Annan Water (6 page)

The sides are steep, the water’s deep,

From bank to brae the water’s pouring …

He couldn’t remember the next line, except that it ended with
roaring
.

Roaring. It was all around him like the agitated breath of some water-god bending over the little craft. Closing over his life.

‘You might take a wee stroll with the lassie.’

‘Hm?’

The roaring was the engine. He could hear no sound from the river above it, except for the slap of the disturbed current against the hull. They were already pulling into the landing stage on the other side.

‘I’d like to have a chat with her mother,’ Jimmy said.

Annie seemed pleased to see him, and he was pleased to see her as well, although it was some time before his panic finally relinquished its grip on his joints. She didn’t question Jimmy’s suggestion, but put on a long, black coat with an enormous hood like a monk’s cowl. In the outside light on the doorstep the shine of her eyes from its shadows matched the other, metallic glints on her face. Michael couldn’t decide how he felt about the piercing. It repelled and fascinated him at the same time.

They walked along the gravelly road, away from the house and the river.

‘Why has he packed us off?’ said Michael.

‘Just to get us out of the house,’ said Annie, ‘while they get down to a bit of canoodling on the sofa.’

It sounded like a water sport. Canoodling.

‘They’re both lonely. And they haven’t much time left.’

Michael wanted to know more, but so did Annie. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure, anyway?’

‘Pleasure?’

‘What brings you out on a night like this?’

‘Oh. I can’t make it tomorrow.’

He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel her disappointment through all the black layers which lay between them.

‘Well, Sunday would be OK.’

‘I can’t make Sunday, either.’

She turned off the road on to a little footpath, narrower than his own green lane, which ran between hedges of hawthorn and ash. There was no room for two abreast. He walked at her heels.

‘Is this the brush-off, then?’ she said.

‘Brush-off?’

She wheeled on him, pinned him against the wet night which stood behind him. ‘Why do you always repeat everything I say? Don’t you understand English?’

He fenced at her aggression with his own. ‘No. Not a word of it. I’m thick as two short planks, me.’

There was no moon, no stars, but even the darkest of nights steals light from somewhere. He saw her eyes soften, and a smile touched the corners of her mouth.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘And I’m the ghost of Lady Di.’

The hedges ended at a wall with a stile built into it. The track ran along the edge of a bare meadow, and before they were halfway across it, Michael could hear where it was leading them. All his roads that night led to the Annan Water.

They crossed another wall and followed a little bald footpath along the river bank. There were always at least three metres between the path and the rivers abrupt edge, but it was never quite enough for Michael. The waters deep song was still summoning him, and the fear was infiltrating his bones again. Annie, walking between him and the bank, vanished abruptly. He thought she had fallen in, but when he looked down he could still see her. She was sitting on something. He felt it in the dark. It was the stump of an old tree; not smooth like a sawn trunk, but uneven, with slimy humps and hollows, There was plenty of room for two to sit there, but Michael didn’t fancy it. He stayed on his feet.

‘So it’s not the brush-off?’ said Annie.

‘Of course not. I’ll definitely be here next Saturday. Definitely.’

‘What if I came to you? Would it be easier?’

Michael hated the idea. Annie, his green road, the rare time out: these had already become precious things. But his thought processes were too slow, and hers were too quick.

‘Of course it would,’ she went on. ‘Save you hours. Jimmy could drop me off when he takes her shopping. Pick me up on the way back.’

‘I suppose,’ said Michael.

‘Great! And I can help with the horses. Brush them and stuff!’

Michael wondered what his parents would say. He found it incomprehensible that anyone would subject themselves to that kind of work when they didn’t have to, but there were always people, girls especially, who were keen to hang around the yard, for nothing more than the pleasure of being around horses. But Jean and Frank didn’t encourage it. They never answered the question that the woman with the smell under her nose had asked. They did not have insurance; never had, never would have. Insurance companies, banks, the Inland Revenue: these were the wolves that stalked their muddy pastures. Michael tried to find a way of explaining it, but it was already too late. Annie’s enthusiasm had gathered way too much momentum. There was no turning it back.

‘Saturday week, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there as early as I can.’

Her bum must have been getting cold and wet from the stump, but she stayed where she was. Michael gnawed at a hangnail on his finger. A rising wind was beginning to blow the soft rain slantways, from one side of the river to the other. The bank was too bare.

‘Why are there no trees?’ he asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Annie. ‘They say it’s that old story. About the young guy who drowned.’

Michael was suddenly sinking with him into the pitch-black tumble of the current; he felt the snag of weeds, the icy touch of a passing fish. He clawed his way back into the night air.

‘What story?’

‘Just some old story. It’s in a song. Ancient. I don’t know it.’

There were no brambles, no briars or scrub or weeds. Just the close, rain-battered grass, right up to the lip of the bank.

‘I suppose the farmers cut back the bushes,’ said Michael.

‘I can’t wait,’ said Annie. ‘Can I ride Bandit again?’

As they passed the lighted windows of Annie’s house, Michael looked in and saw Annie’s mother and Jimmy sitting together on the couch. They weren’t engaged in water sports, or anything else energetic. They were just leaning into each other in a still, warm fondness.

‘Come and see my room,’ said Annie.

Michael left his wellies inside the back door, but Annie pounded up the stairs in her black boots, leaving a trail of mud behind her. The door of her bedroom had ‘
TREMBLE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE
’ written across it in black marker. As she opened it she flicked the switch and a red bulb lit up the room.

Michael had never seen anything like it. Every inch reflected Annie’s identity. If he had never met her he would have known her intimately as soon as he crossed that threshold. The floorboards were painted with zebra stripes. The walls, once white, were covered from floor to ceiling with Gothic drawings of dragons and wizards and demon bikers; snatches of poetry, beatitudes and curses, Chinese characters. Everything had been executed by a steady and confident hand, in strong black lines and vivid blocks of colour. A leopard-spotted blanket covered the double bed. Above it, suspended on invisible wires, hung the skull and sweeping horns of a highland cow.

Annie crossed to the black stereo and began to sift through a litter of CDs. ‘What do you fancy?’

He was saved from a confession of ignorance by Jimmy’s voice, calling up the stairs.

‘You ready, Michael?’

Far too soon they were back in the boat again. Every muscle in Michael’s body was clenched tight. Pushing their way through the tension, like worms through hard earth, the words of the song wriggled up.

Go saddle for me the bonny grey mare,

Go saddle her soon and make her ready,

For I must cross that stream tonight,

Or never more I’ll see …

He felt a hot flush; a double clench in his tense gut.

… my Annie.

A
S SOON AS MICHAEL
stepped inside the door he remembered the chips he had left in the oven. The black smell in the kitchen told him what had happened to them.

The washing machine was in the middle of the floor, standing in its own guilty puddle. Frank emerged from behind it with a fistful of tools.

‘Did you leave the chips on?’ he said.

‘Sorry,’ said Michael.

Frank said nothing. The way they lived, a few burned chips wasn’t a bad total for disasters on any given day.

Michael rooted in the fridge but there was nothing remotely edible in there. He pulled a few spuds out of the sack in the porch, but the sink was full of sudsy numnahs and tail bandages. He put the spuds back and went to the breadbin.

Frank stooped down behind the machine again. ‘That roan horse is coughing. I put him round the back. Don’t let anything near him.’

Michael wrapped a slice of bread around a banana and bit the top off it. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘I don’t know. Hope it’s not a virus, anyway.’

‘No. The machine.’

‘Oh. Won’t empty.’

‘Have you checked the filter?’

Frank stood up and assessed the wires and tubes at the back. ‘Where is the filter on this?’

Michael opened the little square panel at the front and reached in. A stream of grimy water poured out, along with a 5p piece, a matchstick and half a dozen white plaiting bands.

‘Not me,’ said Michael. ‘I never plait the mare.’

It was after midnight before he saw his bed. He was exhausted, but the sight of his room as he stepped into it brought him up short. If Annie came next week, would he be obliged to bring her up there? He’d seen her room, after all.

The prospect filled him with despair. The windowsill was thick with dead and dying flies. They bred up there, in the roof space, behind the dingy wooden walls. The peeling paint was hospital-coloured. The floorboards were rough and bare. Apart from his bed and the clothes piled on two wooden chairs, the room was empty. No stereo, no posters, no comfort. The place was a proclamation, not of his personality, but of his lack of it. He had made no imprint upon it at all.

He tried to think about it as he lay in bed, waiting for the rucked sheets and blankets to trap his heat for him. But he had no idea where to start, and before he had come up with anything the song began to invade him again.

For I must cross that stream tonight, Or never more I’ll see my …

He slammed his head into the pillow to shut it out. And suddenly, it was morning.

T
HE SATURDAY SHOW WAS
a local one—only half an hour away in the lorry. They had the whole morning at home, and Michael was gutted by the knowledge that Annie could have come and ridden after all, if he’d known. But, as always, there was no time to dwell on things. His mother’s trip of the previous evening had resulted in a trailer piled high with golden barley straw, which had to be unloaded and stacked in the one bay of the hay shed that wasn’t full of breeze blocks and half-built walls.

Jean had kinks to iron out of one of the horses she was taking to the show, so Michael took over her veterinary duties for the morning. He changed the poultice on the thoroughbred’s hock, then investigated the lameness that had developed in one of the new horses Frank had bought at the sales. He found heat in the foot, took the shoe off, excavated with a hoof knife until a pus-filled pocket discharged most of its contents in a powerful jet across the loosebox.

‘Found it,’ he called to Frank, who was passing with a laden wheelbarrow.

‘Found what?’

‘Puncture wound, I’d say.’

Frank came in and examined Michael’s work. ‘Good man. Could have been a vet, you.’

‘Could have,’ Michael thought, as he dug out the grungy old poultice boot from the bottom of the trunk in the tack room. ‘Could have’ still needled him as he scalded another poultice and carried it steaming across the yard to the box. The horse tried to snatch its foot away from the sudden heat, but Michael hung on. He wrapped a plastic bag around it, secured it with two elastic bandages and strapped the rubber boot on over it all.

Why not ‘could’?

The answer was clear enough. Because he didn’t understand the questions in his maths class, let alone the answers. He hadn’t opened a biology book that term, and he didn’t even seem to have chemistry on his timetable. Being a vet meant top marks, A levels, years in college.

Frank was right. He could have been a vet. If.

T
HE BOY’S EYE WAS
still slightly black, but the graze had healed over completely. He was in the collecting ring when Michael spotted him, riding the bay mare they had sold the previous week, to someone else.

The pony, just as the grey mare had been under that boy, was full of uncertainty. Her ears twitched back and forth, waiting for the clear signals that Michael had taught her, failing to receive them. But her heart was good; she jumped everything she was faced at, putting herself right when the boy got things wrong, doing her level best.

They might have gone well enough in their class, if the rider hadn’t forgotten the course, jumped two fences in the wrong order and got himself disqualified. He came out of the arena red-faced with embarrassment, rode the bewildered pony back into the practice ring and drove her viciously over the jumps again. It was only the pony’s good sense that kept him out of the trouble he was asking for.

Michael’s young chestnut took the back bar off a parallel, but it was only his second time out and he was pleased with him. Later in the day, the grey mare won her class, and a man with a fifteen-year-old daughter showed some interest in her. Frank took over the haggling, but the deal fell apart when he refused to let them take the mare on a fortnight’s trial.

‘I’ve had horses handed back to me on their knees,’ he told the man. ‘You could take that chestnut pony for as long as you like, and he’ll be half the price. But not this one.’

Michael had heard it all before. He knew what Frank’s mood was like when he lost a sale like that, and he took the mare, still wearing her red rosette, back to the lorry.

T
HE SUNDAY SHOW WAS
a disaster. There were no pony classes, so Michael had brought Bandit and a lanky little black horse called Oliver to go in the D and E. Neither of them jumped well. Jean’s best horse, The Menace, overreached and injured himself in the practice ring and she had to withdraw him from the Open. Her other Open horse spooked at a child with a balloon on a critical turn and ploughed through the next pair of fences. They came home, for once, ribbonless.