Martyn Pig (15 page)

‘Martyn?'

We'd stopped at a T-junction.

‘Which way?'

I looked out of the window, trying to work out where we were, but all I could see was snow and tall roadside hedges. Left or right? Left looked as if it might take us back towards town. I didn't know why, it just did. The road to the right looked as if it
might
be the road down to the pub where Dad had left his wallet that time. The old quarry should be around here somewhere. I wound down the window to get a better look. Snow gusted into my face.

‘Martyn!'

I wound up the window.

‘Which way?' she asked. ‘I thought you knew the way?'

‘I do,' I said. ‘If I knew where we were, I'd know which way to go.'

‘Great.'

The inside of the car suddenly lit up and we both turned to see headlights approaching from behind.

‘Shit,' said Alex.

‘Go right.'

‘Are you sure?'

The car pulled up behind us.

‘Just go.'

She slammed the car into gear and pulled out to the right. I watched in the wing-mirror as the car behind us indicated left and pulled away.

‘It's gone,' I said.

We drove on. The further we went, the less sure I was that we were going in the right direction.

‘Where the hell are we?' Alex moaned. ‘If we carry on like this we'll be driving around all night.'

‘I think we should have gone left,' I said.

‘What?'

‘I think I know where we are now. We should have turned left at the junction. You'll have to stop and turn around.'

She said nothing, but I could tell she was fuming. The road was getting narrower and narrower, thick hedges closing in. There was nowhere to turn.

‘Sorry,' I said.

Suddenly she stepped on the brakes and swung on the steering wheel. The car veered towards the hedge.

‘Wha—'

‘There's a gate.'

I don't know how she spotted it but she was right. There was a gateway into a field, just big enough to stop and turn around in. She found reverse, shot out backwards into the road, wheels spinning in the snow, and then we were off again, back the way we'd come.

I glanced across and saw her smiling. ‘Not bad,' I said.

She nodded. ‘Just don't get us lost again.'

At the junction I told her to drive straight on. The road dipped then rose again up a long steep hill. Halfway up the engine began to shudder.

‘Change gear,' I suggested.

‘I already have.'

We were doing about 10 mph.

‘Turn left at the top,' I said.

I could see the tips of cranes in the distance, dim stalks poking up into the night. The quarry. We drove down the hill, past the pub, then up again, the engine moaning at the strain. Along another narrow lane, more tall black hedges, signs warning of concealed entrances. I peered out through the windscreen, looking for the track to the gravel pit. It was here somewhere.

‘Slow down,' I said.

We slowed.

‘There.'

‘Where?'

‘There, on the left.'

She almost missed it, pulling in at the last moment to stop beside a rusted iron gate.

‘Is this it?'

‘Turn off the lights. I'll open the gate.'

I stepped out into the cold blackness. The ground beneath my feet was frozen solid. Driving wind blasted snow into my face. I checked that no cars were coming, pulled up my hood and crossed to the gate, opened it, then signalled Alex to reverse through. As she manoeuvred the car I kept an eye out for traffic. There was nothing. No cars, no lights, just the long black ribbon of the road slicing dimly through the barren landscape. Wasteground, that's all it was. Acres of used-up land, scraped, dug out, exhausted. Just a big hole on the outskirts of town.

I hurried back to the car and got in.

‘OK,' I said.

‘Where?'

I pointed through the rear windows. ‘Down there.'

‘It's a bit dark, isn't it?'

I shrugged.

‘There's nothing there, Martyn, it's pitch black.'

‘Just drive,' I said. ‘It's straight down.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Trust me.'

We reversed slowly, very slowly, down the track, both of us twisted round in our seats peering out through the rear windows into the gloom. Alex was right, it was
extremely
dark. No moon, no stars, just darkness everywhere. We inched backwards down the track, the engine making that peculiar high-pitched whine of reversing. There was something oddly comforting about it.

‘How much further?'

‘Not far,' I said, hoping I was right.

‘If we back into a dirty great hole full of icy water—'

‘Just watch where you're going, Alex.'

‘I am!'

I thought I caught a glimpse of something. Something blacker than everything else.

‘Stop!'

She stabbed the brakes. The car skidded alarmingly for a few long seconds then stopped.

‘Is that it?' she asked.

I squinted into the dark. Was there anything there? I shut my eyes, then opened them again. Maybe.

‘Can you see anything?' I asked.

‘I think so ... just down there?'

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, the shadows became clearer. A hole in the ground. Deep. Black. Steep-sided. Big enough to swallow a bus and a bit too close for comfort.

We looked at each other.

‘That's it,' I said.

‘Rocks.'

‘What?'

I peered into the darkness. ‘Where are you?'

‘Here.'

I couldn't see her. ‘We need some rocks.'

‘What for?'

I looked towards the sound of her voice and saw a dim outline standing at the edge of the gravel pit, looking down.

‘Weights,' I said, crossing over to where she stood. ‘To weigh down the sleeping bag, otherwise it'll float.'

‘I don't think so,' she said.

I followed her gaze and looked down into the hole. Solid ice glinted in the pitch black depths. Alex picked up a pebble and lobbed it over the edge. We waited ... and heard a hollow clatter as the pebble hit the ice, bounced, then skittered across the frozen surface.

‘Rocks,' I said again.

We scrambled around in the freezing dark looking for rocks. It was still snowing like mad, cold as anything. The ground was uneven, slippery, icy-hard. Dead roots and bits of old machinery jutted out all over the place. And it was dark as hell.

But I felt great. My mind was crystal clear, I knew exactly what I was doing. The cold, the dark, the danger – it didn't matter. I was focused. I was doing what had to be done. That's all. I was
doing
it. For the first time in my life I was really
doing
something.

After about ten minutes we had a fair-sized pile of rocks. I stooped down and picked out a really big one, lifted it with both hands and heaved it over the side of the gravel pit. This time we heard a satisfying crack – a flat, brittle snap that echoed dully off the walls of the pit – followed instantly by the massive splash of the rock smashing through the ice.

‘I love that sound,' I said.

Another half dozen or so rocks went over the side until I was pretty sure the ice was all smashed up.

‘That'll do,' I said. ‘Let's get him out.'

Alex opened the car's rear doors and I reached in, grabbed hold of the sleeping bag and dragged it out. It fell to the ground with a cold thump. I squatted down and unzipped it just a little at the side.

‘Rocks,' I said.

Alex passed me the rocks and I stuffed them into the bag. A car droned past on the road above us and we both froze for an instant. Twin yellow headlights appeared, lighting up the falling snow, then they were gone. I carried on filling the bag with rocks.

‘What's the time,' I asked.

She held her wristwatch up to her eyes. ‘Quarter to eight.'

I put one more rock in the bag, then zipped it up. ‘Give me a hand,' I said. ‘We'll have to drag it.'

We both stooped and took hold of a corner of the sleeping bag.

‘Ready?'

She nodded.

‘One, two, three – pull!'

It was a lot heavier now, loaded with rocks, but once we got going it wasn't too bad, and after four or five big tugs we reached the edge of the pit.

We must have looked like something out of an old horror film; a graveyard scene, mid-winter, the dead of night, two hunchbacks dragging a body in a rock-filled sack across the icy ground ...

I smiled at the image.

A slice of moon had appeared from behind the dark shroud of snow clouds. Silent and pale. For a few moments the quarry landscape was dimly visible. Great mounds of dead earth, hacked-out trenches, flat and barren plains, empty oil drums, machinery remains, rusted cranes, crumbling cliffs. Here and there, nature was reclaiming the land. Clumps of wild grass swayed in the wind and the ground was dotted with dark and squat-looking shrubs. The wasteland was being reborn. It was all twilight grey, colourless in the pale light of snow and moon. Then the clouds closed and the moonlight was lost and everything was black again.

‘Are you all right, Martyn?' Alex asked quietly.

I looked down into the depths of the gravel pit: the water waited, cold and deep and dark.

‘Never felt better,' I said.

Then I raised my foot and heaved the sleeping bag over the edge.

Silence.

The wind whistled faintly through the grasses.

A huge
kersplash
sounded from below.

I listened. Gurgling noises, bubbling, the sound of sinking. In my mind I saw the sodden sleeping bag drifting slowly down through the deep black icy water. Dad, zipped up and dead, senseless, tumbling in slow motion, sinking down through the cold dark liquid, finally coming to rest among the rocks and silt and supermarket trolleys and rusted bike frames at the bottom of the pit. Motionless and silent, cocooned, unseen in the frozen ooze.

Buried.

Gone.

Not sleeping, just dead.

Back in the car, Alex turned the ignition key. The engine whined, coughed and died. She tried again. Nothing.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘It always does this.'

She pulled out the choke and tried again. This time the engine caught and she kept it revving, blue-grey exhaust smoke clouding out into the wind. She jammed it into gear, released the handbrake and pressed the accelerator. The back wheels started spinning. I felt the car slew round to one side and slide back towards the gravel pit. We were going to join Dad in his watery grave ... but Alex kept up the revs and suddenly we lurched forward and were away. No trouble.

Up the hill, through the gate. We stopped. I jumped out and closed the gate behind us, took one final look into the darkness below, then got back into the car.

‘Let's go,' I said.

We pulled out onto the road and I sank down in the seat and watched the windscreen wipers click-clack hypnotically across the windscreen. Snowflakes fell and were wiped away, fell and wiped away, fell and wiped away –
click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.
Metronomic. The car was warm, heated by the working of the engine. Warm and close. Dozy. The engine droned sleepily and the tyres whooshed faintly on the snow-covered road. Outside, the blur of hedges and falling snow passed by, back to where we'd come from. I felt a warm glow of comfort. Satisfied, happy, secure.

We were going home.

We'd done it.

I'd done it.

It probably sounds a lot worse than it actually was. What I did. But you'd be surprised what you can do when you have to. You'd be surprised how easy things are. Once you've accepted something's got to be done, no matter what it is, you can usually do it. You just
do
it. That's the way it is. And anyway, what did I do that was wrong? You tell me. What did I do? Who did I hurt? I hurt nobody. It's not as if I broke any commandments or anything. Where does it say, ‘thou shalt not bury thy father in a gravel pit'? Break it down, look at it, analyse my actions. What did I do? Did I kill? Did I steal? Did I commit adultery? Did I covet my neighbour's ass? Did I honour my father? Maybe not. But why the hell should I? He never honoured me. What it all boils down to is: I never hurt anyone. And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Hurt and pain. Physical, mental, whatever else kind of hurt there is.
That's
what's bad. You can do just about anything you want – as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, or anything, it's probably OK.

A long straight road stretched out ahead. Parallel lines of hazy white lights drawing us into the outskirts of town. Nearly there.

‘Alex?'

‘Mmm?'

‘How do you feel?'

She glanced across at me. ‘About what?'

‘About Dean.'

Her lips tightened and she turned her attention back to the road. ‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘I only want to know how you feel about him.'

‘
What?
'

‘How do you feel?'

‘How do you
think
I feel?'

‘I don't know, that's why I'm asking.'

She changed gear angrily. ‘I feel like shit, that's how I feel. He's a bastard. All right? I hate him.'

‘You must have liked him before, though.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Otherwise you wouldn't have gone out with him.'

‘You wouldn't understand.'

‘I might.'

I watched her from the corner of my eye. Her face was a mask.

‘You're too young,' she snapped. ‘You wouldn't understand.'

I don't think she meant it nastily, it just came out that way.

‘How can I understand if you don't tell me?' I asked quietly.

She frowned at the windscreen.

‘Look,' she said, ‘it's just ... I know what he's like, OK? I always did. He's stupid ... boring ... selfish. I know that. He's not even good-looking. I
know
.'