Mountains of the Moon (19 page)

Have you nowt better to do than tiptoe through bloody tulips?

“It’s much warmer down here,” she said, “positively temperate.”

Sold to the lady with the mouth full of marbles.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll get the coach tomorrow.”

I heard the long-distance words, traveling down the line, and instantly wished I could get them back.

Now the coach is making sounds like leaving. Sheffield has been kind to me, everybody gave me cake, but winter came the first week of September and all I did was thrash about with tears freezing on my face. Cept now I’ve got Soyoko’s coat. Reckon it has saved my life. And security guards don’t follow me around. It’s a new year. Now I’m going to Weston-super-Mare. Seaside. Gwen says her aunt bought this place as a property investment but she’s gone to Leningrad for a nose job. Holiday cottage. I magines spring, creeping over me windersill.

Warm face.

Warm hands.

Warm feets.

“Lovely.” A bloke sits down sides me. “Last seat. Roasting in here.”

We pass the hospital. Physiotherapy has finished now. It’s so hot on the coach we has to take our coats off, whether we want to or not. The Lovely bloke stands up to put them in the overhead rack; holds my coat over his arms like a beautiful fainted lady. Change is as good as a rest. I think about Piggy, Gwen’s horse, great chestnut clod with his white socks
around his ankles, his great white face, his great big heart. I get really excited then, like going to see an old friend.

Warm, salty wind slaps hair all over my face, int sure which way I’m facing.

“It walks,” Gwen says. She’s never seen me without the crutches.

“It limps long.”

Panda jumps right up into my arms. She’s grown a lot in the six months since I last seen her. She finds the mole gain, under my chin. The coach driver gets my bag out from the stowage.

“Here you are, Miss,” he says.

Surprises me how a coat can change your bloody what’s name.

“Is that it?” Gwen says. “Your worldly chattels?”

“My worldly dictionary.”

“What about your clothes?”

“I’m wearing them all. Minus nine in Sheffield. It’s definitely warmer down here.” I look around. “No car?”

“Poor Betsy’s sick—I’ve offered sweet words and kicked seven sorts of shit out of her but she won’t start. It’s only a stroll along the prom. I use the word ‘stroll’ loosely,” she says.

“Glad to get rid of the crutches. It int just your foot you lose, it’s both your bloody hands as well. Where’s the sea?” I arsts.

“Good question.”

We go to the promenade wall and lean on it, looking out. See the seagulls, they is so citing playing on a wind. Wonders which one is Jonathan Livingstone.

“Never knew mud could be so beautiful,” I says. “Is the pier open? I love them sliding shelf machines where you drop the penny in, there’s something mesma about all that moving metal and shine. Have they got the Six Horse Race machine? Is it open now?”

“No, Soppy,” she says. “It closes at three in the winter.” She always seems to jig around me like I was up on a plinth or something.

In an avenue of stately old people’s homes, we turn down a leylandii
conifer track wide enough for a car to scrape through. Wedged between garden fences, on a tiny plot behind, is her aunt’s holiday cottage. Gwen’s used the word “cottage” loosely, looks like it’s made of wet hardboard. The gray Quattro is parked in front, next to a muck heap.

“I think it was cheap,” Gwen says, “and it’s not costing us anything, so that’s good, isn’t it?” She does a jig of good fortune on the breeze-block step. The front door is warped with wetness; she has to kick the bottom of it. I’d like to say she’s done us proud but it looks to me like a damp, poky old hole with concrete floors and woodchip paper on hardboard walls. Polystyrene ceiling tiles. Stick-on floral dado rail. The caravan Gwen had in Rotherham had more substance about it. The hall has plastic pine folding doors, sticky with fingers and flyblow. One clatters back.

“Ta-da.”

Freezing ugly hole of a bathroom. Pitchfork in the shower cubicle, out of the way. We step over a shit in the hall.

“Panda,” she says, case I never knew who done it.

“Ta-da.”

Kitchen.

“Compact and bijou.”

“Loverly close-up of a fence,” I says.

“Food hatch.” She flaps it down on a broken hinge and it won’t close back up. Falls down. “For God’s sake,” she says. “A little maintenance wouldn’t go amiss.”

We shuffle around peeling our shoes off the lino and come back out.

“Ta-da.”

Gwen’s bedroom, same as usual, bridle hanging on the bedhead, straw all over the carpet. Bales piled up around the winder. Another nice close-up of a fence.

“What’s that noise?”

“Ta-da.”

“Fucking. Hell.”

Piggy neighs, always does when he sees me.

“That’s Piggy’s end of the lounge and this is ours.” Gwen is jigging on a carpet so wet with horse piss it actually splashes. He looks pitiful,
with his big head hanging down. I move his saddle off the sofa and sit down. Can’t look. He clonks a stride forward, puts his head over my shoulder.

“Hello, big fella,” I says.

He breathes hard into my hand.

“He int got any headroom, Gwen.”

“Well, I know that,” she says. “It’s not bloody well my fault that I got him in here and now he won’t come out. I have to put him somewhere. What am I supposed to do?”

Silence rings with a petulant pitch. The dog gets in her basket, tramples around in circles trying to dig a deeper hole in the denim jacket. My voice is lit and sparks in the air.

“Tomorrow we’re going to get him a field,” I says.

“How can I be expected to pay for everything?” She wuthers on the edge of tears and some dark moors above the dado rail, pulling and clawing at her plait, always lets her hair down for it. Now she’s going down the hall, me and the dog get up to see. She slams the front door behind her, but it’s damp and bounces back open. When she kicks in the nearside wing of her car, the dog yelps. She storms off down the track.

I feels sick, guts has gone, int got the stomach for my heart bashing. I feels faint, finds my way back to sit on the sofa. Don’t want to touch it, try to breathe. Horse hooks over my shoulder, pulls me in, and closer. I clutches his whole head in my arms. Softness and warmth of his throat almost hurts and he stands so solid still. Don’t know how long we close our eyes, waits for calm, til we got one breath and one heartbeat. We listen to Panda hounded, in her basket, in her sleep and rain drumming on the chalet roof.

Gone dark, I don’t want to disturb this horse, to get up and turn the light on, but he lifts his head to let me. I grope about for switches. A fluorescent tube flickers on, then its twin the other end. I see a horse in the strobe, top lip turned up, sad mock-up of a huge joke. I know. What kind of cunt puts fluorescent tubes in a lounge diner? I look at the big stupid
horse, the ceiling making him low down and humble. Toe down and dip-hipped. It int proper.

“You want to lie down?” I arsts.

When everything is done I turn off the lights. Listens. Our hearts all boom in the dark. Water falls from guttering. The front door sticks and kicks. Gwen back, with butter. She talks to me from the dark hallway.

“Ingredients for toast,” she sniffs. “You’ve got the Calor gas fire going; it won’t ever light for me. Why are you sitting over there in the dark, why don’t you sit by the fire?”

The horse is giving off more heat. She comes then, stands in the doorway and flicks on the lights.

“Oh?” she says. “You’ve moved my belongings about?”

I’ve moved the dented rusted ugly fuck of a Calor gas fire, and the total bore of a Paris painting that she always hangs above it. I’ve moved the nylon-covered soggy chipboard sewing box.

“I’ve moved the sofa forward so the horse can lie down behind it if he wants to. I hope you don’t mind but I gave him some straw to lie on and a wedge of hay and filled up his water bucket.”

“Spoiled Piggy!” She jigs around into the kitchen. I can see her through the food hatch, doing a piggy jig with the butter knife.

“There’s six stables listed in the Yellow Pages,” I says. “In the morning we could try phoning them for a start. We could have a drive out to somewhere green; arst at a couple of farms or something.”

“There isn’t any money,” she says. “Which part of that don’t you understand?”

Oh—that clinking clunking sound.

“I can get a bit from the bank.”

She’s burned the toast, it’s on fire.

“You cook it, I’ll scrape it,” I try for a joke.

“But we can’t drive around anywhere, Betsy won’t start.”

I know the script, we done it so many times fore.

“I’ll have a look in the morning.”

“God, it’s infuriating. Is there no end to your talents?”

I wonder if to tell her I’m crap at choosing friends.

“How many slices does The Body want?”

“Five.” I spit on the saddle soap. I always like to clean the saddle and run the stirrup irons smooth up and down long the leather.

We was sposed to be going out on the town and I’m glad we int made it. She’s pretty harmless indoors, pissed, playing air guitar and throwing her hair backward and forward to Nutbush City Limits and here we fucking go: Quo. The more pissed she gets the closer she comes, smiling at me and calling me Soppy and doing jigs like Rumple Stiltskin, inviting me to let down my hair.

“It int going to work the same, Gwen” I says. “Not with my piece of piss.”

“You shouldn’t worry,” she says Welsh. “Who the hell needs hair with a pair of legs like yours?”

“One of them don’t quite work,” I point out.

“With a body like yours, hell, you don’t even need a face.” Off she goes gain, rocking all over the world.

Four hours later she’s on her damp knees miming midnight and not a sound from the pavement. I wonder if to kill myself. Always does when I drink.

I’d shoot the Paris painting and track down the man that done it. I’d shoot him three times, for lack of color and magination and one last time for wasting paint and ripping off tourists. I’d track down Gwen’s ex-fiancé, Ian, and shoot him for taking her there. I’d shoot the Calor gas fire and the stereo tower. And the car. I’d shoot the horse, clean in the temple, and the dog; I’d save Gwen for last. I’d give my right arm for a gun. I’d need my left to shoot it. I’d press the barrel hard up on the roof of my mouth and pull the trigger.

Why do the leaves–on the mulberry tree–whisper–differently–now?

The sun is holding my face. So warm it is coming through the winder. I try to get it on my tongue and on my wrists. Dust is sparkling, in the air, over Detective Cooper’s shoulders. They glitter.
And gleam
. So, I close my eyes. Lights float by like petals on a pool.

Drifting, I listen to Detective Cooper, talking so soft like reading a story.

“…you do not have to say anything, but anything you do say, may be taken down and used against you.”

I open my eyes and close my mouth. I nods like understand but my shadow on the wall don’t move.

“I am your barrister,” Mr. Lawson says. “I will be representing you in court. Do you have anything that you want to say, Catherine? Catherine?”

And why is the nightingale–singing a tune–on the mulberry bough?

“We’ll see you again tomorrow, Catherine,” Detective Cooper says.

My policeman coughs.

“What kind of flowers should I plant along the fence?” the nurse says. “I thought maybe hyacinths. Oleanders?”