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SheepSimon Maginn

Praise for Sheep:

‘The best début novel I have read since TheWasp Factory. Wonderful original writingglittering with savage imagery, the pagesbreathe the tough, dark texture of a realworld, of real inescapable fears, blurring theboundaries between nightmare and reality,mining the darkest seams of terror imagined,and terror real.’ Peter James

‘Sheep is a novel that conveys a real sense ofdread… A times I was afraid to read on… Si-mon Maginn is certainly a name to watch.’Ramsey Campbell

‘Maginn sifts the novel’s truth from its mys-tery like an expert archeologist, meticulouslyexposing deeper and darker strata that un-derlie even the most innocent events. Oscil-lating between the bleak thoughts of hisemotionally tortured characters and thestark, moody Welsh landscape, he creates athick atmosphere of dread that forces theweight of the past inexorably down on thepresent, yet never impedes the brisk mo-mentum of the tale. This is the rare exampleof a novel of subtle horror that should appealto lovers of the fast-paced modern horrorthriller.’ Publishers Weekly

‘Yet another undeservedly obscure classic!This novel, the first by a noted Englishwriter, is widely considered (by the five or sopeople who’ve read it) one of the finest genredebuts of the nineties. I can understand theadulation, as it’s a stunningly written andimagined account of supernatural horror andall-too-natural anxiety. Simon Maginn has

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fallen silent in recent years (following Vir-gins and Martyrs, A Sickness of the Soul andMethods of Confinement, but Sheep remainsa stand-out entry in the horror field, and iswell worth tracking down… A simple plot de-scription cannot convey the eccentricity, de-scriptive brilliance and horrific menace thisnovel exudes... At its heart Sheep is genu-inely dark and unnerving. Maginn has a giftfor true-to-life description, lending the pro-ceedings a powerful air of authenticity thatmakes the later passages, particularly thosedetailing Adèle’s insanity, all the more upset-ting. Maginn’s descriptive power also liftsthe final pages into an altogether uniquerealm of poetic sadness and ter-ror.’ Fright.com

‘The novel might be the only thing I’ve everread that actually scared me…’ SimonStrantzas

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‘Simon Maginn is a very subtle writer, alwaysoriginal and unsettling in his subject matterand treatment. He is the most talented of theyounger British horror writers, and he hasthe potential to become the best of them all.Already his work may be compared to the re-cent novels of Ramsey Campbell and to theearly writings of Ian McEwan. Maginn'strademark is bleakness; he deals realisticallywith disturbed or disintegrating charactersat the edge of madness, for whom there willbe no happy ending… Maginn is not a flashywriter of commercial horror like Clive Bark-er, but his work is full of exquisite qualitiesand deserves rereading for its layers ofmeaning. He may come to be regarded asone of the best in the field.’ St James Guide

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Other Titles by Simon Maginn,

forthcoming on Kindle

Virgins and Martyrs

‘one of the most magnificently bleak horrornovels ever written’ St James Guide

A Sickness of the Soul

Methods of Confinement

Nominated for British Fantasy Society Novelof the Year 1996

Rattus

(novella)

www.simonmaginn.com

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Drink, yourselves, and stagger!…The destruction of the beasts will terrify you!(Habakkuk 2:16)

Let me sleep, and dream of sheep.(Kate Bush)

For Craig A. Shieres III, who died young andstayed pretty.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank everyone who helpedwith Sheep, particularly Michael Pompey;Sarah Jack, Jeanne Day and Hector Fraserfor technical advice; Hugh Fisher for station-ery, photocopying and moral support; SimonStrantzas for his limitless generosity of spir-it; and my editor Averil Ashfield.

Extract from 'And dream of sheep' by KateBush, © 1985, reproduced by permission of

Kate Bush Music Ltd, EMI Music PublishingLtd, London WC2H OEA.

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1

Drowning

The word rolled round his head like a loosebearing. The child was drowning. Hewatched from the cliff top as the womanfought to keep herself and the child abovethe water. The sea, he noted, was quite calm.Surely she could manage to get the childback to the beach. Surely she can get thatright, at least. They can hardly be out of theirdepth, he thought. The woman twisted her-self round in the water, thrashing and writh-ing like a sea monster; the child was kickingand screaming and clawing at her. No way tobehave towards your mother, I'll have tohave a word. The woman opened her mouth

and before the water could rush in screamedhis name:

'James!'The sound took a long time to reach

him, and seemed to hang in the air. No, hethought, it's time she learned to stand on herown two feet; then he reflected that, ofcourse, she could hardly stand in the water,and he laughed softly, indulgently. She couldbe so impractical sometimes, so emotional.She should stop all this scream- ing and justget the child out. If it was me, he said to him-self, I'd get her across my shoulders andswim with one arm. Why doesn't she dothat?

'James! For God's sake!'Oh well, he thought as he watched the

child come up for the last time, limp andquiet now, oh well, at least we've still got theother one, and turned to look at the little boybehind him, who was smiling and muttering,something about bones.

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Then he was awake and the darknesswas a shroud, his pillow was wet and hisheart was pounding, much too fast. He satup, staring straight ahead, the tears runningover his chin, warm and sticky. He clearedhis throat, but it turned into a sob in hismouth, and for a moment he was lost, hisstomach heaving as if he were about to besick. He got out of bed and went to the bath-room, the click of the cord loud, but alsosoothing. You pulled the cord, the light cameon. Now why couldn't everything be likethat? That way there'd be no dead daughtersand no guilty fathers, no dreams. Hesplashed water on the face that stared at himin the mirror.

'Jesus,' he said out loud, 'I look a thou-sand years old.' He noticed more and moreoften, since Ruthie died, how he was aging.It's incredible, he thought, but I never reallyexpected to get old. Not really. He had afixed image of himself as he had been at

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twenty: it was an accidental glimpse in thereflective glass door of a shower stall in theuniversity sports hall changing room. Wet,glossy, black-haired (all over) with very goodeyes (really sexy eyes, he remembered think-ing at the time, and blushed), and one ofthose light, lean muscular bodies that doesn'tlook too worked-on. And smiling, a smilethat could start fires at two hundred paces(who was it who'd said that?) Now what wasI smiling at? he thought, and the face in thebathroom mirror smiled back, ruefully, as heremembered. But this smile had creasesround the eyes, below the eyes, little lines,Jesus!... How did that happen? How could Ihave let it happen? And in the cold, hum-ming, desolate bathroom, a million milesfrom that steamy changing room, was athirty-two-year-old man, who had let hisdaughter die and whose son was growing up,growing strange.

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Strange. Like a stranger. Like someone else'schild, like one of his son's friends, polite, ob-servant, already starting to compile thedossier that would one day condemn him,utterly, beyond hope.

Strange. Eerie, humming, secret. Heno longer knew everything in Sam's head,probably not even half. Ten per cent? Five?There was no way of guessing. Sam had sud-denly stopped eating meat, no sausages, nobacon (no bacon! he thought, and was in-credulous), fish-paste instead of meat-pastesandwiches in the Bart Simpson lunch box.Why? James had no idea. James would comeacross him, in his room or on the stairs, orsitting on the low wall round the swings,humming. James was bewildered by his fearof this humming, was astonished that hecould feel fear of his own son at all. But itwas so. One day Sam's class teacher hadbeen waiting when James came to pick upthe boy. Sam had been crying, his face was

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puffy, his expression sullen. What's it about,Miss Bryant? Well, it's a little hard to ex-plain, Mr Tullian, but Sam has started teach-ing the children rhymes. Rhymes? Oh God,you can't mean dirty... He couldn't completethe thought and felt unable to breathe. ForJesus' sake what are you talking about?

'Now she's sinking like a stone, Nowthe Devil's got his bone.'

What?

Alone, in the middle of the night, James metthe eyes in the mirror and admitted silentlyto himself that he no longer knew his son.And Adèle, said a small detached voice, doyou know her either? and he felt his pulseslip for a second. He wasn't at all sure that hedid. Those landscapes she painted, so utterlydevoid, so blank. The shoulders in the mirrorwere slumped, and James felt a shudder runthrough his muscles as he formulated theword 'death', and the neon strip buzzed as if

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it was on the moon. He splashed more wateron his face, waiting for the buzzing feelingbehind his eyes to clear. Then he blew hisnose several times, very conscious of thenoise he was making in the silent house. Heclicked off the light and went along thedarkened hallway to Sam's room.

James could tell Sam was not asleep. Samhad recently developed the secretive habit ofpretending to be asleep when he didn't wantto be talked to, but James had learned howto spot this. What the child didn't know, andhad no way of knowing, was that when hewas really asleep he drooled. His mouthwould hang a little open and a line of salivawould form, like a line of glue, between himand the pillow. James hugged this knowledgeto himself like a charm: it was secret inform-ation, power, power over his polite son. Andbesides, who knew what it might do to Sam'sself-esteem to be told that he dribbled like a

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baby? James had to pretend he didn't knowwhen Sam was pretending, and just wait forSam to 'wake up' when his curiosity becameoverwhelming. He waited, leaning in thedoorway. After about thirty seconds Sam’seyes flickered open, and James smiled.

'How's it hanging, chief?' This was aline from a film they'd gone to see, just Samand him. It was an American comedy, with areal jive-talking main actor, and that washow he had said hello to people. Sam hadsquealed with delight when he heard it andfor days afterwards would say little else.James said it to him now, meaningeverything's OK, it's just your dad come in tomake sure you haven't died in your sleep.Nothing to get excited about. Sam smiledand yawned.

'What timesit?''I don't know. Late. Much too late for

being awake. You go back to sleep. I'll seeyou tomorrow.' James came over to the bed

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by the window and ruffled Sam's hair. Hisforehead was a bit dewy; it was a warmnight.

'You want the window open?''No. Stick it up your face.' (This was

from the same film.)'OK.' James slid away, trying to make

no noise. Sam was OK. Everything was OK.He tried not to notice how big the room waswithout Ruthie's bed in it.

Sam counted to twenty, slowly, then said afour-line rhyme in his head (Now there'sstones around her feet/Now the Devil's gothis meat/When the sun comes up again/He'll slip away and go to bed). Then heheaved himself up and sat against the head-board. On the table by his bed there was asmall glass jar. Inside it there was a tinydiver, with oxygen tanks on his back andblue flippers, and a mask over his face. Byturning the jar over he could make the diver

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float down to the bottom, so slowly that youcould look away and say your name ten timesand look back and he'd only have moved thelittlest bit. Sam turned the jar over, then im-mediately looked away and nerved himselfnot to glance back until just the last momentbefore the diver touched the bottom. Hecould see a street light through the gap in thecurtains and he concentrated on this, screw-ing up his face, squinting like a cop.

To fill up the time he tried to thinkwhat it was his dad was so upset about. He'dheard him muttering in his sleep, then he'dheard a gasp and then, after a short pause,steps into the bathroom and water splashing.Dad hadn't used the toilet or pulled thechain, but he had washed his hands. Andhe'd blown his nose three times, which Samhad never heard him do before, unless hehad a cold. His eyes had looked a bit red, butthat could be just because he was awake inthe middle of the night. Also his dad

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wouldn't come right up to him if he had acold, like that time he'd had the flu and hadforbidden Sam even to come into the room.Sam had cried - he was too little then toknow why he couldn't see his daddy. Ofcourse, right after Ruthie had died (Samknew all about that, in fact he knew morethan they did, because they didn't know thatRuthie would come back) Mum and Dad hadcried a lot, and Dad had always been blowinghis nose and looking red-eyed. But that wasages ago. Sam jerked himself round, but thediver was still nowhere near the bottom.

Sam admitted defeat and lay downagain. His mum had told him that if hecouldn't sleep he could try counting sheep,and he began to do this. He imagined a greatheap of sheep, an enormous pile, reaching upinto the sky. They were in a big field, andthere was someone throwing new sheep onall the time; their heads hung limply becausethey were dead. Sam only counted these new

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sheep. He didn't even try to count the onesthat were there already because there werefar too many, he just did the sheep that theman threw on with his stick. Twenty-one,twenty-two. Sam could get up to abouteighty-something, but after that it all got toomuch and he was frightened to carry on be-cause the numbers were so big. Fortunatelyby fifty-nine he was drooling contentedly.

The diver sat at the bottom of the jar, perfectwith his oxygen cylinder and his mask andgoggles, waiting expectantly to find himselfat the top again and begin once more hisendlessly, breathlessly slow descent throughthe immeasurably deep water. Downstairs inthe cramped disorderly kitchen, the dogcomplained in his sleep as a fly brushed hisnose, his hind legs twitching, dreaming of at-tackers at his rear. His ears lifted at thesound of footsteps from upstairs, and hiseyes flickered. Then he sighed heavily, pulled

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in his hind legs and, turning his head,slumped back into the warm ooze of animaloblivion, leaving just the pointed ears oper-ating to guard himself and his house. The flybuzzed softly away, and absorbed itself in themomentous task of depositing thousands ofmicroscopic eggs into the chicken that wasdefrosting on the draining board. The flytwitched its front legs as it performed thisorderly, insectile act of contamination, itsbrilliant, subtle eyes processing the jumble oflines and planes in the dark room, scanning,canny, alert. The eggs slid effortlessly downthe sharp tube, finer than a hair, and spreadout under the skin of the chicken, settling in-to the firmly packed muscle of the wing. Thefly pulled the tube back and stood motionlessfor a second, then buzzed away, a miracle ofminiature design and unwitting agent ofcorruption.

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The next day, mid-morning, Adèle stood,frozen, at her easel. The room, at the top ofthe house, was perfect for painting, with abig picture window and a skylight. She knewit was north light you were supposed to havebut she liked this light better. Just going upthe stairs to the room gave her a thrill - herheart jumped about like a fish in a river.When she opened the door and saw her tablecovered with tubes and glass jars of brushesand knives, and the stacks of canvases lean-ing against the wall, and the shabby blueleather couch that James had spotted at theSunday market up at the station, and had in-sisted that they get a taxi for and install inher studio right now, she got a feeling thatwas important, mysterious, precious. Thiswas where she lived. There was nowhere elsein the world that was so much hers. Herheart trembled to think that somethingmight come and change it. She was almostfrightened to give herself up to the feeling

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too completely in case God was watching andthought, hm, looks like this girl's forgottenlife's a vale of tears already.

Indeed she had not. When Ruthie diedin her arms, in the terrible glittering water,too small and weak to withstand its rapa-cious demands, Adèle had thought that she'dfinally stepped over into the real world, thateverything before had been merely a nasty,deceitful trick to make her think that theworld was all right. This was the real world,the dead child and the feeling that nothingcould ever be done to make it right again,and that although nothing could ever be thatbad again, events like it could happen, at anytime, without any warning, just when youwere smiling and thinking things were fine.Nothing could ever be fine now becauseRuthie had died.

She sometimes looked away from Sam,suddenly frightened that he was going to betaken from her too. Some days she would

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wake up thinking, one day it's going to hap-pen, you might as well just get used to theidea, and would be cool and distant withhim, not wanting to be involved. Sam calledthese her please and thank you days, becauseshe became very polite and correct in herdealings with him. He would be equally cor-rect back, watching her closely until shemelted a bit and was herself again.

Adèle thought, my own child, my onlychild, and her eyes became unfocused. Sheknew that Sam found her odd sometimes,but also knew that he didn't judge her. Hewas, in many ways, a remarkable child. Butthen, she reflected, weren't most children hisage like that? They only began to judge theirparents when they were older, say thirteen.And then, watch out! She would be tried inthe balance and found embarrassing, this sheknew. No more stolen kisses in public, nomore damp little fingers reaching for herhand when they crossed the road, no more

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fingernails digging into her palm when thebig trucks went past. Her eyes filled up asshe contemplated her fate. She would be theone who made him look stupid in front of hisfriends (his girlfriends? she thought, andcouldn't believe it would ever happen), theone who made him shrivel in shame whenshe told him that his friends would have togo home now and he would have to go tobed.

She sighed, an immense long-drawnintake, hold and breathe out. She lookedagain at the canvas on the easel.

It was a landscape. In fact she thoughtit was more like a cloudscape: there was verylittle land in it. The sky was a vertiginouslydeep azure, shading down as it reached thehorizon to a colour just above eggshell. Thegrading was invisible, and there were a fewstreaks of thin white cloud near the top. Theland was brown and dark greens. Theground, in contrast to the realistic sky, was a

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simple geometric arrangement of fields, witha harsh, angular tree near the middle. Shelooked closely at the picture, screwing up herface and twisting her head. She tried herhardest to think critically, sternly, just as heragent would, but she couldn't really manageit. It was her painting and who else was thereto judge it? It was beautiful. And then shethought, it's completely empty. No houses,no roads, no cars and, of course, no people.Not even any animals. She went over to hertable and rummaged about for a tube of zincwhite. Sheep, she was thinking. Sheep.

Uncle Sebastian put his arm round James'sshoulders.

'Thanks for coming in, James. Gladyou could make it. Burger?' James politelydeclined, but asked the cowboy behind thecounter for coffee, white, two sugars. Therestaurant - was restaurant the right wordfor a place where they gave you a beefburger

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and then kicked you out again in an averageof twelve minutes, James wondered - wasdone out like a cowboy joint, with big(plastic) cattle horns mounted on the wallsand (plastic) cowhide chair-covers. Therewere a number of alcoves, which were sup-posed to resemble pens in a cattle shed, butwhich succeeded in looking rather too grimlyfunctional, suggesting, James thought, anabattoir. Nor were these the only gimmicks.You could get beefburgers with names likeCowpoke's Pleasure and Hungry Heifer, andyou could get them in different shapes: cow-shaped (of course), sheep-shaped (for theWoollyback Burger), shaped like a map ofTexas, like a ten-gallon hat, and best of all,like a woman's bust: Saucy Sue's Bust Bur-ger. Uncle Sebastian had an ingeniousthough depraved imagination.

'You'd be amazed the people who comein here,' he was telling James as they waitedfor the coffee. 'Little fellas in business suits,

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with their little cases, ordering the biggestthing they can see to impress the man be-hind the counter. Makes them feel big, see,like a cowboy in a film. They enjoy that. Lon-don is a really prosaic place,' (Sebastian gavethe word 'prosaic' a long, multisyllabic going-over, to make sure that James didn't miss it)'and this joint makes them feel like they'vestepped into High Noon or something. Youget the idea?'

'Ingenious,' said James, without think-ing what he was saying.

'It certainly is,' Sebastian said, leaningforward as he spoke. 'What it amounts to is acompletely new way of selling beefburgers. Idon't mind admitting, it's an operation I feelproud to own. And this,' he gestured widely,'this is just the flagship: soon, in two, maybefive years, there are going to be Cowboy Joesall over London. All over Britain. Franchisethem out like a Pizza Express. The only thingto do in a recession is the opposite of what

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everyone else is doing. Expand. I have to sayit, James, I'm optimistic.'

'I can see that,' James said, sipping thecoffee, then grimacing and stirring it vigor-ously. Sebastian made him feel - well, hecouldn't say exactly what Sebastian madehim feel. Perhaps like the worm that theearly bird got. Pulled, maybe?

'So. Why am I here, Sebastian?' Se-bastian laughed, a £50,000-plus-per-yearlaugh, redolent of clubhouse and lodge, andslapped him on the arm, then patted himplayfully on the cheek. Tactile bastard, aren'tyou, James thought. He managed a smile.

'Right to the point, eh Jim? You know,when Adèle first introduced me to you, Ithought to myself, she's got herself a goodone here.' Sebastian had a slightly Midlandscast to his voice, nothing as definite as an ac-cent, certainly nothing you could call Brum,but unmistakably north of the golf-club belt.A deeper u, a shorter, harder a. The kind of

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voice that might at any moment announce it-self as a plain-speaking man who grew up ina council house and had felt the rough side ofhis father's belt. A voice that, after a fewbrandies, might well start to expatiate on thepossibilities open to a fellow of vision anddetermination in this once-great country;and having started, might have difficultystopping. Not, James felt, the kind of voicethat gets straight to the point.

'Well, I'll get straight to the point too.You're a good, big, strong lad, eh? Good pairof shoulders. Good pair of legs.' James re-ceived the bewildering impression that UncleSebastian was about to make an improperproposition. What say you and I just strip offhere and now and have a good wrestle. Noth-ing like it for relieving the tension.

'But that's just the start of it. You'vegot a head on those shoulders. And you'vegot something between those legs, eh? Youcan manage. People. I'm talking about

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people, James. There's not many that knowhow to manage people, men. Now I look atyou, and I see, you know what I see, Jim? Isee potential. OK, your own business is goingdown the chute. Sorry, but let's stay in thereal world here. Building trades always sufferfirst in any recession. Small, one-man opera-tion like yours, no-one could be surprisedyou're going under. No-one could say you'reat fault. I honestly think - and I'm beingtotally open with you now, Jim - that you,'and here he paused to poke James in the col-larbone, 'have got a long way to go. Whoknows how far? That's up to you. All I cando, all I want to do, is just point you in theright direction. Maybe just push the dooropen for you a little bit. It's a tough world,Jim, now more than ever, competitive. And Ilike that. But it never did a young fellow a bitof harm to have a little push to get him goingagain.'

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James swallowed hard and said noth-ing. Sebastian made him sound like a crossbetween a car with a faulty distributor and adog frightened of the road. His coffee wasthick and cool at the bottom of the mug (au-thentic chipped enamel). Was this smug bas-tard ever going to spit it out, or was this con-versation going to go on until one of the cow-boys came and shot him like a cur? Jameshad a vision of a hip-holster and a fat UncleSeb backing away from him, wide-eyed andsweating.

'So, Mr Jarrett - sorry, sorry, Uncle Se-bastian-' the words tasted like shit in hismouth. 'Am I to understand that you're mak-ing me some kind of, erm, offer?'

'OK.'Finally Sebastian settled down and

outlined his idea. It took shape as Jameslistened, and by the time Sebastian had fin-ished James knew that he'd accept, at once,

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unconditionally, without even consultingAdèle. It was a great idea.

Sebastian had been visiting his brother wholived in Fishguard, west Wales. On an im-pulse he'd decided to get himself lost. It wassomething he liked to do from time to time:it gave him a feeling of freedom and exhilar-ation, emotions hard to come by for a hard-driven, self-made man. He took lefts andrights at random, letting his hands do the de-ciding. At a business seminar once he'dheard someone say that there are two partsof the brain, and that one side is responsiblefor all the serious, logical manoeuvring, andthe other side does all the imaginative, funnystuff. Something like that, he couldn't re-member the details, but whatever side it wasthat was driving the car that day, it wasn'tthe one that had built up a fast-food empirealmost from nothing.

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He'd finally found himself completelylost, about two miles down a road thatseemed to be leading from nowhere tonowhere else. He stopped the car and gotout. It was a misty autumn day, warm andclammy. Sebastian saw a small hill at theother end of the field to his right and climbedit. And there it was. Later Sebastian wouldelaborate the story and say that he'd beendrawn there by some kind of force, magnet-ism or something. Ley lines maybe. Sebasti-an, for all his worldliness, was a sucker forthe inexplicable.

It was a large, sprawling farmhouse,Victorian, built of local stone, the piecessmall and irregular, held together with ce-ment. Although clearly abandoned, derelictand in places open to the elements, it never-theless looked immensely strong, like a once-impregnable fortress. The windows weredeeply inset, and the walls were obviouslyvery thick. It stood in a field; the field ended

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in a cliff, then there was the sea. The At-lantic. Next stop America. Whatever part ofSebastian's mind was in the driving seat thatday, it responded at once to this EmilyBronte location, wild and deserted, perchedon a cliff top. Having decided that he wantedit, he was not surprised to see a For Sale signpropped up against one corner. There wasabout the house a kind of stoical indiffer-ence. People, it seemed to suggest, might in-dulge their meaningless passions and dra-mas in it, but generation after generationcould rise and fall and the house wouldremain.

Sebastian was deeply impressed withthe property, even before he looked at itclose up. Something he didn't admit to feel-ing was a sense of apprehension, which bit athim like a cold draught in a hallway. A housecould be neither good nor bad, but it couldcertainly be indifferent, and maybe it couldbe just a little hostile. This one would

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certainly do no-one any favours, and mightjust conceivably decide to trip you up if youweren't careful. The apprehension translateditself into excitement in Sebastian's mind.The old commercial spirit rose up, and hewas already making the arrangements. Thehouse would be his. It was already: he couldfeel it stretching out to him, pulling him intoit. The house would be his.

Having bought it, at least in his ownmind, he walked over to it and strolledaround. It was surprisingly big, on threefloors with irregular bits sticking out at thesides and round the back. The windows hada primitive quality to them, as if they werejust holes clawed out of the dry stone. Thefront door, which was out of sight from theroad, had two great stone slabs as steps. Oneof these was unmistakably a tombstone,though there was only the faintest memoryof a trace of carving on it. It looked unbeliev-ably old. The front door itself was a huge

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thing, a great lump of oak that seemed as if itcould have been part of the hulk of a slavingship. The iron knocker, indeed, did recall thekind of fitting that a·leg-iron might be at-tached to, as if to remind the visitor that thegreat wealth it had taken to build the houseand buy the farmland had come from thedarkest, cruellest aspect of the greatnineteenth-century trading endeavour, theside that was not sugar. Bristol was not faraway.

He could see at once that it had been,not a grand house, but better than that, animportant house, a house for powerful andinfluential people. Something between thebaronial squire and the gentleman farmer/landlord. The people who had lived in thishouse were people of stature, whose whimswere attended to as matters of serious im-port, and whose instructions were law. Theywere also people who liked a good time. Oneof the perks of being a rich man - Sebastian

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thought of himself as rich, not wealthy - wasthat you could buy yourself pleasant com-pany. The house expected its residents tolive. Parties. Dancing. Sebastian had a visionof a throng of people, music playing. Therewere people dancing on the grass on thefield, near the cliff, glasses clinking. Girls.Sebastian's mind finally reached the goal ithad been skirting round, and he knew whathe wanted to do in this house. He was goingto have what the Americans might call a ball,and what he described to himself as fun. In-nocent, healthy fun.

The house had clearly been desertedfor quite some time. There were a couple ofwindows missing and boarded up and theroof was sagging rather badly over the south-western corner: from what he could makeout by peering through a ground-floor win-dow, the interior had been gutted by a fireand would have to be completely refur-bished. A big job, he thought seriously. And

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then, he said, he thought: Jim Tullian. Whobetter? Family. Well, as good as family. Orperhaps soon-to-be-family. Eh? (James andAdèle had never married. Her parents werewaiting hopefully. His had intimated thatthey would not attend the ceremony if it evertook place.) With the market depressed, nowwas the time to buy. He made a note of theestate agent's number on the weatherbeatensign, and an hour later was ensconced in apadded chair in Haverfordwest, negotiating.The estate agent had worn the look of a manfor whom Christmas had come early.

'James. Now when that terrible, ter-rible thing happened with Ruth,' and Jamesfelt himself shrink away from the name onthe lips of this person, this Uncle Sebastian,'I felt as if it was my daughter that had died, Icouldn't have felt any worse. I mean that,James.' You don't know what you're saying,James thought, or you wouldn't be sayingthis. 'And I thought wouldn't it be a good

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idea if you and Adèle and little Sam could allget away from here, right away, somewherewhere you could all be together and just, youknow, maybe start trying to get over it all. Abreak. Recharge your batteries. You knowwhat I mean.'

'Sebastian ...''Now don't say anything just yet, Jam-

ie,' (Jamie?) 'just let me finish. I understandthat little Sam' (he's seven years old, forChrist's sake) 'is having a bit of bother at thatschool you send him to. I heard somethingabout bad behaviour, playing up, is thatright? Something like that. All very upset-ting. And then there's Adèle, now she, I un-derstand, has got a show coming up, an ex-hibition. An important one. She's been short-listed for a prize of some kind.'

'No, but the Jerwood Prize Committeehave expressed…'

'And the show's in May of next year.''April.'

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'April. All right. Could be an importanttime for her.'

'Important. Yes.' James was acutelyaware of how important the exhibition wasgoing to be. He knew every detail of what shehad done, all the work, the perseverance, theswallowing of setbacks, the fighting of indif-ference and criticism, the cultivating offriends and contacts, to get herself into theposition she was in now, where her agentwas getting calls from the likes of the Jer-wood Prize Committee. Right from her first-year show at art school she'd shown promise.That was the word they used. He re-membered the day she first showed himsome of her paintings. Hm, he'd said, showspromise, and she'd hit him, hard enough toleave a bruise which later she kissed better atinordinate length ...

'James? Are you with me? Now what Isay is this: you, Adèle and little Sammy all goand ...'

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'Wait. Let me tell you,' James broke in,just to make himself feel like he had a role toplay in the conversation (conversation, hethought, or briefing?). Sebastian behavedlike an occupying army sometimes.

'Your idea is this: we, that is to say Del,Sam and me, go to stay at your little place inWales. Over the winter, let's say the sixmonths October to March. I take Sam out ofthat school we send him to and teach himmyself. I dare say I can prove my educationalcompetence. Del has a place to work that'scalm and where she won't be interruptedevery ten minutes by kind friends and neigh-bours bearing gifts and pitying looks. Mean-while, old Dobbin the talking carthorse herebuckles down and clears the place up, readyfor the proud owner to move in in the spring.He might, for instance, be thinking of a partyto mark the occasion. Everybody has a greattime, time waves her mysterious wand andold wounds start healing over. And at the

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end of this idyll, assuming that Unc's happywith the work of course, Dobbin gets himselfpromoted to Foreman Fred, supervising thechirpy chippies at work on a vast and grow-ing empire of theme beefburger restaurants.Is that about the shape of it?'

James was aware that his voice hadbeen rising as he spoke. Despite himself, theindignity of this situation was working onhim, making him sound somewhat like anactress meeting her first bishop.

'Now James...' said Sebastian, holdinga hand up in front of him, as if to stem whathe obviously thought was going to be afloodtide of unfortunate, unretractable state-ments, made in the heat of the moment,which no-one would ever remember toJames's detriment. But if they could bestopped now before they started ...

'I'll take it.' James heard himselfspeaking like a person who's just been talkedinto buying the thing he most wanted in the

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whole world anyway. 'Thanks Sebastian, Imean it,' he said and smiled. He stuck hishand out in that gesture of masculine solid-arity and business done; Sebastian took it,and then pulled James to him, his other armgoing back around James's neck, his wineybreath in James's ear.

'Good boy,' he was saying, and 'goodlad.'

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2

The Sturdie Posts

The sheep cropped listlessly, ears down,shuffling forward as they ate, occasionallylifting their heads to scan the desolate field.Their almost full-grown winter coats made ofthem shapeless blobs, like a child's drawing,except for the delicate legs and feet and thewatchful, mournful faces. White with irregu-lar black blotches, they meandered over thecold, stony field, their movements slow,measured and arbitrary. Their jaws workedwithout pause.

From the farmhouse, Lewyn Bulmerwatched them as the light faded. He had

cleaned the place up as well as he could,though there were areas where the damagewas so extensive that nothing could be done.The rain had been getting in where the roofhad collapsed, and there was a great deal ofwater penetration, rotten timbers and sag-ging, discoloured plaster. Still, he'd done hisbest, swept out the mice-droppings and thebrittle bodies of dead insects, opened doorsand windows to clear the smell of neglect.He'd checked the electricity and the waterand the flush on the toilet. He'd made upbeds with his own sheets and pillowcases.He'd even put some asphodel in a glass jarand left them on the kitchen table, alongwith milk, eggs and a small jar of coffee.There was a pan of stew on the cooker. Theyshould be arriving by nine, Dilys had toldhim, a man, a woman, a child, and a dog. Afamily. Neighbours for you again, Dilys hadsaid, and stroked his face.

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Dilys had brought him up while hismother was - away. His father had run thefarm, silently, brooding over his wife's deser-tion. She was just a girl, Dilys had explainedto Lewyn, aged thirteen, when he asked her,so young, not much older than you are now.You mustn't blame her. It doesn't mean shedidn't love you, of course she loved you.Would she come back again? Dilys hadlooked at the serious thirteen-year-old andhugged him, hard. No, she said, and cried,the first adult tears Lewyn had ever seen. Itwas Dilys who taught him the songs that henow sometimes sang to the sheep when theywere lambing in the shed, their ears flattenedagainst their heads and their eyes wild. Dilyshad shown him how to wash his clothes, howto cook, how to pray. Brought him up withthe unspoken assent of his father. By four-teen he was fully grown, and sombre. By six-teen he knew what he wanted to do, and on

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his eighteenth birthday he signed up for tenyears with the First Glamorgan Fusiliers.

Two years later when Lewyn's fatherbecame ill, Lewyn was given a compassion-ate discharge from the army, the only familyhe knew. The letter came one day when hewas on exercises in Salisbury. He had sat onhis hard bed in barracks and cried, his headin his hands, rocking back and forth, andPrivate Delaware had sat with him. Laterthat night he slipped a scrap of paper intoDelaware's sleeping hand; it had written onit his address and I love you. Delawarehadn't woken up and Lewyn had kissed himgoodbye, once, very chastely on the mouth,his tags jingling clearly in the silent room,and squeezed Delaware's arm, hard enoughto mark it.

As Lewyn sat in the darkening housewatching the sheep in the next field, he feltagain that kiss, and his hand on Delaware'sarm, and blushed. What a long way away all

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that was, he thought, and yet his bodytingled with the recollection as if to say, no,it was here and now, this is the same warmbody. Lewyn had lived long enough on hisown to come to an understanding of himself,and even a wan liking. His own company,which in the long years of nursing hisbedridden father - washing him, putting himon his pot, cleaning his teeth, spooning inthe porridge and the mashed potato, whilehis father's stern cold blue eyes bored intohim with the malevolence of the helpless -which then had been a burden, a pressingweight like the sixty-pound pack he'd carriedin basic training, was now light as air.

The rigorous, monotonous life on thesmall farm suited him well, the routine gov-erned by the cycles of tupping, lambing,shearing and slaughter. Each day, when he'dfinished the many small chores his solitaryexistence required of him, he would go up tothe large attic room at the top of the house,

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where the bench and the weights were. Hewould strip to his army vest and shorts andpush himself through a strenuous routinethat left him dripping with sweat, musclestight and aching, his head thumping and theblood fast and churning through his veins. Atthe age of thirty-eight he still had the hard,bulky physique he'd inherited from his fath-er, the same body he'd had at fourteen.

These daily workouts, the feeling ofstrained flesh, the trembling of muscles as heclenched his teeth and tried for one more re-petition, but most of all the lightness in thehead and the fluttering in the stomach whenthe bar clanked into the grooved rest for thelast time; the sensation of floating, of dream-like weightlessness, coupled with a faint andnot unpleasant nausea; this was when Lewynfelt most alive. Felt most himself.

Later, in the chipped white bath in thecold bathroom, he would succumb to theheat of the water and the lubrication of the

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soap and, eyes closed, allow the stark and of-ten brutal pictures to flood his mind as hishand worked, slowly and then faster. The fi-nal image, before he shouted out and came,would be violent, cruel, horrible, and hewould immediately disown it. That was notreally me, he would say to himself, not really.That was the only part of himself that Lewynhad not grown to like, but, he knew, it was abig part. The obscene images, although theyseemed to come from outside, from some-where else, came from him, from his ownmind, from his own body. Lewyn knew allthis, and yet he felt that something exteriorwas working on him, that he was taken overby something else, something - well, Dilyswould call it something evil.

Lewyn no longer prayed. When hisfather died, in terrible pain, the unyieldingblue eyes locked on to the crucifix on thewall, Lewyn realized that he could no longerpray to any God that allowed such suffering

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into the world. If there was a God then hewas perverse, sadistic, insane. In fact a Godlike that would not be a God, but would be aDevil. Lewyn believed in the Devil. And hebelieved that the source of the vicious scenesof torture and humiliation was the Devil, aDevil that had no God to restrain him orpunish him or condemn him. A Devil tri-umphant and grinning. There were timeswhen Lewyn awoke in the blackness of thenight as the wind raged round the house, andfeared for his soul.

One of the sheep strayed to the fence at theedge of the cliff. It nuzzled the salty, wirygrass, seemingly oblivious of the long, longdrop to the sea just a dainty step away. It wasLewyn's father who had put up the sturdieposts, and uncoiled the barbed wire andfastened it, three strands, all along the cliffedge, the length of four fields.

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Lewyn could remember the hammer-ing and sawing, and the excitement of thisunusual job. His father had let him hold theposts as he raised the sledgehammer andslammed it down. Lewyn had felt no fearthat his father might miss, that the iron ham-mer might land instead on his hand or head.He trusted his father completely then.

In the twelve months before the fencewent up they had lost forty sheep over thecliff; the beasts had seemed to become reck-less and foolish, they meandered along theedge, taking curious dancing steps, unable tomaintain a straight line. They held theirheads in stilted, awkward positions. Theywobbled, danced, fell. Some of them seemedsimply to walk to the edge, sniff the air, andstep over. And in the incident that hadprompted the erecting of the fence, fifteensheep had panicked and run head- long overthe cliff, a frenzy that Lewyn's father had wit-nessed and had never forgotten. While he lay

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dying he would sometimes call Lewyn to himto tell him the story. The day after that incid-ent, Lewyn's father had driven to the vet inHaverfordwest, something that usually onlyhappened at lambing, if a lamb got into a dif-ficult birth position, or when, very infre-quently, there were triplets.

His father arrived back with the vet inthe early afternoon. The vet took his case ofinstruments and followed Lewyn's fatherdown the cliffside to the rocky beach. Lewynhad trailed behind, fascinated by the vet withhis black jacket and shiny little shoes, andhis case with brass finishings on the corners.

'Can't use this one,' the vet had saidwhen they came to the first carcass. 'Thehead's all bashed in, see?'

Lewyn had seen the creature, sprawledlazily over a flat rock, its head a mess of redand mushy white, with splinters of bonemixed in. Already there were flies crawlingover the mess. The sheep's eyes were glazed

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over, open, staring out to sea. It looks sur-prised, little Lewyn thought, it wasn't expect-ing this at all.

'Better drag it up a bit, out of the wayof the water. It'll have to be burned. They allwill. Will you give me a hand, Mr Bulmer?'The vet had an alert and mobile face, andseemed always to be on the verge of laughingbut seldom did.

'Little thing,' Lewyn's father had said,staring at the ruined animal; Lewyn lookedat him, astonished. Lewyn was ten: never be-fore could he remember hearing that voicefrom his father, a deep and rumbling voicefull of tenderness and pity.

'Little thing, there now.'Between them, the vet and Lewyn's

father wrestled the wet, inert carcass, pullingat the hind legs. It was surprisingly heavy forall its daintiness. Lewyn took hold of a footand helped them, strong even at ten. Theyhauled the sheep over the rocks until they

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reached a hollow under the cliff, almost acave.

'What would make them do it, MrAstley? I've never known them to do any-thing like it before, why would they?'Lewyn's father had asked in a voice that wasbewildered. Lewyn had been momentarilyshocked by this evidence of helplessness inhis father, almost ashamed. The vet sensedthat Lewyn had better be got out of the way.

'Hey Lewyn, do you think you can getback up to the house by yourself?' he asked,his eyes shining.

'Yup.''And do you think you could come

back down again, with a big two-gallon canof petrol?'

'Reckon so, aye.''What do you think, Mr Bulmer? Can

he do it?''Aye, he's a strong lad, a good lad.'

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Lewyn could still recall the prideswelling his whole body at these words, arush of delight. He determined that he wouldperform this task perfectly, quickly. This newfeeling completely wiped away the uneaseand anxiety his father's odd behaviour hadbrought on. He dashed away, excited, happy.Have I ever been so happy since, LewynBulmer, thirty-eight, asked himself as thehouse grew black and dismal around him.

The path doubled back on itself a number oftimes. At the first turning Lewyn heardvoices and stopped.

'Hold the head still now, Owen, willyou? Steady as you can.'

'Like this?''That's ... the ... way .. .' Lewyn crept

away from the path and crawled over to theedge. He poked his head over, and directlybelow him he saw the bald patch on thecrown of the vet's head. His father was

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straddling a dead sheep, both hands holdingits head. The vet's case was open beside him.The instruments and needles and bottlestwinkled in the flat afternoon light. The vethad put on a pair of glasses, his neat jacketwas on the rock next to the bag, and over hisleft hand and arm he had a long black rubberglove. In his right hand he held a small saw.

Lewyn watched, goggled, as the sawbit through the top of the sheep's head, thebone grinding against the steel. The vet wascutting off the top of the sheep's head at thewidest point, below the ears and above theeyes. Like cutting off the top of your egg,Lewyn thought, and smiled weakly.

The vet sawed slowly and mechanic-ally for about three minutes, pausing occa-sionally to wipe his forehead with hisshirtsleeve. The blade dug in and out, in andout, smeared with blood and tissue, until fi-nally the vet pulled it out and placed it on therock. Gently and with the utmost care he

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took hold of one of the sheep's ears with hisgloved left hand, and pulled away the top ofits head.

Lewyn heard a sound, a little slither-ing, slurping sound, and felt his stomach rollover as the brain of the sheep, with the men-ingeal fluid like milk and the rich red blood,flopped over the side of the skull and spreaditself across the rock. What a lot of brain,Lewyn thought, maybe they're not so stupidafter all. Lewyn looked at his father; his jawswere clamped together and his eyes werenarrowed to slits as he grasped the lower halfof the sheep's head.

The vet went to his bag, whistling, andtook out a long pointed instrument with awooden handle, like a meat skewer, onlywith a curved hook on the end. He brought itover and, grasping the semi-solid mass of thebrain with his gloved hand, he dug the skew-er into the greyish slimy tissue, twisting itround and then pulling it up, slowly. He did

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this four, five, six times, until, pulling it up,he stopped and looked at Lewyn's father, hiseyes twinkling.

'I believe we've got one, Owen.'He drew the skewer out, slowly,

slowly, an inch at a time, while the brainmade its sucking and slurring sounds, andthen drew it clear. And then kept on pulling,for on the hook at the end of the skewer wasa flat grey ribbon, narrow and ridged alongits length, as if in sections. Lewyn put hishands to his head but could still hear theslippery, gurgly noises. He repeated to him-self, 'The Devil, the Devil,' though he didn'tknow why. When the ribbon was over twofeet long and the vet was standing above thesheep, his arm outstretched with the - thing -wriggling and turning on the end of hisskewer, its other end free of the brain afterthe vet had given a final tug, Lewyn stood upand shouted aloud:

'The Devil! The Devil!'

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He screamed, a tiny child again, ut-terly terrified and appalled, and staring, star-ing at the grey ribbon turning lazily this wayand that, unable to look away. His father hadrun up the path and got him, got hold of him,turning his head away and holding him flatto his body. There were flecks of brain on histrousers.

'There now, there now,' his fathermurmured, stroking his head. Lewyn hadwept, with fear but also shame at his weak-ness, crying like a baby.

Lewyn had been given a spoonful of whiskyand put to bed, and all that afternoon hisfather and the vet had collected the sheepfrom their resting places on the rocks and inthe shingle, and had dragged and carriedthem to the hollow under the cliff. Wherethere were separated limbs or loose tissuethe vet had scooped them up with his gloved

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hand, whistling, and dropped them on to thepile.

By five o'clock there was a heap ofbodies, a rough pyramid, the off-white woolmatted and stained with blood. Lewyn's fath-er left the vet to finish off and went to thehouse to collect the petrol and some looselumber. Back at the beach, dumping the canand the wood, he dug into his pocket andproduced a small flask. He and the vet drankin turn, the vet smacking his lips in appreci-ation. The vet stacked wood at the bottom ofthe heap, while Lewyn's father sprayed thepitiful mound of wool and hoof and sur-prised faces with petrol.

The vet lit a sliver of wood with his ci-gar lighter, and, gingerly, put it to the wool ofthe nearest sheep. Almost at once the woolblackened and charred and the smell roseup, acrid. But the fire's progress was slowand it soon went out.

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'I think we may need some more pet-rol, Owen, I wonder if you wouldn't mind?'the vet said. Lewyn's father brought downtwo more cans and this time Lewyn followedhim, chastened and white, but composed,carrying more wood.

The bodies burned, but without enthu-siasm and unevenly, until Lewyn's father,with no regard for safety, threw on more andmore petrol, climbing up on to the heap ofcorpses, trampling over their heads andbacks and dainty hooves. When both canswere empty the vet again lit the fire and thistime it took, its grip steady and bright. Theday was windless and the choking, stinkingblack smoke rose straight up in a thick pillar,up to heaven, thought Lewyn. Again theyfetched more wood and petrol and by six-thirty the pile had settled into a great heap ofcinders and glowing fragments, giving out anintense heat and a rich, savoury smell.Lewyn found himself salivating. The pile

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burnt steady and hot, settling and crackling.The air above it shuddered. The tide startedto turn at seven, and the light began to fade.

Breaking a silence that had lasted forfifteen or so minutes, the vet said brightly,'Well, I think that's that, Owen. I'm sorry foryour trouble, I truly am.'

'Aye,' said Owen Bulmer, and sighed.'I'll have to order some spray from

Swansea, it'll take probably a week or tendays. As soon as I get it I'll be back. Also I'llwrite to the Veterinary Investigation Service,and the Ministry of course.'

'Ministry,' said Lewyn's father blankly.'Of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.'

He announced this mouthful with greatsolemnity.

'You have to do that, do you?' OwenBulmer had enquired defiantly. He didn'twant strangers knowing his business, norany trouble with any Ministry neither, thankyou.

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'Well, no I don't have to, this isn't whatthey call a notifiable disease, but generallyspeaking ...'

'Then I'd much rather you didn't, MrAstley, and obliged to you. If it's all thesame.'

'As you wish, Owen. Well, until I getthe spray, there's not much you and your boycan do but wait and pray to God that it hasn'tspread to the whole flock. And watch out forfoxes, they can spread it. If I were in your po-sition I would put up a fence, a good strongone, right the way along, just in case thereare any more afflicted animals. Much easierto contain it up there than down here, I'msure you'll agree.' He ruffled Lewyn's hairand beamed at him.

'And of course we want to stop themchasing each other when one of them gets itinto his head to jump over.' The vet laughed,and Lewyn laughed back, though he wasn'tsure how funny this really was.

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'Now don't you worry, your dad'll takecare of it all, you'll see,' said the vet. 'Nothingto upset yourself over. Just a little worm,that's all it is.'

When they'd had their tea that evening,Lewyn's father had given his son a garbledversion of what the vet had told him aboutthe life cycle of Taenia Multiceps, and its sin-ister transformation into CoenurusCerebralis.

'He calls it sturdie. It's a disease sheepget from the soil. What happens, see, is thatthere are little, little eggs sometimes in theground, and the sheep eat the eggs. They'reso small these eggs you can't even see 'em,see, they're tiny, but when they get into thesheep's stomach they start to turn intoworms. Like the worms in the soil, but flatterthan that. These worms, they're like threadsto start off with, but they eat the food thatthe sheep eats, cos they're in its stomach,

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and when they're big enough they come outof its stomach and go along its spine. Thenwhat happens, they go into its brain. They -they kind of eat away at its brain, and thesheep don't know what's happening, but itmakes them go dizzy, they get vertigo. Whatthat means is that they come over funnywhen they're high up, and they can't standstraight and they can't even walk straight,and they fall over. So it's nothing to worryover, Mr Astley says, it's just a worm, andyou can kill it with spray on the ground andkeeping dogs and foxes away. It needn't killthem if you treat 'em soon enough, Mr Astleysays. Sometimes it's in droppings of foxesand wild dogs, but Mr Astley he thinks some-times it's just there in the ground, all thetime, and it just comes out every so often,not for any reason at all.'

Lewyn looked at his hands as his fath-er spoke. His father was trying hard to makehis voice convey reassurance and control.

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Nothing to worry over, just a worm. A wormthat lives in an egg in the ground and eatsthe brains of animals while they're still aliveand makes them dance and run over theedge of the cliff and smash themselves topieces. That's all.

'Mr Astley, he says people can't get it,this worm it can't live in people, only insheep. So you got nothing to worry over.' Hisfather looked at him, appealing to him to be-lieve him, to trust him, to have faith in him.Lewyn thought of his father's voice a fewhours earlier, querulous, asking the vet,'What would make them do it, Mr Astley?'Then he put the thought away, though itwould return later.

'OK,' he said.'And tomorrow we can go and get

some wood and put up the posts.''OK.'Lewyn had felt pleased his father had

spoken to him for so long, and so seriously.

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And it would be good helping him with thesturdie posts, working alongside him. Hetried to dismiss the vile, lazily turning wormfrom his mind, and think about other things.But in the night he'd cried again, trying tostifle the sound of the gulps and sniffles bycovering his head with the pillow.

Dilys had come over the next day.Lewyn's dad told her about the vet's visit andthe worm, but omitted the part aboutLewyn's panic. Lewyn glowed with pleasureand complicity, and when Dilys had come tohim all sympathy and soothing, he'd foughtshy of her and said he had to help his dadwith the fence. She'd held him at arm'slength and looked hard at him.

'Lewyn. Is everything all right?''Course it is,' he'd said, avoiding her

searching eye. He'd been crying, she couldsee that. But she couldn't make him talk toher. She smiled, and patted him on thebehind.

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'OK my beauty.'

Lewyn sat on, on the cold stone ledge underthe window in the farmhouse, gazing out atwhat was now impenetrable darkness. Notlike me, he thought, to be just sitting here.Woolgathering. He was startled by a bangingnoise from upstairs; his beefy body frozewith fright, and then he thought, shit, loosewindow.

He stood up, stiff, and went to thestairs. The staircase turned through ninetydegrees halfway up, and the deep, velvetyblackness at that first landing sent a thrill ofhorror through him. Lewyn, long inured tosolitude, darkness and silence, found that,even now, he could be scared of the dark. Helaughed, softly, at the thought, but it wastrue. In the army he'd been on a tour inNorthern Ireland, three months, and oncehe'd been caught in a firefight at a bordercrossing; he'd kept his head and managed to

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get himself and the men with him out safely,without any injury. He'd been commended:at nineteen it was quite an accomplishment.And then, two weeks later, he'd been in-volved in the defusing of a suspected car-bomb outside a pub in Newry, and had hadto stand guard, at what was in theory a safedistance, until the experts arrived. Sevenminutes, and every second could have beenhis last. He'd sweated it out, and his CO hadshaken his hand and praised his courage.The big, brave soldier. Now here he was atthe foot of a stairwell in a deserted farm-house, his bladder turned to jelly at thethought of going up the stairs.

'Wish I'd thought to put a light in,' hesaid, and grinned with fear at the sound ofhis voice.

The only working lights were in thekitchen and scullery and in the attics. Therewere no lights at all on the first floor. Thewind had sprung up and the loose window

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was creaking and thudding. He could smellthe cold air streaming down the stairwell. Helicked his lips and rubbed his hands downhis trousers. He put one foot on the firststair, and the blackness on the landing cameforward to meet him; he backed down again.

Involuntarily he clutched his penis ashe fought with the implacable, irrational andincapacitating fear. Then he was up andmoving, walking fast and heavily, stampingon the bare wooden stairs. Now he was turn-ing and could see the doorway facing the topof the staircase, stamp, stamp, grinning likea fool, glancing nervously behind, his handclutching his cock. A few steps more and hewas at the top of the stairs, his heart thump-ing as if he were deadlifting a hundred andtwenty. He rested his back against the wall,and the nightmarish terror that somethingmight be behind him left him, like cold waterdraining out of a tank. The corridor stretchedin both directions, but the banging of the

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window was coming from the right-handside, and Lewyn immediately knew whichroom it was. Of course, it had to be that one.He stood in the dark corridor with the coldair streaming round his legs, and felt theflesh on his scrotum crawl. Suddenly hewanted to urinate, very urgently.

they-think-me-mad-I-am-not-mad-please-jesus

He dashed the words away from hismind, shaking his head. Unknowingly he hadadopted a hunter's crouch, knees slightlybent, buttocks pulled in, neck and headdrawn down, fists clenched. His powerfulbody was responding to instructions laiddown millions of years ago, moulding itselfto a shape that had served it well in forestsand jungles, when it was faced with an en-emy. Minute muscles were responding to in-finitesimally subtle commands and pullingup the hairs on his legs and forearms andneck, to make him look bigger, more

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ferocious. He noted with surprise that he waserect, and formulated the thought 'fear is likedesire'; they certainly felt very alike. Exceptthat fear froze you, made you immobile, pre-sumably a defence designed to minimalizeany noise you might make in a forest orjungle, while you were hiding from the tigeror the bear. Or the demon. Only people, hethought, have ever been menaced bydemons, and he grinned at the idea, display-ing teeth. Only people fear the dead; animalssimply eat them. I'd better go and shut thatwindow, he thought, and laughed aloud.With a conscious effort he relaxed themuscles of his body, one by one, a techniquehe had learnt from Dilys.

He turned to the right and walkeddown the corridor, past two doors, turnedleft and there it was. Two low steps led up toit. Unlike the other doors this one was of sol-id oak, three inches thick. There was a bolt attop and bottom, a deadlock, and a big iron

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handle. The surround was also of oak, andthe impression was one of tremendousstrength. Lewyn stood outside and the win-dow slammed shut, then creaked open again.He mounted the steps, one two, pulled thebolt from the top and then from the bottom,turned the deadlock with the key that was init (it was as cold as petrol on his fingers) andthen took the handle in both hands andpulled.

At first nothing happened; then therewas a moan and a great gush of damp air asthe wind pushed the door open from inside.He stepped back and stumbled slightly as thedoor swung wider, silently and smoothly,and the window slammed again, bang!

I-will-watch-he-will-not-have-meHe strode into the room, the blood

singing in his ears. In three paces he was atthe window, which had swung open again.He grasped the handle and slammed it shut,secured the lock. As he looked out he saw the

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lights of a car, then the car itself roundingthe bend leading to the house. He tried topenetrate the blackness to see inside the car,and for a moment met the eyes of a woman.She looked terrified, as if she were riding adeserted ghost train which had gone out ofcontrol, and he thought: Edith, she's comeback.

He stood motionless for a long mo-ment, then turned on his heel and advancedout of the room, looking neither left nor rightbut only directly ahead so that he would notsee the iron rings in the wall and the crudelycarved inscriptions. There's no handle onthis side of the door he thought, and then hewas out, was pushing the heavy, awkwarddoor shut, was bolting and locking it, andwas in flight down the corridor, as I waswalking up the stair, on to the landing, I meta man who wasn't there, his boots rattlingagainst the bare wooden stairs, ratatatatat, infull ignominious retreat, his bladder

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bursting. He reached the front door at thefoot of the stairs and, flinging it open, stoodoutside and leaned on the wall, gasping atthe freezing air and the wind off the sea, hisbig chest heaving up and down like thewaves. He put his hands on his hips and bentdown like a runner after a long race, andbreathed the air and blew it out again ingreat blasts. Then he could hold it no longerand, turning to the wall, unzipped histrousers with trembling hands, pulled out hiscock and, one hand braced against the walland the other holding his cock, his legsspread and his head tilted up, pissed. Heclosed his eyes as his aching bladder emp-tied, and the pulse in the great vein in hisneck slowed a little. He opened his mouthand unknowingly emitted a long soft moan,as his water steamed and foamed at his feet,and he grinned at his foolishness.

He heard the car approaching, in lowgear, then idling, then cutting out. A door

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opened and he heard a dog bark, then theother door opened and there was a great dealof shuffling and rattling and quiet voices.The dog barked repeatedly, a musical low-pitched wo wo wo, and then there was achild's fluting voice: 'Dad?'

The family, Lewyn thought, andsmiled.

'Hello!' he called out. 'You'rewelcome!'

They were seated round the kitchen table, asLewyn heated up the stew and made coffeeand put down some milk for the dog.

'I won't stay,' he said over his shoulderas he stirred the stew. 'I should be gettingback anyway, I just thought I'd see that youwere all right and say hello.'

'Well...' said Adèle, at a loss, glancingover at James, 'we weren't expecting awelcome.'

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'Dilys told me you were coming,'Lewyn said, then, 'but of course you don'tknow Dilys yet. Anyway, your Uncle Sebasti-an he rang her to tell her, see, and she comeover to tell me. I had a key from, from lasttime. Which reminds me.' He pulled a bunchof keys out of his pocket and removed theright one, put it down on the table. 'I've kindof been looking after the place a bit. Not thatit's anything to do with me, not really.'

'Were you upstairs, just now? Aboutfive minutes ago?' Adèle asked, her voicesounding strange to her; somehow it seemedlike an accusation.

'Yes, I was...''Oh then it must have been you I saw,'

she rushed on, 'at the window at the back. Iswore I saw someone as we were driving up,but Jamie wouldn't have it.' She smiledacross at James, who gave her a tense grin inreturn. 'It really gave me a fright.'

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'That's funny, cos you gave me a frightan' all, don't know why,' Lewyn said, andthey laughed.

'I thought you looked like you'd seen aghost,' Adèle said, still laughing.

'Right, well I'll be off now. Stew's allready. I hope it's all right.' (I hope you'll beall right.) 'Sorry about the lights upstairs, Ijust didn't think of them, stupid really. I'llcall in tomorrow for the pan.' He picked uphis jacket from the window seat in the bareliving room adjoining the kitchen, andopened the front door.

'Mr Bulmer.' It was Adèle, coming outfrom the kitchen.

'Lewyn.' He smiled.'Oh yes. Lewyn.' She smiled back.

'Thanks for doing all this. Really. You can'timagine how worried I've been about it, weall have.'

'Oh I'm sure. Take a bit of getting usedto, I dare say.' He looked down as he spoke,

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as if, she thought, he was unused to talkingto people. Then he looked up.

'Oh I, stupid, I forgot to say, I've madeup beds for you, I'll show you. How could Iforget to say that?' He went to the stairs andwithout the smallest hesitation started upthem, with Adèle following. He turned left atthe top and went to the furthest door.

'This is the biggest room, the nicest Ithink, with the double bed, I hope that's not .. .' he stopped, embarrassed. Dilys and Davehe knew slept in single beds, but then peoplefrom the city, he'd thought, and they young... Adèle sensed his difficulty.

'That's just perfect. White sheets. Andyou've put flowers . . .' She beamed at him,and he blushed and turned away.

'And then for the boy, I've made oneup here,' he said, opening the door to thenext bedroom. There was a single bed onhigh metal legs, and on top of the pillow sat agrizzled-looking toy monkey.

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'I thought he might like it, but then Isuppose he's a bit old for teddies and such-like,' he said, embarrassed again and surehe'd done the wrong thing. Adèle wanted tokiss him, but instead patted his shoulder.

'Well, if he doesn't want it I'll have it,'she said.

'Right. I'm away now,' he said andrattled down the stairs, calling out goodnightas he passed through the living room; thenhe stopped. The child (what was his name?)was standing at the open front door, andturned to look at him. Bright little eyes,Lewyn thought, and then heard, discerned, afaint humming sound that the boy was mak-ing, as his eyes flickered over Lewyn's faceand body. Then the child smiled, and Lewynsaid, 'Well bye then,' and brushed past himout of the heavy front door.

Hope that dog's not going to be a nuisance,he thought, as he walked up the path across

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the fields to his house. You could never tellwith dogs. Better be sure they've got himwormed. Quiet, the man of the house was.Good-looking fellow. He smiled. Neighboursagain, he thought. Got to be better than thelast lot, anyway. Can't be no worse.

'Jamie,' Adèle said as they lay in the unfamil-iar bed, which felt as if it was miles up in thesky on its stark iron legs.

'Hmmmm,' said James reluctantly. Heassumed she wanted him to go and dosomething, and he was so warm.

'I just thought. That stew.''Hmmm,' he said and wriggled.'Sam ate it, didn't he?' What was she

talking about? She'd seen him eat it. He'dgulped it down, even had more. 'I didn'tthink at the time, but that means therewasn't any meat in it. Now I think about it Ican remember. There wasn't.'

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'Hmmmm,' James said again, andwriggled his head into a good position tonuzzle her neck.

'Well, don't you think that's odd? Imean on a sheep farm?'

'Very odd,' he murmured, 'extremelysinister,' and his warm wet tongue enteredher ear and she was gone.

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3

Talking to Strangers

James, Sam and Elvis the dog had driven in-to Fishguard to buy food and some of theendless small things they'd discovered they'dforgotten (corkscrew, coathangers, tea-tow-els, alarm clock... ), and to get James some ofthe tools he was going to need. Uncle Sebhad put a largish cheque into James andAdèle's joint account, and there was sud-denly money! a phenomenon long departedfrom their lives. It was beautiful warm Octo-ber, and the trees dotted along the roadside,oddly individual and ancient-looking, werechanging colour, something that fascinated

Sam who was at that moment demanding acomplete explanation.

Alone in the farmhouse, Adèle waspottering about. Pottering about was, shethought, probably the thing she liked doingmost in the world. Well, apart from sex ofcourse. And painting. And watching Sampaint. Well all right, one of her favouritethings. She sang the words aloud as she satat the kitchen table, having one of severalpost-breakfast Silk Cuts. She'd continuedsmoking even when pregnant, though she'dcut right down. Guilt, guilt, but ah what aguilty pleasure, what a pleasurable guilt! Allof Adèle's set at boarding school hadsmoked, it was only the odd and the friend-less who didn't. She'd never given up, evenafter just about everyone she knew (or atleast kept in touch with) had stopped. Jameshad never smoked, unusual for a man his ageand (say it) class. She suspected that hefound it beguiling in her, despite his

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professed horror of it, in the same way thathe was beguiled by her indefinably loftymanner, her (only somewhat) privilegedbackground, and the grave accent on themiddle vowel in her Christian name. Adèle.A-d-e-grave-l-e. He was, she knew, sur-prised rather than beguiled by her success asan artist. He would acknowledge that thepaintings were good, some he thought verygood; underneath his words, however, shesensed the unspoken thought, 'but anyonecan do that.'

She herself was surprised by her suc-cess. At art school she had gone about awedby the seemingly effortless style and confid-ence of her fellow students, amazed at theirabilities and their faith in those abilities.Their work was amusing, brilliant, original;hers always seemed to her to be crampedand anxious, which was more or less howshe'd felt. She'd gone through her three yearsin a state of ill-defined dread, of her fellows,

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her tutors, of just about everybody, come tothink of it. She'd been prey to a wide array ofintestinal disorders, which had conspired tomake her life miserable for much of the time.And that was what she thought her canvaseslooked like. But it was she, and not they, herbrilliant friends, who had got on, progressingfrom group shows in anarchic squat galleriesto solo shows in art centres and those hor-rible trendy cafés, through a brief profile in anew-names-to-watch article in Marie Claire(a publication she was, she freely admitted,besotted with) to her first contact with a realLondon agent, and then the delicious, tantal-izingly slow blooming of her success.

She stood up, stretched, and wanderedthrough the ground floor. Everything, she re-flected, was livable in, but damaged. It re-minded her of her early days in Brighton,when she had lived for a brief but unforget-table three months in a squat. Slumming,she thought, and smiled. Not even one of

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those well-managed middle-class squats withelectricity and working sanitation, but a con-demned carpet warehouse. Calor gas andstolen showers in the nearby sports centre.This place had much the same feel, bothcrumblingly dry and unpleasingly damp,scorched timbers poking out like brokenbones, gaping window holes like blind eyes,dangerous floors.

Dangerous.She continued singing The Sound of

Music out of the glassless window, and wasstartled, shocked, to see scores of little blackand white faces watching her. Christ, shethought, the hills are alive. She put her handto her breast where her heart had just kickedher. Bloody creepy sheep.

'Gw'an, eat your fucking grass, youmorons!' she yelled at them, discounten-anced by their blank, unblinking stares. Theone nearest her glanced away, then back,

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then clumsily turned itself round and movedaway.

'Mint sauce! Mint sauce!' she bellowedout after it. 'Ha fucking ha! And carrots andpeas and gra-vy,' she sang, and threw her ci-garette end out of the window. Ruthie, sheknew, would have been frightened of thesheep. Perhaps not frightened exactly, buttimid, cautious. When Uncle Daniel hadbought her, aged four, a huge stuffed giraffe(from Hamley's, God knew how much it hadcost!) and they'd brought her into the sittingroom to receive it, she'd just stared andstared. She wouldn't go near it. Adèle hadpushed her towards it, but Ruthie hadbacked away with a nervous little smile,which had turned into tears. Buried her facein her mother's legs. Adèle had been morti-fied, and Uncle Daniel, single his whole lifeand not used to the ways of children, hadlaughed it off, but was clearly offended and,to Adèle's anguish, a little disdainful. And,

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God save her soul, Adèle had been ashamed.Of her own child! But she could be so annoy-ing. No, used to be so annoying. Was so an-noying no longer. Tense, thought Adèle,mimicking her old Classics mistress, MissGrealis, attend to the tense if you want tomake sense.

The giraffe had been adopted by Sam,aged two, who would topple it over and try tobreak its legs off. For a while that had beenhis only mission, his real work. And wherehad all of Ruthie's caution got her? It was al-most funny. Well, perhaps funny was thewrong word, in the circumstances... Adèlefelt tears at the back of her eyes and in her si-nuses, and returned to the kitchen.

Wash the dishes, isn't that whathousewives are supposed to do? She dutifullyran hot water and as always fell into a kind oftrance state until everything was piled up onthe draining board. She rinsed it all by sling-ing cold water on it from the bowl, breaking

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a glass. She didn't care. You had to rinsethem or the washing-up liquid gave you can-cer. Something like that. She'd read itsomewhere.

'Well, here we are on holiday,' shesaid, and stood up to do a little dance.'Holida-ay,' she sang, doing her best karaokeMadonna. Sam thought they were on holidayhere. And in a way they were. After Ruthie,Adèle had kept on painting; she'd painted onthe day of the funeral, that ghastly suburbancremation, where she hadn't been able to cry.James had cried, no stopping him, and hehadn't worked for weeks, had cancelled adormer window he was scheduled to put inalong with dozens of other smaller jobs.

For a while it had looked as if he wasgoing to be one of the lucky builders whowould ride out the recession, accumulatingall the work that the other, unlucky, liquid-ated builders had had to cancel. Mostly smallthings, repairs and minor renovations, fixing

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banisters and even mending leaking taps. Hetook what he could get, with good grace. Shehad to give him that. They'd even had aweek's holiday, a real holiday in Cornwall ata guesthouse. (Sam had been terribly im-pressed that they had their own toilet andtheir own bathroom, and even a kettle intheir room with cups and sachets of coffee.And the pictures on the walls were real pic-tures.) And then bloody Ruthie...

Now Adèle did cry, simultaneouslyglad she hadn't got round to doing her make-up yet. James had spent his days afterRuthie's death at their disgracefully aban-doned allotment, which just happened to beup near the crematorium. He didn't plantanything, he just dug it. Turned it over. Thenhome, beer, television, crying. Adèle sup-posed you could call it a kind of breakdown.Not, she thought, a particularly stylish one.

And then Sam had said the Odd Thing.Quite out of the blue, while Adèle was

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reading a seed catalogue (it was she who wasthe gardener), and James was sitting in frontof Taggart, red-eyed, tipsy, maudlin.

'So isn't Ruthie coming back anymore?'

He had seemed genuinely puzzled.Adèle had felt a slow shock, like the pricklykind of sweat you get with the flu. Theydidn't know how much Sam had understood;he'd accepted everything, had looked appro-priately solemn, and clearly knew that whathad happened was serious. He'd been toldthat Ruthie was dead. When you were deadyou didn't live at home any more. Your bodygot burned (God it sounded brutal) and yourspirit went up to the sky, where you werehappy for ever. Your clothes went to the poorchildren. Neither she nor James wanted Samto get any funny notions about religion andGod and the fucking Baby Jesus. He gotenough of that garbage at school. Theywanted to tell him honestly what it was

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about, as far as they knew or believed.Presents at Christmas had never been fromSanta Claus, but had been bought by Mumand Dad because they loved him. Theythought he deserved, or rather needed, to begiven the truth.

Adèle had turned the television off(this was serious), earning a baleful lookfrom both Sam and (maddeningly!) James.

'Ruthie's dead. The water killed herand she died. So she can't ever come back,'Adèle had said, almost angrily. Samstiffened, sensing her mood.

'I'm not angry with you,' she saidquickly, and sat beside him on the arm of thetwo-seater.

'But can't you make her come back?'Sam had asked earnestly. 'Can't you makeher?'

'Fraid not,' Adèle said, carefully, softly.'Sorry, matey. No-one can make her comeback now. If we could we would, because we

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still love her. We'll always love her, just likewe'll always love you. But dead is dead,pumpkin.' She stroked his head.

'But you haven't even tried,' Sam said.'Why don't you try?'

Adèle had begun to get a very peculiarfeeling, a kind of light-headed, singing feel-ing, as she stared down at her son's shortblack hair. What was going on under thatneat little haircut?

'How?' she whispered, and then Jameswas on his feet.

'Bed!' he'd shouted, 'bed, right now!'Sam had burst into tears and stomped up tohis room. 'Sam,' Adèle had called after him,'I'll be up in a minute.' When Sam's door hadclicked shut, James had stared hard at Adèle,both of them on their feet, both furious. A fa-miliar posture, thought Adèle wearily.

'He's seven years old!' she'd shouted.'Did you have to scream at him like that?'

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'What in God's holy name did youthink you were doing there?' James hadflung back. 'I mean, what exactly did youmean, "how?"'

'I didn't mean anything! I was just try-ing to explain...'

'No, no that's not it at all!' he yelled,and she could hear his father in his voice.That and the beer. 'You were practically,practically encouraging him to think...'

'Think what, James? Jesus! What areyou thinking?' He said nothing for a second,then quite carefully: 'I wish she hadn't died.'Adèle had felt her whole body trembling asshe held on to the back of the sofa. 'I couldn'thelp it! I couldn't help it, James, I swear toGod...' This burst out of her before she couldstop it. She hadn't known that her guilt aboutRuthie's death was so close to the surface.James stared: the tears, never far away, wererunning down his face.

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'Oh God, Del, that's not what I meant,'he'd said, and they both sat down, as if theyhad rehearsed it.

'James, I don't think it's any good talk-ing about it right now,' she'd said, weary bey-ond belief, and reached for the televisionknob. She'd left him looking hopelessly at anadvert for lager, and gone up to Sam's room.

She'd sat down outside his door, tocollect herself.

You haven't even tried. Why don't youtry?

Seven years old, she'd told herself.Nothing weirder on this planet than a seven-year-old. Her question - how? - had just beenan attempt to explore his mind a little, so shecould reassure him that everything thatcould be done had been. Nothing more.She'd knocked, then gone in, her heart full ofdread and something the consistency of dies-el oil. There'd been a little furtive scuffling

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sound that made her smile. Who knew whata seven-year-old boy did in bed?

'Sam, your dad's sorry he shouted atyou. He didn't mean to. He's upset, but it'snot your fault.' God, she felt tired.

'OK,' Sam said, fiddling with a smallblue slime ball James had bought him in ajoke shop. Adèle hugged him, but he wasmade of wood.

'Do you miss Ruthie?''Yes,' said Sam, but somehow mechan-

ically: yes was the right answer, that was all.Sam was very good at right answers.

'So do I, baby. Every day.''Mum?''What?''Don't tell Dad, but I think one day

Ruthie will comeback.'And Adèle could think of nothing to

say. Nothing in the world.Why don't you try?

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There was a knock on the door, and shejumped, completely disorientated.

'Mrs Tullian?' Adèle sank back; Lewyn.'Coming!'

It took no more than three minutes for Adèleto become profoundly ensnared in a complic-ated discussion with Lewyn about his grazingand hay rights in the fields. He didn't have alease, but he had understandings and it wascustomary, and besides if he didn't use thefields they'd get overgrown and have to beploughed over, which would cost them andthey'd lose the revenue from the hay ...

'Stop!' Adèle called out, laughing, tearsbanished. 'Mr Bulmer, please...'

'Lewyn.''Lewyn. Look, you can graze water buf-

falo for all I care. We're just here for thewinter. Really, we don't want to changeanything.'

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'Yes, but the income from the hay fromlast year...'

'Lewyn. I really don't give a fuck aboutthe hay. Really.' The word 'fuck' struck himhard, and he glanced at his hands. And whatbig hands they are, she thought.

He smiled.'Oh. Well that's all right then. I just

thought I should bring it up. I haven't dis-cussed it at all with Sebastian Jarrett yet.Been on my mind a bit. It'd finish me, to behonest, if I lost the grazing. I've always hadit, and me dad had it. Sorry. Didn't mean tobother you with it. I suppose you've gotenough to think about, what with -everything . . .' He trailed off.

'I want to thank you for being here lastnight. First night in a strange place, it reallymade a difference.'

'Oh that was, that was nothing...' hesaid, and blushed. And what lovely eyesyou've got, she thought, lovely real deep blue.

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And something else, some little impressiontickling her like a stray hair... It eluded her.

'I suppose we're going to get to knoweach other pretty well, stuck here all winter.Sorry, I don't mean stuck, you know what Imean.' She scratched absently at her cheek,brushing the imaginary hair away. What wasit?

'So what I thought would be nicewould be if you came over to dinner onenight. And Dilys, was it? The woman youmentioned last night?'

'Dilys. And Dave, her husband. Well,thank you very much. I'll ask Dilys. They'remuch more for going out than me, really.'

And what about Mrs Lewyn Bulmer,she was about to say, and then thought oh,so that's it. No Mrs Bulmer. And not justsingle. What was that horrible phrase, a bumbandit? How had she picked that up, thatsudden knowledge? She just knew.

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'And of course anyone you might careto invite, Lewyn,' she said casually.

'Oh, no, there's no-one like that,' hesaid, and smiled in a way she found oddlyconspiratorial. Our little secret. But what ahandsome man, she thought abruptly, andwhat a good physique too, real rugby player'sbuild, short, thick, heavy, solid like old fur-niture, a mahogany dresser with all thedrawers locked tight. She found herself sud-denly at a loss again. She, with her cheapfinishing-school upbringing, the perfecthostess.

'Oh where are my manners!' she calledout brightly, if rather startlingly. 'Tea,Lewyn, or coffee? Let me guess... Strong tea,no sugar. Right?'

'Well, coffee if you've got it. And twosugars. Black. Actually,' he said, and theyboth laughed. Oh, she liked him. She buzzedabout with kettle and teaspoons.

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'Our first night! Sam slept like an an-gel, I was sure he'd be up the whole night buthe went straight off. And me! I'm usually un-bearable in strange beds, tossing and turn-ing, but as soon as I hit that pillow...!' Actu-ally she'd had a long, difficult night, withJames (maddeningly!) like a corpse besideher: she'd been listening to all the secret, tinysounds that occur on quiet nights in thecountry. It had begun to sound curiously or-chestrated after a while: organized. It allmeant something, but she with her city earscouldn't even begin to decode it. And thenthere was the house as well, doing all thethings that any ordinary house does on aquiet night, so many almost imperceptiblesounds. And then Sam...

'Must be very quiet for you,' saidLewyn, 'boring I'd imagine, after the city.'She tried to picture what ideas Lewyn hadabout 'the city', and came up with the imageof Piccadilly Circus at midnight, great

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flashing signs for Coke and Fuji Film andstreams of people, drunk, busy. Young boyshanging around outside the Burger King...

'Have you ever lived in London,Lewyn?' she asked.

'Me? No, never even visited. Can youimagine it!' He seemed ashamed.

'Well, let me tell you, you're not miss-ing anything. I love it here,' she said, determ-ined that it be true.

'Right. Must be getting back,' he said,standing so suddenly that Adèle was mo-mentarily sure she must have offended him.

'OK. Well, any time you're passing...''Oh, and I'll take that pan back if it's

no trouble.''Yes, of course.' What could she have

said? She dug the pan out from the pile ofdishes on the draining board. 'The stew waslovely,' she said appeasingly. (You must giveme the recipe... )

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'Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed him. Growmost of the stuff meself. Cheaper that way.The herbs too.'

'Well, that's marvellous,' she twittered,wincing at the banality of her words. She waslost, completely unsure of herself. Shecouldn't have offended him, surely. Shehanded him the pan and he smiled, radi-antly, charmingly. Then he grasped herhand, in the clumsiest handshake she'd everfelt, clumsier than the most gawky sixth-former from St Dunstan's at a too-brightly-lit, alcohol-free disco.

'I hope you're going to like it here,' hesaid, terribly earnest.

'I'm sure we will,' she replied seriously,and then couldn't help herself, and laughed.

'Sorry, sorry, you just took me by sur-prise. I can't remember the last time anyoneshook my hand. Sorry.'

'Don't be sorry. It's good to have alaugh. Not much to laugh at, not round here.'

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She felt confident again, and dared to say,'Lewyn, would you mind if I came up to yourhouse with you? To tell you the truth, I coulddo with getting out for a bit. And I'd love tosee it. Would you mind?'

'Well, he's nothing much to see, notreally. Bit of a mess, what with just methere.'

'What, worse than this?' she said, ges-turing widely around her. He grunted.

'All right then. If you like.''Wait here. I'll just change my shoes

and put my coat on...' She ran up the stairs,relishing the rattle of her feet on the barewood.

'Dad, why does that lady talk funny?' Samstage-whispered as they left the tiny Spar su-permarket. James sssssshed him, suppress-ing his laughter till they got outside.

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'That's just her accent, chief. Peopletalk differently round here. It's you and methat talk funny to them.'

'Really?' Sam was wide-eyed with thewonder of it. The labels on all the tins weredifferent, old-fashioned looking. And thereweren't any trains, seriously. No tube... Itwas baffling. How did they get about? Hehelped his dad load the bags into the bootand back seat, while Elvis, joyously releasedfrom his mournful vigil at the rear window,lolloped about barking and getting in theway. Sam glanced nervously around him. Itwas like being in another country where allthe words were different, like in Francewhere you had to say 'Pardon' when youmeant excuse me, and 'Mercy' when youmeant thank you. How, he wondered, couldthey possibly remember it all?

Adèle followed Lewyn up through the fieldand on to the road, then off the road on to a

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path, rutted and overgrown, that led upbetween low hedges to his house. The air waswonderfully soft, misty. Autumn was her fa-vourite season. Lewyn tramped on, oblivi-ous, as she trailed behind, breaking off twigsand pulling at the ferns. It's so rural, shekept thinking idiotically, and smiling,smiling.

'These are my fields,' he said, pausingat a gate in the hedge, and she marvelled atthe great green expanses and the grey dry-stone walls. And the sheep. Everywhere youlooked, each one a near-perfect replica of theothers, all stepping neatly through the shortgrass, just eating. All right for them, she re-flected, they didn't have to worry about cho-lesterol and fucking size twelve jeans. Whatdo they think about, she wondered, but cameup with a blank. Just nothing. Baa.

Beside her Lewyn was gazing out ab-sently, worrying (she guessed) about hisgrazing rights on her fields. Her fields,

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indeed. But he seemed to have more thanenough room of his own. Why would he needthe other fields as well? She decided not toask. She didn't want to start all that up again.He could have them if he wanted them.

'All look the same, don't they?' he said,as if catching a delayed echo of her thoughts.'But they're not. Every so often there's onethat's a bit different. Seems to have a mind ofhis own.' (His, she thought? Surely they wereall females? Then she remembered: sheep,like pans and houses and any other 'count-able noun' as Miss Grealis would have said,were masculine around these parts.) 'You'llget one, he'll come up to you and have asniff. Won't be scared of you. Or he'll wanderoff on his own and keep trying to knock thegate open. And he'll be the one they'll all fol-low. He can get 'em panicking, they'll followhim anywhere. And then you'll get one aswon't take the tup, not anyhow.'

'Tup,' she echoed blankly.

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'Aye, you know. Ram you'd probablycall him. You'll get a sheep that'll just kickhim off, no matter how many times you try.Got a mind of his own, see.' (She was struckwith sudden hilarity at the thought that ewesand rams were all 'him' for Lewyn. Nowmight that be an explanation for...)

'And we had one, back when me dadwas alive, I swear to God he'd try and talk toyou. He'd come right up and stand there,bold as you like, and he'd shout at you, andthen when you talked back at him he'd shoutagain. Used to crease me up he did. I'd talkto him most every day. Missed him whenhe'd gone. Sounds stupid I know.'

Before the winter was out, Adèle wassure that she too would be reduced to talkingto the sheep. A girl needed some intelligentcompany after all, and neither of her maleswas much of a talker. Only way to stay sane,she thought, and then shuddered violently ata picture of herself running through the

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fields at night, sheep scattering round her inall directions. She was shouting, 'I only wantto talk to you! Please!'

'What, cold are you?' Lewyn asked.'No I'm fine. Someone just walked

over my grave.''Oh yes,' said Lewyn. City talk, he

thought. 'Mind you, they'll do a bit of shout-ing once the truck comes for 'em. They knowsomething's up, see. Don't ask me how, butthey know all right. They'll all get on, butthey makes a hell of a racket. Funny, butonce they're inside they quiet down again. Ithink they just forget. And they like the ride.I used to go with 'em a few times, me and medad. Big double-decker truck with planks inthe side, and they all just stand there lookinground with their heads poking out. Likethey're going on holiday. Day trippers. Butthen when they get the other end... Well any-way.' He clammed up again, abruptly. Adèlewas getting used to his mood changes now.

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And if he had once had a sheep that he wason chatting terms with, she guessed that thewhole business of slaughter was probablysomething he preferred not to dwell on. Theystood in silence for a while. Then, withoutknowing she was going to, Adèle asked,

'Lewyn? There was no meat in thatstew, was there?'

'Meat? No.''Are you vegetarian?''Aye. All my life, just about, and me

dad.''Do you mind if I ask why?''Mind? No I don't mind. I seen 'em,

see, I seen 'em in the truck and then I've seen'em being done. Processed they call it, but it'sjust slaughtering, like any other kind. I'veseen 'em rolling their eyes and stamping, andshouting. Trying to run. Trying to kick theirway out. Biting each other, trampling. I seenone bite another one's ear clean off it was soscared. Shitting themselves, begging your

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pardon. The ramp down from the truck atthe other end gets so slippery with the shitand the blood from them biting that theycan't walk down him. So they fall over, breaktheir legs, then the ones behind panic andtrample 'em, and they're screaming andscreaming. They got just enough sense to beshit-scared. They know what's coming. Pro-cessing plant, abattoir, whatever you want tocall it, it's got a smell, not just the blood andthat, but it's the fear, you can smell it andthey can smell it an' all. Slaughterhousestinks of fear. No I won't touch no meat, nothank you if it's all the same.' His voice wasferocious. 'And that's not all. Cos sometimeshe don't work like he should, see, the stungun. So they gets slit open and hung up, andthey're still kicking, still screaming. Thenthey're headed for the machine that rips theskin off 'em. I used to get dreams...' Hestopped, and then spat very deliberately, as ifhe had a bad taste in his mouth.

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And there's something else, Adèlethought, I'm sure. Something you're notsaying.

'Anyway, you don't want to get mestarted on that!' he said, and gave a hardbark of a laugh. 'You'll find a lot of 'em roundhere don't eat no meat. Not just me.'

'Sam's just become a vegetarian,' sheremarked after a short pause, 'though henever said why.'

'Oh yes. Well, we should get up to thehouse if we're going. Don't want to standaround in a field all day. Don't want you toget foot rot!'

Elvis sat very erect, his head tilted up arrog-antly, as he was bounced about on the backseat with Sam amongst the carrier bags. Heknew how to behave in a chauffeur-drivenlimo. He would periodically lean forward andpant down James's neck, as if discreetly issu-ing instructions: just pull over to the kerb

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here, driver; and on the comers his feetwould scratch at the battered plastic seats, ashe maintained his dignified posture. A largedog of no clear pedigree.

It was only a three-mile trip, and onlythat because of the serpentine twisting of theroad. Direct, it was no more than a mile anda half. James was in no hurry and theyambled along at thirty or so, enjoying thesights. Sam had already grown blasé aboutsheep, cows and horses (on the way therehe'd been issuing 'more cows!' bulletinsevery thirty seconds or so) and now onlycommented on such exotica as barns, tract-ors and hay bales being thrown into lorries.

James kept his eyes on the road, buthis thoughts were elsewhere. Twice in thenight he thought he'd heard Sam muttering,quite loud but muffled, as if he was shoutingthrough plate glass. Once he thought he'dcaught the word 'Ruthie'.

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He still hadn't spoken to Sam aboutthe accident: the months after it had seen allthree of them running to their own corners,time out, dazed, punch-drunk. Apart fromthe time when Sam had said the Odd Thing,they had hardly talked about it at all, andthat hadn't been talking, that had been rawpanic. For James it wasn't Sam's questionthat had been disturbing, though, it had beenthat little whispered word from Adèle: how?In that moment he'd realized that he kneweven less about Adèle than he thought. He'dfelt a wave of helplessness crashing over him,one of those infrequent, true revelations ofhow totally alone people are beneath theirskulls.

He pulled off the road at the crest of adeep decline, where the road widened outenough for two cars to pass. He could see thestones standing on the tip of the hill justabove Fishguard Bay: eight gods who hadfallen out of the sky one apocalyptic day, and

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been turned to stone by the wickedness ofthe Welsh. The fields were mostly for graz-ing, but there was some harvesting going onand some hay-baling. The colours werefaded, nostalgic and seductive, like a fiftieschildren's picture book, Ten Little Chickens.The high smell of sprayed manure and cutgrass filled up the entire scene, and the sunwas strong enough to bring out all the intric-ate mouldings and ripplings of the land. Youcould even see a twinkle of sea, just about.

Now that the time had come, Jamesfound himself at a loss as to how to open theconversation. Sam did it for him.

'Dad, are you sad?''Yes. Yes I am.''Why?''I'm sad because of Ruthie,' he said,

and didn't realize till he said it how true itwas. It was the complete truth about his lifeat this moment.

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'Oh that,' Sam said. He'd thought itwas because of the house, all messed-up.Cautiously he added; 'But it wasn't anyone'sfault was it? Mum said it was a naccidentand it wasn't anyone's fault, just bad luck.'

Just bad luck. How could she possiblybe so bloodless about it? Just bad luck was aflat battery on a cold morning, or havingevery screwdriver except the particular oneyou needed. He felt a little nudge of anger,and bit it down.

'That's right. It wasn't anyone's fault.Not mine, not your mum's, not yours. NotRuthie's.'

'And Mum tried everything she couldto save her, didn't she?'

'Of course she did. The waves were toobig and she couldn't keep Ruthie out of thewater.'

'Yes. It was the water that killed her.But it wasn't the water's fault either.'

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'No. Not the water's fault.' Thus farhad been agreed already. The water justcouldn't help doing it. Sam thought for amoment.

'And you were with me, up on the hill,with the Frisbee. So you couldn't see, andyou couldn't hear Mum shouting.'

'Fraid so.''And I was on the hill with you. So I

couldn't hear either.''Yup.' God, seven-year-olds could be

tedious, James thought weakly. So literal.The dog had been (very unhappily) in ken-nels, so he was in the clear, thank God.

'And Mum couldn't have known beforethat the water was going to do it, could she?'

Ah but there, you see… The red flag in-dicating danger to swimmers hadn't been up,true. True. But had it been entirely wise ofMum to go out in such a heavy tide? Adèlehad medals for four-hundred and eight-hun-dred metres, breaststroke and crawl, from

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her posh school. Real alloy gongs with blueribbons on a pin. But that was in anOlympic-size swimming pool, built with oldgirls' money after a particularly shamelesstin-rattling campaign. Not in a strong tide offthe Cornish coast. With a young child. Whocouldn't (wouldn't was more like it) swim.Ruthie was, surprise surprise, frightened ofthe water. She didn't like to get her ears wet,or her beautiful long black hair. She didn'teven like splashing in the kiddy pool at thesports centre. Just the kind of challenge thatDel would feel obliged to rise to.

'No, couldn't have known.''Though you didn't want me to swim

earlier on, did you?' Which was true. Jameshad forgotten.

'But I'm not as good a swimmer asyour mum, so I didn't want to risk it.'

'But you thought the water was toobig.'

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'Too big for you, yes. And for me, forthat matter.'

'But you would have saved her if you'dbeen there.'

Now there was a question. How manymillion times had he asked himself that,through the endless sitcoms and wildlifedocumentaries?

'I'd have done anything I could.' Butunspoken: yes, probably, because I'mstronger. And I would never have let her goout there in the first place.

Birds that James couldn't identifytwittered past, low; Elvis growled absently atthem.

'And Ruthie, she didn't even want togo in the sea, did she? She cried.' This cameout almost triumphantly: Ruthie had alwaysbeen crying. Not like Sam.

'Ruthie was a bit scared of the water.'Adèle would relate how Ruthie had screamedthem out of swimming pools, off beaches, off

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reservoirs. Ruthie had never trusted the wa-ter; she'd never really trusted anything. Andshe'd been right, right, right.

'So Mum was being silly, wasn't she?'A slow fog crept over James. The child

was cross-examining him. Your honour,where was this line of questioning tending? Ifail to see the relevance... except that Jamescould see very clearly the relevance. Sam wasechoing his own most abjectly dishonour-able, disloyal thoughts: if it hadn't been forDel's obstinacy!

'No, no.''But you just said ...''Sam! That's enough of that!' Damn!

No matter how he tried he always seemed tobe shouting at Sam to shut up. He tried to becalm.

'Your mum did everything she could,Sam. That's all there is to it.'

'And I couldn't see, I was playing withthe Frisbee, so it wasn't me,’ Sam sang out in

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a nursery-rhyme voice. James was suddenlytoying with the tiniest little bite of a memory... playing with the Frisbee, yes, and Samhad been flinging it harder and harder, andhadn't he been shouting 'down, down'...?James couldn't be sure if this was a real re-collection or a dream, like the dream whereSam stood behind him, chanting. Down? ordrown?

James started the car.'No-one's fault,' he said again, but dis-

tantly. What was there in the world thatwasn't ultimately someone's fault?

Lewyn's house, thought Adèle, was nothingwhatsoever like the farmhouse of her ima-ginings. She'd visualized copper warmingpans, well-kept knick-knacks, a great kitchentable and roaring fires, maybe even the oddcorn dolly. Lewyn's house was rather, well,suburban was the word. Adèle had the city-dweller's distaste for the suburban, as well as

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the snob's. Built of brick, tidily curtainedwindows, ugly floral carpets, mantelpiecewith clock. Despite herself she was lookingfor clues: a framed picture perhaps of ahandsome moustached man, an oldvalentine card with Love Always Roger x. Ofcourse she was disappointed. There was justan untidy, single man's house, no more. Gym(upstairs), workroom (cellar), and livingquarters in between. The kitchen was grimyand neglected, the 1960s cooker grease-bound and the working surfaces smeared,imperfectly cleaned. Bet you new Flash doesit in half the time of your old cream cleaner!she thought and smiled grimly. Inadequatehousewife as she was ('You're a tramp and alush and an unfit mother,' as James used tosay to her in their old flat - he'd got the linefrom Dallas) she could smell the depth ofLewyn's domestic ineptitude in every cornerof the place. What is it about women like me,she wondered, that we can't see a cooker

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without wishing it scoured and gleaming?Inveterate toilet-scrubbers the lot of us, shethought. Guilt probably.

Lewyn was an efficient if uninspiredhost.

'This is the bathroom,' he'd say, show-ing her the bathroom. 'And this is thebedroom...'

His bedroom was neither spartan norsybaritic, certainly no bachelor's passion pit,but no monk’s cell either. It was just messy.And he had a single bed, at item of furniturefor which Adèle had only the profoundestcontempt. You could sleep in a single bed,maybe. But you certainly couldn't do any-thing much else in it. Except of course... Shecaught herself looking for wrinkled, stiffenedhandkerchiefs or crumpled tissues, andchided herself. Nosy bitch. (But what did hehave under his mattress?)

He showed her the weights and pulleysin the gym (she casually demonstrated her

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competence with York machines by insertingand twisting the key to change the weight.And she, oh, very matter of factly, curled fourof the black iron plates. Lewyn watched,impassive.)

In the course of showing her how thelat extension pull-down pulley worked, hestripped off his shirt (she hated to admit it,but she was impressed) and as he lifted hisarms she saw a large, untidy scar runningdown from his armpit and under his HanesBeefy-T Athletic.

How'd you get that scar, Lewyn?' sheasked, and was shocked as the weights ab-ruptly crashed home, the pulley bangingagainst the frame. Lewyn stood facing themachine, his arms back at his sides. Then hereached for his shirt.

'Oh that? Had that a good few yearsnow.'

'War wound, huh? Or were you goredby marauding sheep?' She kept her tone

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light, but she had been more than startled byhis reaction. He buttoned his shirt, lookingaway from her.

'I'd completely forgotten I had him,tell you the truth.' Adèle said nothing.Waited. 'Well, I'll tell you if you've got a fewdays to spare!'

He sat on the bench, and she sat onthe floor against the wall.

'Nothing much to it really. It was justan accident I suppose you'd call it, though itwasn't no accident neither, not really. It wasEdith.' He paused and looked at Adèle.'Edith Charpentier. Oh well, I suppose youwas going to find out anyway. She was thewoman who lived up Ty-Gwyneth beforeyour Uncle Sebastian bought it. Her and herhusband Raoul. He was French, 'parently.She had a bit of trouble, see. Truth of it is shewent a bit mad. Went round saying all kindsof things about Raoul. You wouldn't believethe half of it! Said he was the devil, he'd

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murdered the children, all this.' Lewynpaused and glanced over at Adèle, as if, shethought, he's checking my response. He's be-ing very careful what he says.

'Well anyway, she came up here onenight. Banging on the door, middle of thenight, in her nightie an' all, no shoes on herand it was winter. So I got up and let her in,gave her a cup of tea, and she started all that"He's the devil" business. Said he had herlocked up in a room in the house and she'donly 'scaped by going for his eyes with a nailor summat. She wanted me to get the police,'cos he was planning to kill her, 'parently.She was begging me. I wasn't going to doanything of the kind of course, and I told herso; then she starts screaming and crying, allconfused stuff, bits out of the Bible an' allsorts.' Lewyn swallowed hard. Adèle believedthis part.

'And then, I was just trying to quietenher down a bit, and she started to - you know

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- she started to stroke my hair and she wastouching me. So I got her off me, and thenshe was going, "You're in it as well!" and shepulled out this nail. Big six-inch masonrything. From the pocket in her nightie. Andshe said, "But I've got it all written down. Onthe wall." That's what she said, then she,kind of slashed at me with this nail, and shecaught me under the arm, as you saw. Bledterrible, and I was up the hospital for tet'nus,cos the nail was all rusted. Never healedright for months. Had to have stitches and allsorts.' He sighed.

'And that's that really. Years ago thiswas.'

Adèle waited, but that seemed to be it.As an explanation she felt it ranked along-side 'ship sinks' as an explanation of the Tit-anic. But she wasn't going to start asking alot of questions. Lewyn clearly thought thathe'd told her enough, and would probablyevade any deeper probing, at least for now.

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And there was also some small part of herthat was flashing a warning sign saying 'Youreally don't want to know the rest.' Caution,submerged structure. Dangerous.

Dangerous.'Shocking, isn't it? All these rural

goings-on?' said Lewyn, and laughed. Theystood up and went downstairs.

After Adèle had left Lewyn went back up tothe gym and again took off his shirt. Heraised his left arm and ran his finger downthe scar, regarding himself in the full-lengthmirror bolted to the wall. He hoped hehadn't said too much. And he felt the in-justice he'd done to Edith in his account. Yes,she was mad at the end. Who wouldn't be,after what had happened? After what hadbeen done. What she'd seen. Her madnesshad been, in a curious way, entirely sane: itwas the only thing she could do that madesense. And Lewyn knew that, disordered

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though her accounts had been, they had con-tained truth.

All written down. On the wall. With a rustysix-inch masonry nail.

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4

Blue

Adèle worked fast, applying the paint with apalette knife. She was merely blocking in,great swathes of pure colour, allowing theform to emerge from her hands. She foundshe worked best when she wasn't consciousof doing it; somehow the paint got thick andsticky when she was trying too hard and thelines didn't flow, the shapes were too rigid.She allowed her mind to travel freely whenshe was painting, and sometimes it was likeflying. She would feel her senses going out,one by one, like stars being covered over bynight clouds, until only the colours re-mained, vast luminous fields of colour; then

she would come to, and a painting would bethere, like a surprise birthday present. Shewould leave it for a while, a day or a month,and then add the finishing details; only atthat stage would she be aware of using herskill and technique.

Sometimes it was like flying: today,however, she was thinking about what shewould cook that evening for Lewyn and Dilysand Dave. Her range of vegetarian meals wasnot very extensive, and most of her firstideas struck her as rather dull: vegetablelasagne, pizza (without any pepperoni?), len-til croquettes in tomato sauce. She wantedthe meal to be a success. She had realizedthat in a situation as isolated as this (therewas no phone, even) neighbours would be alifeline. They had the car but Fishguard wasat least fifteen minutes away in good condi-tions, and Lewyn's phone was their only im-mediate contact with the outside world. InLondon everything had seemed almost

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limitless in scope - there was a twenty- four-hour 7-Eleven five minutes away (seven daysa week, three hundred and sixty-five days ayear, as they proudly proclaimed on thematchboxes), and every conceivable emer-gency service only a phone call and a fewminutes away. Friends. Company, that yousometimes had to work hard to escape. Shewould look forward to an afternoon alone asa treat, and a weekend with just James andSam was something that had to be plannedlong ahead. But here! It would be possible(hell, it would be inevitable) that she mightgo for a whole day without a conversation!Of any kind! With anyone! If Lewyn didn'tcome round, or if she could find no excuse tovisit him (and she'd already 'run out' of tea,pepper and eggs) then she was doomed tospend the whole day with only James andSam for company.

She blushed at the tone of the thought- it seemed uncharitable - but, all the same,

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her relationship with James had never beenbased on talking. The blush deepened at thethought of what the relationship was basedon.

Their first week together had beenspent almost entirely in bed. On Tuesday,she had staggered out for milk and cigar-ettes; on Thursday he'd gone to get sataychicken and special rice; and on Saturdaythey'd gone to the pub. They'd stayed thereexactly one hour and fifteen minutes. Thenback to bed. God, it had been heavenly. Theywere both astonished and even abashed, af-terwards, by the pleasure they got from eachother. It had seemed endless, and by the endof the first week they were both bruised andtender and stiff from their exertions. Say onething for him, she thought lewdly, he's gotstaying power. He was what, at her (onlymoderately) expensive boarding schoolwould have been called an ever-ready eddy.A five times a night man. A-I shag. And big...

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Of course size doesn't matter, she added du-tifully, but Christ it made a difference! Thevery first time she had been frankly andopenly incredulous at the size of him, thegirth, the length. She'd even believed she'dnever be able to get him in, but of coursethey'd managed somehow.

Vegetable curry and fried rice? Nutloaf with cranberries and mushroom sauce?

(Getting him in her mouth had been adifferent matter, but once they'd got theangle right...)

On Sunday she'd gone back to her flat.She didn't see him on Monday, or Mondaynight. She moved in on Tuesday, and they'dspent twenty-six nights apart since. Nearlyten years. She could hardly believe it. And inall that time they'd had only a handful of ex-tended conversations.

And Sam (bless him) ran mostly to'what's inside the dog?' and 'what would hap-pen if you ate wood?' type discussions,

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entertaining but not a conversation. In aconversation you talked about God, food,little black dresses reduced from £27 to £15,your work, the horrors of breast-feeding.Families. That sort of thing. Adèle had beendelighted (if somewhat taken aback) byLewyn's description of the slaughterhouse: ithad been a real conversation with a real per-son. His nostalgia for the talking sheep hadchilled her slightly (she was reminded of acar-window sticker she'd seen as they weredriving through Heathrow: 'Wales: WhereMen are Men and Sheep are Nervous') butthen all it really showed was that Lewyn toowas someone who needed to talk. Even if itwas only to a sheep...

Three of the twenty-six nights shehadn't spent with James had been right afterRuthie had died, when his inability/refusalto talk to her had led to rage and violence.On one occasion she'd shoved him so hardthat he'd lost his balance and cracked his

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head open against the door jamb. Even thenhe hadn't responded, he'd just retreated,sulked, cried, while she rubbed the blood offthe door, viciously.

Lamb casserole with rich dark gravyand soft stewed root vegetables...

She shook the thought from her head.All right then, just the stewed bloody root ve-getables. She wanted something nice but nottoo fancy. Didn't want them to run away withthe idea that she was some kind of little richgirl, patronizing them with her sophisticatedurban ways. (First Year Etiquette and Com-portment. Rule Number One: Always makeyour guests feel at home.) Frozen veggybur-ger and Smash (Sam's current favourite).Egg and chips.

'La-di-da,' she sighed, and stood backfrom the canvas.

There was a problem in the composition. Orrather, more specifically, it was a pile of shit.

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She needed a large object of some kind in thebottom left foreground. Something veryclose-up and detailed to balance out themisty autumn landscape. It would come toher. She lit a cigarette and went down tomake a cup of tea.

After he'd got to 'hold the string very tightand don't move' while James knocked asmall wooden peg into the ground to tie it to,Sam had got bored and wandered off.

'Stay where I can see you!' Jamescalled after him. 'And don't go in the house.Your mum's painting!' Sam decided to makea hole in the dry-stone wall.

James could see the problem in itsentirety.

The house was built practically on astream; the ground on the far side of itbanked up, so that water drained down intothe fields surrounding it. The house wasn'tjust damp, it was all but running. So: a

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trench all the way round it, like a moat, per-forated clay pipes in the trench, then acovered pipe right across the field like a cul-vert to the septic tank near the cliff. It wouldput an additional burden on the tank, whichwould mean emptying it more often (andwatching it carefully in wet weather, unlessyou wanted the end of the field to become anopen sewer). But it was the only real solu-tion. Then renew the damp course, or replaceit completely lower down. Spray everythingwith silicone. And hope for the best. It oughtto work.

I'll bet there's no record of the plumb-ing and electric lines, he thought grimly. AndI'll bet there's no map of the drainage linesalready in place. So no JCB. It'd be a pickaxeand shovel job. He was looking at two weeks'work, and that was before anything could bedone actually in the house. And he'd have togo very carefully: digging down into Godknew what, he'd be lucky to avoid slamming

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the pickaxe into an underground power cableor pipe. Softly softly catchee monkey.

The string was stretched between twopegs, one near the house, the other near theseptic tank. He walked the distance; close totwo hundred feet, he estimated. And notlevel either, slightly hilly. To get a propergradient on the pipe he'd have to dig deep,then lay shingle, rake it all down. Long stripsof wood and a spirit level. Christ. He got hisspade and went back along the stretchedstring, turning over the turf. The ground wassoft, and, he feared, rather more clayey thanmight have been wished for. Clay was aswine to dig, and when it got wet it was acomplete bastard. It was at least double thework of dry soil. The spade would immedi-ately become clogged and heavy, his bootswould be caked, and after an hour his dodgyback would start complaining. And then allthe stones... Bloody Sebastian was certainlygoing to get his money's worth. Still, better

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working than thinking. He started to dig inearnest, beginning near the septic tank.

Within ten minutes he was sweating,despite the cold. He pulled off his anorakand jumper, and felt the wind bite. He couldsee Sam at the far end of the field, methodic-ally damaging the wall. He started to shoutat him, then stopped himself. The poor kidhad to do something. And they could rebuildthe wall together some time. A nice little jobfor a fine day, dry-stone walling. His shovelturned up something white. Chalk? No, itwas more like bone. He picked it up andcleaned the clay off it. A bone of some kind.Hardly surprising on farmland. He glancedalong the barbed-wire fence running thelength of the cliff edge. There were tufts ofwool on the barbs. Sheep had been meander-ing about in this field for scores of years,maybe hundreds. Bound to leave the oddbone behind. Lewyn had agreed to put thesheep into the adjoining field while James

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was digging, the field on the other side of thelow wall that Sam was at this moment pa-tiently dismantling. James flung the boneout over the cliff, and shouted at Sam toleave the wall alone.

'Go and ask your mum to make me acup of tea,' he called; Sam plodded off obedi-ently. He was a good child. Not perhaps thelittle bruiser that James had had in mind; hewas more introvert, more intricate than that.He didn't want to be a footballer, he wantedto be an architect for God's sake. But he wasa good 'un. Intelligent, sensitive, perhaps abit secretive, but not a milksop. Jamesturned up another bone.

In the house Adèle paused as she squeezedout a tea bag: she felt a shiver run over her.Draught probably. James had done emer-gency work, what he called first aid, on thehouse, boarding up the gaping windows andgetting the electrics to work. But it was still

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barely habitable. Everywhere you went therewere draughts, coming up through the floor-boards and down the chimneys. Lewyn hadlent them a Calor-gas heater which Adèlehad put in her makeshift studio on thesecond floor. Or rather James had put itthere, complaining that she would want it uptwo flights of bloody stairs. But he'd do any-thing for her, she knew that. She wished he'ddecided to do a bit more inside the house be-fore he started on the drainage problem, butshe accepted his reasoning. Get as much aspossible done outside before the wet came,and the frost. Once the ground froze youcould forget about digging. And so what ifyou had to wear two jumpers inside and youcouldn't take your shoes off? She shiveredagain. It was still only late October; God helpthem come February. If we're still here, shethought, and was immediately puzzled by thenotion. Where else would they be?

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Elvis lolloped into the kitchen andcame to her, and she buried her hands in hiswarm glossy fur, crouching down to him. Hebreathed his unspeakably bad breath on herenthusiastically and she pushed his faceaway. She stroked his belly. He was gettingto be a stocky, older dog, with little touchesof grey round the muzzle. A phlegmatic, se-rene animal, and so gentle with Sam. Neverso much as bared his teeth at him, evenwhen Sam was the most terrible of twos andbelieved that Elvis's tail was detachable if hecould only pull hard enough.

There was a knock on the door, andElvis woofed and padded off to see. Adèlefollowed, surprised by a feeling of unease, al-most alarm. But it was only Sam, lookingfrozen and dejected.

'Hiya Sammy! Sammy Davis Junior,'she said, and rubbed his cold little ears.'Whatcha been doing? Helping your dad?'

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'I held the string. Then he had to dodigging, and I can't hold the spade right,'said Sam, 'and then I couldn't play with thewall.' He sounds way off, thought Adèle.Poor little frozen mite.

'He says will you make him a cup oftea, please?' The "please", she reflected, wasSam's addition. James had never been onefor common courtesy.

'Well that's funny, cos I was just thisminute making one. Isn't that funny?'

'Yes,' said Sam correctly, looking as ifhe would never find anything funny again.

'Oh baby, you're frozen stiff. Do youwant some hot milk? I believe there's somechocolate Nesquik lying about somewherethat might interest you.'

'Yes please,' he said and followed her,tragically, into the kitchen. Elvis came alongas well, treading respectfully behind.

Adèle got out some large sheets of sug-ar paper and his paints and brushes and the

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plastic water jar with the magic lid whichdidn't leak when you knocked it over. Even atseven, Sam was becoming a connoisseur ofgood design. She left him at the kitchen tablewith his hot chocolate in the Can You SeeThe Lions? mug. (The lions were at thebottom.)

She put her padded jacket on and tookJames's tea out to him. As she neared himshe stopped, and the shiver walked over heragain: lying around his feet were some lar-gish white objects which, even from a dis-tance, were unmistakably bones. And he washolding another one in his hand, cleaning itoff.

Don't touch it! she screamed inwardly.He looked up (guilty, she thought: why areyou looking so guilty?) and waved the boneat her.

'Jamie?' she said as she handed himthe tea. 'What are all these doing here?'

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'Don't know. But there's enough ofthem.'

'Are they...''Sheep. They're sheep bones.''Are you sure?''Well, either that or midget bones.' Or

children's bones, she thought, and felt asurge of vertigo. 'Curiouser and curiouser,'she said. 'What they wanna go a-buryin' themidgets for, Jiiiiiim?' she drawled in hercountry-bumpkin Bristol accent. His parents'accent.

'Well, you know country folk,' hedrawled back. She regarded the scatteredwhite objects.

'Highly irregular. Elvis'll be pleased.'She hugged him and he gave her a

warm wet kiss on the ear.'Come in and have something to eat,'

she said.'I'll give it another hour. My curiosity,

as you posh folk say, is piqued.'

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'OK.'She went back to the house and

watched Sam painting. He was humming.

James dug on. The bones were everywhere,and he found himself digging down deeprather than along the neat line of turned-over turf. The sheep in the next field hadgathered at the dent Sam had made in thewall. They were watching.

Sheep bones, he told himself. Justsheep bones.

Why?Too small for human bones (unless

they were children's). Too small. Have to bea midget. Why would anyone bury midgets?His mind feverishly circled round the prob-lem as he dug faster, slamming the spade in-to the glutinous, slimy clay. The sheep staredat him with their dead eyes, innumerablepairs of flat, black little eyes. They werestarting to jostle each other; he glanced over

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at them and saw that their ears were up,their heads stuck forward.

He threw down the spade and pickedup one of the bones. It was blackenedhalfway along its length. Barbecue. That wasit. There was a barbecue, and they buried thebones afterwards.

Sam was painting a house. There was smokecoming out of the chimney. Adèle watchedhim, puzzled. There seemed to be rather a lotof smoke.

More blackened bones, some of them endingin crumbling, charred fragments. Some ofthem broken cleanly. The sheep were makingsmall sounds as they jostled and pushed atthe wall, that strange, banal sheep sound,baaaa: really it was more like maaa. Ma. Thesound a young child might make. If it was introuble. If, just for instance, someone was

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trying to harm it. Burn it… He shook hishead, and picked up the spade again.

Sam dipped his brush; the water in the magicjar was becoming very cloudy. He reachedfor the black again. More smoke, and nownot from the chimney but from one of theupper rooms. His humming was louder, andAdèle again felt giddy. Don't touch it!

James plunged the spade and turned oversomething more worrying than the white ofthe bones. Something blue. Bright sky blue.He lifted it clear of the ground: it was wool.Knitted wool. Charred.

He held it in his hand, all time frozen,a clear still point. Blue.

Adèle watched as Sam dropped his brush,splashing more smoke into the ever blacker

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sky, and ran out of the kitchen, threw openthe door, ran across the field.

James flung the piece of cloth over thecliff, into the sea, and then Sam was there,scrabbling in the loose soil.

'Sam?' James was suddenly confused.Why was Sam here? Adèle watched from thedoorway, her mind full of black smoke.

'He was frightened of them,' Sam wassaying, 'he thought they were devils. But theywere frightened of him. They screamed. Likethis.'

And Sam opened his mouth, a bone ineither hand, and screamed, a high shrill madshriek of terror, on and on; he drew breath,and then it came again, wild, unmodulated,inhuman, a ferocious, primal sound. Jamesgrabbed at him, and Sam went limp, fallingawkwardly amongst the bones.

Spare ribs. Chilli sauce.

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Adèle wrenched herself forward, dimlyaware of the audience of alert little black andwhite faces gathered at the wall.

James came towards her carrying theslack bundle in his arms.

'Go and phone the doctor, he's hadsome kind of a...'

'There's no phone! There's no phone!Oh God!'

'Adèle.' James spoke loudly, not ex-actly shouting. 'Go up to Lewyn's and phonea doctor.'

'But shouldn't I stay here with Sam?Oh God what's the matter with him? Whywas he making that noise?'

'No. I'll stay with Sam. Go and phone.'Adèle stared at Sam for a moment, went totouch his head, then James pushed past her.She started to run up the field; the sheep, shenoted, were dispersing. Nothing to see here.It's all over.

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James carried Sam into the house, and real-ized at once that there was nowhere to puthim. No couch, no armchair. The front roomwas devoid of any kind of furniture. He wentinto the kitchen and, clearing a space amongthe paints and brushes, laid him on the table,feeling that he was doing something verywrong. The child was completely limp: infact he appeared to be fast asleep. Half re-membered words floated into James's head,epilepsy, narcolepsy, hysterical paralysis. Ormaybe Sam had just fainted dead away, asVictorian women were wont to do, faintedwith terror. He'd been muttering somethingabout being frightened before he startedscreaming, making that noise. Could peoplereally just faint with fear?

James regarded his son, curled up onthe kitchen table, and tried to make himselfthink. In the time it would take a doctor oran ambulance to get out here, he could drivethe boy into Fishguard. If any treatment was

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needed straight away then that would savetime, rather than have someone come all theway out and then have to go back. And itseemed dreadfully wrong to be just standinghere, watching the child asleep on the kit-chen table. He would leave a note for Adèle.He cast around for a pen and paper and sawSam's painting on the floor. Smoke. Hepicked up the still-wet brush and wrote onthe back of the painting, in big splashy blackletters:

'Taken him to F'gd. Stay with Lewynwill ring.'

He felt for his car keys: in his jacket.Where was his fucking jacket? You took it offdown by the septic tank. By the hole. Hesprinted out and ran down his line of turned-over earth. The brown and green anorak wasright there, on the edge of the hole he'd dug.The bones gleamed dully all around it. Hegrabbed for it and ran back.

Sam was sitting up, rubbing his eyes.

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'Sam?''What?' Sam had that cross, bleary

look he always had when he was waking up.'Are you all right?''Got a sore throat. I was painting and

then I fell down the hole. Got a sore throat.'From all the screaming. Did he

remember?'Apart from that.' James approached

him, feeling inexplicably reluctant to get tooclose. 'Do you feel all right apart from yourthroat?'

'Yeah but who was out by the hole?'What?'What do you mean?' James went to

the table and sat down, swinging Sam's legsround and holding them.

'There was a man by the hole. Had astick thing.' Sam's eyelids were drooping, asif he wanted to go back to sleep.

James watched him narrowly. 'Sam, Iwas by the hole. I was digging. Remember?'

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'No, it wasn't you,' said Sam, shakinghis head crossly. 'He was different. Had astick thing. Why am I on the table?'

'I'm going to take you into town. Doyou feel like a drive?'

'OK, but I feel a bit sleepy. Is it late?''Come on, chief.' James helped him off

the table, and the boy stood shakily, as ifcoming round from an anaesthetic.

'Aren't we taking Elvis?''No. Can you walk OK? Want me to

carry you?''Legs feel funny.' But he managed to

stagger out to the car, climbed in, and wasasleep on the back seat before James hadturned the key.

Adèle stared at James's note, not able to readit clearly. She didn't understand for aminute. Then she thought, bastard, whycouldn't he wait for me? It was almost as ifhe wanted me out of the way, sending me off

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like that. Bastard! Now she'd have to wait forhours, assuming he remembered to ring atall. She found her cigarettes and lit one up,fuming.

Lewyn had looked considerablystartled when she'd found him in the garage,tinkering with a motor of some kind. No,he'd looked horrified. She'd been shouting'Doctor! Need a doctor!' and he'd actuallybacked away from her, with a wrench in hishand. She laughed harshly. Just anothercrazy woman coming after him with a rustynail, she thought.

It would be at least half an hour beforeJames could ring, and he'd probably have towait at the doctor's for a while. An hour,probably. She glanced at her watch: still only1.15! She felt she'd been awake for days. Shewalked out into the field, and it seemed nat-ural to follow the line James had dug. Followthe yellow brick road. And at the end of it, apit.

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She peered in. Dark, moist-lookingground. A few bones. What was there here tobring on Sam's fit of screaming? What hadhe seen? When he was a baby she'd comeacross him a few times staring hard at abso-lutely nothing, staring out of his cot at aboutthe level a person's head would be. Once he'dheld out his hands and said, 'Da! Da!' de-lightedly, gurgling. Children are always see-ing ghosts, she reflected. Elvis was the same.He'd suddenly stiffen, put his ears back,growl. Nothing there. But then Elvis alsogrowled at people wearing hats and (to herperpetual shame) black people. Racist dog.Where had he got that from?

And then she thought, where's Elvisnow? After a few brief, formal, inconclusivemeetings with the sheep, he had taken tokeeping well clear of them. He just didn't likethe way they looked at him, she guessed: afew seconds of meaningful eye contact andhe was backing down, licking his lips,

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lowering his head. He certainly felt no ances-tral urge to go rounding them up. Shewandered round behind the septic tank, andthere he was, shame- faced, grinning up ather, a bone between his paws. She laughed.To a dog, the world and everything in it isjust food, she thought. Just meat.

She went back to the house to get hislead, and then returned, picked up his bone(he looked reproachful but that was all) andclipped on the lead.

She felt strangely carefree as shewalked up the field and on to the road; justtaking the dog out. Her son was (for all sheknew) lying in a coma in a doctor's consult-ing room in Fishguard (oh, and her daughterwas dead) but begone dull care! She had al-ways known that one day something wouldhappen to Sam. And now it had. And she wasrelieved. She couldn't wait to see Lewyn'sface when she appeared yet again! Sheshould wear a Halloween mask and a green

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wig: that'd give him something to thinkabout.

James parked the car outside the chemist(Renfrew and Sons, Dispensing Pharmaceut-icals, as the sign rather inexpertly put it) andwent in. He was out again within minutes,and followed the directions the assistant(Mrs Renfrew, he wondered, or a Son indrag?) had given him: down to the square(except it was a triangle), then right up NewChurch Road, then left.

A woman answered the door: no, TheDoctor was on his rounds. Was it an emer-gency? It seemed awkward for James to saythat it was, when the patient was sleepingsoundly on the back seat, dribbling, notbleeding, not even bruised, in fact not in anyway distressed. Apart from a sore throat.

'I don't know,' James said lamely. 'Butwe're pretty worried about him.'

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The woman, who had probably seenseveral thousand anxious parents in hertime, looked sympathetic.

'He had a kind of fit,' James added,after it became clear that the woman in theneat wool suit and the perm from Alyson'sCoiffures was waiting for a bit more to go on.

'Oh I see. Well, The Doctor' (andJames could hear the capital letters in hertone) 'will be back at around two o'clock forhis dinner. If it was an emergency, you couldcall an ambulance and get him to the hospit-al in Haverfordwest.' She paused; then,cautiously-

'If you like, I could take a look at him.I'm a qualified nurse. Not a Doctor, you un-derstand, but I could take a look.' Jamescouldn't help detecting the hopefulness inher voice.

'Oh, would you?' he said, relieved, butstill uncertain. He was sure there was no callfor an ambulance. Ambulances were for

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gushing wounds and heart attacks andbroken legs. Not for little boys with sorethroats who'd had a funny turn. Anxietytempered by embarrassment. And the dreadof making a fuss.

James picked Sam up from the backseat with some difficulty (he was a big seven,and dead weight) and carried him inside.The woman who was not a Doctor led himinto the consulting room, and James laidSam down on the brown vinyl adjustablecouch with the disposable paper cover. Hehovered as she did all the things nurses aretrained to do (temperature, blood pressure,pulse) without disturbing Sam in the slight-est. He noticed a big, fancy framed certificateon the wall and alongside it a smaller, lessostentatious one: Sylvia Anne Castle, SRN.

'How long has he been asleep?' sheasked as she ripped the Velcro tabs apart onthe blood pressure cuff.

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'How long? About half an hour. Well,he passed out, and then he woke up again,and then he went to sleep again. In the car.'

'With your permission I'll wake himup.'

'Yes, of course.''What's his name?''Sam.'She leaned over the little boy and

stroked his (perfectly dry) forehead.'Sa-am,' she sang out, 'Sa-am,' so

gently that James was amazed at how readilySam opened his eyes and blinked. Usually ittook the equivalent of a plane crash on theroof to waken him.

'Now don't you fret. You just fellasleep. I'm going to take your jumper off.OK? Can you lift your arms for me? That'smy lovely, there.'

She stripped Sam to the waist, he co-operating solemnly. She sat him up andtapped his back, all over. Then she went to a

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cabinet and came back with an object like apencil which she shone into his eyes, holdinghis eyelids back.

'I'm only doing what any casualty doc-tor would do first,' she said calmly. She putthe ophthalmoscope back in the cabinet, andcame back, sat on the couch beside him.

'How'd you feel? Any pains? Head-ache?' She stroked his forehead as she spoke,and Sam watched her in awe, his little whitechest painfully thin-looking next to thislarge, heavy woman.

'No. But I've got a sore throat,' he said,though trying to imbue the fact with a littledrama.

'Let's have a look then. Open widenow.'

She switched on an adjustable lampand swung it over, then took her glasses fromher breast pocket, put them on, and peereddown Sam's mouth.

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'OK. You can get dressed again now.'James hung about, helplessly.

'Is he all right?' he burst out,embarrassed.

Sylvia Castle turned to look at him.'He's certainly in no immediate

danger. You say he had a seizure of somekind?'

How to begin...'He screamed and then he passed out.

Only it wasn't just screaming, it was...''Has he ever done it before?''No. Nothing like this.''Excuse me asking, did he excuse him-

self?' It took James a second to understandthe question.

'Oh. No, no he didn't.''Any disturbance in his breathing? Did

he bite his tongue? Any convulsions,twitching?'

'Well no I don't think so but...''Did be hurt his head?'

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'No.''Anything else you can tell me?' She

was looking very directly at James.'No,' he said finally. 'Just this

screaming.''OK. Thank you.' She turned back to

Sam. 'Sam? Do you remember whathappened?'

'I was painting. And then I think I fellin a hole or something. And then I was onthe table.'

'That's right, he fell into a hole I wasdigging. He was saying something...'

'Just a moment, if you please,' she si-lenced him. 'Now Sam. Did you feel funnybefore you fell in the hole? Did you feel, oh Idon't know, kind of dreamy?'

'No but there was someone there andhe was telling me something, he had a stick.'

'That was me. My spade.'She gazed at Sam for a while; he gazed

back sorrowfully, blinking.

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'Right then. If you want to wait for TheDoctor he won't be long. You'll want TheDoctor to look at him. The Doctor will re-commend what to do.' She went to the sinkand washed her hands.

'I'll get you a cup of tea. Would youlike to sit in the waiting room? And wouldyou like some orange juice, Sam?'

Sam nodded, mournful, and now alsosomewhat disappointed.

'Yes please.' It wasn't like on Casualty.There weren't enough machines.

They sat in the waiting room, wherethere was an electric fire (one bar) andtattered copies of Punch and The Lady. Samlooked at the cartoons in Punch; he'd readthe caption, then ponder it for a moment;then, 'Dad...'

Sylvia Castle came back in, bearingtea, orange juice and a disapproving look.

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'Is it your car, the one by the gate?' sheasked, as she handed James the tea. Jamesadmitted that it was.

'I must ask you to move it, I'm afraid,Mr...?'

'Tullian. James Tullian.''Mr Tullian. You see that's where The

Doctor leaves his car. You can park furtherup.'

'Oh. Yes of course.' James respondedat once to the authority in Nurse Castle'svoice, as he supposed many thousands ofpeople had done before him. He ruffledSam's hair.

'Back in a minute, chief.'Sam watched him go, then carried on

puzzling over the cartoons. Sylvia regardedthe solemn little child for a few seconds;something troubled her about him, shecouldn't say what. She left the room, frown-ing, then paused outside the door. Now shecouldn't see him she realized what it was.

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Humming. A slow, unmusical drone, like ahoney bee. She listened hard; he onlystopped to breathe. He was humming con-tinuously. Humming, screaming, fainting.Quite a busy lad, she thought. No wonder hisfather looked half out of his mind. Andwhere was his mother? She sighed and wentback to the consulting room to open a newfile in the name of Sam Tullian. It wouldn'tsurprise her one bit if it wasn't soon to be-come quite a thick one. And it would only bea matter of time before Mr and Mrs wereneeding files as well.

This time, Lewyn had merely looked an-noyed as she came up the path to the garage,with the dog lurking behind her, snuffling.He saw at once that she had a bone in herhand, and found that he wasn't at all sur-prised. He had begun to get the impressionthat her elevator didn't go to the top floor, as

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Dave, a voracious reader of American literat-ure, would put it (usually about Dilys).

'It's only me!' she called and waved.Lewyn stood up from the shearer motor andsmiled politely, as Adèle explained what hadhappened. She hated to be such a nuisance,but if he wouldn't mind if she waited forJames's phone call...

'He's got my number then, has he?'Lewyn asked, eyebrows raised.

'Oh shit! Pardon me. I don't know if hehas. Are you in the book?'

'No.''Shit!' Damn these suspicious, ridicu-

lous people! Why the fuck not? she wanted toyell at him, but restrained herself.Neighbours.

Lewyn sighed.'I could run you into town if you like.

Won't take but quarter of an hour.'Adèle really did hate to be a nuisance.

She'd always been her own woman. She

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never let James do any of those things (asshe called them) in the house, like changingfuses and unscrewing jars of pickle. And nowhere she was interrupting a working man,being chauffeured around. Still, she reallyhad no choice. James had seen to that, har-ing off in that absurd way. Overreacting. Hewas probably in a phone box in Fishguardright now arguing with an operator whowouldn't give him an ex-directory number.And would he even know the address?(Come to think of it, did she know theaddress?)

She accepted, and Lewyn went in toget the oil off his hands. As she was waitingshe looked down at her hand and realizedshe was still carrying the bone. What onearth did she think she was doing, wanderingaround the Welsh countryside with a bone(sheep bone, she told herself carefully) in herhand? Like Lady Macbeth, she thoughtvaguely; no, that was blood. Still, where

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there were bones there must be blood. Sheepblood. She remembered Lewyn's horror ofthe slaughterhouse. He, she thought, mustreally think I'm mad. He's humouring a mad-woman. She felt cold at the thought, andangry at James. It was his bloody doing, thewhole business. He should never have star-ted all that digging. God knew what wasdown there.

Sam's painting floated into her head;she flung the bone away from her, as far asshe could, and called Elvis.

And then she thought: tortillas withspiced cheese and salad. She could pick it allup while she was in town. And guacamole.And exotic fruit salad.

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5

Puzzling Evidence

'Da-daaaa!'She entered the room, plates in each

hand and balanced on her arms, and sailedto the table where Dilys, Dave, Lewyn andJames were waiting obediently, smiling ateach other. Lewyn was wearing the slate-greypolo shirt Dilys had bought him last Christ-mas. Dilys was gorgeous in paisley silkblouse and pearls ('Real!' she'd hissed atJames when he'd complimented her onthem. 'You can bite 'em!'). Dave grinnednervously from a good wool sweater of inde-terminate design, and James was his

handsome finest, starched white shirt andslicked-back hair.

'Da-daaaa!'There was a moment of silence as she

expertly laid the plates before her guests. Itwas the kind of moment she sometimes hadnightmares about. Their eyes flickeredanxiously from the plates to each other.Lewyn gazed off into the distance. It was adisaster.

'My, aren't these pretty?' Dilys mur-mured finally, smiling conspiratorially at herhusband. 'I don't believe I've ever had thesebefore! What do you call them?'

Adèle summoned up a smile from thebottom of the pit she'd just crawled into.

'Tortillas. They're Mexican.' Gamely,bravely, Dilys sliced off a comer of one of thefolded cardboard things on her plate and,eyes shining, bit deeply into it.

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'Oh!' She was shaking her head. 'Oh,but...' She looked round at the ring of faceswatching her.

'Oh, these are lovely. Just lovely.'James glanced at Adèle and started to

eat, followed by Dave and finally Lewyn.'Really, you don't need the cutlery!

Just grab 'em up!' said Adèle, leading by ex-ample, and the men reluctantly put downtheir knives and forks and ate.

'And there's the salad, just helpyourselves, and guaca... avocado dip. Andcorn bread.' Adèle piled things on to herplate. She felt like a slave at the court ofNero, proving that nothing was poisoned.Mexican food, she thought, and sighed. She'dpractically had to force her burritos intoJames the first time; he'd just sat there, gaz-ing at them, looking obscurely resentful.

She poured wine (really it should havebeen bottled lager, but tracking down thetortilla shells alone had been more than

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enough trouble, not to mention the cayennepepper), and laughed and babbled about herhunt for these exotic rarities.

'So I'd completely given up. And thenthere they were. Spar, it would seem, had aSouth American promotion about two yearsago, and they were still there in the stock-room! A whole case of them. The managernearly kissed me! Oh, they keep for ever inthe tin,' she reassured them hastily, 'and themanager, he was so sweet, he knew he hadsome somewhere, so I invited him along fornext time. He said he'd always wonderedwhat they were...'

James gave her his patented just-take-it-easy-now look and she subsided, still smil-ing though. Dilys needed to know how youmade them, and Adèle was happy, happy,happy to tell her. Dave rolled his eyes atLewyn, who was chewing away dutifully, ifcautiously.

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Dave spoke up when Dilys had run outof wonderment.

'Ten o'clock he starts.' Lewyn mur-mured agreement.

'Oh now David...' said Dilys, but hewas not to be shamed. 'Bruno and Tyson.Can't miss that.'

'That's tonight, is it? I thought it wasweeks away. Losing track of time already,'said James, and Adèle was reminded of hislong sessions in front of the screen. Shelooked tenderly at him and touched his arm.

'No telly here, lover.''Well actually I was thinking we could

go up to mine,' said Lewyn. 'Only up the waya bit. Shame to miss him.'

'Del?'She felt her tenderness dissolve as he

looked coolly at her, challenging her to stophim breaking up her first dinner party so hecould go and gawp at two men beating the...

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'Well I won't join you, if you don'tmind. I never really cared for the sight ofblood.'

'Nor I neither,' said Dilys emphatic-ally, and drained her glass. 'Two grown mentrying to kill each other. For money.' Daveglanced at her glass: she reached for thebottle. 'Well tha's all it comes to, when youlook at it,' she finished stoutly, to Adèle's si-lent applause. 'How can you hit someone,when you don't even hate him, don't evenknow him? Stupid I call it.' This was clearlyan old argument and the seam was nearly ex-hausted. There was a short silence. It was8.30 now. If they were going to get throughthe tortillas and the guacamole and the exot-ic fruit salad then they'd have to eat up. Themen attacked the alien food with noticeablygreater determination, and Adèle hated themfor it. Particularly James. Bastard, shethought. You bastard. She smiled brilliantly

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at him as he fought with the food. Bastard.You'll get yours.

Sam was lying on the floor at the top of thestairs, just out of sight, listening. All his lifehe'd been listening, listening to Ruthie cry(always crying), to his mum shouting, to hisdad trying to explain, giving up. Mum lovedDad, and Dad loved Mum, but the wordsdidn't mean the same things. And he knewabout 'bedtime' when they loved each other,ferociously. He knew when he was being sentout of the way, so they could love each other.And they said things that meant more thanthe words, he knew that as well. They weredoing that now. He shifted a bit nearer thenewel post, attending, buzzing.

By 9.40 all the food had gone. Coffee? (Realfilter coffee, made with the percolator thatJames had chosen to regard as some kind ofinstrument of class oppression. He thought

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coffee should come out of a jar.) Not for me.No, nor me, thank you.

'Well, I would love some coffee,' saidDilys, and then, 'that was just lovely, Adèle. Iwish I could cook like that. Dave and me, it'smostly just bean stew and curry and, well,God knows what you call it!'

Adèle smiled serenely at her. Theplates were collected by Lewyn and stackedin the kitchen. She followed him in to put thepercolator on.

'Oh, I wish you didn't have to go!' shesaid, 'just when we were getting to knoweach other,' and heard Dilys cackle. 'Supposeyou'll have to be getting away, if it's a teno'clock start.'

Lewyn nodded and, hesitating by thedoor (God, what a handsome man), hethanked her, politely but fully, for the din-ner. He went out to mobilize the men, andDilys came into the kitchen.

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'How will you get home?' Adèle askedher.

'Oh I can walk it, he's not far. Or Icould stay over. Long time since I had aslumber party!' Adèle gave her a smile, andDilys breathed in her ear, 'I've got a teensy-weensy bit of grass. Eh?' and they laughed,mocking their pathetic shadowy men.

Lewyn had beer in the fridge. Beer and telly,the old firm. James had never been much forsports of any kind, though he'd played foot-ball at school and later university. Second,third elevens. He'd once, briefly, been in thefifth eleven, when he was working at theGreater London Council. He'd never beenmuch of a team man. But he took an interest,could hold his own in barbershop conversa-tion, and was secretly fiercely proud of hisprowess. Or ex-prowess. He hadn't kicked aball in, what, five years? (Couldn't be.) Andhe was proud of his body (ex-body? he

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thought, unconsciously pulling in his stom-ach). Thighs like a - what was it Del hadsaid? Thighs like a thunderstorm. What thefuck did that mean, he wondered, andsmiled. He felt, to be frank, drunk and randyand lonely. Sprawled in front of Lewyn'sthirty-two-inch colour television, Dave andLewyn on the couch, watching the between-rounds adverts. Dave said something toLewyn, and Lewyn murmured somethingback, none of which he heard. He smiled.

'How's your boy?' Dave said, turningto face him. 'I heard he had a fall.'

'Oh, yes, no he's fine. It wasn't any-thing,' James said.

'Dilys was dying to get her hands onhim, I can tell you,' said Dave. 'Fancies her-self as a bit of a healer, she does. Neverhealed me of anything though. Just the op-posite, as a matter of fact.' They laughed.

'Del thinks she can sense things. Saysshe can sense something in the field. Doesn't

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like me digging it up,' said James, andsensed immediately a stiffening, thickeningin the air, as if Dave and Lewyn had frozensolid on the couch. Bruno and Tyson weresuddenly back, filling the screen with blood-ied, closing eyes and gaudy shorts, circlingeach other. Intent. James stood up and wentto the bathroom, not entirely steady to behonest, weaving slightly. Worse for wear, hethought. But it was good to be in anotherhouse, no child upstairs, deep soft chairs,central heating, colour telly. He hadn't real-ized how much he was missing those things.To get comfortable in the farmhouse you hadto go to bed. And it was never really warm.And he didn't feel right bringing beer homewith him. Adèle drank maybe three-quartersof a can in an evening. He was always finish-ing her drinks off for her. Not that she'd eversaid anything, just as he never said anythingabout her bloody cigarettes. Each to theirown.

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He came back into the room, andLewyn was saying: '...not knowing, that's all Imean.'

'Not knowing what?' he called outcheerfully, and was suddenly chilled. Daveand Lewyn did nothing as obvious as look ateach other or avert their eyes, but somehowtheir whole posture was yelling something athim, like a distant car-alarm going off late atnight. Neural alert. Sam, he thought, a hard,brittle thought like a fragment of fibreglassin the neck of his shirt. Sam drooling in theback of the car. There was a roar from thescreen as Bruno stumbled, gloves up to hisface, one eye completely closed and startingto colour.

'Good to see someone looking after theold place,' said Dave, not entirely convin-cingly. 'Bit of a mess he is, no mistake.'

'Yup. Someone did a thorough job onit, I'd reckon. It's more than just age and the

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fire. Some of it looks deliberate. Do theyknow how the fire got started?'

All three men stared at the screen.Then James heard Lewyn's voice, low andhesitant.

'James. There's a couple of things Iwant to say about that, if that's all right.'

Dave swigged from his can andglanced across to Lewyn.

'I was telling Mrs Tullian just before,the other day. I don't know if she mentionedanything to you?'

Adèle? She hadn't said anything. Whatwith Sam, and then worrying about the din-ner party, they hadn't really spoken much atall. (Well, come on, hadn't actually spoken atany length for years, he corrected himself.)

'No.''Well it's like this, see. There were

people living there a few years back. Didn'tgo too well for them. They ran into sometrouble.'

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Dave looked sympathetically at Lewyn;he was finding it difficult to get started.

'Yeah, they had a few problems, yousee, and...'

'Raoul and Edith Charpentier. Shar-pent-ee-ay. French. On his side.' Dave tookover, and Lewyn, relieved, sank back andnursed his can, eyes fixed on the gory battleon the screen.

'They arrived in 1966, nice youngcouple and two little girls, a year betweenthem. Pretty as anything. Raoul, he was quitea fellow. He'd been an architect for a while,done very nicely by the sound of it. Heworked from home. I had a look at some pic-tures he had of things he'd built. Funny-looking things I thought they were, but hewas successful: made a fair amount of moneyat it by all accounts. Ty-Gwyneth, it was theirdream. Well, his dream I suppose anyway.He thought he was going to get planning per-mission to build on the land, he wanted to

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put up a new house, then knock the farm-house down. He showed me some of theplans and drawings and that, you wouldn'tbelieve it. Had an observatory, and a kind ofplatform that was going to stick out over thecliff, sort of like a deck. He was going tobuild gardens out over the cliffs, so theyhung down. Bloody weird thing in my opin-ion, but there you are. He didn't get no plan-ning permission though, council don't let youso much as put up a hay barn on those cliffs.And the house is listed, 'parently. I supposehe should have known that but he seemed tothink, because he was a big-deal architectand all, they'd roll over for him. But theydidn't. A big blow for him that was.

'Anyway they'd just come down forweekends to start with, then they moved in.He did a few alterations, but not very much. Ithink he lost heart a bit after all that councilbusiness.

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'Then they started having theseparties. What would happen, all day Fridaycars would be arriving, big bloody flashthings, he used one of the fields for parking.He'd rigged up lights along the cliffs anddown the path to the beach. He had a musicsystem with speakers all over the place. Hellof a racket. I'd come over sometimes toLewyn's and you'd be able to hear it, thump-ing and blasting away like God knows what.Don't ask me what kind of music it was, Ihaven't got much of an ear, but loud? Ishould say. Wa'n't it, Lewyn?'

'Aye.''This'd go on all Friday night, all

Saturday night, then all the cars'd screech offagain. This'd be in the summer. One time,Lewyn and me, we went down there to havea look. Felt like kiddies, sneaking round inthe bushes 'n' that. Funny it was. Anyway wesaw them, they was all out on the grass, frontof the house, all lights on and this music

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going, dancing. All drinking their heads off.God knows what else they were doing.Lewyn, he found a - what do you call it?Lewyn?'

'Syringe.''Aye, syringe, down on the rocks be-

low. They were just off their heads. Thesewere all friends of Raoul's. From London.'He tried not to make it sound accusatory, butLondon was clearly the sink of human de-pravity for Dave. 'Saw someone off the tellythere, didn't we Lewyn?'

'Aye.''Off one of those chat shows, actor or

summat. And all these women, well I say wo-men, weren't much more than girls some of'em. Wearing next to nothing. He didn't nev-er invite us though, did he?'

'No.''No.' Dave laughed. 'Can't say I'm sur-

prised, what with celebrities there and all.

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Wouldn't have fitted in, I dare say. Wouldn'thave gone, anyway.'

'Nor me.''Dilys, she wanted to go, but that's just

what she's like. Likes a bit of a party doesDilys. You should hear the state of hersinging!'

Lewyn went to the kitchen for morebeer. 'So this was all going on anyway. Allover one summer, he'd have a party once afortnight or so. Got so we was used to it.'

Lewyn had never got used to it. Livingas he did, the nearness of so much ostenta-tious fun, pleasure and company unsettledhim, deeply. Being alone was one thing: be-ing alone with parties going on next door wasquite another. He remembered lying in bed,listening to the thump of the music and theoccasional screams of laughter and surprise.Excluded. Even though he didn't want to beincluded, not with that lot. And even thoughhe hated drunkenness. He had been

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surprised by how much it rankled. Never gotused to it.

'Then one night, Lewyn, he heard allthis screaming going on. Di'n't you Lewyn?'

'Aye.' Lewyn declined to tell this parteither.

'Yeah he heard screaming, so he wentover to have a look. Everyone runningaround in a panic. Then all the police andambulance and that, from out Haverfordw-est. I came over and all when I heard that,must have been three o'clock or so. Womanhad fallen off, 'parently. Killed herself. Acci-dent though. Police took a lot of them awayto question them, Raoul included. Tookhours to get everyone sorted out, and theyhad to fix up a winch to get the woman upfrom the beach before the tide come in, lot ofrunning about going on. Wa'n't it Lewyn?'

'Aye.''So that was that. Di'n't hear anything

more about it for a while, and he stopped the

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parties and all. You'd see him in Fishguardwith Edith, she was wearing sunglasses bythen, wouldn't look you in the eye. Wouldn'ttalk to you. But Raoul was the same as al-ways, very - very charming he was, wa'n'the?'

'Aye.''And full of plans and ideas and that.

Interesting man. Very tall and good-looking,tanned, held himself very straight, like hewas ex-military or something, with Edithholding his arm. Like they were out of a film,her in her sunglasses. Can't explain it really.

'Then we stopped seeing Edith. Raoulsaid she wasn't well and needed rest. She waslooking after the children, they were aboutnine and ten by then. Never saw themneither.'

'Didn't occur to us at first, though, didit? Didn't think anything about it, did we?'said Lewyn tentatively. He was still appar-ently transfixed by the spectacle of two

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grown men knocking the crap out of eachother, though James got the distinct impres-sion that if you asked him what was going onhe wouldn't be able to tell you.

'Though Dilys reckons she thoughtsomething was up. Trust her.'

'Aye.''So then we started getting visits from

the police. They'd had an inquest, the coron-er said it was death by misadventure, but po-lice weren't happy about it. They asked allabout Raoul and that, but we couldn't reallytell them much. Dilys wanted to tell them allabout this dream she'd had, about the kid-dies and all, but I don't think they were tak-ing her too seriously. Laughing up theirsleeves I reckon, but they were very polite,wrote it all down.'

James had yet to become accustomedto this loping, elliptical delivery, and realizedthat his mind was wandering. Dave wasclearly leading up to something, but so far all

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he'd got hold of was Lewyn's phrase 'ran intosome trouble'. It sounded like Adèle's 'justbad luck'. He saw himself on the cliff topwith a piece of blue knitted wool in his hand.

'Next time I saw Raoul he told me thatEdith wasn't getting any better and they'dhad to send the girls away to boardingschool, cos Edith couldn't look after themany more. I asked him what was the matterwith her, and he said it was her nerves. He'dgot in some doctor from London, HarleyStreet is it? and she had to just rest. Shecouldn't see anybody. Lewyn, he calledround there one time, didn't you?'

'Aye aye.''Raoul wouldn't let him in. Said Edith

got upset if anyone came in the house.''Upset. Aye.''It was all I could do to keep Dilys

away. I told her she'd get into trouble if shestarted going round there. Had a few rowsabout it, I can tell you! I told her it wasn't

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none of our business, but she kept on sayingwe should do something, get the policeround again. But she didn't do anything.Anyway, nothing much happened for a bit. Ithought it had all blown over.'

There was an outburst of commotionfrom the television as a boxer crashed to thefloor, bouncing off the ropes, and the com-mentator said, 'Well, he looks like he's introuble with that eye.'

'Then Lewyn got a visit from her. FromEdith. She was in a bit of a state, weren't sheLewyn?'

Lewyn merely grunted.''Parently she said to Lewyn that Raoul

had turned funny. Reckoned he'd killed thatwoman who fell off the cliff, threatened herwith a knife and then pushed her over.Reckoned he'd been taking drugs of somekind.'

(Raoul Charpentier, high on theclifftop, his arm tingling from the

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tourniquet, which minutes earlier hadcaused the veins in his forearm to pop outlike wax running down a candle, while heaspirated the syringe, injected, then let itfall through the air on to the beach far be-low. Holding this beautiful, musky creaturein his arms, dancing to the music, CharlieParker, Dizzy Gillespie. He has a stiletto.His hand plays with it, the carving on theivory handle. A beautiful, ornamental thing,the blade tapered and sharp. They dancealong the cliff, other couples are dancingcloser to the house, the lights have beendimmed. Edith is watching from her bed-room window, she has a headache. The airis cool after a hot windless day, there is abreeze floating in off the sea. She is dread-fully unhappy. Watching.

The woman has her head againstRaoul's chest. He has both hands free now,he is stroking the blade behind her back asthey shuffle lazily, languidly. Then she jerks

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her head up, smiling, puzzled. Surprised.Then she stumbles back, she says 'Oh!', thenshe is falling, Raoul yells, 'Watch out!' thengoes to the edge, and everyone is running tohim.

He shouts, 'She's gone over!' Edith ismotionless, shocked by the fact that she isnot shocked, that she always knew, that shedid nothing. Let it happen. She ducks back,too late, Raoul has seen her. She locks herbedroom door. She brushes her hair. Theface in the mirror is hideous. She must pro-tect the girls. She doesn't know how to.)

'Reckoned he was going to kill her andthe kiddies. See, she thought he was the dev-il. Edith thought he'd killed the woman askind of a sacrifice. And she said that thepeople at the parties were in it as well.'

'Everyone was in it. Everyone,' saidLewyn firmly.

'Tha's right. Dilys says you call it para-noia, though what she knows about it 'scapes

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me I must say. You know anything aboutparanoia, James?'

'I'd have to ask Del, she's the one withthe education,' James said, surprised at theway the sentence came out. Blurred some-what. Pissed again, he thought. Del will bepleased.

Dilys flatly refused to wash any dishes. 'Getthat good-looking young man of yours to doit,' she said. 'Or isn't he house-trained yet?'

'Fraid not,' Adèle said and smiled.'But you don't care.''Well-' When she'd first met James,

she'd thought he was the sexiest man she hadever seen. And that was it, really. She'dgrown to like him, got used to him, whatever,more or less on the strength of that. No,there was more to it than that, obviously...She found her thoughts expanding and gaveup.

'No. I don't care. Not really.'

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'By the way, I'm making these ex-tremely weak,' Dilys said, looking up fromher work. She was manipulating cigarette pa-pers and very small pieces of dried-up veget-able matter from a plastic bag. Thai Grass.Adèle was of just the wrong generation tohave any really extensive knowledge ofdrugs. Too young for acid, too old for Ec-stasy. But Thai Grass she knew of old. She'dbaby-sat people having 'heart attacks', para-noid delusions, fits of depression so severethat they never seemed truly light-heartedagain afterwards, fits of laughter that bruisedand exhausted them, fits of yawning thatturned into inability to breathe, that madethe face ache for days. She and James hadonce had some that had made him so randythat... well. It was an entirely different exper-ience from the little blocks of waxy, crumblycannabis resin. All she usually got, though,was a particularly heightened sense of

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alertness, acuity. Perception. And a sense offreedom. She loved it.

'You should have seen your faces whenI put that food out,' she said, and Dilyslaughed along with her, but was straightaway frowning again.

'I suppose we're just not very used to -novelty.'

'Something else.''I'm sorry?''There was more to it than that. Lewyn

looked actually frightened. ''Lewyn, Lewyn. He's a beautiful boy,

wouldn't you say?''Well, yes. Oh yes, he's gorgeous.'

(Though hardly a boy, by anyone'sreckoning.)

'Not for me to say it, I suppose, beingpractically his mother.' 'Yes, I think he men-tioned that, you brought him up.'

'Well, you see, I had to. She was noth-ing but a little girl herself, his mother.'

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'Yes. Yes.' Adèle noted that she hadbeen sidestepped, conversationally. 'Dilys.About the food?'

'My, how direct you are. To the point.A real city girl, eh?'

'Dilys ...''All right. I'm going to tell you in just a

minute. Don't be all in a rush now.''Sorry, I don't mean to be pushy or

anything.' Adèle was surprised, in fact, athow pushy she was being. And surprised toothat such an innocent little fishing expedi-tion should actually yield a fish. She hadn'treally meant anything about the food. Hadshe?

'Lewyn, he's told you about Edith?''Well, he told me something.''Yes, I can imagine. "Well, she 'ad a bit

of trouble, see, and then she went mad." So-mething like that? I thought so. Never onefor the fine details, my Lewyn. Never uses a

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word where a raised eyebrow will do. Not abig talker.'

'No.''Not even to me. Never has been.

Comes to me one day, he says, "Well, tha'sit." His dad had died in the night. End ofstory. I think with Lewyn it's a kind of tact-fulness: he doesn't want to embarrass any-one with anything. Wants to spare you. He'salways had to be very strong, see, from a veryyoung age. He knows how chaotic things canget when people aren't strong. It frightenshim. So he leads by example. Should havebeen a soldier, that was the real life for him.

'See, that's why he maybe looked a bittense over dinner. 'Cos Edith, after a whileshe more or less stopped eating. After hesent the girls away, after that woman died.She'd have us all round for dinner, and she'djust push it around her plate, talking, talking,not eating. Some of the food it was - well, itwas quite novel. Sometimes it didn't taste

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quite right, 'cos she never tasted it herself.Sometimes you didn't really know what youwere eating, but you had to eat it anyway.She cooked a lot of French stuff, lots of herbsand garlic; I'd say to her, my, lovely this is,what on earth is it? Kind of like a joke. She'dsay, "Ah, old Provençal recipe, family secret."Raoul's family was French, see. After a few ofthese dinners, Lewyn got it into his head thatthe food was - what shall I say? - that itwasn't what you'd normally call food. Onetime he excused himself and sicked it all upin the toilet. It got so he was truly frightenedof eating it. But he didn't want to admit it be-cause it seemed so foolish. Like being 'fraidof the dark. Did you know that? Terrified heis. But he won't admit it.'

'Dilys, why did Edith go mad?''Because she was a silly, spoiled girl

who had no-one to talk to.' Adèle wasstartled by the bitterness in Dilys's voice.'Too much on her own, too much

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imagination in her, too much life really, toomuch for her to handle. I think she just gotso bored down here, she had to inventsomething to interest her. Once Lewyn hadturned her down. He did, you know. Didn'twant no part of her.' There was fierceness inher voice, pride, triumph. 'So she came upwith all this monkey business. Devils, sacri-fices, all that silly stuff. I mean, I think shethought she was in one of those films. Shewas the heroine, locked up in her room, wait-ing to be rescued.'

'Locked up?'Dilys paused.'Yes. Raoul locked her up. He had no

choice, after a while, she wasn't safe. Hewouldn't hear of her going away, he lookedafter her himself. He did all he could.'

'Locked up here?''Raoul made a nice room for her.''Here?'

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'Fraid so, my lovely. So he could keepan eye on her.'

Adèle felt a rush of blood in her face.'Dilys, what are all those bones in the

field?''Bones? What, sheep bones are they?''I don't know.''My dear, are you feeling all right?''I don't know.''Just sit quiet now. Here, better pass

that over to me. Hope I didn't make him toostrong.'

'What happened to Edith?''Well, I'm sorry to say Edith died. She

threw herself out of the window. Well,jumped anyway. Doctor was giving her allkinds of pills apparently. Should have let mehave a look at her, but Dave wouldn't hear ofit.' Dilys sighed. 'So. She jumped. They bur-ied her at her family's place, out Staffordway.'

'Dilys, why...?'

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'Oh now, why why why, you're just get-ting yourself upset now.' Dilys took her hand,held it very tight, looked hard at her. 'You'reall right. It's just a bit of a shock, bound tobe, but you're all right. There's nothing tohurt you here. I know. I know.' Adèle foundthat she was crying, and Dilys was saying,'Oh now, oh now, there then,' gripping herhand, frowning.

Dave had given up trying to get Lewyn tohelp him out. Lewyn had just withdrawn,beer can in hand, watching the post-fightanalysis, slow-motion shots of the strangelystylized savagery, the sprays of blood andsweat forming perfect parabolic traces, like ascientific demonstration.

'Funny really. Cos he was all set toleave, he'd all packed up and everything. Andthen it just burnt down in the night. Lewyn itwas who called the fire brigade. They had to

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come out from Haverfordwest way, so it waswell burnt by the time they got here.

'Raoul was outside shouting "The chil-dren! Get the children!" 'Cos of course theywere back living there by then. He'd hadthem back after Edith died, said he wantedthem near him. They were up in their room."Get the children!" But no-one could get in.Raoul was trying to, but they held him back.He'd never have made it. A lot of old wood inthere, dry as a bone. Next day the police andthe fire went in, didn't find anything, but inthe kiddies' room they found some bones.Just the bones. Ah God.'

Dave dried up. Lewyn was motionless.James was shaking his head, unable to be-lieve what he was hearing.

'It's unbelievable,' he said finally.'So anyway. Raoul just took off after

that.'(Raoul Charpentier, arranging the

bones in the children's empty beds,

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approximately the right number and size,no skulls of course, no hands or feet, butenough. Bones he'd been collecting for sometime. Sheep bones. He arranges themneatly, then gently lays the girls' pyjamasover them, then the bedclothes.

He knows how buildings burn, knowswhere to put the materials, reels of old filmfrom an auction sale in London, to burn hotand leave no trace. Raoul Charpentier walk-ing through the silent, darkened, emptyhouse, checking everything is in place.Nerving himself up, cracking his knuckles.Only one chance to get it right, better nothave forgotten anything. Check it again.Again.)

'And then the house was just deserted,for a long time. Must be, what, fifteen yearnow? Lewyn had the spare key Edith had giv-en him, in case she ever locked herself out.Ironic that, I suppose. Is that the rightword?'

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Lewyn gazed at the screen, blind, re-membering how he'd gone into the houseafter Raoul had left. The police had takeneverything remaining away, to be examined.Not that they seemed particularly suspicious.Raoul had apparently given them a forward-ing address in France, Chatellerault. Hewould have to come back for the inquest onthe children. Yet another inquest. The wo-man at the party, then Edith, then the chil-dren. He was seeing a psychiatrist, he toldthe police, and they were sympathetic. Therewas something about him they liked, andhe'd been through a lot. He'd broken downfor them, said he blamed himself, cried.They'd looked away, embarrassed, and he'dpulled himself together. They gave him a ci-garette. He'd kept his dignity, his film-starbearing. They liked that. Christ, if it had beentheir kids... They shook their heads. Quite afellow.

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Lewyn had cleaned up some of themess, carting away heaps of soaking plasterand carpet and wet, scorched wood. He'dmarched about, stamping, whistling.Brought in his little portable radio, put it onLOUD. He'd forced himself into the girls'room, flung the debris out of the window,took no more than half an hour but it was along time. Then he'd pulled back the bolts onthe secure room, glanced in. It had alreadybeen cleared before the fire, no particulardamage: he'd tried not to look at the walls

just-a-game-he-said-what-we'll-do-is-play-a-little-game

not to look at the walls, and not tothink, go straight back out. He'd felt sickfrom the soot and the burnt, wet smell. Hishands were sticky. He'd run home and had abath, then another one, biting down hard onthe panic. He'd been sick around midnight.He'd kept the radio on all night, and the

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light, forcing sleep away. Please God I don'twant to dream, not tonight. Please.

'It's just unbelievable,' James saidagain, stupidly, dimly aware that his speechwas impaired.

'Aye, I can hardly believe it myself,'said Dave. 'Anyroad, tha's what happened.Tha's why the house is such a state.' Jameswanted to ask, and what about the field? butfelt suddenly too weak. He didn't want tohear any more.

'So. Is there any more?' Adèle asked, andlaughed. Dilys had sat with her in the bath-room while she composed herself, breatheddeeply, washed her face. Dilys sat on theedge of the bath and Adèle removed hersmeared make-up with a pad. She smiled athow she'd felt when she was putting it onearlier that evening. At how she felt now.

Dilys laughed too. 'What, more grass?Haven't you had enough yet?'

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'You know what I mean.''Oh that. I'd have thought you'd've had

enough of that and all.' 'What happened tothe girls?'

'Funny but I can't even rememberwhat their names were. It'll come to me in aminute. Oh they were lovely, those two. Dideverything together, always playing littlegames. My Lewyn, he used to spend hourswith them, larking about. He's not normallymuch for children, but you should 'a seenhim with these two, he couldn't resist them.So pretty. Briony and Jonquil. That was it.

'Well, when Edith got sick Raoulpacked them off to some school or other. Hecouldn't really cope with them, and Edithcouldn't do much. Could have got someonein, I suppose, cos money was no problem.But he sent them off. He said it was a lovelyschool, lots of fields and things. Horse-ridingand swimming and ballet lessons. He saidthey loved it.

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'Then Edith died, as I say, and hebrought them back again. I think they musthave been pretty shocked about their mum,'cos I never saw them playing or anythinglike before. Few days later, you won't believethis, there was a fire in the house.'

'You mean here?''Yes. Raoul was out for a stroll, late,

and came back and the house was burning.Couldn't get them out. He was beside him-self, but it wasn't no-one's fault. It was thethird thing, you see. First that woman at theparty, next Edith, next the kiddies. Just ter-rible. Like it was supposed to happen, forsome reason. As if God was punishing himfor something, or maybe testing him. LikeJob. Just terrible.'

Adèle was watching Dilys's reflectionin the mirror. She got the same feeling she'dhad when Lewyn had given her his ratherterse account of things. As if Dilys waschecking how much she believed. Ship sinks,

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because it is struck by iceberg. All drowned.Or as if she was going to say, 'Nah, I'm justpulling your leg, as if...!' Adèle found that shedidn't know what to say. Somewhat absently,working moisturizer into her cheeks, sheasked, 'The woman? At the party. You didn'texplain that.'

'Oh. Well, she just went and fell off thebloody cliff, tha's all. Wandering about in adaze, evidently. Drunk. Just fell off, tha's all.'

'Oh.' Adèle imagined Dilys thinking,'Would that do?' Yes. It would do. Just badluck, you see. 'Well. Quite a colourful historythen, this house. I wonder what Uncle Sebsaw in it?' Parties, dancing. Girls. A ball,came the reply. Wasn't that what he'd said?Have a ball.

'My dear, I've known this house justabout all my life. Lewyn's grandma used toown it, did he tell you? I got a picture of herstanding in the garden here, all stiff andformal she looks, with this funny hat on her

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head. Her best, probably. I love this house. Ialways loved him, first time I ever saw him Iloved him. You don't need to go worryingover him. Bit of a mess right now, but thatyoung man of yours'll put it all straight in notime. Handsome fellow, isn't he? And doeshe love you? I could see that straight off.You're just what this house needs. A bit ofloving. Shall we go back down?'

And Adèle was thinking fields, riding,swimming, ballet lessons. It sounded likeheaven.

The television had now moved on tosomething else, as if the drama of the fighthad never happened, the hundreds of thou-sands of pounds not won or lost, the eye notdamaged, the blood and sweat not spilled, inparabolas perfect or otherwise. Pity we don'tall live in the telly, James was thinking, sowe could just move on when things didn't

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work out. Have a break for adverts, then re-turn in a different programme.

Dave suggested they go back.'I don't like leaving Dilys too long case

she has any fun without me,' he said. Lewynstirred himself sufficiently to say goodnight,but he was clearly lost in his own world.

'See you again Lewyn,' Dave called,and James shouted, 'Bye then.'

James was having a few small prob-lems with his cerebellum, fine motor control.He fumbled his jacket on, spilled keys out ofthe pocket, grabbed for them and missed,grabbed again, stumbled. Shit. Shit-facedagain. Well not exactly shit-faced, but not ex-actly clean and sober either. Dave discreetlyled him back to the house: it seemed like along, arduous journey, full of pitfalls and ad-ventures. His feet seemed to have gone a bitstupid. The darkness was full of darkerforms, great lumbering things, unknown, un-seen. A shape flitted past him, then another;

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bats, he thought after a moment's panic, justbats. It was incredibly dark. It never got thatdark in London.

More fumbling at his front door. Nowhis fingers were messing him about: Davewatched, decently making no comment.

Adèle met them as they entered: sheinstantly knew James was drunk, he imme-diately knew she'd been crying. They had oneof their few rare moments of mutual under-standing. No man's land. Pax. They stood bythe door while Dilys got her coat. Did Davewant to come in for a moment? Have a cupof tea? No, better be off really, past his bed-time. Dilys thanked Adèle for the dinner,squeezing her arm as she went past. Lovelynight. Our turn now. See you again.

Adèle shut the door and bolted it. She wentinto the kitchen where James was making acup of tea. He came over to her and huggedher, and she found tears welling up again. He

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held her harder as she sobbed silently, herwhole body shaking. He kissed her hair, herneck. They separated, smiling awkwardly ateach other, and sat with their tea. Adèlebroke the silence.

'Dilys was telling me about the peoplethat lived here before.'

'So were Dave and Lewyn.' They fell si-lent again. Adèle lit a cigarette.

'Dilys said she was locked up here,Edith Whatshername. Her husband lockedher up. Here.'

'I didn't hear that bit.''She said there was a special room.''No.''I want to look at it.' ''No. What's the point? You'll only get

upset.''Did you know about it?'Hard question that: he'd known there

was a room that had deadlocks, he knew hehadn't been in it, had always so far found

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reasons not to go in it. He'd been intermit-tently aware of how strange it was for thereto be a room in the house that neither ofthem had ever entered. He'd blanked thethought out, evaded it. They'd been here overa week, and the room had been there too.He'd known that much.

'No. I didn't.''Well, I'm going to have a look,' said

Adèle brightly. 'Coming?'

Afterwards, James had put it down to his be-ing drunk, to Adèle having smoked funny to-bacco, to both of them being disturbed,jangled, by the stories they'd been hearing.Nerves, hysteria, hallucination.

They were in the room. Longer than itwas wide, with the window opposite thedoor. They'd left the door open. The lightwasn't working (no bulb) so they'd kept thelanding light on: it lit up a small triangle onthe floor and part of one wall. James stood in

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the lit area. He found himself glancing overhis shoulder periodically.

Adèle was at the wall. It was covered,from ceiling to floor, end to end, withscratches in the plaster, writing. The letterswere clumsily drawn, angular, esses likebackward zeds, upper and lower casepromiscuously mixed, giving it a runic qual-ity. Adèle was reading it with her hand, likeBraille.

'Adèle, come on, what's the point?Leave it.'

'-though-he-says-theyre-not-his-how-can-he-say-that-'

Adèle was sensing the extraordinarydetermination that had gone into this ac-count, the tenacity of the woman. It wouldtake her days to read it: God alone knew howlong it had taken to write, character by pain-ful character. How long had Edith been in-carcerated in this room, and on whose au-thority? Adèle kept coming back to Raoul,

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with his film-star bearing. He'd made a niceroom for her. He'd sent the children to theschool of their dreams. At every point he wasin there, organizing people, managing theiraffairs. And then explaining himself.

'-you-wont-help-me-I-will-find-someone-who-will-youll-not-get-out-of-here-'

Adèle was getting snatches of Edith'srecord: the writing was not in lines, from endto end of the room, but in columns like anewspaper. In the darkness she couldn'tquite grasp the layout.

'Del look, let's come back tomorrow.'James's voice was almost pleading. Stillslightly slurred.

'You go if you want, James. I'm justgoing to read some of this.'

'Come on, Del,' he said. There wassomething worrying him, something hecouldn't place. He thought: lawn-mower

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bluebottle powersaw, not knowing what hewas thinking.

'-they-said-no-we-dont-like-that-game-he-said-heres-a-new-one-then-youll-like-'

refrigerator generator amplifier'-its-called-sheep-you-put-on-the-

blindfolds-'Because they don't know the words.'-out-on-the-cliff-he-had-his-bayonet-

he-must-have-seen-'Why do bees hum. James called out,

'Sam!' then the door slammed. Completedarkness. Adèle shouted, 'James! James!': hewas at the door but it wouldn't open. Adèleran to the window: it was immovable. Sheshouted, 'James! I can't breathe! James,open the door!' He shoved at it stupidly; itwas stuck, why was it stuck? She ran to him,pushed him aside, she kicked at the door, shebeat on it with both fists. He tried to stop herand she turned on him, flailing in the

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darkness while he tried to cover his face.'You bastard! You bastard!' He cowered awayfrom her and she turned back to the door.

'I can't breathe!' she screamed with agreat lungful of air, 'I can't breathe in here,let me out, please, I only want to talk to you,please, pleeeeeeeease…'

The door swung open: Sam was stand-ing there in his Count Duckula pyjamas, rub-bing his eyes.

'I thought somebody was shouting.''Did you lock the door?' Adèle bel-

lowed at him. He looked at her blearily.'What?''Del...''Why did you lock the door?''I was asleep, then I thought someone

was shouting,' he repeated, looking cross andsleepy, 'so I came out and then the doorshut.'

'Del, the door wasn't locked, it justjammed.'

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'I couldn't breathe! James!' He tookhold of her and led her off to the bedroom.

'I'll tuck you in in a minute, Sam, yougo back to bed,' he said, and shut the bed-room door. Adèle seemed to be in shock, shewas trembling, her eyes were glazed; she wasbreathing very deeply. Hyperventilating. Hercolour wasn't good. One hand was bleedingfrom her assault on the door. He tore off theblankets and wrapped her in them, sittingher and then lying her down. She had be-come, not rigid, but passive, absent. Hedidn't like the look of her. He left her lyingon the bed, swathed in the tangled blankets.He padded softly to the secure room. Heswung the heavy oak door a few times: itmoved easily. He glanced inside, then pulledthe door to, bolted it top and bottom andlocked it. He withdrew the key and droppedit into his trouser pocket.

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'James!' Adèle was calling. He wentback to her, closing the bedroom doorquietly.

Sam got back into bed. He was very tired,he'd had a busy day. First there'd been thehole, then the nurse, then the doctor -though the doctor had just asked him a lot ofquestions and stared at him. Not a real doc-tor. Then a long night listening, after he'dbeen put to bed. He catalogued it all neatly inhis mind.

The lady who lived here before lived inthe room and wrote on the wall. That was abad thing to do, you were supposed to writeon paper (as Sam had found to his cost whenhe'd decided to decorate the wall by thestairs at home, aged five. Now he wroteeverything down on paper). Then shejumped out of the window. Also bad, youweren't supposed to play with windows. 'Cosif you fell they'd have to scrape you up and

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take you away in a bucket, his dad said. Sothe lady must have been put in a bucket. Shedeserved it really, doing all those bad things.

The man played games on the cliff.Now that was bad, but it was also fun. Samwas interested in games. He'd heard hismum in the lady's room saying somethingabout a game. Sheep. You put on a blindfold.

The little girls had been very good,though they sounded a bit boring. After thelady went to live in the room, the man sentthe girls away. So maybe they were badreally, but pretending to be good. But he sentthem somewhere nice, like Beaver Camp.Hard to decide about those two.

But the best thing was the lady whofell off the cliff. Sam had had to duck back in-to his room to hear this, when his mum andthe other lady went to the bathroom. The taphad been running, so he couldn't hear prop-erly, but she'd definitely said 'Fell off thecliff'. She was drunk which was OK as long as

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you knew when to stop like his dad did. Shemustn't have known when to stop, just gonestraight over.

The little girls had come back, thenthey'd been in the fire and burnt, like Ruthie.So they were probably no good.

One other thing: his mum had used aword he didn't know. Sam was always inter-ested in unfamiliar words. She'd said it whenshe was in the lady's room, before she'd star-ted being silly and shouting. Bay-net. He'dhave to look it up. Tomorrow. His dad wascoming to look at him. He clicked off his BartSimpson night-light and closed his eyes.

James glanced in at the boy, a huddled formunder the blankets. He was too distracted tonotice that he wasn't dribbling.

James went back to Adèle. He'd re-made the bed and she was lying beside him,eyes wide open. She breathed deeply, slowly,taking each breath with conscious effort. For

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a moment she thought she was going to diein there. Never get out. Blind terror. Wasthat how Edith had felt? She tried to stopthinking in case James could hear it: itseemed awfully loud, a high, strong, angrysound. The wind came up, and she rolledover and slept.

Dilys and Dave strode arm in arm along thecliff-top path, singing, as the waves crashedand thundered below. They alternated lines,coming together for the refrains, and Daveimprovised a lower descant part.

'Thou God of Harmony and loveWhose name transports the saints

aboveAnd lulls the ravish'd spheresAnd lulls the ravish'd spheres.On thee in feeble strains I callAnd mix my humble voice with allThy heavenly choristersThy heavenly choristers!'

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6

The Destruction of the Beasts

Lewyn was in the slaughterhouse. The greatmachines were thudding and grindingaround him. He was lost, looking forsomething. He had to find it before someoneelse did. He went from room to room, push-ing his way through the racks of hanging car-casses which seemed strangely unstill. In oneroom he'd find a heap of hooves and ears, inanother a pile of entrails with the blood run-ning down a gutter into a drain. All stirring,slithering. There was a room where a manwas standing in the far corner with his backto Lewyn, doing something with an immenseslab of meat, which again did not appear tobe entirely dead, flopping about. He looked

round and Lewyn apologized and closed thedoor: it was private.

Lewyn walked alongside a conveyorbelt. Parts of animals were coming along it.Some of them he could identify, many ofthem he couldn't. He picked one up: it waswarm, the fur matted and sticky. He put itdown again when it twitched in his hand. Atthe end of the conveyor belt a little girl wasstanding, with a white cap and gloves, col-lecting the pieces and pushing them down asteep chute. She smiled.

'Where's the other one?' Lewyn askedher. The girl shrugged.

'She went off somewhere.' Lewyn nod-ded and walked on. That was what it was. Hehad to find the other girl before anythinghappened to her. He descended a staircaseand came out into a dark cavernous hall. Hewalked across it, trampling over things hecouldn't see, careful not to lose his footing inthe seething, grisly stuff underfoot. Then he

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caught sight of her: she was running fromhim.

'It's all right!' he shouted. 'Come back!'but she kept running until she tripped andfell into the mess of cartilage and fur andtissue.

'Hold on!' he shouted, but he couldn'treach her, and she quickly became covered inthe restless slime until she was indistin-guishable from it, had become part of it. Hefound a door and emerged into daylight, car-rying a bloody hunk of something, whereJames was waiting for him.

'We'll go in the barn,' Lewyn said,'where no-one can see.'

'What about the beast?' James asked.'It's all right,' said Lewyn, 'I killed

him,' and awoke. The television was still on,adverts. Lewyn stared at it for a while, thenunplugged it and went to bed. He left thelight on.

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7

Still Life

Lewyn had come down to help James for theday. There was a concrete path round thehouse which had to be taken up. Lewyn wasgoing round softening it up with a sledge-hammer; James followed him with a crowbarand pickaxe, prising open the cracks, thenhammering the crowbar in to get leverage,then smashing the pieces. It was slow, heavywork, and they stopped frequently. Elvis wassuspicious of Lewyn, running round him andbarking, getting in the way, until Lewyn laydown on the ground and rolled over. Elvisapproached him, sniffing, and Lewyngrabbed him and wrestled him over, rubbing

his stomach and scuffing his ears, to whichindignity Elvis submitted with good grace.Then he stood up and shook himself andtrotted off.

It was November now, but the firstfrost hadn't come yet and the sky was clear.Still autumn. The sheep were at theirmundane, incessant work, heads down, com-pletely undismayed by the colossal noisesringing out, as if they remembered a timewhen giants had worked Wagnerian anvilsand the earth had trembled.

James had cleared the bones away be-fore Lewyn came, throwing them over thecliff, obscurely ashamed of them. He keptmeaning to ask Lewyn about them, and keptshying away from it. He wasn't entirely surehe wanted to know. While he was working hewas worrying about what might be under theconcrete. Every part of the house seemed toharbour some secret. He was expecting atany moment some new thing to burst out.

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But it was just rubble, hardcore. Good qual-ity too. But wet.

They stopped at twelve for a cup ofcoffee. James dragged out a pair of deckchairs he'd found, and they sat in the bright,cold sun.

'How's your boy?' Lewyn asked.'He's fine.' Sam was with Adèle. She

was supervising his school activites - theymight be on holiday but that didn't mean hegot off free. They'd both had to go to a smalloffice in north London to establish their fit-ness to teach Sam. They'd sat opposite astern-looking woman who'd scrutinized theirO-level Certificates and had given them astack of syllabuses to follow. Sam was copingwell with the new arrangement: he was fas-cinated by books, and was beginning to get afeel for maths: he would manipulate his littlecoloured Cuisenaire rods with a dexteritythat surprised Adèle. He had a problem bookwith sums and the answers at the back: he

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never, ever, cheated. He was puzzled but ex-cited by the division questions: if Mary hastwelve oranges to share equally betweenHarry, Bob and Bill, how many would eachboy receive? The division of numbers in-trigued him, the curious, relentless reduc-tions, but so did the original premises: whydid Mary have twelve oranges, and why wasshe giving them away?

'Mrs Tullian all right is she?' Lewynnever called her Adèle. Nor did he say 'themissus' or 'the wife' or any of the other innu-merable joky appellations that women areheir to.

'Yeah, she's OK.' Though she didn'tseem to have quite got over the incident inthe secure room. She was just a touch dis-tracted, inclined to periods of withdrawaland abstraction. She wasn't sleeping verywell either: she'd read late into the night, andsometimes James would wake to hear hermoving about the house. She wasn't herself.

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But the painting was going well. She was ex-perimenting with a different style, workingon a series of still-life studies, as well as thelandscapes. Sheep, not surprisingly, had be-gun to figure quite largely in the landscapes.There was one that James particularly liked:it was a big picture, with a lot of impression-istic background, and taking up much of theleft foreground was a sheep's face, very closeup, blurred on the near side, stark black andwhite, with another close behind. The sheeplooked surprised, almost amused, its ears up.James liked it because in real life you nevergot that close to a sheep; they kept a meticu-lously cautious distance from you, though hehad been surprised by how calm they were.They didn't startle easily. He'd thought ofthem as mindless panicky creatures, and wasimpressed by their impassive, almost non-chalant, demeanour. He'd asked Adèle if theycould hang this one in the front room (nowequipped with a couch and a few other bits

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and pieces from a second-hand place inHaverfordwest), and to his surprise she'dconsented. She was normally very secretiveabout her paintings. There was a strongwooden peg driven into the cement abovethe fireplace, and he hung the painting there.She would get them all framed when sheknew what was going to go into theexhibition.

He was less enthusiastic about the stilllives she'd shown him, though he could ad-mire the technical achievement. Damagedfruit, dead flowers and meat; half-emptymilk bottle, snail, broken shower attachmentand meat. His Adidas trainers, over-full ash-tray. And meat. He found the subject matter,to be frank, disturbing in a way he couldn'texpress. He just didn't know what she wasgetting at, nor could she offer anyexplanation.

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James tried to rouse himself: he was beingrather a torpid conversational partner.

'So how are the sheep, Lewyn?' Itwasn't much of an opening, admittedly, butit was something.

'Why do you ask?'Why did he ask?'Oh, no reason. Just wondering.''Well, as it happens, I found one of

them in the lower field, down by the cliffpath. He was in a fair state, looked like he'dbeen got at by something.' Lewyn's tone gavenothing away, but he'd been shocked by thesavagery of the mutilation. Head hanging off,rear right leg missing. Could have been thework of an animal, dog perhaps. But thatwasn't what it looked like. The beast, he'dtold himself. The beast in the barn, woken upby his dream. The recollection of the dream,particularly the latter part with James,troubled him and he looked away, out to sea.He'd had problems with the sheep before, in

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the days of the Charpentiers. He'd neverreached any kind of conclusion about it. So-metimes he thought he remembered doing ithimself: in the dream he'd been holdingsomething, a leg perhaps?

'Well, it happens. A dog could havedone it. You'd be surprised how nasty theycan be. But apart from that they're fine. Theydon't get up to too much, as you may havenoticed. Keep themselves to themselves.'

Was there a rebuke there, for James'sinquisitiveness? He cast about for somethingto say, and found nothing. Lewyn stood up.

'I'll just use the toilet a minute,' hesaid.

On the stairs he encountered Sam,who was writing in an exercise book. Heclosed the book as Lewyn came up.

'Hello piglet,' said Lewyn and Samsmiled politely. 'What you writing?'

'Oh, just a story,' said Sam modestly.

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'Oh yes.' Sam had a dictionary openbeside him. 'Bathe' to 'beach'.

'What's the word then?''Bayonet. It's a blade that goes on the

end of a rifle. What's a rifle?''Rifle? It's a gun. Big long gun. You

know what a gun is?''Oh yes. To shoot people with.''Tha's it.' Lewyn was taken aback by

the boy's coolness. He supposed childrendidn't understand what violence meant,maybe they thought it was like a cartoonwhere no-one really got hurt and the coyoterolled out flat by the steamroller alwayspopped back into shape again.

'Hope you're not going to have peoplegetting shot in your story,' he said, and Samsmiled.

'Oh no. I just wanted to know what itmeant. Any word you don't know, you canlook in the dictionary and it'll tell you. It's

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got all the words there are. I know lots ofthem already. Not all of them though.'

But a dictionary couldn't tell you whata gun felt like, smelled like. It couldn't tellyou about the fear and the sick exhilarationthe thing produced, the weight of it in yourhands, the smell of the cartridges. As for abayonet, no definition could express the feel-ing of fixing it to the muzzle, a twist and thena snap, and then the horror of imagining asituation so desperate that you would stick itinto someone, a warm living man, make himscream and bleed, make him writhe, makehim cold. The gun was an impersonal thing,your target was a faceless form a long wayaway. But to use a bayonet you had to chaseyour enemy, see his face, smell his breath.Watch him fall. A bayonet was intimate, bod-ily, almost private.

'Nasty thing a bayonet is. Very nasty.''Have you seen one?'

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'Aye aye. When I was in the army.Long time ago now.'

'Did you kill people?''Of course I didn't!' Lewyn was mo-

mentarily outraged, until he recalled that theperson he was talking to was a little boy, sev-en years old.

'No. I never used one on anyone. Don'tknow if I really could, if it came to it.'

'Why, is it very hard?''Hard? No he's easy enough. Nothing

to him as far as that goes. You just clip himon, level your gun as if you were going toshoot, but a bit lower down. You bend yourknees. Like this.' Lewyn got into position,weight well balanced, head forward. 'Thenyou run at your target. In the army we hadpeople made out of bags of straw, hanging upoff a pole.' Lewyn blinked rapidly as thememory returned. A hot, dry field, the sunblazing down. A company of men, tired andheavy in the middle of the afternoon. The

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sergeant demonstrating the procedure pa-tiently, as if he were addressing a group ofmental defectives. The drill was straightfor-ward enough, and within half an hour thecompany was presenting, fitting, removingand stowing the bayonets in the proper jerky,mechanical way. So far so good.

Next, running and screaming. Four ata time. The straw men were hanging from astructure like that used for children's swings,attached by chains. They wore jackets, buthad no limbs or heads. Nothing to strike withor scream with. No eyes. You ran, screaming,at them, rammed the blade in, twisted it(quarter turn, clockwise), jerked it out. If thescream was less than full-throated you weresent back to do it again. Lewyn had neverscreamed before, not in adult life, and foundit extremely difficult, as did several of theothers. He had three attempts before heachieved the right voice, and it was a libera-tion. He remembered the lightness in his

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head as he ran across the dry grass, thescream streaming back behind him, a dizzy,exhilarating feeling. Then the sudden stopand the release of the thrust as the blade torethe canvas and the straw man swung away. Itwas a powerful, dramatic thing to be doing,once the earlier feeling of being ridiculoushad evaporated. The scream cleared his headof everything, all fear, all embarrassment, alluncertainty. It was only funny afterwards.And only disturbing much later, as his throatremembered the screams and his armstrembled from the thrusts into the closelypacked straw, more solid than he'dimagined.

The child was listening hard, andLewyn was horrified by himself. What was hedoing, telling all this to a young kiddy? Whathad got into him?

'Anyway, tha's enough of that. Youdon't want to go thinking about guns and

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bayonets. Not at your age. Shouldn't havetold you all that, not really.'

Sam understood. There were somethings he wasn't supposed to know. His dadwould tell him them all when he was twenty-one. There were quite a few of them by now,and the list was growing all the time. Heimagined the conversation they would have,his dad perhaps consulting a notebook andticking them off one by one as he dealt withthem. But what if he needed to know beforethen? Maybe his dad would make an excep-tion. He turned to p. Pyre.

Lewyn said, 'Right better get on,' andwent to the bathroom. He passed the roomwhere Adèle was painting, and his nostrilsflared. A thick, oily smell, and turps, andsomething else. He couldn't place it.

He locked the bathroom door. As hiswater splashed into the bowl, he ponderedover what he should tell James. Dave's ac-count of the Charpentiers had been accurate

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as far as Dave knew, but there were gaps,omissions, and one major inaccuracy. Arather important one. Dave only knew whatRaoul had wanted him to know, planting hisinformation in a calculatedly off-hand man-ner, disarming and laced with charm. Lewynknew more, much more, and had been ableto untangle the truth from Edith's chaoticoutpourings. He'd held his knowledge tohimself, wearing it like a hair shirt. He'd nev-er disclosed it to anyone, not Dilys, no-one.To do so now would be like exposing himself,for the information was indecent, shocking,somehow shaming to the one who knew it.He should have told the police. He hadn't. Itwas too late now to regret it, but regret it hedid. His knowledge involved him in what hadbeen done, made of him a witness, with awitness's share of the guilt and responsibil-ity. He flushed the thought away and wentback down to smash some more concrete.

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Adèle was having a few problems with themeat. Now that it was starting to decay, thelines and colours were becoming far lessclear cut, were engaged in a subtle and com-plicated negotiation between solid form andfluidity. She found she was looking more andpainting less, finding her hands blocked bythe difficulty of the task. The meat alsoseemed to be growing something like a crustor a skin, so that the surface, in contrast towhat was beneath, was hardening, thicken-ing, drying out. There were patches wherethe colours were just on the verge of turning,from umber to green and vermilion and evensaffron, but somehow that was somethingshe only knew to be latently there butcouldn't yet see. It was all very tricky: unlessyou were scrupulous about it, you ended upeither with a sort of cartoon T-bone steak, ora formless brown smear. It was a matter ofseeing perfectly and then holding the imagein your head long enough to portray it. And

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you had to do it fast, or the paint, like themeat, started to thicken and coarsen and dryout. She sighed and lit a cigarette.

The exhibition was beginning to takeshape in her mind. Two contrasting sets ofpaintings: landscapes with more and moresheep in them, and the still lives with themeat. They would counterpoint each other,formally as well as thematically. Of the threecanvases that had been completed so far,there were two landscapes and one still life.She would make her final selection whenthey were all finished, take slides of themand send them to her agent. He would un-doubtedly have a few comments to make, soshe needed to leave herself at least a monthfor alterations and reworkings. She wasnervous about his response to the still lives.She'd never tried anything like them before,apart from a few hesitant technical exercisesat college, and it was quite possible that hewould reject them. It was, of course, her

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choice as to what went in and what didn't,but for an exhibition as important as this shewould trust his judgement more than herown. If he did reject the still lives she wouldhave to have a pool of 'spare' paintings tomake up the number. There was a lot of workto be done before April came around.

She looked again at her subject. It wastoo crowded, too busy. Folded curtains andpillowcases, each with its own floral design,screwdriver, plastic carrier bag and meat.Abruptly she took away the curtains and thecarrier bag. That was more like it. She'd onlysketched in the other objects in grey crayon,so she could keep most of the painting. It putthe meat into greater prominence in thecomposition, balanced nicely by the redplastic handle of the screwdriver. It flashedthrough her mind that this was really quitean odd painting, quite a strange painting,but the technical improvement was undeni-able. Good. Good.

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James and Lewyn worked on into the after-noon, reducing the neat concrete path to aneat line of bags of concrete rubble. Jameswas secretly relieved that there was just con-crete in the bags. He and Lewyn sat in thedeck chairs again as the low sun set behindthe trees. There was a silence between them,but James was less troubled by it now.Lewyn was clearly a man of few words, andthat was fine by James. It was a good silence.All his life James had been worried by si-lences. His father and mother had had someterrifying periods of wordlessness, periods ofsuch extreme tension that James had some-times felt like screaming. James had talked agreat deal as a child, but as he'd got olderhe'd begun to gain a clearer understanding ofthe deadly quiet he was speaking into, andthe terrible fear of it that had made him wantto talk so much. Aged eleven he'd clammedup, afraid the desert of non-communication

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around him would just absorb him, leavinghim dried out, a husk. There was somethingalmost predatory about it: it was a trap. He'dshut up and stayed shut up, contributing hisown dune to the desert. By adolescence hewas habitually quiet, very shy, very inarticu-late. All desire to explain or describe or ex-press gone. He was what he'd feared hewould become: barren.

And then, much later, he'd met Adèleand she'd talked and talked and talked, buteasily, without fear or panic, effortlesslythrowing out her impressions and feelings.She expressed. And James stayed quiet,soaked it up. Now he was afraid that shewould come to see his quietness as a trapalso, that she too would dry up, turn to sand.He wanted to talk to her, before thishappened. He kept meaning to. But the fearwas growing in his mind that it was alreadytoo late, and this feeling got into his mouthand gummed it up, dried it out. He was well

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aware that she often now talked simply fromher fear of his secretness, and that there wascreeping into her voice an edge of panic. Fearbegetting fear.

Lewyn, however, just kept his owncounsel; if there was something on his mindhe'd say it, if not, not. So between him andLewyn he sensed the growth, not of a desert,but of a quiet, orderly garden. He smiledacross at Lewyn, pleased with his solidityand self-containment.

'All right, Lewyn?''Aye aye.''Stay for something to eat?''Very good of you.' James felt a tre-

mendous peacefulness: it was partly the ces-sation of work, his body tingling from theday's exertions, partly the beautiful clearcold air. Bats twittered past and he couldhear Adèle and Sam in the kitchen, theclanking and rattling of plates. He should goand give Adèle a hand, but it was so

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luxurious to sit, quietly, in a deck chair as thesun went down.

'James, before we go in there'ssomething I want to tell you. Been on mymind.' James smiled; not the grazing rightsagain, surely. Adèle had regaled him with thestory of Lewyn's worries about taking hayand grazing on the fields.

'About the field.''Look Lewyn really, you don't have to

worry about that. We're just happy that thefields are being used for something. It'd beterrible to let them get wild. We really don'tmind.'

'No, no I don't think you understandme right. I don't mean about the sheep andthat.'

'Oh.' James waited, trying to look en-couraging in the half light.

'See, it's something that happened along time back, when the Charpentiers werehere. What Dave told you the other time, I

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don't know if that was right or not. I don'tknow how to say it really. But after that lastparty, when the woman got killed, couple ofweeks after, he had a fire. Raoul did. Bonfire.I was out in the top field and I saw a lot ofsmoke. So I come down to have a look. Hidbehind that wall over there. Wrong of me todo it I know, snooping around, but this waslate summer, and people usually don't starthaving bonfires till autumn, when there'sleaves to burn. Or they're cutting trees back.So I was thinking what's he got to burn thistime of year? So I came down. He had a bigfire going, lots of timber, and he had a stick,he was poking at it. Obviously I couldn't seewhat he was doing cos of the smoke and that,and the heat. But that was it, you see. Thesmoke.' He paused, and James saw himselftossing a tiny fragment of charred blue woolover the cliff.

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'That was what'd made me suspicious,see. That smoke. Cos I've smelled himbefore.'

(A thick column of smoke rising up,straight to heaven. The devil! The devil!)

'There's no mistaking him once everyou've smelled him. He was burning meat.'

(A barbecue that's all it was a barbe-cue grilled leg of lamb on the bone bakedpotatoes corn relish please)

'He gets right into your nose, thatsmell, and you don't ever forget him.',

(all-right-then-lets-play-another-one-its-called-sheep-youll-like)

'Then he put the fire out and he star-ted digging. Just over where you've been dig-ging, matter of fact, where that septic tankis.'

(what they wanna go a-buryin themidgets for Jiiiiiim?)

'And he put all the ashes into the hole.'No!

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'And then after that the children wentoff to boarding school. 'Parently. Never sawthem again.'

James felt an overpoweringly strongwish to be in the kitchen with Adèle andSam, chopping onions or even peeling pota-toes. Anything rather than having this eerieconversation with this intensely serious manas the bats flitted by.

'I don't understand,' he said at last.'Dave said the children died in the fire in thehouse. After Edith had died.'

'Maybe they did. I'm just saying what Isaw, tha's all.'

'But what you're suggesting...''All I'm saying, all I'm saying, is what I

saw. I'm not making no accusations. But Iwas kind of wondering if, maybe when youwere digging in the field, maybe you foundanything.'

'What like?''I don't know.'

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'I didn't find anything.''Please, don't take me wrong or

anything...''I didn't find anything!' James

shouted, and flinched back from the sound.He desperately wanted to be back in thecalm, reflective silence they'd had before, butLewyn had broken it, broken it badly.

'Jesus Christ, Lewyn!''Aye, well...''I found sheep bones. That's all.''Sheep. Aye.''Jesus Christ!''I just wanted to tell you. What I saw.'

James sat, stunned. He was frightened ofthem, he thought they were devils, but theywere frightened of him, they screamed, likethis. He had a stick-thing.

'I found a piece of wool.''Oh aye.''Not sheep wool, knitted wool.'

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'Aye, I thought perhaps you'd foundsomething.'

'Oh Christ. I don't believe it.''No, dare say.' They sat on in a new si-

lence, a complicit, guilty, hard silence, likeplate glass.

'Don't say anything to Del,' Jamessaid.

'Of course not.''She's got enough on her plate as it is.''OK.''Please.''I won't.'Lewyn had expected to feel relieved,

but instead he found that he felt ashamed, asif he'd done something improper towardsJames. But the urge to speak out had been sostrong, he just couldn't help himself. He wasmistrustful of any feeling as strong as that:he didn't like the idea that he was housingthings he couldn't understand or control.

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The beast was supposed to be in the barn,not in him.

Lewyn had known about the beast allhis life. As a young child he'd avoided thebarn, and when he had to go in he'd carefullyavert his eyes from the pile of lumber underwhich the beast hid. The beast ate rabbits;they would be found stretched out on thestone floor, not damaged in any way, butdead, as if they'd had the life sucked out ofthem. But he was harmless, Lewyn knew, aslong as you didn't look at him. In his dreamsLewyn had sometimes already killed him,but he was never really dead. You couldn'ttruly kill him, no-one could. He was a fact oflife, almost a companion. And if one day heshould rouse himself and shake off the lum-ber, and go looking for food other than un-fortunate rabbits - well, Lewyn would facethat when it happened. But as long as he didnothing to disturb him he was safe enough.

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'Maybe we should go in?' he said, asJames showed no signs of moving. Jamessighed.

'Yup.'

Dinner was a very different affair from thedinner party of a few weeks ago. This wasjust the family feeding itself, with a guest. Notable settings or South American delicaciesthis time; Sam had his usual Smash andveggy-burger, with some salad on the sidethat he dutifully despatched first, to get itover with. For the rest of them, Adèle hadmade chilli with kidney beans, and rice.(Even so, there was enough of the hostessleft in her from Westdene to ensure that eachplate was garnished with chopped herbs andthe rice was mixed with poppy seeds.Presentation.) And this time she was amusedrather than offended by Lewyn's ill-disguisedreluctance to put any of it into his mouth.Elvis hung about with his optimism-in-the-

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face-of-all-odds expression: he never gotanything from the table, not even from Sam,and he knew it. The triumph of hope over ex-perience, however, kept him at the table,watching the movement of fork to face andback again. Maybe this time.

Lewyn chewed slowly, methodically,subjecting the food to every test his nostrilsand palate could devise, then forcing the bol-us of matter down. Swallowing food, otherthan what he prepared for himself, was athing he did only with deliberate effort; itwas a matter of determination. First youscooped something up on the fork, havingsearched the plate for unfamiliar material.Then you raised the fork, now trying not tolook at it too closely (Lewyn had found thatno food looked entirely, convincingly, inno-cent close to). Your nose sucked up thearomas, alert for the telltale scents of any-thing amiss: the dry, crumbly, secret smell offungus, the urinous tang of flesh, the rich,

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febrile whiff of the over-ripe, any odour hid-ing behind a stronger one, or an unfamiliaredge to a familiar smell. The high, giddy reekof strong acid, or the singing, soapy flash ofpetrol.

Then you raise the fork further, closerto your mouth. Despite yourself you have tograb a look at it before it touches your tongueand lips, in case it is the tidily folded wingcase of an insect, for instance, or a clot of hu-man hair, or - Disguising the movement as ablink you shut your eyes as the tines of thefork touch your tongue and whatever it is isdeposited into your mouth. The fork tastessour, metallic, bloody, and you get it awayfrom you fast, back to the plate. Meanwhileevery nerve in your mouth is frantically filingreports, OK so far, this may just be all right,and you chew, squeezing out every particle incase there is something hidden inside, someputrid, insane thing... You can delay nolonger, and in any case you have got to get

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this obscene gob of filth out of your mouth,quick for God's sake swallow it, your epiglot-tis obeys you and you push the thing down,push it down, your throat convulsing, yourmouth slimy with saliva, your pulse hard andfast. And all the time you must appear re-laxed, genial even, and above all else youmust not spit it back out. There is a wholeplateful of it to go. You ration your gulps ofwater. You try to remember to smile.

Adèle observed this stubborn, doggedfight with admiration and respect. She couldonly guess at the difficulties Lewyn faced,but she could see clearly enough the rigidity,the jerkiness of his movements, and the fre-quent short pauses as he gathered up hiswill. What grim battles we all have to fightsometimes, she thought, just to get throughhalf an hour of a day.

Lewyn finally swallowed the last fork-ful and pushed the plate away, aware that he

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did it rather too forcefully. He smiled up atAdèle, who smiled back sympathetically.

'Thank you Mrs Tullian. That was verynice.'

For sweet (James wouldn't tolerate the use ofthe word 'dessert', and gave a nasty, ironictwang to 'afters') there was ice-cream andblackberries. Adèle loved blackberries be-cause they were free! and because the fruitwas so unpredictable, some sweet and fra-grant, some bitter. And she loved the gritti-ness, the realness of them. She'd shown Samhow to select the right ones to pick - and hadgot the unmistakable impression that he washumouring her. He couldn't disguise the factthat he just did not believe you could eat thethings that grew in hedges. Until she poppedone into his mouth, and he raised his eye-brows. After that he ate more than hedropped into the cleaned-out Flora tub, des-pite her warnings, and later paid the price of

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not listening to his mother. It had been alovely afternoon, cold but so clear you couldsee everything, and they meandered alongthe hedges, listening to the birds. Sam hadseen a frog (his first), and then she'd spottedthe sloe bush, laden with dusty, velvety blackdrops, astonishingly generous. She polishedone for Sam and, warning him that theseweren't like the blackberries, dropped thecold black bead on to his tongue. He chewedit thoughtfully, said 'Hm...' and went back tothe blackberries. Possibly a bit of an acquiredtaste, she agreed.

To show respect for Sam's stomachtrouble later that evening, she'd washed theblackberries and put them into the big chestfreezer in the basement. They'd go sloppy,she knew, when they defrosted, but they'd benone the worse for that. Sam would probablyneed about a week to get over his feeling ofbeing betrayed by the natural world.

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And she'd forgotten about them! She'dbeen digging around for the ice-cream andthere they were. One of the tubs had tippedover and she'd had to scoop them up off thebottom. She'd been struck by a thought, buthad been distracted (Sam had been shoutingthat the kettle was boiling for his Smash) andit had just flitted away, evaporated. She'dstood for a moment, perplexed, and then,balancing the tubs on the cardboard ice-cream box, gone back up, clicking off thelight with some difficulty. She'd had thedishes all served out and ready to go beforethey started eating. Sam's helping containedmore ice- cream and less fruit.

With the main course finished Lewynwas visibly more at ease, and the silky,runny, brilliantly coloured pudding wasquickly eaten, Adèle as always savouring thesound of spoons scraping bowls as the lasttraces were scooped up. Sam licked his dish,though he left the blackberries on the side,

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and she was happy for him to do it. God-damned little housewife-and-mother, shechided herself, but she did like to feed hermenfolk. James did cook (though much lessfrequently than he believed he did), but hetook no pleasure in it and it generally puthim into a sulk, so she didn't enjoy it. He'donce smashed three plates serving out ricethat hadn't been rinsed and thus wouldn'treadily come off the spoon. And she alwaysfelt that she had to exaggerate her gratitudefor it, and make lots of those idiotic slurping,appreciative sounds, while he gracelesslyshovelled the food down. Not a natural cook.

James stood up to make the coffee,and Adèle lit a cigarette, using her dish asthe ashtray. Pushing her luck really, sheknew, but James would just have to put upwith it. It made her feel free, spontaneous.Well dammit she was supposed to be anartist, she could get away with it.

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Lewyn was manoeuvring his tongueround his mouth, dislodging the tiny grittyseeds that were stuck between his teeth. Helooked distracted, she thought, almosttormented.

'Hard day, Lewyn?''Aye. I'll sleep tonight and no mistake.''What, haven't you been sleeping

then?' Wrong, she thought immediately. In-trusive, clumsy, nosy. Sniffing round forwrinkled handkerchiefs again.

'Well I have a bit of trouble some-times. Dreams, you know.' He seemed disin-clined to pursue it, but she felt if she couldget him on his own he'd open up. Come tothink of it, he did look tired.

'Can I go upstairs and read please?'Sam asked, and Adèle gravely assented.

'Yes you may.''Thank you.''That's all right.'

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Sam said goodnight to Lewyn andwent up. Elvis, reluctantly accepting that thiswas the end of whatever remote possibilitythere might have been of getting anything,padded away after him.

'Painting going well is it?''Yes I think so. Hard for me to tell

really.''That one of yours is he?' Lewyn

turned to look at the sheep portrait.'Well, yes. I don't know if it's really fin-

ished yet...''Now don't you put yourself down. I

think he's marvellous.' Adèle blushed (notoften that that happened these days) andstared with Lewyn at the painting. Yes. Itlooked all right.

'Bit startled he is, isn't he? Got his earsup.'

'Yes I suppose so.''Frightened even. Maybe.'Adèle laughed.

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'I suppose it's not every day he hassome strange woman peering at him frombehind a bush! He probably thought I wasafter him.' She noticed that she'd picked upLewyn's gendered noun, but it sounded nat-ural enough. 'It' would have been too cold,and 'she' would be artificial, she felt.

'They have the strangest way of look-ing at you, don't you think?' she said. 'It's asif they go dead for a moment, they justfreeze'

(just flitted away, just)'and their eyes don't even flicker. And

then they kind of dismiss you, stop seeingyou; as if you're invisible.' She was makingheavy weather of this, she knew, but she hadbeen astonished at the alienness of thesturdy, compact creature she'd spied on frombehind the blackthorn. It had made her feel,not invisible perhaps, but worse than that, ir-relevant, of no conceivable importance, noteven worthy of fear. Merely another item,

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like a wall or a hay-feeder. If she'd droppeddead on the spot the sheep would have juststepped fastidiously over her. There couldnever be any sort of communication betweenthem, not of any kind. Wholly alien. It wasthis quality that she'd tried to paint, but whathad come across was fear. The sheep's, shewondered, or her own?

James stood at the sink with cold water run-ning over his hands, rinsing the cups. (Hecould never be quite sure Adèle had done itproperly.) They were certainly getting a thor-ough rinsing now, because James was milesaway.

He was crouching where Lewyn musthave crouched, watching the smoke and thehaze from the fire, getting glimpses ofsomeone moving about on the other side ofit. The smell was dense and suffocating.

James watched through Lewyn's eyesas the figure behind the fire reached into it

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with a stick, poking, prodding, drawing backas the wind shifted and he was engulfed insmoke. He doubled up, coughing, his eyesburning.

James shook his head. He refused tobelieve it, any of it. Maybe it was a joke,maybe the Welsh were playing a game withthe tourists, tell them a few stories, get themgoing. He tried to picture Lewyn and Davehuddled over their beer glasses, inventingfurther and further outrages: I know we'll tell'em Raoul killed, partially ate and thenburned the children, no how about if Raoul isreally the devil see and we're the only onesthat know, no I've got it the devil comes outof the sea on to the cliffs at high tide anddrags people down. Reckon they'll go forthat?

Not a likely scenario, he thought, as heremembered Lewyn saying 'I'm just tellingyou what I saw,' his face creased with theseriousness of it. He didn't believe Lewyn

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was joking. So Lewyn must therefore be seri-ous; thus Lewyn was either correct or incor-rect. Raoul had either killed and incineratedthe girls, then somehow fooled the police in-to believing it was an accident, or he hadn't.If he had, then what about the woman at theparty; what about Edith, kept a prisoner inher room all that time? Had he killed themtoo? He'd have to have been some kind ofpsycho, a mass killer, planning and executingeach death, covering his traces, planting falseinformation with his neighbours, convincingthe police. A fucking psycho.

Or Lewyn had simply got it wrong.Seen a perfectly innocent bonfire. MaybeRaoul was burning tyres, that would explainthe stench and the smoke, then he'd buriedthe residue because it was unsightly, and hewas after all an architect, deeply concernedwith issues of aesthetics and visual beauty.And the piece of wool? Well, maybe he justwanted to burn some old clothes. And the

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bones? He could have found a dead sheep inthe field and decided this was the best way toget rid of it. Surely that was more likely than- than all that other stuff.

had a stick thingLewyn had said sheep sometimes got

attacked. By dogs. What else could you dowith them but burn them and bury thebones?

had aJames shut off the tap, briskly, then

turned it on again and drank from it. He hada peculiar taste in his mouth.

This could be such a beautiful room, Adèlewas thinking, as they had their coffee. Stonewalls and thick, dark beams, and a stoneledge round three sides of it faced with woodwhere you could sit and gaze out of the win-dows. She would have to see if she could getthe fire going properly - her first attemptshad resulted in the smoke going anywhere

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except up the chimney. A wood fire on a coldwinter afternoon, everything brushed andclean, Elvis growling as the logs crackled andspat, and the wind outside flinging the deadleaves around in gusts. If they could sort outsome of the draughts she could even pull thecouch up to the fire and bring down blanketsand a pillow. She and James could drinkwhisky and make difficult uncomfortablelove, in front of a log fire. That's what thehouse needs, Dilys had said, loving. She pic-tured the firelight on their naked flesh asJames touched her, stroked her; the baby oilwould be brilliantly cold for a second, thenJames would cover her, working against her.

She caught Lewyn's eye and blushedagain. Well, he could join in too. Shewondered what ideas Lewyn had about logfires and baby oil. She could watch him andJames together, a heavy, thickly muscledbody and a lighter, leaner one. Like that filmwith Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Would

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James go along with it? She looked over athim speculatively; he was saying somethingto Lewyn about repointing, particularly thatwest face. Just you wait till I get you upstairs,she thought, and her stomach tightened,turned over.

Lewyn stood up to leave and Jameswent to fetch his coat.

'I'll walk you halfway,' he said. 'I coulddo with a blow.'

Lewyn, after thanking Adèle and re-ceiving her assurance that it was nothing, apleasure to have him, stood awkwardly, look-ing at the painting. She started to collect theplates and bowls and he assisted; she had astrong impression that he wanted to saysomething to her but was unable to. Itcrossed her mind that she was perhapswrong about him and that he wanted to lether know that he fancied her, maybe whisperthat she should try to get away tomorrow,he'd be waiting in the barn. Would she turn

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him down? she wondered idly. Of course shewould. But if he were to persist... Hm. Therewas certainly something about him, asidefrom the directness of his blue eyes and theundeniable attractiveness of his hard, strongphysique.

She had to admit it, she was apushover for silent, difficult men, men with ashadow. It had taken her years to discoverthat what she had thought to be hiddendepths in James was merely something miss-ing from him, not still water so much as astagnant pond. The only times now that shefelt again the original fascination for him waswhen they set sail on the tempestuous tidesof torrid abandonment (as she liked to thinkof it). And that particular boat hadn't beenpushed out for, let's call it ten days though itcould well be more like three weeks. Whatwith the upheaval of moving and the worriesabout Sam, not to mention the sheer bloodynoise the charmingly antiquated bedsprings

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made and the way that one or other or bothof them always seemed to manage to get themood broken by an obliging draught up the -well, it just hadn't been happening much.

And apart from the troubling questionof, if they weren't having sex then what ex-actly were they doing together, and the inev-itable anxieties about their relationship (aword she always thought of in an Americanaccent) and was it her fault, was it his fault,was she getting too old to arouse him, was hebored with her - apart from all that, she wasbecoming good and randy. She mentallystripped Lewyn and found a big, capable, po-tent man who'd been living alone (as far asshe knew) all his life and who was probablyready for a bit. She smiled at the crassness ofher thoughts, but there they were. Would shebe able to navigate the boat with a differentcrew? Only one way to find out.

James returned with the coats; sherealized she'd been that close to flirting with

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Lewyn, in so far as flirting was on the menuwith such a dank, dark cellar of a man. Well,a girl had to amuse herself somehow, and ifthe boat had sprung a leak - She smiled andshook the proffered hand.

'Lovely to see you, Lewyn. Thanks forall your help. Sleep well.'

'See you again, Mrs Tullian.''I'll just be a few minutes, Del.'

As soon as the cold black air hit him, Lewynknew he was going to be sick. The feeling hadbeen rolling round in him for the last half-hour, unidentified, just another strand in hisinternal background noise. But now he couldfeel his abdomen clenching, and he triedhard to relax the muscles, breathing slowly,not fighting it but willing it down. Jameswalked beside him, not speaking. His headwas full of tangled thoughts, he couldn't pullany single one out and speak it aloud. He'dhoped the night air might clear his head, but

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it seemed to be having the opposite effect,clouding further the murky water. Theyreached the point where the path to Lewyn'shouse joined the road, and stopped. 'Lewyn,look. What you were saying earlier on. Aboutthe fire.' James didn't know how this was go-ing to come out: it was just the handiestloose end hanging off the ball of confusion inhis mind.

'It could have been all sorts of things.Couldn't it? It needn't have been what youthink it was. I mean it's all a bit hard to be-lieve, wouldn't you say?'

Lewyn shrugged, grunted. 'I saw whatI saw. Believe what you want.'

'I'm not questioning what you saw,but surely there must be other explanations.'

'Raoul Charpentier was not a goodman. If I had to say what I truly believe, I'dsay he was a bad man. An evil man. I don'tknow what he did or didn't do. I didn't seehim actually do anything, that's why I didn't

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go to the police about it. I wish I had, I reallydo, if I could go back and have the chanceagain I would. Those parties, they weren'tjust people having fun; Dave didn't tell you,but he saw it same as me. People wearingmasks and things on their heads, playinggames. One time I saw them, Raoul waschasing them round with a stick, and theywere falling about they were so drunk. Onthe cliff edge. In the dark. They'd go couplingin the fields. It's a miracle more of themdidn't go over. Maybe they did and no-onefound out. Maybe that woman wasn't theonly one. Edith said she saw him dancingwith her just before she fell, she said he hada knife. Who knows what else she saw?Raoul said she was mad, well she certainlyacted mad, she said the things mad peoplesay. But what made her mad? Doesn't meanthat everything she said was wrong. I thinkshe was mad because she was shit-scared, ifyou'll pardon me. Of Raoul.

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'And she told me, she told me, Raoulwanted to kill her and the kiddies. Then thekiddies disappeared off to some fancy schoolsomewhere, after he had a big fire in themiddle of summer and buried the ashes. No-one ever saw them again. Edith fell out of thewindow. Who knew what happened exceptRaoul, who was going round telling everyoneshe was so mad she had to be locked up likean animal? Harley Street doctor. Who eversaw him, 'cept Raoul? Then the house justburned down while he was out for a walk.Just burned clean away! Then off he goesback to France or wherever it was. Well youmight find it hard to believe, but you nevermet him, you never met Edith. Those chil-dren. Dear God help us all. I'll go to my gravewishing I'd said something to someone,helped her when she asked me to. I couldmaybe have stopped him, I could have saidsomething...'

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Lewyn fell silent and felt the bile risingin his throat, hot and choking. James re-garded him, amazed: he'd had no idea Lewynwas capable of such passion, or of putting itinto words. He didn't know what to say, andwhen Lewyn reached for his hand and shookit, and then maladroitly pulled him to him,he hugged him back, patting his shoulder.Lewyn held him for a moment with his eyessqueezed hard shut. Then he released himand walked across the road to his path.

'See you again James.''Goodnight Lewyn.'

Adèle had gone up to bed. Somehow the ideaof washing dishes had become a dim, distantlabour to be performed sometime in the fu-ture, tomorrow possibly or next week. Shehad to lie down. Her stomach was churning.What she had taken for lust was forming intoa hard, tender lump in her groin. The pro-spect of scraping the remains of food off the

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plates was nauseating. Come to think of it,the whole idea of food was itself distinctlyunpleasant. Any food. Steak pie or chickenchasseur or a big plate of greasy fried breadand beans and sausage. Stilton and liqueurs.Stop this she instructed herself as somesphincter low down clamped shut.

She felt hot and irritable; she kickedthe blankets off, exposing her leg, which im-mediately froze. She rolled over on to herstomach and bitter, scalding fluids trickledinto her mouth. She swallowed, swallowedagain, but the taste wouldn't go away. Herstomach felt as if it was about to boil over,like a pan of rice, and she retched andcoughed. She lay still for a moment, then satup. The nausea receded: she sat gasping andswallowing, calculating the distance to thebathroom, and then a wave of burning, acidicvileness rose up irresistibly into her mouth,and she struggled out of bed, holding her

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hand to her mouth. The taste was rich, fer-mented, juicy.

She ran to the bathroom, and, with herhead over the toilet bowl, waited. Again it re-ceded; then suddenly her whole interiorreached up into her throat and gouged itsway out, bolt after bolt, she saw lightningstreaks as she retched and heaved, and thesmell bloomed up around her, the sweet,tangy smell of vomit. She was aware of thesounds she was making, dimly, then hermouth was flooded again and she coughedand choked. There was a line hanging fromher mouth, she reached for the toilet roll andwiped it away. She crouched on the floor,knowing it wasn't over, panting. It cameagain, hotter, harder, juicier, pumping out ofher mouth in waves. She cried out in dis-tress, and her teeth locked as the acids ragedin her mouth; another bolt, but there wasn'tmuch to come up now; another, the musclesof her abdomen clenching on nothing. She

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spluttered, her whole upper body in spasm.Dear God! It was almost funny. Gaaaaaaa!

She let her head rest against her hand,which was braced on the toilet seat. Sheclosed her eyes and a kind of bliss came uponher, the bliss of not feeling sick, of having herbody free of the rotten, clawing nausea thathad possessed it. She raised her head. Wasthere more? She felt giddy, exhilarated,elated. She laughed aloud. Dear God let medie now, for I am in Paradise! Her legs wereextremely wobbly, her stomach felt bruised,trampled on, and her throat was etched withlines of trauma drawn in acid. But the cessa-tion of nausea was transcendentally exquis-ite. She got herself back to her bed and laydown in a transport of physical well-being.Her head was singing. Was there more? Yesprobably, but later, later, for now she wouldjust lie here, for a week or two maybe. Sheremembered that she hadn't flushed the

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toilet. Ah well, she would go and do it in aminute. In a day or two.

Lewyn had got as far as the barn when hisbody erupted, a violent, unbearable horror ofsickness prostrating him. Oh no, he moaned,hugging himself, oh no.

James smelled it as soon as he shut the doorbehind him.

'Adèle?'He ran up the stairs, and her white,

damp face smiled sweetly, sadly at him as heentered the room.

'James, do you feel the teeniest bit un-well?' she asked, and he smelled the vomiton her breath and ran for the bathroom.They were both sick again, later in the night.As he staggered back to the bedroom Jameslooked in on Sam: he was out for the count,dribbling innocently. James got into bedwhere Adèle was now sufficiently recovered

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to want a cigarette. She was even hungryagain. James felt strong enough to go down-stairs and get her a glass of milk and a pieceof bread.

Whatever it had been, he reflected,standing in the cold bright kitchen, it musthave been something Sam hadn't had. Coffeeperhaps? But coffee didn't make you sick,not in his experience, and he'd rinsed thecups himself. Then he remembered: Samhadn't had the chilli. Wise child that he was,he'd stuck to veggyburger. He examined thepan, his nose wrinkling in distaste as hepushed the remains around with a fork. It alllooked OK. What was in it anyway: tomato,onion, kidney beans, tomato puree. Chillipowder of course, and garlic. Del had made ita thousand times. And rice was just rice,surely? If the onions had been off Del wouldhave spotted it, you knew the moment youcut into them.

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He went to the bin and found theonion skin and the empty tins. It all lookedand smelled like it was supposed to. He cut apiece of bread and debated whether to butterit. He decided not to. No good pushing yourluck. He rinsed a glass, and his eye fell on thepudding dishes. There were blackberries inthe top one. Sam hadn't eaten them. Jamesfelt saliva squirt into his mouth, and his jawtightened. Blackberries. From the freezer. Heput down the glass.

He opened the door to the basementand clicked on the light. The chest freezer,along with everything else in the basementand the basement itself, had been undam-aged by the fire which had mostly been con-fined to the top floor of the house. It hadn'tgot down this far. Adèle had spent half amorning swilling it out, though it had lookedclean enough. She'd made him open it thefirst time, admitting that she couldn't bearthe thought of what might be inside. She'd

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screamed when he jerked back as he openedthe lid, then kicked him on the thigh as helaughed. It wasn't just empty, it was clean.Gleaming white.

The light hummed as he approachedthe freezer. He touched the handle on the lid,then pulled his hand away. He stood lookingat it. He didn't want to open it.

Why not.He just didn't, that was all. He'd go

back upstairs and Adèle would drink themilk and eat the bread, probably getting hic-cups as she usually did with dry bread, andhe'd lie down in the warm bed and sleep.That would be nice. He shifted his weight,looked away, looked back again.

Why not.No reason, just that there might be

dead children in it or live rats or a seething,crawling mass of plump white maggots orjust something waiting in there, waiting forhim to open the lid so it could slither out.

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Touch his face. Flop on to the floor and crawlround his feet, slimy, hissing.

He touched the handle again. Helooked away, opened up the lid. He peeredin.

Plastic bags of frozen vegetables, peas,green beans. Some sealed Tupperware con-tainers. Pastry. He reached down and rum-maged beneath them, and his eye caughtsomething that was instantly familiar, butunplaceable.

Something blue.He pushed aside a large bag of oven

chips. A blue patch. On something dirtywhite. Furry. He stood, not moving, notbreathing, and his ears began to sing. It waspart of the hindquarters of a sheep. The bluepatch was the dye the farmers used to markthem. It sat awkwardly on the bottom of thefreezer, a large irregular piece of flesh, notcut, not sliced. Torn. He blinked. Heslammed the lid down again, stood back, his

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heart pounding. He rubbed his hands againsthis trousers; then he turned his back on thefreezer and went up the stairs, turning off thelight. He shut the basement door and walkedto the sink, poured washing-up liquid on tohis hands and washed them, once, twice.

And then he thought: it's not working.It's not even cold. And by the look of the -meat? - in there, it hadn't been working fordays, weeks even.

He filled the glass, took the plate ofbread, went up to the bedroom. He layquietly while Adèle ate and drank. Then heturned off the light and rolled over, awayfrom her. His last thought before he sleptwas: the woman beside me must be insane.

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8

The Smile of Death

Adèle woke to find James gone, the sheetscold beside her. She yawned and stretchedand her abdominal muscles complained: ittook her a few seconds to remember why.But she felt marvellous, ready for anything.Purged, renewed.

She found James in the cellar, with abucket of water and a sponge. He had thefreezer on its side, so that the open lid wasflush with the tiled floor; he was kneeling onthe lid, his bum sticking out as he leaned in.She contemplated giving him a good hardkick but thought better of it, and boiled wa-ter for tea.

The table had been put back in the kit-chen from the front room, all the dishes hadbeen done and there was a general air ofclean wet surfaces and good order. She wasimpressed. She sat at the table and had a ci-garette. She used an ashtray this time.

James came up from the basementand poured the contents of the bucket downthe sink, then filled it up again. She noticedhe was using bleach in the water. Funny kindof time for spring cleaning, she thought, butthen who was complaining? If it was left toher spring would never come. He went backdown.

'Hello Adèle, my you're looking loveli-er than ever this morning. I hope you sleptwell and woke refreshed? Why yes, thankyou James, and may I add that it's a joy anddelight to renew our acquaintance afterhours of cruel separation,' she said as he de-parted, though perhaps not loudly enoughfor him to hear. When James started

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cleaning, she knew, he took a pretty dimview of anyone who was just sitting aroundenjoying themselves, and was even less re-ceptive than usual to any kind of pleasantryor badinage. She dropped the tea bags intomugs. James was inclined to the view thattea should come out of a pot, whereas shewas not. In the early days, this kind of differ-ence of outlook had worried her terribly -and there had been so many of them: in heryears at college she had had thousands ofconversations about such things as class,gender and race. She'd been able on a goodday to get herself worked up into a frenzy ofguilt about her privileged background. She'ddropped countless numbers of her habits,many of them around the preparation,serving and consuming of food and drink. Bythe time she met James she was able to flickash on the floor, drink from mugs thatweren't clean, use a fork without a knife,

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even eat without a plate, straight off thetable, if the food came pre-wrapped.

And James had been horrified. Forhim, it was something akin to an insult not touse what he called a coaster under a cup, heflinched when she put a milk bottle on to thetable (he favoured a jug) and he was pro-foundly disturbed by her newly, joyfully ac-quired habit of filling the kettle down thespout rather than taking off the lid. James'sfood-related behaviour was tighter, more ri-gid, more formal than hers had ever been.And he was the genuine article, a working-class man.

Adèle had had a short period of confu-sion, which had culminated in her coming toa standstill in front of a shop, gazing at a setof cork table mats decorated with thatchedcottages and rosebuds. And she'd neverlooked back. She'd rather lose James thanuse table mats. That was what it came downto. His weapon was something she called the

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smile of death, a face he would use when aprofound outrage was perpetrated on him,such as a knife being used for both margar-ine and jam. Adèle, the smile would say, youare beyond belief. Lurking behind the smileshe sometimes thought she saw his mother,but she didn't want to speculate too muchabout that. He never spoke about his par-ents. She had never met them, at his insist-ence. It wasn't always clear to her who hewas ashamed of.

She took James's tea to him; he lookedup over his shoulder, then returned to hiswork.

'How're you feeling, Jamie?' she asked,determined to get something out of him,even if he was sulking. He grunted, and shecursed him: bastard!

'Jamie? Is there something wrong?'She knew how he hated talking about whatwent on between them, but she also knew

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she could make him do it if she persevered.Usually she didn't.

'Jamie?'He backed out of the freezer and stood

up, facing her. The daylight from the kitchencast him into strong silhouette - she couldn'tsee his face.

'Well what do you think?' This was apredictable response, his first line of defence.

'I don't know, maybe you'd better tellme.'

He stood before her, furious, she couldtell by the set of his head, the way his handsrubbed against his trousers, like a fast bowl-er getting ready to throw.

'How long has it been like this?''James. Please. How long has what

been like what exactly?' She was aware of thesnotty-bitch tone that had crept into hervoice, her outraged-consumer voice. Shecouldn't help it.

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'Del, this freezer hasn't been working,for weeks by the look of what was in it. I'vehad a look at the plug. The fuse has gone.You've been using it just about every day.You apparently didn't notice.'

it just flitted away, flitter flutterShe frowned. What was he saying?'I emptied everything out. Everything.'

He waited for her to respond, but she wasfrowning, looking distracted. 'Del?'

'Flitter flutter, bread and butter.''What?''What?' She couldn't concentrate. She

was suddenly unsure of the identity of theperson facing her. She couldn't make out hisfeatures.

'I put everything into a bin bag. Here.Would you like to have a look?'

Why would she want to look at whatwas in the black plastic bin bag? She had aflicker of memory, dark branches waving in astrong wind, running fast, alongside a wall...

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'You had something in there thatshouldn't have been. Didn't you.'

What did he mean? Ruthie was dead,buried, burned rather, it couldn't be her.

He picked up the bin bag, heavy,swollen like a pregnant animal.

'Here!' He put his hand in, rummagedabout.

Don't touch it! James!He pulled something out.'No!''How did this get here, Del?''I don't know!''I think you do.''No.' She dropped the mug of tea,

heard it shatter and splash, steaming liquidand fragments of pottery skittering over thetiles. He shook his head and smiled at her,that dreadful, condemning smile...

'Flitter flutter, bread and butter, biteyour tongue and make you stutter!' sheyelled at him.

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'What are you talking about!''I don't know!' He approached her, the

hunk of rotting meat in his hand. 'Please. Putit down. Don't touch it.'

He glanced down at the ragged, stink-ing lump in his hand and dropped it on thefloor. It landed with a heavy wet smack. Itwas leaking.

'Adèle? It's all right. I'm not going tohurt you.' He came closer, cautiously, andshe backed away until her foot touched thebottom of the stairs. She turned and ran.

James stood, shocked by the scene. Hehadn't meant to frighten her. He'd woken upearly and the image of the freezer hadsmacked him in the face. He was genuinelyunsure if what he remembered had actuallyhappened. He'd felt the warmth of Adèle'sbody beside him, and couldn't in any way re-concile it with the repulsive, sloppy, stinkingmess at the bottom of the freezer, the freezerthat their food had been coming out of, for

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weeks. He'd padded downstairs, the sunshining strongly through the landing win-dow, and had gone to look. Yes. It was stillthere. A kind of rage had come over him,rage at the goddamned bloody inexcusablemessiness of this bloody woman; and thenhe'd been brandishing the stump of meatand fur at her, and she'd run, terrified. Ofhim.

I should go after her, he thought. Thefloor was slippery, tea and animal tissuestrewn about. He stepped carefully throughit and ascended the stairs; then he thoughtno, I'll leave her for a bit. She's in no fit stateto talk. He went to find Sam, who was writ-ing in his room, and called Elvis.

The three of them walked up to Lewyn'shouse. Elvis snuffled along, aware that hewas off the leash and therefore on trust.

'You and Mum were sick, weren't you?'Sam asked.

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'Yup.''I wasn't though and Elvis wasn't.''No. That's right.''So why were you and Mum? Did you

eat something dirty?' Sam knew if you pickeddirty things up off the floor and ate themyou'd be sick. Elvis was allowed to do it be-cause he had a constitution of cast iron, andit just went straight through him. But peoplewere different.

'Did you eat something off the floor?'Sam persisted, ever keen to pinpoint amisdemeanour.

'No. There was something wrong withthe food.'

'Oh.' Sam sounded disappointed.'Sam? You haven't been...' What, ex-

actly. Dismembering sheep? Taking fuses outof plugs? Hoarding decaying parts ofanimals?

'Sam.' He tried again. 'You haven'tbeen playing in the basement, have you?' He

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wasn't supposed to go down there, becausehe might hurt himself and not be able to getout and they might never, ever, find him.

'No.''Seriously now. Have you?''No.''OK.' One thing about Sam, James

thought, he gave you a straight answer to astraight question. They reached Lewyn'shouse. Elvis went directly for the barn, snuff-ling and scratching at the door. Lewyn's doorwas open and James called in.

'Lewyn? Are you decent?' Lewyn ap-peared at the doorway from the gloom of theinterior. He looked terrible. 'Are you allright? Del and me had a spot of stomachtrouble last night, and I was wondering if -you'd had - anything...' He trailed off. Hereally didn't need to ask.

'Aye, I wasn't feeling too clever. So-mething we ate, I dare say?'

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'Yeah. I think so. The freezer's on theblink.'

'Oh yes.' Lewyn watched Elvis snuff-ling round the door of the barn, where he'dstood, then squatted, finally lain down, wish-ing to die, moaning, crying, abject.

'I'm really sorry.''So what was it?' James heard hard-

ness, anger in Lewyn's voice.'The blackberries.''Blackberries. Really. I thought it had

been that, what do you call it? Spicy stuff.''Chilli. No, we think it was those

bloody blackberries!' He tried to make itsound like an innocent misadventure, justone of those things. 'Anyway, we're bothreally sorry.'

'Mrs Tullian all right is she?''Del? Oh yes, yes she's fine now.''Are you sure?'James met his eye and couldn't pre-

tend to misunderstand the question.

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'She's still a bit upset.''Aye. 'Spect so.' Lewyn looked away

and back again. 'Well must get on.''Yes. Sorry Lewyn. I hope it won't put

you off coming over.''Aye well...' Lewyn winked and nodded

at Sam. 'You all right, piglet?''Yes, 'cos I didn't eat any of the black-

berries. Neither did Elvis. So he's all right.Elvis was only sick once, when he was apuppy. He ate a dead bird, and it had wormsin it.'

'Sam.''Living in it!''Sam. That'll do.' Sam looked annoyed,

but left it at that. He'd wanted to tell Lewynabout how the worms ate the bird, so thebird didn't really die it just turned intoworms and then they turned into flies, so hisdad said, and then birds ate the flies, andthen...

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'OK Lewyn. Come over any time. Wewon't make you eat anything. Promise.'

Lewyn looked away, smiled.'OK.' He watched them as they left.

'Tell Mrs Tullian I hope she's feeling bettersoon,' he called after them.

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9

Being Silly

Adèle squinted at the painting. There wassomething in the background, behind a leaf-less tree. At first she'd taken it for part of thetree, but the closer she looked the more shebecame convinced that it was a humanfigure.

It was a big, wide landscape, intendedas one of the centrepieces of the exhibition,great rolling fields and a hard whitish-bluesky. Sheep were roaming about all over it,small white blobs on the hills, and a group ofthem close up in the front, gawping directlyout of the canvas with their knowing, beadyblack eyes. She'd differentiated them as faras she could, varying their positions and

angles, but their expressions troubled her -no matter what she intended they came outthe same, neither blank nor animated butsome curious thing in between, alert, avid,watchful, but oddly disinterested, as ifwhatever happened wouldn't matter much tothem one way or another.

But yes, they looked frightened. Theirears were up, their noses sampling the air fordanger. One of them had a foreleg lifted offthe ground, as if it were about to stamp.She'd spread the close-ups along the wholelength of the painting, and their eyes werefocused on the viewer from a wide semi-circle. All except one, towards the back of theforegound group, which was looking awayfrom the viewer, towards the tree at the endof the field. It was this one which had attrac-ted Adèle's attention to the tree. She stoodback and looked again. Definitely. Someonewas hiding behind that tree, she could see

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the top of a head and part of an upper body.What was he doing there?

Adèle had never painted human fig-ures. She didn't know why, but she wasdeeply reluctant to bring people on to thecanvas, it would make her responsible forthem somehow. And in any case, what busi-ness would anyone have in one of her inimic-al, desolate landscapes? She rememberedseeing the films of the Apollo landings, thosecomic balloon-men swimming about on thatterrible, dead infinity of dust and rock. It hadchilled her to the marrow. People weren'tsupposed to be there, and she felt much thesame about her landscapes. They justcouldn't support human life. They could onlybarely sustain sheep, she thought. And yethere, beyond any doubt, was someone. Thefirst man, lurking behind a tree. There was apainting she'd seen on a trip to the V and A,of Adam hiding from the wrath of God in theGarden of Eden. Was that what she was

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thinking of? But the artist in that paintinghad portrayed Adam as a pathetic, cowed,cringing creature. Her man was hiding, butnot from fear. He was up to something.

She lit a cigarette. She was more orless chain-smoking as she painted now, asmuch to keep the smell at bay as anything.She looked over at her new still-life group:syringe and meat. The meat was beyondgamey, beyond high, it had gone over intothat other world of decay and decomposi-tion. It was rotten. She prodded it with abrush and something slithered away, out ofsight. The smell, she conceded, was not good.She had taken to locking her studio when sheleft it: otherwise, she was sure James wouldhave been in there with his bloody bin bagsand bleach. All that silly fuss about a bit ofrotten meat. How was she to know the freez-er was out of action? What was she, a fuckingmechanic? He was supposed to be Harry theHandyman.

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But of course she had known really,though she'd swear on a stack of Bibles shehadn't taken the fuse out. Had she? Shethought of the screwdriver in the previousstill-life, and for a moment was assailed byone of those baffling flashes of somethinglike memory: the click of the light and thechill of the basement air on her bare legs.The fuse like a lost earring in the palm of herhand...

But she would swear, she'd swear onSam's life, she'd never seen that torn hunk ofsheep before. Oh no, definitely not (butwhere had her still-life model come from,she wondered; and found that she didn'tquite know, it was just there, wasn't it, likethe screwdriver and the syringe.

(climbing down the cliff steps, thehandrail a particularly intense shade ofpink in the black air, clambering about onthe freezing slippery dark rocks, and there it

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was, no needle, but the barrel and plungerintact, Medispose)

She wheeled around but there was no-one. The door was safely locked. Shedropped the cigarette on to the floor andground it out with her foot. She picked upher brush.

James's gravel had arrived, twenty bags of itand twelve sixteen-foot lengths of pipe, four-inch polypipe, yellow flexible stuff, and thecollars. Unloading it from the truck hadtaken the better part of the morning, princip-ally because the driver, a polite, nondescriptman with sandy hair, had been in no particu-lar hurry. James was beginning to get used tothis way the west Welsh had, as if the rolling,convoluted roads had got into their heads,making the shortest distance a long trip.There really was nothing for it but to standand talk to them.

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James, never much of a conversation-alist at the best of times, found himselfmostly confined to nodding and smiling asthe driver's rapid, rather staccato voicerattled on, quick-fire bursts of heavily inflec-ted speech, slightly nasal, with a singsongquality to it which James found distracting.

'Had to come over the top, 'cosFishguard's out, widening him for all the lor-ries, hell of a job by the look of him. Been outfor months, still that's the way it is Isuppose.'

'Yup.''Then they're going to put in a new

bridge, did you hear that? Cut right throughLower Town, and the Sailor's Return comingdown to make way for him, though the ne-cessity of him I can't see, I'd have to say,lovely old pub that, been in have you?'

'No. No...''Oh yes, lovely old pub. Keep banging

your head on things, but it seems a pity to

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knock him down so they can build a bypass.Still the amount of heavy traffic throughLower Town you wouldn't believe, andthere's some tight corners, dangerous he isreally I suppose. Nothing like a bit of pro-gress eh? No end to it sometimes. Why theycan't leave things alone a bit escapes me, butthen I s'pose you can't have things all thesame for ever, not with things the way theyare, can you? Bloody vandalism though,when it comes to knocking things down just'cos they're in the way. I was saying theyshould take him up higher, cut through bythe old Brynhelwyn road, and bring him outby Dinas Cross, save them building a bridgeand they wouldn't have to touch Lower Townat all. Don't you think?'

'Er...''Made a film in Lower Town, did you

hear that? Aye, they made that Under MilkWood there, never saw him myself but hewas supposed to be very good. Not much for

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cinemas me, though I'd be curious to see thatone, just to see it all on film; they had thatRichard Burton in the Sailor's evidently,when they were all here for the filming,Neil's got a picture of him up, signed hisname and everything...'

James was exhausted by the time thelorry negotiated its way out of the gate andround the dog-leg comer. But the driver'scalm, self-assured voice had soothed him,driven from his mind the picture he'd beencarrying of Adèle shrinking back from him ashe came towards her with a piece of rottingmeat in his hands. He didn't like that picture,not at all.

He went inside; he stood outsideAdèle's studio, listening to her quiet noises.

'Del? Do you want something to eat?''No, James! I'll get something later.'

Then, almost as an afterthought; 'Thankyou.'

'You all right in there, Del?'

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'I'm fine James, really. I'll talk to youlater.'

'OK.'

Sam was sitting at the kitchen table. He wasplaying with a farmyard set they'd found inthe basement: cows and sheep and pigsmade of garishly painted, brittle I970splastic, and a farmyard like a model of a filmset, house, barn, milking parlour, a pig shed.A ruddy-faced farmer with side whiskers,waistcoat, floppy hat and stick, and a dog.

'Hi chief. Want some beans on toast?''Yes please.' Sam didn't look up, he

was busy. James looked over his shoulder:Sam was balancing one cow on top of anoth-er, the one behind with its rear legs on thefloor. James saw that there were other pairsof animals dotted round the farmyard insimilar positions. He deliberated brieflywhether to say anything, decided not to. Butsometime soon he'd have to have one of

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those chats with Sam, and he couldn't thinkof anything he was less anxious to do. Mostseven-year-olds would have friends to misin-form and alarm them about such delicatematters; Sam was, by necessity now, but alsoby inclination, a solitary child. He wouldhave to grope his own way towards an under-standing of the joys of sex, at least untilJames could no longer decently avoid thesubject. He trod on a pig, and returned it tothe table.

'No, that one's finished,' Sam said, anddropped it back on the floor.

'Whatever you say chief. You's da bossman,' said James in his Beverly Hills Copvoice, and Sam giggled.

'I thought you were supposed to be do-ing your maths anyway, fatboy? Isn't thatwhat we agreed?'

'I did it already.''I've done it already. Is that perhaps

what you mean? Let me see.' Sam showed

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him his maths problem book and a piece ofpaper. James glanced over the answers: allcorrect.

'Top of the class. Again,' he said andSam giggled again.

'But there's only me in it!''That's right. You're top and bottom.

How does it feel to be so talented?''And I didn't look at the back, in case

that's what you're thinking.''The thought never crossed my mind. I

trust you totally.''Can I have HP sauce in the beans?''No. Absolutely not. Unthinkable.''Please. Please can I?''Hm. What's fifteen thousand four

hundred and fifty-eight divided by ninety-three?'

'That's not fair!''Come on. Ten seconds.' He opened

the tin.'Dad.'

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'Eight, seven...' ,'You don't even know that one.''Oh no?''Do you?''Five-four-three-two-one,' he said and

put the bread under the grill.'That was too fast!''Life's like that, ratface. Take it or leave

it.''Dad!'

After dinner (the word 'lunch' was likethe word 'cunt' for James: he would neithersay it nor think it and disapproved stronglyof those who did) Sam helped him with thegravel. The problem was making sure thepipe was laid at a gradient, and a reasonablyeven gradient at that, so it would drain prop-erly. Sam watched, puzzled and impatient, asJames again tapped in posts at either end ofthe trench, higher ones this time, andstretched a string between them, loosely

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knotted at the far end. Sam wanted a blow-by-blow explanation, but all he got was:

'Wait. Watch. Attend.'Sam was left down by the septic tank

end and instructed to raise or lower thestring as directed. James got the spirit level,the stick with three bubbles in it, vertical, ho-rizontal and forty-five degrees. Slanty, ashe'd explained to Sam. (Why anyone wouldwant a stick with a slanty bubble in it wasbeyond Sam, but he'd patiently forbornefrom mentioning its obvious uselessness.)James held the level against the stretchedstring and called out 'Higher. Lower,' untilSam got it to exactly the right place, thenJames knotted it tight. He started luggingthe dead-weight bags of gravel around andSam helped him, grunting and panting. Heslit them open and poured them out into thetrench, along half the length.

Sam fidgeted and hopped about whileJames delayed things further by selecting

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two long battens and joining them togetherwith a prop. He took, to Sam's way of think-ing, quite unnecessary pains to ensure thatthe join was also completely level. Shouldn'tthey just get on and start messing about withthe gravel?

And then it started to rain. James sentSam inside, though he intended to carry on,rain or no bloody rain. Sam returned to hisanimals, disgruntled. He knew they shouldhave got straight to the gravel. When he'dfinished the animals he went upstairs to hisbook.

It rained steadily all afternoon, thick,dripping rain. Adèle came down at fouro'clock and started making dinner (tea, forJames). She was pleased with the painting -sometimes she surprised even herself. Jameshad said he'd cook that evening, but shefound that she wanted to do it. After lastnight's fiasco, she felt she had her reputation

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at stake. She decided to go for safety: bakedpotatoes and salad and cheese.

She sang 'Didn't we almost have it all?'as she cut up the tomatoes and cucumbershe'd paid an arm and a leg for in Fishguard.It was her kind of music, a big, emotion-sat-urated ballad, and she sang loud, really giv-ing it some. James hated her singing, butthen he would, wouldn't he? He hated any-one expressing themselves. He found itembarrassing.

While she was singing, she was sud-denly struck by the strength of her voice andstopped in mid-line. God, she sounded likesome wounded animal! James came runningin, soaked.

'Del? What's the matter?''Oh I was just singing for Christ's

bloody sake,' she yelled at him, and flung theknife into the sink.

'Singing?'

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'Yes, bloody singing. You know? Likethis,' and she sang at him, 'Didn't we almosthave it all?' as hard and loud and high as shecould; her voice cracked at the end of theline, and she listened, dismayed. Jameswatched her, completely at a loss. Hemuttered something, she thought it was'need your head looking at', but she couldn'tbe sure, and went back into the rain.

She poured dressing into the saladbowl and tasted it. Hm. Something missing.She held her head on one side, pondering,then went out of the side door into thegarden.

'Del. What's this.' James's voice was con-trolled, but only just. He had had aboutenough.

'I would have thought a man of evenyour modest capabilities...' she began in herhoity-toity voice, and jerked back as he

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picked up his plate and banged it downagain. Sam watched, all eyes.

'Del don't - don't start talking likethat.'

'James James James, my darling boy,it's baked potato and grated cheese andgreen salad, with garlic dressing. What didyou think it was?' She thought she detectedthe traces of the smile of death lurking: andwhat a mean little mouth you've got, shethought. Why didn't I ever notice thatbefore?

'OK. So what's in the salad? Exactly.''Well, let's see. Tomato, cucumber,

green pepper, lettuce, apple, grated carrot.Parsley.'

'So what's this?' He picked out astrand of something with the end of hisknife, where it dangled wetly.

'Oh.''Yes. Oh.''James please, don't start shouting...'

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'What is it? You tell me.''I don't know!''Well you put it there didn't you?''No!''No?''I don't know! James, please...''What is it, Del?'She stood up, banging her knee

against the table.'It's grass, isn't it?''Really, this is too ridiculous.''You put grass in it didn't you?''Of course I didn't, people don't eat

grass!''No. Sheep eat grass.'The logic was unassailable. She walked

away, determined to escape his vulgar, hec-toring voice. Sam sat, keeping very still.James put the knife down, stood up, put onhis coat, went out into the dark, wet night.

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He had to think. Adèle seemed to be havingsome kind of breakdown. Ever since thatnight in the secure room she'd been strange;maybe even before that? He tried to thinkback, but could remember nothing out of theordinary.

Christ, as if he didn't have enough toworry about! Here he was, right in themiddle of a long, difficult job, maybe his lastchance to keep his business afloat. Sebastianwas dangling carrots in front of him, but hehad to get this job out of the way first. He'dpulled Sam out of school, cancelled con-tracts; there was a nice young couple rentingthe flat in London, with a six-month short-hold tenancy agreement in their kitchendrawer, so there was no house to go back to.Christ! She certainly chose her moments.

When Ruthie was born, Adèle hadgone into a deep depression. Nothing unusu-al about that, the doctor had said, women of-ten suffered terribly with their hormones

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after childbirth. But that had been anotherchoice moment: he struggling to establishhimself in the grip of the first Tory recession,in an unfamiliar part of north London. Hewould come back to a flat, the curtains stilldrawn, the post uncollected, the heating onin the middle of bloody July, Adèle lying onthe couch, undressed, smoking, and Ruthiecrawling about in soiled nappies, runningwild. I'm a bit tired, she'd say, what time isit? Why are you back? Because it's the even-ing now, Adèle. Is it?

He'd never got angry. He'd clampedhis teeth and seen to things. She couldn'thelp it and he'd never held it against her(though he'd never exactly forgiven or for-gotten it either). And over the years there'dbeen a few - Well. Once. She'd taken it intoher head that the man in the flat downstairswas trying to get at her. She'd claimed hekept her awake, playing the piano: Jameshad stayed up all one night listening. There,

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did you hear it? Hear what? Oh, he's stoppednow. She claimed she'd seen him sitting inthe ground-floor window with a Ouija board.She said she'd found a mark chalked on thefront step, a star in a circle. She'd gone outand scrubbed it off. He'd wake up in thenight and Adèle would be taking off hershoes, getting back into bed. Del? Where'veyou been? She'd mutter something, but hewas sure she was still asleep.

Then he'd been woken up one night bya commotion from below, shouting andthumping. He'd run down and there she was,wrestling with the disbelieving Mr Raphael.She'd got him up and accused him of tryingto drive her mad. His English wasn't quiteperfect in any case, but he'd certainly beenunable to make any sense of her shouting.James had grabbed at her, and she'd allowedherself to be taken back to bed.

She wouldn't go to the doctor. It hadpassed, and he put it down to strain and

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'women's troubles' (his mother's coy phrase).Then Sam had come along and she'd been sohappy, so delighted and relaxed; she couldbe such a lovely woman, he reminded him-self sternly. Her eccentricities were just partof it, he'd thought, part of her intense, play-ful engagement with the world.

Of course, that had all ended withRuthie in the sparkling Cornwall water. Herwork had become successful by then, andshe'd painted her way through that unendur-able, deadening period - painted herself outof a corner, he thought.

But this new business was different.He was fairly certain she was sleepwalkingagain. She'd complained that she could hearthe sheep at night, trampling about andbleating. He'd noticed mud on her feet onemorning; she couldn't explain it.

Well it happens. Could have been adog

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Since she'd started locking her studiohe hadn't seen any of the new paintings, butthe ones he'd seen so far were troubling himin ways he didn't like to think about tooclosely. And now the food...

He stood on the cliff top, the raindrumming around him and on him, and fi-nally allowed himself to formulate the ques-tion that had been working away at himsince that night in the secure room:

Is she dangerous?He felt a great surge of relief wash over

him as the words hung in his mind. All theconfusion and worry and guilt were pushedaside leaving just this one, eminently practic-al, consideration. Never mind how she'd gotto be this way, never mind if he was contrib-uting to her distress, or if there were thingshe should be doing to alleviate it. What wasessential was to consider whether or not sheconstituted a menace, to him, to Sam or to

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herself, and if so what actions he should taketo make her safe.

Clearly she could not be allowed toprepare any more food. Whether or not grasswas harmful to eat (had she washed it first,he wondered, and was presented with theperplexing image of her with a colander fullof grass at the sink) it certainly wasn't right.Nor was it right to take food from a freezerthat had stopped freezing and that had apiece of sheep carcass in it. He rememberedthe peculiar taste he'd had in his mouth aftereating the blackberries and ice-cream, andhis body shuddered again at the thought ofthe food in his mouth being in intimate, juicycontact with that damp, furry thing... For amoment the nausea returned, then recededagain, but his mouth was sour and acidic.She must have blanked the thing out of hermind, in some way not really seen it. Ormaybe she'd somehow got used to the ideathat it was in there, decaying quietly;

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accepted it. Liked it? His jaw was clampedshut and he relaxed the muscles, swallowingrepeatedly.

Was she dangerous? He knew, with allthe certainty there was in the world, that shewould never knowingly hurt him, or Sam. Itwas simply not conceivable that she woulddo that. She might be neglectful, erratic,sloppy; she might even be slipping over theincreasingly thin ice of sanity towards apoint where she would abruptly drop into thefrigid, murky water of madness. But he wasunable to think that she might hurt them,whatever happened. She would sooner hurtherself, he was sure.

So was that a possibility? He knew thata depressed woman was perfectly capable ofself-harm: he'd heard of women who feltcompelled to cut themselves with razorblades or burn their hands and arms with ci-garette ends, in a desperate attempt to findpeace and release from their inner torments.

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He thought of hiding his Bic disposables, andthen developed this into hiding cutlery, tak-ing her matches away, disconnecting thecooker, decommissioning the iron, checkingher drawers for nail files or paper clips or...It was ridiculous. It would be simpler just tolock her up (like Edith Charpentier). No-onecould live that way. He ran an imaginary eyeover her body, checking for scars or bruises,and found none. He would have noticed. Ofcourse she could always swallow bleach orhang herself from a beam or drop herhairdryer into the bath. There were dozens ofways a resourceful person could (he forcedthe words into focus) kill themselves. (Shecould, for instance, jump out of a window.Like Edith.)

But she would never do that either.She would know how much it would damageSam and him if she did; and it would in anycase be undignified and ugly. No, he wassure that wasn't a real possibility.

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He watched the Rosslare night ferrypulling out of Goodwick harbour, lit up like afloating Christmas tree. How lovely to be onthat ferry, in the brightly lit saloon with aplastic glass of lager in front of you, just tosail away and in a few hours' time you couldbe in a smoky Irish pub, one more solitarydrinker brooding into your glass, striking upsome kind of meaningless, impassioned con-versation with somebody as drunk as your-self. You could probably find work in Dublin,find a room to rent. Would it be rainingthere?

He sighed. His place was here, withSam and Adèle, he was connected to them ina million ways, more ties than he could evercut. He loved them. Adèle needed him ter-ribly right now, she would certainly go mad ifhe were to leave, he knew that. But it wasn'ta matter of obligation or guilt or duty: it waslove, it was his life, his identity. What wouldhe become without them? He pictured a

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James Tullian coming home to an emptyroom, beer cans and fast-food trays and dirtyclothes, and the phone number of a womanmet in a pub; no, that was someone else'slife, someone with no Adèle and no Sam, andJames pitied him from the bottom of hisheart.

He was soaked (again!) by the time theferry disappeared into the loneliness of itspassengers' futures, and he turned roundand went back to the house. It was a beauti-ful house, or it would be when he'd finishedwith it.

Adèle was reading in bed. It was abook about a teenage drug addict in America,her diary, and the girl's experiences hadbrought tears to her eyes. The girl was good,desperately wanted to be good, but felt sep-arated from her family, was dreadfully aloneand frightened. She'd started smoking can-nabis, but was tricked into taking heroin by agirl in her class and liked it, and had quickly

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found she couldn't stop. She'd ended up in atown she didn't know the name of, givingsomeone a blow-job in return for heroin.Adèle closed the book and howled, the bedshaking and creaking with the force of heranguish. She gave herself up to the stormand was rocked and buffeted by it, shaken,thrown all over the bed. She was beyondworrying about Sam's possible reactions tothe noise she was making, as the stormcrashed and shrieked around and in andthrough her.

Some period of time later, minutes orhours, she came to and sat up. Whatever hadbeen happening to her in the last few weeks,whatever it was that had been taking hold ofher, had drawn back a little, and left herenough of herself to see it. How close had shebeen to losing herself completely?

(dark branches waving, and she wasrunning along a low wall)

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She was unable to make any sense ofher behaviour. It was as if someone else weredoing it and she was remembering their ac-tions. She felt confusion mounting again andthumped the mattress with both fists:

'No!'She was strong, she was determined. It

had to stop, all of it. She would go into herstudio tomorrow and clear it out, all thosesinister pictures, those gruesome still lives,that meat! How could she have stood it for solong? If only she could vomit it all out, likethe tainted blackberries, throw it all up andflush it away and be done with it (but itwould still be there in the septic tank, untilthat got emptied and then it would bedumped out at sea somewhere, floatingaround in the unspeakable, monstrous blacksea, the sea that had come in and claimedRuthie's life).

(down by the septic tank where theybury the midgets)

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'No!'She would go in tomorrow and take

the pictures and the meat downstairs andburn them, bugger the wasted canvases; andshe'd start again, paint things that werewholesome and good and beautiful. Wasn'tart supposed to be beautiful?

She heard James come in and listenedto his footsteps on the stairs. She scrubbed ather face with a comer of the sheet. Heknocked on the door (his own bedroomdoor!) and she croaked 'Come in,' thencleared her throat and said loudly, clearly,sanely:

'Come in, Jamie!'He came over to her, literally dripping,

and she hugged him, pulling at his wet hairand kissing his neck and throat.

Sam waited for the sounds from next door tosubside. First Mum had been being silly,shouting and crying and carrying on, then

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Dad had come up and those other noises hadstarted. Sam knew the sequence well, lowvoices and a long period of silence, then thebed creaking rhythmically (Sam tappedalong with it), more silence, more creaking,then sounds like they were playing farm-yards, grunting and moaning, finally his dadsaying 'Easy, easy,' a burst of creaking, andthat was that. His mum scratching a matchfor her cigarette, low voices and laughing.They would be asleep soon. Sam fingered thekey under his pillow. He had nearly read itall now.

'Easy, easy...' James levered himself up offher, holding his weight on his elbows, andshe pulled his nipples and chest hair, run-ning her hands down to his belly where shekneaded and grabbed at him; he sat up andlifted her hips and she gripped the musclesof his arms as he thrust faster, deeper. Shereached for his hand and put it to her mouth,

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gnawing at his fist, and he covered her again,gasping and muttering in her ear. Shepushed her fists up into his armpits and hejerked and splashed and ran into and overher, his mouth locked on her neck.

'So. Did you come yet?' she asked himafter a few breathless moments, and theylaughed. She reached for her cigarettes andhe rested wetly, heavily on her while shestroked his back. By the time she'd finishedthe cigarette he'd be ready to bring her off(his term; she preferred 'pleasure her'). If hemanaged to stay awake that long.

Lewyn sat, staring out of his bedroom win-dow. He could see nothing but the traces ofthe rain on the glass and his own reflection.The dream was fading, all except one scenewhere he and James were shaking hands inthe barn. Lewyn had given him a sheep aspayment; James had it slung over hisshoulder. It's OK, he'd said, you'll never see

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it again, I promise. I'll take care of it. Andthen he'd smiled...

It was the smile that Lewyn woke upwith, his hand working at his achingly hardcock. He was glad the dream had finished be-fore anything further had happened with thehandsome, smiling James. And he was sorry.He didn't want to think about it, but thatwasn't true either because he wanted to thinkabout nothing else, just at the moment.

He looked over at his bed, and wasfilled with revulsion and something like hor-ror. He turned back to the window.

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10

4.38 a.m.

James fumbled into his wet, obstructiveclothes, fighting with the laces of his train-ers. He couldn't find his watch and the bed-side clock had stopped at 4.38, a completelyimpossible time for anyone to be outsideshouting. The clock flipped on to 4.39. Hefelt as if he was in someone's dream. Wherewas Adèle? He thought he heard a door clos-ing quietly, but it was only a tiny clickingsound, and all hell seemed to have brokenloose outside.

He ran down the stairs and out intothe boggy field. The noise was coming fromthe next field along, two voices, oh Christ heknew one of them, it was a voice he'd lived in

dread of for many years, ever since the incid-ent with Mr Raphael in the north Londonflat. A high, cracked voice, screaming, ar-guing, pleading. Adèle.

He found them at the cliff edge. The groundwas sodden, and there was freshly·turnedearth scattered around. Adèle was in herdressing gown, barefoot; she was being heldby Lewyn Bulmer. James thought: he's tryingto rape her, the slimy bastard, and then real-ized that Lewyn was restraining her, as sheyelled and struggled, attempting to attackhim.

'James!' Lewyn shouted, and stumbledas Adèle hooked a foot behind him andpulled his leg away. In the marshy grass itwas difficult for him to get a proper footing.James watched, astonished, almost amused,as they wrestled. She could be bloody strong,he knew. He came forward and his footstruck something. It was warm. The sheep

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had been ripped open - his foot had connec-ted with part of the entrails. He regarded it:he could feel the warmth of its fluids and tis-sues rising up to him through the damp,clean air. He saw the exquisitely detailedformations of its blood supply and organs.Heart and lungs he could identify, the rest ofit he wasn't sure about. He wasn't quite cer-tain it had the correct number of limbs, andhe knelt down to check it properly.

'James! For God's sake man!' Lewyn'svoice pulled him away from the ruined anim-al, and he found one of Adèle's flailing armsand pulled it behind her back, as shescreamed and threatened.

'You bastards! You'll be sorry, youcock-suckers!'

'Adèle.' He spoke loudly but calmly,bringing his head to her ear. 'Adèle, I wantyou to be quiet now.'

'Fucking bum-sucking shit-lickers!'

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'Adèle. This is James. I'd like you toshut up now.'

'James?'She stopped struggling and fell silent.

Everything suddenly seemed terribly quiet.James could hear the cautious sounds ofsheep around him as they manoeuvredthemselves out of the way.

'James?' She sounded surprised.'It's OK, Del. Just be quiet now.''It wasn't me!''No, that's all right Del, be still now.''It wasn't me!''Lewyn, er...' He didn't know how to

put it. Lewyn let go of her and she relaxed,her back against James, as he held her armsto her sides. Lewyn stepped back.

'I heard shouting and, well, singing Ithought it was, so I came out. She was dig-ging.' He pointed to the spade: the handlewas smeared with something James didn'tlike the look of, even in the dark. 'I asked her

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what she was doing and she went for me, shejust went wild! Jesus!' Lewyn was beginningto react to the situation. 'I saw the sheep onthe ground, and she tried to go and get it, shesaid she had to bury it, and when I wouldn'tlet her she started screaming again.'

'Lewyn, I'll take her back to the housenow.'

'Shall I come with you?' Lewyn soun-ded hesitant.

'No, she'll be fine, really. I'll talk to youtomorrow.'

'I hope I didn't hurt her, but I...''She's all right now, I'll take her back.'Adèle was standing, quite relaxed,

leaning against James. She was swayinggently. James spoke into her ear.

'Del? Shall we go in now?'She allowed James to navigate her

round the disturbed soil, past the rich,copper-smelling mess, and towards thehouse: he held both her arms with his, and

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walked her away, as if he were pushing somekind of ingeniously constructed robot. Lewynwatched them, both hands on his head,blinking. They almost looked as if they weredancing.

James gazed at the little glowing numbers onthe bedside clock: they had become mean-ingless, like a readout from the cockpit of analien spaceship. Dots and dashes. Beside himAdèle slept soundly, even going as far as tosnore occasionally. He remembered the lasttime he'd been up all night on her account,listening out for the ghostly, imperceptiblepiano music from downstairs.

Daylight began to work its way intothe window, bringing faint, elusive detail tothe looming forms of wardrobe and dressingtable.

He was finding it very difficult to be-lieve that the scene he'd witnessed just hoursbefore had actually taken place. It seemed,

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on the face of it, far more likely that it hadn't.Adèle's dressing gown caught his eye, smearsand streaks of something on the white back-ground dimly visible in the slyly growinglight. It had happened. Tomorrow he'd haveto do something about it. He was dreadfullytired.

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11

Miss Laker's Condition

Sylvia Castle opened the door in a full-lengthdressing gown and oddly inappropriate pinkfluffy slippers. Inappropriate, Jamesthought, for a woman of her size. And age.He found himself so distracted by the slip-pers that he couldn't remember for a mo-ment what he was doing there.

'Mr Tullian, isn't it?' she said, andlooked at Adèle.

'It's my wife, that is - it's Adèle.''Oh yes?' said Sylvia Castle, scanning

Adèle's face and realizing at once thatsomething was amiss. Sam sat in the car,watching.

'Come inside please. I'll get The Doctorup.'

Dr Castle listened as James recounted theevents of the last weeks, ending with Adèle'sadventure on the cliff the night before. Adèlesat beside him, miles away. The doctorlistened very closely to everything James hadto say, then asked to speak to Adèle alone.James felt treacherous and guilty as heclosed the door of the consulting room.

Nurse Castle settled him in the waitingroom and fetched Sam from the car to joinhim. She'd been expecting something likethis.

'Mrs Tullian?' Dr Castle spoke firmly,trying to engage Adèle's attention: she wasawake but completely unresponsive, andwouldn't look directly at him.

'Mrs Tullian. Is what your husbandsays true?'

'There is no Mrs Tullian.'

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'Excuse me?''We're not married. My name is Adèle

Laker.''I see.' He waited.'I didn't do it.''Have you been experiencing any

headaches or dizziness of late?''What?''I said, have you...''Where's James?''He's waiting outside for you. Do you

know where you are?' She shrugged. Whatdifference did it make where she was? 'MissLaker, I'd be very grateful if you'd answer afew questions. Just a few. Then...'

'Where's James?'Dr Castle watched her, excitement

growing in him. Either a neurological dys-function or something much rarer, muchmore subtle.

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'How have you been feeling lately,Miss Laker? Have you been depressed orworried about anything?'

'I'm worried about - you know who.''Who's that, Miss Laker?''You know.' She smiled, startlingly.'I'm afraid I don't.''He's hiding behind a tree, I can't see

him yet.''Behind a tree?''He'll come out though, sooner or

later.''Please go on.''I can't quite see his face yet, he's too

far away.''Yes?''When I know who he is I can stop

him.'She fiddled with the cuff of her coat,

eyes directed up and to one side.He watched.

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Fifteen minutes later, he emerged,calling Nurse Castle. She went into the con-sulting room, now fully and properly attired,without slippers, and they conferred.

She came out and James's anxious,bloodshot eyes met hers as she opened thewaiting-room door.

'The Doctor is just going to make a fewphone calls,' she said, 'and we may have toask you to wait for a while. Would you like acup of tea?'

'Has he found - anything - ?''It's too early for a definite diagnosis.

There may have to be some tests.''Where?''The nearest facility is Cardiff.''What kind of facility?''Please be patient, Mr Tullian. We'll let

you know as soon as we know anything. I'llget the tea.' Half an hour passed. Someonearrived at the front door, a smartly dressedyoungish woman. Sylvia Castle showed her

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into the consulting room. James sat, feelingdead inside, with Sam wriggling on the hardwooden seat beside him.

'Dad?' Sam whispered, as if they werein church. 'Elvis hasn't had his walk.'

'He'll have to wait,' James answered,flatly. He couldn't think about the bloodydog right now. Elvis was in the kitchen athome, shut in. Well, he'd just have to wait.

Twenty minutes. James looked at his watch:still only a quarter to eight. He yawned.

The smart young woman came out,and was shown to the door by Nurse Castle.

'Excuse me,' James said, interceptingher on the way back, 'who was that?' Thefeeling of having abandoned Adèle to anarmy of strangers was eating away at him.

'Judith Colquett. She's a social worker.Approved social worker I should say,' shetold him, giving 'approved' a very particular

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inflection as if to say, 'though not necessarilyby me'.

'Sylvia?' the doctor called.'Excuse me,' said Nurse Castle, and

hurried into the consulting room.James stood up.'Wait here, Sam,' he said and followed

her. As he entered the room Adèle wasstanding, awkwardly, oddly, in the middle ofthe floor. Sylvia and Dr Castle were in ahuddle at the doctor's desk. They looked upat him.

'Mr Tullian, please could I ask you towait outside. We'll call you in in a...'

'What's wrong with her?''Far too early to say, Mr Tullian,' Dr

Castle replied in a bedside-manner voice,and James said:

'Tell me.'The doctor assessed him, took in the

bleary, desperate eyes and the weariness ofhis posture, the rumpled, still-damp clothes.

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'All right. My preliminary diagnosis isthat Miss Laker is in the early stages of apossibly severe psychological disorder.'

James struggled to understand. Whothe fuck was Miss Laker? Adèle? He went toher; she seemed not to see him.

'Adèle?'He turned back to the doctor. Between

Adèle's frozen, unseeing demeanour and theprofessionally formal manner of the doctor,James was beginning to feel invisible.

'She'll need to have some tests. I thinkit's best that she be admitted immediately tothe Acute Psychiatric Ward at Cardiff RoyalInfirmary.'

James felt, simultaneously, a wave ofrelief and a gust of shame at the feeling. Herealized that other people were now in-volved, and the dismal, helpless feeling ofbetrayal surged up in him.

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'It's OK, I can look after her. Really.There's no need,' he said: Dr Castle looked athim.

'I'm not sure you understand me, MrTullian. I regret to say that, having conferredwith my colleague Miss Colquett, it is my be-lief that Miss Laker should be admitted un-der Section Four of the Mental Health Act.'

'What?''For her own protection and the pro-

tection of others. And so she can be given theappropriate tests.'

'Protection?' Surely it was his job toprotect her; hadn't he always protected herin the past? 'No. Please. Look, I can lookafter her, I know what she's like, she's justbeen under a lot of strain recently. She'dnever hurt anyone, never, she's not like that.'

'You mentioned food poisoning? Andanimal mutilations? We have to consider thewelfare of everyone involved in this, Mr Tul-lian. There's a child.'

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James got a picture of an immensemachine grinding into life, a machine thatwould take Adèle away from him: a machinethat he had activated, turned the key.

'Section Four is a seventy-two-hour or-der, for tests and initial examinations. Afterthat a further order may be necessary.'

'Tell me what's wrong with her.Please.'

'I'm really not qualified to say, Mr Tul-lian. She'll have to be examined by properlyqualified...'

'Tell me.''Schizophrenia.'The word flew round the room like a

splinter of glass. Adèle watched it out of thecorner of her eye.

Sam slept in the ambulance, his head onJames's knee, adding his own small pool ofdampness to James's already damp trousers.James held Adèle's hand for a while, but

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there was no response: it fell like a lump ofwood when he released it. She sat upright,frowning, looking away at nothing. The para-medic travelling with them made a few at-tempts at conversation, then read hisMirror.

More waiting at Cardiff: this time theseats were moulded plastic with thin foamcushions, orange and green. Sam dozed offagain. Ten thirty-five, Tuesday. Peoplewalked about, getting through their dailyroutines, doing their jobs or being ill: every-one knew exactly what was expected of them,whatever their function. Even Sam seemedto know the right thing to do in the circum-stances. James sat, wishing he'd thought tochange his clothes before he came out, wish-ing he felt more ready to deal with it. Wish-ing he knew what to do.

'Mr Tullian?'A good-looking middle-aged woman

was approaching him. He stood up, ashamed

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of his shoddy, wrinkled clothes in the face ofwhat was clearly a well-tailored and expens-ive black and jade suit.

'Would you come with me please?'James woke Sam, and they followed

the woman to a small room equipped withchairs and a coffee table. Sam promptly fellasleep again.

'My name is Sheila Kavanagh,' said thewoman. 'I'm the consultant psychiatrist here.I've just been talking to Adèle.' James wasrelieved that the troublingly unfamiliar MissLaker had been banished again.

'She's resting now. We're going to needsome blood and urine samples, and she mayhave to have an EEG. At the moment we'relooking for anything at all unusual; it'd helpme if you could answer some questions?'

'Of course.''Does your wife take any kind of drugs,

either prescription or street drugs?''No.'

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'You're quite sure?''Yes.' Adèle was reluctant to swallow

even a Nurofen. He debated whether to men-tion the Thai Grass, but he didn't want to gether into any more trouble than she was inalready. He felt as if he'd told enough talesfor one day.

'Would you describe to me what ledyou to refer her to, er...' she opened a card-board folder, 'Dr Castle.'

James, bleary and buzzing, wentthrough the story again, automatically, theevents sounding both incredible and alsostrangely ordinary to him now. Dr Kavanaghlistened, noting down a few things as hespoke.

'This must have been a hard time foryou,' she said when he'd finished. He nod-ded, smiling bleakly.

'We're going to do everything we can.Your wife is in good, experienced hands

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here.' She gave him a brilliant, flashingsmile, then put it away again.

'Dr Castle said she had schizophrenia,'James said, miserably, his voice sounding inhis ears like a child disappointed with itsChristmas presents. Dr Kavanagh snortedthrough her nose.

'I'd be grateful if you'd keep this justbetween us, Mr Tullian, but he had abso-lutely no business to tell you that. We couldbe looking at schizophrenia: on the otherhand we could have a simple case of LSD ormescaline-induced behaviour. Or an atypicalbrain tumour. Or hydrocephalus. Or a num-ber of other things. All possible. All treat-able.' She produced the smile again, leaningforward.

'And if Dr Castle turns out to be rightin his diagnosis and Adèle is indeed sufferingfrom schizophrenia, then we can treat thattoo. Believe it or not. Contrary to what yousee in the films, Mr Tullian, most

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schizophrenics are perfectly peaceful, non-violent individuals, who are capable of bene-fiting enormously from drugs and psycho-therapy, both of which, I'm proud to say,we're able to offer here. Unfortunately inmany hospitals psychotherapy doesn't getmuch of a look-in.'

She patted his knee: James felt hercontrol and optimism, and her faith.

'Please, don't look so worried!' shesaid. 'Many of my patients go on to a full re-covery and a resumption of their normallives. I won't lie to you: many do not. ButAdèle is a strong, intelligent, creative, lovingwoman. Her chances are good. Believe me.'

'How long will it take?' James asked,and Dr Kavanagh smiled again.

'Ah, what a question! I've had caseswhere the patient has recovered in forty-eight hours. I have other patients in theirnineties who have been receiving treatmentall their lives, and who will never recover.

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We must hope, Mr Tullian. I must also saythat there are degrees of recovery, and thatthere is a strong likelihood of relapses. Butwe must hope. There's nothing else to do.And there's nothing more effective. Believeme!'

He tried.

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12

Heaven and Hell

Dilys was happy to do it, she really was. Shefelt flattered James had asked her: after all,she'd only met Sam once, and that briefly.But then, she corrected herself firmly, hereally didn't have any other option. It wasn'tas if he'd selected her from a list of dozens.Dave had pointed this out to her at the time.You could always rely on Dave to bring youdown.

They'd gone out with Sam and Elvis,who had stuck close to Sam most of the time,panting up nervously at her and Dave. Funnyname for a dog that. Sam said it had been hischoice: his mum had wanted Foo-Foo, Samexplained solemnly, and his dad couldn't

decide between Killer and Shit-breath. Buthe was his dog, Sam stated, so he'd namedhim. Dilys was shocked at James's choices,but Dave laughed and ruffled Sam's hair.

It was like being a grandmother, Dilysthought. It had been God's will not to blessthem with children; she and Dave had sat inDr Castle's office while he'd explained it allto them, the monstrous, damning polysyl-lables falling heavily on to the worn carpet.She was fertile, Dave was not: that was whatit all came to. Orchitis, after adult mumps.She'd had Dr Castle write it down for her.She still had the piece of paper, with 'Lustral'and a smiling face at the top. She kept it inthe drawer where she might otherwise havekept the photo albums. But whatever wordsDr Castle might have scribbled down, Dilysknew the reason didn't lie within them. Itlay, quite simply, in God's plan for them.

Then Catherine Bulmer had disap-peared, and Owen Bulmer had walked up the

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path with the struggling red-faced two-year-old Lewyn in his arms. He'd been a difficult,unhappy, desolate child, but he was living,screaming proof for Dilys of the love andmercy of God and the efficacy of prayer.Dave accepted the fact that nothing on earthwas going to stop her bringing him up. She'dreturn him at night to Owen's empty house(Owen had insisted the boy sleep under hisroof, wherever he spent his days). Lewyn hadbeen God's intervention in Dilys's life, likeNaomi with Ruth's child.

And now here she was with anotherunknowable, secretive, oh delightful child,walking through the winter fields. He waswearing his England shell suit (James'schoice again, she thought dourly) and he wascarrying a quarter-sized baseball cap, thoughhe didn't seem inclined to put it on.

She knew now that Lewyn was nevergoing to marry. He just wasn't made thatway. She'd smiled and waved when his train

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pulled out at Fishguard station to take himaway to his new life in the army, Owen stonyand aching beside her. Then she'd gonehome and cried. She hadn't believed he'dever come back. What was there for him tocome back for? But she knew it was for thebest.

She'd hated herself as she'd writtenthe letter that she knew would bring himhome, detailing the sudden deterioration inhis father's condition, his growing helpless-ness. More long words, more inadequate ex-planations. She'd felt as if she were to blame,but what else could she do? Owen needed hisboy back. She'd prayed for forgiveness forthe joy, the joy! when he'd stepped out of thetaxi wearing the same clothes he'd gone awayin. She'd cried again, this time all over him,tears of gratitude and relief and shame. He'dshaken his head when she'd tried to tell himabout God's plan and His mysterious ways,and it had hurt her, but she knew that God

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had brought him back to her just as surely asHe'd entrusted him to her in the first place.

But there would be no child of Lewyn'sfor her to sing to sleep; God apparentlydidn't wish Lewyn to wish it. This realizationhad brought her as close as she'd ever cometo doubting God's wisdom, as close as waspossible for her. To be unable to have a child- well that was unarguable, a simple, hardfact built into Dave's body, a body built, afterall, in God's image. But to choose not to!She'd accepted it, but it had shaded over partof a sunlit field for her, for ever. Her God be-came more complex and baffling as she grewolder.

She held Sam's little hand as he climbed overa stile, and she knew she had been wrongever to doubt, ever to question. He was afunny, serious child, intensely interested ineverything and capable of extraordinary con-centration. He was fascinated by the plants

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growing in the stone walls, one in particularthat produced thick waxy circular greenplates detaining him for several minutes.How could it grow out of the rock? NeitherDave's nor her explanations satisfied him.He would just look perplexed and say 'Oh'.He was to stay for his tea and sleepovernight, so that James could have sometime to himself. (Lewyn had suggested theygo into Fishguard and have a drink, andJames had been grateful. He was shell-shocked.)

Elvis had to go back on his lead whenthey returned through the fields with sheepin: despite Adèle's (appallingly, all too liter-ally) being caught red-handed, he was still asuspect for the previous sheep death, andLewyn had insisted on it. He'd also insistedthat Elvis be wormed, though Adèle haddone him just before leaving London. Lewynwas taking no chances: he just couldn't af-ford to lose any more sheep.

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Lewyn, resting between two sets of uprightrows, regarded himself in the full-lengthmirror. His arms rested heavily at his sides,and he admired the blood vessels and theclean, precise definition of the musclegroups. It had never occurred to him that hewas, deep down, profoundly narcissistic:even if he'd known the word he wouldn'thave applied it to himself. Ever since hecould remember he'd been aware of his body,interested in it, pleased with it, and lookingat it was as much a part of his daily routineas feeding or washing it. He was carrying hisyears pretty well, he thought, probably betterthan most. He was just the right side ofheavy, the weight packed into tidy, well-ar-ticulated slabs.

'Not bad,' he said, and smiled. Yes, hefancied himself, the smile acknowledged, butwith good reason.

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He soaped himself more than usuallythoroughly in the bath, and even dug out anancient bottle of aftershave. He combed andBrylcreemed his hair and tweaked at his earsand nose with a pair of tweezers. He wouldwear the grey chinos and the dark green cot-ton polo shirt. The only good shoes he hadwere his formal black brogues, his funeral/christening/wedding shoes. They hadn't seenmuch wear. But it was a jacket he was reallystuck for: if not the denim and not the blackwith the too-wide lapels, then what? He hada good waxed cotton Barbour, but it wouldn'tbe right with the shoes. He toyed with theidea of driving down to H.E. Edwardes inFishguard, he could just make it before theyclosed, then he thought, no, Dave had abrown suede one that would be just right, ve-getarian or no vegetarian. He scrutinized histeeth. Not bad. He smiled again.

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Sam waited politely while Dilys said grace.He even closed his eyes when he saw that sheand Dave did so.

'Who were you talking to?' he askedwhen she'd finished, and she glanced over atDave as if to say 'I told you as much.'

'We were thanking God for giving usfood to eat,' she told him, and he frowned.

'Oh.' Why, he was wondering, did theyget their food from god: couldn't they affordto buy any?

'What's the difference between Neil's wifeand the Titanic?' the overweight man withthe beard called out hilariously. He was in aknot of youngish men, on the far side of thebar from where James and Lewyn sat in theDinas Cross Hotel bar. Lewyn looked over atthem: there was a lad there he'd seen before,T-shirt and cropped hair.

'Doesn't look like we're going to get agame,' Lewyn said to James, 'they'll have the

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table booked right up till closing time.' Notthat there really was a closing time: out ofseason Martin kept pretty much whateverhours he liked, something that was necessaryif he was to make any kind of a livingthrough the long winters. One or other of thelads would sometimes ring the bell at eleven,but it was strictly a joke.

Lewyn thought of other nights he'dspent in here. He recalled the feeling of leav-ing the bright, yeasty place, leaving a gang ofmen, uproarious at the bar, just settling infor a long session. Lewyn usually had to beup at 5.30, so he could rarely stay late. Andbesides, what was the point of staying, sittingin a corner, talking to nobody except for afew words with Martin the owner? Excluded.He'd been in the habit of making a great fussof Martin's dog Shaun, mostly to mask hisfeeling of aloneness, awkwardness. The ladson the other side of the bar might as wellhave been in Cardiff for all the contact he

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had with them. Long, long evenings punctu-ated by trips to the bar and the toilet. Scru-pulously indifferent glances at the men (he'dnever, he realized, seen any woman set footin the place apart from Martin's wife Carol)and the awareness of half-amused looksback. Prolonged study of beer mats, wallpa-per, the imitation coal fire.

But tonight was different, he had com-pany! Not, admittedly, that James was beingexactly companionable, but he was there,Lewyn was not alone. He could order twopints of beer, he could even be put out thatthe pool table was so busy. He felt vindic-ated, almost triumphant. This is James, myfriend, he wanted to announce. You see?Shaun trotted over and Lewyn tricked him(easily) into giving him his paw. The doggave James a wide berth: he'd had a lot oftrouble over the years with drunks, andJames was already halfway to being one ofthem.

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James stirred.'Sorry Lewyn. I'm not usually quite

this boring. It's just, you know...'Lewyn nodded.'I thought it was going to be the right

thing, us coming out here. Like a holiday,you know? We all of us needed to get away,and it was a chance of six months' work, putus back on our feet again. I can't believe thishas all happened. God alone knows whatwe're going to do now. Christ!'

'Aye.''Something must have just triggered it

off, I suppose. The doctor said it can lie therefor years, and then some little thing willbring it out.'

(like the beast, Lewyn thought)'She says it usually strikes much

younger, but it can happen anytime. To any-one. I mean, Del's always been, I don't know,unusual I suppose you'd say. That was whatattracted me to her in the first place, she

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wasn't like anyone I'd ever met before.Wasn't. Jesus. She's terribly bright, youknow. And she sees things differently, she'sgot her own - ' James clucked his tongueagainst the roof of his mouth, shook hishead. How could you explain the astonish-ing, unpredictable uniqueness of thiswoman?

'She gets excited about things. She no-tices things, I don't even see them. And shecan talk to people, anybody. We'd go out andshe'd spend the whole time talking to somedrunk at the bar. By the time she left she'dknow everything about him. She kind of col-lected people. She was always writing lettersto people she hadn't seen for years.'

He didn't say, in fact that's partly whyI never let her meet my parents. He had triedto picture Adèle sitting in the bare concreteand turf garden on a plastic chair, balancinga cup and saucer, talking about current af-fairs with his mother, letting slip something

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wrong, peculiar, eccentric. He had neverrisked it, not that his mother had everpressed him. Even if he'd been properly mar-ried to Adèle, his mother would not have ac-cepted her. James didn't think he could havestood her disapproval, disdain. Adèle hadsent her pictures of the children; she'd sentpolite thank-you letters back. That was theextent of it. Adèle, he knew, had been firstamused, then angry, then contemptuous. Shethought he should be free of the need for hismother's approval by his age. It was ridicu-lous, unbecoming: not brave. Adèle believedpassionately in being brave.

'She's a lovely woman,' Lewyn said,and James was surprised, not at the senti-ment, but that Lewyn should voice it.Though of course, in the few short weeksthey'd been here it had been Adèle who hadbefriended Lewyn, got to know him, chippedaway at his solitariness and suspicion.

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'So how long do you think she'll begone?'

'The doctor said at least six months.She's on a treatment order.'

'And after that?' James shook hishead. 'She didn't know. She said she couldmake a complete recovery in six months orshe might never recover. She said sometimesit's just a matter of a few days. It can just hitand run. Or it can be permanent.'

Schizophrenia. Terrifying, icy, alienword. Like someone being encased in crystal,aloof, alone, cut off. Blank. Dead. But notquite dead. Her symptoms were apparentlynot unusual: the belief that someone else wascontrolling your thoughts and actions, thebelief that someone was trying to get you.The certainty that things were being ar-ranged, planned by someone. She hadstopped short of saying she heard voices, butclaimed she was acting on someone else's be-half, doing what they wanted: she hadn't said

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who it was that was controlling her in thisway. The doctor told him her speech was dis-ordered: she'd said she'd been losing sheep,instead of losing sleep, for instance, and thatshe was paining, instead of painting. She'dsaid she killed Ruthie deliberately, becausesomeone else wanted her to, as an experi-ment. Who? She wouldn't say, she'd justsmiled. She'd said someone was in her paint-ings, changing them, making her paintthings she didn't want to. There wassomeone hiding in them. The sheep were try-ing to warn her about something, somedreadful thing that was going to happen. Butthey were also involved in it in some way.They could hear her thoughts. She'd said oneof them had laughed at her.

'She's going to be on medication for awhile, until she's more stable. But people getbetter, the doctor said, it isn't like it used tobe. They can stop it getting as far as it usedto. She said there are lots of people living

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ordinary lives who've had it and recovered.She said the important thing was not to giveup hope.'

James stared bleakly at his glass.Hope. The doctor had also said there wereninety-year-olds who'd had it all their lives.Unreachable. Frozen.

Lewyn was recalling the first glimpsehe'd had of her, as he was closing the win-dow in the secure room, her white, strainedface in the car as it rounded the corner.Edith. She's come back.

'Poor woman. It must be terrifying forher.' Again James was surprised, this time byLewyn's insight. He hadn't thought of that.He realized that he'd been thinking of him-self, of the - well damn it the inconvenienceof it all, the bad timing, the extra burden itwould put on him. He hated himself.

'It was only four thousand that wentdown on the Titanic,' came the voice again.

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James looked up and, this time surprisinghimself, laughed aloud.

'But how can Jesus love me when he hasn'teven met me?' Sam was demandingearnestly.

'He loves everyone, everyone that'sever been and everyone that ever will be,'said Dilys, leaning forward.

'But what about bad people?''He loves them too, but they don't love

him.''Oh.' Sam frowned. He hadn't heard

any of this before.

'You never married then, Lewyn?' Jamesasked, breaking the silence.

'Me? No.''Never found the right woman, eh?''Oh I don't know. Never had the time I

suppose really.'

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He looked away, as another roar brokeout on the far side of the bar: 'Confucius hesay man who puts prick in fire fucking grate.'

'Well, that's not true. I just neverthought about it. Bit late now I 'spect. Andthere's not many women that'd want to liveout here, it's not exactly much of a life. Dif-ferent for me, see, 'cos I was born to it. I nev-er did anything else, 'cept the army.'

'You were in the army?''Oh yes. Long time ago.''Did you like it?''Like it?' He thought of the terrible

food, the lack of freedom and privacy, theendless fiddly routines of cleaning anddrilling. 'It was what I always wanted, since Iwas a kid. Soldier. I never wanted nothingelse. But I had to leave, 'cos of my dad andall, and that was that. Been here ever since. Idon't expect I'll ever leave now. I don't mindit. It's not a bad life.'

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'Confucius say: man who put prick inbiscuits fucking crackers.'

Lewyn sighed.'Well, one more and we'd better be

away. I thought maybe we could walk backalong the cliffs. Beautiful at night it is.'

Sam lay in bed, mulling it over. Jesus diedbecause everyone in the world was so bad. Itwasn't his fault, but he took the blame for itanyway. But then he came alive again. Hewas really dead and then he was really alive.It was true, then. Jesus had made an old mancome back. And someone called Elijah whowas a prophet had done it as well. It used tohappen all the time, so it seemed. And Dilyssaid that one day everyone would come back,everyone who'd ever died. Even Ruthie? he'dasked. Yes, even Ruthie. But not just yet,though it might be soon. The good peoplewould go to heaven, and the bad ones to hell.It was all very straightforward. Jesus could

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do it because he was God as well, and Godcould do anything he felt like. Dilys hadn'tbeen sure about Elvis, but she said that if hewas a good dog then he'd probably go toheaven, and he'd live for ever. Was Elvis agood dog, Sam wondered? He never bitpeople and he didn't bark much. That wouldprobably do.

Dilys had given him a Bible, a smallthick book with tiny writing, in columns.That had the whole story in it, and it was alltrue because God had said it. God never toldlies. The paper was rattly and some of thewords were spelled wrong, but that was be-cause it was written such a long time ago, be-fore people knew how to spell properly. Dilyshad said he should read it, or some bits of itanyway, and anything he didn't understandhe could ask her. He liked Dilys, she wasnice. He'd be seeing more of her, she said,now his mum was in the hospital. She wasn'till though, she was just upset and had to go

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away and rest. She was tired. Sam was awarethere was a bit more to it than that, and thathis dad knew his mum had been being sillyand had to stop it. She had gone too far. Still,he thought he could probably managewithout her for a while.

Dave was unhappy about it. Of courseit was wrong that the boy should have beenbrought up without any instruction. Whatwere the teachers thinking of? It could neverhave happened when he was at school. He'dhad it every day then, till he was sick andtired of it. It hadn't been until he was aboutsixteen that he'd really believed it. He re-membered sitting in the bare, frigid chapel;the minister had stopped in the middle of asentence and looked right at him, and he'dsuddenly felt it, it had tingled and flickeredall over him. It was true, he knew. For a mo-ment he'd forgotten that his bum was achingfrom the wooden bench and that the womantwo rows ahead was picking her nose and

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that he wanted to go to the toilet: his bodyhad become warm and soft and his head hadstarted to buzz. It was true! Actually true! Hewas saved!

The moment had passed and his faithhad flickered on and off like a faulty lightswitch ever since, but he always held on tothat long-gone moment, that instant ofwarmth and excitement and completehappiness.

But (and here was where he differedfrom Dilys, differed often and not alwaysamicably) he knew there were some peoplefor whom it wasn't true. Were they wrong?Dilys of course would say yes, but Davewasn't totally convinced. He refused to be-lieve that God couldn't see the good inpeople, even if they didn't know it. Jesus haddied for everyone, hadn't he? Dave was dis-turbed and secretly deeply uneasy aboutmuch of the Old Testament. Dilys's favourite,Elijah, for instance, staging a competition

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with the priests, seeing whose God couldburn the sacrificial bull, even when it wasdoused in water; Ba'al, not surprisingly, hadfailed and Elijah had ordered the executionof the priests. Four hundred and fifty. And soit went on. Couldn't people be different butstill good?

And Sam's parents, however ignorantor misguided they might be (or even actuallymad, in Adèle's unfortunate case), didn'tthey have the right to do what they thoughtwas best for him? Sam would find God in hisown time and his own way.

'It's our duty, David,' Dilys said firmly.'We can't just abandon him to damnation. Itwould be a terrible, terrible sin.'

Sin. Damnation. Dave gritted his teethand said nothing. What kind of God wouldthrow a little boy into everlasting tormentbecause he didn't know his Bible? No God hewanted to know, certainly not the God who'd

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breathed on him that dim, distant day inchapel.

But Dilys would have her way. As usu-al. Perhaps she was right.

Adèle lay perfectly still under the much-too-bright light while the nurse injected her withthe poison that would eventually make her soweak that she'd go back. She had a televisionin the room, but it was just full of their non-sense. It wasn't real. The nurse was very nice,but if she really was nice why would she wantto poison people? Someone must be makingher do it, Adèle decided, and smiled warmlyat her.

'You as well?' she said, sweetly, sadly,and someone called out in the corridor, 'Hey!What the fuck's wrong with this fuckingdrinks machine?' Adèle thought, he meansme, he thinks I'm not working properly. Didthey all know, then? They must. She had be-come a machine and everyone knew it.

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'It's not me,' she said, 'I'd never doanything like that.' The nurse smiled andstroked her forehead. Adèle felt she deserveda better explanation.

'You see, it's more of a metal-fisticalproblem,' she said, and stopped because hervoice was far too loud and in any case thenurse could hear her thoughts perfectly well.The nurse went away, promising to comeback in a while.

'Just try and relax now, lovely. Do youwant the television on?'

Adèle turned away from her. It wasn'ther fault, but she was as bad as the rest ofthem. Television indeed! The light was buzz-ing: it would probably blow up at anyminute, and she'd get covered in glass. Shepulled the sheet up over her head, but shecould still see everything. Even with her eyesclosed.

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The sky was so beautiful! James and Lewynlay on their backs, side by side, on the wintrygrass. The cliff-top path wound away out ofsight on either side, leaving them on a smallpromontory. It had been Lewyn's idea to liedown for a moment as they were walkingback from Fishguard. There were two cowsin the field; they'd stood up when Lewyn andJames approached, like well-behaved chil-dren rising when a teacher came into aclassroom. They stared at the men, not in theleast surprised, almost as if they were ex-pecting them; their great sturdy warm bodiesmoved in and out as they breathed the freez-ing air and turned it into steam. 'If you go in-to a field of cows and lie down, do you knowwhat they do?' Lewyn said. 'They watch youfor a few minutes, then they start to comeover to you. Very slowly they do it. You haveto lie dead still. Eventually they'll come rightup, surround you. You get a whole ring ofcows around you. And they breathe on you:

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trying to keep you warm I suppose they are.Fine creatures, cows. Lovely breath they'vegot, lovely warm sweet breath.'

The sea was crashing and thumping farbelow them, sending huge concussion im-pacts through the rock: you could almost feelthe vibrations. There was a tiny sliver of amoon, just a fingernail, and James thought,if Del was here she'd wish on it. She was al-ways wishing on things, birthday-cakecandles, midnight on New Year's Eve, thetimes when they said the same thing at thesame moment; sometimes she'd just closeher eyes and cross her fingers and wish forsomething with no pretext at all, screwingher face up with the effort. Lucky pebbles.Lucky pictures. He'd never known what itwas she was wishing for so fervently, thoughhe guessed it was something to do with himand Sam. And Ruthie of course, before theaccident. Had she stopped wishing things forRuthie, he wondered, or had she carried on

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anyway? Heaven, he thought. Up past thestars, where everyone would be happy forever and ever. Was that where Ruthie hadgone? Or had she vanished totally, com-pletely, leaving no trace at all except thesmoke from the crematorium chimney? Hewished he could believe in something.

'You see that star, in between thosetwo bright ones, straight overhead,' he said,and Lewyn followed his pointed finger.'Watch it carefully.'

'Christ he's moving!' Lewyn said, aftera few moments.

'Yup. It's a satellite.'

The house seemed very different whenLewyn shut the door behind him and flickedon the light. Bloody messy, really, come tolook at him. He'd have to clean it all up.

He put a record on the scratchyDansette as he made himself a cup of coffee,and tried a few dance steps in the greasy,

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unwholesome-looking kitchen, manoeuvringround the chairs and table.

'Da-da, da-dee, three steps to heaven,'he sang, and realized he had neither sungnor danced for a very long time.

It was after ten when James woke up. Christ!Where's Sam? Then he remembered: Samwas over at Dilys and Dave's. Because Adèlehad gone mad and been hospitalized, and hecouldn't cope. Quite something to wake upto, apart from a hangover. He splashed hisface and brushed the sour, gritty taste out ofhis mouth. Adèle gone, Sam gone, even Elvisgone. He'd been abandoned. He rummagedaround for clean things, but ended up in hisusual work clothes, check shirt and V-neckpullover, and those ugly green corduroytrousers he'd bought in the Spastics shop inHighgate. Bought specifically for working in,but no more acceptable for all that. He found

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his anorak and went out into the overcastmorning.

It was a five-minute walk to Dilys'shouse, along a quiet narrow road with fieldson either side. Sheep glanced up as hepassed, incuriously. Incurious as to Adèle'smental state, to his reactions, to the possiblefuture effects on Sam. Life went on. Eatgrass.

Six months. Forty-eight hours. Ninetyyears. What would life be like after Adèle?The only image that came to mind was onefrom his young days, drunk in a club, lightsand music going crazy, a girl in a short plaidskirt, she was with a group of people, allglancing around. He was leaning carelesslyup against a ledge near the dance floor. Didyou still get girls in plaid skirts in clubs? Heremembered brushing up against her, clum-sily, and she'd said, 'You're drunk.'

He'd smiled.

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'Yes. I don't think I can plausibly denythat.' Loquacious when in his cups, always.

'And you're gorgeous.''Well yes, I don't think I could plaus-

ibly deny that either.' He'd been amazed athis audacity, and delighted at hers.

'What are you doing later?'Later? Oh, going home, having a ke-

bab maybe, perhaps a joint cadged off hisflatmate Gary. Nothing too much.

'Nothing too much. What are youdoing?'

'I'm going home with you. What didyou think?'

'Oh. Right.'A pick-up in a club, and then ten years

later here he was trying to contemplate lifewithout her, one child dead, one childstrange, her in a bin with the rest of the loon-ies. Life can be hard, oh yes indeedy.

He stopped and leant on a gate, watch-ing the sheep.

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Adèle had been his life. Her odd, ag-gressive, almost predatory personality hadbeen something he'd been living with, adapt-ing to, for most of his adult years. AfterRuthie had been born he'd gone out onenight with Madèleine and Steve. Steve hadfelt sick and gone home, and Madèleine hadwanted him. And he'd wanted her, repulsedby Adèle's distant, exhausted demeanour andher dismissal of him. But he hadn't. He neverhad. Ten years.

And now she'd left him. Left him forher own imaginary landscape, her imaginaryterrors and delights. Would she even knownow if he left her? Would she care? Forty-eight hours. Ninety years.

Dilys answered the door, surprised tosee him. 'I took him home, about an hourago. Isn't he about?'

'No, he isn't.''Well, he let himself in. I thought he'd

be with you.'

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'I'll go straight back.''I'm sure he's OK.''Thanks, Dilys.' He didn't exactly run,

but he certainly had no time to lean on gate-posts and admire the sheep either. Wherethe fuck was Sam?

He turned the comer, ran up the drive-way. Sam was sitting on the tombstone step.He looked up.

'Dad? Where've you been?'Where had he been?'Well where've you been, Sam! Christ,

I was worried about you!''Nowhere.'Nowhere. Uh-hm.'When did Dilys bring you back?''Oh, about an hour ago. I came in but

you were asleep so I went for a walk.''Christ! How did you rip your jumper?'

Sam shrugged. 'Sam? How did you rip yourjumper?'

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'There was a tree. It had all sharp bitson it.'

'Have you had any breakfast?''The lady made me toast, with this

funny marmalade. And cake. It was allcrumbly.'

'Sam, you must never just run off byyourself. Haven't I told you?'

'But you were asleep.''Then you should have woken me up.'Sam shrugged again, a damned-if-you-

do-damned-if-you-don't shrug. He'd triedwaking his dad up after a night out before.

'Shouldn't you?''Yes.'Shouting at Sam again. Poor kid, he

wasn't quite having the holiday he'd beenexpecting.

'Sam, until your Mum comes back' ( -six months, ninety years - ) 'or we can sortsomething out, you're going to have to stay

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where I can keep an eye on you.' Dammit,why not put the little rascal on a

(lead?)'I'm going to be doing some work on

the house. Now I want you to stay inside andwe'll go out for a walk later on. But you'renot to go wandering off. All right? Sorry,chief.'

'Can I do painting?''Yes.''Can I have the radio on?''Yes.''OK.'

An hour later James was up a ladder with aheat gun, burning off paint from a window,the exciting, choking smell enshrouding him.The discoloured paint wrinkled andscorched, peeling off in brittle strips. Offwith the old.

And the new? He'd never before con-sidered how absolutely impossible life was

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without Adèle. Purely on a mundane level,how was he going to work and keep an eyeon Sam, short of tying him up.

(like a dog?)Now, for instance: Sam was either

downstairs painting in the kitchen, or he wassomewhere else, falling off a cliff perhaps orstarting a fire. An active seven-year-old,there was simply no limit to the perils hecould encounter or engineer. And Jamescould hardly be up and down a ladder allday, it just wasn't possible to work that way.So he'd have to hire a child-minder. Wherein God's name did you get a child-minder?And how did you know you could trustthem? He turned the idea of Dilys over in hismind. Perhaps if he offered to pay her shemight do it, maybe just mornings. Howmuch? Christ, how was he supposed to af-ford it? Sebastian's deal had been fair but nomore than that. The rate for the job, no spe-cial favours, not even for family. We all have

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to stand on our own two feet, Jamie. Start of-fering people something for nothing, you un-dermine their spirit. Take me for instance.Blah fucking blah.

Even if he could have found the time,James knew that he and Sam would quicklycome to blows if exposed to each other forprolonged periods. He was struck by thethought that Sam was someone he knew onlyin controlled bursts, like a favourite sit-com.A couple of hours in the evening if Samwasn't out at Beavers or piano. Stories atnight, infrequent nocturnal glancings-in (justto check you're still alive, chief, no sweat),hurried, ill-tempered encounters early in themorning (not the best time for either ofthem). Drives out at weekends. A week lastyear in a guesthouse in Cornwall. Incredibly,that was it. He had almost no idea what Samactually did during the day. At eleven, atthree o'clock. What? He'd always imaginedhim sitting at a big wooden desk scratching

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his name on the lid. But he couldn't do thatall day. Did he have a nap in the afternoon?Or was it only much younger children whodid that?

(and dogs)What if Sam didn't like the child-

minder? Had he liked Dilys? The cake hadbeen all crumbly, which could be either goodor bad, but he suspected from Sam's tonethat it was bad. And anyway, how much didhe know about Dilys? Adèle had spent onenight with her and ended up having a panicattack in the secure room. God knew whatstories Dilys had been telling her. If theywere anything like Dave's or Lewyn's stories,it was no wonder that Adèle had gone

(barking mad?)had had a breakdown, an episode as

Dr Kavanagh had called it. A psychotic epis-ode. Was a woman who gave people psychot-ic episodes the most appropriate person tolook after his only surviving child? No, that

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was unfair, Adèle had simply succumbed tothe strain and the delayed shock of losingRuthie; Dilys couldn't possibly have pushedher over the edge in one night. (Surely.)

A girl from the town then, perhaps.Mind you, if the local people he'd metalready were anything to go by, he'd be hard-pressed to find anyone even half-way suit-able. (Had Adèle been suitable? The questionwriggled out from under a secluded rock inhis brain, and squirmed out of sight,ignominiously.)

He caught something out of the cornerof his eye, and, twisting round, very nearlyunseated the ladder, rocking hard to the left.Damn! The scraper fell to the ravaged con-crete path, and James saw Lewyn standing inthe field, carrying a large, still object in hisarms.

sweet christ not Sam you murderingbastard!

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'James? I think you'd better comedown.'

Elvis. It was Elvis.

The two men regarded the sprawled heap ofdripping, bloodied fur at their feet. Headbashed in. One eye put out. Rear left leggone. James experienced a sudden swim-ming feeling, waves of unreality crashing andbooming around him, and Lewyn's handpressed on his shoulder, steadying him. Thedog was recently dead, still bleeding warmred blood, and wet.

'He was down on the rocks, under thetop field. He'd got lodged in a rock, other-wise he'd have been washed out.'

'Lewyn, for Christ's sake,' James saidweakly.

'I just saw this big brown blob, Icouldn't think what he could be, so I wentdown to have a look. Not a pretty sight is he?'

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'How-' How not to make it sound likean accusation? 'Lewyn, how could this havehappened?'

Lewyn shook his head.'Well you found him! You must have

some fucking idea!' James felt as if he weredrowning, foam and spray hissing aroundhim, fingers clutching at the slick, shiny wetrocks, the demented abstract determinationof the sea dragging and pounding him.

'Sorry. Sorry Lewyn.' Lewyn put aclumsy arm round James's shoulder andstared ahead, unable to look at James's twis-ted, working face.

'Let's go in and sit down.''No. We'd better get him out of sight. I

don't want Sam to see this.' He croucheddown and scooped up the sodden, heavy, in-ert animal. Foo-Foo. Shit-breath. Killer. Pityfor the dog fighting against revulsion at theraw stump of flesh, he lifted Elvis up in botharms and, staggering slightly under the

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weight, carried him off in the direction of thecliff.

'James? Where are you going?'Well, where indeed? Where do you

hide a dead dog from an inquisitive child?He stopped, baffled. Then he said, 'Under thewall, in the corner. Cover him with branches.It'll have to do for now.' He reeled to thecorner of the field, dropped the dog over thewall, and started tearing at a hawthorn bushgrowing nearby. Lewyn watched him, help-lessly. James stood for a moment looking atthe makeshift covering, then turned roundand came back.

James sent Sam upstairs.'Just do it, Sam. Don't give me a hard

time now. I'll come up in a minute.'James and Lewyn sat at the kitchen

table, with Sam's painting things all around.Another burning building, James noteddimly. Smoke engulfing the whole of the topof the floor, the sky transformed from paper

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white to Rowenta black; something else toworry about. When he got the time.

'Tell me again, Lewyn.''Like I told you, James. I was up in the

top field - ''Why?''Why?''I'm sorry, Lewyn, I'm not really think-

ing. This is all so...''Tha's all right. I was up there and I

was by the fence, and I saw your dog lying onthe rocks. I went down the steps, you know,further along, and climbed over to him. Car-ried him up. He couldn't have been deadlong, he was still, you know, he wasn't stiff oranything.'

'You didn't see anyone around?'Lewyn hesitated, then shook his head.

'No. No-one. They must have been there be-fore I got there.'

'They?''Whoever did this.'

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'You mean you think a person did it?'Eye put out, leg missing.

'I'm sorry to say I do, yes. I can't seeany animal taking out the eye. Can you?'

Well maybe not, but did that mean youcould see a person doing it? What on God'sgreen earth kind of person?

'Oh now come on, I can't, I refuse tobelieve there's somebody roaming around inbroad fucking daylight mutilating animals.People don't do that, he was just a dog forpity's sake!' James heard his voice trembling,and put his hand to his face. Lewyn watchedhim steadily.

'I think we have to believe it, James.There's no animal would do that.'

'Not another dog?''No.'He thought of Adèle, eerie in her

dressing gown on the wet cliff. It wasn't me!(Click.)

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'What am I going to tell Sam?' Badbreak, chief. Elvis didn't make it.

Lewyn sat, uneasy but solid. Jamesstood up, and went to the stairs.

'Sam? Would you come down hereplease?'

He supposed it was rather a lot to ask of achild to accept that his mother had goneaway, for an unspecified reason and dura-tion, and that his dog had been killed, all inforty-eight hours. But all the samesomething in Sam's response tripped offalarms in him.

'Oh.'Yes, and? Sam sat and fidgeted, glan-

cing at Lewyn and his father in turn.'So he isn't going to come back?' The

boy sounded, more than anything else,disappointed.

'No. Elvis is dead now, Sam.'

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'The lady said dead people come backwhen Jesus calls them.' James had to thinkfor a second to connect 'the lady' with Dilys:damn it, there was always someone readywith the Baby Jesus when your back wasturned.

'She said dogs can go to heaven aswell, if they were good.'

'Look Sam, I don't care what Dilys hasbeen telling you, I don't want you to thinkElvis is going to come back. I don't want youto be disappointed.' And yet, wouldn't it begood for Sam to be able to believe Elviswasn't gone for ever? It might cushion theshock for him. Comforting lies. James wassometimes envious of those who could live ina world where no-one was ever gone for goodand we'd all be reunited in a better place.

'But the lady said...''Sam!'Sam subsided, cowed, and Lewyn

caught James's eye. James was ashamed;

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more than that, he was sick and tired of him-self. Increasingly he heard his father in hisvoice, silencing dissent, guillotining debate,shouting down. Everything would then be es-tablished and orderly and easy, and no-onewould have to say anything, because no-onewould have anything to say. Was that how hewanted Sam to turn out?

Lewyn stood to leave. 'If you need ahand with - with - '

'OK. Thanks, Lewyn.'

Lewyn crossed the field; he was thinking thatSam hadn't wanted to know how Elvis haddied, how he'd come to be found on therocks. He went home and took off all hisclothes and put them in to wash. Ninety de-grees. He stood naked at the sink, scrubbedhis hands with Swarfega. Small particles ofdog seemed to have found their way on toevery part of his body.

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No, Sam had been more interested inthe question of a canine afterlife. Lewynknew it was only in his dreams that deadthings moved again, a kind of eviscerated re-surrection shuffle, each part crawling andtwitching towards its own ghastlytransubstantiation.

He lay in the bath, ducked his headunder, splashing vigorously. Inch-and-a-quarter-long black hairs floated around him.

soul: surviving after death, separatedfrom the body.

hearken: listen attentively.(attentively: paying attention to.)Sam was finding this happened more

and more. He would look up a word in thebattered Penguin English Dictionary, andhe'd find that he'd have to look up the wordsthat explained what the first word meant.The shadowy intuition was beginning toform that the whole project had a curious

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circularity to it. Words meant other words,which meant further words; and they allseemed to mean each other.

He went back to the other book, theone the people who couldn't spell properlyhad written a long time ago.

'''Oh LORD my God, let this childe'ssoul come into himm againe!" And the LORDhearkened to the voice of Elijah, and the soulof the childe came into him againe.'

Well, that was clear enough. Samcopied it into his red exercise book in neatwriting.

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13

Sheep

Sam swung his legs against the hard seat,singing faintly. He liked the shoe shop, it hada nice smell, dusty and cardboardy, and heliked the tall racks of shoeboxes, a wall com-pletely covered in identical white containers,each with its own secret content of style, col-our and size, nestling two by two. He hadsensed that money was not, at the moment,the minefield it had been until recently. Pre-viously if he needed new shoes or even flip-flops for the beach it had provoked tensionand tight lips from his parents. Admittedlysince Ruthie had gone away finances hadeased somewhat, but even so the run-up toChristmas was a period of tight negotiation

and some anxiety. Sam was a good bargain-er, he knew just how far he could go withoutpushing his luck, a phrase that fell from hisdad's lips like a curse. You're pushing yourluck, Sam. He generally managed these daysto stay on the right side of this invisible butdecisive line. Elvis had died, and Sam wasgoing to get new trainers, and they weren'this Christmas present, he would getsomething else for Christmas. Not in anylikelihood the flashy electronic games systemhe'd opened the bidding with, but he wasprepared for that.

James looked at his watch. Dammit, itwas nearly ten. He was due to visit Adèle inCardiff and Sam was going to stay withLewyn for the day, and be very good. IfLewyn had even the smallest complaint, Samsensed, it would knock off some fraction ofthe value of the Christmas present. Well,he'd just have to work round that. James fid-geted. It was all very well having a relaxed

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attitude to life, taking your time, moving at aslower pace, but dammit he had to get on!

The assistant reappeared with an arm-ful of shoeboxes, and Sam began a meticu-lous inspection of some of them. Brand con-sciousness had recently awoken in him, andtwo of the boxes were examined purely forthe sake of appearing thorough: he certainlyhad no real intention of walking round in Hi-Tecs or Dunlops.

James smiled up at the plump, baldingassistant, and knew instantly that hewouldn't be getting out of here before 10.45,10.30 at the earliest. He was going to have aconversation.

'What just visiting are you?'James explained, he hoped not too

tersely, what they were doing here, the as-sistant punctuating his account with expres-sions of interest and comprehension.

'So you're up by Dinas then? I haven'tbeen up that way, oh not since a few years

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back now. Bit out of the way that, isn't he?Lovely area though, if you like him rugged. Ihad a sister lived up Brynhelwyn, but shemoved down to Port Talbot a few years ago,her husband got promoted see; she don't likeit though, Port Talbot people is very un-friendly evidently, but I tell her you've got togive him time, you can't just expect to settlein straight off...'

James smiled and nodded. Sam washaving trouble lacing up the Reeboks, andthe assistant took one off him and started tothread the lace through the innumerableeyes. James suspected that the more holesyou got the more you paid, and cast a regret-ful eye on the clearly discarded Dunlops. Theassistant fed the lace through with a non-chalant expertise. Slowly.

'...you must be pretty near StumbleHead then, you'll have seen the monument?'

James was caught off guard by thequestion; he'd been contemplating grabbing

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the shoe from the assistant's pudgy fingersand lacing it himself, no disrespect butreally.

'Monument?''Aye. Can't be more than a half-mile up

from you, up on the cliffs there. Worth a vis-it, I'd say. Quite a story, I'm surprised no-one's mentioned him to you. Well I say that,you'll find people who think the wholething's best left and forgotten about. Neil -you know Neil at the Sailor's, do you? - hisgrandaddy was one of them. Neil won't talkabout it though.'

James watched the sausage fingers fid-dling with the lace, slowly, slower. Quite astory, eh? It sounded ominous. He revisedhis estimate upwards to 10.50. Call it 11.00.He writhed on the chair.

'1928. There's still one or two left whosaw it, there's an old girl lives out somewherenear you, matter of fact, must be ninety-oddnow. They interviewed her for the Mercury,

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back in the seventies, fifty years on youknow, and she was seventy or so then. Cometo think of it she may have departed by now.Yes. She saw it.'

He paused, his fingers merely turningthe scaled-down replica of a training shoenow, all pretence at actually aiding the pro-cess of selling abandoned.

'Saw what?' James said, feeling thatotherwise this fat fuck (well he was sorry butfor God's sake!) would continue hinting del-icately round the edges of whatever it was in-definitely. He was reminded of Uncle Seb'svulgar, tactless tactfulness and his endlessbloody good-bloke chattiness.

'There was a meeting. They used tohave them back then, big open-air meetings.New Connection they called it, some kind ofMethodist splinter, they were very big roundhere. Don't see too much of them now ofcourse.' James suspected from his tone thathe'd stepped into one of the innumerable

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factional debates that covered the wholearea, like cracks on Tottenham Court Road.He'd expected when they first arrived to findan orderly community of Methodists, the val-leys united in chapel song. And then he'dwalked around Fishguard: Methodists, yes,but also Baptists, Congregationalists, Presby-terian, United Reformed, and that was justthe English-speaking churches, the Churchin Wales, Welsh Methodists, Independents,not to mention an astonishing number ofJehovah's Witnesses and Born Agains. A del-icate fracturing of the people, as subtle andprofound as the gradings of the middle classin Highgate, distributed along fault lines thatwere as much organizational as doctrinal.Protestant, but as much against each otheras they were against the Catholics, who werenowhere to be seen.

'This was a big-deal meeting evidently,more or less everyone in the area across toLlanthietho who were in this New

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Connection went. Thousands, by allaccounts.

'They had it on the cliff top, July Ithink it must have been, and they had a bigpreacher, one of the original New Connec-tion men, I forget the name now, but he wasan important man, oh yes.

'Well he was standing there on somekind of platform they'd built special, and hewas whipping them up, lots of hellfire andshouting. People would come up on the plat-form and confess, you know, and he'd forgivethem. Crying and wailing and God knowswhat. This old girl, she said that some ofthem started doing the old speaking-in-tongues routine when this preacher touchedthem. She was towards the back evidently,and she said she could feel it spreadingthrough the crowd, people falling on theground and leaping about. Said she thoughtthere was going to be trouble. She got herselfout of the way, but she reckoned she could

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still feel it, like a 'lectric current orsomething, people were sobbing and holdingon to each other, confessing, and there wasthe preacher calling out to heaven, calling onGod to come down and save them.

'Then she said he shut up for a minute,waving his arms about, and she thought hewas just getting inspired, but he wasn't, hewas falling off the bloody platform wasn't he,stupid rickety thing was falling down. So ofcourse everyone starts pushing forward, andthe poor buggers at the front went flying offafter him, they prob'ly thought it was Judge-ment Day or something. There were peopletrying to shout "Get back!" but no-one wastaking any notice, they just kept shoving for-ward. She said she couldn't be sure but shethought she saw people just jumping off,arms stretched up to heaven, just flingingthemselves off like they thought they weregoing to fly away to Jesus.

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'They didn't though, unlucky for them.Ended up in a big pile on the rocks, couple ofhundred of 'em, stacked up like sandbags,with the big-deal preacher at the bottom.Lots of them got washed away, they werefinding bodies all along there for weeks after.New Connection kept quiet after that, apartfrom collecting for the monument. I think itpretty much finished them off.

'"This Tablet erected to the EternalMemory of those Pious Souls who joined theHeavenly Choristers in this Place, 1928."Tha's all he says, and a carving of Jesus sur-rounded by angels. They tried to pass it off assome kind of a miracle for a while, but no-one was having it really.

'The old girl says she never talkedabout it for years after. Said she felt ashamedto have been there, to have felt that current.She says she'll never forget seeing people justrunning off the cliff top, calling out to Jesus,

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stretching out their arms. Stumble Head,aye.'

The assistant gazed away, and Jameslooked at Sam who was blinking up at him.

'Dad?' Sam whispered, 'I'll have theReeboks. OK?'

The acute psychiatric ward at Cardiff RoyalInfirmary was a busy, bright, efficient-look-ing place, nurses going confidently abouttheir business, more male nurses than usual,with the patients in an extraordinary varietyof moods and postures, moving amongst thestaff with an air of uneasy helpfulness. Therewas a truce, but the threat of it breakinglurked in every clean, well-lit room. Itseemed to James to be a very appropriatelocation for people whose sense of realityhad been altered: it was an unreal place,nothing at all like the outside world. Anasylum?

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Adèle was in the Occupational Ther-apy room; there was an area at the backwhere the patients were able to paint. DrKavanagh had said schizophrenics were of-ten seized with the desire to paint and draw,even if before the onset of their illness theyhadn't dipped a brush into water sinceschool. Many were able to paint, compet-ently, lucidly, when they could do little else.Of course with Adèle it wasn't so much occu-pational therapy as occupation: the art ther-apist who came in two afternoons a week hadbeen struck by Adèle's businesslike routine.She'd asked Adèle if she could see any of herprevious work - maybe James could bring insome slides? Adèle had denied that she'dpainted before. Someone else had done themand falsely attributed them to her. The paint-ing she'd just finished was another of those.She was surprised the therapist couldn't tell:she must be a fool. Adèle tolerated her in-terest, never certain that she wasn't really

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another patient. She humoured her, butdisdainfully.

James had bought flowers at the stallin the car park, then dumped them in therubbish bin by Reception. They seemed asham, as falsely cheerful as the bunny rab-bits and Mickey Mouses people paperednurseries with, as if they could keep terrorand hallucination away. Spuriously optimist-ic charms to ward off dread and the awful icyisolation of dreams.

He gave the bag of Adèle's clothes andtoiletries to the ward sister, then stood at thedoor of the day room; the television was on,but quietly, and for the most part unatten-ded. One or two of the patients looked up athim, but didn't appear to register anything.Dr Kavanagh had spoken of a tapering of af-fect, the marked inexpressivity schizophren-ics sometimes withdrew into. The ultimatemanifestation of this was a state James hadheard of before: catatonia, prolonged

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absence of any movement, not from paralys-is, but from a seeming atrophy of the will todo anything, or from extreme, incapacitatingfear of performing any action. She'd toldJames of patients locked into a posture, likea statue, which could be held for hours, days.Sometimes there would be something she'dcalled waxy flexibility: the patient would al-low her or himself to be put into a positionand would then retain it. (Dr Kavanagh,James thought grimly, certainly didn't pullany punches. She'd calmly described very re-gressed schizophrenics, unreachable ones,who would decorate their bodies withstamps, coins, matchboxes; others, incontin-ent, immobile or repeating a small repertoireof movements incessantly.)

But these were rare cases, extremecases. Most patients were far more subtly af-fected, Dr Kavanagh had assured him. Adelewas a world away from those chilling, hid-den, secret souls; and with luck and

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perseverance and hope (hope again, a wordDr Kavanagh used as matter-of-factly aschlorpromazine, and as confidently of its ef-fectiveness) she would never get that far.They would arrest her symptoms, relieve herof them, and they would reach her, per-suade, cajole, draw her out; she would recov-er. Dr Kavanagh had explained that she be-lieved some people needed to go through aschizophrenic period to release the unbear-able ten- sions they'd had building up inthem, perhaps from their earliest days. Forsome it was the only way, and the symptomswere equivalent to the itching of a wound asit healed. (She fell short of actually recom-mending it, however.)

Dr Kavanagh said. God, she'd better beright.

Adèle looked up from her work, smiledfaintly, went back to it. He wasn't sure ifshe'd actually seen him or not. She was cer-tainly not pleased to see him, nor displeased,

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nor surprised, nor any bloody thing he couldidentify.

'Adèle?'He spoke gently, absurdly anxious not

to disturb her.'I thought you weren't here,' she said,

dabbing at the picture. 'But since you are,you ought to know. It wasn't me that did anyof those things, it was you-know-who.' Shegave him an understanding smile and,shockingly, a wink. 'I would never do any-thing like that.'

'Adèle?' He didn't know what to say,he had no words. 'Are they treating you OK?Del?'

She paused.'They're treating me with treatments.

What do you expect them to do? Treats. Ice-cream and black fruit, but it's all poisonedunfortunately.'

He wanted to touch her, hold her - ifhe touched her she might come back to him.

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He ached with his longing for her, but he wasinhibited by the thought that perhaps touch-ing wasn't allowed here, that a nurse wouldcome and tell him off. He wondered fearfullyhow his touch might feel to her: repugnant,or worse, nothing at all. And how might shefeel to him: waxy? His arm twitched futilely.

The picture was a landscape, small byAdèle's standards; she was using thick tex-tured card instead of canvas, and water col-ours instead of oils. The sheep were there,wild-eyed now with terror, some seeming totry and rush out from the picture, otherstwisted round to look at something deepwithin the composition. And there wassomething he'd never before seen in any pic-ture of hers: a human form. It was this figurethat the sheep were turning to look at, wererunning from. A very indistinct shape, butunmistakably human. It seemed out of scalewith the rest, though that could have been atrick of the perspective.

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'Closer,' she said. 'I can almost see theface.' She wiped her hands on a cloth andthrew it aside, one of the old familiar paint-ing mannerisms. She was still there! Thethought leapt about in his brain. Still there!

'So. How's the car running?'So grotesquely inapt was the question

that he laughed aloud, he couldn't helphimself.

'Fine. I think the hand-brake cable'swearing a bit though.'

'Broken probably. None of the ma-chines work properly round here, ask any-one.' She put her head on one side, reflect-ing, then continued.

'You see, everything's been broken andspilled out, but there's more to come, it'll allhave to come out. Come out and pray, prayto be forgotten by all your sins. Do you see?'

'Adèle.'

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'A secret dell, hidden in the branches.Is that where you put it?' Elvis, covered inhawthorn boughs. He felt himself stiffening.

'A delicate flower, oh just thrown inthe bin.'

Psychotic insight Dr Kavanagh hadsaid, but she'd meant the implausible, non-sensical connections schizophrenics oftenbegan to see everywhere. This was real in-sight. Two lucky shots: would she try for athird?

'Adelts don't do that kind of thing.'He relaxed again: just words, word

salad Dr Kavanagh had called it. Words flungtogether, chiming meaninglessly like thedoor bell to a demolished house.

'Sampled the handwriting. Off thewall.'

She intangibly but quite definitely dis-missed him, withdrew into the paintingagain. The window had closed.

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James left the room. He sat in a chairin the corridor by the door, and when a nursecame smiling past he said, 'Excuse me,' andstarted to cry. She guided him to a smallwaiting room, held his hand. She arranged acup of tea for him.

Lewyn crawled behind the sofa; Sam, blind-fold, followed him on all fours.

'Baaaaaa!'He doubled back, past the television,

and out into the hall.'Baaaaaa!'Sam twisted his head round, locating

the direction of the sound. It was a surpris-ingly good game, Lewyn decided, thoughrather hard on the knees and thigh muscles.The object was for the blindfold person tocatch up and touch the other, following thesounds he made. Sam, being nimbler andhaving more recent experience of crawling

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than Lewyn, was finding it far easier andmuch less tiring.

James had left at ten o'clock andwasn't due back till at least four. Six hours.Lewyn was realizing how exhausting it couldbe looking after an active child. Sam hadwanted to see all the sheds and outhouses,with their curious cement roofs and bowedwindow lintels. Someone had recently askedLewyn if he could buy them and turn theminto what he described as an 'agriculturalcrafts museum experience', and had beengreatly disappointed when Lewyn explainedthat he merely rented them, and all the land.His family had been in the area for genera-tions, but suffered disaster in hisgrandmother's time and had to selleverything and lease it back.

Sam had had a ride in the red MasseyFerguson tractor and even held the wheel, aresponsibility he had taken immensely seri-ously. He'd gone up the ladder into the hay

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loft, and been conducted round the sheds,wanting to know the names of all the objects,and what they were for. His capacity for in-quisition seemed to know no bounds. His at-tention had been particularly engaged by awood-handled implement hanging from anail on the wall.

'What's that for?''That? He's a dibber, he's for making

holes in the soil to plant things.' Sam ex-amined the instrument, a thick shaft abouteighteen inches long, pointed at one end witha crosspiece at the other to hold it with. Thepointed end was sheathed with iron, studdedwith rivets. Sam had to use both hands tohold it.

'Baaaaaa!'Lewyn was at the top of the stairs; Sam

felt his way forward, found the bottom stairand laboriously heaved himself up.

Sam had been intrigued by the Yorkmultigym and had with Lewyn's assistance

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been just about able to drag down the pulley,though not with any weight on, grimacingand groaning like a power-builder. Theworkroom had also been thoroughly ex-amined, every drawer and cupboard lookedin, the nails and screws and drill bits namedand explained. They'd played a little gamewhere Lewyn put his hand in the vice andSam tightened it, Lewyn pretending to be inagony.

'No no! No more. Aaaaagh!' Sam hadgiggled and given the handle an extra turn.

In between these technical discus-sions, Sam had quizzed Lewyn about Jesusand the Bible. Lewyn had been meticulouslyneutral in his explanations: he was preparedto say neither that it was all true nor that itwas not. He felt, with Dave, that Dilys hadbeen perhaps a touch over-zealous in herevangelism. He had confirmed that the Biblewas very old and that a lot of people believed

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it, but beyond that he'd confined himself todon't knows and maybes.

The breadth of the child's knowledgeastonished him: not just the things a seven-year-old could be expected to know, theGood Shepherd and the Sermon on theMount, but the minor prophets, Chronicles,Kings. Sam seemed to have dipped in andout, extracting stories and names and eventsmore or less at random, but a theme that re-turned several times was resurrection.Lewyn assumed this was an interest promp-ted by Elvis's sudden demise. If people, thenwhy not dogs? If dogs then why not sheep,rabbits, fish? The child was perfectly inno-cently reducing the great revelation of lifeeverlasting to a kind of repair shop where noform of existence was too humble to qualifyfor the divine treatment. Slugs? If animals,why not plants? What about grass? And ifpeople and animals could come back really,with their bodies as well, then what about

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meat that people ate? Would it come out oftheir bodies and reform itself? Lewyn grewincreasingly uneasy about this line of ques-tioning and· tried to steer Sam away.

'Baaaaa!'He let Sam catch him on the landing

so they could swop over roles.Sam didn't appear to be at all traumat-

ized by his mother's abrupt departure, norhad he been upset by James's refusal to lethim visit her. He placidly accepted that hismum needed a nice long rest all by herself,somewhere a long way away. He knew shewas in a hospital, and that she might be therefor quite some time. How long was quitesome time? he'd enquired, and James hadcome close to an outright lie: she'd be backsoon, maybe before Christmas. What waswrong with her? Another half-lie: James saidthe doctors didn't really know. (This wasmore or less true - Dr Kavanagh had beenunable to say clearly what kind of disorder

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schizophrenia was.) James assured himeveryone would do everything they could tomake her better.

Sam had not exhibited any particulardistress, either, when they'd buried Elvis theprevious evening. James had dug the hole, inthe same corner where he'd temporarily hid-den the corpse, and had wrapped Elvis in ablanket; then Sam had been allowed to watchas James covered the dog with earth. Jameshad stood at the graveside and improvised ashort speech.

'Elvis was a very good dog. He wasbrave and obedient and loyal. He had a goodlife.'

'And he never bit anyone,' Samchipped in solemnly.

'No. Never bit anyone.' James hadbeen assailed by a memory of Elvis as apuppy; he'd been from a litter of nine andwould have been put down if they hadn'ttaken him. He'd been rather undersized, and

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his removal from his mother at such an earlyage had left him shaken and suspicious.James had brought him home in a shoeboxlined with an old jumper. Elvis had stood un-steadily by the hissing gas fire, trembling andgroggy. The vet had given James a pipetteand some vitamin solution, and he'dsqueezed the fluid into the tiny, desperatemouth: he'd put a few drops on to his thumband the sharp little teeth had closed over it,but not enough to hurt. He remembered theurgent wetness and warmth of Elvis's mouth,and, standing beside the low hummock ofearth, closed his eyes. Sam watched him.James took some of the stones from the walland put them over the grave, a low pile. Samdid the same. It seemed inadequate as a ce-remony, and not for the first time Jameswished he could pray. Sadness rolled up inhim. He took hold of Sam's hand and led himback to the house.

'Sam? It'd be OK to cry, chief.'

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'Oh no, it's all right,' Sam said, think-ing of the Resurrection and the Life. Elviswould be back.

Lewyn allowed Sam to tie the blindfold onhim, and then loosened it slightly; hewatched until Sam had trundled away out ofsight, arms and legs moving purposefully to-gether. Cheating, admittedly, but there wasno way on earth he was going to crawlaround the house in the dark: the mere ideaof it sent ripples of cold through him. He'donce woken screaming from a nightmarewhere he was trying to find the light switchto the workroom, feeling along the wall intotal darkness, the switch gone, stumblingforward into an unknowable, endless cor-ridor of nothing. He shuddered, reliving theannihilating, senseless, booming frenzy ofthat moment. After that he'd always leftlights on in the hall and landing, and a lampin his bedroom. Darkness was where the

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beast lived. He heard again his screamsrolling through the dark, empty house, ima-gined hearing them from the attic, from theworkroom, and his flesh tingled as he adjus-ted the blindfold.

'Baaaa!' Sam called, sounding somedistance away, somewhere near the barn.Lewyn came after him.

James stopped at a Hungry Traveller. Hewasn't hungry, but he felt the need to get outand walk about. Park the car. Buysomething. Interact with the world on asimple, mundane level. He was in no rush toget back; the visit had been a great dealshorter than he'd anticipated, and he wasn'tdue to pick up Sam till four o'clock. Helingered amongst the overpriced sandwichesand cakes, ending up with a Chelsea bun anda prawn and salad roll. The woman at thecheckout rang up the ludicrous prices, un-blushingly asking for some outrageous sum

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of money, and giving him the change,without looking at him directly once. Hethanked her and took the receipt: the num-bers all added up in an exquisitely simple,arithmetical fashion, items and subtotal andamount tendered and change. There was nohyperbole or darkly imaginative rationali-zation. He folded the receipt and put it care-fully into his wallet. It had become importantto him to preserve such evidences of orderand reason, like Galileo hugging his starcharts to himself.

It wasn't just the nightmarish visit tothe acute psychiatric ward that had under-mined him. He reflected on the last fourweeks, the bone excavation, Sam screaming,the revelations about Guy and Edith, Adèle'sabrupt plunge into insanity, and then, mosttroubling of all, the death of Elvis.

Someone, rather than something, hadkilled Elvis, and it hadn't been Adèle. Notjust killed him, but savaged him, blinded,

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mutilated him. James found it almost im-possible to imagine any human being doingthat to a dog. But someone had. The sameperson, presumably, who had performedthose other monstrous violations on thesheep.

It wasn't me! James! (Click.)He crumbled inwardly at the thought

of how readily he had believed that Adèlecould have been responsible. Admittedly shehad been at the scene, and she had certainlybeen in the grip of her insanity by then. Butto accept unquestioningly that the womanhe'd been living with, sleeping with (onlyhours before. Jesus!) the woman who wasthe mother of his children, was capable ofripping apart a living animal! What elseshould he have believed, though?

He could keep the thought away nolonger; it bubbled up from where it had beenlodged for weeks now, like marsh gas.

Lewyn.

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Lewyn, who had known that Jameswould find something buried near the septictank, and had had that story ready aboutRaoul and his bonfire. Who had been strug-gling with Adèle on the cliffs with the still-warm carcass under his feet. Who had ap-peared at the house with Elvis's poor, drip-ping body in his arms.

Who was at this moment mindingSam.

He stood up, banging his knee againstthe moulded plastic table and sending ashock wave through the detritus piled on it.Hungry travellers looked up from theirdoughnuts and coffee and ashtrays as hebarged through, a wild, unshaven man hunt-ing frantically for the exit.

'Sam!'Lewyn flung open the doors of sheds

and outbuildings, squinting into the dark-ness inside. The secret, looming interiors

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glared back unco-operatively, as if angry atbeing invaded by the bright winter sunshine.He ran back to the house and searched itmethodically from top to bottom, hesitatingas always at the door to the basement beforethrusting it open and, averting his eyes fromthe vanishing perspective of the stairs, fum-bling blindly for the light switch.

He stood at the top of the stairs; therewas nowhere for a child to hide, unless hewas in a cupboard. Lewyn went down andopened them all. Nothing.

'Sam!'He charged back up and out into the

neat fenced front garden. Seventeen acres offields, a main road, and then an unlimitedexpanse of cliff top. Stone walls, trees,stream beds, culverts, hedgerows. He tried tothink. Sam was probably hiding as a joke,part of the game. He couldn't have got far -he was probably somewhere nearby, in oneof the buildings. Lewyn returned to the barn,

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flicking on the dusty overhead lights one byone with the row of switches by the door.Even in full daylight the high small windowslet in only a dim glow. It was a convertedcowshed, still divided into stalls on bothsides with a corridor between them. It hadgrown incrementally over a long period in anapparently ramshackle fashion, and therewere numerous side rooms and additions.He examined each stall in turn with morethan necessary thoroughness, kicking overimpossibly small heaps of discarded andwrecked furniture. Somewhere at the back ofhis mind he knew the heap of lumber waswaiting for him. He was in no hurry to reachit.

'Sam! Where are you?'His voice fell flat and dead in the rank,

sunless building. He worked his way alongthe rows of empty and half-empty stalls,scanning methodically, furiously.

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James accelerated into the stream of M4traffic, pushing the twelve-year-old car to thelimits of its capability. Every MOT it passednow was a bonus, borrowed time. Startingfirst time was a dim, distant memory, tingedwith nostalgia and regret; the driver's doorhad to be lifted and levered and massagedinto place, the clutch had developed a nasty,expensive-sounding grinding noise, like anold man getting his phlegm up. Reverse wassometimes, quite simply, not on the menu,not to be found however ingeniously thegearstick was manipulated. Nought to what?as the bumper sticker said.

His understanding of a car engine waslimited strictly to a kind of global overview,what part did what and how much it costwhen it went wrong. Adèle had pretended tobelieve, only half jokingly, that the car waspowered by a capricious spirit which couldbe placated and appeased by flattery and

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sweet talk, and James felt this could almostbe true.

'Come on,' he murmured furiously asthe clutch coughed and ground, 'come on,you handsome, brilliant machine, you mir-acle of craftsmanship and high-tolerance en-gineering, come on you bastard!'

The lumber was stacked at the far end of oneof the added-on rooms, a mighty heap ofbeams and boards and planks in variousstages of soundness and decay. It had beenthere for as long as Lewyn could remember;clearing it had been one of those jobs that forvarious reasons got put off from one year tothe next. His father had added to it every sooften; it had eventually become a central re-pository for all the unused and unwantedtimber on the farm, reaching up to the high,cobwebbed ceiling.

Lewyn could not recall a time when hehad been unaware of it. It had been a part of

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his interior landscape, an unvisited part, forever. Nor could he pinpoint a time when thebeast had arrived and taken up residencethere: it had assembled itself from the rotten,cracked heart of the pile, from the insidious,silvery threads of the dry rot, from the roughsplintered surfaces. It had developed, fillingup the shadowy spaces like an embryo in awomb, growing limbs that snaked up into thegaps between the pieces, growing eyes andears. A mouth.

Lewyn leaned on the wall outside,away from it. In a minute, he told himself. I'llgo in in a minute and look. Unconsciously hefelt for his pulse, shifting his thumb aroundon his wrist, though he could feel the bloodsinging clearly enough in his neck and ears.It felt as if it would come spurting out at anymoment, hot urgent licks from his eyes andnose.

'Sam!'

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His voice was desperate, frightening inits need and hoarseness.

'Sam! Are you in there?'His ears strained for any sound, any-

thing at all, but all he could hear was theroaring in his sinuses and behind his eyes.

'You better come out now. I'm not kid-ding Sam, you could hurt yourself in there!'Hurt yourself, get your brain ripped out, bechewed into a ragged pulpy mess. His handsqueezed his groin rhythmically as he staredat the wall in front, with the knowledge thatthe pile was only two steps away, around thecomer. He closed his eyes.

'Sam!The sound dropped at his feet; he pic-

tured the beast sitting hunched over in thepile, his red glittering eyes flicking, grinningwith his wet, raw mouth. Tired of sittingquietly, snatching the odd rabbit in the dark-ness, ready for juicier, tenderer meat.

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Listening to his frantic noises with gleefulanticipation.

In a minute, he told himself. In aminute I'll have done it and it'll be over. Hecounted backwards from sixty.

The two male orderlies held her arm as sheshrieked and arched, writhing against them.

'I can see his face! I can see his face! Ican...'

A nurse walked quickly into the dayroom, saw what was happening, andmarched straight out again.

'...see his face! I can see his...'The nurse returned, puncturing the

seal on a small glass vial with a syringe. Thetwo restraining the jerking, seething womanuttered small sounds, part comforting, partstern.

'Now you're fine, you'll be fine in amoment.'

'...FACE!'

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The nurse smiled at the distraught wo-man, speaking loudly over her screams.

'Adèle? I'm going to give yousomething to make you

feel better. Please try to relax.''No no no no no no no-'One of the orderlies rolled up Adèle's

sleeve and twisted the arm upwards. Thenurse squirted the needle, expelling the air,then, holding the forearm steady, jabbed theneedle into its muscle.

'Look at his face! Oh oh oh oh oh o-o-o-o-o-h,' the last sound a rising note com-posed purely of terror. Adèle's eyes werefixed on the painting in front of her, glitter-ing pupils surrounded by bright, foamy poolsof white.

The nurse held her hand, a thumbchecking the pulse; she frowned at Adèle'sfrozen mask of fear, a rictus of desperationand horror. She slumped suddenly, held

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upright by the orderlies. The nurse scrutin-ized her, checking her eyes.

'I can see his face.'Adèle tore her gaze away from the pic-

ture and looked pleadingly at the nurse.'Can't you see who it is?'The nurse smiled. She nodded at the

orderlies who helped Adèle away. The nurseheld her hand, talking quietly.

'You're fine now, nothing to worryabout. There now.'

'...four, three, two, one.' Lewyn braced him-self against the wall. 'Sam?'

His voice dropped to a conversationallevel, and the blood was dead in his veins,churning sluggishly like buttercream aboutto turn.

Baaaa.He opened his eyes, feeling each indi-

vidual hair stiffen on his legs in a wave. Hethought his heart had stopped; his arm had

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adopted an absurdly unrealistic pose, slightlyflexed in front of him. He tried to force allthe life in him into his ears, focusing his eyeson the arm. Had he really heard it?

Baaaa. Baaaaa.It was unmistakable, though very dis-

tant, coming from somewhere in the wideopen world outside the barn. And it wasn't achild. It was sheep. Panicking.

He tore himself away from the walland ran, imagining the creaking, splinteringsound of rotten wood being clawed away asthe beast, cheated of his victim, rose at lastfrom his nest. Lewyn pounded down thelength of the barn, reached the door,stumbled out into the fading daylight. Hedropped the latch and sweat spilled out allover him, trickling cold behind his knees andover his stomach. He stood for a momentpanting, swallowing.

Baaa.

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It was coming from the top field, afaint high sound, many voices together. Itwas something he usually only heard inlambing season, when a dog or fox got inamong the sheep. He ran down the lane, onto the road, then up across the fields. As heran, he became aware of another sound, alsohigh. It sounded like someone playing cow-boys and Indians. A child.

James took the corners at reckless speed,sounding the horn. If anything was comingthe other way it was in for a big surprise. Theroad twisted and wove like noodles in chopsuey. And chop suey, thought James, wouldbe an appropriate description of how he'dend up if there was anything unfortunateenough to cross his path.

He turned the last corner, horn blar-ing, braked, wrenched at the complainingdriver's door which lurched and groaned un-der his clumsy hands. It wouldn't open. You

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couldn't open it like that. He took his handsaway, clenched his fists, then gently, gentlysqueezed the handle and eased it up andover, just as he was always telling Adèle todo. Lifted it clear. The door clunked open,settling down half an inch, and he leapt out.

'Sam! Lewyn!'He was unknowingly conscious of a

commotion coming from somewhere nearby,and his legs moved in that direction, guidedby something like a voice saying 'He's overthere.' Instinct.

The steps down to the rocks were treacher-ous at the best of times, crumbling and un-even and overgrown with creeping plants. Infading light and with feet made uncertain byhis hurry, Lewyn found he was in danger oftoppling over and ending up as a colourfulsplash on the rocks. He made himself slowdown, holding on to the garish pink handrail,controlling his forward momentum. He

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could see the child clearly below him, strug-gling in the choppy dark green water.

'I'm coming!' he called. 'Hold on!' So-mething puzzled him for a moment, but hehad no time to stop and think. He loweredhimself down the zigzagging, precipitoussteps until he could jump. The water wasbreathtakingly cold, swelling heavily, angry.He swam to where Sam was treading water,got hold of him and pulled, dragged,wrenched him along, shoved him up and out,on to a rock, heaved him up, went underbriefly, fought against the panic of the heavyblack water. He surfaced again, shaking thetangy, sticky water out of his ears and hair,shoving some large floating shape out of hisway. Sam was holding on to the rock, inchinghimself forward. Lewyn saw he was safe andconcentrated on getting himself out. He layon the rock beside Sam and put his armround him; he felt himself blacking out, thencoming to, in no more than a few seconds.

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Sam had his eyes and his mouth clenchedshut, he was breathing hard and fast. Had heswallowed much? Lewyn shouted over thebooming, thundering surf:

'Sam? Are you all right?'Sam nodded convulsively, his body go-

ing into a spasm of shock. Lewyn got a betterfoothold and shakily stood up, pulling Samwith him. He half dragged the boy along therocks to the steps, then put him over hisshoulder and pulled himself up one step at atime, his free arm wrenching at the handrail.

He was fifty yards across the fieldwhen James appeared, scrambling over thewall. Lewyn stood still, panting, and Jameslanded, came forward a step, stopped dead.

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14

Making Sense

There came a stage with many schizophren-ics when 'they' became 'he'. Before this theyhad been at the mercy of a loose, ill-definedset of observers, plotters and arrangers, anamorphous army who were at work every-where setting things up, organizing coincid-ences and chance events. And then psychoticinsight bloomed like a strange ungainlyflower; the voices offstage crystallized into asingle entity, often one person, who was con-trolling the whole mystifying spectacle. Itwas the sufferer's way of making sense ofwhat was happening, and could often be agood sign. Far easier to challenge a single,

coherent, if elabor- ately structured, delusionthan a chaotic hubbub of fears and fantasies.Other less fortunate patients never reachedthis stage, their beliefs becoming increas-ingly disordered, often logically or physiolo-gically impossible: their brains had melted,for example, or their eyes belonged tosomeone else.

In Adèle, Dr Kavanagh reflected, thedelusive system had become highly struc-tured, focusing on the revelation she'd seenin her paintings. The attack when she'd hadto be sedated had been the turning point andmarked a new phase in the course of her ill-ness. It was Dr Kavanagh's habit to keep arecord of the patient's statements as a nar-rative, from their point of view, as if it weretrue. In this form the story could be ex-amined and the patient made aware of whatwas illogical or contradictory, or just down-right implausible. Of course the patient hadto be at a certain stage of recovery to be able

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to accept such an approach, and many neverattained it. A badly hallucinated person, dis-tracted by voices and accusations, often wassimply unable to attend closely enough, thedoctor's voice drowned out by the chorus ofinsinuations and whispered allegations.Adèle seemed to have been spared any overthallucinations of this sort, though she ap-peared sometimes to be attending tosomething no-one else could hear: she wouldglaze over, frowning, twisting her head.Listening. Whether or not she perceived thesound to be external from her was unclear.

Dr Kavanagh reviewed her notes. Sofar Adèle's story ran something like this:

'I murdered my child (Ruthie) becausemy other child (Sam) wanted me to, as partof an experiment he was conducting. Hewanted to know if he could bring someoneback from the dead without killing themhimself. The experiment was a failure: Ruth-ie didn't come back. Sam made me drown

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Ruthie by pressurizing me mentally. Not ex-actly as a voice, but I knew that was what hewanted me to do. I thought someone wasshouting "drown, drown", and I interpretedthat as referring to Ruthie.'

Nothing too unusual there, she reflec-ted. A parent who had tried and failed tosave her child from a fatal accident was cer-tain to experience appalling guilt: that couldoften be the worst feature of the tragedy.Adèle was both accepting responsibility(she·had drowned Ruthie) and blamingsomeone else (Sam). It was an elegant andclearly very useful mechanism.

'After we moved to Wales Sam contin-ued his experiments. He killed a sheep, tear-ing off its back leg and part of its hindquar-ters. I found the torn-off parts and hid them,in the freezer and in my studio.'

Also oddly plausible, at least the partabout hiding the sheep flesh: what more lo-gical place than a freezer? And in an artist

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what more characteristic response than topaint it?

'He killed the sheep to see if he couldbring it back again. This also failed.

'One night I woke up and heard noisesfrom the field. I went out and he was therewith another mutilated sheep. He was tryingto throw it over the cliff. He ran off when hesaw me coming, and I tried to bury it forhim, so that no-one would find it. But aneighbour came out and saw me. Everyoneassumed I'd done it. But it wasn't me.'

Adèle was presenting herself here as aprotective, dutiful mother, sheltering herchild from the consequences of his actions.She had managed to 'forget' this until shesaw the child in one of her paintings, when itall came back.

There was nothing logically impossiblehere: there were no aliens from the centre ofthe earth or other unlikely agencies at work.The reasoning was - well, reasonable, given

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the outlandish premises. And, Dr Kavanaghknew from her interview with James, themutilations had indeed occurred. Whether ornot it was Adèle who had committed themwas a matter for somebody else to determ-ine; ultimately it would become a policeproblem. It was Adèle's interpretation oftheir meaning that was important here.

Adèle was due in five minutes. DrKavanagh closed the file and leaned back inher chair. She knew how important it was tobe clear-headed and alert when talking toschizophrenics. Apart from the unreach-ables, the catatonics, they were characterist-ically highly animated and expressive, andshe couldn't afford to miss any of the cluesthey threw out.

She cleared her head by picturing her-self lying on a grassy bank with the sun shin-ing down on her from a cloudless sky. SheilaKavanagh, aged fifty-six, consultant psychi-atrist. The other danger, and one which had

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tripped her up more times than she cared toacknowledge, was the sheer plausibility ofmuch of what her patients told her. Sheknew of colleagues who had stumbled intothe trap of entering into their patients' beliefsystems, finding them attractive, beguilingplaces, full of a kind of truth. A profoundlyconvinced patient could subtly undermineeven the most experienced therapist, sheknew. It was vital to be aware, consciously,fully, from minute to minute, of who waswho. I am Sheila Kavanagh. I am fifty-sixyears old, a widow of ten years' standing,with a daughter who lives in Manchester.She has two children: I have their pictureshere on my desk. I am a consultant psychiat-rist, I work for South Glamorgan AreaHealth Authority. She heard herself repeat-ing this ritual statement of self, and con-sidered her schedule. She had a case confer-ence at 1.15, a budget meeting at 4.00, anumber of small, important chores to attend

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to before she drove home to her house wherethe toilet didn't flush properly and the staircarpet needed replacing. She dropped eachitem into a grey metal box, a neat row ofthem, and locked them all. She opened hereyes.

'Hello, Adèle. Please sit down.''Dr Kavanagh, it's extremely important

that I go home right away. There are badthings happening there.'

Lucid, she noted. No obvious disorderof speech or thought. Appearance generallygood, hair, make-up. An improvement.

'What are the bad things?''I know you don't believe me. I know

I've been ill. But I'm better now, and I'vesimply got to get back. Please sign the reliefform or whatever you have to do. I'm readyto leave immediately.'

Relief form. Adèle was asking for helpnow, asking the doctor to relieve her of hersuffering, make her ready to go back to her

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life. If there had been a relief form thenSheila Kavanagh would willingly, gladly,have signed it. If only life was like that. Adèlewas presumably thinking of a release form,necessary for her to leave the custody of thehospital. A waiver of responsibility.

'I'm glad to hear you're feeling better.Won't you sit down?'

Adèle was standing by the chair, onthe other side of the desk.

'Please?'Adèle sat, clearly impatient at the

waste of time involved.'Dr Kavanagh...''You can call me Sheila if you like.''Yes all right, Sheila, you don't seem to

understand. Something dreadful is about tohappen, and I have to stop it.'

Impending catastrophe, the oftencrushing fear that some calamitous eventwas imminent. It could sometimes be a kindof retrospective acknowledgement of the

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appalling havoc the illness had brought intothe patient's life. Or it could be indicative ofthe fear the patient had of going back to or-dinary, mundane routine, after the floridprotection of the illness had been removed.Either way it could be interpreted as a posit-ive sign.

'What is it that's going to happen?''Oh, I've told you. Look, I know this

must be hard for you to believe, but my sonis extremely dangerous, he could kill some-body. I can stop him.'

The dangerous child. The part of thepatient's mind that had revolted, gone bad,was often perceived by what remained oftheir consciousness as an external thing, aperson. A child, after all, was part of you in away that no-one else could be.

'What's he going to do?''Well I can't be sure, but I think the

next part of his experiment is going to be tokill a person himself, to see if he can bring

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them back. He thinks it's possible to do that,he believes it. I've told you.'

'The last time we spoke, you men-tioned to me that he'd read something thatbolstered that belief. Would you explain thatagain?'

Adèle sighed.'There was a woman living in the

house before us. She wrote something on thewall, I read part of it, it was about how herhusband was killing people. I think Sam readit all, I think he's imitating what the husbandwas doing. He was killing people ritually, akind of sacrifice.'

A woman locked in a room, writing onthe wall of the wickedness of the world andher husband. A nearly perfect image of men-tal illness, Dr Kavanagh thought. Mene MeneTekel Upharsin, the most significant part ofwhich meant ‘thou hast been weighed in thebalance and found wanting’. The writing by adivine hand that appeared on the wall at

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Belshazzar's feast. Found wanting. At thebase of much mental disorder, she knew, wasa poor self-image. In schizophrenics this lowself-esteem had reached disastrous propor-tions, prompting the accusatory voices: spy,pervert, murderer.

'So this woman's husband was a mur-derer, and Sam is following in his footsteps?Is that right?'

'Don't you take that bloody tone withme! I'm telling you the truth for God's sake!'

The truth, the truth which no-one elsecould see but which was so compellinglyclear to the schizophrenic.

'OK. Sorry. How are you going to stophim?'

'Well what do you think? I'll call thedamn police.'

'And tell them what?'Adèle, for the first time, paused. Sheila

Kavanagh watched closely: a crack in thedefence?

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'I'll show them the paintings.' She re-laxed again. No, no chink of light there. Self-validating proofs were something schizo-phrenics were rarely lacking.

'It's so clear! And the latest one - ohit's horrible. He's not going to be contentwith sheep for much longer, I'm sure of it.Please, please, I've got to get back.'

'Adèle, I want to ask you something.Why is Sam wanting to do all this? Why?'

'Isn't it obvious?''Not to me, I'm afraid, no.''Christ, you're supposed to be the fuck-

ing expert! Because he's mad!'And there it was, that word so rarely

uttered in mental institutions, that short,eloquent, painful word. If Adèle could con-ceive of her child as mad, then it might notbe long before she could discard the projec-tion on to her child, on to someone else'shusband, and use it on herself. And if shecould begin to see that it was she that was -

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well, 'mad' said it as clearly as any psychiat-ric textbook - then she would be truly recov-ering. Of course the realization would be ag-onizing, and the weight of shame and humili-ation at what she had done and believedwhile ill would be worse than physical pain,but recovery could never be easy, not for theschizophrenic. Adèle would have to live withthe memory of her insanity, her screaming,her fighting, her undignified, uncontrolledbehaviour and monstrous accusations, forthe rest of her life. But that was the price shewould pay for her sanity. Adèle had becomeill very suddenly and very intensively: para-doxically that meant her chances of a full re-covery were better than average. It was theslow growing, slowly maturing schizophrenia- the oddly misnamed 'simple' type - that wasmore intractable, harder to reach. Adèle hadsimply dived, clean and deep, and she mighteven now be on her way back up to thesurface.

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'Tell me about your new painting.''Why? Are you going to let me go if I

do?''Please. I'm interested. I understand

you're preparing for an exhibition? Thatmust be exciting.'

'You think I could exhibit those - thosebloody things? They're sickening. Since youask, this last one shows my son Sam drag-ging a sheep off to the cliff, the sheep's bleed-ing, the other sheep are going crazy. OhChrist. There's someone else around now, Ican't see who it is yet, but he's in terribledanger. Oh!'

'These are things that are really hap-pening? Or about to happen?'

'Really happening, yes yes, I've toldyou.'

'I know this is hard for you, Adèle.Please be patient a while longer. How do youknow these things are happening? After allyou're not there, are you?'

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'I don't know how I know,' said Adèle,and Dr Kavanagh detected a change in herposture, a touch of abstraction.

'Adèle? What's happening now?''Hold on...''Adèle?' Dr Kavanagh knew that a hal-

lucination could sometimes be staved off ifthe patient's attention could be distractedout from herself, out into the real world.

'Adèle? What was your mother's maid-en name?'

'Sheldon. Shhh...''What's your date of birth?''Birth?''What's your favourite food? Tell me.''Grass, glass, smash, crash, boom, un-

derneath the wa-ter you shall push yourdaugh-ter, now she's here and now she'sgone, now the devil's got his bone...'

'I can't understand you - ''Tie the rocks around their feet, now

the devil's got his meat, when you call their

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names aloud, they'll come out and join thecrowd.'

Sheila stood up and knelt down infront of her, trying to catch her eye. Eye con-tact would sometimes bring a patient backfrom wherever they had gone: most schizo-phrenics avoided it as much as they could.

'Look at me.''I can't see you, I can't breathe, oh, oh.''I'm right here.''Oh, oh, oh, oh...' Adèle was panting,

and Sheila took her hand and squeezed,moving her head to try to catch her atten-tion. Adèle relaxed little by little, and Sheilafelt her hand squeezing back. Gripping her.She was pulling herself out.

'Can you see me now?''Yes.''Try to relax. Breathe deeply.''Yes.''I'm going to let go of your hand now.''Yes. OK.'

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She returned to her chair, and Adèlerubbed at her forehead, frowning.

'Have you got a headache?''No, not really.''Would you like a glass of water?''No thank you.' Adèle shook her head.'OK. Just rest for a minute.' Dr

Kavanagh looked hard at the Perspex framecontaining the photographs of her grandchil-dren, smiling, healthy children, passing ex-ams, winning prizes at swim- ming galas,just discovering their strengths and talents.Self-doubt, guilt, panic - that was all un-known to them yet. Still to come.

'You know what kind of eyes he's got?'She looked up to find Adèle's angry,

knife-sharp concentration on her.'Who?''You know who. Sheep's eyes, that's

what he's got. The Devil's eyes. Eyes that cansee in the dark. See in your head. Up here!'She tapped her temple. 'He knows all the

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right triggers. He's pretty advanced for sev-en.' There was a curious pride in her voice,the pride of a mother in her child's attain-ments, but mixed with dread at what thoseattainments were. Something rather differ-ent from cycling-proficiency certificates andgrade two cello.

'He knows what he's doing. And so doI. I'm the only one who knows. If no-onestops him then he'll go on. Because he's evil.'Her voice was level and controlled now,rather flat. 'So you'd better write it all downin your file, Dr Kavanagh. Then when it's toolate you can read it all and wonder why youdidn't do anything about it. Some childrenare good, some are bad, some are mad. Mychild happens to be in the last category. Ishould know, shouldn't I? He's driven mehere so I'll be out of his way, because hedoesn't need me around any more. He'llprobably try a different tack with James. Ithink he's got Lewyn fairly well in hand

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already. Covering all bases. It's perfect. Whowould ever suspect a bright-eyed, please-and-thank-you, may-I-be-excused-pleaselittle boy?'

Dr Kavanagh studied her. How must itfeel to believe, really, truly believe that yourchild was some kind of devil who controlledpeople's minds and tortured animals as anexperiment? How could Adèle bear to believeit?

Again, it wasn't necessarily a badthing: it would be so damaging, so ap-pallingly, crushingly hard to sustain the cer-tainty that the child you had borne, carried,fed, loved for all those years was a sadisticanimal, a freak. Adèle wouldn't be able tohold on to this belief for very long. She wouldhave to let go sooner or later, and when shedid Sheila Kavanagh would be there to catchher. It would be a hard fall.

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The wire had been stamped down, flattened,leaving a dip low and wide enough to stepover. He'd have to replace it. There was halfa roll in one of the sheds somewhere. Therewere tufts of wool caught on the barbs,coarse cream-coloured strands. He'd haveplenty of time for mending fences nowJames and Sam were gone. Gone to his par-ents in Bristol.

'I'm sorry, Lewyn, but I just can't leaveSam here any longer. You can understandthat, can't you?'

That was when he'd calmed down;Lewyn flinched from the memory of howhe'd been when he arrived on the scene.Well, it was his child, you could understandit. All James knew was that his son hadnearly been killed. Lewyn had been supposedto be looking after him, instead of which he'ddamn nearly let him drown.

But that wasn't it. James in his ragehad not hidden the fact that he believed

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Lewyn was involved in the incident in someway, if not directly responsible.

'I don't want to discuss it, Lewyn. Idon't want to know. I'm taking him awayfrom here, and that's it.'

'James please, listen...'He clenched his eyes shut. His voice

had sounded so weak, almost pleading. Hadhe been crying? He hadn't cried since thatday in barracks, rocking back and forth withDilys's letter crumpled in his fist, SteveDelaware sitting on his bunk with him. Theend of the world.

The sheep edged around him, politelyapprehensive, unconcerned at the death ofthree of their number the previous day.Knowing but silent, like a flock of spies ordiplomats. Keeping secrets.

What had they seen? Lewyn observedthem, trying to find some key to their codedimpassivity. He watched for signs, for anydeviation from their invariable, immemorial

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repertoire of behaviours. Sam had saidthey'd come running at him, frightened him,chased him off the cliff. Lewyn knew such athing was impossible, and he knew Jamesknew it as well. Sheep didn't behave like that.

His father had kept a battered, board-bound book in the kitchen, an almanac of ag-ricultural lore, not as a reference but as akind of charm. It contained paragraphs onsuch matters as 'What tyme lambes shuldebe wayned', and 'Blyndeness of shepe, andother dyseases, and remedies therefore'.Most of the remedies involved applying tarto various parts of the sheep and lettingblood, and most of the symptoms, whether of'maggottees in shepe', 'the blode in shepe','the pockes', or even of 'the woode evyll' werethe same: hanging of the head, excitabilityand scratching and loss of appetite. Even intheir disorders sheep were subject only tosmall variations from their eat-grass-and-then-go-over-there routine. 'The woode evyll'

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made them 'to halt, and to holde theyr neckeawry'. 'The blode' caused them to 'stande stil,and hange downe the heed'. The outbreak ofsturdie in his father's time had gone un-noticed for some time, simply because thereagain the early symptoms were barely dis-cernible from the normal: a tendency to holdthe head down and stand still. Only when thebrain had been thoroughly eaten away by theflat, swollen-headed worms did they do any-thing at all interesting: they walked in circlesand ran off cliffs.

Could it have come back then, thesturdie? He watched, looking for heads downor standing still, and saw it everywhere. Thatafter all was what sheep did: it was their job.

As far as he was aware, sturdie was theonly thing (short of demonic possession, aswith the Gaderene swine) that would make asheep run over a cliff. It was possible theTullians' dog had brought sturdie back, buthe'd been wormed before he came and again

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at Lewyn's insistence after the first mutila-tion. The fields were harrowed and den-shired in rotation, not that that necessarilyprevented it: though Lewyn retained a prim-itive, almost druidic belief in the purifyingqualities of fire, and the spectacle of a field ofscorched grass and undergrowth was onefrom which he took great reassurance. At theend of each winter the sheep innocentlylicked up a phenothiazine and salt mixturefrom their feeding troughs: again, only a par-tial solution, but the best that could be man-aged on his budget.

In any case, he would know by now:the later stages of the infection were unmis-takable. The sheep would struggle at beinghandled in what Mr Astley called a 'sturdieway'; their movements would become highlyerratic, the inability to hold a straight coursedegenerating into increasingly tight circles,always in the same direction, until they fell,exhausted. They would become blind: Mr

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Astley had said he'd even seen them turnsomersaults just before the end. The diseasewas also known as 'gid', for the reason thatthe sheep would appear to be drunken, stag-gering and lifting their feet high in stylized,almost dance-like steps. This 'giddiness' wasalso quite unmistakable.

Lewyn didn't keep a dog, primarily forthe reason that however rigorous the worm-ing you couldn't prevent the possibility of in-fection entirely, particularly when there wasa history of parasites in the fields. Dogswould eat sheep droppings whatever you did:it was their nature. The scale of his operationin any case didn't require a dog - the sheepcould be managed and moved about per-fectly well by a man with a stick and an un-derstanding of their ways. So cross-infectionfrom a farm dog was not a possibility here.

Demons, then? His father's almanacmade no mention of demonic possession,gave no indications of what to look for. He

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wondered what a sheep would do if pos-sessed, and laughed. It would probably holdits neck awry and stand still. It might - per-haps - run at a young boy and drive him overa cliff, but Lewyn allowed himself to doubt it.

There was one other thing that wouldcause a sheep to run: fear. Fear was mostmarked at lambing when a ewe was quitecapable of running long distances, and fast, iffrightened: but she would run from, not to-wards, the menace to her lamb, keeping itgalloping alongside her.

From, not towards.The only explanation that made any

sense was that the sheep had panicked: andif so, then they must have been panicked bysomething. Imagination was not one of thequalities for which sheep were noted. Unlikepeople, they didn't invent their own terrors.

Panicked then. By what?Lewyn fingered the barbed wire, the

clumps of wool slightly sticky on his fingers.

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By a small boy running at them, shout-ing, waving a stick?

The picture came to him fully formed,Sam in his new trainers and baseball cap,whooping and charging, zig-zagging over thefield, rounding them up like a show dog; theystamped, their ears up, they ran. From, nottowards.

He chased them to the fence that he'dstamped down, he chased them over it, helost his footing and fell with them. Lewyn re-membered his puzzlement, that odd distrac-tion, while he was rescuing Sam from thewater: large, wet forms bobbing round nearhim, he'd pushed one of them away. Sheep.In the chaos of his desperation to save Samhe hadn't had time to take notice of them.

'James, it doesn't make any sense,can't you see that?'

But all James had been able to see wasthat his child had fallen into deep, dark, coldwater and that it was Lewyn's fault. James

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must have believed that Lewyn had thrownhim off and the sheep with him. He mustthink I'm a killer, Lewyn mused, fingering adiscoloured, matted shred of wool, a mad-man. He wondered what else Sam had toldhim. Whose word did you take, your ownchild's or a comparative stranger's?

There was something else Lewyn hadwanted James to know: that he hadn't toldhim the whole truth when he'd said he hadn'tseen anyone around at the time of Elvis'sdeath on the rocks. Not seen: heard. Singingand chanting, a high, pure voice. A child'svoice. It was this that brought him out to thetop field. And a peculiar, elusive sound thathe'd been only intermittently and dimly con-scious of, but which now returned to him, asound like an electricity pylon in a still fieldin summer. Humming.

'I don't want to hear any more, Lewyn.I think I've heard enough.'

'Listen to me, James...'

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'Enough. For Christ's sake. No more.'The look on James's face had been dis-

gust, distaste, the look of a man who'd puthis hand under a rock and found the soft,decaying, maggot-eaten body of a rabbit. Therabbit was Lewyn, a person capable of mutil-ating his own sheep, tearing a dog apartalive, throwing a little boy in new trainers offa cliff.

It hadn't occurred to James to ques-tion why this same man, this flyblown, sick,stinking, rotten animal, had risked his ownlife to save the child he had just tried tomurder. James wasn't questioning, wasn'tlistening, wasn't thinking: he was just run-ning, like a ewe with her lamb, from the dev-il. From? Lewyn thought, standing at thedamaged fence. Or with?

The fuse like a lost earring in her hand, shehad stood in the cold basement. The

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screwdriver had a red handle, with lateralridges to make it easier to grip.

Adèle lay on her bed in the bright hos-pital room, staring up at the ceiling. Shetried to find what preceded this scene, whathad taken her first to James's toolkit andthen to the freezer where the ragged, mattedlump of flesh lay, damning, silent.

Silent. She fastened on the word, fol-lowing a crack from the light fitting to thewindow. Dead things couldn't speak,couldn't make any sound, that was one of theways you could tell they were dead. If a deadthing wanted to make itself known it wouldhave to find another way. The light buzzed,but it wasn't going to explode now, she knewthat. It was just buzzing quietly because itwas full of electricity and electricity buzzed.Not even a buzz really, more of a hum.

Sam hummed. Was he full of electri-city then? She dismissed the idea, finding itridiculous. Where did such absurd notions

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come from? No, he hummed because heliked humming, he wasn't even aware he wasdoing it.

If a dead thing wanted to make itselfknown, wanted to be found, discovered, howwould it do it? She examined this idea: alsoridiculous. Dead things didn't want anything,they had gone beyond wanting. To be deadwas to lie very still and not want anything.But I'm lying still and not wanting, and I'mnot dead.

(If someone had hidden a dead thingbut wanted it to be found...)

The crack disappeared at the window.She considered briefly that it might continueout into the open air outside. A crack in theair. It might be there but you wouldn't beable to see it, no-one would be able to, itwould be invisible. Hidden. It could be therefor ever and no-one would ever know be-cause you couldn't see it or hear it or touch it...

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(If someone hid a dead thing andwanted it found, how would they drawsomeone else's attention to it? What kind ofinvisible crack could you outline in the air tolead them to it?)

...or smell it...(She blinked. She almost remembered.

She'd hidden it because if anyone ever foundit Sam would get into trouble. But she wasdisturbed by it, disgusted by it. Every timeshe opened the freezer to take something outshe was nauseated by it. It was)

...or taste it.(sickening)At last she had it. You could let it rot

so that someone would say, for God's sakewhat's the hum in here, it smells likesomething died in here, where's it comingfrom, well I never, look what I've found inthe freezer.

And if that didn't work you could let itget so good and rotten that it spilled out its

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rottenness on to everything else, so that fi-nally something you ate, something that hadtouched it, been touched by it, made yousick. That's what you could do.

She blinked again. That's whatsomeone had done. What she, in fact, haddone. What she had forgotten about (it hadjust flitted away somehow).

Jesus. There were other cracks in theceiling. What else had she forgotten?

She pondered.

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15

Apples

They crossed the Severn Bridge, the aston-ishing audacity of its design a revelation inthe winter sun. It seemed to be held up byforce of will as much as anything, the greatpillars and wires merely a nod towards anappearance of structural soundness. Walesfell away behind them, separated by thebroad expanse of water spanned by this fra-gile, tenuous cage of steel and faith. Jamesfelt the oppression of the last few weeks van-ishing, as the low sun flickered through thestruts. He breathed more easily, andsomething in his shoulders fell a bit further,relaxing after weeks of being screwed uptight. Sam sat sullenly behind him watching

the cars: he liked spotting Beetles. Jamestried not to think about what they wereheading for.

The phone call to his mother had beenshort and heavily loaded. He said merely thathe and Sam would be coming to visit, andthat they might want to stay for a while,maybe a few weeks. And Adèle? No, shewouldn't be coming. A pause. Well it'll betremendous to see you, James. When shouldwe expect you?

He'd also rung Sebastian: the workwould be held up for a while. Oh, sorry tohear that. How long? James had shruggeddown the phone. A few weeks? He had noidea how he was going to finish it. He sus-pected he probably wasn't going to. Nothingwrong I hope, Jamie? No no, just a week orso, a break for Christmas. Work going well, isit? Oh, oh yes, very well. A week or so awayand then he'd be right back on it, finish wellon schedule, maybe even early. He knew the

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final cheque wouldn't arrive until it was alldone to Sebastian's satisfaction, which, bythe look of things, would be never. Sebastianmight even demand some of his advanceback. Already spent.

('Beetle!' Sam yelled, forgetting hismood, as a car drew level with them, packedwith people and children and dogs. The chil-dren made faces and screamed; Samwatched them with a disapproving tilt to hismouth.)

Ah well. What had gone had gone,what was to come was unknowable. But forthe moment, suspended in the air betweentwo countries, flying through the steelspider's web of someone else's genius for op-timism, James was happy.

There was a moment of shock as the two oldpeople coming down the drive turned intohis mother and father. They were so small,so grey, so ancient! It had been only three

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years since he'd last seen them, but the pic-ture he carried around in his mind had beentaken at least a decade ago. It was then thathe'd told them about Adèle, about the Ruthiethat was soon to be; that there was to be nowedding.

Salad and cold meat in the kitchen.Sam politely but firmly declined the meat,and grated cheese was finally producedinstead.

'You'll never get to be big and stronglike your daddy if you don't eat your meat,'James's father admonished him, and hismother clucked her agreement. This veget-arian nonsense was doubtless one of Adèle'ssilly fads. Sam looked to James for support.

'Dad?''It's OK, Sam. You don't have to eat it

if you don't want it.''Go on Sam. Have a little taste. Just for

your grandma.'

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'He doesn't want it. Neither do I.'Solidarity, thought James.

'No wonder he's looking so pale.You're not looking so well either, Jamie. Hu-man beings were designed for meat-eating,you know. I saw a programme.' His father'svoice.

'Yes, and they were also designed toeat cheese!'

'Oh, James.' His mother shook herhead. Opening shots, James knew. As soonas his plate was clear Sam asked to go to bed:it was early yet but he could legitimatelyclaim to be tired from the drive. He had thetiny guest bedroom, the old nursery, at thefront. It was too small. The light from thestreet shone in, and the curtains didn't quiteclose. He didn't like it.

James sat with his parents in thenewly carpeted front room, watching the new28-inch colour television. It had teletext andspecial speakers, the purpose of which were

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unclear to James, except that they made itlouder. The chair he sat in, part of an im-mense suite including footstools and cornerunits, was limitlessly comfortable, deep andenveloping. Neo-gothic in design, it all buthad flying buttresses. The arms ended inprotuberant knobs the size of a baby's head,supported by scrolled and fluted columns.The suite was also new: Ray had taken anearly retirement and a lump sum from thefactory where he'd risen, over forty-twoyears, to the lonely eminence of Supervisor.Evie now worked part-time at a teashop intown: on her first day they'd put a mop inher hand and asked her to clean out the toi-lets - calmly, implacably, she had declined,and after the first week they dropped thesubject. She was not a woman to be swayed.

James felt drowsy, as he always didafter driving. The heating was on, an ornatelog-effect gas fire that he remembered fromway back. One of the bars on the grille had

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been twisted when he'd thrown a tennis ballat it in sheer, white-hot frustration. It wasstill twisted.

One hot day in the university library,James had stumbled on a book of surrealistpoetry, simple nonsense for the most part,but one line had stuck in his head:

'No-one said apples for nearly aminute.'

Well here they all were and no-onewas saying apples, not saying it in theclearest and loudest of voices. Evie had astriking clock - it struck all four quarters,based on Big Ben. It was a mournful, under-water sound, one James had heard at oddtimes of the day and night all his young life.The chimes could be turned off with a switchon the face, and then the absence of themwould become somehow even more disrupt-ive; you grew tense waiting for them, you ex-pected them at every moment. They were

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usually left on, even when next doorhammered on the wall.

James sat waiting for the chimes, sink-ing further into the capacious maw of thescarlet and gold upholstery, thinking apples,apples, little green fucking apples.

'Hello little 'un,' Maurice Partridge calledover the fence. Sam looked up and saw awhite-bearded, white-haired man standingin the next-door garden.

'Who are you, then?' he asked, as Samstood bashfully holding on to the washing-line prop.

'Sam Tullian,' said Sam, fiddling withthe prop.

'Tam Sullian eh?''No. Sam Tullian,' Sam said, a little

louder.'Tha's what I said. Tam Sullian.'Sam surveyed him seriously.'Whatcha doing then, Tam?'

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'Nothing.''Must be doing something.''Not really.''Oh. Wanna see a frog, do you?' Sam

shrugged. He'd already seen a frog. MauricePartridge lifted him over the fence andplonked him down in the middle of an orna-mental forest of small shrubs and conifers.Everywhere he looked there were thingsgrowing, banked up along the fences and ar-ranged in beds. A line of stepping stonessnaked through the immaculate grass, disap-pearing behind a screen of roses on a trellis,still flowering, pink and yellow. The pondwas at the far end of the garden, fringed withlow climbing plants. Sam's shadow fell overthe water, surmounted by the shadow ofMaurice Partridge. Sam could see no frog.

Maurice said, 'Wait a mo,' and retiredto the shed behind the rockery: before hecame back a fountain sprang into life in thecentre of the pond, and a waterfall began to

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gather strength on a raised shelf, dribblingand then gushing. Sam was astonished.

'Maybe that'll wake him up,' saidMaurice, returning to the pond. 'He likes abit of a splash.'

Sam concentrated like crazy, but therewas no frog.

'Ah well, maybe he's gone for a bit of astroll,' Maurice said at last. 'Got a lot to do,frogs have. Never mind.'

'I better go back,' said Sam. 'My dadshouts if I go wandering off.'

'Quite right. You on your holidays areyou?'

'No. I don't think so,' said Sam. 'Wewere but I don't think we are now.'

'Oh. Ah well, better get you back overthat fence then, eh? Mind out for the plantsnow. They don't like people trampling allover them.'

'How do you know?''They told me.'

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'Oh.'Maurice lifted him up and lowered

him over on to the cement path that ran upboth sides of the desolate, scrubby turf onthe other side of the fence.

'Tam. Tam Sullian,' said the beardedman, and went back to his gardening. Therewas something about that child: holding himwas like holding a sackful of puppies. Therewas a lot going on in there. The fountainsplashed on, suggesting hot days and leis-urely afternoons.

Evie Tullian watched from the kitchenwindow. She hadn't spoken to Maurice orJoan Partridge for twelve years, and shewasn't about to start now. She'd have to havea word with James.

A week later James was ready to explode.His stomach was a clenched fist, his mouthwas zipped tight shut, pulled up at onecorner. His shoulders were aching again.

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Incredibly, no-one had yet asked himwhere Adèle was. Conversation was strictly amatter of local affairs and table talk. You'renever going to leave that lovely bit of ham?Finish it all up now Sam, just for me. There'sa bit more if anyone wants it. You got to eat,James.

On Sunday evening Evie was driven byRay to choir, and fetched back an hour and ahalf later: other than that the evenings werelong and unbroken by any respite from theenormous television with the special speak-ers. Sam stayed mostly in his room writing inhis exercise book, and James sat, deadened,aching, clamping his teeth amidst thesuffocating, too-soft furnishings. Whoevercracks first it won't be me, he thought grimly.As sure as God made...

One day Sam sidled up to him, coyly,tugging at his sleeve. James followed himupstairs to the cupboard-sized room: Sampointed to the bed. It was wet.

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'Dad? When are we going back toWales?' he whispered.

Back to Wales. Between the devil,James reflected, and the deep blue sea therewas only a very fine line, a tenuous web ofsteel.

Sam had been in danger in Wales.James had felt it very strongly. Whatever,whoever it was that was carving up the anim-als had its eye on Sam too. Early on Adèlehad said she'd felt something in the field,had asked him to stop digging. He'd laughedat her. Soon after Sam had had his fit in thetrench. He'd been painting burning build-ings, apocalyptic visions of peril and chaos.How much he'd been affected by Adèle's in-cipient madness was impossible to gauge: DrKavanagh assured him that schizophreniawas not genetically transmitted, there was noschizophrenic gene. True, children with twoschizophrenic parents stood at greater risk ofdeveloping it than other children. But how

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much was nature, how much nurture? DrKavanagh had shaken her head. So little wasknown.

Something had got to Adèle, some un-settling tremor, triggering off her disorder.Could it have got to Sam also? (Lewyn, whohad lived there all his life. Had it got tohim?)

No, with a hundred and fifty miles ofdistance between them, James felt certainLewyn was not responsible for those grue-some, bestial mutilations. He didn't believeit, not any more. There must have beensomeone else wandering about, a local who'dbeen worked on by whatever it was Adèlehad felt in the field. James pictured aslavering, semi-human form hunched overthe still-warm corpse of a sheep, feeding.

If Lewyn had been right about RaoulCharpentier's bonfire, then Raoul had him-self been such a creature, murdering wife,children, anyone who happened along. Had

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he somehow returned? James shook hishead. No. That was all a long time ago. Raoulwas in another country now, or dead.

Who was that by the hole?Could the sheep themselves have been

somehow affected, driven mad, savage, mur-derous? Killer sheep from hell. Coming soonto a cinema near you. James laughed aloud.

Well whatever, whoever it had been, ithadn't been Lewyn. Lewyn had pulled Samout of the sea, saved his life. How could italso have been Lewyn who'd caused him tofall? It didn't make sense. Lewyn had tried totell him this before they left. James struggledwith it, gave up. Maybe it was the devil. Thatwas as good an explanation as any.

The Christmas tree was duly erected anddecorated, exactly seven days before Christ-mas Day. It was the same tree and lights andballs that James remembered from his child-hood. It was placed, as ever, on a low table

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behind the television, where it sat diffidently,inconspicuously, lit up only to check thebulbs were working, then again for an houron Christmas Eve. Its principal functionseemed to be to reinforce Ray's belief that itwas a fire hazard: he would glare at itnervously from time to time, as if expectingit at any moment to burst into flames. Hechecked before retiring for the night that itwas unplugged. He checked first thing in themorning. He sternly lectured Sam that hemust never go near it. And he lectured Jameson the importance of keeping Sam awayfrom it. All his life James had beenfrightened of fires at Christmas.

Walking down Park Street, James wasconsidering what present was suitable forAdèle. He'd bought his parents his and hersbath towels, which would lie under the in-flammable green plastic tree alongside Sam'spresent, a stripped-down budget version ofthe games system he wanted. It was the best

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he could do, and anyway he was in no frameof mind for Christmas shopping. The win-dows of every store were jammed solid withthings that Sam needed - urgently - to exam-ine for very short periods of time just in casehe saw something better than what he wasexpecting to get. Gifts for wives, husbands,fathers in exuberant, costly profusion, butgifts for schizophrenics?

According to the (highly selective) re-ports from the hospital, Adèle was stable andresponding well to her drug regime. The fourdaily injections of chlorpromazine were nowreduced to one single dose, and the side ef-fects were minimal. What Dr Kavanagh de-scribed as the extra-pyramidals, the EPSEs,were taking their toll, however, causingAdèle some stiffness in the joints, particu-larly in the wrists, which was obviously animpediment to her painting. Dr Kavanaghspoke of 'encouraging' results from the psy-chotherapeutic sessions, but was unable to

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predict when Adèle would be sufficiently re-covered to resume her life.

James knew he wasn't getting the fullstory here. Dr Kavanagh believed in main-taining close links between the patient andthe family, but that didn't mean telling themeverything. She had chosen to withholdAdèle's extraordinary accusations againstSam, believing that they wouldn't serve tomake Adèle's return to her family (wheneverthat might be) any smoother. James was re-luctant to visit her again, and ashamed of hisreluctance. He had abandoned her, as muchas she had abandoned him, and try as hemight he couldn't think of going to see her asanything other than a distasteful chore to beput off for a while, like clearing out the backof the car. Besides, nothing very useful wasto be hoped for from his visits, he felt: Adèleseemed only to be able to see him tangen-tially, obliquely. She slid away somehow, achunk of ice shattering on a frozen pond.

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But he had abandoned her, oh yes, hehad handed her over to the approved socialworkers and the psychiatric nurses, to thatcurious, menacing tribe of professionals andsemi-professionals who James thought of asfeeding on the mentally ill like flies on meat.Even though he knew he couldn't manageher, he felt he should have tried, triedharder, longer. Maybe he could have broughther round, snapped her out of it. He was har-assed and made miserable by the thoughtthat he could have done more. He knew herbetter, in all probability, than anyone else onearth. She was almost a part of him. Andhe'd prosaically signed the admission form,handed her over. She had been received asmatter-of-factly as a registered-deliveryparcel.

Betrayal. He wondered if he wouldever feel the same about her now that he'ddone that, if she would feel the same abouthim. Ten years, and then a flick of the pen on

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a hospital admission form. Here you go.She's all yours now. You try.

So what kind of Christmas present wasapplicable in these circumstances?Everything he saw in the crowded shopsseemed designed for people whose lives werenot hedged round with guilt, betrayals, un-fathomable disorders of the heart and mind;there was nothing that was adequatelyserious.

They sat on a bench on College Green,watching the streams of people parading upand down Park Street. Sam, whose presentwas now bought, wrapped and ready to bepositioned under the perilously combustibletree - though still nominally a secret - wastaking only an academic interest. He wouldbuy his mum some small, randomly selecteditem of marginal utility and low cost later on.He had other things on his mind.

James was very conscious of howmuch Sam hated Bristol. The bed-wetting

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was now a regular occurrence, and he'd no-ticed other things: a tendency to stay, alone,in his room; a habit of silentness; a generalstate of inactivity and lethargy. Sam, heknew, wanted to go back to Wales. Back tothe fields and cliffs where some subhumanthing, some devil, drooled and gibbered overanimal carcasses.

And, to his astonishment, Jamesfound that he did too.

He'd tried to speak to his parents theprevious evening. The tag on the bath towelswould have to say From James and Adèle,and the thought of that had set him off. Tenminutes into the Scene South-West News,over a piece about a sponsored abseil, he'dopened his mouth and spoken.

'Adèle's in hospital. In Cardiff. She'sgot schizophrenia.' It sounded ludicrouslymelodramatic, but he was damned if he wasgoing to go hinting and suggesting, using theenormous vocabulary of euphemisms that

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surrounded the mentally ill, like the forest ofthorns that grew round Sleeping Beauty'scastle. Had some problems. Couldn't cope.Needed a rest. No, let's call an apple an applehere.

He was reminded of the way peoplehad responded whenever Elvis had had wind(which had been often). Slight shifting mo-tions, legs crossed the other way, throatscleared. Or the kinds of things people didbetween movements at a symphony concert.(Del had dragged him to Mahler's Fourthonce, early in their courting. They'd both leftafter the second movement. Before the fatlady sang.)

His dad spoke up.'We're very sorry to hear that, James.

Very sorry indeed.' Oh you liars, Jamesthought between clenched teeth. Wasn't it avalidation of their dearly cherished, unshak-able belief that Adèle was unsuitable? Thathe should have found someone more his own

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kind? He wanted to shock them further, pro-voke them into an honest reaction.

'She's on the acute psychiatric ward.Along with the killers and the psychos.' Hewas shaking.

'Oh Jamie.' His mother's voice; theone she used when he was fourteen andowned up to taking money out of her pursefor fireworks, when he was seventeen (seven-teen for God's sake!) and she'd found a May-fair under the rug in his room. When he wastwenty-two and told her he'd met someone, agirl...

'Oh Jamie.' After everything we'vedone for you, and this is how you repay us.We hoped for better.

'Schizophrenia? That's when you thinkyou're two different people, isn't it?' Raymight easily have been discussing variousgrades of adhesive at the factory.

'I don't know. Not in Del's case,anyway.'

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'Schizophrenia? Yes, you think you'retwo different people. I saw a programme onit.'

There it was, the guillotine. Ray hadseen a programme. End of discussion.

'Oh Jamie.'Haven't you got any knitting to do, he

thought viciously.'Incurable, isn't it?''Her doctor says people get over it

sometimes.''Yes well doctors - ''Why don't you say what you think,

Dad? Why don't you say we knew all along,we warned you but you wouldn't listen. Whydon't you say well I always thought it was abit suspicious about Ruthie's accident, I al-ways thought she wasn't a fit mother...'

'Hey, hey, I don't have to listen tothis...'

'...and what about Sam, he must bemad as well, it's hereditary, I saw a fucking...'

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'You just…''...programme!''...listen to me for a minute!'The last word, always. James stood up,

his face was twitching, his body was burningwith adrenaline. Fight or flight: he flew.

"Tis the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-laaaa...' blared the speakers from the RotaryClub Christmas tree by the Watersheds.

'Dad?' Sam said, critically studying theplywood sleigh, and James's heartcontracted.

'When are we going back to Wales?'

The next day was the day before ChristmasEve. James was sitting in the back gardenwith gloves and scarf. Sam sat beside him.That was another thing James had noticed:Sam, when he wasn't holed up in his room,was becoming increasingly dependent, al-most clingy. They were playing I Spy, having

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to work hard at it because apart from 'g'(grass) and 'c' (cement) there was nothingvery much to spy. And Sam didn't seem to begetting 'cement'.

'Something beginning with 's',' saidJames in frank desperation. He was thinkingof 'sky'.

'Hello there!'James looked up: a late-middle-aged

man with a beard like Jehovah. MauricePartridge.

'Jamie, isn't it? Well well well!''Hello Mr Partridge.''And the little 'un, I forget what he's

called now...''Sam,' said Sam, carefully.'Tha's 'ee. Tam. Tam Sullian.''No. Sam.' Sam couldn't understand

why he kept getting it wrong.'Long time no see, Jamie. How's it

going?''Yeah, all right, not so bad you know.'

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'Dad, can I go in now please?''Yes, off you go you little horror,' said

Maurice, and Sam disappeared, with somedignity, into the house. 'You keeping wellJamie?'

'Fine.''And that scarlet woman you took up

with? That Jezebel?' Maurice smiled. He hadoverheard enough to know all about 'James'swoman'.

James laughed, then the laughtercaught in his throat, he swallowed andblinked, his lower lip trembled.

'Yeah, she's...'He hung his head as the tears ran over

his face.'...she's fine.''Oh son. Don't take on now.'James approached him, wiping his

nose with his gloved hand, feeling about el-even years old with his first dead hamster.

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Maurice put his arm over the fence and pat-ted his head.

'Not gone and had a row, have you?''No, no...' James blubbered, snuffling

indecorously.'Not gone and left you, has she?''No.''Oh now. There now. Don't you take

on.' James heaved silently, resting his headon Maurice Partridge's arm. 'Can't be as badas all that.'

'Don't know what to do!' Jamessobbed, and Maurice stroked his head,crooning as he'd always done in the past.

From the kitchen Evie watched, herface a mask of granite. Sam stood at the topof the stairs, eyes closed, humming.

'Whatever it is, you can't run awayfrom it,' Maurice said; James, embarrassedand wet-nosed but steady again, shookhands over the fence, remembering only atthe last minute that the glove he was

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proffering was besmeared with the slimyfruits of his grief. He laughed and, with somedifficulty, they shook hands, right to left.

Evie turned suddenly, dropping aglass, ran to the stairs, screamed: Jamescrashed into the house seconds later, andlooked where she was looking. Sam lay in aheap at the bottom of the stairs, his limbstwisted awkwardly under him; he wasn'tmoving.

'Sam.' James whispered the word,breathed it as if with his final breath, and theboy stirred and opened his eyes. He sat up,and James approached him with the samenameless, inexplicable dread he'd felt thatother time, when Sam had sat up on the kit-chen table. Who was that by the hole?

'Did I fall down again?' Sam said, andJames turned and looked at his mother.

'Do you know anything about this?'

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Three hours later they were out of the houseand driving, Sam once again asleep on theback seat; as they neared the toll for thebridge James realized that he'd left Sam'sChristmas present under the deathtrap tree.He shrugged mentally. It could stay there foreternity for all he cared, and if it and the treeand the neo-gothic furniture burned to afucking crisp then he for one would not besorry. Whatever happened he would neverreturn for it.

They were going back to Wales.

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16

Something Missing

At eight-thirty the next morning Jamesopened the front door to a healthy-lookinggirl of (he guessed) about seventeen; shewore jeans and a quilted jacket.

'Yes?''Pauline. Pauline Hughes. Mrs Parrish

sent me over.''Who?''You are Mr Tullian, are you?''Yes.' No question about that one, even

if it was a bleary eight-thirty a.m. on Christ-mas Eve. Then he remembered.

'Oh. Dilys's niece. Pauline.''Tha's it.' She smiled with exaggerated

patience. 'Shall I come in then?'

'Yes of course.'He made her a cup of coffee and she

cheerfully answered his questions. Twentyyears old, student at Sheffield Poly, trainingto be a physiotherapist. Home for Christmas.Dilys had rung her late last night, straightafter James's call from the phone box inFishguard, and she'd agreed there and then.She hated Christmas, couldn't stand thethought of sitting in with her parents (amento that, James thought); she'd looked afterher two brothers and sister since she wastwelve. Loved children, but she wanted towait a while before she had any. She wantedto travel round America, and a young childwould be a distinct liability. Besides, shehadn't met anyone yet who she thought wasa realistic candidate for splashing about inthe gene pool with. She was looking forsomeone intelligent, ferociously handsome,hairy and with a big nose.

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'Oh and in case it was about to crossyour mind, Mr Tullian, forget it. I'm not in-terested in older men.' James was shockedfor a moment, then laughed.

'Well, I'm not interested in fucking thebaby-sitter either, if it comes to that. I've gotenough to worry about as it is.'

'Yes, well I'm sure you'll sort it out,'she said, regarding him firmly. Whatever itis, please don't feel you have to burden mewith it, her face said. This is business. Fourpounds an hour, eighty-thirty till six.

'OK. I think you'll probably do.''Why thank you, Mr Tullian. Do you

want to introduce me to your pride and joy?Oh and by the way, I don't cook.'

'Neither do I.''Tough.'Half an hour later she was marching

purposefully off along the cliffs, with Sam inher wake. If she knew anything about chil-dren it was that you tired them out before

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they got a chance to tire you out. Pre-empt-ive retaliation. She waved goodbye and dis-appeared around a corner.

Dilys had also rung Lewyn.'Guess who's coming back to Ty-

Gwyneth?'Lewyn had had a strange moment of

confusion - Edith was gone for good, surely?'James Tullian that's who, and little

Sam.''James? He's in Bristol.''Not any more my darling. He's come

back. Couldn't keep away from us 'parently. Ithink there might have been a spot of botherwith his parents, but he's not saying. Any-way, back he is. I thought you might want toknow.'

And so, when James came up the paththe next morning, Lewyn was waiting forhim.

'James.'

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'Lewyn.'Lewyn looked away and flicked his

stick.'Lewyn, I owe you an apology.''Nothing to 'pologize for James.'Lewyn's heart was beating, fast.'Well let me say it anyway. I more or

less accused you of trying to murder Sam.For Christ's sake! I was out of my mind,Lewyn, I wasn't thinking...'

'Understand that,' Lewyn mumbled,and felt the blood rising to his cheeks.

'It was inexcusable. I'm sorry.''Handsome of you to say it. No harm

done.' Lewyn looked at him. 'Good to haveyou back, James.'

Now where have I seen that look be-fore, James wondered, and was suddenlyback in the university sports centre, staringat his reflection in the open glass door of ashower stall. A decade ago, before Adèle, be-fore Ruthie or Sam, a sleek wet young man of

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twenty-one, smiling at something. And nowhe remembered what.

He'd been swimming, and when hecame in to change, his wet feet slapping thetiled floor, he had the place to himself. Hewas abruptly taken with the idea of strippingoff his Speedos and walking around naked.Usually he would have slipped into one ofthe changing cubicles, wrapped a towel dis-creetly round his waist, removing it in thestall and hanging it over the door. He wasn'tgenerally speaking a man for public nudity.

He stood, irresolute, in the middle ofthe tiled room: then he pulled off theSpeedos and walked to the sinks, very con-scious of the weight and swing of his newly-liberated genitals. He danced in front of themirror, raising his arms above his head,punching the air.

'Christ Almighty!'He whirled round and standing in the

doorway was a figure, a man, watching him.

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The man met his eye, flicked down his bodyand then met his eye again. Looked. Jamescupped his hand over his cock, and his handregistered the pulsing of the blood: he wassemi-erect. The man leaned against the doorpost, completely at ease, unhurried.

James had thought: well, I could. Icould smile, say hello, get chatting. I couldarrange to meet later, have a drink, go backto his room. I could. The moment hadstretched out, becoming eerie and unsustain-able. The man in the doorway shifted hisweight, then walked to one of the changingcubicles. James went to the shower, now de-cently veiled in his white towel, and the hotwater massaged and caressed him, playingup and down his body.

And he smiled at the thought that hislife could just then have taken a completelydifferent turn, that he could have become anew person, a person different from any-thing he'd imagined before.

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Could I?He met Lewyn's eye, seeing there a

strong vigorous image of something, an im-age of a new James with a new set of ideasand imperatives, a new love, one that wasn'tAdèle. Lewyn was close, reachable, warm: hewas solid.

'How's the little 'un?' said Lewyn, tobreak the charged silence.

'Oh fine. He had a fall, but you knowwhat children are like. He's pretty resilient.'

'James I don't know how to say this, soI'll just come out with it. I'm a bit worriedabout Sam. James stiffened. Lewyn ploughedon.

'There've been a couple of little things,nothing really I suppose, but it's been on mymind.' He gave a short, colourless descrip-tion of the sounds he'd heard, the soundsthat had brought him out to the top field tofind Elvis splattered on the rocks. The gamehe'd seen Sam playing: throwing plastic

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animals off the cliff and calling them back.His feeling that Sam had deliberately givenhim the slip while they were playing Sheep:the impossibility of Sam's account of thesheep rushing him. James listened, pulling athis ear.

'Lewyn, there's obviously somethingaround here, I don't know what it is. I wouldhave thought you'd know more about it thanI do. From what you've told me, there's beena lot of funny business in the area. Whateverit is, it started before we got here. Sam's alittle boy, Lewyn: he's seven years old. You'venever had any children, have you?'

'I think you know I haven't James.''Well, if you had, I don't think you'd be

saying what you seem to be saying. Sam'smother has had a major breakdown. I thinkit would be surprising if he didn't show a fewsigns of stress. Don't you?' James workedhard at keeping his tone level. Lewyn lookedaway.

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'Aye. I'm sure you're right James. Ijust thought I should mention it. No offence.'

'None taken. I know you can't afford tolose sheep, I know you've got a business torun here. But Sam isn't your problem. Be-lieve me. And however it was he ended up inthe sea, I'm here to make sure it doesn't hap-pen again. I've got a job to finish, and I in-tend to finish it. Sam is going to be super-vised every minute of every day until weleave, and whatever is trying to get him, itwon't succeed. I'm his father.'

'Aye.' Lewyn smiled again. 'Well any-way, good to have you back, as I say.'

'Thanks, Lewyn. And if you feel likerisking it, you could come over later andhave your tea. I don't suppose my cookingcan be any worse than what you've hadbefore.'

'Aye. You may be right there.'

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'In fact, come to think of it, what areyou doing tomorrow? Christmas Day, in caseyou'd forgotten.'

Lewyn hadn't forgotten. He wouldusually go to Dilys and Dave's, and sufferDilys's tortured vegetable version of Christ-mas dinner.

'Nothing too much.''Right then. Come round about seven.

Mind you, seeing Sam at Christmas mightjust confirm your worst fears. He can be-come a bit of a monster.'

'Well, I'll take my chances.'They shook hands, and Lewyn

watched him as he went down the path.

They walked for half a mile before Samshowed any signs of tiredness, and theStumble Head monument seemed a goodplace to rest. Sam laboriously read it, thenasked Pauline to explain it to him.

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'This tablet, they mean stone, erectedmeans put up, eternal memory, that meansremember for ever; pious souls, pious meansgood, souls means - '

'I know what soul means.''OK. Those pious souls who joined the

Heavenly Choristers: means dead people.''To remember for ever the good souls

of the dead people?''Tha's it.''Oh.'Pauline sat with her back to the stone

and Sam, after a certain amount of fidgeting,sat beside her. He looked around. This woulddo. In the next field were a flock of sheep,cropping diligently. There were a number ofhay-feeders lying around. Yes, this would dofine.

'I want to play a game,' he said.

James returned to the house. He walkedaround, quietly, afraid somehow of

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disturbing the silence in it. His footstepsseemed loud, the boards creaking under hisfeet. He went from room to room, ending upin Adèle's studio. There was a canvas on theeasel against the window, an unfinishedlandscape. He looked at it for a while,searching for clues. Adèle had been madwhen she'd painted it, but it seemed so con-trolled, so sober. Almost banal, just fieldsand trees and sheep. He found himselfstudying one of the trees: there wassomething odd about it. He couldn't concen-trate, it was too quiet. He gazed out of thewindow, distracted, thinking about Lewynand the look he'd given him, like a surprisingbut long-expected Christmas present,something he'd always wanted but neverknown.

Sam's game was a simple one. The idea wasto drag the hay-feeders, four of them, into astraight line along the cliff top. They were on

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wheels, and Pauline, having first extracted apromise from him that he'd help her putthem back again afterwards, was happy toco-operate: Sam seemed as intent on ex-hausting himself as she was. The grass be-neath was yellowed and flattened, and thewheels were rusty, stiff to begin with, butsurprisingly easy to move when they'dcleared the weeds away from under them.

Once in place, Sam assigned the roles.'I'm a fox. You're the shepherd. All the

sheep are eating out of the hay things, andI'm trying to get them. So you've got to chaseme round. OK? And I keep hiding. OK?'

Pauline assented. In her experience arunning-round game was always fixable sothat it was the child who did all the running.

'OK fox. I'll give you ten seconds tohide. Then I'm coming after you.'

Sam waited until he was satisfied thather eyes were really shut, then ran behind

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the hay-feeders, on the cliff side, and hid.This would be a good game.

There was a patch on the wall of the smallshed, the opposite of a shadow, because itwas lighter than the surrounding wall. At thetop of it there was a hook. It could have beenthe mark where a large crucifix had hung, alarge rather crude crucifix. Lewyn looked atit: he'd never hung any crucifixes up, andcertainly not in the sheds. He couldn't un-derstand it. He traced the outline with hisfinger.

He went over to the barn, switched onthe overheads, glanced around. Somethingwas different, there was a quality to thedusty, shadowy interior that had never beenthere before. No, the other way round - therewas something missing an absence ofsomething, like the paler patch where thecross had been in the shed. He walkedthrough the barn, his feet taking him straight

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and sure to the room where stood the pile oflumber. The timbers seemed to have shifted,settled, collapsed.

Yes. It was as he'd suspected. Thebeast was loose.

'Gotcha!' She lunged at him and he duckedaway, laughing harshly. He ran between twoof the feeders, squeezed himself through andhid again. She would have to go all the wayround. She sighed. Sam was a bit too good atthis game for her liking: she felt like a veter-an tennis player being given the run-aroundby a Californian upstart with a ponytail. Ohwell, five minutes more and then she'd sug-gest another game, one you could play sittingdown. Something a touch more cerebral.Like pretending to be asleep.

'Mrs Lucas tells me you've stopped painting,'said Dr Kavanagh, regarding the composed,alert figure in front of her. She had been

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conscious, as soon as Adèle had walked in, ofa change. Something had been resolved, sor-ted out.

'Yes. I've finished now.''That seems rather a pity.''Oh, I'm going to carry on. But not un-

til I get out of here. What I mean is, I'm fin-ished for now.'

'I see.' Dr Kavanagh produced herlovely, brilliant smile. 'You're looking verywell, Adèle. You look different somehow.'

'Do I? Well, I feel a lot better. You see Ican remember now. Everything.'

'Would you care to tell me?''Certainly.' Dr Kavanagh listened,

hard, to the story. Adèle was fluent, unemo-tional but not flat; lucid. She spoke clearlyand without hesitation. Were it not for theextraordinary nature of the subject matter,Dr Kavanagh would have had difficulty infinding any disorder of any kind. She satback, attending.

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Pauline looked around. Where was he, thelittle bugger? He'd wriggled back betweenthe feeders, and by the time she'd got to theother side he was nowhere to be seen.

'Sam?'The sheep in the next field jerked up

their heads with one accord, as if on strings,as hands shot out from the hay and grabbedher hair and she screamed: then the handsyanked her head down on to the sharp, rustyedge of the metal dividing plate, yankedagain. She slumped into the feeder bleedingfrom the forehead, and Sam fought his wayout from beneath her. Damn. Another oneruined. The blood was running into her hairand over the hay. He tried to drag her out ofthe feeder but she was too heavy. Damnbloody damn, as his dad would say. Then hehad an idea. He went round to the back ofthe feeder and, bracing himself, heaved withall his strength. The wheels were stuck fast.

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Damn. He heaved again, and this time thewheels shifted; another heave, and the thingwas in motion. The grass in the field wascropped right down in the thorough-goingmanner of sheep, who finished off the lastinch and a half or so of what the cows left, sothere was no resistance. The feeder trundledsqueakily along, with Sam grunting andgroaning behind it, then the front wheelswent over the edge: Pauline was towards thefront and her weight overbalanced it after amoment of inertia. It toppled, crashing downthe rocky slope, dragging a small avalancheof loose chippings behind it. It smacked thesea with a great reverberating boom; Sampeered over the edge, and was satisfied. Thesheep blinked, then went back to work.

Sheila, alone again in her office, finished heraccount and sat back, looking at the picturesof her grandchildren. She picked up the pa-pers and read them through.

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'The first time he did it, he just left iton the cliff. I'd heard something, it hadwoken me up. I went out and found the car-cass. There were parts missing, a leg and apiece of hindquarters. I knew I had to findthe pieces, because if anyone else did he'd bein trouble. I ran along the wall, the darkbranches waving in the wind, and went downthe steps to the beach. The handrail ispainted a very bright pink, and I think thislodged in my memory somehow.'

An eye for colour, even when she wasbasically sleep- walking.

'I scrambled around on the rocks, be-cause I was certain he would have thrownthe pieces down there. I found a syringelodged in a crevice, above the high-waterline: it must have been left over from one ofRaoul Charpentier's parties. When I'd foundthe parts I brought them up and hid them. Iintended to return and bury the rest of the

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carcass, but I must have forgotten and goneback to bed.'

Sheila already knew the next part,about the hiding places. Freezer and studio.

'I took the fuse out of the freezer plug,so that the meat would eventually rot and befound. It was the only way I could think of.'

Strange logic, but logic all the same.She'd had to find some way of resolving theconflict between protecting Sam and dealingwith her disgust at his actions. Indirect, butlogical, logical.

'The next time he did it I found him:he'd woken me up again and this time I knewexactly where to go. I told him to go in, I'ddeal with it. He must have been making quitea bit of noise, because while I was burying itLewyn (a neighbouring farmer, the owner ofthe sheep) came out. He thought I'd done it.I couldn't explain, because Sam would get in-to trouble. If anyone ever found out he wasdoing this they'd have put him away. I

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couldn't allow that. I'd already lost one child.I thought I could help him.'

Not just logical but understandable,human. If once you accepted that a seven-year-old boy had become deranged to the ex-tent that he was capable of such actions, thenthese were the things that his mother wouldhave to do if she was going to protect him.And in doing them she would be beset bysuch conflicts, such guilt, that they could, ina person predisposed towards it, trigger off apsychotic episode. Exactly the kind of epis-ode Adèle had in fact undergone, and ap-peared now to be pulling herself out of.

Dr Kavanagh picked up the Perspex-framed photographs of her grandchildren.Smiling, confident. Some children are good,some children are bad. And some childrenare mad. The only thing needed for Adèle'sstory to be wholly credible was SheilaKavanagh's belief that any child could be so -well, Adèle had said it perfectly.

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Evil.

Coming out into the daylight, Lewyn squin-ted and blinked. Surely that couldn't be Samcoming up the path?

'Sam?' Sam waved. 'I thought you werewith Pauline?'

'Oh yes. I was. Then she felt sick so shehad to go home. My dad said would it be allright if I came up here for an hour? He saidhe'll come and get me when he's finishedwhat he's doing. He said he's right in thefucking middle of it. He said I wasn't to beany trouble.'

Lewyn was surprised, but also pleased.If James was prepared to entrust Sam to himagain, then he must genuinely have got overhis suspicions of him. And looking at Sam, adishevelled, dirty, mucky-faced kid, Lewynfound it difficult to sustain his belief that hecould really be the one who'd been tearingsheep and dogs apart, limb from limb. After

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all he had no evidence, it was just a hunch.But he'd certainly be keeping a close eye onhim, that much was for sure. Sam smiled.

'Do you want to play a game?'

James meandered into Sam's room. Thestuffed monkey grinned at him, oblivious tothe fact that it had lost an arm. Bloody chil-dren and their bedrooms! The place was atip. He picked Sam's clothes off the floor,dumping them on the bed. He stripped offthe sheet, dislodging the pillow which fell tothe floor with a clink.

Clink?He walked round to the other side of

the bed and picked up the pillow. Un-derneath it was a key.

It wasn't me! (Click.)He held the key, the metal cold and

sharp on his palm, like a sliver of ice. The keyto the secure room. What was it doing under

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Sam's pillow? The monkey, dismemberedbut still grinning, was saying nothing.

He crossed the hall, turned the comer,climbed the two steps; then he released thebolts and inserted the key. The door swungopen. This time he was taking no chances: hedragged the chair out of Sam's room andwedged it in the doorway.

In the full afternoon light the columnsof writing were starkly visible, ranks of inel-egant hieroglyphics, reaching from just be-low the ceiling to a foot or so above the floor.The tops and bottoms of the columns weredistinctly less legible than the middles: hardto scratch cleanly when you were stretchingup or crouching down. One of the columnswas completely disordered, the lines waver-ing and the characters reduced to jaggedscrawls. She had perhaps tried to write atnight? Or she'd injured her right hand some-how - or someone else had injured it for her -and was trying her left? But the rest of it was

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clear. He started at the top of what he took tobe the first column, the one nearest the door.

'-I-don't-know-how-long-Ive-been-here-it-seems-like-years-he-wont-let-me-out-anymore-not-after-I-saw-him-with-Celia-on-the-cliff-dear-god-how-will-I-save-the-girls-he-means-to-have-them-I-know-dear-god-'

James gritted his teeth and read on.

'No more! Aaaaagh! No!' They were in theworkroom playing torture. Lewyn had hishand in the big vice on the worktable, andSam turned the handle an inch at a time, un-til the jaws were pressing just hard enough tohold his hand still.

Lewyn looked down at the grinningchild and abruptly thought: the dibber. Apale patch on the wall, cruciform. Sam hadbeen quite taken with it, he recalled. Had itbeen there since then? He couldn'tremember.

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He opened his mouth to ask Sam, andSam took the handle in both hands and twis-ted it a full half turn, then another.

'Sam! Christ, what the ...'He scrabbled at the handle with his

left hand as Sam ducked away from him andran to the stairs. He ran to the top, reachedup over his head and turned off the light.Blackness fell all over Lewyn and he clampedhis eyes shut.

'Sam!'Lewyn could hear him scratching

around, like a rat in the dark cellar.'Put that light on. It isn't funny, Sam!'He again tried to reach the vice

handle, but the choking, enveloping dark-ness drained him of his strength. The darksmothered his face. If he kept his eyes shut,if he couldn't see, then he wouldn't be able tosee the darkness, the panic would recede.His right hand was throbbing, the knuckle

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joints bruised and tender against the coldiron of the vice.

He forced the terror out of his mind,made himself think. There was an anglepoiselamp on the worktable. The switch was offsomewhere to the left. He reached his leftarm out, feeling a dreadful, crushing vulner-ability. Anything could happen in the dark,any senseless, insane, appalling thing. Theblood boomed in his ears; he could feel itbacking up along his right arm, the veinsswelling like a stream in spring. Bolts of painwere shooting out from his crushed hand,but the panic was worse, unbearable -

Think.He worked his left hand over the wall,

feeling his way along: no switch. Oh Christoh Christ oh Christ oh

He could hear something bumping,then the sound of metal dragging along thefloor. A freezing, incapacitating slow wave ofterror broke in his mind, and he

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simultaneously broke sweat, little trickles ofliquid fear crawling down from his armpitsand knees, down his back, his stomach, likeworms, cold, slithering worms -

Think.Where was the switch? He should have

reached it by now. He was stretched to hismaximum, splayed out against the wall likean exhibit in a glass case, except that no-onecould see him because it was so -

He screwed his eyes tighter, clenchingmuscles he'd never felt before in his face,muscles that no-one would ever use unlessthey were in extreme pain, or worse, extremefear. He shook his head violently.

Think.Then it came to him: lower down. The

switch was nearer the ground. He fumbledhis hand down the wall, twisting the left sideof his body, pulling on the bruised, pulpyjoints of his right hand: he knelt, his free

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hand writhing over the plaster, desperatelytrying to feel the contours of the switch.

Click.Through his eyelids he sensed the re-

turn of light to the cellar, but now thethought of what he might see was almostworse than the terror of seeing nothing. Hishand froze.

He opened his eyes.Sam was hurtling towards him, hold-

ing the dibber out in front of him in bothhands; the light glimmered dully on the ironsheath of the point. Sam opened his mouthand a shrill, crazed, primitive scream camefrom him, sickeningly loud in the deadacoustics of the cellar room.

'E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!'Lewyn just had time to yell out a single

syllable - 'Sam!' - and then the dibber gougedinto him, catching him squarely in thearmpit. He looked up: Sam rammed it in fur-ther, turned it (quarter turn, clockwise) then

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let it go. It hung in the air, dropping slightlyunder its own weight. Sam watched him ashis eyes misted over and a low gurglingsound emerged from his mouth: then heslumped forward, and his head drooped.

Sam stood for a moment; then, satis-fied, he went up the stairs and out of thehouse. It would be dark in an hour or twoand he had a lot to do. The folded red exer-cise book had fallen out of his back pocketand now lay on the floor, innocently, nearthe spreading pool of rich red blood comingfrom the crucified farmer.

'-if-you-wont-help-me-Ill-find-someone-who-will-youll-not-get-out-of-here-they-have-to-die-theyre-devils-Ill-make-it-painless-I-sed-if-I-cant-stop-you-god-will-he-laughed-its-gods-work-Im-doing-cant-you-see-that-Ill-burn-them-burn-all-the-devil-out-of-them-a-burnt-offering-is-pleasing-to-the-lord-

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'Let-me-out-then-Ill-help-you-he-laughed-again-your-no-better-than-they-are-he-says-theyre-not-his-anyway-how-can-he-say-that-sweet-christ-hes-out-there-now-I-smell-smoke-god-if-your-there-stop-him-if-you-exist-there-is-no-god-'

He was three-quarters of the waydown the second column by now. The writ-ing had·taken on a cramped, urgent quality,and several times he had to reread a line tomake sense of it. The gaps between thewords occasionally disappeared altogether,and many of the letters could only be in-ferred from the context. Punctuation was en-tirely absent.

Why had Sam wanted the key to thisroom? What use could he possibly have forthe deranged, semi-coherent ramblings of amadwoman? A chill stole over him at thethought of Sam standing here, alone,painstakingly deciphering the laboriousscratches, decoding them.

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Who was that by the hole?Lewyn had seen a bonfire. He'd

smelled burning meat. He'd seen someonepoking the fire with a stick. When he wascoming to from his fall amongst the bones,Sam had said something about a man with astick, trying to tell him something.

James shook his head. Not possible.Sam had just had a funny turn, that was all.There was no way Sam could have spoken toRaoul Charpentier in the trench where the(midget? sheep?) bones were. (orchildren's?)

Maaaa!The certainty flooded him that what he

was reading was no madwoman's fantasy, nopsychotic hallucination.

It was true.'-he-sed-its-done-now-the-lord-is-

satisfied-with-my-work-they-will-sin-no-more-I-have-purified-them-the-police-will-come-I-sed-they-will-find-them-but-he-sed-

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Ive-thought-of-that-youll-see-soon-enough-oh-god-he-frightens-me-I-will-watch-he-will-not-have-me-like-he-had-them-my-Briony-my-Jonquil-'

He'd killed the children, just as Lewynhad said, burned the bodies, as some kind ofa sacrifice.

Now she's sinking like a stone Nowthe devil's got his bone.

He couldn't read most of the thirdcolumn, apart from

one word, god, which stood outagainst the jumbled scratches. He turned tothe fourth column, the last one, near thewindow.

'-burnt-my-hand-but-it-is-healing-now-he-sed-Ill-put-a-stop-to-your-scratching-he-will-have-to-kill-me-first-its-done-now-he-sed-but-the-sheep-must-die-too-they-are-tainted-by-the-same-evil-as-those-children-but-I-will-keep-their-bones-he-sed-and-use-them-what-for-I-sed-he-

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laughed-youll-see-he-sed-he-has-given-me-no-food-today-not-emptied-my-bucket-l-will-go-mad-if-I- stay-here-any-longer-I-can't-breathe-there-is-no-air-no-food-again-today-he-has-not-come-to-the-room-l-can-hear-no-noise-in-the-house-has-he-gone-away-he-couldnt-leave-me-here-to-die-I-will-go-mad-not-mad-please-thats-what-he-tells-people-they-think-me-mad-I-am-not-mad-please-jesus-not-today-I-heard-a-sound-downstairs-he-has-come-back-oh-jesus-I-will-watch-he- will-not-have-me-'

James looked up. Funny kind of timefor someone to be out on a powerboat.Nearly dark. Why would anyone be out in apowerboat or flying a model aircraft or usingelectric power tools, sheep-shearing maybe,no, the wrong season. And then he thoughtChrist, I know that sound and jerked hishead round just in time to see the chair beingwhisked away and the door slammed shut.He heard the bottom bolt slide into place,

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then a pause, something scraping on thefloor, creaking, then the top bolt.

He stood at the window, immobile, finallybelieving what he'd really known all alongbut had suppressed, rejected, evaded: thetruth in madness.

Adelts don't do that kind of thing.Could a child?

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17

Heavenly Choristers

'Wooooo-oo-oooh! Whoo-ooo-ooo-ooooooh!'Sam screamed and charged across the field,herding the stamping, bleating creatures to-wards the gate. There were about twenty-fiveof them, Sam estimated, so he needed abouteight. A third. He managed to isolate a groupof them from the rest and, after a great dealof trouble, got them through the gate; theydispersed round the field, instantly calmagain. Ten. Oh well, that was close enoughprobably.

The hay-feeders were lined up alongthe cliff edge, apart from the one that hadcarried Pauline to her watery resting place. Itwas a shame she'd got spoiled, she wouldn't

be any good now. But he'd had to think ofsomething quickly: he hadn't counted on anew person coming along. They had to beperfect, unblemished, which meant withoutany damage, or they wouldn't work. Oh well.

He tramped back along the cliffs to thehouse. He needed petrol and matches, andmaybe some wood, though he could probablydo without the wood. The light was fadingfast now.

A booming, battering noise greetedhim at the house: his dad trying to get out.Sam ignored it. There was a can of petrol inthe basement - it was to make the lawn-mower work in the summer. It was very dan-gerous, because if you got it on yourself youcould go on fire and if you drank it your in-sides would melt or something. It was one ofthe reasons he wasn't allowed to go in thebasement. He'd have to be careful. Hegrasped the carrying handle on the tin anddragged it to the stairs. It was really heavy,

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but he lugged it up, step by step, the metalhandle digging a weal into his fingers. Helumped it out through the kitchen and intothe front room.

'Sam? Is that you? You'd better openthis door right now! I mean it Sam. No kid-ding now.' His dad, yelling from the secureroom. There was only one can of petrol sohe'd have to go a bit easy.

Matches. His mum had probably leftsome in her room. She needed them for hercigarettes. He went up and rummagedaround in her chest of drawers. He found anold box of 7-Eleven matches; she must havebrought them with her from London. What afunny thing to do! She was always doingfunny things, ever since he could remember.He counted the matches: seventeen. Thatought to be enough.

He dragged the can over to the bigscruffy couch. The sheep portrait gazed downat him unblinkingly. What did she want to

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paint sheep for? Sam liked painting too, buthe didn't want to paint any boring old sheep.He liked painting houses. Houses on fire.

He poured some of the petrol on to thecouch, balancing the can on the armrest and,allowing it to tip over just enough for a slowtrickle of the pale liquid to slop out. Not toomuch, though. He dragged the can out to thefront step, carefully replacing the cap, thenreturned to the front room. The matchflared, and Sam threw it at the couch: it wentout before it landed. Damn! He tried anoth-er, with the same result. He pondered for amoment, then went up to his parents' roomagain. He wished his dad would shut up for abit, all the noise was making it difficult tothink properly. Again he rummaged in thedrawers; near the back was a crumpled whiteand purple packet of Silk Cuts, the ones hismum liked best. She must have put themthere in case she ran out in the middle of thenight. Sam hated cigarettes: the smoke got

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into his throat and made him cough. But hecould see how they might come in handy.There was a whole one and a half one.

'Sam! I promise I won't be angry butyou've got to open this door right now. Thisisn't a good game, Sam. Right now, I mean it...'

Back at the couch Sam lit the half ci-garette, then, glancing around furtively, tooka quick puff. Uuugh. He wouldn't be doingthat again. The smoke was disgusting and hecoughed, his eyes watering, holding the hor-rible thing away from him. His dad saidsmoking was a very bad habit, but it was upto his mum if she wanted to: it was her fu-neral. Sam would never smoke.

He threw it on to the couch: itsmouldered for a while, then there was asmall 'whump' and the fabric began toscorch. Shoots of flame sprang up. Hewatched it for a moment to make sure itwasn't going to go out again; already the

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smoke was filling the room and curling uptowards the stairs. The sheep gazed down,tranquil, alert, watchful.

'Sam! You're going to be in big troubleif you don't...'

He turned and left the house, pullingthe door shut behind him, took hold of thepetrol can again and began the long, arduousjourney back to Stumble Head.

James became conscious of the smoke by de-grees. He was aware first of an irritation inhis nostrils and a dryness around his eyes.Sam had come and gone, on God alone knewwhat business, but one thing was for certain:he wasn't going to open the door, which hadbeen made well, fitting snugly into the sur-round, but not snugly enough to keep out thesmoke. James coughed, and the word 'fire'went off in his brain, like a starting pistol.

He ran to the window, also beautifullymade, but more importantly not locked. He

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opened it and the draught dragged in a smallcloud of smoke from under the door. Thewindow was higher than is usual, the lowerend of it at shoulder height. There was a bardown the centre of the aperture, but therewas enough clearance on either side to getout; he grabbed the bar and pulled himselfup, wriggling his shoulder and head through.He looked down: it was quite a drop, and itwould be hard to jump cleanly with the barin the way. It would be more like a controlledfall - and the ratio of control to fall would belargely a matter of luck. He would be landingon the jagged rubble of the defunct concretepath that he hadn't got round to finishingyet: not the surface he would have chosen toland on, ideally. In an ideal world where hehadn't been locked in and set alight by hisown fucking son... He shook his head. Therewas no time to think about that. The smokewas now a constant irritant in his throat;

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whatever he was going to do he'd have to doit soon.

He twisted himself, sideways, wedginghis shoulder against the bar, and leaned outfurther, craning his neck upwards: the gutterwas a mere two feet or so above the windowlintel. This end of the house was two storeysonly, clearly an addition to the three-storeymain building. The roof sloped sharply up,double pitched; if he managed to keep hisfooting he could get up to the apex ridge andfind a better place to jump, or even a down-pipe. He didn't like the thought of trustinghis weight to a rusty downpipe bracket, but itwas a more attractive proposition than anoptimistic leap on to rubble and hardcore.He stubbornly concentrated on his escaperoute, blotting out the reasons why it was ne-cessary. If he allowed himself to think ofthat, he felt certain he'd end up sitting on thefloor weeping while the smoke engulfed him.

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No, he'd deal with Sam once he was safelyout. He'd cry later.

Sam rested halfway. It was nearly dark andthe lights of Goodwick and Fishguard Baywere visible now; the trees and grass werelosing their colour, fading out to an ashygrey.

It was a pity about Lewyn. If he couldhave kept him whole he would have done: asit was, he wouldn't be coming back. Still, thatwas what the book said. His arm should bewholly withered, which meant completelybuggered (as his mum would have put it);admittedly it also said his right eye should beutterly blinded, but he hadn't had time forthat. He'd done the best he could by turningthe light off - he hadn't allowed for Lewyn'sanglepoise lamp. Oh well it'd have to do. Je-sus would understand, he was sure. He'dkept his mum and dad unblemished anyway.That was the most important thing. They

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would live for ever now, though his mumwasn't exactly dead yet. Well, he'd see to thatwhen he got time.

He regretted Elvis though. He'd triedto keep him whole, but the stupid animal hadstruggled so hard Sam had had to subduehim. The eye had been a mistake - he'd beenaiming for the throat. And then he'd brokenhis leg dragging him to the cliff: he couldn'tallow Elvis to go over with a leg broken, sohe'd hacked it off with the little Stanley knife.Better a clean stump than a broken leg, hewas sure. Elvis had screamed: he hadn't un-derstood what Sam was doing. Well he wasonly a dog after all. You couldn't expect himto understand everything. Sam was certainthat even if Elvis didn't come back he'd go toheaven and live for ever up there. Maybe Je-sus would give him a replacement leg. WouldJesus be able to fix his eye? Sam wasn't sure,but if Jesus could make a whole person comeback when they were dead it'd surely be

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nothing much for him to give a dog a neweye. He hoped so anyway.

He was sorry too about the sheep, butthey'd been so difficult, running about andbleating. And he hadn't realized just howheavy an adult sheep was, and how fragiletheir legs were. He hadn't known then aboutthe unblemished rule: he'd thought that ifyou just got them over somehow, even inpieces, it'd work. Well he'd learned, and theday he'd been staying with Lewyn he'd per-fected the technique of scaring them over.He was getting the hang of it, like when hisdad showed him how to hammer nails. Therewas a knack, his dad said, you had to get thehang of it. But he obviously hadn't got itright yet: no-one was coming back, notRuthie, no-one.

He'd taken quite a risk with Ruthie,but for a first attempt it hadn't been too bad.He'd always been able to make his mum dothings: you just thought them at her and

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after a while she did them. It didn't workwith his dad for some reason. In any case hewasn't that bothered about Ruthie - shewasn't exactly a lot of fun. He wasn't at allsure he wanted her to come back, come tothink of it, if she was always going to be cry-ing and clinging on to his mum.

No, the thing he was really excitedabout was the Stumble Head people, theHeavenly Choristers. Hundreds of them, theman in the shoe shop had said. All unblem-ished. If he could get them back, that'd reallybe something. Just imagine, a whole gang ofpeople coming back and living for ever. Andall thanks to him. His dad would be proud ofhim. He probably wouldn't mind about beinglocked in the room and set on fire. It'd bequite an achievement, just like when he'dcome top in maths at school. Better even. Hisdad might buy him a bike. Sam briefly re-gretted the lost Christmas present, but it wasworth it. It'd been hard to make himself fall

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down the stairs and it had really hurt hisback, but it had certainly worked.

He would try to get the lady at theparty and Edith and the girls back too, butthat had all been rather a long time ago, andhe wasn't sure Raoul had killed them rightanyway. Raoul might not have known thatthey had to be unblemished, and he'dmessed about with the girls' bones. Whenhe'd talked to him before he fell in the hole,Raoul had said that they were all devils, eventhe sheep. Sam found this a bit hard to be-lieve, and his confidence in Raoul hadsuffered accordingly. Then when he'd readthe writing on the wall his estimation hadrisen again: Raoul knew all about sacrificesand fires and all that. Edith's account hadbecome unreadable in places though, so hecouldn't be sure. Raoul probably knew whathe was doing, at least most of the time. Ohwell, he'd give it a try. No harm in trying,that's what his dad said.

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Almost dark now. He picked up hiscan and struggled on. Nearly there.

James had one hand on the gutter; the otherwas bent behind him, holding the bar. Hehooked a leg up and wedged it against thewindow frame, then raised himself, slowly,carefully, pulling on the guttering. He had aqueasy, vertiginous feeling that the gutterwould come away at any moment, but it wassurprisingly sound. He nerved himself for asecond, then let go of the bar - for whatseemed like a long time his hand reachedabove his head for the gutter, as he hungfrom one arm, secured only by the leg bracedin the window, leaning precariously out-wards. His fingers found the rough metal ofthe gutter and he grabbed on to it, rested.

Jesus!He released his other hand, shaking

the blood back into circulation. Then hegripped the gutter again and, closing his

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eyes, heaved. He was aware of his ownnoises, mutterings, grunts: he was distractedmomentarily by the realization that this wasexactly how he sounded when he was makinglove with Adèle.

'Easy now. Easy. Eeeeeea-sy-now.'His arms shook uncontrollably with

the exertion and his hands grew slimy withsweat. He was going to fall, he knew it! Thewater in his bladder tilted and lurched,tingling. He opened his eyes and stared atthe sky. The muscles in his upper armsstretched, complaining loudly.

'Uuuuuuugh!'A bit more, a bit more, just a - little bit

- more! He managed to lever his elbow intothe gutter, and the extra purchase allowedhim to pull up the other leg. He raised him-self until he was standing on the windowledge, straddling the dividing bar, both fore-arms secure in the gutter.

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Now for the last part. He countedbackwards from five, then he forced his fore-arms down, kicking his leg up and round un-til his heel reached the gutter. He scrambledup over the loose slates, clawing at them, gothis chest then his belly over the gutter andon to the roof. He kicked at the gutter, whichbegan to give way under the pressure, but hewas safe now, his legs dangling harmlessly ashe inched his way up, until he wasspreadeagled on the roof, panting, ex-hausted, victorious.

Digging his heels against the exposedbattens, he mountaineered up the treacher-ous slates, finally reaching the ridge. He satastride it, offering up incoherent prayers ofthanks to a God he'd never believed in.

'Thank you Jesus. Thank you God.Thank you Jesus.' He tilted his head backand drank in the night air.

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The sheep edged round the dark field: one ofthem found the hay-feeders and began tochew the fibrous matter, looking up fre-quently as Sam poured carefully measuredamounts of petrol into the hay, distributing itas evenly as he could.

The sky was almost black now, a shadeof blue so deep as to seem darker than anyblackness. There was no moon, and the starsgleamed fitfully, a long way away.

Sam finished with the can. He stoodup on top of one of the hay-feeders. Hecleared his throat.

'All the people in the seaYou must hearken unto meHoly Mary, quite contrary,Jesus and his holy dad,If you're good or if you're badWhen I call your names aloudCome back out and join the crowd.'

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He stamped rhythmically to keep thetime and the sheep watched him, startled, allears, as his shrill voice sang out.

'When the sheep go falling inYou will have your go againThey go in and you come outYou will hear me when I shoutJesus and his holy dadWe will bring the people back.'Sam paused, aware of the ten pairs of

black, suspicious eyes on him. He couldn'tremember the next bit. He felt in his backpocket for his exercise book: not there.Damn! He must have dropped it somewhere.Bloody damn! He backtracked over the lastfew lines, frowning, muttering them underhis breath. Oh yes.

'You will live forev-erAll come out togeth-erEverybody in the deepI will swop you for the sheepPeople in the wa-ter

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Like a cup and sau-cerO-U-T spellsOut!'He jumped down and struck a match:

the hay caught immediately and he went onto the next trough. The sheep that had beenfeeding ducked away as the flames licked up.Within seconds all three feeders were blazingbrightly, sparks and charred fragments float-ing down. The sheep stood, finally seeingsomething that astonished them, as the sud-den light threw their long, dancing shadowsacross the field.

The little boy ran behind them, thentook off his baseball cap and swung it roundhis head.

'Wooo-oo-oooo! Woooo-oo-oo-ooooh!'

James hit the ground running and raced inthrough the front door. A blast of smoke andheat gripped him at the throat; he took adeep breath of night air, then shouldered his

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way through to the kitchen. He reached thesink, smashed the window over it and againgasped in air. He found the light switch, thenwet a tea towel and put it over his face. Therewas a hose somewhere, for cleaning out thecellar. He stumbled down the stairs, grabbedat it, dragged it back up.

The smoke gave way to steam as heplayed the water over the blazing couch,choking through the tea towel. The boardsaround it were charred, but there was noth-ing much else in there to burn: thank Christthey hadn't furnished the place yet! He flungopen the windows and the smoke and steamchurned about in great heavy slabs, thenbegan to thin out. He left the hose runningover the floor and fled.

Where to? James stopped on the grassoutside the house, trying to slow down hisoverheated brain. Where would Sam be? Hehad absolutely no idea.

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Never mind, get to a phone, call thepolice. He couldn't have gone far. He racedover the dewy grass towards Lewyn's house.

Drip drip. The slow red drops oozed downthe handle of the dibber and collected alongthe crosspiece where they fell, one by one, onto the floor.

Lewyn stared, filmy-eyed, at the poolof congealing blood around him. His lefthand twitched. Not dead then, he thoughtcautiously. Not quite. He tried to lift thehand but it was a gargantuan thing, the sizeof a planet, miles and miles away. It wasmade of some dense, inert substance, likerock.

Try again.Drip drip. My blood, he thought wear-

ily. If I don't do something about it prettysoon all my blood will just drip drip dripaway.

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The hand twitched again, thendragged a little way along the floor, towardshis body. It crawled up over his leg, sluggish,stupid, disobedient.

He contrived to wrap the grey, inflex-ible fingers around the crosspiece of the dib-ber. Now you must pull it out. Can't.

Try again.The fingers curled round the wooden

handle, and he forced himself to take an in-terest in their activity, tried to wrench histhoughts away from the slow, hypnotic drip-ping of his vital fluid. The angle was tricky,but he dislodged the thing, and heard him-self give a mighty scream as the torn tissues,ragged, raw, were ripped apart again. Thewooden implement clattered to the floor.

Didn't I have another hand some-where, he thought idly, just out of curiosity,and painfully twisted his head to the right.He followed the line of the arm along untilhe reached a blackened, swollen glove on the

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end of it, trapped in a vice. Boxing glove? hewondered, and then the scream rang outagain as he realized what it was.

'Lewyn! You in there?'James smashed at the front door, kick-

ing and shouldering until the panelssplintered open. He reached in and twistedthe handle.

'Lewyn!'In the basement Lewyn heard the

voice and tried to find one of his own, onethat wasn't a simple cry of despair.

'James! Down here!'

The sheep screamed, terrified now, as theshrieking child charged and charged, turningthem round, blocking their exits. Theystamped, their heads high, calling out toeach other in their high, harsh voices and re-stricted vocabularies. Between the devil andthe deep blue sea was a wall of fire,

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brilliantly coloured flames dancing up intothe sky.

'Woooooo-oo-ooooh!'They ran into the inferno, jumping

clumsily over the burning hay, catchingalight, screaming as they plunged over theother side and off the cliff. They tumbleddown, transfigured, beautiful, incandescentforms sailing out, like the brightest of angels:Sam, alight also, also screaming, falling be-hind them, dimly aware that once again he'dgot it wrong.

The sea received them with a hiss, likea great devouring snake.

It wasn't like doing Bronze Medal atschool, Sam found himself thinking as heplunged down into the deadly blackness. Forone thing it was unbelievably cold, muchcolder than the swimming pool. It was colderthan his body knew how to experience or ex-press to him. And the water in the pool, hethought, it didn't slosh about the whole time.

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Also in the brilliantly lit swimming pool youcould see right down to the wavering, glow-ing, ghostly pattern on the tiled floor. Youhad to pick up a brick with your pyjamas on:Sam remembered (his thoughts revolvinglazily as shock took over his body) how oddhis body had felt having his Count Duckulasstuck to him like another skin. His clothesnow were much heavier of course, but apartfrom that it was the same thing really. Themost important rule, the one that Mr Mat-thews said time and time again, until he hadeveryone imitating him and giggling, was:

Keep cool, keep calm.You just had to hold your breath, not

struggle, and you'd float. Because people, MrMatthews explained in the booming, echoingacoustic of the pool, are naturally buoyant,that means they float. You could keep youreyes shut if you were frightened by howfunny everything looked underwater (andSam decided against taking a little

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experimental peek as his descent sloweddown - the thought of all that black water allaround him, above and below and for mileson every side...)

Calm, said Mr Matthews. Cool. AndSam held the words in his head as greatflows of terror and cold buffeted him, thefreezing water no longer taking his heat butgiving its own negative energy, covering himwith the gentle, insistent breath of the dead,who showed no inclination at all to come outof the sea.

And suddenly Sam began to feelsomething he had no words to describe, nothoughts to imagine: a great, whispering,limitless, embracing peacefulness, a quiet,throbbing feeling of being drained of allworry and pain, an awareness that this was agood, tranquil place to be. Calm, but not inthe way Mr Matthews had had in mind: thiswas the calm of shock and heat-loss, thecalm of drowning. A good place to be, Sam

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thought as he began to rise again through theturbulent water. He thought he might like tostay here. For ever.

James helped Lewyn into the ambulance,holding his left hand.

'You'll be fine, you'll be all right,you'll...'

'James I...''You'll be...'Lewyn pulled James's head down to

his mouth, kissed him awkwardly on theneck.

'I love you,' he whispered.Oh God, James thought, as if I didn't

have enough love to deal with. Love forAdèle, love (incredibly, still) for Sam, and(neverendingly) for Ruthie, the love he felttrying to cram itself into his eyes and throat.Oh God please no more love.

And in any case, he thought abruptly, Idon't know how. A lifetime of 'backs against

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the wall' had left him with only the mostrudimentary notion of what a man mightwant with another man. And none of itseemed to have anything to do with the wayhe felt about the injured, possibly dying,Lewyn, whose breath had just stroked hisear, whose eyes had just met his.

James held Lewyn's hand in his andsensed the urgency, the heat, the passion ofLewyn's feeling.

Could I?It was such a small, simple, unassum-

ing question, like a shy animal breaking cov-er and then darting back out of sight. Ashrew, perhaps, waiting for the age of the di-nosaurs to come to an end so it could takeover the world. If the answer was yes - Jameswas unable to compute the consequencesthat might attend.

He recalled the smell of the day roomat Cardiff Royal Infirmary, the scent of con-trolled desperation and leaking sphincters

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and forcibly-injected optimism. The day-inday-out compassion of the nurses, starchedinto their uniforms, the diffident, anxiouscollusion of the patients.

He held Lewyn's hand and felt an an-swer to Adèle's impalpable disconnection,her breath the air from another planet, thecompleteness of her ruination by the thingshe loved most in the world, her strange,lethal child.

His child also. The fruit, as they said,of his loins. Of his love.

Could I?But then it came to him: the question

was superfluous because, he thought, Ialready do. Whatever it might mean andhowever he might try to feel about it, it hadalready happened: he and Lewyn were con-nected, and he was a different person now.

So could he ever again hold Adèle tohim, aware of her unconscious vigilance con-cerning Sam's welfare? Could he ever again

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innocently, unthinkingly, love her, withoutrestraint or limitation or question? The ques-tion that had now been posed by Lewyn's ur-gent hand and the flutter of his breathagainst James's ear.

'I love you,' Lewyn whispered, andJames squeezed his hand back in answer asthe paramedics guided him into the ambu-lance. He watched the lights flashing as thevehicle pulled away, the alarm rising up, anawakening beast crying into the night.

Fifty-nine, sixty, he was nearly asleep,rocked by the unending rhythm of the soft,murderous sea. Sixty-one, sixty-two - un-knowingly, Sam's breath escaped him, bub-bling up alongside him as he suddenly sur-faced: he awoke with a start as the freezingwet air slapped him across the face and thesurf boomed gigantically in his ears, nolonger muffled by the depth of the water.

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The paddling motions he'd been bornwith, refined by Mr Matthews's instruction,carried him back to the rocky beach. Heclambered out of the breaking surf andcrawled out on to land, like some antediluvi-an sea creature who had decided its evolu-tionary future lay beyond the waves. Or like adrowned soul called back from the deep bywitchcraft. Sometimes, Sam thought, some-times things do come back.

James returned to the cellar of Lewyn'shouse where three policemen were standingabout, one of them filling in evidence slipsfor James to sign, the evidence itself alreadybagged up. They were waiting for someonefrom Forensics to come to collect tissue andfibre samples and to take pictures. There wascertainly no shortage of blood to takesamples from. After the pictures, some luckysod would get to clean it all up. And after

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that the hunt would be on for a next of kin tonotify, at this festive season.

They looked up as he came down thestairs to the room, and he was strongly awareof their interest in him. Professional interest.He doubted that they got much action in theusual course of things, and he felt unpleas-antly certain that he was going to be thecentre of attention for the next few hours atleast. Would he have to make a statement?He sniffed the air, at first unable to place thesmell. Then he identified it and closed hiseyes. Blood.

He looked at the policemen, not know-ing how to speak, what to say. He'd alreadyreported Sam as missing: there was a searchteam on the way from Haverfordwest, coast-guards, all sorts of people. Christmas Eve.He felt apologetic for causing so muchtrouble. It was going to be hard to shake offthe old parental habit of assuming respons-ibility for Sam's misdemeanours, he thought,

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though Sam had certainly progressed fromkicking balls through people's windows. Yessirree.

One of the three approached him, ayoung officer with a full beard that wasclearly his first attempt at the genre. Heplucked nervously at it as he came towardsJames, and James could feel the hesitationin his manner.

'Mr Tullian? My name's PC Lodge,how d'you do,' he offered his hand, 'and thisis PC Garner and PC Brophy. We're going towant to ask you some questions, but there'sno hurry for any of that, see: we could maybeget you a cup of tea or something, you couldsit down for five minutes. Bit of a shocker allthis, eh?' James was at first surprised by theconcern in the officer's tone. Then hethought: star witness. They need me in goodcondition. Only a witness - or maybe a sus-pect? There was, he realized, no good reasonwhy they should accept his story about Sam.

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In fact it had seemed distinctly implausibleto him as he'd told it My son impaled thisman against the wall, then locked me in aroom and set fire to the house. Then he dis-appeared somewhere. How old is he? Oh,seven. Hm. It occurred to him that he shouldperhaps be careful what he said now, thenrealized that he had nothing to say in anycase. He laughed, was shocked by the inap-propriateness of the sound, mumbled anapology. The young officer turned to the oth-er two, who shrugged eyebrows.

'Sir?''I'm OK, really,' James started to say,

but stopped when he found his eye resting onthe contents of one of the plastic evidencebags which were lying on the work-bench. Itwas so familiar that it took him a moment toregister it.

A red exercise book. Sylvine, feint andmargin. And on the inside of the front cover,he knew, was written neatly Sam D. Tullian.

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The policeman stood aside as James walkedpast him towards the workbench. The exer-cise book had been transformed by theplastic envelope from a simple, innocentitem of stationery into something more sinis-ter: into evidence. He picked up the bag, theplastic cool and glossy, almost slimy. Lodgemade as if to stop him handling it, and then,seeing the expression on James's face,backed down.

James withdrew the book from thebag, as if he were handling a snake, andopened it at random. As he read his aware-ness of the room and the high, alarmingsmell of Lewyn's blood, his consciousness ofthe predatory attentions of the police, all fellaway. The world collapsed around him, like adisaster-movie set, as, for the first and lasttime, he entered the mind of his son.

Woe to my worthless shepherde!Let his arm be wholly wither'd

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His right eye utterly blynded!Woe: misfortune, sorrow.(misfortune: bad luck)

Sam's neat, deliberate handwritingcovered the pages, definitions and quota-tions incongruously mixed in with mathsproblems and doodles, and what looked likeattempts at a poem.

Strike the shepherde, that the sheepemay be scattered

Two thirds shall be cut off and perishAnd one thirde shall be lefte alyveAnd I wille put this thirde into the

fyre.(Perish: die)

Bayonet: blade that fits on the muzzleof a rifle.

(rifle: a long-barrelled gun)

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Pyre: a funeral mound, for burning thedead.

Sacrifice: offer to a deity.(deity: a god)

six divided by three = two If Mary hastwelve oranges to share equally betweenHarry, Bob and Bill, how many will each boyreceive? Four. One third of nine = three, twothirds of nine =six.

James flicked the pages over. He re-cognized some of it as coming from thesecure-room wall. (Sampled the handwrit-ing. Off the wall. Sam pulled the handwritingoff the wall.)

If he brynges a lamb as his offeryng, heshall brynge a female without blemishe.

blemish: fault, flaw.flaw: defect, fault, blemish.(fault: defect)

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(defect: imperfection)

And the priest shall offer the whole,and burne it on the altar; it is a burnt of-feryng, an offeryng by fyre, a pleasing odourto the LORDE.

(odour: smell)

The second Angel blew his trumpet,and something burning with fyre was throwninto the sea.

James turned the page.

And the sea gave up the dead in it.

'Jesus Christ,' he said softly.

Stumble: fall, trip.

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'Jesus Christ,' he said again, to thebearded policeman, 'I think I know where heis.'

They could see the glow as they drew up tothe Stumble Head turn-off. One of the of-ficers stayed in the car to contact Haverford-west who would redirect the search team.James and the other two entered the field.

The hay-feeders were smouldering andflickering as they reached them. James re-garded them, and was aware that he couldfeel Sam's recent presence here, as if he werea famous psychic brought in at the eleventhhour by a desperate police force. I haven'tgot a cravat or strangely penetrating eyes, hethought, and felt like a charlatan.

'Graham! Over here!'PC Brophy was standing at the edge,

shining his torch down on to the sea where anumber of large forms were bobbing about.PC Lodge joined him and the two men

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scrambled down the side, the shale clatteringas it accompanied them. They shone theirtorches over the heavy swell of the sea.

'Nothing. Just some sheep.'They climbed back up, panting, and

Lodge came across to where James wasstanding.

'Mr Tullian. I have to ask you. Do youknow what's been going on here? If youknow anything you'd best tell us now, see,and save us all nearly breaking our bloodynecks on the bloody cliffs all night.'

James looked at him withoutexpression.

'Mr Tullian?''He was here,' James said, then giggled

at the melodramatic way it came out. 'And Ithink he's still around somewhere.' The of-ficer began to move away, then turned back.

'Why would he come all the way outhere? What for?'

James shrugged.

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PC Lodge tugged at his beard, andJames stood, at a loss, in the dark, dampfield, aware that this young policeman wasfinding him very odd indeed.

'Mr Tullian, once the rest of them gethere, the frogmen and all and the Divisionallot, I'm going to have to tell 'em why youbrought us all out here. Make a report. And ifI just say, well Mr Tullian here, he had a feel-ing see, they're going to look at me daft.Everybody's going to want to know what youand your family have been up to out here.But I can't tell them unless you tell me, see?I'm supposed to know.' He smiled. 'They'llthink I've not been doing my job right, see?You wouldn't want 'em to think that wouldyou?'

Christ, James thought, he wants me tolike him. All this lunacy, and he thinks if he'scharming enough I'll explain it all to him.

'I don't know what's been going on,'James said, trying not to sound indignant.

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'Where's your boy, Mr Tullian?' askedPC Lodge, and James realized with a shockthat this rural policeman wasn't thepushover he was pretending to be.

'I've told you, I don't know. But I thinkhe's nearby.'

'Because of what was in the exercisebook.'

'Yes, but also...' James stopped,shrugged, feeling as guilty as the most miser-able sin. 'Sorry,' he added. PC Lodge swunghis flashlight around, along the walls, overthe grass: a sheep, caught in the beam,stared back, its eyes perfectly blank, perfectlycalm. 'What, he's somewhere here d'youthink? Hiding maybe?'

James looked round helplessly.'Or where?''In the sea?' said James. 'I don't know.'

He didn't want to have to think about all theplaces Sam might be.

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'Mr Tullian, I hate to say this but ifyour boy's down there in the sea then by thetime the rescue team get here it's going to betoo late. For God's sake if you know where heis...'

'I don't know! Christ how many moretimes!' James felt his eyes fill up and turnedaway to wipe his face with his sleeve. 'I don'tknow where he is,' he said, and Lodge, be-lieving him, patted him on the shoulder andmurmured, 'Sorry. This is my job.' He wentover to the smouldering hay-feeders, pre-tending to search them, though it was obvi-ous at a glance that Sam couldn't be there.

He didn't now believe Sam was goingto be found that night. So there was going tohave to be a major missing-person search onChristmas Day, which was guaranteed to godown a storm. He sighed heavily, already re-gretting the big Christmas dinner and thelong slouch in front of the telly.

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And it would all be for nothing, hethought. Because although he was sure nowJames Tullian was telling the truth, he wasalso, and more reluctantly, sure that SamTullian was already dead.

He stroked his newly acquired beardas the dim light from the smouldering hayfell on him, and listened to the sea ragingagainst the cliffs far below. In the field be-hind him the sheep trod gently.

The O.T. room was freezing in the pre-dawnlight of Christmas Day. Paper streamers andcardboard Father Christmases were hungabout, jarring, incongruous.

She regarded her final painting. Afield, this time at night. No sheep. No people.Not even any trees. Black and dark green, re-lieved only by the stars, which were falling,reflected in the heaving ocean.

Luxury liner on maiden voyage hit byfloating iceberg. Distress calls sent. Ship

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sinks. Most lost on board, some survivors inlifeboats return to tell the tale to a shockedand humbled world, who will never again be-lieve that anything is unsinkable.

She remembered seeing a cartoon: along queue of anxious relatives at theshipping-line office, and a man at the frontwith a polar bear asking, 'Any news of theiceberg?'

The stars were falling and so howwould she ever find her way home? She hadlost her way, but more than that, she'd losther map of how to get back. Her home: it wasa place not to be found on any chart, andthere did not appear to be any roads to it. Ithad vanished as surely as the iceberg, andshe was unsure that she even wanted to findit.

I have lost my place in the world, shethought, in the same way that I might losemy place in a book. The only thing to do wasstart again, from the beginning. Except that

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second time round, she felt sure it would allbe different.

She turned off the lights and wentback to bed.

The two little girls stood up in the water,their identical yellow dresses clinging tothem. They smiled and waved.

It's all right, Lewyn called, you cancome out now.

Edith stood beside him, the nail in herhand.

Is he dead? she asked.Yes, Lewyn said, the beast is dead

now.Who killed him?Lewyn pointed to a figure standing

nearby: James.He must love you very much, she said,

and flung the nail away, far out to sea.

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The machines hummed all aroundhim, the saline and plasma drips, the heart-rate monitor.

The machines roared and boomed allaround him, but Lewyn knew what to do: hewalked along the assembly line until hereached the chute where the twitching, half-familiar hunks of flesh dropped down. Hereached up and pushed a button.

Silence.

It was full daylight when the police broughtJames home. He was demented with shockand exhaustion, but the sharp, powerfulsmell of the burned upholstery and charredwood gave him the energy to turn off thestill-running hose and crawl upstairs to hisbed, blind to the wet footprints ahead of himon the bare wooden stairs.

He collapsed, staying awake just longenough to register the faintest, most elusiveof sounds coming from the secure room. He

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twitched as he fell into sleep, thinking neonlight, wasp, electric train.

He slept and the smell of the sea hungover his dreams, sharp, salty, nearby, ticklinghis nostrils. He dreamed of great fish leapingin the sea and making a gentle, strangely fa-miliar sound, which, oddly, now seemed tobe coming from somewhere in the house:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

THE END

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