Bar None (9 page)

"Maybe we could use a hotel," I say. "Or pull off and find an old pub, kip down there."

"Maybe."

We eat, enjoying the sun on the backs of our necks and the good food. Jessica opens a bottle of wine and we have a small glass each. I almost decline—I'm riding a motorbike after all. But a couple of mouthfuls won't do me any harm. I smile at her, offer my thanks, and Cordell says, "What the
fuck
is
that?"

A large shape is moving across the hillside, high up, almost at the level of the trees. It's huge, and for a second or two I think I see long segmented legs stretching out, limbs forcing it along, clawed feet ripping out clods of earth and flinging them aside. Then I blink and remember falling from the motorbike, and I know what we're looking at.

"Deer," I say. "A herd of deer."

"Here?" Jessica asks. She knows nature, and she knows we shouldn't be seeing what we are.

I shrug. "It's been six months . . ."

The deer are running across the hill, keeping close to the woods yet seemingly reticent about going inside. They surely can't hear, see or smell us from this far away, and our vehicles would blend in with the dozens of other cars and trucks stopped along this stretch of road.

So I wonder what it is that has them spooked.

"We could take a shot at them," Cordell says. "Damn, you fancy a nice venison dinner, guys?"

"You'll never get close enough," Jessica says. She stands slowly, shields her eyes with her hand. "They're not supposed to be here," she says quietly, almost to herself.

Something comes out of the woods. A darting grey shape, soon joined by three more. They spread out around the flock of deer, which flows and pulses like a flock of birds dancing across the sky.

Jacqueline gasps.

"What?" Cordell says. "What now?"

"Dogs gone feral," Jacqueline says. "Must be thousands of them out in the wild now. And cats."

"And budgies, tortoises and goldfish," the Irishman says.

"Not dogs." Jessica is leaning forward as though to see better. "Damn!" Quiet again, as though talking to herself, and I feel my patience wearing.

"Jessica, what are you seeing?" I say.

She glances at me, and I see a glint in her eyes. She's not afraid, not shocked. She's
excited
.

"Wolves," she says. "I'm seeing wolves!"

Cordell laughs, an uncertain cough that sums up what we're all thinking.

"They were talking about breeding them in Scotland, weren't they?" Jacqueline asks. "Letting them out in the wild up there? In a protected preserve?"

"Talking about it, yes," Jessica agrees. "But it never happened. Too many objections from local farmers and people who thought the wolves would carry off their babies."

"So . . ." I say.

"So, where have those come from?"

We watch the shapes darting back and forth around the herd of deer, trying to drive them up toward the woods. The wolves—if that's really what they are—are very spare in their movements. There's no exuberant barking or howling, no running around in circles. They move only when they have to, and within another couple of minutes the deer are rustling the bushes that grow around the trunks of the first trees.

That's when they spring the trap.

We can't see clearly from this far away, but it's obvious that more wolves have been waiting under cover. When the deer are close enough they leap, and then the animals guarding the herd dart in to join the kill. The deer scatter, run and then regroup, fleeing northward even though they are no longer being chased.

Several of their kind have been left behind. They struggle briefly, buried beneath the grey shapes, and I hear a faint cry. And then silence. Several wolves back away from the sudden red splash on the hillside and lie down, waiting their turn.

"Leader of the pack," Jessica says. "Damn, I've read about this but never thought . . ."

"Never thought you'd see it in Britain," Cordell finished for her.

"Maybe they were pets that got out," Jessica muses.

"Are you sure they're wolves?" I ask. "Not dogs? Alsatians?"

She shakes her head, very definite.

"Well, my vote is that we move on," Jacqueline says. Out of all of us, she's the only one who really looks afraid.

Later, I will begin to wonder whether she had an inkling of what was going on, even then. Perhaps Michael had told her more than anyone else because he saw how quiet she was, how attuned to the dangers around her. She drank less than anyone, and thought more. I believe she had a past she did not wish to revisit, and memories for her were as intimidating as the plagues were for everyone else.

But by the time I get around to thinking about this, it's far too late. By then Jacqueline is dead, and we're beginning to know the truth.

On a hot day in the capital, interspersed with pints of London Pride—hoppy, with a citrus bite and a light bitter finish—whenever we could find a pub not jammed to the gills with thirsty marchers and press people eager for a drink, Ashley and I joined a protest march against the war in Iraq. It was an adventure. We'd travelled down the night before, enjoying the communal spirit on the coach, Ashley dozing with her head resting against my shoulder, slowing as we neared London and taking four hours to make our eventual way, snake-like, into the city. We had intended staying in a guest house that night, but it was almost three a.m. by the time we poured from the bus. We thanked the exhausted driver and he smiled back, giving us a cheerful peace sign and telling us to go get them. Once on the street we found that the atmosphere was already buzzing. Hundreds of people were dipping in and out of all night diners, with many more pitching stands and tables from which they were selling banners, placards and tee-shirts.

"Shall we hit the sack?" I asked.

"I don't think I could sleep a wink!" Ashley said. She grasped my hand and we plunged into the crowd. She'd been asleep for four hours on the coach and I'd grabbed barely half an hour, but I was so thrilled by her enthusiasm that I didn't have the heart to insist.

And I'm glad I didn't. We ate an early breakfast—or a very late supper—of sausages, mash and onion gravy, then found a pub that was probably breaking a dozen laws by being open at four in the morning. Trade was manic, and the landlord seemed to enter into the spirit of safe rebellion by halving the prices of his drinks. We settled down at a small corner table and drank London Pride at less than two pounds per pint. It was bliss. We could barely hear each other talk above the hubbub, but we spent much of the time listening to the good-natured banter, the occasional song, and the exhortations of a tall Scot who insisted on dancing on tables and regaling us with poems no one could understand.

The Pride was gorgeous. I'd drank it outside London but it never seemed to travel very well. Perhaps it didn't like being away from home. Here it was smooth and rich, giving a distinct hoppy smell and a full-bodied taste. The pub served its beer in mugs, which was a refreshing change, and by the time the march was due to start at nine a.m. we'd already had several pints, some more food, and a couple of hours of lively singing, chanting and cheering.

When we exited the pub and headed north toward the march, we passed a group of more serious protestors standing on the corner. We were here because we felt bad about the war, the lies spewing from politicians' mouths, the whole basis upon which we were invading another country. It made Ashley and me angry and we'd printed our own "Not in My Name" tee-shirts, because we didn't want some side-street vendor profiting from such heartfelt conviction.

These people standing on the corner had built a screen from torn cardboard boxes and timber framing. They'd covered its entire surface with white paper and then started affixing pictures, photographs and bold lines of quoted rhetoric at various places. George Bush, Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein, military hardware, oil drilling rigs, the UN flag, the French President, soldiers with brown skin and white, a group of children playing in a park in London, a group of children playing in a park in Baghdad. When they'd finished they connected faces with words, images with photographs, and then they combined the disparate threads and joined them at the centre. There sat a gruesome photograph from the first Gulf War, showing the effects of a high-explosive bomb on the confined space of a bomb shelter. Written across the temporary screen below this photograph, in what I was almost certain must have been one of the protestor's blood, was the word
Innocent
.

The crowd grew quiet as it passed this presentation. A few still bickered and jeered, but mostly we were cowed by the seriousness of the display. We were here partly for the protest, but mostly for ourselves, pandering to some deep-felt guilt and trying to give ourselves a sense of having done something positive. We were being safe, and hoping it would make a difference.

The display shamed me in ways it should not have. It made me sad that we'd been drinking beer and having fun while these protestors faced such dreadful photographs, pinned them up, cut their veins to add their words of defiance.

"How can they be so
intense?
" Ashley said to me. "It's all about a combined voice, isn't it? We're here in numbers, not to see who can be most horrifying." And she was right. We passed the make-do display board and its creators, leaving them in a bubble of uncomfortable silence that hung in many places across London that day. Mostly the people on the march were like us, ready for a day out to make our voice heard and our statistic felt. Ashley and I did not feel bad about that. We marched, wore our tee-shirts, and we even got to speak into a camera from a regional TV station in Wales, though we never found out whether the interview was broadcast.

Indeed, some of these more extreme protestors tended to spoil the spirit of the day. One group of them chanted, "Blair fucks Bush!" again and again, unconcerned at the presence of young kids brought along by their parents to take part in this public outpouring of opinion. Another started a shuffling, clumsy scuffle with police, and while they were handcuffed and led away they shouted about fascist abuse and the stifling of freedom of speech. We looked and shook our heads, because we were as free as anyone. We were making our feelings felt. We were
saying
something, and doing so far more effectively than being locked away in the back of a police van.

The sense of camaraderie was powerful and dizzying, and there was no impatience whilst queuing for food or toilets, no anger, no tempers flaring. Ashley and I sat outside a pub drinking London Pride late that afternoon, our feet sore and legs aching from walking so far, and a gang of kids from a school in Yorkshire put on an impromptu acrobatic display in the street while their teachers enjoyed a drink.

"They'll remember this forever," one of the teachers said to me, sipping from his drink, his eyes alight.

"Do you think it'll do any good?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Absolutely not. But it never was about stopping the war, was it?"

I thought about that for a long time, and later when Ashley and I were making love in our guest house bedroom, I knew what he meant. We marched, but we knew it would never stop the war. We made love, but we knew now that we could never have children. It was the process that made a difference, not the end effect, and it was all about love. Afterwards I told her what I thought, and she agreed.

"Not hippyish, not Seventies-flowers-in-our-hair," she said, "but yes, today was all about love." We held each other close as we fell asleep, happy that we had made a difference.

Cordell offers to ride the bike but I refuse. It already feels like mine. We have ridden and fallen together, and in truth there's something special about it because it was Michael's.
And whose before his?
I think.
Whose was this bike before Michael found it coughing away alone, by the side of the road?
Cordell claps me on the shoulder and tells me to take care.

We head down the hill toward the M4 junction, and the wolves are on my mind. We just witnessed a wolf pack make a killing in the South Wales countryside. Even with everything that has happened that instils a sense of amazement in me, and I'm glad I can still feel that way. I keep glancing in my wing mirror, expecting to see loping grey shapes keeping pace with us in the fields, darting from cover to cover as they stalk us southward. Instinct goes so far, but these creatures knew what they were doing. They were practised, their assault perfected. They were wild. Our view would have been the envy of any wildlife cameraman, and though the attack was far away, still the tactics were clear.

Perhaps they'd escaped from Longleat or some other safari park when the end came. The wolves there were kept out in the open, a large enclosure where they could wander away from the fascinated gaze of children if the mood so took them. Ashley and I had been there several times (and she must have smiled, she must have
laughed
, but still I only remember her when I'm drunk). But the wolves' food at Longleat was delivered already dead, because it was felt that visitors could be disturbed to see the majestic creatures hunting and killing their own prey. Yes, instinct went so far, but I was unsure whether animals reared and kept in such surroundings could ever really adapt to the wild.

And certainly not this quickly.

Perhaps they had been living in the wild for decades. Britain echoed with these stories, tales of cryptozoology featuring wild cats and bears and wolves, and there were many professional scientists prepared to risk their reputations by agreeing with such tales. And Wales had always been a hub of sightings. With its mountain ranges and wide swathes of sparsely populated countryside, it was a natural home for creatures that wished to exist below the radar, popping up only now and then to slaughter half a flock of sheep or gash some over-inquisitive rambler's legs.

I think of the pack circling the deer, herding them, and the waiting wolves pouncing from the cover of trees. And a shiver runs down my back. I am suddenly certain that we have just witnessed something far removed from how the world was before the plagues came.