Part 31 (1/2)

The mess wasn't as bad as he'd expected, actually. At least Amos had left all three in the bath.

III.

These were the missing days. Sarah spent them living a road movie: not the American variety, all sand-strewn horizons and miles of cattle wagons trundling over a prairie, but a homegrown version in which damp hedgerows featured largely, and the scenery lacked visible rhyme or reason. Dry stone walls appeared out of nowhere, ran humbly along lanesides for a mile or two, then vanished into the ground. Who decided that's where they should be? Fairytale trees, tough and withered as witches, jutted at dangerous angles from hillsides. She remembered Mark saying once that all the best road-books and films he was an infallible source of opinion were the product of foreign eyes celebrating things the natives never noticed: Nabokov setting American geography in motion; Wim Wenders discovering Texas to the sound of a steel guitar. Okay then: maybe she should have packed a pen or a camera. She had the refugee's eye all right; she was an alien in this landscape. A visitor from outer s.p.a.ce.

They had chosen to drive the back roads Michael had chosen to drive the back roads because, well, because that's what he'd chosen to do. She did not argue; if anything, they needed s.p.a.ce in which to conduct a reality check. It was not a reality she had ever expected to find herself in a hire-car with guns in the boot: you read about this happening in the States. It was always described as a spree, and there were always bodies left by the roadside. It ended with somebody strapped to a chair, waiting for the punishment to start.

She had to jerk herself out of these reveries. Remind herself whose side they were on.

The first night, they stopped at a farmhouse some miles from anywhere: if it had been possible to drive clear of Britain without noticing, they'd have managed it that day. The B&B sign by the verge also offered eggs, tomatoes, and, peculiarly, reconditioned fridges. The depredations on the farming industry had obviously been farther-reaching than she'd imagined. They took two rooms, the only two rooms, and in response to the landlady's raised eyebrow Sarah managed something about just being friends. They were not just friends. There was no word available to describe their relations.h.i.+p. That night she fell straight into heavy sleep, to be woken in the small hours by a barking dog, followed by the muttered cursing of, presumably, the farmer. The dog fell silent. So did everything else. Sarah got out of bed and went to look from the window; the surrounding countryside was dark as the far side of the moon. But as she gazed out, a car crested a hill in the distance, its sudden headlit appearance throwing everything into relief. She could make out the hillsides then; the occasional raggedy outbreak of hedge. Three trees in the near distance, their configuration an echo of a Station of the Cross. When the car pa.s.sed she returned to bed and slept once more, though this time there were dreams: savage, confused things over which hovered, somehow, the horror of crucifixion. The next morning, when they pa.s.sed those trees, they were innocent in the early light; neither young nor ancient; merely trees. She could as easily have had nightmares about the car she'd seen; a black demon chewing the darkness with its twin electric swords.

Michael never referred to his coughing fit. When she asked him directly he shrugged, and changed the subject.

That second day, still early, they parked on the edge of a wood. While Sarah watched for traffic, Michael fetched the guns from the boot and carried them into the trees. There she followed him, picking carefully over roots and fallen branches; skirting mud puddles and suspicious piles of leaves Michael didn't seem to notice, though he didn't stumble either. He stopped in a clearing and laid the shotgun on the ground. He had not broken it the way you were supposed to: the code of the countryside. Presumably he followed a different set of rules.

Out on the road, a car drove past. Its engine noise tugged at her heart; the ease with which it left the area, disappeared into somebody else's future.

He found a tin can lying under a tree there wasn't an empty s.p.a.ce in the country you couldn't find a rusting can and lodged it in a branch before pacing the clearing, measuring ten steps. 'Any further than this,' he said, 'you're definitely going to miss.'

'I'm not going to shoot anybody.'

'Are you going to let them shoot you?'

'I don't suppose it'll be a straight choice,' she said.

He loaded the handgun. 'Use both hands. Use your left to steady your right. On the wrist, like this.' He demonstrated. 'It'll kick back. Not a lot, but you need to expect it.'

'I don't want to fire your gun, Michael.'

He ignored her. 'Don't aim dead centre. Take your bearing and fire a little low. That way, when it pulls up, you're already compensating. When you're new to it, it almost always pulls up.'

'Fascinating. But no.'

'You know your problem, Tucker? You haven't sorted out yet which part's real and which part isn't.'

He turned, apparently casual, and shot the tin can from the tree. It made a lot of noise: not just the gun itself, whose low crack sounded like the splintering of last year's wood, but a racket all around as birds and unseen beasts took fright and fled. And then there was just a settling down, with, somewhere in the distance, a ba.s.s pulse, as if the gunshot were still out there, heading like h.e.l.l for the hills.

Michael retrieved the can and showed her its jaggy, bone-dry wound. 'See? It's made of tin. You can shoot it all you like, you'll never hurt it.'

'So what's the point?'

'We're not in Oz. Whoever's got Dinah, it's not the Tin Man.' He held the gun out for her. 'You might never have to use it. But if the time comes you do, you can't say Stop, I haven't practised.'

It was heavier than she'd have imagined. This was appropriate: machines that were made for taking life should have heft to them. You wouldn't want to take them lightly. This one, he'd already told her, was a German gun. A Luger. Not as old as the gun he'd broken back at Gerard's, but a wartime piece just the same. 'A collector's item.'

'But still illegal.'

When she looked at the can, it was miles away.

'Just imagine it's Rufus.'

This was crude, unnecessary, and did not work. Her first three shots went wide; only with the fourth could they measure how wide, because that time her bullet wound up buried in the tree itself. About a foot from the can.

'You're pulling to the right. Aim to the left.'

He showed her how to load, but didn't make her do it. He did make her try again. This time she emptied the gun, and came within a few inches of the can with her last shot: he said. She wasn't sure how he could tell.

After that, he picked up the shotgun.

(Back at Gerard's, while Michael smuggled the guns out, Gerard told her about the shotgun. 'Don't let him fire it without taking the plugs out,' he'd said.

'Plugs?'

'The barrels are plugged. Keeps dirt out. That's a b.l.o.o.d.y expensive gun, Sarah.'

'What would happen if he fired with them in?'

'He'd ruin it.' After a moment or two he added, 'Blow his hands off too, mind. Serve the b.u.g.g.e.r right.'

And she knew it was her he was thinking about. That he didn't want Michael handing her the gun; saying, Here. Have a go with this, and Sarah blowing her hands off.) She didn't need to bring it up. He broke the gun open, peered down the barrels, then upended the gun and pulled a cork from each with his little finger. They looked like corks: red ones, each with a loop in the end for easy removal. He dropped them into a pocket of his denim jacket, then scooped a handful of sh.e.l.ls from a box liberated from Gerard's cellar, and shovelled them into another.

'Watch.'

He loaded it, his eyes watching her rather than his hands; making sure she was following. Then cracked the gun back into a piece, pulled the hammers back, and with an action so smooth he might have been dancing brought the stock to his shoulder, levelled the barrels and fired.

The can disappeared. A good part of the branch went with it. This time there was no follow-up noise; no local creatures left to go bats.h.i.+t with shock. Anything left in the area was already stone deaf or dead, themselves excepted. And she wasn't sure about her own hearing, once the roar of the gun had died away.

'You okay?'

'You hit it, then.' Her voice sounded funny in her head. As if it were echoing in a large, empty room.

'Missing it would have been a better trick. If it comes to a straight choice, use this.' His voice was level, serious. It always was, but holding a gun lent him gravitas. 'You point a handgun at a soldier, he'll take it off you. But if you're carrying one of these, he'll keep his distance. Here.'

This, too, was heavy. But in those first moments, she had nothing to compare it to: couldn't remember picking other things up. It was a tool for a job outside her scope, and only a sudden heavy scent of woodland carried on a draught through the clearing gave her the bearing: it was like work for an autumn day, work you did with the house behind you, and woodsmoke drifting on a steady wind. Like shouldering a rake once you're sure the job's done; or wielding a yard broom, clearing rubble from the foot of a tumbling wall.

It was not like housework.

'It'll kick,' Michael said. 'The thing is, don't drop it.'

She raised it to her shoulder, the way he had.

'Uh-uh. You'll end up with a bruise the size of Ireland. Fire from the hip. Just let your eyes point the way. We're not going for long-distance marksmans.h.i.+p here. All you need do is prove you're not afraid to fire it. Most situations, that'll get you the benefit of the doubt.'

When he was satisfied she was holding it correctly, she fired.

It kicked, yes: she felt the tug on her arms as if she were about to take off backwards. What she had been aiming at, she wasn't sure, but the sh.e.l.ls tore a hole in a bush she could have put her arm clean through. This was something she did not notice until regaining her balance: but she did not fall, did not drop the gun. For a short moment her vision pixelated, but that was all. The dead bush, the trees around her, were a vast confusion of blurred dots, as if she were standing too close to the screen they projected on to. And then it cleared, and the bush had a hole in it, and Michael was taking the gun away, showing her again how to break it open, feed it, lock it.

'One more time,' he said.