HORSE MANURE FOR SALE. A cocky rooster eyed its hens. Rain-soggy sheets and white pillowcases hung on a washing line. Frilly panties and bras too. A mossy track disappeared over the rise, towards the main road to Malvern. Passing a stable, I peered into the hot, manure-reeky dark.
Three horses, I made out. One tossed its head, one snorted, one stared at me. I hurried on. If a bridlepath goes through a farmyard it can’t be private but farmyards definitely don’t feel public. I’m afraid of hearing Trespasser! I’m going to give you a prosecutin’ you’ll never forget! (I used to think trespassing was about Heaven and Hell, because of the Lord’s Prayer.)
So anyway, over the next gate was this medium-sized field. A John Deere tractor was ploughing it into slimy furrows. Seagulls hovered behind the plough, plucking easy fat worms. I hid till the tractor was headed away from the bridlepath.
Then I began legging it across, like an SAS agent.
‘TAYLOR!’
I’d got noosed before I’d even reached a sprint.
Dawn Madden sat in the cockpit of an ancient tractor, whittling a stick. She wore a bomber jacket and mud-starred Doc Martens with red laces.
I steadied my breath. ‘All right’ (I meant to call her ‘Madden’ ’cause she’d called me ‘Taylor’) ‘Dawn.’
‘Where’s,’ her knife shaved stringy loops of wood, ‘the fire?’
‘Huh?’
Dawn Madden mimicked my Huh? ‘Why’re you running?’
Her oil-black hair’s sort of punky. She must use gel. I’d love to gel her gel in for her. ‘I like to run. Sometimes. Just because.’
‘Oh, aye? And what brings you so far up the bridlepath, then?’
‘No reason. I’m just out. For a doss.’
‘Then,’ she pointed to the bonnet of the tractor, ‘you can doss there.’
I badly wanted to obey her. ‘Why?’ I badly didn’t want to obey her.
Her lipstick was Fruit Gum redcurrant. ‘’Cause I’m telling you to.’
‘So,’ I scrambled up the front tyre, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘I do live here, y’know.’
The wet bonnet of the tractor made my arse wet. ‘That farmhouse? Back there?’
Dawn Madden unzipped her bomber jacket. ‘That farmhouse. Back there.’ Her crucifix was chunky and black like a Goth’s and nestled between her subtle breasts.
‘Thought you lived in that house by the pub.’
‘Used to. Too noisy. And Isaac Pye, the landlord, he’s a total slimeball. Not that he,’ Dawn Madden nodded at the tractor ploughing the field, ‘is much of an improvement.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Official stepfather. That house is his house. Don’t you know anything, Taylor? Mum and I live there now. They got married last year.’
Actually now I remembered. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Brains of a bull.’ She peered at me round an invisible curtain. ‘Not only the brains, judging by the racket they make some nights.’ Stewy air stroked Dawn Madden’s milk-chocolate throat.
‘Are those ponies in the stable yours?’
‘Have a good snoop round, did we?’
Her stepfather’s tractor was heading back this way.
‘I only looked into the stable. Honest.’
She got back to her knife and stick. ‘Horses cost a fortune to keep.’ Whittle, whittle, whittle. ‘That man’s letting the riding school keep them there while they’re doing some rebuilding. Anything else you want to know?’
Oh, five hundred things. ‘What are you making?’
‘An arrow.’
‘What do you want an arrow for?’
‘To go with my bow.’
‘What do you want a bow and arrow for?’
‘What-what-what, what-what-what-what?’ (For one horrifying moment I thought she was taking the piss out of my stammer but I think it was more general.) ‘All questions with you, ain’t it, Taylor? My bow and arrow’s to hunt boys and kill them. The world’s better off without them. Spurty scum, that’s what little boys are made of.’
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Can I see your knife?’
Dawn Madden tossed her knife, right at me. It was sheer fluke that it was the blade’s handle that hit my rib and not its fang.
‘Madden!’
Her stare said What? Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey.
‘That could’ve stuck right into me!’
Dawn Madden’s eyes are dark honey. ‘Oh, poor Taylor.’
The clackering tractor reached us and began a slow turn. Dawn Madden’s stepfather beamed hate-rays my way. Rusty earth sluiced round the blades of the plough.
Dawn Madden did a spazzo yokel voice at the tractor. ‘“Made o’ moy flesh an’ blood or not, young missy, we’re going to have more respect in this ’ouse or you’ll be out on your bony arse an’ don’t you go thinkin’ Oi’m bluffin’ yer ’cause I never bluff no one!”’
Her knife’s handle was warm and sticky from her grip. The blade was sharp enough to hack off a limb. ‘Nice knife.’