Out Backward Read online

  We went down one afternoon to have a check on the fence, and it seemed the sheep had the same idea for when we got there they were lined up in front of it, taking an inspection. Hello there, ladies. One of them twisted her neck to look at me along the top of her back. It’s quite a fence you’ve made–there’s no getting through now, she said. That’s right, ladies, there isn’t, it’s the end of your adventures, I’m afraid, you’ll just have to keep yourselves busy munching your cud and practice-humping each other. I looked down at her house. They’d learnt how to get the fire going, then. Churls of smoke were floating out the chimney, and I didn’t need my X-ray eyes to see them in their sitting room, the warmth slurping round them sat snug and fuddly in their seats. Chickenhead fluffed out, roosting. The dad smiling at a bookshelf, and the kid itching about on the rug. The girl was set off from the rest of them, upstairs. What did she want with sitting next to Chickenhead, the sour-faced cow? Likely she was at the magazines again, lying on her front on the bed, her feet rubbing in the air like a pair of swans twining necks. The room all neatly sorted–small, buckled boxes shelved up, full with a hundred types of trinkets, books and magazines about the place, and her school skirt and tights on the floor, folded, where she’d undressed.

  I turned away from the house. Sal was off on a wander. The sheep were still by the fence, stooping for a bite of grass. One of them was set off from the rest, and I stepped toward her and stood in front until she marked me, lifted her head, the bottom half her mouth grinding slowly side to side.

  Afternoon, I said. Then I walked back to the fence. I waited a moment, before stepping up to the sheep again. Hello. How you doing? She chewed on, looking blankly at me. Must’ve known you were coming past, somehow, I said. That’ll be the X-ray eyes, that will. I smiled, just a showing, then wider, so my lips parted. I paused. Must’ve known you were coming past, somehow. Probably think I’ve eyes in the back my head and all, do you?

  The sheep bent down and ate.

  If you want, I’ll show you what there is round here. I practised the smile again. There’s more to do than just picking mushrooms, you know.

  A few of the other sheep glegged up. What the hell’s he braying on about? Hasn’t he a feed for us? Then they put their heads down again to tear at the grass.

  I left the tractor parked up and walked down the high street to the garage. I stood myself on the forecourt, outdoors of the shop, gawping at the newspapers. Well now, which one should I buy, I’ll just stand here and think on it a moment. I looked them over, each while a squint down the street toward the bus stop. I waited ten minutes, then I buggered off back to the tractor. I couldn’t likely spend all afternoon choosing a newspaper.

  Next day, I came back, and I waited longer, but nothing happened still. Only folk I saw at all was the barman from the Tup, sneaking across the road for his paper. He didn’t take much of a ponder, he picked one straight off the display, paid, and went back in the Tup to look at the breasts.

  Inside the shop, Mrs Applegarth watched me from behind the counter. She came out twice and fussed about on the forecourt, picking up leaves or checking the paper towels by the pumps.

  I took to buying a paper, and that kept her indoors.

  A fair pile started building up on my bedroom floor. I put my boots on top of them at first, so as it looked I was keeping the carpet from getting mucky, but when the pile got big enough Mum would mark something queer about it, I threw them out. I began thinking I’d got the hour muddled, so I came down different times, but there wasn’t sign of her still, and I knew I hadn’t much longer before Father smelt something suspect, me taking the tractor out each afternoon. I kept at practising my conversation, anyhow, so as I couldn’t be caught by surprise and forget it. Mrs Applegarth likely thought I’d flooded my banks, stood there each afternoon chuntering at the newpapers.

  I got to know the world’s turnings, mind, reading The Valley News each day, never mind none of it mattered anything to me. The Blatherskites’ News is what they should’ve called it, for it was nobbut gossip-talk. Gossip-talk and, at the arse-end the paper–

  HATCH, MATCH, DISPATCH–a list of bairns, couplings and dead. For all Mrs Applegarth thought I was half-baked, I wasn’t near so half-baked as the folk who bought this. Roadwork dispute deepens. Local dog wins prize. And, course, the fuss over the Fat Betty. Three hundred and ninety people signed the petition, The News said, and the matter was under consideration by the local council. It was front page one day–BRAND THE BETTY? FAT CHANCE–and all sorts of folk had spoke their tuppence, saying what a scandal it was, the pub was the heart and soul of town and how could a place survive without a heart? But I marked toward the other end the paper, near the clog-poppers, there was an advert for a new bar in the town. Coming soon–comfort and class in the perfect countryside setting, with traditional ales and a comprehensive wine list. It didn’t have a name yet, but the address was certain familiar.

  It was no use waiting in the garage the whole time if she wasn’t coming past, so I went to the Tup and framed up a new plan. I nodded at Seymour as I walked through, but he didn’t notice me, then I sat outdoors and turned it over, looking down the road toward the edge of town.

  Just out of sight, round the corner, the private school bus would be dropping off soon, the rambler kids streaming out into a sudden hive of four-by-fours swarming round.

  I crouched behind the hedge, spying through the mesh of thorns at the hubbleshoo of small boys spewing out the bus. They were all over the road in an instant, squawking zigzags through the mass to clobber each other round the head with their bags. Next were the little girls, slower, mingled in with the big-belly boys who weren’t so partial on chasing about. And then the older ones. The girls kept separate from the lads, paired up tantling down the road with a snitter of talk kept close between the two as if all they had to say was secrets, meant for the hearing of nobbut themselves. I couldn’t spot her. There was a lad stepped off, looking back smiling into the bus, and I scoured through, pressing closer to the hedge, but it was another lad came off the bus talking to him. They walked on together and got in the back of a Land Rover.

  Then I started thinking, maybe I’d imagined it up. Maybe she hadn’t talked to me at all, I’d just dreamt it, my brain had been flowtered by those gommerils in the car. I’d been drinking and all. Sod knows what came out the pipes in the Tup. Just take a look at Seymour.

  I bristled along the hedge, but they couldn’t sense me, they were too busy with their secrets. There were two pairings of lasses who’d joined up at the back of the crowd, bundling close together as they walked toward town. I eyed them, checking I’d not missed her–girls weren’t marked so different from each other when they were wearing the same uniform and you were viewing them through a hedge. And these all had wet hair, too, damp straggles clung over their shoulder tops, showing dark against the white of their shirts. She wasn’t there.

  There was a fair gap opening up between these last and the rest. They weren’t mooded for hurrying, they were having a fine time laughing about, until a car came past and they giddied off to the side the road, where I was creeping alongside.

  Eeeuw! Not likely.

  Yeah, imagine kissing him.

  I scratched my ear trying to get a listen of what they were saying.

  That beard. It’d be like kissing your dog, or something.

  They giggled. One of them jumped up at another lass, pawing at her shoulder. Woof! Woof! Her skirt flapped up as she jumped, and I stooped for a snatch underside of it. Woof, woof, my eyes swarmed up the flesh of her thighs, busting for the soft curve of her backside. She stood laughing a moment, clearing the hair off her face, where it had stuck to her cheek with damp. Then they were all at it, woof, woof, their feet padding up, down on the marbled floor. Do you want to stroke my beard? Woof! Go on, give it a stroke, just a little one. They were all shivers, arms folded, rubbing the goosebumps on the backs their arms. Then one of them turns and dives in. Come on, she waves, bobbing up and down
, and then they’re all in, the splash of water jinnying round the walls with their laughter. Beardie beardie weirdie, beardie, beardie weirdie. I watch the glimmer of their swimming costumes slipping through the surface of the water as they chase up the pool.

  One of them gets out. Her feet squilch-squelch on the tiles as she walks off, the sound of the others swimming and giggling fading away behind. Aye now, where are you off, then? She’s going at a fair crack, and I lose her behind a pillar. Hello, where’ve you gone? Time to switch on the X-ray eyes, lad, she’s smart is this one. Then I realise she must’ve gone in the changing rooms, and I go toward the entrance, pausing outside a moment as I feel queer going in, no matter I know it’s only her inside, it still feels queer, like going in Father’s bedroom.

  I go in the entrance, a proper soaking for my feet in a footbath, but when I turn the corner it’s not all ties and bras hung from pegs and her stood naked in front of me–it’s a car park, and she’s walking through it, singing to herself. I steal between two lines of cars as she reaches the open portion in the middle. She stops, looks ahead both sides, hmm, which way shall I go, and I gain on her, silent as Mr Fox after his chicken dinner. At the end of the line of cars I bide a second before moving into the open space, and copping that I’ve lost her. She’s disappeared from sight, and the singing has stopped. Well now, you’re a crafty one, I’ll give you that, I say, looking about the place for where she’s gone. It’s quiet this side of town, just a few grey houses round the car park, and I still my parts, listening. I can feel the sting of blood racing through me. I follow on, same direction she’d been headed, toward a narrow street leading out the car park, but she’s tricked me, the bumblekite. I turn round and see her stand up behind a car. Then she runs off back toward the high street, a proper flight she gets on, I don’t bother going after her. I stand flat-backed against a vehicle and listen to the sound of her feet on the road, dying eventually to a patter.

  7

  We sat quiet round the table, chewing our tea. I was thinking to myself, the garage days were over–there wasn’t use trying to talk with a girl just because of something she’d said to me in a dream. She didn’t come past that way, it was clear enough now, that proved I’d imagined it up. I was thinking on all this, when Father spoke, talking through his food.

  Aye. We’ll sell them pups to any as’ll take ’em.

  The way he said it was like him and his brain were having a discussion inside his head, but the last part had spilt out.

  We’ll keep one to work t’ farm wi’ Jess.

  There was a glob of gravy on his chin, slipping down a cleft toward his gullet. He didn’t notice it, kept on eating, silent. He’d said his piece.

  I bided a moment, until it was right to speak.

  Which’ll we keep, Father?

  They’re all t’ same size. I aren’t bothered.

  Can I pick one, then?

  No. Buyers’ll take what ones they want.

  It went quiet again while we mopped up our food. After we’d done, Mum stacked the plates and took them to the sink. He took his sleeve to his chin and wiped it, the skin scraping against his cuff. I studied out the window.

  Tha’s lucky they’re too old for t’ bucket, lad, he said, and he pissed off out the room.

  I kept my glare on the window. It was beetle-black outdoors already, and I watched Mum in the glass, washing pots at the sink. He was right, course. If Jess had dropped a bigger litter, we’d have drowned most straight off. We hadn’t need for the spares. Every summer started with that bucket, stood in the yard, brimful with cold water. Normaltimes it was kittens, as we hadn’t need of any–they were all spares. Mum would bring them out in a cardboard box, and I’d fetch a dinner plate, and a log from next the fire, before Father pulled them out the box two or three a time and floated them gentle in the water, like a bairn with a toy boat. I’d be on plate duty, resting it over their heads with the log weighted on top, pushing down until their lungs filled with water.

  Father would go off then, see on his other jobs. I’d put the log and the plate back, and Mum would chuck the bodies, picking them from the bucket like wet socks out the washer.

  He put a sign up soon after, down by the road turning at the end of the track. DOGS FOR SALE. THREE MONTHS. WORKING OR PET. There was a smear of paint at the bottom where he’d wrote £15, then his brain had ticked over and he’d blotted it out, scheming that towns would likely pay daft prices. They’d pay a fair pocket for Sal, I knew. Father was right about the others catching her up for size but he knew sod-all about the nature of awther one and Sal was easy the conniest. She had a fluff of brown, both cheeks, that was how to tell her apart, and that was what’d make her the most saleable, unless it was a farmer came buying–what did it matter to them the colour of cheeks? They’d not give a shite if she had two heads and a hump so long as she could work a flock.

  The first buyers weren’t farmers, though, they were towns. They were leaving by the time I bolted in from the fields, the car trembling off down the tractor-path avoiding the potholes. I shot a look over the stable door, but it was empty so I went in the kitchen, where Mum was shushing five-pound notes between her fingers. The whelps were scratching at the insides of a wooden box. Sal was still there. They were down to three, mind, one of them took off to become a town dog–a life of slipper-carrying and dried-up biscuit food.

  Mum slapped the notes on the tabletop. Thirty pound, she said. Then she picked them up and counted again, all concentration, the one eye squeezed tight as a Scot’s arsehole.

  Thirty, it is. She laughed. And they chose the runt, they did.

  I was in next day when another pair came round. I stepped down from my room and the first I saw of them they were inside the kitchen door, wiping their feet on the mat. I wouldn’t fuss with that, I thought, you’re best doing it on the way out, the state of our floor.

  Oh, what a homely kitchen, the female was saying to Mum, but that wasn’t what she meant–what a muck-hole, she was thinking. There were two of them, a young couple, in matching coats–these mighty, blown-up, red affairs. They couldn’t walk through side by side, they’d have knocked all the trunklements off the walls, you go first, no you, oh, will you look? Little sweethearts. Look at them. They’re gorgeous. I stood by the fire watching on, burning the backs my legs. They both knelt down aside the box and the whelps scraffled up the side to have a study what was going on, three small heads peeping over the top–fucking hell, have you seen this? There’s two giant tomatoes here, blathering at us. Mum stood over them, her brass-counting face on her. She was chuntering. Oh, it’s a bonny one, that. What the hummer did she know? She thought her budgerigars were bonny and all. Right characters, she always said about them, and she was right, if humping yourself in the mirror all day told for character.

  The man held Sal up to his face and shook her so as her haunches waggled.

  Is it a boy or a girl, this one? he asked, rubbing the back of his finger up, down Sal’s cheek.

  Mum glegged the underside Sal’s belly. Oh, she’s a girl, her.

  Rub, rub, with the finger, you’d best watch yourself, feller, or she’ll have it–she’ll chew on anything these days, now the teeth have come through.

  The giant tomatoes gave each other a look. We’ll take this one, the man said, holding Sal into his body. Then they chose a second, picking it out the box as I sloped out the kitchen and went upstairs.

  I traipsed further into the Moors. The cold weather had begun setting in, past week or two, and it was a brittle afternoon–all still, save for the heather crackling under my boots. Most folk, such as Father, weren’t partial on the darker months, but they suited me rightly. The heather had gone through pink and purple to russet, the blare of gorse quieted, and folk on the Moors scarcer than ever.

  I drifted on, an hour, two, lost with myself–where was I, on the Moors? No, I was on some other planet, a vast of barren space all round and me the only person there. I stopped and viewed about.

  He
llo! I shouted. Hello! Any other bastard there?

  Course, there wasn’t, and my voice belted over the Moors, nothing to echo it back. It’d reach Whitby in a minute or two, pricking up the ears of some grizzled old fisherman–ey up, bastard, what? Must be the sea playing tricks again.

  I crackled onward. I was close by the border where Danby High Moor turned into Glaisdale Moor. There wasn’t a real border between, never had been, only the heather spreading on, but I knew the line of it sure as if there was a wall or a fence all along. Further on there was a slack in the ground–Tumbale’s Rest–called after a giant back in ancient times who sat his backside down there and sunk the ground in. Father had told me that story when I was a sprog, and I’d bricked it all the way home, thinking Tumbale was going to come and eat us, until Father said that he was a friendly giant most times, and only ate sheep, so I could shut up sniffling.

  As I walked down into the slack I marked a Land Rover parked up past the lip of the other side. A body was moving about aside it. A man, fiddling round in a shooting butt, tending it. I kept on. I wasn’t capped to see that. This part the Moors was blotted all over with horseshoe-shaped walls, for the Trilbies to cower behind and slaughter grouse by the barrowful. They were out every weekend now, huddles of them knelt with their guns propped over the wall. Got one! How many’s that? Must be a hundred by now, some feast we’re going to have tonight, except we’re not going to eat them, we’re going to string them up a while then throw them out. Land management, the Trilbies called it. Seemed the grouse were on the wrong team, then.

  Bugger if I knew how he’d pierce a bird from the air, if he couldn’t heed me from two hundred yards. Now then, Trilby, shall I cackle about like a grouse, would you notice me then? Cackle, cackle, that’s right, I’m a grouse–a big lanky one, why don’t you point your gun at me? I’ll fucking show you what we think of your land management. But he’d not spotted me, he was away in the Land Rover, belching off over the Moors.