Fallow Read online

  We took the man’s car down into town. I was worried it would look suspicious but Mikey reasoned that people would assume he’d let us use it while he was away. I hadn’t driven in some time but I soon got the hang of it. We were in the square in no time and I parked up across from the pub. The Cask and Shackle was painted in gold above the windows, the door and window frames bottle green.

  Our table from the other night was taken by a huddled crowd of three heavily bearded men but we found another one closer to the pool room. Mikey’s eyes were out on stalks when he noticed the same group of girls were sat in the far corner. I used some of the cash from Duncan’s latest envelope to get a round in. There was a girl on the bar this time. She looked young. Too young to buy a drink herself even. Her hair was done up in a tiny bun that tottered on the top of her skull.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, glad the snotty barman from before wasn’t around.

  She looked me up and down. ‘What d’you want?’

  ‘Is the ale on?’

  ‘The Dirty Monk?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Nah. There’s Tennent’s there. Or Carling.’

  I asked for two Tennent’s and as she was pouring them I sloped along to the end of the bar to peer up into the pool room. There was a pair of identical twins enjoying a game, chalking their cues after every shot, but no sign of the butcher. I would be able to relax.

  The pub was busy for being so early in the evening. I had to fight through a crowd of patrons to collect our round. They were all around me, men in jumpers and suits, their chests and arms pressing against me. I felt a man’s hair brush my neck as I squeezed through, holding the pints aloft, and I gagged. That was something I hated, crowds. It was a kind of claustrophobia I suppose, but more so. More of a disgust at the animalness of them, their chewing mouths and wet eyes.

  We had an OK time, Mikey and I. We drank our first round and chatted about the people up at the site. I explained the scam to him, how they were dragging their heels to rinse more money out of the Toad and his company. He nodded as I told him.

  ‘That’s clever,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You know,’ he went on, holding his pint to his chest, ‘I never knew that was a real thing.’

  ‘Archaeologist?’

  ‘Aye. I thought it was pretend. Like a wizard or something.’

  I sipped my pint. ‘Huh.’

  The pub was alive with lights and chatter. The fruit machines gabbled and pinged, their garish lights racing. You could hear snatches of conversation, the odd ‘I know eh?’ and ‘Aye fucking right’. As long as I wasn’t in the crowd I didn’t mind it. Perhaps this would be a good place for the pair of us to settle down in after all, I thought. Who said we had to rush back to our mother as soon as things died down at home? It looked as though with this new information we had on Sam and Duncan we were well placed to make a nice earning.

  ‘But I suppose they are real,’ Mikey shrugged.

  ‘Oh no, they are real. Definitely.’

  ‘It’s funny, eh?’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Just the stuff you get confused about. It can be funny.’

  I nodded. ‘I suppose it can be.’

  We finished our pints at the same time. Mikey raised his eyebrows to me. ‘Another one?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

  The circles of men around the bar parted reluctantly to let me through and I managed to get my hand on the wood. The barmaid was chatting to one of the identical twins, ignoring the rest of us crammed against each other, waiting.

  A hand grasped me on the shoulder and I leaned in to let whoever it was past. The hand didn’t budge.

  ‘Here,’ said a voice. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

  I held my teeth together and gripped the edge of the bar.

  5

  Here it comes.

  Here’s the hand on the shoulder, the knee in the small of the back. Faces turning to look, to truly see us for the first time. Recognition. Revulsion. They’ll fall upon us, drag us out into the flickering streetlights, into the square. I’ll be held back while they tear at my brother, at my flesh and blood. The Buchanan Beast, the Beast of Buchanan. There’ll be chanting and the piercing lights from mobile phones as they film him writhe or choke as they pull the rope around his neck.

  All for something he did when he was thirteen years old. All for that.

  I turned to see a squat face looking up at me from underneath a leather cap. ‘Don’t I?’ it said. ‘Know you?’

  I stopped myself from saying his name. His nickname. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘From the site over the hill.’

  ‘Thought so,’ the Toad muttered. ‘So are you one of that lot then? One of them fucken PhDs or whatever they are?’

  ‘I’m just there to dig. Just labour.’

  He glared up at me, no taller than five feet. The cap he wore was bizarre. It didn’t have the rigidity to be a fedora or trilby but was too round to be a baseball cap. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell with you lot, can you? Your mates, Sue and Derek or whatever they’re called. They look like a pair of clowns, but they’re PhDs or MCDs or NWAs, I don’t know what the letters are.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Or so they tell us anyway. I don’t know. So how’s it going up there? I can’t get a straight answer out of the hippy one for love nor money.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m just digging.’

  ‘Good man,’ he said, being shunted towards me as the identical twin left the bar. His skin was silvery up close. ‘Pass the buck. There’s no shame in passing the buck. None at all. Some people say you should accept responsibility for things.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Fucken bollocks that. Listen to me pal. Never get into business, never put your hand up if someone asks you to, cause there’ll always be someone waiting to shaft you if you do. Like that lot up at the site.’

  I nodded. ‘OK.’

  He looked around the pub in a fury, perhaps hoping to spot Sam or Duncan to give them a piece of his mind. ‘So what are you then? You do that full time, digging?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Do odd jobs on the side. Housesitting just now.’

  ‘Housesitting?’ he demanded, reacting to the word with barely contained rage. ‘Housesitting?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Like with babies, but a house?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  He shook his head from side to side so fast his cap came away from the skull. ‘Who with? On your own?’

  I said, ‘No,’ and nodded towards Mikey, leaning against the wall, fiddling with a beer mat. He waved at the Toad.

  ‘Who’s he? He your boyfriend is he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well. You can’t tell these days, can you? I don’t know whether I’m coming or going most of the time, these days. Can’t say poofter, can’t say chinky. Can’t get anyone to sign off on your fucken site fast enough that you’re not losing money hand over fist,’ he poked me in the chest, ‘daily.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘All right.’

  ‘Is anyone serving up there,’ he said, standing on tip toe to crane over my shoulder. ‘I’m spitting feathers.’

  He had this way of talking, the Toad, where he spoke at you without stopping to look for a reaction. He scratched his brow with the brim on his cap.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, eyeing the optics. ‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested in making a wee bit extra cash would you?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘A wee bit extra cash in your pocket at the end of the month?’

  ‘How?’

  He fished inside his jacket and pulled out a business card. It read Angus Raymond, Site Supervisor, Mason Dew and was followed by a landline number.

  ‘You keep that,’ he said, ‘and if you can give me any information that would, y’know, grease the wheels and so on, it would be greatly appreciated.’

  As
I looked the card over he pushed in front of me and gave the barmaid his order. ‘You snooze, you lose,’ he told me with a wink.

  Mikey was eager to find out what the Toad had been talking about. He inspected the business card as he drank his pint. ‘So he’s Duncan’s boss, is he?’

  ‘Not really. He’s the boss of the company who employs Duncan’s company.’

  He smiled and turned the card over in his hand. He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  We stayed for another couple of rounds and as we drank I was aware of the Toad watching us from his position at the end of the bar. ‘Think about it,’ he shouted as we made our way to the door.

  The next day at the site, we dug all morning. The summer was in full swing by then and we worked with the sun in our hair. We’d brought along T-shirts from the house to wrap our hands up in and pillows to kneel on. We’d frozen a couple of water bottles so that the ice melted throughout the day and provided us with trickles of cold water.

  Down at the cabins there was a Portaloo but once you were up in the ditches it was easier to nip over into the trees that flanked the field. At around noon I told Mikey to take a break and I wandered over to the coverage the woods provided. I kicked a groove into the earth with the toe of my boot and took my trousers down to shit into it. From my position I was able to peer through the bushes to see my brother. He was sitting on the edge of our newest ditch, squeezing the ice bottle into his gob. I watched as Sam came into view, wandering up the space between two ditches.

  She stopped by Mikey and they began to talk together. Their bodies morphed and shimmered in the waves of heat that hung in the air between me and them. She was probably asking him how he was getting on, if he was settling in all right. He would say he was settling in fine and she would smile down at him. All friendly on the surface, but trying to worm information out of him. Maybe even laying out small hints that maybe he shouldn’t always listen to his big brother, that maybe he should think for himself now and then. That was the sort she seemed. One of those woman that thinks they can do whatever they want and just because they’re a woman no one’s going to say anything to them. Clearly she’d never met me before.

  There was plenty leaves on the ground that I could use for my arse and I stood and belted up the man’s trousers.

  Sam turned as I crossed the field towards them. ‘Hi Paul,’ she said.

  I made it over and looked at them both. ‘Hiya.’

  ‘I was just telling your brother that you’re both doing a great job out here. I know it’s shit work but we really appreciate it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘All right.’

  ‘I was saying we’ve put up a couple of ads in town for more hands. Need to replace Pawel and his lot.’

  ‘I see.’

  Mikey squinted as he looked up at me and the sun behind my head. ‘There’s a night out planned,’ he told me.

  Sam clapped her hands and pointed them in my direction. ‘That’s right! A team night out tonight. We’re all going to pile into Dunc’s van and sniff out a club, if you two are interested?’

  Mikey was smiling anyway, from the sun in his eyes, but his grin widened at her question.

  ‘We’ll think about it,’ I nodded.

  ‘Super,’ said Sam.

  I watched her as she walked away. She was slim on top but her legs bulged at the thighs and calves.

  ‘A club,’ said Mikey. ‘A night club.’

  I stepped down into the ditch to get back to work. I said, ‘Mm,’ and picked up my spade.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘A proper night out.’

  I scooped up the displaced soil and tipped it up into the field. There were only another few metres to go on this ditch. We’d be able to finish it off and make a good start on another before the day was over.

  Mikey sighed.

  I asked him what was wrong and he sighed again. That’s when I realised. He’d never been on a night out before. He’d been to the pub a few times in the months he’d been out but had never gone to a bar or a club late into the morning. I asked him if he wanted to go and he nodded furiously.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Let’s see how we get on with this work and we can have a chat about it later.’

  The Toad showed up again as we were readying ourselves to leave, late in the afternoon. We were helping Duncan to load the tools back into the cabin when he drove his motor up along the dirt track and parked it up.

  ‘Here we go,’ Duncan said, leaning a shovel against the side of the cabin. Sam and the others were still out on the far side of the field but I could tell they were standing to get a better look.

  The window came down. He was holding another ice cream cone in his pudgy fist. ‘All right?’ he asked the three of us.

  ‘Afternoon Mr Raymond,’ said Duncan, strolling over to the motor. ‘What’s up?’

  With his free hand the Toad ejected a clipboard through the open window into Duncan’s waiting hand. ‘Need to get your autograph on that.’

  Duncan took the clipboard and leaned on the motor to read the paperwork.

  ‘Watch the paint,’ said the Toad. ‘That’s the metallic option. You pay extra for that.’

  His gaze fell on Mikey and me, watching the exchange. ‘This what you’re paying them to do?’ he asked Duncan. ‘Just stand around with their thumbs up their arses.’ He took a heavy lick from the cone.

  Duncan peered at us over the clipboard. ‘They’re just packing up. It’s finishing time.’

  ‘Huh,’ coughed the Toad. ‘Finishing time.’

  Duncan signed the paperwork and handed it back to the Toad, who snatched it away and tossed it onto the passenger seat. ‘Any progress?’ he asked, jerking his head towards the field.

  ‘I’m afraid not. We’ve just come across an interesting patch of ridge and furrow.’

  ‘Ridge and furrow?’

  ‘That’s right, see there.’ Duncan pointed over the cars bonnet to the far end of the field where the other archaeologists were staring back. The earth there was gently rippled.

  ‘The fuck’s rig and furrow?’

  ‘Ridge and furrow. It’s too early to say. Going to need a bit more investigation. Could be quite significant.’

  The Toad looked at the far end of the field and tapped on the steering wheel. He let out one sharp breath and closed his eyes. ‘Ridge and fucken furlow,’ he seethed, before the window zoomed up and he was gone.

  Duncan began to laugh as the motor pulled out of sight.

  The road took us once again alongside the narrow loch. Something about the light that day made the water dark as whale skin. There was no wind so only light ripples of movement disturbed its surface. I imagined the inside of it thick with weeds and bloated wood and hurrying cold animals. There would be an eel in there somewhere, I decided. Fat and long and smiling. The king of the water. It was the object the other water beasts hid from, in crevices and holes in the silt. The eel stalked the blue and green and black water, curving its fatness and its wetness around the branches of driftwood, in among trailing sea grasses. Its eyes never closed. Its smile never faltered. It was quick when it needed to be. It…

  Duncan chapped on the dashboard. ‘Hello?’

  I turned away from the window and the water. ‘What?’

  ‘Did you get any of that?’

  ‘No. I… I don’t know. I was miles away.’

  ‘I was just saying, what about if we picked you up at about nine or so. If you’re interested?’

  The night out. Of course. I looked around to see Mikey’s hopeful face peering back at me from the gap between the seats. ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘OK.’

  ‘Grand,’ smiled Duncan. ‘Should be fun.’

  As we were climbing out of the van he stopped us and cracked open the glove compartment. There was fat manila folder and a wrap of brown envelopes inside. He counted out our pay from a stack of notes inside the folder and slipped them into the envelope. I noted that he wa
s giving us more than we were due.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said as he handed me the envelope.

  Duncan nodded.

  There was an odd noise coming from inside the house. Mikey opened the front door, cocked his head and frowned at me. It was a scuttling sound.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  We creeped inside and I left the door resting on the snib. As we went through the hall I peered into the living room but there was nothing there. We looked into the kitchen and there was Doris. The fridge was open and the tiles were littered with pieces of shredded food. A packet of bacon reduced to smatterings of red jelly, a cheese rind rocking. The dog was jumping between items, excited about her feast. That was the scuttling sound – nails on tile.

  I marched forward and got the dog by the collar. She began to buck as soon as I put my hand on her but I quickly got her under control. I made her lie on her side and I pressed on her neck.

  ‘Stop,’ said Mikey, pulling on my shoulder.

  ‘I’m teaching it,’ I spat, ‘a lesson.’

  The dog flinched and opened its mouth and looked up at me, its eyes’ whiteness bulging. I held its neck against the tiles. ‘See what happens?’ I said to it. ‘See what happens?’

  Eventually Mikey managed to pull me off and the dog launched herself up and bounded into the back garden. Mikey went after her and I sat down on the kitchen floor, against the wall. There were chunks of gnawed carrot between my feet. My breath was going like a pump, filling me with warmth and anger. I closed my eyes and imagined gliding along in cool water, my long slick belly brushing sand, the pure ice of the water flowing into my open, smiling mouth.

  Mikey came back inside, having calmed the beast down and locked her in the run. We cleaned up the remains of the dog’s dinner and after that we washed and ate. Mikey washed his good white shirt in the kitchen sink and left it on a radiator to dry. I managed to pull together something vaguely appropriate from the man’s collection.

  Once we were dressed we sat in the living room together to wait. It had been a long time since I’d been on a proper night out. There had been the odd one here and there with the various workmates I’d had over the years. It was difficult to keep those friendships though. Something would always come between us.