Winter Damage (20 page)

‘Chicken’s just fine,’ said Butch.

‘Fine for a bird boy like you but chicken’s just chicken and won’t go far. How you come by that ridiculous name anyway?’

‘My dad.’

‘Joke was it?’ She called Trip close to the fire and told him to kneel so he could turn the spit every five minutes and said she wouldn’t be long.

‘Where you headin now?’ asked Ennor.

‘Out, won’t be long.’

‘Then take the gun.’

‘Don’t need no gun. Keep it, you’ve got a regular family here to protect.’ She put Ennor’s army coat over her own and stumbled through the door.

‘Where she goin?’ asked Trip.

‘Round the bend,’ laughed Butch. ‘Let’s eat the chicken before she gets back.’

Ennor poked him in the ribs. ‘If it weren’t for Sonny, I’d be dead in the ground.’

‘I’d be plenty able to supply if it weren’t for her hangin round.’

Trip told Butch to shut up because Sonny was his friend and Ennor said he was only fooling and she thought about the rapture right there and then because she was flirting with Butch just a little and she wondered if he’d noticed.

She looked at him occasionally when his eyes sank sleepy to the fire and the heat bundled him silent, his secretive eyes dancing the flames alive with uncharacteristic passion.

‘How long’s she bin gone?’ he asked.

‘Five, ten minutes maybe.’

‘Ten,’ said Trip, turning the chicken.

‘You think someone should go lookin for her?’

‘Not yet, she’ll only go mental.’

‘How long until she’d go mental if we dint go lookin?’

‘Few hours?’

They both started laughing but soon stopped when Sonny threw a turnip at them through the open door. ‘Peel that and dice it tiny cus its animal feed and chewy. That’s if you got nothin better to do.’ She sat cross-legged with a pan of fresh snow and rested it snugly into the embers of the fire.

She sang a song about a time before poverty and disaster and half the words she made up and when the chorus came around the third time the others joined in.

She boiled the chew from the turnip and strained it to plate and carved the chicken four ways equal because Trip was growing and needed sustenance the same as the others.

They ate noisily but in silence and when the chicken was picked through they broke bones from it and tossed them to the dog and he smiled the evening through.

That night darkness came as a different kind of dark and was heavy and bright with the non-stop snow.

It seemed as if a lifetime of winters had arrived at once and settled on that little peak of Cornwall known as Bodmin moor.

The snow at the door had risen into a step and Sonny carried concrete blocks and stacked them against the doorframe to keep it at bay.

‘We won’t get snowed in, will we?’ asked Butch. ‘If it keeps snowin the way it’s snowin?’

They sat in a line with their backs against crates and the fire and the changing world between them and watched the entrance diminish.

‘If it gets to the middle, I’ll climb out and start shovellin,’ said Sonny.

‘What with?’

‘I dunno. There must be somethin in this tip we can make a spade with if we need to.’

Ennor settled herself to looking deep into the heart of the fire and every time she thought of Dad she thought of Mum instead. She put her hand to her chest to feel the bootlace ring press against her skin and closed her eyes and prayed Dad into heaven and Mum into her arms.

Butch made more tea by scraping snow from the ice-wall with a knife and all blankets were piled by the fire for a bed and Trip and the dog lay snuggled to the heat and listened to the comfort of older conversation.

They all agreed the chicken was the best they’d ever eaten and even the turnip added a certain something to the meal.

‘Where’d you find it?’ asked Butch.

‘Floor of that barn by the pig sty.’

‘Pig feed?’

‘Anyone’s feed when you’re hungry, you did eat it, dint you?’

Butch shrugged.

‘There you go then. Dint Mummy put turnip in your pasties?’

‘Course.’

‘Course, turnips are turnips and food is food whether it’s out the ground, the sky or a bin, hell.’

She went and found herself a piece of thick wood from the junk which she hoped to whittle into a paddle for shovelling and she built herself a step at the door out of crates so she could see over the snow and sat with her hunting knife in hand.

‘What you kids don’t realise is I’ve seen the world and thereabouts and I know that sailin int as plain as you think. Crisis is whole world or don’t you listen to the news?’

‘Course,’ said Butch. ‘Radio won’t shut up bout city riots and good people runnin scared to the country. Said it’s gonna take a whole lot of time to get back to somethin that resembles normal.’

‘When you hear that?’ asked Ennor.

‘Before I came away.’

A menacing silence settled between them, interspersed occasionally by Butch’s coughing.

‘Can’t we just bed down now?’ Ennor asked Butch. ‘You’re on the next watch and need to rest.’

Trip and the dog lay fast asleep and Butch and Ennor got beneath the blankets and Sonny added a little of the fence wood to the fire to keep it ticking over.

Time stopped and drew back and forth through the night and Ennor was aware of the fire crackling with damp wood and of Sonny’s silhouette shaping the paddle through the low dancing flames. She dreamt they all lived in a big house the shape and size of the farmhouse back home but within it echoed the open rattle of the barn. Everything make and mend and almost perfect from a lifetime of living and making do, anything and everything fixed and fiddled and found a use for.

Ennor could imagine the world changed in her dream and it was no longer anyone’s concern who was or who wasn’t sent to institutions and or whether adults played their part in the lives of their children or if they were out fighting mad. The war that people fought in her dream was like the ones in the history books with guns and uniforms painting the picture and she woke almost believing that those old wars in history were somehow better to have lived through because they had boundaries and sides and everything made sense in a roundabout way.

She sat up and saw that Butch was now sitting guard and it was Sonny who slept peacefully beside her and she smiled and nodded at him and bundled back down beneath the blankets before the cold had her rattling.

When it was her turn for guarding she sat and peeked over the snow line and waited for her eyes to adjust to the strange snow light and was glad to see snowflakes had been replaced by fog. She watched the veil lick the stone and slate of farm buildings and pull up short to the door frame to look at her and it filled the half-square with daring front.

Ennor had an urge to bat it away with the shovel or draw the gun to shoot into the void because it told her that her dad was dead and it demanded she show some emotion.

She bit back the tears until her face ached with the pain of defiance and it caught in her throat like a bone that had grown long into the flesh.

One flash of emotion multiplied like spores gathering on the wind and her dad’s voice drowned her ears and she could see his face clear as youth and it filled the square of fog like a painting and smiled and joked and whooshed with a thousand memories.

Re-enactments of happier times and made-up times merged into fantasy and Ennor slapped her face to keep back the tears but they bubbled beneath her fingers. They travelled down her neck and into her shirt collar and splashed on to her lap and she crawled out on to the level snow just to feel something tangible and outside of herself.

The fog left her where she lay and moved on to other places and she pressed her face to the snow and waited for the sting of tears to harden into tiny salt crystals on her cheeks.

If this was grief, she was better off not getting close to anyone ever because it hurt more than you could think or say or know.

Ennor rolled on to her back and she flapped her arms and legs as a trick way into thinking she was fine but the snow was frozen hard and she merely lay there spent and stupid with anger rising and overflowing inside.

She jumped to her feet and ran a little way out from the complex of buildings and through the unfamiliar field. The moor was like an enemy and she stamped it dead with all the strength she’d been building and hiding all her life and she screamed and cried until the long-stuck bone snapped and fell from her throat.

She could no longer hear her dad’s voice but the shrill power of her own and she kept at it until the snow inched back below her feet and the fog retreated to the coast.

There was nothing left to stamp or scream about and Ennor bent to catch her breath back into her lungs and she smiled at the craziness of it all.

When her heart beat normal and she stood normal to the world her smile became a giggle and the giggle became healing laughter.

Ennor Carne’s dad was dead and that was a fact no matter which way she turned to look at it and life would move on the way God intended.

To the east, light was threatening to rise and a string of muted colour traced the cross-border landscape in an arc from Bodmin Moor to Dartmoor.

She made her way back to the barn and was mindful to keep her wits close because with the coming light and without the veil of falling snow there was every possibility that she would be seen.

She walked close to walls and edged her way forward and she realised the snow was planted with everywhere footsteps that a farmer with half an eye and half a brain would notice. They would have to get moving as soon as they were able and she wondered how to say she’d gone for a dawn walk without sounding like the crazy she was.

‘The wanderer returns.’

Sonny sat on a crate outside the half-blocked doorway and she clapped and nodded some kind of appreciation.

‘Glad you could join us.’ She smiled.

‘Don’t start, I was gone no more than half an hour.’

‘More like two and a half. I saw you goin and then heard you runnin off into the night, I was concerned.’

‘I needed to be on my own. You goin to let me in?’

Sonny stood to let Ennor pass and she followed her down into the cubby.

‘I had to relight the fire.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered. I made fresh footprints all round, we’ll have to go.’

‘I guessed that, but the kid needs to eat somethin besides chicken bones.’ Sonny sat and tended a pan of porridge and she said they weren’t going anywhere until it was eaten because it was their last.

‘What are you two hammerin on about?’ asked Butch and he sat up and blinked towards the light.

‘Your girlfriend here decided to go for a jog in the early’s and set a trail every which way to our door. You better sit with the gun till we’re done.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ennor. ‘It’s my problem anyway.’ She sat with the barrel poking and she watched Sonny stir the porridge until it was cement thick.

‘What we gonna do with no food?’ she asked.

‘That’s a stupid question I won’t be answerin.’

‘She’ll steal some,’ said Butch. ‘Break down that farmhouse door and stamp right into the kitchen demandin and goin on.’

Sonny laughed. ‘Not such a bad idea. You offerin to come with?’

Ennor stopped listening because they were beginning the first bicker of the day and it was interfering with the calm buzz she’d gleaned from earlier. She sat in the doorway and watched the sky develop and bend into lighter hues of grey outside and allowed herself to wonder briefly if today was the day for rekindling something with Mum.

‘You gone over the plan?’ she asked Sonny. ‘You know how to get to that Treburdon place, you reckon?’

‘Course.’ Sonny smiled.

‘Good,’ Ennor nodded. ‘That’s good.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

The ragtag crew of five crept from the barn and went silently through gates and fields until they were back on open moorland with the morning light a dazzling surprise.

The temperature slunk below freezing and the group knew it would stay that way. There was no wind coming from the south to push it warm, but neither were there snow clouds rising from the north and that was something to be grateful for. In any case north was where they were heading and they rough-sketched the day’s route in their collective mind.

The crazies that had Ennor running mad earlier that morning had settled into a warm, content buzz.

‘What you smilin bout?’ asked Sonny. ‘Grinnin like an idiot.’

‘I’m not.’

‘You are. Big stupid grin slapped across your face like a nutcase.’

‘Just happy a while, what’s wrong with that?’

‘Don’t seem happy. You might be smilin but . . .’ Sonny shrugged and ran off to tease Trip and the dog.

‘What’s her problem?’ asked Butch.

‘What?’

‘She’s always at you.’

‘Just her way. Kind of like havin fun I spose.’