John Banville - Birchwood

He dozed off after a while, sitting bolt upright with his hands on his knees, and I lay back against the wall and nursed my belly as it did its best to digest the remains of Albert, for Albert it must have been, the region could not boast of more than one monkey. How much else of the circus had survived? I had a vision of Mario perched in a tree, munching leaves and gibbering, or of Angel served up piping hot in a can. My friend started up abruptly and grabbed me by the throat.

What?’ he roared, ‘what?’ I croaked at him and flapped my tongue, and he released me and passed a hand over his forehead. ‘Jesus, that was a close one,’ he muttered cryptically, and then burst into song.

!

His gaiety departed as quickly as it had come, and he began to grind his teeth again, and stared out gloomily at the frozen wood.

This used to be my place,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the wall behind us. ‘Cottage I had, grand little spot. Everything I needed, bit of game in the woods there, spuds in the back, a few head of cabbage. There was-’ Something occurred to him, and he turned to me and stuck out his hand. ‘Cotter's the name. Cotter's cottage, ha!’ Before I could shake his paw he clenched it and punched himself on the knee. ‘Them fuckers! Listen, tell me this, what harm was I doing? Christ, didn't they own half the county already, what did they want with my bit of a spot, eh? I had rights, squatter's rights! But O no, O no, the Big House wouldn't have me living in their woods, O no! You'll get shot some day , he said. By accident , he said. Accident my arse. That was the old whore himself, old Simon. Then they come and stove in the roof-and me in the bloody bed there! The fuckers.’

He ruminated for a while in a furious silence, pounding himself with his fist, and then a small light dawned in his eyes and he bared his fangs and grinned.

‘But they got their comeuppance too,’ he growled, ‘aye they did. I heard about it when I was up north, her kicking off in the madhouse, and then your man getting shagged out when her crowd took over. Good enough for them, the mangy bastards. And now I'm back to claim what's mine, my rights, I am.’

I waited for him to calm himself, and then I asked very carefully.

‘And what happened to…your man?’

‘What? Who?’

‘Godkin.’

‘Mister Joseph? Fucked if I know. I hear they let him stay on, living in some class of an outhouse.’ He glanced at me suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘Oo you jast wahndered, did you now? I see, I see.’ His teeth were out again, and his eyes gleamed. He clawed at his beard in a paroxysm of suspicion. ‘Bejesus, do you know what it is, you talk like one of them yourself. You wouldn't be coming down here to spy on old Cotter, would you, eh? That wouldn't be it, now, would it?’

I backed out of the shelter slowly and stood by the fire watching him. He whipped off his hat and began to beat himself on the thigh with it, and muttered ruefully,

‘Dying, says he-like fuck!’

He made a lunge at me and missed and stumbled into the embers of the fire, and as I turned he came up howling and coughing in a cloud of ash. I fled.

Til get you! I'll get you!’

At the edge of the wood I tried to leap the ditch and instead fell into it, and when I had crawled up out of the mud to the road I found myself staring into the disenchanted yellow eye of the stuffed tiger in its cage.

I WAS NOTsurprised. I had known all along that in the end they would find me again. Perhaps it was that knowledge which kept me alive all that time, against all odds. Now here they were, the silent curtained caravans, the horses asleep in their harness, a life come back to claim me. The attack outside the pub had left bad bruises. Two caravans were missing, and the paint on those remaining was scorched and blistered. Windows were smashed, spokes were missing. A halfdoor hung loose on its hinges like a hand dangling from a broken wrist. The cart on which was carried the tent and tackle was hitched to the last caravan, leaving to one horse the work of two. There was something about the circus standing there silent and deserted that frightened me, a malevolence which I could not understand but only feel, and when Silas himself, hard on the thought of him, appeared around a bend, I crouched and ran to the cart and hid myself on it under a fold of the tent. I heard him shout at someone, and there was a mumbled reply startlingly close to me, and then boots rattled on the road. Mario, I think it was he, pissed against the wheel of the cart. Silas came up.

‘Hurry it up now, dear boy, we're on our way. Stirring times, eh?’

Mario gave no answer, only grunted. They went away, and in a little while we moved off. The sacks under me were wet, I remember that smell, and I remember too the muffled grinding of wheels and the feeling of panic that made my rotten teeth ache as I was carried blindly into the unknown. The journey was brief. We turned off the road on to gravel, and when I lifted the flap and cautiously looked out I saw an open gate which bore the legend, Lawless House. We crossed the lawn into a field and stopped, and there was a great deal of bustle around me. Surely now they would put up the tent, and I would be discovered, which I think would have been a relief, for I had begun to feel foolish cowering there. But my lair was l$ft undisturbed, and the desire to be discovered left me, and the fear came back. The voices and the bustle receded across the field. I waited for a long time, hearing nothing, and then suddenly there was a cry in the distance and a loud familiar crack. Vaguely I had a sense of many feet running over turf, and of storm and panic, of pain, and the voices returned shrill with terror, and Silas gasped,

‘Stick her in there, yes, in there- heave , damn you!’

They were close to me now, struggling with some heavy thing. I heard Mario blubbering.

‘Is she dead?’ Sybil shrieked.

‘Shut your mouth.’

‘O Jesus Jesus!’

‘Fuck off!’ Mario roared in a voice shaking with mingled rage and hysteria. Silas clicked his tongue.

‘My boy, control yourself, and you also, woman. Broken eggs, broken eggs. She'll be all right.’

‘She will not, ‘Mario muttered. ‘She'sa dying.’

‘Tut, nonsense. Ah! my, this gore is frightful.’

Again they departed. I could contain myself no longer. I lifted the flap. Angel lay on her back in the open doorway of the caravan in front of me. The top of her head was within inches of my face. Her hair was tangled and her shoulders heaved, and beyond, in the gloom, her hands with the fingers interlocked clutched her heaving belly. There was blood everywhere, in such quantity that it seemed impossible that one body could have shed so much. Suddenly she wrenched her head around and squinted at me.

‘You!‘she said.’Ha!’

Her face was set in an agonised grin, but she spoke calmly, with a certain bitter amusement, indifferent to that terrible wound which she held in her hands in there. I wanted to flee, but that great heaving mound of flesh held me rooted to the spot. She turned her terrible grin away from me and said,

‘Rats!’

I do not know how long we remained there locked in her dying. Across the field a battle raged. It did not seem real. Tiny figures ran and fought and hopped about, unreal. Rain fell and rattled on the canvas above me, soft spring rain. Angel began to swell, I cannot explain it, she filled the doorway until the posts groaned under the strain, and her massive trunk poured itself into every nook in the caravan, and soon the whole thing was packed with her, throbbing and heaving, rocking on its wheels. She cried out, and rose up in an arch on her heels and head, and upside down her face gaped and turned purple and her hands scrabbled furiously, scampering over her wound like animals. She shuddered and coughed, and all that shook, that flesh, fat, hair, teeth, blood, and she died snarling and laughing, and the spell broke, and I crawled out from my hole.