Backs to the wall
Sunday, September 25
A handful of protesters waving ‘HONK IF YOU LOVE HENS’ banners and a bucket load of police greeted us outside Chicken Colditz. A dozen news vans hugged the compound walls and hedges either side. This came as no surprise. After the London bombings, 9/11 and the now almost daily occurrence of some delusional fanatic blowing himself or herself up in a crowded place, terrorism was officially scary. As was activism, it would seem. Which was fair enough – threats were threats even if those threats emanated from nothing more menacing than a handful of chicken fancying spinsters. Yet, these were not religious fanatics. If anything they were rabid pacifists. I suspected the only incendiary device here was a cigarette lighter.
We pulled in behind a five strong queue of cars waiting to be screened at a police checkpoint.
‘How’s this for overkill?’ I said.
‘They’re taking it pretty seriously.’
‘So they should. But stopping every car? For God’s sake. As if they’re going to bowl up with a trailer load of explosives the next afternoon!’
Luckily Gabriel had photo ID to prove she was theoretically one of the persecuted and we were allowed through to the gates.
This raised an interesting question:
‘Gabriel. Do you know if you got any letters?’
‘I’ve no idea. Why?’
‘Well…it’s pretty obvious these people have done their research. And if they’ve targeted Simon’s rugby club and Melissa’s Bingo Hall, they’re obviously trying to shut the whole family out of everything. Which means they should have targeted something specific to you. And if they have…’
She sucked through her teeth. ‘I haven’t lived here for so long, monkey. There won’t really be anything.’
‘Nothing in Durham?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘What about Updike Littlejohn?’
‘We were there on Friday night, monkey. Remember? I think they’d have mentioned it.’
She had a point. Which meant there wasn’t a single letter we could currently pin to Gabriel. The only one of three Hogg offspring not to receive any form of direct threat was the one I planned to marry. I’m sure the Hoggs had noticed that. I’m sure the police had noticed that too.
‘If they know Melissa plays Bingo every Wednesday night,’ she said, ‘they also know I’ve never worked on that farm. Maybe that’s why. Maybe they’re leaving me alone because they know I’m nothing to do with it.’ She peered out through the front windscreen. ‘Come on guys, Open the fucking gates!’
We had been nose into the gates for several minutes. Plenty long enough for Mariabella – who was never far from a window or security monitor – to have spotted us.
Finally the gates did open. Before we could drive in, Attie Joubert burst out. One look at his set jaw and especially squinted glare as he swept around the driver’s side of the car told me to get out and become a more mobile target. He was on me before I could stand, knocking me backwards with his shoulder, fists clenched, but held back at his sides. I righted myself and held my palms up in a placating gesture. I may have had the long hair and tattoos of a street fighter. I also had the glasses of a coward.
‘Steady, mate,’ I said on the retreat. ‘There are cops watching.’
‘If there weren’t, I’d knock your bloody block off, son!’ he snarled in his white South African drawl, still on the advance, every inch of his grimy green overalls itching for one therapeutic swipe.
Gabriel was out of the car and at my side. ‘Fuck off, Attie! We didn’t come to see you!’
He stopped and his hands went to his hips. Now that violence was out of the question, he reverted to what I strongly suspect was his default emotion – that of arrogant disdain; the sort of easy arrogant disdain born out of decades of Apartheid-approved arrogant disdain. Outside the walls of Chicken Colditz that Sunday, Gabriel and I were as worthless and inherently despicable as a black couple caught strolling arm in arm along a whites-only beach.
‘Well, if it isn’t the little tramp,’ he said squinting at Gabriel. ‘My word, you guys have an incredible cheek coming here.’
‘Watch my mouth, Attie,’ I said stabbing at it with a finger. ‘I. Haven’t. Done. Anything!’ I sounded a bit like Dawn. ‘We. Are. Innocent!’
Attie Joubert’s features darkened, if that was possible. ‘You have no idea, do you?’
‘No idea about what, Attie? Why would I sabotage my own family? My own prospective family.’
‘You can forget about that, my lad,’ he said with a hard smile. ‘This matter is now in the hands of the police.’ He nodded at them. ‘These guys are handling it from here. I suggest you go away and stay away. Don’t try and contact your mother, Gabby. She won’t talk to you. And you. Don’t come near here again. I tell you, you are not welcome here under any circumstances. Any circumstances. Is that clear? You can protest your innocence all you like. This matter is in the hands of the authorities. I suggest you stay well away until you are proved guilty or otherwise.’
‘Otherwise?’ Gabriel called as Attie Joubert marched through the reopening gates. ‘The word you’re looking for is innocent! Add it to your vocabulary, you fucking racist slug! You’re going to need it!’
‘Is that so?’ he called back through the closing gates.
‘You’ll need another one as well…Sorry!’
‘We’ll see about that, young lady,’ he said. The gates closed and he disappeared from sight.
‘If you think you’re a victim of this!’ I shouted over the fence, emboldened in no small measure by Gabriel’s defiance and, in quite considerable measure, by a set of punch-absorbent gates. ‘Try being in my shoes! Our shoes!’ I turned to Gabriel. ‘I meant our shoes.’
‘I know you did, monkey.’
And that, most unsatisfactorily, was that. We got in the car and made our way back through the police and media with a long, loud blare on the horn as we passed the placard wielding protestors. I couldn’t resist.
‘That oughta help,’ Gabriel muttered sarcastically from the passenger seat, feet on the dashboard.
‘Well, that’s where we’re different,’ I said. ‘I thought it was a bit stupid. But this isn’t.’
I pulled in against the hedgerow twenty yards past the protesters and marched back, Gabriel running along behind like a Chinese wife. I didn’t for a minute think the instigator of the letters would be here, but no harm in asking.
The five assorted protesters were a poor advertisement for animal rights – a motley rabble of bitter, twisted rejects and misfits, youths with eating disorders and women with beards. I set my sights on a puny weasel of a man in a dirty purple anorak who, if he wasn’t bitter enough to send threatening letters, should have been. I was aware of police watching my every move.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the bloke who sent the letters.’
‘What letters?’ the weasel man said.
‘The threatening letters!’
‘Nothing to do with us, man. We just do this.’
‘Your mother must be very proud.’ I cast my eye over them. ‘Do any of you know who sent the letters?’ Shakes of heads. ‘Do any of you know what day it is? Who’s in charge here?’
‘I am,’ said the weasel man. ‘But I don’t know nothing about no letters. This operation isn’t run from here, see?’
‘Where’s it run from?’
‘I don’t know.’
And I believed him. He was just that transparently vague. These people were nothing but ignorant underlings, ‘the usual animal rights rent-a-crowd,’ as Gabriel put it back in the car. ‘They were probably emailed or telephoned by someone they didn’t know with a time and a date,’ she said. ‘There would have been talk of a mass ‘Stick it up em!’ demonstration and you can bet that hundreds were contacted for this. As per usual, five turn up. It’s the same everywhere. Everyone’s a willing volunteer until they’re actually asked to do something.’
***
‘This is my worst nightmare.’
A pint of Tetley’s sat largely untouched on a low round table at the Fox & Hound, Cragmoor. A vodka, lime and lemonade sat newly finished next to that. Beside the table, a bowl of water had all but been drunk dry by the dogs at my feet.
‘Our worst nightmare,’ said Gabriel lounging in a large turquoise armchair, one of a kind in the long narrow room of eclectic, mismatched furniture which wouldn’t have looked out of place in a student flat. Students, however, would have looked way out of place in here amongst the corduroy and Andy caps. As did we in our Monsoon and Diesel, with our earrings, bracelets and tattoos; me with my long hair and flavour savour; Gabriel, with her Latin looks and brown skin. Then again, Gabriel was something of a novelty wherever she went in predominantly lily white rural North Yorkshire.
My eyes fell on a fox head snarling down from a gallery of stuffed animals, which did nothing to improve my mood. ‘That’s a given, Gabriel. Cut me some slack, for God’s sake. I’m the only one in this relationship who really knows how unfair this is. I’m the only one who knows for a fact I’m innocent and my world’s gone mental. And yours. I can’t believe it! The world’s gone completely fucking round the twist! I’m not sure I can cope with this bullshit. I didn’t come here for this. I came here…What did I come here for, Gabriel? I came here to marry you.’
‘And to bleed my father for all he’s worth.’
‘Exactly! That is exactly it! Why would I sabotage that?’ I thought about this. ‘It doesn’t look too flash whichever way you look at it.’
The tiny door of the Fox & Hound squeaked inwards to admit more corduroy, a battered old farmer stooping inside and bustling to the bar rubbing his hands.
‘Do you think we’re bad people?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think we’re bad people at all. We’re getting what’s rightfully ours. And there will be money. Even if the farm dies, the house will still be worth something. The land has to be worth loads. And if we did something positive with the money…’
She was right and I was buoyed by this. ‘Like what?’
‘Well…we’ve all got our favourite charities, haven’t we?’
‘Whoa back, little girl! We’re not donating the money to charity!’
‘I’m not suggesting we do. Just some of it. Half of it. It’s effectively found money, Bailey. Found money can do funny things to people. I’ve read about people who won the lottery and it sent them round the twist. Long lost friends coming out of the woodwork wanting to be their best mate. Relatives appeared at the door expecting handouts. It’s awful, or it can be. All these weird guilts about whether they deserved it, how to spend it, who to cut in. I mean, I know you’ve got money, not that you’ll tell me how much. Which is fine. Sort of. And I’m working on my side. Not that that’s…Anyway, we’re hardly on the breadline. Which makes me think, if we did fall into some decent sized extra cash, we could do something really positive for the animals.’
The lie had tightened my face. The dream loosened it. ‘We could open a dog sanctuary.’
She laughed. ‘How much money do you think we’re getting, monkey?’
‘At current rate of knots? None. I’m just toying with the dream.’
‘Nothing like a bit of toying.’ She flopped back in her armchair and gazed at the ceiling. ‘A dog shelter. I can see that. Might be more like a dog kennel, though.’
I laughed. ‘What about doing something for dancing bears?’
‘Teach them a few new moves, you think?’
Another laugh. ‘No. Set up a sanctuary. Or help fund one, more like. There’s an organisation called Libearty who traipse around the globe building bear sanctuaries and liberating bears, which I kind of like. We could chuck them a big wad of cash.’
‘That would be nice. Why dancing bears?’
‘Well, I, ah, have a bit of unfinished business.’
‘With dancing bears?’
I nodded a little guiltily and Gabriel grinned.
‘What? One refused to dance with you?’
I laughed. ‘Yeah, I thought I was in. All joking aside, I saw a documentary about it once.’
‘You?’
‘I know.’
‘You hate watching that stuff!’
‘I know. It caught me off guard. I was watching it before I knew I was watching it because Bill Bailey, you know, the comedian bloke?’ – she nodded – ‘He was there and I got sucked into what he was saying and next thing I knew I was watching all these bears being yanked around by these little Indian blokes. It was fucking awful. Like, with these sloth bears in India, these little wankers literally go into forests, kill the mother, steal the cubs and sell them to gypsies who smash all their teeth out with a hammer, pull all their claws out with pliers and force them to dance for tourists who think it’s all very cute and give them money,.’ I stuck my fingers either side of my nostrils. ‘Red hot poker, straight through the nose. Then a rope through that. Can you even begin to imagine what that must be like? A dirty old rope through your nose. Raw all the time. Getting infected. For fifteen years…The bears go mad from the pain. Completely insane. Like crazy people…rocking. And loads of them, the infection makes them go blind. . The bears don’t stand up and dance. They stand up and fight against the pain. And they scream. Like bears would. The Indians tell tourists they’re singing.’
Gabriel gazed at the floor, shook her head sadly. ‘That’s awful.’ She stared at the floor a bit more.’ You know, monkey, you say you can’t stand seeing animal cruelty. But you’ve seen that and you’re still functioning.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re angry, but you’re fine. You should do more of that. You should try to get involved.’
‘I did try to get involved!’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes!’
‘What did you do?’
‘Well, nothing. It all turned to toast.’
She angled her head. ‘More info?’
I scoffed. ‘I got a copy of the dancing bear documentary and showed it to the MD of an agency I was working for at the time. He agreed to do a fundraising campaign for Libearty, the group liberating the dancing bears and setting up sanctuaries for them. The agency were going to pay for everything – production, placement – and I was going to work on the creative side at home in the evenings. I’d met the guy from Libearty and two reps from WSPA. Got the green light. The creative director – a complete wanker – comes back from holiday, finds out about it, pulls the plug.’
‘Bastard. Why?’
I scoffed. ‘Ego. He was offended I hadn’t asked him first. That was my one chance to do something positive through advertising, Gabriel. I was really excited about it and the little prick fucked it, just like that.’
‘Do I detect a bit of a grudge?’
‘Jesus, you’re quick! We don’t get many chances like that in and around encouraging people to drink alcohol and eat shit. I’d love to do something. I’d love to go somewhere like India, rut out all the little bastards forcing bears to dance, confiscate their bears and have some bloke step in and beat them all to death with a stick.’
‘The bears?’
‘No, the Indians. The ones that had mistreated bears.’
‘Oh. Have you run this plan past the World Animal people?’
‘No point really until I’ve got the cash.’
‘And the guy with the stick.’
‘He might turn out to be the most expensive part of the whole operation.’
‘He’s important though, is he?’
‘Oh, I think he’s the clincher. Loads of people, Bill Bailey, being a high profile example, have had some success in liberating bears, which is fantastic, but no one thus far has gone that extra mile.’
‘Beating Indians to death with a stick.’
‘It does strike me as the way forward, Gabriel, yes. It’s all about breaking the cycle. You liberate one dancing bear from an Indian; the Indian just gets another dancing bear. He can’t do that if he’s been beaten to death with a stick.’
‘Ah, I see now,' she said with a slow and slightly overdone knowing nod. 'You’re not just saving the bears, you’re saving future generations of bears.' She cocked her head and feigned a smile. 'It’s actually quite clever really, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know about clever.’
‘Brutal then.’
‘Brutal’s a better word, yes.’
Gabriel slouched back in her armchair and eyed me with amusement. ‘It doesn’t concern you,' she said picking at a fingernail with her thumb, 'that beating Indians to death with sticks might actually harm the whole bear liberation cause?’
I shrugged. ‘Who’s going to know?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Well, presumably the entire world eventually.’
‘We’re not going to video it.’
‘I didn’t think you were, monkey. But wouldn’t beating Indians to death with sticks be considered terrorism?’
‘No,' I said taking up an angled and considered postion in my armchair, beer poised. 'It’s only terrorism if you’re attempting to send a message to others to change their behaviour. This would just be beating Indians to death with sticks. No message, just dead Indians.’ I sipped as Gabriel giggled.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong,' she said, 'but this sounds more about killing Indians than liberating bears. Do I detect a hint of racism?’
‘Not at all. If it was Kiwis torturing bears, I’d beat them to death with a stick as well. It’s not about race, colour or creed. It’s about behaviour. It just so happens Asians generally have a long history of dreadful behaviour towards animals. Not racism, sad fact.’
‘That’s a cultural thing.’
‘No. It’s an ignorance thing. Anyway, this is all pointless. Barring a miracle, there isn’t going to be any payout.’
We lapsed into silence. Clearly from the amount of frowning and fidgeting and staring into space Gabriel was doing, the silence wasn’t going to last. She had something on her mind. Ultimately it fell in my lap.
‘If the worst comes to the worst and we don’t get any money out of Dad, we’ll be all right, won’t we?’
‘Of course.’
Her eyes narrowed on mine. ‘We have money, don’t we, monkey?’
It was a leading question.
‘Yes.’
And, if the worst comes to the worst, we can pay for the wedding ceremonies ourselves, can’t we?’
This was a bit too direct. Fact was I couldn’t pay for a cake right now.
‘To be frank,' I said, then cleared my throat. 'I think we should leave the wedding alone for a while.’
‘No way!’ she screamed lurching forward in her chair.
The contents of corduroy shot us a glance. ‘Keep your voice down, Gabriel.’
‘I am keeping my voice down!’
‘You’re shouting. Just argue calmly for a change.’
Fact was Gabriel couldn’t argue calmly. Rarely did I win an argument with Gabriel. Not necessarily because she had the stronger case, just the louder case. I hated shouting. Kurt and Courtney hated shouting. We simply weren’t used to shouting. We cowered collectively in its presence. And the more Gabriel shouted, the more arguments she won by default and the harder it became to change what she no doubt saw as a highly effective character flaw. A flaw which, with recent events, may be the only thing she inherited from her parents. A flaw she was yet to face, let alone correct.
I had to be careful how I broached a wedding deferral. Last time I stuck a stick in the spokes of Gabriel’s vicious cycle she came a cropper and landed back in England.
She huffed and sat back in her chair.
‘This is how I see it,’ I said. ‘We have to be patient. As Attie said, we have to just sit tight for a while and let nature take its course. Nothing’s going to happen now for quite a while, Gabriel. It might, but I doubt it. We just have to have faith in the system, leave it alone and get on with our lives as best we can.’
‘Yes. And getting married is getting on with our lives!’
‘Give it time. Please?’
‘Newchurch took five years, monkey! I’m not waiting five years!’
‘If you’d let me finish! I don’t believe this will go on like that. Everybody will have learnt too much from that whole debacle – the police, the activists and, probably most of all, your parents. The police won’t want it to go on that long. The activists won’t want it to go on that long. And meanwhile all Austin and Mariabella are thinking is that it could!’
Gabriel’s face pursed into a sour lemon frown. ‘I don’t agree. Newchurch changed everything, Bailey, absolutely fucking everything. These people are far more bloody minded than you realise; they’ll do anything, no matter how disgusting, to get a win. And I have to say, there’s only going to be one winner in this. And it’s not Windy Dale Eggs.’
