Fallow Read online

  At about half eight Mikey started to get antsy. He would get up from the armchair, put his can of lager on the table, and peer out the window. He would go through to the bathroom to check himself in the mirror and then pace around in the hall for a bit.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said, poking his head through the doorway. ‘What sort of ill?’

  ‘Not ill ill, just you’re not going to enjoy yourself if you’re so wound up about it all.’

  Duncan honked for us when he was outside. We locked up and climbed into the van with Sam and the others, whose names we learned were Jose and Fia. They both had toffee coloured skin and dark shining hair. Fia was up in front with Duncan but Jose was in back with us. They gave off the air of being a couple but showed no outward signs of affection to each other. There was a bottle of foul European spirit being passed around. It stung your tongue and filled your nostrils with spice.

  Duncan called through to the front, ‘Everyone belted up?’ and they all laughed because there were no real seats in the back of the van, never mind seatbelts.

  And then off we went.

  Duncan struggled to find a parking spot, the van was so large. We’d driven straight through the village and then onto a B road that joined the motorway. As we came into Glasgow you could see all its yellow lights and the misty fire they caused in the clouds above. Drunk men knocked on the van’s side when we were stopped at traffic lights and taxis swerved in front of us constantly.

  He managed to squeeze the van down an alleyway and we all piled out. There was a heated discussion about where to go but in the end they settled on a place called Quick William’s. You went down a set of stairs once you were past the bouncers, then you paid your money and then you were in. Because of the time we’d taken driving and finding a parking space the place was already packed. They were playing David Bowie’s Changes and everyone was singing along out of tune and forgetting the words.

  I was dizzy from the syrupy spirit so I didn’t mind squeezing my way through the crowd. People rubbed against me as they danced and it didn’t make me ill in the same way. Duncan bought a round for himself and Mikey and me. He bought us sour whisky and Cokes and put his arms around us.

  ‘You’re some of the good guys,’ he shouted in our ears. ‘That other lot. Pawel and that. They never came out.’

  ‘All right,’ I said and Mikey looked up at him with eyes of adoration as he struggled to get his arm up to sip his drink.

  Duncan threw his whisky back and asked for another. The girl who served him had the back of her head shaved, leaving just the fringe and sides hanging, dyed pink. I’d never seen that before and didn’t care for it.

  Duncan threw his second whisky back and let out a shout.

  We had to leave the bar to let others through and we found Sam and the rest by the dancefloor. The music was louder there and I couldn’t hear what she said to us, even though she screamed it. The music changed to something I didn’t recognise and Sam pulled us through the bodies to dance. I gave it a go for as long as I could but it got too much for me and I had to leave to linger by the edge.

  I watched the people moving and jumping and their bodies were pink and green from the lights and occasionally bright flashing white, each of them visible for only a moment before they were gone. I could feel the music in my arm hairs, it made growling sounds inside my chest. People were moving around me and I felt shoulders in my chest, tits against my flank. Mikey was holding his hands in the air and stomping his feet and the others were clapping for him. All the bald spots, all the hands.

  I finished my drink and put it down. The Hungarian stuff was wearing off. I managed to find the toilets nearby and locked myself in a cubicle. I sat on the toilet lid and put my feet up against the door and closed my eyes. Girls screamed through the walls and men laughed.

  Some lads were chatting at the urinal. ‘Nah,’ one of them said. ‘No fucken way.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the other. ‘You wait and see.’

  I sat like that for some time, until I’d calmed down. I washed my hands before I went back out again, to make it seem proper. It took a while to find the group. They were deep in the crowd over the dancefloor. They’d all paired up, Duncan with Sam, Jose with Fia. Their faces were smashed together and they were still dancing and had their hands everywhere.

  I touched Duncan on the back and he turned.

  He laughed at me. ‘Here he is,’ he shouted. ‘Here’s misery guts.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he slurred. ‘Just dance, man. Enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Where’s Mikey?’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  Sam leaned over. ‘What’re you saying?’

  ‘You don’t know where Mikey is?’

  They both shrugged and went back to each other. I fought my way through the dancers. Misery guts, he’d said. My blood was all over the shop – I pushed past people and drinks went onto me, onto my front. Climbing the stairs at the far end of the dancefloor, I managed to get a good look around. Mikey was tall, it shouldn’t be too hard, and I knew he wasn’t in the toilets. I scanned the bobbing heads, trying to pick him out.

  Nothing.

  He wasn’t at the bar either when I checked. I was swearing over and over beneath my breath. The man at the desk gave me a stamp on my hand and I went outside for a smoke, to calm down. Quick William’s was on a corner and I skulked around the side to roll my fag. I paced as I smoked it, going down the block and then walking back up. On my third go around I happened to glance down an alleyway.

  There he was, pressed up against a wall. A girl was on her knees in front of him and I stood and watched. She was really going at him. I flicked my ash and the movement must have caught his eye. He pushed her off and pulled up his jeans and she wiped her mouth and looked at me.

  I said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Paul,’ said Mikey.

  ‘Who the fuck’s Paul?’ said the girl.

  I told her that I was and I took a drag on my fag. I beckoned Mikey towards me and he waddled down the alley, zipping his jeans and casting a mournful look back at the girl. I got him by his arm and walked him along the pavement.

  ‘What’re you playing at?’ I hissed at him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he hissed back.

  We went by the door of Quick William’s and Mikey’s head turned. I told him not to even think about mentioning it, my voice shaking. We walked the streets instead, dodging drunks and stepping over splatters of vomit, until we came to the van. I let go of Mikey’s arm and leaned against the bonnet.

  ‘This is the plan? We just wait?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s it.’

  He flung himself against the bonnet too and crossed his arms.

  We waited like that for some time. Static hummed between us but we didn’t speak until the rest of them showed up. Duncan let out a shriek when he saw us, running down the alleyway and wrapping us up in his big hairy arms.

  ‘Look Sam,’ he shouted into our necks. ‘I found them.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Sam as she stumbled along. She was smiling at first but I saw a flicker of something else when she met my eye. Probably thought I was a misery guts too. They probably all did.

  Fia had stopped drinking earlier and was all right to drive. Jose sat in front with her and was asleep within moments of the journey home. Mikey and I sat on the sofa in the back and Sam and Duncan leaned against the units in the kitchen area.

  ‘So,’ said Sam, playing with Duncan’s hair. ‘What happened to you two?’

  ‘Just got bored, needed some air,’ I said.

  ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Yeah. Both of us. Eh Mikey?’

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Mikey.

  ‘I see,’ said Sam. ‘You missed yourself. It was a great laugh.’

  I smiled at her. Right at her. ‘I bet it was.’

  She laughed, cruelly. ‘All right,’ she said.

  Onc
e we were off the motorway you could see nothing of the world outside as Fia hurtled us along. I sat stiff in my seat and Sam and Duncan kissed on the floor and I didn’t even look at Mikey. I had to direct Fia for the rest of the way. She knew how to get to the village but had never gone to the site via our house.

  ‘Cheers for the lift,’ I told her as we climbed out.

  She told me it was no problem. Everyone else was asleep by then.

  Mikey followed me up the garden path and we went inside. I said he should probably see to the dog before we went to sleep. I waited for him in the kitchen and rolled a fag. I could hear that fucken dog bound around on the grass. There was a mug on the table that I used for ash.

  He came in behind me and walked around the table, heading for the hall. I tapped my fag on the mug’s edge. ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Bed,’ he said. ‘We’re up early.’

  ‘Come here,’ I said, nodding at the chair across from me.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  He looked up into the hallway and then came back across. The chair squeaked on the tiles as he sat down.

  ‘What you did tonight.’ I let the silence hang in the air. ‘What you did.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  He kind of screwed up his mouth. ‘Well,’ he said.

  I had been very still as I sat there, but that ‘Well’ made something happen to me. My legs jerked upwards and made the table rock. Mikey’s mouth opened. I said, ‘Well?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like that big a deal. If she hadn’t recognised me already then I don’t see what…’

  Mikey didn’t finish that sentence. As he was talking I reached over and held onto his wrist. I pulled his hand towards me over the wood-effect table top. I turned his hand over and I put my fag into his palm. The fingers closed automatically from the shock and I held them there, tight.

  ‘You don’t see?’ I said.

  He was gasping too much to answer me, tugging his arm and breathing and blinking. I thought of the fawn we’d come across in the mountains. I thought of another animal I’d come across once before. A mole that turned up in the fields behind our mother’s old house. I didn’t know what had happened to it but it was on its way out. When I found it there wasn’t much time left. Its whole front was wide open, purple mole guts this way and that. If you put your finger into the gap the mole shivered and flicked its legs. It made the tip of your finger as warm as fire.

  I repeated myself. ‘You don’t see?’

  He couldn’t speak to me.

  ‘In future try your very fucken hardest to see. Do you hear me?’

  I let him go and he stood up and the fag butt went flying. He rinsed his hand under the sink and wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  ‘You should get some peas from the freezer,’ I said. ‘It helps with the burn.’

  I found him some frozen sweetcorn and he pressed it into his hand, taking it off every few seconds to inspect his palm.

  ‘Good job the dog didn’t get into the freezer too,’ I laughed.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I suppose.’

  My mind was crafting itself a nice little plan. I had the Toad on my mind. I had Sam and Duncan on my mind. I had Duncan turning to me and calling me misery guts on my mind.

  Misery guts? I thought. We’ll see about that.

  6

  Up at the site the following day the mood was poor. Duncan had been silent as he drove us along, a sheen of sweat on his cheeks and the tiny hairs at his temple clinging to the skin. He kept opening his mouth to speak before deciding against it. The van trundled along at a snail’s pace and Duncan gripped the steering wheel like a life-ring.

  The archaeologists kept to the cabins while we dug the field. I myself was in fine spirits. There’d been a touch of hangover in my eyes when I woke but I took an ice-cold glass of water in one go and I was right as rain. We worked through the morning without discussing the night before and it wasn’t until we are taking our morning break that Mikey brought it up. He unwrapped the T-shirt to inspect his palm. He poked the burn and winced.

  ‘It hurts,’ he said.

  I took his hand to check it over. I gave it back to him. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Mm.’

  I looked up at the cabins and saw Jose move from one to the other, carrying a plastic tray of objects found in the field. He waved at us and I stared back.

  ‘Nice guy that,’ said Mikey, holding up his good arm.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

  I shook my head, as in: I’d better not say.

  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s just… Aw, I don’t like to say this, but they were really laying into you last night when you pulled your wee disappearing act. It was ugly.’

  He blew air from his mouth, dismissively. ‘No they weren’t.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I had to walk away. I couldn’t listen to it.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  I sat down in the ditch with my legs crossed. I leant against the wall. ‘Don’t believe me if you don’t want. No skin off my nose.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

  I shook my head. ‘Just calling you a mungo, calling you a spastic, calling you thick as shit.’

  Mikey turned away from me and put his hands on his hips. Then he turned back. ‘No way.’

  ‘Why would I make that up? I felt sick.’

  He kicked some dirt down into the ditch and made a watery sound in his throat. ‘Man,’ he said.

  I let him have his little tantrum and we got back to work. We went straight through until finishing time and then Fia gave us a run down the road. She told us Duncan was too sick to drive – he’d been throwing up in the cabin all day.

  ‘Just hope Mr Raymond doesn’t show up,’ I laughed.

  Fia made a cross with her fingers over her breast and laughed. ‘Heaven forbid.’

  I found myself to be exhausted by the time we were home. I lay across the armchair with my head on the arm and slept. It nourished me and I woke up stronger than ever. Mikey was sat up at the kitchen table, looking at an atlas he’d dug up somewhere.

  ‘Fancy the pub?’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Go on then.’

  I could barely make him out over the noise the pub was making. Putting my finger in my other ear, I hunched over the phone.

  ‘Say that again?’ I said.

  The Toad huffed. ‘I said that what you said was very interesting. So all that nonsense, all that ribs and fallow, that was all bollocks?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘How do I prove it?’

  ‘How should I know? Get someone to check it out.’

  I could hear the Toad’s mouth moving at the other end of the line. His lips smacking, his teeth touching. The air leaving his nose. ‘I was hoping for something more concrete.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, checking over my shoulder. ‘Just get someone to check it out. You’ll see.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘So. What about my pocket?’

  ‘What about your pocket?’

  ‘You said that…’

  ‘I know what I said,’ laughed the Toad. ‘I’m only messing around. I’ll see you at the site, OK?’

  I said, ‘OK,’ and replaced the receiver. I went into the toilet there for the first time. It was empty and had one of those old fashioned ceramic urinals where the piss runs along a gutter at the edge of the floor. I spat into it then pissed into it. I washed my hands in the sink and watched my face as it moved around inside the greenish mirror. There I was. I smiled at myself and myself smiled back. That was a winner’s face.

  I hated it, so so much.

  I scowled at it and then pinched myself on the cheek.

  Mikey had already finished his first pint and was itching for a second. The Dirty Monk was still off so I asked for the usual.

  The barmaid screwed up her face. ‘
The usual?’

  ‘Two of what we usually ask for.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you before,’ she said, her bun wobbling.

  ‘Two pints of Tennent’s,’ I said.

  As I brought the pints over the pleasure must have shown on my face because Mikey eyed me. ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ I told him. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You were a while. Were you on the phone?’

  ‘On the phone?’ I smiled. ‘No.’

  I ended up roaring drunk that night. Maybe I was making up for going so softly the night before but I kept getting rounds in and I lapped Mikey once or twice. We were remembering a story our uncle used to tell. It was about when he was young and had moved to London for work with a group of pals. They’d all roomed in a boarding house in Crystal Palace. One of them, not our uncle, had got himself mixed up with some gangsters, meaning a lot of late night door bashings and threats made against the whole group. They’d got the train back up together with their tails between their legs. We forgot some parts of the story but between us we managed to piece it together.

  I killed myself laughing thinking about our uncle, huddled in a grotty London boarding house. A couple of people looked round.

  ‘You all right?’ Mikey asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Fucken marvellous. We’ve got some good times ahead of us, you and me.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  I tried to tap myself on the nose but ended up touching my mouth. I turned it into a shushing motion. ‘Never you mind. Never you mind.’

  I was far too gone to drive so we left the car in town and walked back up the road. I walked with my arm around my brother’s shoulders and he stopped me from swaying out into the grassy ditch that ran beside the road. When cars came by we jumped across the ditch onto the field to let them pass. They threw cones of light onto the black countryside and you could see them flash on-and-off, on-and-off, as they made their way into the hills.

  I was lying on top of the duvet, drifting in and out of consciousness. I could hear the Ramsay ladder rattle and then Mikey’s head came up through the floor. He got down to his pants and vest and slipped into the covers. The lights were off but the window provided a thin moonlight.