Wild Abandon (26 page)

“You’re back,” Don said, glancing at the camera. “Here you are. Back.”

“I’m not staying. We’re off for extortionate lunch.”

“This is your celebration. Everything you see was made for you.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Anyway, who’s we?”

Patrick was sitting with his hands in his lap, the roof and windows down. He didn’t hear them approach. A solemn, narrator’s voice began: “Nearly a quarter century ago, in an office block in Lambeth, you introduced me to something that changed my life forever.”

Patrick turned to see the narrator standing at the passenger side door with his head bowed slightly and oysters, one in
each hand, shucked and on the half shell. Of the first few months he and Don had spent together in London—their honeymoon period—the moment of greatest romance was spent shucking a dozen natives with a penknife, arguing about landownership, on a bench on Primrose Hill. Kate, behind her father, held up her hands and mouthed:
Sorry
.

“Come on, old pal, a peace offering,” Don said, presenting them, reaching into the car. “An invitation to the celebration.”

Patrick pressed a button and slowly, excruciatingly so, slow enough to allow the childishness of the gesture to really ring out, the soft top’s exoskeleton unfolded itself and pushed forward over Patrick’s head, forcing Don to take a step back as it clicked into place. He walked round the front of the car and came to the driver’s side window.

“Fresh off the beach today. Gower’s own.”

“Which one is poisoned?” Patrick said, and sniffed them.

One was huge and one was tiny. They were both bloodshot with Tabasco, which was how Patrick liked them. He took the small one. Without even getting out of the car, he necked it, took a couple of bites, and felt it slide down inside him.

Don held up the huge one in his hand and seemed unsure. Patrick allowed himself to make a small
ch
noise that he knew would be just enough.

“Fine,” Don said, and lifted the frilled edge to his lips. It had real depth, the shell, fist-sized, definitely a wild oyster—an alpha male. Patrick thought about something sarcastic along these lines but decided it wasn’t necessary. Don had the creature in his mouth and, it became clear, could not swallow.

Patrick looked around for Kate so that they could enjoy
this moment together, and saw her, but also, next to her, an outsize brown-skinned man pointing a handheld camera at Don. His giant finger was on the zoom, and it was apparent that Don realized he was being filmed. A little creamy liquid eked out at the edges of his mouth as he finally swallowed, a full chest gulp, leaving him bent over, his hands on his knees.

Patrick felt unthreatened and reckless.

“Right, I’m off,” he said.

“Don’t leave me,” Kate said.

“It won’t be the same without you,” Don said, still bent over, mouth open.

Patrick imagined Don telling everyone at the party: “I held out an olive branch, but the old man’s still not ready to grip on.”

“You’re really just going to dump me here?” Kate said.

“I really am.”

“You’ll be missed,” Don said, unconvincingly.

“Give me the car keys, Kate.”

“Come get them,” she said, and held out the key on the palm of her hand.

He raised his eyebrows. “Are you really going to make me?”

“I really am,” she said.

Patrick shook his head and breathed out. He got out of the car and walked around the front. She took a few backward steps as he approached, now dangling the key from her index finger.

“This is not dignified,” he said.

“How’s your ankle for running?” she said.

He stopped. Behind Kate, the cameraman stepped back for a wide.

• • •

Albert swung and felt the compost give. “She’s back.”

Isaac stabbed the thick gunk, climbed onto the garden fork’s hips with both feet, and waited there, elevator-style, as it sank in.

“She’s come to fuck things up,” Albert said.

He had heard someone yelling “Aaaa!” and, going to investigate, had seen Don giving Kate a piggyback.

The mattock’s blade went
shung
as it entered the mulch. Albert yanked it back and a green-yellow pus seeped out of an eggshell. The smell was vicious. Isaac dropped his fork and ran back toward the polytunnels, both hands over his nose. Albert was immune.

“But don’t worry because I have everything under control,” he said.

In between each swing, he looked up toward the goat pen. Isaac walked back over, sniffed the air, and picked up his fork.

“Total fuck,” Isaac said, and frowned.

“You got it, Eyes.”

Isaac seemed surprised to hear himself swear. He looked down at his muddy hands.

Don was shortly due to meet his wife and he had still not changed into his slaughterwear. Kate had asked him to give her and Patrick “the tour” of the festival. It would have been strange, given the enthusiasm with which he’d just welcomed them, to decline. He wanted to explain that the tour would need to be very quick because he was going to meet Freya, for the first time in weeks, and he really wanted their meeting to go well—which his daughter would understand. But he
could not risk telling her that he also needed enough time both to change into clothes that he was happy to see spattered with goat’s blood and to access a meditative state of pre-slaughter calm. This she might find upsetting. So he said nothing.

They started at the bottom of the long field, beside the yurt, which had its sides uncovered and a low stage at the back.

“The live music arena,” Don said.

“So who’s headlining then?” Patrick said.

“No one. Or rather, everyone.
Everyone
is headlining.”

Don ushered them toward the top of the field where the first visitors had arrived from other communities, Tipi Valley, Brithdir Mawr, Holtsfield. They had to walk at Pat’s pace, which, with his ankle, was approximately that of a pallbearer. They passed a converted Royal Mail van, a Honda Civic, an American school bus, and a bathtub, all parked at angles. A pony drank from the tub. Don kept getting a few paces ahead, then waiting for them to catch up.

Don stuck to firm ground to allow for Patrick’s ankle, hoping it would help him pick up the pace, but it didn’t.

“Would you like a hand?” Don said finally, and he honestly hadn’t meant it to sound patronizing, but sometimes old patterns of communication have a way of asserting themselves.

Patrick said nothing but walked quicker all the same, just the tiniest of hobbles creeping into his gait, clearly unwilling to express any discomfort. Kate put one arm through Patrick’s, like husband and wife, to support him.

They stopped at the goat pen while Kate jumped the
fence to say hello. They heard her apologizing for having gone away. Don looked around. It was a matter of minutes until he was due to meet Freya at this exact spot.

They walked over to the front of the big house, where the sound system was being set up beneath a big blue seven-cornered tarpaulin, amoeba-shaped. It shaded half the yard, having been stretched and tied between the rain gutters of the schoolroom, the apple tree, and the roof of the workshop.

“The Rave Zone,” Don said, with audible capitals, then looked at his watch.

Kate watched two young guys—not much older than her—carrying speakers from a white van, setting them up on a row of pallets, and lashing them together with buckle straps. There were eight cabinets, two high by four across. The upper ones had militaristic casings. By the looks of it, the sound system had been her father’s key investment in the future of the community, that and the semicircle of portable toilets set back behind the workshop. On a plastic school desk next to the speakers there were CDRs, a mixer, and an amp. One of the boys opened the driver’s side of the van, came back with a disc, held it up in the air—flashing sunlight off its underside—and said: “Sound check.”

“You know, Don, this system’s gonna project like billy-o?” Patrick said. “Good morning, pensioners of Gower!”

They looked around but her father had gone. Apparently the tour was over. Kate hadn’t been able to work out if his nervousness had been just a symptom of the party, or if that was what he was like all the time nowadays.

As the boys switched on the equipment there was a sense of air moving, of latent energy. The first sound was of a helicopter landing. Patrick actually looked up. Then the beat came in. It was physically loud, akin to being groped. Kate put her fingers in her ears and watched the boys bounce together behind the school desk, lip-synching. The noise brought people out of the house and gardens and into the yard. A woman with an intricate facial birthmark emerged with her hands over her ears. Marina appeared from her bedroom at the far end of the workshop, making the universal hand signal for
turn it down
. More people came out of the big house: a pale man in his early thirties making gang signs; Arlo doing the robot, holding tongs; Janet, squinting, wearing a straw hat; two new wwoofers; and then Isaac, sitting in the dirt at the side of the workshop, making mud pies, drumming his pan on the off-beat.

Everyone saw Kate and Patrick. They saw everyone.

“We’re back!” Kate yelled, barely audible, raising both arms.

Patrick held up a hand in acknowledgment.

Arlo slotted his tongs into his back pocket, wiped his hands on his apron, and led the charge. Janet followed, removing her hat to reveal blow-dried hair. Everyone held out their arms—too many hugs to choose from—all smiling and calling their names; people Kate had never seen before, moving toward them with arms extended like the undead. The first hug was from Janet, who put her arms round Patrick’s waist and her ear to his chest; he kept his arms up awkwardly, as though wading through pond water. Then the rest fell on
them, one after another, Kate’s vision darkening a notch as she was enveloped and squeezed and told that she had never left their thoughts.

Someone turned off the sound check. Through the clot of heads she saw Albert, watching from the side of the workshop, holding a three-quarter-size wheelbarrow of compost. It was not the circumstances in which she had hoped to have their reunion—her suddenly famous and swamped by groupies. Marina squeezed Kate’s shoulders and whispered, “Your brother missed you,” into her ear. Albert dropped the wheelbarrow, made serious eye contact with his sister, pointed toward the house, then ran inside.

As the giga-hug disbanded, only Janet and Patrick remained, Patrick trying to peel off her arms. Kate excused herself, saying she needed to catch up with her brother.

In the schoolroom, there was a man with an alcoholic’s ripe nose making paper lanterns, two nonidentical twins cutting colorful people holding hands out of tissue paper, drawing a unique expression on each, and a boy with a square fringe folding origami cranes. They looked up at her with the nonjudgmental but slightly questioning expression that she herself used to adopt when finding unknown persons wandering the house.

In the kitchen, a skinny woman fed a cinder block of cheese into the industrial grater, producing a blond wig in the bowl below.

She finally found Albert in the scullery, wearing an apron, washing potatoes at the butler’s sink. It was odd to see him washing them because he still had not washed himself. He
had a kind of Hollywood tan. He wore special black scrubbing gloves that said POTA across the right knuckle and TOES across the left. The way he rubbed his gloved hands around the potatoes reminded Kate of an evil genius formulating a plan.

“Hey, bro. I’m back.”

He ignored her. His hair looked salt-stiff, almost glued. Her instinct was to smell him, to take a hit off his neck.

“Don’t mind if I help, do you?”

She picked up a peeler and started skinning, slimy strips piling up on the counter, their wet sides glistening. He kept on formulating. She looked across at him with a half smile to convey impending fun—the kind of smile you do before tickling someone.

“Albert, I want to say I’m sorry that I went away. It can’t have been easy for you.”

He stared straight ahead, gazing at the paintbrushes in a jar of dark water on the sill, then glancing up at the community’s only wall clock. It was 10:27. She tried to think of some common ground between them.

“Guess what I saw the other day?
Steamboat Willie
, remember that cartoon, where he peels potatoes?” she said. “How scared we were?”

She mimed throwing the potato over her shoulder and whistled the tune.

“Why would that scare me?” he said.

“You used to have nightmares,” she said, nudging him. “We both did.”

He responded to her nudge with an elbow, then reached
down and got another potato. There were only ten or so left. Outside she noticed Patrick, now Janet-less, making his escape, gingerly moving down through the kitchen garden.

Albert reached down and grabbed another.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

“Gotta problem, you fuck?” His voice suddenly loud in the brick-tiled room.

She examined his profile, imagining licking her finger and writing something witty on his cheek. “I just want us to be friends, shithead.”

“I’m not letting you near me. You’re not getting anywhere near.” He looked up at the clock. “And stay the
hell
away from Mum.”

He still hadn’t turned his head toward her, not once. She saw that Patrick, despite his weak ankle, was already way down at the bottom of the garden, disappearing into the trees beyond.

“Two left,” she said.

“You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem,” he said, “and Arlo says he wants the skins left on.”

Mud swirled down the drain. He looked at the clock and tossed the last one in the colander. Turning round, he picked up a fresh sack of potatoes, unwashed, and poured them into the sink with a flourish. He took off the gloves and handed them to his sister.

“This is the least you can do,” he said, and was gone.

It was 10:31 and Freya and Don were standing by the goat pen. He was wearing gray joggers, a Phoenix Suns T-shirt with the basketball bursting through the front, and a blue
baseball cap. His slaughterwear. They heard a blast of hip-hop from the sound system and Don turned his cap to the side. No response from Freya, who was not about to let him start enjoying himself. There was the sound of hooves clacking on wood and they looked across. All six goats were stood on the roof of their pen, huddled together in sunlight, as though longing for a crag to inhabit.