Chemistry and Other Stories Page 9

  Hunters in the Forest

  Ben cocked the rifle and placed the barrel, wrapped in a towel, in the vice. Cobwebbed windows, murky garage light, the petrol-sweet stink of the lawnmower. He folded a length of fishing line, threaded it into the breech.

  He cut a white T-shirt into inch-square patches, wet one with solvent and dragged it along the barrel with the fishing line pull-through. The white cotton smudged with grey. He repeated the operation with fresh patches and solvent, then pulled dry patches through, till one came out of the muzzle clean as it had entered.

  Ben had owned this gun eight years now. A present from his father on his tenth birthday, he’d unwrapped it and known wonder. Had staggered outside: used up all hundred pellets in the box, shredded targets, in an orgy that left the barrel so hot his spit on it sizzled.

  The rifle was too big for the boy, but he grew into it. He’d camp with his father along the Teign river, shoot rabbit or pigeon, roast their prey over an open fire. Ben became a crack shot, winning annual prizes for his shooting at Christow Agricultural Show, kudos that saved the studious boy from teasing.

  The gun grew up with him. The weekend after Ben’s last O level exam his father took him to a gunsmith in Exeter who’d replaced the beech stock with oiled walnut, put in a new trigger mechanism and mounted a telescopic sight. Hard to believe it was still only an air rifle suitable for target practice and despatching small vermin; it looked like a mighty weapon.

  On a final piece of cloth, Ben fed a dribble of fine grease through the barrel, a lubricant that would add a degree of chiselling to the pellets’ passage. As a rust prevention he wiped the metal surfaces of the gun with WD-40. Finally he worked a little oil into the wood, inhaling the scent of linseed.

  With an armful of empty cans, Ben paced to the end of the garden, rifle over his shoulder, lead pellets loose in his pocket. After cleaning, it would take ten or twenty shots to settle the rifle down. He cocked it, loaded a pellet, snapped the barrel shut, took aim, fired. The recoil, infinitesimal, nudged his shoulder. In the gathering dusk the pellets dented the cans with dull thocks.

  Ben tiptoed through the house in the dark, pulled his boots on at the back door, hauled bags out to the lane. Stars still hung in the black sky. In the quietness he heard a front door slam at the top of the village even before he heard Phil kick-start his bike, then gun the engine: it spluttered, with the choke out, then fired into glorious full-throated life.

  Ben tracked the bike’s progress as it growled its way down from the council houses. It swung around the corner by the post office and the beam found him. He raised his hand to shield his eyes.

  Phil switched off the engine. Sat astride the bike, feet on the ground, the teeth of his grin visible. ‘What the ell you got there?’ he said.

  ‘Food. Sleeping bag,’ Ben said. ‘Tent.’ The gun was in a sheath, slung over his shoulder. Phil’s rifle, he could see, was in a scabbard attached to the side of the bike.

  ‘This here’s a chopper, bud, not a caravan. We’re only stoppin out one night. Leave the tent behind.’ He leaned into a pannier, drew out a scratched old helmet. ‘Better wear this.’

  They pulled away, choke out again: the fumy rich mixture. Ben rode pillion with his hands behind him, gripping the metal bracket at the back of the seat, as he’d seen other male passengers do.

  At Gidley’s Turn they joined the valley road, and Phil opened up the throttle. Ben felt suddenly, horribly, precarious.

  ‘I need to hang on,’ he yelled, and though he did not know whether Phil could hear him, he put first one, and then the other, arm round Phil’s waist. Like one of the other man’s girls. He was still chuffed at being invited on this trip: telling Phil in the Artichoke that he was off soon, Phil said Jimmy was too, the three of them should mark the leaving. Ben could smell the patchouli in the leather of Phil’s jacket. He realised he was committing a grave offence, that this was a ruinous way to begin the excursion. But there was a cool draught of air coming off the river this late September morning, the Kawasaki chased its headlight barrelling through the darkness, and he wanted to live to see his nineteenth birthday.

  Jimmy’s family lived out beyond Doddiscombsleigh, up a dried mud and pebble track, bumpy and potholed. Phil slowed to a crawl. Rusted ghosts of vehicles either side of the track. After a slow half-mile the beam lit up what looked like an assortment of shacks and sheds tacked together. Mismatched windows, odd doors.

  Phil switched off the headlight and killed the engine. To Ben’s surprise, it was no longer dark. The stars had dissolved into a cloudless sky. A door opened. In grimy blue jeans, bare-chested, with shoulder-length hair, Jimmy appeared, squinting out at them, scratching a nipple with one hand. Rough tattoos on the knuckles, a skull on his muscular torso.

  ‘You two’s bright an early,’ he said, croaking. He yawned. ‘Come an have a bite a breakfast.’

  ‘Don’t want to disturb no one,’ said Phil.

  Jimmy rubbed his eyes, and turned back inside. ‘Old man’s out,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Stick the kettle on.’

  The door by which they entered gave directly on to a large room. It had a stove, stainless-steel sink; draining board, shelves, table all of unplaned wood. The floor was strewn with children’s toys, scrappy items of clothing. A sweet odour.

  Along one wall a sagging red sofa. On the windowsill behind it a dozen empty Coca-Cola bottles, from one of which a wasp was trying to escape. It kept reaching up as far as the elegant neck and then fluttering back to the bottom, where it sucked a little more sugar from the sticky remnant there before trying again.

  ‘Hot enough for you lads?’ Jimmy’s mother asked. Short, broad, with green eyes and winter-pale skin, as if she’d spent the whole of this long summer indoors. She spread butter on to the white loaf before cutting each slice. The tea was strong and sweet. On Ben’s tongue the enticement of bacon frying. Jimmy’s mother stepped across from the stove with the frying pan and scooped two rashers each on to their bread. Butter melted beneath hot oily meat.

  Phil munched, and mumbled, ‘Bacon sarnies,’ nodding with appreciation and gratitude. Ben murmured in agreement. As the boys ate, a succession of people wandered drowsily into the room. They ranged in age from infancy to youth and shared Jimmy and his mother’s pale muscularity; they came and sat at the table, waiting to be fed, gazing at Ben with their gooseberry eyes. Phil winked and grinned at them.

  A dog lolloped in from outside, a thoroughbred springer spaniel. It sat beside the stove staring up at Jimmy’s mother, who ignored it until, all of a sudden, she tossed bacon rinds into the air which, jumping open-mouthed, the dog caught with a greedy snap of its jaws.

  A man a little older than Jimmy appeared, even more squat and heavyset, with similar home-made tattoos. He poured himself a mug of tea at the other end of the table. ‘Bit late to go huntin, innit?’ he said. ‘Or early. Be gone be time you’re out.’

  ‘Who asked your opinion?’ Jimmy said, without looking up from his plate.

  ‘Be gone back to bed theirselves,’ his brother said, and chuckled at his own wisecrack.

  Phil pushed his chair back. ‘Best be off then,’ he said, smiling. ‘Reckon we’ll keep goin all day on that,’ he told Jimmy’s mother.

  As Ben stood up, a young woman came into the kitchen. She carried a wan, blond infant on her hip, but she herself had jet-black hair, deep brown skin, dark eyes. It struck Ben that she had been abducted, in order to revitalise this family’s gene pool. There was pathos in her failure. He reckoned she might be younger than he himself was; certainly, she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. He tried not to stare at her, but his lowered eyes kept raising themselves, avid for beauty. Phil tickled the baby, said it was better than anyone else here, teased its mother and Jimmy’s brother both, undaunted. The girl smiled shyly, the brother drank his tea.

  Jimmy rode his Triumph around the side of the house. He paused, put two fingers between his teeth, and whistled. The spaniel came dashing out of a side door, b
ounded into the air and landed in the home-made pannier attached to Jimmy’s bike. Ben laughed out loud. Jimmy scowled.

  ‘You ain’t goin a bring that yappin springer a yours?’ Phil demanded.

  ‘Not leavin her here, am I?’ Jimmy told him.

  ‘She’ll fright off any deer fore we ever find em.’

  ‘Don’t matter, then, do it, cos there baint no deer in them woods.’

  ‘I told you, Joe Cornish saw em t’other mornin.’

  Jimmy gave his throttle a twist. ‘I never seen em,’ he yelled, and he eased his bike forward and out along the track, weaving his way between potholes, Phil tracing the route close behind.

  They rode along the valley then headed up towards Moretonhampstead, climbing steadily. The little town was wide awake: shops open, a brewery lorry delivering beer to one of the pubs. Ben heard a metal keg clang as it hit the pavement.

  They carried on beyond, up towards the moor. Along narrow, high-hedged lanes, wooden stands for milk churns outside farms: Thorn, Higher Stiniel, Yardworthy. The dog sat high in the pannier, eyes closed against the wind, long ears blown behind her.

  They followed a dead-end road around the edge of the reservoir to an empty car park, manoeuvred the bikes through a little gate and sidled into the forest along a wide track. After half a mile they eased off to the right on a path between overgrown shrubs that brushed against them. When the path opened into a small clearing, Ben got off, the dog jumped out of the pannier, Jimmy and Phil walked their bikes under the trees.

  ‘Good a spot as any,’ Jimmy declared. His dog dashed wildly about, sniffing the ground.

  ‘Can’t argue,’ Phil said, taking three cigarettes from his pack. He flicked open the top of his Zippo lighter, set his thumb to roll the cog that struck a spark off the flint. The other two leaned towards him. ‘Watch the dog-ends,’ Phil said. ‘Don’t want to start a forest fuckin fire.’

  ‘Slip in, slip out,’ said Jimmy, exhaling his first drag. ‘Leave no trace.’

  The spaniel ran further along the path, where dry grass grew waist high, and sprang, ears flapping.

  Phil drew his rifle from its scabbard. He took bullets from a box and eased them into pouches along his leather belt. Ben stuffed his denim jacket in the pannier.

  ‘Another hot day for sure, this,’ Phil said, draping his leather jacket across the bike saddle. He had on a black T-shirt. His face and wiry arms were deeply tanned, his long brown hair had been bleached and corkscrewed by the sun. He was still skinny, despite two years already spent labouring for a pig farmer near Hennock.

  Ben took his own gun out of its sheath. Phil stared as Ben checked the scope was in place.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Phil asked. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  Phil put his cigarette in his mouth and scrutinised the rifle, eyes screwed up from the smoke. He held it out for Jimmy to see. ‘Know what this beauty is?’ he asked. Jimmy said nothing. Phil brought the gun down over his knee, cocking it, pulled the spring tight. ‘Rolls-Royce with a Mini fuckin engine.’ He closed the rifle, pointed it at the sky and squeezed the trigger, blasting air upwards. ‘What the fuck’s you goin a bag with this?’ he asked Ben. He was grinning the whole time, like Ben had come thus armed purely, and thoughtfully, for Phil’s amusement.

  ‘Leave him be,’ Jimmy muttered.

  ‘While you two are blundering around after non-existent deer,’ Ben said, ‘I thought I’d catch a couple of rabbits so we’ve got something to eat tonight.’

  ‘What you reckon, bud?’ Phil asked Jimmy. ‘Reckon he could pick off a bunny or two with this here toy?’

  Jimmy was easing something out of his own gun case. It wasn’t a rifle, of any kind, but a long, narrow strip of wood. Jimmy grasped it around the middle, where string was wound tightly.

  Phil shook his head, still grinning. ‘You is pullin my plonker, bud. What happened to the old man’s gun?’

  Jimmy secured a loop of string around one end of the length of wood. ‘Bastard hid it.’ He flipped the bow around and put the end against his foot, bent the top towards him. ‘Fucked if I care,’ he said as he took the strain of the bow, wincing, and tried to string it. ‘What you think Englishmen used for huntin,’ he grimaced, ‘before guns was invented?’ The tension in the bow, the pressure Jimmy was forced to exert to bend it, made the end of it tremble in his hand, so that he couldn’t pop the loop of string over. Sweat broke out on his forehead. ‘Used bow and arrow for hundreds a fuckin years,’ he gasped.

  Ben stepped across and took the string from Jimmy, freeing him to use both hands to hold the bending bow. It stopped trembling, and Ben secured the string.

  ‘We goin a stand around all day yackin?’ Phil said. ‘Let’s crack on.’

  They crept through the trees in loose formation, the spaniel running ahead, too excited by the scents her nose detected to obey Jimmy’s commands. He removed his belt and looped it through her collar. The dog strained forward incessantly, choking herself, rasping. Jimmy kept yanking her back. ‘Not used a bein on a lead.’

  After an hour they paused. Ben took out his Marlboros, opened the packet and offered it towards the others. ‘What are you planning to do with her,’ he asked, ‘when you join your regiment?’

  ‘Takin her with him,’ Phil said. ‘Run point with Jimmy’s gang a squaddies, on the streets a Belfast.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jimmy said.

  ‘Sniffer dog, get her into bomb disposal, I should,’ Phil continued. ‘Got one hell of a nose.’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Jimmy said. The spaniel loped over to him. ‘Don’t you take no notice a they,’ he said, scratching her tummy. ‘They knows nothin about dogs. You go on, girl, flush them deer out for us.’

  The forest was a thousand acres of conifers planted fifty years earlier on moorland. Ben identified old Japanese larch, Norway spruce, lodgepole pine. They stepped out of cool plantations into the sun’s bright glassy glare.

  ‘Bloody hot, innit?’ Jimmy said, sweating.

  ‘Should a left your jacket with the bikes like we did,’ Phil told him.

  ‘Pah!’ said Jimmy, as if to wonder what kind of fool Phil took him for. ‘I int losin this leather,’ he said, patting his jacket. ‘Been through too much together.’

  Ben knew they christened their black bikers’ jackets with cider and piss, whisky, blood. Jimmy’s had tassels down the arms. A white skull and crossbones were painted on the back. Clipped to the front were German World War Two medals and insignia, an Iron Cross and a swastika among them.

  The plantations were criss-crossed by gravel roads and by streams of cold water running down off the high moor. Ben cupped his hands to drink; Jimmy lay and lapped, like his dog beside him. Butterflies wafted about them, as if studying these specimens of Homo sapiens. The sweet smell of pine sap.

  ‘There are longhorn beetles,’ Ben told his companions, ‘that spend years as larvae. One can start its life in a pine tree in Russia and emerge as a beetle from the leg of a table in someone’s living room in Exeter.’

  ‘No shit,’ said Phil.

  Jimmy took a cigarette and threw his packet to Phil, who drew one for himself and threw the pack to Ben. The three of them gazed at the ground as they smoked.

  ‘I’m tellin you,’ Phil said. ‘That’s deer droppins.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Tis a rabbit, you tosser.’

  ‘Come on, bud,’ Phil said, turning to Ben. ‘You’re the bunny killer. Ever see rabbit droppins this big?’

  Ben knelt down. With a twig he turned a pellet over. ‘A rabbit’s is round. Look, this is oval, wouldn’t you say? And look at these.’ He nudged a different pellet. ‘They’ve all got these tiny indentations at one end.’

  Jimmy crouched, frowning. ‘How the fuck do it make that, whatever it is?’ he wondered. ‘A little dimple in every droppin. That is weird.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ben admitted. He stood upright. ‘I tell you what. I’ll get back to the bikes, set up camp, make a fire. Try and bag a rabbit
or two. Reckon I’ll have more chance on my own.’ He realised it sounded like an accusation. ‘I mean, it’s what I’m used to.’

  ‘Good idea, bay,’ said Jimmy.

  Phil was still kneeling on the path. ‘I thought you hunted with your old man,’ he mused.

  ‘Next time I see Joe Cornish,’ Jimmy said, ‘remind me to ask if twasn’t unicorns he saw.’ He let his cigarette fall and stamped it out on the dry earth. ‘Sod this for a bunch a soldiers.’

  Phil stubbed his butt out on a stone. ‘He was up here haulin a lorryload a wood for they sawmills over Kingsteignton. Don’t worry, bud, we’ll be takin enough venison back for your whole family.’

  ‘Don’t get lost,’ Ben said, turning to head downhill.

  By the time he’d skinned and butchered the rabbits the heat of the day had dissipated. Ben built a fire. Dry grass caught, twigs crackled aflame.

  Ben looked in the motorbike panniers, but could find nothing except spare bullets and a bottle of whisky in Phil’s, one of vodka in Jimmy’s. In his own rucksack, wrapped in separate plastic bags, were tea, coffee, dried milk and sugar. With his Opinel penknife, bought while on a school exchange in Brittany the year before, he cut forked pieces of branch and stuck them in the ground either side of the fire; sharpened sticks and skewered the carcases; rested them in the wooden forks. The smell of burning meat made his stomach rumble. There could be no better compass, he thought, for Phil or Jimmy, or the dog.

  He heard them shortly, crashing down through the plantation. Phil walked straight across the clearing past the fire to his bike, where he slid his rifle back in its sheath and found the whisky.

  Jimmy patted Ben on the back. ‘You’re a fuckin star, bay,’ he said. ‘How many a they you got?’