’

‘Why?’

‘I told you. I don’t know.’

He was afraid to pursue it, but he had to. ‘Is it something to do with your dad?’

She wriggled as if she was uncomfortable. ‘Maybe it is.’

‘How long has he been inside?’

‘Three years.’

‘Do you ever visit him?’

‘I went once. He blubbed like a baby. I never went again.’

‘What did he do to you, Annie?’

She didn’t answer, and he was afraid that he’d been wrong; that she’d frozen him out again.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

But she shook her head and a hot tear dropped onto his neck. He held her tighter.

‘Come on, Annie. You can come and live with us, you know. My mum and dad are mad about you.’

The sound she made could have been a laugh or a sob. ‘It’s too close,’ she said. ‘I have to get further away than that.’

The wind played the rain like a snare drum above their heads. Michael listened to it, and the fluty sound of the trickling scuppers.

Never more …

‘I’m coming with you if you go,’ he said.

He changed the gears again on the way home. Jean regaled them with stories of X-rays and horrified doctors, but Michael’s gaze was fixed on the wet road. Dead leaves scudded across it like injured mice. The slanting rain was a subtle mesh, fencing him in. Tree trunks and telegraph poles slid in and out of the lorry lights; each one a milestone on a road of no return.