The Pack (16 page)

“You'll soon see,” said Martha.

Out in the light, Martha was confirmed in what she had suspected. She saw an old man's sallow face framed by his hat and earmuffs. It was the tremble of panic as much as of anger or threat she had first heard in his voice.

Hunger was sniffing through the thick snow.

“About here,” said Martha and punched through the frozen drift. Her fist found emptiness. A mini avalanche collapsed into the space.

At her fourth punch, her fist jarred against something and when she withdrew it, there they were—a pair of brown eyes staring at her through a film of ice, as they had stared their last at Floris. Its eyelashes were like tiny scimitars. Martha excitedly brushed the ice-spicules from the calf's nose and head.

“This should help,” she said, stepping back.

The old farmer's eyes gleamed. “A calf! A whole calf!” Whether he was trying to dance or simply moved too quickly towards the frozen treasure, he slipped in the snow and fell. As Martha helped him up, he seemed to recollect himself and become suddenly fearful.

“We've got to be careful. Later—we'll do it later.” And he packed snow back into the hole Martha had made and turned back up the track to the farm.

*   *   *

It was almost dark when they left Bradley sleeping under a mound of straw to return to the calf's snow tomb.

As Victor and Floris stood watch and Hunger surveyed the far horizon, the farmer sliced through the snow with a spade to free the frozen calf. Martha crouched and with her hands dug away snow to clear the hooves. They were bronze in the fading light. She took the end of the rope the farmer passed to her and tied it tightly round its forelegs.

“Often it's the rope that pulls them into the world too,” the farmer said.

They heaved together and with a creak the calf was pried from the snowdrift that had claimed it. The farmer took his spade and collapsed the calf-shaped imprint it had left. He picked up the rope with one hand and began to pull the calf like a sledge. Soon he was panting. Martha took hold of the rope.

“Here,” she said to Victor and Floris, pointing to the smooth side of the calf. Victor crouched on it for a few yards, drumming his fists on its taut skin. Then he skipped off and held Floris's hand as she took his place before she tumbled backwards into the banking of snow. For once, her laugh kept her cough at bay.

“It's good to hear a youngster laugh again,” said the farmer. He looked up into the empty sky; the first stars were clear in it. A light snow was beginning to fall.

“More snow,” said Martha.

“No, just enough to cover our tracks,” said the farmer. “Winter's had her last big bite at us. The thaw will come soon. You can stay till then.”

“So, what do we call you?”

“Sundep McLachlan. Pleased to meet you…”

“Martha.”

*   *   *

That night, when they felt close to sleep, the barn door opened and two figures passed through the moonlit frame, carrying bowls of hot soup. Shreds of meat floated in it and its surface was jeweled with moons of fat. This time, only silence greeted them.

“How's the boy?” said Mrs. McLachlan. “Here, this'll mend him.”

Martha lifted the bowl to Bradley's lips. The hot soup melted a passage of ice through his chest. But before its work was done, Bradley felt the first grains of salt encrusting his lips and he was desperate for a handful of snow to assuage his thirst.

14

CHLOE

“Bradley. Come in.” Uncle Vince leans against the marble fireplace. Above it, a huge mirror makes the room seem endless. There is no fire in the grate today—only some withered flowers—and, though the sun is dappling the high trees in the valley, inside it is winter. How quickly the seasons pass in these parts! Bradley begins to shiver.

“You will know,” Uncle Vince begins—the “o” of “know” like a smoke ring in the chill air—“that your father left no provision for you. He was blind in more ways than one.” Uncle Vince tugs at a white cuff with pleasure.

Bradley says nothing. He is trying to see the room beyond the room that they are in, reflected in the mirror. Perhaps his mother is in there, wringing her small hands in the lap of her blue dress, waiting to make amends.

“So, what do you have to say?”

Bradley shrugs. “What does it mean for Chloe and me?”

“It means you're both paupers. It means that your mother and I may support one of you, but certainly not both, given what a pampered creature you've turned out to be.”

Any time now, his mother will come forward and turn on Uncle Vince her blue cut-glass eyes. She will put his world to rights. All will be as it was.

“I am my father's son,” says Bradley. “I shall have my inheritance.”

“You pip-squeak. You dare to speak to me like that!” Uncle Vince swipes his open hand at Bradley's head. The slap has not toppled Bradley, but his head rings like a bell. “Out of my sight. Now!”

Bradley turns to the double doors so far away. On the other side of them, he is almost sure, his mother is smoothing down her dress, preparing for an entrance.

He will never know, for he has only started towards them, when the whole room begins to creak like a ship. Both doors burst open, no longer able to hold back a ferocious wind that hits Bradley with such force he must lean low and fight to keep his balance.

The ship pitches now and he slides back a few steps before he is able to re-align his body position to meet this new threat. Furniture topples past him. Amongst it, he counts a studded leather armchair, an inlaid table with iron legs and a cupboard whose feet are four lions' paws. Each could bear him away and crush him against the marble fireplace or into whatever void awaits him. He twists and turns to let them pass.

The brief storm blows itself out and he is returned to an empty room. But the room is vast. And within it he must shield his eyes, for he is almost blinded by blue light: blocks of blue light, stretching out until the far horizon. The wind has drawn tears from his eyes and, as they freeze to his cheeks, he feels the slightest tautness on his skin. Below him, the carpet's intricate design has given way to a carpet of ice that creaks and cracks with each faltering step he takes. But faltering will not save him: he needs to dance to avoid his father's fate.

Uncle Vince's laughter, in the shape of a black bird, passes overhead.

So he dances and dances through the cold and the breaking ice, though his legs burn with tiredness and hunger eats at him. Until he knows only this—he must eat or sleep. Simple choices.

Margaret smiles at him in her old kitchen with its hanging copper pots, its pantry stocked with soup, fruit, oatcakes and … and … But he fights the dream, knowing, for survival's sake, he must hold on to what is happening. Here. Now.

He crouches on the ice to scratch up a piece of fishbone, a frill of flesh still frozen to it. He sucks at it, though the bones meld with his lips and take some of his own skin with them when he has finished. Is it the bones that have given him such a raging thirst? Salt surrounds him, encrusts him, courses through him.

Then, through a clear pane of ice, he sees the round brown eyes of a calf staring up at him. It must have slipped from a passing cargo boat. Ice holds its head in place, while its limbs dance below it. Bradley digs at the ice.

The ice shatters over the eyes of the calf. They stare at him blindly, as his father's once did. He is reaching into the blue waters to take the calf's head in his arms, when the platform of ice splinters around him and he falls through it into the icy waters.

Here he knows he needs to wake, wake or be drowned. Only he does not drown, but falls into another room, where he stumbles backwards, till he lands on a hard wooden floor.

And there all the stories he has ever been told dry up.

*   *   *

Bradley holds up his hand and stares at the slow, perfect bead of blood that forms and reforms on the heel of his hand each time after he wipes it. That at least is something real to cling to, as all else seems so unpredictable. For if he lives in a castle, why the broken glass, why the sour smell of alcohol?

Uncle Vince shifts on the burst settee. He has been scratching himself and his hand stays under his armpit, held by his shirt, as he sleeps. Bradley knows not to wake him. He gets up and crunches across the broken glass. In the kitchen he reaches up to open the cupboard doors. They are all empty. He is closing the last door, when he becomes aware of Uncle Vince's breathing in the doorway.

“What is it you're looking for, ya greedy wee pup? Think we can keep you the rate your mother wants to feed you?”

“Where is my mum?”

“Where d'you think? Out with that sister of yours, looking for something to fill you up.”

Uncle Vince yawns and scratches under one arm as he turns. Bradley knows he should not ask the question, knows it riles Uncle Vince, but every so often he can't help himself.

“Dad?”

Uncle Vince spins round. “Look, you may as well stop asking. He's not coming back. Blind drunk he was, as usual. Wandered off and froze himself to death. Silly bugger. So stop asking. Right?”

Uncle Vince cuffs Bradley round the ear and Bradley stumbles against the cupboard. Inside, the cups chink against each other.

“Careful!” says Uncle Vince.

Bradley remembers his father before blind-drunkenness, before the Dead Time. Bradley was very small then and his father could throw him up in the air. Bradley remembers hanging there a long time, like a star in the sky.

“You're my little star,” his father would shout. And Bradley would look down on his father's smooth face, his shining eyes, his bright white shirt. But this was a long time ago, when he had a name that was never spoken now, though he strained to hear it. All he could make out was a crash of consonants and vowels that sounded like a curse.

The door opens and Bradley's mother and sister, Chloe, come in. His mother has a plastic bag in her hands. Uncle Vince grunts an enquiry her way.

“Some potatoes,” she says. “A bone.”

“A bone,” Uncle Vince sneers. “D'you think we're dogs? Huh, probably not as well off, eh. What else? What else?”

“I got it, if that's what you're asking,” says Bradley's mother. She looks up at Uncle Vince. Her blue eyes are grey and red-rimmed, her cheeks pinched.

“Right, fine. But watch that tone with me. I'm the one that's keeping a roof over our heads, remember—though for how long I can manage that … Here, give me it.”

Bradley's mother takes out the bottle and hands it over to Uncle Vince. It is a clear liquid, like water, but still it makes him cough.

Chloe and Bradley watch him take a couple more long gulps. What will happen? He may hug them and cry. He may look at Bradley and become suddenly angry.

Their mother is watching too—like a hawk.

“A little bit, please. Just a swallow or two…”

Uncle Vince looks at her in disgust. This is a recent request, but one she makes with more and more urgency.

“Please, sweetheart.”

“Pah!” says Uncle Vince and thrusts the almost empty bottle into her outstretched hands.

Soon now, their mother will take to the bed she shares with Uncle Vince, turn her face to the wall and weep helplessly, her greasy hair spread out across the dirty pillow.

“Where are you two going?” Uncle Vince asks. “Sit down where I can keep my eyes on you—before you eat us out of house and home.”

They sit by the fireside, nursing the dying fire, as Uncle Vince's red eyes grow more and more malevolent, before finally they close and he tips over into sleep.

Chloe takes Bradley by the wrist.

“Come on,” she says. “We're going on an adventure.”

She brings a blanket from under their mother's bed and tells Bradley to put on all the clothes he has—another pair of socks, a jersey, his padded top.

“Sshh,” she says, as she opens the door and waves him into the street. The door shuts on Uncle Vince's grunting sleep, their mother's fitful weeping.

The streets are quiet, but Chloe knows where she is going and needs no one to guide her. The streets all look the same to Bradley. Smashed windows, spray-painted walls, eyes in empty doorframes.

After an age—or so it seems to Bradley—they come to a street of old shops with broken signs.

“Here,” says Chloe. “Let's rest in this doorway.”

“Yes,” says Bradley. His short legs are tired now and it is good to have a blanket wrapped around him and to share his sister's warmth.

“You remember,” Chloe says—then there is a name, but it is all vowels, soft and indistinct—“when Mummy and I go out? You know where we get most of our food?”

Bradley shakes his head.

“People give it to us. We sit with our hands out and kind people give us food. Shall we try that tomorrow?”

“Yes, please,” says Bradley. He is so hungry he can hardly wait till tomorrow—one short sleep away.

“Good,” says Chloe. “Good.” Then there is that vowelly word again, but even softer now. And again. It is almost like the sound of sleep itself.

*   *   *

When Bradley wakes up the next morning, he is in the doorway alone. He waits for Chloe, but she does not come back and he cannot remember the way home.

With hunger comes the memory of what Chloe had told him to do. This seems as good a place as any. He puts out his hands.

Soon—“Poor wee boy”—“Too young to be living like that”—“Ach, another one”—he has collected almost more bread and scraps than he can eat himself. Then he sees, coming towards him, yellow eyes glinting in the midday light, a huge, sharp-eared dog …

*   *   *

Martha stroked Bradley's forehead. Yet another bowl of soup had gone cold—its surface yellowy and thick-skinned. Hunger licked his lips.