The Chalk Giants (9 page)

Wondered where Potts took himself off to. Used to wander out into mist, in dirty old belted mac. Sometimes be gone all day. Never took gun, not any more. Had feeling one time he wasn’t coming back.

She used to say she thought a lot of him. But that was old stuff too. Like tramps. Could never resist tramp, filthier the better. Used to feed them, try and get them to come up to the flat. Swore it was result of hospital training. But never did a good work that was private. They used to call them Penances with Hooks.

She never understood about my painting. And I was closer to her than any other woman I ever met. Not many disappointments like that in one lifetime.

Said once she was sorry for me, because men could never have babies. Maybe she was just as disappointed in me.

Subject of Potts really caused final row. Said she was sorry for him, way he looked at her she could tell he was lonely, never had anybody to love. Love the greatest experience, etc. Said I’d always had enough to do feeling sorry for myself. Anyway, had seen her sympathy once or twice. Another trained fruit tree. One thing led to another, Christ knows why. Probably both dog-tired. Said in the end I didn’t want her, never had. Said she’d sleep with him instead, at least he’d show some gratitude. Said O.K. fine, to carry on, then had to hold her back when she started getting up. Was always her trouble. No sense of the grotesque.

Looked rough in the morning, said she didn’t feel too good. Said to take it easy for the day but that wasn’t right either. Said it didn’t matter how she felt, had always had to work. Got fed up with the whole bloody thing, went down to boat. As I pushed off heard her walk across yard, slam of big house door. Started to work off temper chopping wood.

Stayed out most of day. Took half a dozen grayling, more than we’d need. Didn’t fancy going back so rowed on west, thought I’d see if I could find some decent wood. Made fire in cranny in rocks, cooked own lunch for once. Didn’t enjoy it. Went through all the moods I used to go through before, whenever I walked out on her. Used to be mad to start with, tell myself I was being ruined anyway, we were better off apart. Also other insidious thing, that I was handy as lover but no good for a spouse. Used to remember her face then, calm, frozen look she always used when she was hurt. Would want to run back like bloody fool, or find phone. Then would get mad again because I knew that look as well, it was standard part of armoury. Then I’d remember things we’d done together. Like first week’s camp on Purbeck, cracking up crab with tentpeg mallet, drinking white wine by moonlight. And it would all start again.

Tide was setting, when I started back. Made it a hard row. Getting dark when I beached boat. Walked up to farmhouse with conviction something was wrong.

Lamp was lit and she’d prepared decent meal, out of scraps we had left. She was sitting in corner, by fire. Blanket round her, thought how white she looked. Said she was O.K., just fine. Tang in air, like hospital. Even then it didn’t click.

Took dish across to the sink we’d rigged. Nearly threw up. Bottom of sink one big puddle of blood.

Ran back to her, grabbed her hand. Had been keeping it out of sight. Dressing she’d put on was sopping but could see how short it was.

Don’t think I’ve ever been so mad. Was scared of course, when I realized what she’d done. That now I had a Goddess with a finger missing. She’d got a meal ready then. Done it specially well, I expect while she was pouring blood.

Wasn’t angry with her, was angry
for
her. Asked like a fool was it still bleeding, was there anything I could do. She started pulling at dressing on stump, said there wasn’t but she expected I’d like to see. Hit her then, hard across face.

She steadied up. Stood and looked at me. White marks on cheek. Then said if there was nothing else, was going to bed. Asked if I was sure I didn’t mind.

Covered her with the blankets. She didn’t argue, just lay clutching poor reddened hand. Made fire up, asked if she wanted whisky. Didn’t answer. Cleaned sink, couldn’t leave it like that. Got spare lamp, went into Martine’s room. Sleeping bag still there, her bits scattered about. Air felt like a tomb but once in bag it wasn’t too bad. Took a long time to sleep. Stomach felt queer, and had got the shakes.

She’d gone in the morning. Didn’t seem possible at first but suppose I should have expected it. Run through each other a long time back, each taken what the other had to give. Thought when I killed it first time nothing could ever be as bad again. But was wrong. When ghost is killed too, nothing left at all.

Didn’t try looking for her. Instead started on whisky. Don’t know what I was celebrating. Perhaps that Death is King.

Don’t know what happened to me after that. Had run through feelings, no emotion left. So don’t know why I was on hands and knees in front of door, why tears pouring down face. Searched shingle, inch by inch. Then realized I was looking in wrong place. Think whisky had got to me.

Went to barn. Blood on floor, and on wheel of Maggie’s car. But still couldn’t see what I was looking for.

Couldn’t believe it when I found it. Don’t think I believed till then any of it was real. Wrapped it in handkerchief. Then couldn’t see straight. Realized had taken all she had to give, then asked more. So started giving pieces of her body. Nothing else left.

Potts back midmorning. Shuffled about, poked head round door of barn. Asked what was the matter then said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Bloody fool sounded as if he meant it. Started laughing then, couldn’t stop. Shoved out past him, ran into mist. Made for lane. Knew she’d have gone that way. Seeing her face now as it used to be, forehead and firm cat-muzzle, big calm dark blue eyes. Had to find her and explain. Knew if I could find her it would be all right. Never know loneliness and pain again.

Reached dead village before I realized. Tank still there, heeled over in ditch. Beyond it could see trunks of trees lining main road.

Couldn’t believe it. Realized mist thinning, light brightening round me. Ran again, up to road. Sky pale blue; sunlight, golden rust on wrecks, hill ahead with golden grass. Air cool; and down below, mist stretching out like sea.

Curious conviction of total emptiness of land. But started in again, running toward hill.

Dusk has fallen, the long, blue dusk of summer; and Potts is alone. It does seem a shame...

He lies in his room at the end of the ruined corridor. He’s wearing his old mack; his back is against the chill stone of the wall, his head sunk forward on his chest. He feels empty inside somehow, as empty as the farmhouse. He’s been trying to get cynical about it all. But he’s just too tired.

There’s a noise somewhere, a creak or a scuff. Like the scuff of a foot. He tries to imagine what it would be like if the door opened slowly and she was standing there, she’d come back - Just her, on her own. But the picture won’t form. It won’t form because he knows that’s not the way things happen. People never come back.

The noise wasn’t anything of course. He imagined it. Or maybe it was a rat.

It seems impossible somehow that life could be so empty; that the farmhouse should be empty, and the cliffs. Not just wrong, impossible. He reaches out to where he laid the gun. He wants to put the barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger, stop all the emptiness once and for all. But he daren’t. In spite of everything, he’s still too scared. That’s nearly the worst of all.

The light has almost gone now; and surely that was her, she turned her foot on a pebble just outside, he heard the scrape. He calls out, as loud as he can; but nothing answers. He lies back; and this time his eyes stay closed.

He frowns. There are the sounds at last, the sounds he’s been waiting for; a clapping and pattering of footsteps, and something else. A high-pitched squeaking; erratic, like . . . it must be, the wheel of a truck!

He’s certain he isn’t dreaming; he sits up, and at once a curious equipage jerks itself into sight. For a moment, he’s disappointed. He’d almost thought ... but it doesn’t matter what he thought. Something odd is happening, something very odd indeed. He watches, intently. Quite what his altered viewpoint is, he’s not sure; but it doesn’t matter. At best, viewpoints are subjective things . . ..

To Monkey, the movement of the sun across the sky always seemed essentially a sideways matter. It was this innate feeling - a thing of the blood rather than the intellect - that helped him in his first uncertain attempts at map reading. For years, the maps he owned had been meaningless to him. He would draw them from the wooden pocket in which they were kept, steadying himself against the lurching movements of Truck, and fold and unfold them, admiring the rich light blue of their edges, the patches of green and brown overlaid with delicate networks of marks and lines. And he would blink and frown, grappling with something more nebulous than memory.

The sea gave him his first real clue; the great blue presence of it, looming and dazzling between the shoulders of watching hills. How Truck, in its erratic career, came to be in sight of the water will never be known; but Monkey crowed with delight, extending blackish, sticky fingers to the brightness. Then he fell wholly quiet.

He remained quiet for a day, a night and part of another day. All that time, Truck veered and rattled along within sight of the vastness. Then a dead tree, sprawling grotesquely across the road, caused Pru and Sal to swerve aside. They fled, backs humped, from the clutching, bleached branches; and Monkey lay frowning, thoughtfully oblivious, sucking at his fingers. In time, he began to doze. He dreamed of formless shapes that hovered aggravatingly just beyond reach. When he opened his eyes again, Truck was passing along a narrow sunken lane. Walls of reddish-brown rock jerked past on either side, hung here and there with the translucent green leaves of ferns. Above, the foliage of over-arching trees shone golden in sun- light.

Monkey, still bemused, lay seeing the green and brown and blue; and suddenly it was as if a great idea, already formed somewhere in his brain, pushed itself forward into consciousness. He stopped his thumb-sucking, drew out once more the precious, grubby sheets; and the truth burst on him. He bawled his loudest, bringing Truck to a precipitate halt; sat up crowing and dribbling, a map clutched destructively in one great fist. He waved his arms, startling Pru and Sal from their immemorial indifference; and Truck turned, jerkily obedient, under control at last.

Monkey, his mind buzzing with new ideas, stopped Truck when the blueness was once more in sight. He sat a long time frowning, screwing his eyes against the miles-long dazzle; then finally, unsurely, he waved to the right. Though ‘right’ at that time was a concept beyond his grasp; rather, he turned his destiny five-fingerward. To his left, or three-fingerward, lay the water; in his hand, still tightly and juicily gripped, was the map. His intention was as irrevocable as it was strange. He would follow, or cause Truck to follow, the edge of the sea.

Through the day, and on into the night, Pru and Sal kept up a steady pace. For a time, Monkey lay restless; finally their steady pounding soothed him to sleep. Dawn light roused him, streaming over the high canvas flap of Truck. He sat up, mind instantly full of his great design. The spyholes of Truck, ahead and to either side, afforded too narrow a field of view. He stood precariously to his full height, hands gripping the edge of Truck’s bleached hood; and crowed once more, with wonder and delight, at what he saw.

He was parked on the crest of a great sweep of downland. Ahead the road stretched away, its surface cracked and broken, bristling with weeds. Across it lay the angular shadow of Truck, topped by the small protuberance that was Monkey’s head. Beyond, and far into the distance, the land seemed to swell, ridge after ridge pausing and gathering itself to swoop saw-edged to the vagueness of the sea. Below him, a great distance away, Monkey saw the curving line of an immense offshore beach. Waves creamed and rushed against it; above it were hovering scraps of birds, each as white as the foam. The noise of the water came to him dimly, like the breathing of a giant.

He collapsed abruptly, huddled back to the darkness and protective warmth of Truck. Later, gaining courage, he traced with one finger the little green line that was an image of the mightiness. He sat proudly then, chin on fist, the master of all he surveyed.

At midday the great beach still stretched ahead. Behind the long ridge of pebbles, lagoons lay ruffled and as blue as the sky, dotted with the bobbing pinpoints of birds. The lagoons too Monkey traced on the map, and hugged himself with an uncommunicable excitement.

His good mood was tempered in the days that followed. Always, relentlessly, he urged Truck on toward the sunset; always, at dawn, he stared anxiously ahead, expecting to see the narrowing of the land, the blue glint of sea five-fingerward. But the land went on endlessly, leaping and rolling; and his faith was sorely tested. To Monkey, the notion of scale was as yet as hard to grasp as the notion of God. He became aware, for the first time, of the frustration of helplessness. His thought, lightning-swift, outran the stolid jogging of Pru and Sal. Sometimes he urged his companions on with high, cracked shouts; but they ignored him, keeping up their one stubborn pace.

It was a dull, drizzling morning when Monkey reached the end of the world. The sea, grey as the sky, was fretted with long white ridges; a droning wind blew from it, driving spray like hail against the impervious hood of Truck. Monkey, woken from a grumbling doze, sat up Wearily, crawled to the forward spyhole and yelped with triumph. The land on which Truck stood ran, narrowing at last, into the ocean; the water had swung round five-fingerward, barring further progress. Monkey crowed and howled, bobbing till Truck shook on its tall springs; for after all, the great idea was true. He had understood a Mystery.

North, or headwards, was a concept already relegated to the state of things known. Headwards Truck turned, then five-fingerward toward the sun and three-fingerward again. During his first great journey the notion of contour had also come to Monkey; he studied his maps, fitting each painstakingly to the next, and in the depth of winter was undismayed to see, rising ahead, the outlines of hills greater and more terrible than any he had known. Pru and Sal stopped at the sight, clucking and stamping in alarm; but he made no further move to urge them forward. For a time Truck wandered as it had always wandered, aimlessly; and Monkey was content. Snow came, and the long howling of the wind. In time the snow passed. The sky grew blue again, buds showed green against the stark twigs of trees. Then the maps were once more produced; and once more, Truck went a-voyaging.