Lie of the Land (30 page)

‘Why not?'

‘Well, because . . . because she always wants to talk about her condition, you know. I mean, what does she want? For us to settle down and pretend to be a happy family? That's not going to happen.'

‘How do you know she wants that if you never talk to her?'

‘What else is there to talk about?'

Alec John let out a short laugh. ‘The fact that she's pregnant and you're the father?'

‘But we know that, so what is there to talk about?'

‘How the hell would I know? And you won't know either unless you talk to her. She might be terrified at the prospect of having another kid.' His face darkening, Alec John turned back to the window. ‘You're going to be a father. That's something you should be thankful for.'

Carl snorted. ‘Right. A kid is exactly what I need. And exactly what Inverlair needs.'

‘Maybe it is.'

‘No,' said Carl. ‘It's not.'

Alec John reached for his oxygen mask and took a few puffs.
He was quieter when he spoke again. ‘My wife died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of thirty-one. She was in the post office down the road when it happened, buying stamps. She had a bit of a sore head, I said goodbye to her that morning, went out as usual, and when I came back, the doctor at the time and the postmistress were waiting for me. Every day I think about her, even now.' He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘We couldn't have kids. It was my fault, and now here I am. You see, no matter where you go or what you do, you'll always be a father. There's no getting away from that.

‘I never met anyone else after my wife died. I suppose that was my choice. But you don't have a choice now. It's all a question of what you do with the knowledge. I don't believe any man can just ignore his child and if he does, well, it'll have some effect on him, sooner or later.'

Sermon over, Alec John looked out the window, clutching the oxygen mask on his lap.

Carl got up and put his chair back under the table. He zipped up his waterproof jacket. ‘I don't know,' he said, standing there. ‘I don't know what to do.'

Staring up at him, Alec John settled the blanket round his knees. ‘That's okay. It's fine not to know. But at least think about it.'

Carl shrugged. ‘I shouldn't have upset you.' He turned to leave. ‘I'll see you later.'

Alec John smiled. ‘So I'm firing blanks as well as live ammunition, eh?' He turned back to the window. ‘I'll be up and about tomorrow to joint that carcass, so you can watch how it's done again. You're still making a bloody mess of it.'

At the head of the bay, down on the main road, the shadows were already hardening as the icy night reasserted itself. With the sun up, there had been a hint of warmth in the air, an easing. But now, at just after 4 p.m., the cold was clenching again. At some point, perhaps in a day or two, the air stream would swing to the
south and the clouds would come back and the temperature would rise. It would start raining again. This was the wisdom of those who had been here for far longer than he had. There were those who could see the bigger picture, who could see beyond the transient discomfort of a cold snap. They could read the secret signs that were invisible to everyone else, the subtle cues that suggested what was to come.

Carl had been good at that – the sense of what lay beneath the surface, finely attuned to the hidden language of true intentions. If he paid attention, maybe he could make it work – being here. He could get through this, whatever this actually was, by learning a skill. That's the way he had to look at it: learn what needs to be learned and then get on with it, keeping out of everyone's way in the process. It worked for Alec John, that kind of approach. Every man has dreams of power. It's how he reacts to powerlessness that defines the kind of person a man becomes.

Climbing the main road up the southern headland had warmed him up. Cold air clawed at his lungs, steaming hot billows into the cold. His stride slowed at Terry's gate, but quickened again, and he pressed on towards the roadblock. A little further and he stopped, just short of the painted boulders, feeling SCOPE in his right temple. Today might have been the six-day pulse, but it was too late in the afternoon to know for sure. Besides, he didn't really want to know about the six-day pulse any more. It was a deadly hope, and a false one.

Running. Running from the low-frequency wave that was breaking over him, and that was killing Howard. And then the darkness and the rain and the realisation. All of it came back to him if he let it, but there was no need to let it because he was moving forward into some kind of future. It was happening. He could see he had no choice. The alternatives were worse, on balance.

The deltameter showed the delta field was, if anything, a little stronger today.

The useless sun was slinking away back into its hole and there was fuck all for him to do but become proficient in something, the capacity to shoot and walk and watch that had fallen into his lap. He stamped on an ice-filled pothole, causing a crack, but not breaking through. His primary task was now maximising the supply of protein obtained through the flesh of dead animals. Those animals, in the main, had to be shot. The man who'd performed that task, dutifully, for almost forty years was more or less incapable of walking any distance, and he, Carl, had stepped into the role. He put the deltameter into his inside pocket and turned back towards the village. As the light dwindled behind the southern headland the shadow of night started creeping around the bay. Round and round the limits of its orbit, the world turned and the day went on into cold star-filled night. Carl lifted the binoculars, took a last look across the bay. There was that big fucking thug Casper, dumping more logs from the pick-up. The guy doesn't even bother to knock now, just marches straight into people's hen-coops or polytunnels, sees what there is, and loads up the trailer with plunder. There was no need for violence; he took the food because people believed the committee had a right to it. Yes, Carl could see the sense in Howard's system, in having a committee to ration everything – but fairly. This system wasn't fair. When is it ever?

George still enjoyed a whisky: the perks of the publican, perhaps, but surely conduct unbecoming for the chairman of the emergency committee.

Across the bay, Carl could see Casper talking with Adam and another guy. They could take over, he thought. Inverlair's own emergency authority could run the place in whichever way they chose. It was their choice. Gibbs couldn't do a thing about what had been done to Terry, and the committee wanted to smooth the whole thing over. Move along now, nothing to see here.

But there must be a consequence, a punishment. The evildoers must get what they deserve. Isn't that what happens?

Carl watched the men across the bay. Big dumb Casper and his little emperor. There would be a punishment. He would bide his time and then, when the right moment presented itself, enact his own version of justice.

Simone entered the binoculars' field of vision, dark orange scarf wound against the cold, a striped woollen hat down to her ears. He watched her say hello to her brother and the other two but not stop. She walked past the shorefront houses, past the boarded-up craft shop, Carl following her progress. She was pretty enough, and he liked her. There was nothing wrong with her, and maybe he'd accept the way things were, but then again maybe he wouldn't. There must be something left – some choice that he still had the power to make. Simone stopped at Dr Morgan's cottage.

Part of Carl hoped for the worst.

•

‘This is a great little lamp,' said Dr Morgan. ‘Remember that big power cut a few years ago, the first big one? My nephew gave me this for Christmas.' She switched on the lamp; it had a slender conical base topped with a wire-and-paper shade. ‘Leave it on the windowsill to charge during the day and you get a good three hours of power at night . . . Can I offer you a refill?'

Simone raised her dark eyebrows, an empty cup in her lap. ‘Please, that tea was nice and fresh.'

Dr Morgan went over to the fire and lifted a pan of steaming water from the embers. ‘Wringing out the last few drops,' she said brightly.

It occurred to Simone that tomorrow was the day for handing out tea and coffee rations. At this point in the week, a teabag would have been wrung out a few times to make a brew, by most people.
She watched the cups being refilled with hot water, steam rising as the cold ceramic was soused. She knew the food-rationing situation was wrong, but the fattening foetus inside her had its own needs, imperatives that she had to obey. And it was only a cup of tea, after all.

They sipped at their cups by the fire. Even though her face was warm, Simone could feel the chill at her back, where heat ended and a cold house began.

Delicately, Dr Morgan raised the subject of Carl, and Simone tried to make light of the situation. While talking, she became conscious of the fact that she was defending him, so she wound up the conversation with a shrug. ‘There's not much I can do about the situation. We'll just have to see what happens.'

Barring any mishaps, one thing was certain to happen, and she was over halfway towards it, or towards
her
, as Dr Morgan's test had just confirmed.

34

On a bright spring day the lamb is born; and on the same bright spring day it dies.

Carl was too far away to help it. Through the binoculars he could see birds, bigger than crows – ravens, maybe – taking up position around the mother; one was even perched on her back. They were all waiting.

The sheep stood to give birth, its hindquarters thrusting towards the ground, mouth open, head tilted upwards, as a sausage of pliable waxy life unplugged itself from the birth canal and spilled onto the ground. Then the birds moved in.

Carl lowered the binoculars, his lips dry. The lamb was seconds in the world, and now it was out of it. Months to make, and all that energy, from sunlight to grass to foetus, was now being pecked back into death by the ravens. That, surely, was the point. The ravens had to live – they had as much right to life as the lamb, or as little claim on it. He could run over there now, take up a good position, and probably kill one of the birds, let it act as a warning to the others. The lamb would still have its eyes pecked out, but he could even the score. There would be no justice in it, because the birds weren't doing anything wrong, as such; it was simply that killing them helped keep death away.

Carl walked along the ridge, cutting down the track and into the boggy saddle between the peaks, inland from the head of the bay. There was warmth in the air, so he took off his baseball cap and unzipped his Gore-Tex to the navel. On a day like this it
was good to be alive. He wasn't about to rush anywhere to waste a bullet.

The ewe had needed to give birth there and then, out in the open, just one dumb brute struggling by itself to produce another. The birds, too, had no choice – killing and eating a just-born lamb, fresh from the oven, was a simple risk-free way of eating. People talk about the facts of life, but it could just as easily be the facts of death. There was no escape from either, though there were rules of engagement.

Alec John had a choice: the moment of death was now in his own hands, thanks to Dr Morgan and 150mg of diamorphine. By controlling the ‘how' he could control the ‘when' and, thus, the ‘where'. Death might be the strongest animal, but, if you're lucky, there will be time to tidy up before opening the front door to it.

At least Alec John could cut short the pain, any time he chose, though staying alive was becoming harder every day for him.

‘Howard said between two and four years, but he also said the nearest mast might fail tomorrow,' Carl had argued. ‘When it does, we can get the stuff you need, the nanomeds.'

Alec John had gone along with that, to begin with, but now pain and permanent immobility were proving too much. The fight to stay out of bed – which he saw as a step closer to the grave – was all but over. Most days Alec John couldn't make it into his clothes, or a chair. Even if the nearest mast failed tomorrow, it might not be enough to open the way to the next town, and the nearest doctor's surgery would not necessarily have the right kind of medicine. They both knew it was ridiculous to think otherwise.

Up on the ridge, Carl scanned along the shoreline with his binoculars, settled on Terry's caravan and then on Hendrik de Vries and his wife, who were fussing around in and out of their polytunnels. She paid regular visits to Terry, probably just to check on him.

On this side of the bay Simone and Isaac were in the back
garden, putting logs in a basket. She had her padded jacket on. It hid the bump but made her look twice as big.

There was no white boat on the horizon. And there never would be.

Just like Alec John, it could be any day now with Simone. One going out of the world and one coming into it. But at least the ravens wouldn't be waiting for either Alec John or the baby. Carl watched Isaac help his mum with the logs, watched how they acted together, the little actions that revealed their intimacy. Then he lowered the binoculars and began the long, hard climb up to the crown of Ben Bronach. After a spell, he veered left towards the gully and the river. Two days ago, when the weather broke, he'd taken an older hind here. He'd gralloched her with inexpert hands, still using the gut hook to detach the hot innards, blood-warm slime and intestinal tubing, scooping it all from the body cavity and onto the rough grass. For Alec John, such an activity provoked no reaction; pinched disgust was the best Carl was able to manage, even now. At least he no longer vomited.

Now, two days later, there was nothing of the hind's guts to be seen except a little dried blood and tufts of downy fur clinging to the heather. Who knows how many animals had fed off the remains? Maybe the guts had made the difference between life and death. A crow might emerge, alive, from the winter because it had eaten its fill here. That crow might kill a lamb. That lamb wouldn't grow up to produce more lambs. The struggle for flesh was open and constant.