Fallow Read online

  ‘Grand,’ he said. ‘All that beer’s made me sleepy.’

  So we went through the mist in that final valley and everything above us was obscured. We were underwater in fog.

  ‘Here,’ laughed Mikey. ‘This is like that film. What’s it called? About the bad fog.’

  ‘The Mist?’

  ‘Maybe. We used to watch that one all the time in Polmont.’

  I said, ‘That’s enough.’

  The ground brought us upwards and the mist broke and we could see the tent silhouetted by the moon’s light. I opened my mouth to say something about how the walk hadn’t been so bad, but then I shut it again. There was a figure by the tent. It was poking at the canvas with a cane. I heard it say, ‘Final warning. It’s not allowed.’

  We stopped and looked at each other. Mikey mouthed the words ‘four-wheel drive’ and I nodded. My blood was kicking in fierce then as we crouched down and hid ourselves in the valley and watched the man worry the tent. He kept at it for a long time before calling us bleeding gyppos and marching down the hill towards his car. Mikey made to skulk back up to the tent but I held onto his neck and made him follow me downwards. We watched the man start his motor and go off down the road.

  ‘Let’s just leave it,’ Mikey whispered. ‘Let’s go home.’

  I said, ‘No,’ and we wandered up and onto the road. We jogged along to the wee house and by the time we got there the man had already parked. I pulled Mikey into a copse of trees across the road from the house and we hid.

  I knelt down behind a thick bush and Mikey squatted further back, among the roots of a yew tree. From my position I could see the three windows that made up the wee house’s front. It was a bungalow with a small atticy-looking level above.

  ‘What’re we doing, Paul?’ moaned Mikey.

  I saw the man’s head come through from the back of the house and go past one of the windows. All of them were burning light. Someone must have a few bob in his pocket, I thought.

  I turned to face Mikey. He was huddled into himself, his lanky elbows and knees jutting out. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘What don’t I get?’

  ‘That they’re not going to let us be. They’re not going to leave us alone.’

  Mikey looked at me. His eyes were like a little boy’s.

  ‘If we want to get left alone,’ I said, ‘if we want to get back home with Mum any time soon, we need to take matters into our own hands.’

  ‘Paul…’

  ‘It’s true Mikey. I’m being honest with you cause I’m treating you like a grown up cause you are a grown up. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Paul,’ he pleaded.

  I made my mouth thin and turned back to the house. ‘I expected more of you than this mate, I really did.’

  There had been a dog barking, hadn’t there? It hadn’t sounded especially fierce. More like an excited lab or maybe a terrier. Nothing to lose sleep over. There had been a dog on our street growing up. I still had the scar on my calf from where it bit me as I tried to climb out of its garden. It went missing, that dog, not long after.

  ‘Right Mikey, are you ready to listen?’

  He made a noise behind me. A wet noise.

  ‘Good boy. I’m going to tell you exactly what you need to do. As long as you do exactly what your big brother tells you then nothing bad will happen.’

  That same wet noise again. I turned to face him.

  ‘All right?’

  3

  I waited in the trees for Mikey to get the job done. He was a fast worker. I counted as I watched the two heads’ shadows move between the lower windows of the house and I didn’t get far. I watched the heads move apart and then towards each other. It was hard to tell which was which but once they fell to the ground and only one returned a minute or so later I knew it must be Mikey.

  He flashed the lights three times when it was all over and I crept across the road and around the back. I knocked on the door and Mikey answered.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  He wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘Like you said.’

  ‘It’s self-preservation, Mikey. You’ll thank me one day.’

  I needn’t have worried about the dog. It was locked up in a run outside. Mikey followed me into the garden to check it out. When the beast saw us approach it lowered itself onto the breezeblocks and cringed. The floor of the run was dotted in dried turds.

  ‘We’ll need to get this seen to as well,’ I said.

  Mikey put his fingers through the wire and the dog ran its heavy pink tongue all over them. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘No one else inside?’

  He shook his head.

  We left the dog where it was and went into the house to assess the damage. My brother had done a grand job. You went in through the kitchen, came to a hall with a living room joined onto it. A Ramsay ladder led to the upper floor, which I assumed was a bedroom. The man was on the floor of the living room. He’d been watching a porno film, the dirty old bastard. I couldn’t help but laugh. The girls were still moaning and slavering, and here he was. Lying on the floor.

  We carried the man out through the back garden and over the fence into the waste of nature beyond. The land was wilder there than up in the meadow. You could sense the mountains in the distance but it was so dark you couldn’t make them out.

  I got Mikey to run back to the house to fetch a shovel, leaving me alone with the man. I propped him up against a hump of earth.

  ‘You thought you could get the better of me?’ I said. ‘You won’t be making that mistake again, will you?’

  I was chuckling and moving around him. I felt as though I took up the whole of the night. My mouth was the entire black sky.

  I knelt down so we were face to face. ‘This is what happens. Are you pleased with yourself? Are you? You just couldn’t just let a couple of lads camp in peace, could you, you posh fuck?’ I might have shouted that last part because when I was finished my throat was scratched.

  Mikey came back with a pair of spades little bigger than trowels. Even in the dark I could tell his eyes were pink. He handed me a trowel.

  ‘What do you call this?’

  ‘It’s all he had.’

  ‘You’re joking? These country folk, they’ve got all the fucken tools going.’

  ‘They’re all I could see.’

  It took us quite some time to create a suitable hole. The earth was soft enough, it was just a matter of volume. We got him settled in the end but we were filthy when we made it back to the house. I sat in the kitchen and rolled myself a fag while Mikey heaved the sack of dog food out into the back garden. It was a nice place. The kitchen was done out all old fashioned, with one of them big ovens that’s always switched on. I lit my fag and had a nose in the fridge. He was well stocked. Plenty meat, plenty beers.

  I went through to have a look in the living room, tipping my ash on the carpet as I went. The porno film was drawing to a conclusion and I pulled the telly out at the plug, all that nonsense being of no interest to me. I heard Mikey close the back door and he came into the living room to join me. We took an armchair each. There was a tumbler of whisky on the carpet by my armchair that I dropped my singed filter into.

  I looked around and said, ‘How about this?’

  Mikey was playing with his bottom lip. He nodded when I spoke.

  ‘Aw,’ I laughed. ‘Come on now! You can’t be serious.’

  He shrugged, staring into the cream carpet.

  ‘This I cannot believe. Mikey Buchanan, suddenly developing a conscience.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  He said it in such a way that it made my blood kick in. ‘You know fine well what that’s supposed to mean.’

  That shut him up right enough.

  ‘Listen,’ I went on. ‘All right, agreed. Maybe, perhaps, this is some good fortune we’ve come into through less than ideal circumstances. I’ll give you that, Michael. But come on mate. We’d be mad to pass it up. That’d be looking a g
ift horse right square in its gifty gob.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘He supposes does he? Well very good. This is an opportunity. This is an opportunity to keep our heads down in relative comfort. Keep our heads down until it’s all over back home. Until those hacks fuck off back to Glasgow or wherever.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t think I need to remind you of the reason why those fucken hacks are there in the first place, do I? I don’t need to remind you whose fault it is we’re even out here?’

  Mikey gave me a look then. A look like he was going to say something to me. And I was ready. I had pure energy in my wrists, in my neck. I was waiting for him to say his piece. I wanted him to say his piece more than anything else.

  But he didn’t. He nodded and agreed with me, which was for the best.

  I said, ‘There we go.’

  There was a bathroom across the hall from the living room, right beneath the Ramsay ladder. I even agreed that Mikey could go for a wash first. That was the kind of guy I was. We found him a good soft towel in an airing cupboard and we managed to get the shower to work. I sat in my armchair and listened to the water pour and rolled myself another fag.

  We switched rooms when Mikey was finished. I brought my own towel and squeezed myself into the tiny bathroom. I got myself naked and looked in the mirror over the sink. What a sight. My own hair and beard had grown out considerably, although not as much as Mikey, pre-trim. My skin had taken on the sun – with that and sleeping outdoors it had become tough and dark.

  I used the man’s toothbrush on my teeth. I used his floss too. I used his floss until my teeth were stained red from the blood and a clump of bloodied worms of floss lay in the sink. I conjured up some thoughts then and closed my eyes. They were good. Sometimes the thoughts I could conjure up when my eyes were closed would frighten even me. I finished myself off into a wad of toilet roll and climbed into the shower.

  Ropes of brown water scurried off me instantly. Despite washing every other day in the burn and, before that, the loch, it seemed if you were living outdoors there were places the dirt got to that you just couldn’t reach. I washed myself until my skin tingled and then I got out.

  Mikey was in his towel in his armchair.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked, dripping onto the hall carpet.

  ‘There’s no clothes,’ he said. ‘It’s all up at the tent.’

  ‘Here, that’s true. Never mind though.’

  I climbed the Ramsay ladder and emerged into the bedroom. There was a huge bed up there and another telly and all the usual wardrobes and drawers and whatever else these folks have in their bedrooms. I found a couple of pants and a couple of T-shirts to get us through the night.

  Mikey turned his nose up at them of course. Didn’t like to wear a dead man’s clothes apparently.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ I said, stepping into the kitchen to change.

  Once I’d sorted myself out I decided to concentrate on my stomach. I opened the man’s fridge again and had a more thorough nose through the contents. On the top shelf I found a parcel of quality looking steaks.

  ‘Aha,’ I said, taking them out and closing the door.

  I set up a skillet on the hob and let it get good and steaming. The bottle of Glenmorangie had been left out, so I helped myself to a tumbler. I threw the steaks into the pan once it was hot enough and let them scream. After flipping them a few times I took my own steak out of the pan and gave Mikey’s a few minutes more. He could be quite squeamish about things like that.

  ‘There you go,’ I said, handing him his plate and nodding for him to grab a can of beer from under my armpit. I noted that he’d got dressed in the end.

  We ate our steaks and watched telly and it was strange after having not seen it in so long.

  ‘This is mad,’ I said, pointing a chunk of steak at the screen with my fork.

  ‘How’d you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s like you only get a wee minute of actual telly before they put the adverts back on again. It’s as much adverts as it is telly.’

  He chewed a mouthful of meat. ‘And all the faces. They all look so big and orange. It’s quite scary actually.’

  Mikey took our plates through and we finished our beers. By that time it was really getting on. I’d nearly forgotten I had work in the morning.

  We resolved to share the bed that first night with the proviso that we’d pick up an air mattress or something similar as soon as possible. The bed was more than large enough anyway. We settled ourselves in and pulled the duvet up to our chins and I switched off the bedside lamp. It was our first night in a proper bed for months. I sighed with pleasure.

  ‘Paul?’ said Mikey.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t feel good. About before.’

  My blood had gone down by then so I knew he wasn’t being difficult. ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know. The old man.’

  ‘We’ve been through this pal. We didn’t have any other options left. That old man didn’t give us any other options.’

  ‘I know. It’s still weird though, eh?’

  ‘I know.’

  He fell asleep first but I was pleased that he didn’t start to snore. He wriggled in his sleep and made little yelping noises. I hadn’t heard him do that before, but then, he’d been away from home for so many years that there was a lot of things he did I didn’t know about. He’d been gone close to ten years and was only home for half of one before we’d had to run. I was glad he was being reintroduced to the world through me. It meant I’d be able to guide him. Make sure he saw things as they really were.

  I closed my eyes and smiled to myself in the darkness. The mattress was soft and the duvet was soft and you couldn’t hear any of the filth of animals and insects from the world outside the tiny window.

  I woke to a car horn. I leapt from the bed and bounded across the room. There was an old camper van parked out on the road. It honked its horn again.

  ‘Fuck!’

  I dressed in a rush, pulling on whatever of the man’s I could lay my hands on. Mikey got himself up too and dressed.

  ‘You got time for breakfast?’ he asked as I flew down the Ramsay ladder.

  ‘You can hear him honking can’t you? That’s not just me?’

  I pulled my boots on at the door and waved to the man in the van, showing him two fingers, meaning two minutes.

  Mikey stood in the doorway to see me off. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  ‘Cheers. Listen. If anyone comes just you ignore it, OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’ll see you tonight.’

  The man, Duncan, I assumed, rolled down the window as I approached. ‘Morning sleepy head.’

  ‘Really sorry mate.’

  The back windows of the camper were plastered in stickers giving the names of various countries and tourist attractions around the world. Climbing inside I noted that the theme carried over into the van’s interior. Duncan was crowded by artefacts of international travel – strings of beads hanging from the rear view mirror, a boomerang jammed into the tape deck, some sort of African tribal mask resting on the dashboard.

  ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Paul?’

  ‘Aye. Paul. All right.’

  I’d been anxious that he’d be annoyed about my having slept in but he seemed remarkably chipper. He shook my hand and smiled at me with the shiniest teeth I’d ever seen.

  ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Well met Paul. You feeling good? You in a working frame of mind?’

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘That’s what we like to hear.’

  He started the engine, which whined and bubbled, and I put on my seatbelt.

  ‘Nice place that,’ he said as we drove off. ‘Who’s your mate?’

  ‘That’s my brother.’

  ‘Sure, sure. He’s not interested in a bit of work, no?’

  ‘I don’t know if he’d be suited to it.’

  ‘Shame. We can always use an extra
pair of hands.’

  I told Duncan I’d have a word and he nodded with great enthusiasm. He wore his hair long and it sprung grey from his temples, turning black at the ends. There was a shark’s tooth fitted into a necklace on his chest.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘What’s the work?’

  ‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘Nice one Paul.’

  I laughed too, thinking he was about to go on but no explanation was forthcoming. ‘But seriously,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

  He looked away from the oncoming road to meet my eye. ‘You’re serious? It wasn’t on the card? We didn’t go over it on the phone?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  He yelled with laughter at that. ‘That’s hilarious,’ he said. ‘You’re a brave man, Paul. Right. Well. It’s archaeology essentially.’

  ‘Archaeology.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it. Although what your doing’s about as close to archaeology as growing wheat’s to being a baker in fucking Paris.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Sorry. That wasn’t nice. I’ll show you what I mean when we get up there.’

  He drove us up through the valley and away from the house and the village. The road was bright and clear and free of traffic. I was waiting for Duncan to ask me about myself, about Mikey.

  I pointed to the paraphernalia littered around the front of the van. ‘What’s all...’

  ‘In my line of work,’ Duncan said, ‘you do a lot of travelling. Too much actually. It makes it hard to lay down the old roots, y’know?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘See, you’ve got your brother there. The pair of you are close, aye? Christmases, weddings, all that jazz. This dig’s the first time I’ve been back in mother Scotland for I don’t know how many years.’

  ‘Right.’

  We went by a long loch that stretched itself out beside the road. There was a white pebble beach between the tide and the tarmac. The mountains were low and dark on the far shore.

  ‘So what’s the story with you and your brother. He lives with you?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘He’s a bit...’ I held out my hand and tilted it this way and that and Duncan nodded to show he knew what I meant.