Beastings Read online

  Beastings

  Benjamin Myers

  Copyright © Benjamin Myers 2014

  First published in 2014 by

  Bluemoose Books Ltd

  25 Sackville Street

  Hebden Bridge

  West Yorkshire

  HX7 7DJ

  www.bluemoosebooks.com

  All rights reserved

  Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN 978 0 9927919 3 3

  Hardback ISBN 978 0 9927919 4 0

  Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press

  For my parents

  who showed

  me the mountains.

  “He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord.”

  ~ Psalms 113:9

  WHEN THE MOON was a pearl at the bottom of the tarn they walked over drifts of shifting shale and wild waxy grass polished to a sheen by the wind and when the great banks of cloud rolled in and they could see neither their hands in front of their faces nor their feet on the ground they sat where they were and waited it out.

  Once when they were walking the Priest stopped and raised a hand as if to swear an oath and said listen and the Poacher said what do you hear and the Priest said just listen and they stood in silence then the Priest said I can hear a baby crying and from the far distance along the broad fell and across the tight valley they could hear the shrill unfettered screams of a creature in distress.

  That’s them said the Priest that’s the child and the Poacher said that’s not them and the Priest said how do you know and the Poacher said because that’s not a baby that’s two foxes rutting mark my words – that’s two foxes at it – mating like – I’d know that sound anywhere. I’ve heard it a thousand times before and I expect I’ll hear it a thousand times more. What happens is the vixen clamps on and the dog swells inside her and it’s him what makes the screaming not her. The Priest said are you sure because that sounds like a baby to me and the Poacher said it may sound like a bairn but that’s foxes trust me Father though many is the night wanderer that’s made the same mistake as you.

  They listened some more to the howls of pain that cut through the night like the sound of something human being torn apart. A sound to freeze hot blood and still a beating heart.

  Then they pressed on.

  1.

  RAIN FELL LIKE steel rivets.

  It came down hard pile-driving into the ground. It was the first full fall in the weeks since she had left St Mary’s.

  She had departed while the embers were still glowing. Upped and went before Hinckley started hacking in his pit. She’d bundled the bairn and gone out the back way. Taken one of the tracks out of town. Away from the streets and into the trees.

  It was best for the both of them. To get out of that house. The only way.

  She had known it the first moment she saw him lift the baby. The way he had held it all wrong and shaken it when it cried. Shouting all the time in its face so that his voice went hoarse. It was a tiny thing; a fragile thing. It would only be a matter of time before those hands – hands used to smashing rock and hewing stone – would go too far. She saw a life that was already set in place just as hers was set from day one.

  The child was a rare and delicate egg that had fallen from a crooked nest.

  There were places they could go to beyond the horizon where she had heard that things were different; stories of the seaside and great mountains made from sand and boats just sitting there waiting to be sailed away.

  Some of the Sisters – the ones with the strangest accents – had talked of an island out there. They said it was free of serpents. Maybe there were other islands too. Maybe there were other islands that were empty where she and the bairn could live safely in silence.

  Because on an island in the ocean no-one can sneak up on you.

  It would be some time before they missed the bairn or did anything about it. Of this she was certain. They weren’t even fussed; anyone could see that. Might be that they’d come after her; might be they’d see it as a blessing. Certainly he didn’t give a fig for the child. They had a head start at least.

  And now it was raining and the girl was under the cover of branches but she was wet and already shivering and soon the trees would end and the fells would begin and after that she would just keep moving. One foot and then the other.

  After many hours the rain slowed and the girl spied the tops of a cluster of buildings in the distance. She went towards them.

  Through the falling cords of drizzle she saw that it was a farm dwelling hunched in a hollow in the ground. It held one house and a number of outbuildings.

  The girl approached from behind and had to climb over a stone wall and push through furze that stabbed at her and then she was in the farm yard. She looked from left to right. She waited. A man stepped out from the barn. A dog followed behind him. The dog’s ears were standing to attention and it circled the yard low stalking the ground. It had smelled the girl first then heard her. Sight was the third sense.

  The man looked up and saw her and the collie growled. He gave a curt but shrill whistle and it crouched onto its stomach.

  The man slowly walked towards the girl. He stopped and squinted at her through the rain. The dog suppressed a growl.

  What you after said the man.

  The girl looked over her shoulder back the way she had come to check her escape route in case he came at her.

  She pulled the bundle tight to her chest.

  You’re a long way from anywhere here.

  His voice was loud. It cut through the space between them. He spoke at the volume of someone who lived outdoors someone more used to talking to dogs and cows and sheep.

  You must be after summat he said.

  The rain was teeming now. It was running in rivulets from the rim of the man’s hat. She had never seen one like it before.

  The dog’s fur was matted into points and its ears flattened down. It hadn’t taken its eyes off her.

  Trying to get to the lake he said. A statement.

  She nodded. Uncertain.

  It’s slewing it. Bad day for you and the bairn to be out.

  The girl looked at the bundle then back over her shoulder and then she turned her head to the man. He stared but she refused to meet his eyes; she could only look vaguely towards his form.

  The man stepped closer to her. He was wearing an old pair of Hessian boots that went up to just below the knee. The girl chewed at her lower lip.

  He saw the unsuitable boots on her feet that were caked in mud to her ankles. And still she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  The bairn’ll be after feeding he said.

  The girl said nothing so he turned to the house and without looking back said there’s milk indoors.

  He walked across the yard but the dog stayed for a moment then he whistled and it turned and followed him. So did the girl.

  There was a run-off down one side of the yard and it was thick with slurry. The flow carried the detritus of the yard: straw and effluent and dampened clumps of grist.

  The farmer walked around to the side of the house and opened the door.

  The girl paused a pace behind.

  Come on then if you’re coming.

  He turned and she followed through the doorway and into the scullery. It was a dark room and no warmer than outside but it was dry.

  Her boots rattled on the slate.

  There was a stone sink
and straw underfoot to mop up the mud that they had trailed in from the yard. More straw in the corner to make a nest for the dog. Cured meat parts turned on chains that hung from ceiling hooks. Ham sides and bacon flanks. She held the baby tighter to her chest.

  She followed the man through to the kitchen and as she did he stopped and turned to her and she flinched but he was only closing the door to keep the dog out of the main trunk of the house. It scratched at the closed door but the man said get by in a low voice and it quietened down.

  The kitchen led onto a small living room. There was no door between the rooms only a low stone arch.

  The man bent to stoke the hot coals in the range then pushed a handful of kindling in and pulled a metal stopper to fan the embers. The flames took to the branches. Then he picked up the scuttle and rattled more coal into the stove. The fire jumped into life and the sound of the cracking coal and the smell of the coke dust and the shadows on the dark walls put her back there. Back to the time before Hinckley and before the Sisters even; back to the house of her parents up top. A world of shadows and sounds and smells and feelings rather than clear images. Tension and fear and pain.

  Her parents were a storm rolling over the tops; their pairing was a flash of violence and the crack of the sky in the cramped room where the fire burned. The sound of slapping and stamping. A family activity was gathering to watch a sheep have its throat slit out front. The gleeful chatter of hungry voices as the black blood dripped into a bucket and the face of the animal as its eyes searched the crowd for an explanation were as memorable now as if it were yesterday yet the face of her father had been reduced to nothing but a smudge. A rough-edged shape.

  Her mother was a flour-dusted toothless thing who one day turned her back and kept it turned till the church cart and its passengers had crossed the bog on the cart track and disappeared down out of sight. Her tapped daughter gone with it.

  By that next spring the rest of the dormitory beds were full with the wild children of the fells now locked in tied down strapped and scratched and starved into shape. Time distorted and time crumbled. Her existence at St Mary’s came to be defined by a few stock symbols – soap and scars and slopping out; buckets and bruises and The Book. Life was one hard day followed by the next and for the girl the days stacked up to become first months then years and soon everything that had gone before diminished to a few stock memories. The past was blurred and no-one ever came to bring her back to a hill-top house haunted by past doings like this one here.

  So now she would do for the Hinckley bairn what someone should have done for her. Find a way out.

  There’s tea mashed said the man.

  He pulled an armchair over to the range then gestured to it.

  The girl sat.

  The farmer stood over her. Studied her face for clues.

  The bairn’ll be wanting summat other than tea though he said.

  She looked up at him.

  There’s milk he said. That’s one thing we’ve plenty of. Milk and bloody mud.

  He went into the scullery and came back with a jug and poured some milk into a small pan and placed it on the range then he poured tea.

  That’s the beastings he said. The mother’s first milk for the newborn. The best bit. Tit-fresh.

  The girl felt her face flush. The range was kicking out some good heat and the baby stirred a little. Its eyes flickered and its fingers curled around the girl’s thumb.

  Dry them boots the man said. Else you’ll get the toe rot.

  The girl shook her head.

  No?

  The girl shook her head.

  Please yourself.

  He put his tea down on the side.

  I’ve got things to be doing fore it gets dark he said.

  The girl looked up at him and brushed a strand of dark hair from her face. The baby gripped her finger more tightly.

  You can stop in till the bairn’s fed and you’ve had a warm but that’s it.

  The girl’s face said nothing.

  His voice hardened.

  And don’t be thinking of taking owt because Ruby’ll be in on you in a flash.

  The farmer looked at her with scorn then turned and muttered.

  Bloody hill wanderers he said.

  He left through the scullery. The fire crackled and the girl leaned into the wall of warmth and felt her face flush again.

  NIGHT HAD FRAMED St Mary’s on the crest in the early hours of the morning that they turned her out for good: an obsidian black pointed block set against the darkest blue.

  At the sink the girl had seen the lights coming on across the town one by one. She could just make out the jagged line of the mountains looming like the great scaly back of a dormant beast that would one day awake and rise and swipe the town with a single brush of a limb.

  Then after that the buildings the people the Sisters and Father. Especially Father. Everything would be gone.

  When that day came St Mary’s and everything inside its walls would be nothing but a bad memory. The stones cleaved from the hills above that made the buildings would tumble into the river and the river would dam and flood and the silly statues of the town would fall and the beasts from the farms would run free again. Oak beams would crack and splinter like match sticks. The old bridge would crumble and the banks would wash away. As was prophesied there would be landslides and worse: by fire and sword he will punish all the people of the world whom he finds guilty – and many will be put to death.

  She pictured it. She prayed for it. She willed it: flames from kilns and ovens would rage and rooftops would fall inwards and not even the rising waters would quell the fires that would burn long into the night and through the next day and those that managed to survive would flee screaming and the town would slowly disappear and all that would be left would be blackened puddles piles of stones and the smell of sulphur. Bodies everywhere and the mountains watching on.

  And the Lord says the worms that eat them will never die and the fire that burns them will never be put out. The sight of them will be disgusting to all people.

  She had thought about that moment at least once a day for however long she had been kept at St. Mary’s. So many years of cold water washes and carbolic soap. Of taunts about her wicked flesh and threats and slaps and midnight violations. Pinned down and pressed back. Gagged.

  And now in each window life was happening. Behind curtains people were washing and eating and yawning.

  The girl re-focused her eyes and saw herself reflected in the glass. She saw something blank-faced and puffy around the edges. Eyelids still heavy with sleep and a gormless mouth with wet lips. Eyebrows that nearly met in the middle.

  She bent and cupped some water then rubbed it into her face. She looked at her reflection and then through that to the town again and the pallid sky above slowly getting lighter and below it the great mountainous beast buried deep in sleep just waiting to make its move. She silently urged it on.

  SISTER HAD TOLD her to get some things and when she had got her things Sister said come come in all labour there is profit and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully and then they went outside.

  They walked down the hill into fading darkness. She was offered no explanation. No choice. The forces once again guiding her life and determining her existence.

  As she left St Mary’s behind the girl had felt no relief. No sense of anything ending. The ties to Father were strong whatever he had done because his was a unique protection. Father was doing God’s work and He had decided that only Father could lay his hands and everything else upon her.

  Out here though.

  Out here the threat of the wider world – the threat of what might be – was great. And after so many years living within its shadows each step away from St Mary’s only tightened her throat and knotted her stomach.

  Sister had moved quickly then. Har
ried the girl. There was urgency in her movements. Anger.

  Don’t slouch she said.

  Keep up she said.

  Sister walked as if the outside world was a dangerous and volatile place and everyone was Satan’s hand-maid and the sooner she got back to the orphanage the safer. All the Sisters did. The town was something to be endured – a series of tests of faith – nothing more. Its inhabitants were decadent and vain. No good could ever come of them.

  It had been a long time since the girl had been down the hill. Mary’s was all she knew and yet here they were – their feet on flat stones as squat square buildings rose up around them. Buildings bigger than she had ever known.

  They passed the butcher’s window strewn with meat mobiles; hanging forms of plucked parts. Beheaded chickens pig ribs pork chops and offal trays. Dirt-smudged eggs placed around the border. They passed the bakers with its fresh baked loaves buns and cakes. Then the White Lion not yet open for sinners and Sodomites; the pump house by the beck. Over the hump-back bridge to the Co-operative. Then the chemists. The new theatre.

  The girl wanted to stop and smell the air and look at things but Sister grabbed her by the elbow and pinched hard and the girl had stumbled and her suitcase had caught between her legs and she nearly fell. Sister only pinched harder.

  They left main street and turned into one of the side avenues that pointed down to the lake. The girl still struggling to keep up. Her suitcase clattering against her shins.

  Don’t pant said Sister. You’re not a beast of the field.

  Wipe your lip she said.

  Close that mouth.

  And then they were at the door of a house and Sister was briskly flapping the letterbox and then stepping back and straightening her corners and looking at the girl sideways and saying stand up straight and get rid of that gormless look else I belt it off.

  And so began her outside life.

  THE CHILD WAS fed and dozing and so was the girl when the farmer returned to stoke the fire and make more tea.

  He removed his hat and jacket and hung them on a rusted six inch nail driven into the door back.

  He poured them a cup of tea each.