After they’d eaten, as they sat in front of the fire, Fran began talking about Tegwyn Aneurin Rhys and soon had Jenny in stitches wtih her imitations of his eccentric way of talking and his bird-like habit of putting his head on one side when he was making a special point.
Helen didn’t even smile. When Fran left and Jenny was in bed, they washed the dishes together in silence. When they’d finished he suggested there might be something worth watching on television.
‘Anything rather than talk to me!’ she burst out at him.
It was their first quarrel since they’d moved down to the cottage, yet they both knew it’d been smouldering for some time. She accused him of having an affair with Fran. That hurt. He’d smothered those feelings almost from the start.
Then she attacked him for the long hours he spent with the worms. True — but they were trying to make a living, he argued back. Not only from skins either. What about those colour transparencies he’d sold to the Geographical? That illustrated article to the German paper? Why couldn’t she involve herself more in what they were doing? Fran had asked her to help with the book-keeping, to become part of the business, but she’d refused. Why?
‘You know very well why!’ Helen retorted.
But the storm passed that day and during the next few weeks neither of them mentioned it. They even made love occasionally, trying to repair the breach. And he cut down the amount of time he spent with the worms and did more jobs about the house. She began to take in typing from the local solicitor and Matt helped her to check the work for accuracy. It gave them an insight into several neighbourhood scandals. In church on Sunday mornings they looked at several members of the congregation with renewed interest.
It was a mild winter that year and spring came early. He checked the tanks daily, hoping the worms might show signs of a courtship dance, anything to indicate a change in their behaviour pattern. They’d still not found any females but Fran had read somewhere that hermaphrodites were not unknown in the animal world. She rang Aneurin Tegwyn Rhys to discuss the idea; he thought it not impossible.
‘If only we could breed them,’ he explained to Jenny as she watched him dropping food into the tanks one day, ‘we’d have more control. Hunting’s so uncertain. Hit or miss.’
‘You hate it, don’t you?’ Jenny observed, matter-of-fact. ‘I know you do, Daddy, because your mood’s quite different when you go hunting. You’re all on edge. Mummy notices too. Why don’t you love each other like you used to? Is it because of the worms?’
Matt’s immediate instinct was to deny it, but then she’d only fall silent as she realized he was lying. ‘I don’t know, Jenny. People go through these phases.’
They moved to the tank with the largest worms. ‘Isn’t it beautiful, that one?’ she cried out enthusiastically. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it lovely?’
He smiled at her, agreeing, but holding her arm to prevent her putting her hand in to stroke it. The worm regarded them both lazily, opened its mouth to display its teeth, then curled and slid away in an elaborate figure-of-eight to the far side of the tank. Its long back rippled and twinkled with every imaginable shade of incandescent green and purple. Jenny caught her breath with excitement.
‘Oh, I love them!’ she exclaimed, her eyes bright with pleasure. ‘If only Mummy weren’t so afraid of them! And they’re so intelligent! I’m sure they understand every word we say. Where do you think they come from?’
‘Where do we all come from? We’re all part of nature, aren’t we?’
‘Mm…’
14
Helen went down to the main shed reluctantly, hating what she had to do. It was eight o’clock in the evening and still not dark yet, though the pale moving clouds were tinged with red. A sudden breeze had sprung up, swaying the masses of daffodils; it was unexpectedly chilly after the warm spring day.
Matt had said he’d not be able to get back from London that night. A business deal with a lot of money involved — more skins, she supposed — so would she mind feeding the worms just this once? Jenny had been invited out to a birthday party, otherwise she’d have done it gladly.
Mind? Of course she minded. The mere sight of them turned her stomach. That glowing greenish-purple colour. The ripples as they moved. Their eyes.
Time and time again she’d told Matt they were his concern, she was having nothing to do with them, if she had her way she’d incinerate them in their own tanks. So why had she weakened once more? Why?
He’d left everything ready. The specially-constructed boxes he’d designed himself, each clearly marked, were stacked in order on the rough trolley he’d knocked together out of that discarded pram they found on the rubbish tip. He certainly worked hard, no one could fault him on that score. The hours he put in, the labour… Those worms were never out of his mind. At meal-times, while watching TV, even in bed. It was eerie, verging on madness.
As she pushed the trolley down the uneven path the ‘food’ suddenly came to life, scratching and scrambling inside the boxes. Helen shuddered. Right at the very beginning she’d argued with him about it, voiced her objections. But he hadn’t listened. Pigheaded.
Biting her lip nervously she unlocked the shed door and went inside, easing the trolley over the step. Even before she switched on the light she sensed the quick stir of interest in the worm tanks. Sensed rather than heard. She was convinced they had known she was coming and consciously waited for her — silently. That threatening silence inside the shed.
‘Well, here’s your food! Here it is!’ she called out, trying to reassure herself with the sound of her own voice. And failing. They knew all about her. Her fear. Her loathing of them. They weren’t taken in.
She started with the first of the tanks on the wide shelf down the left-hand side of the shed, the glass aquarium where he kept the smallest worms, no more than three or four inches long. Already they were emerging from the murky water at the bottom and oozing up the smooth rocks he’d placed there; raising their heads, rhythmically waving them from side to side, trying to fix her with their tiny pinhead eyes. But she averted her gaze as she took the uppermost box from the trolley and placed it sideways over the tank, slotting the top edges of the glass walls into the grooves.
When it was firmly in position she opened the catch and drew out the sliding bottom of the box. The two mice inside squealed in alarm and protest; a panic-stricken scratching as they tried to cling to the walls; then they dropped down to the waiting worms. One landed in the water, the other on the largest of the rocks. More tiny screams and scurrying as they tried to save themselves from the sharp teeth.
Sickened, she turned away and went to the next tank. It was much bigger, made of sheet metal, and in the bottom was an evil-smelling mixture of stale water, rotting vegetation and rocks which Matt had collected from the seashore. In the semi-darkness the worms’ skins glowed; their eyes seemed to seek hers. She retched, and it was all she could do to prevent herself vomiting into the tank.
Hurriedly she lifted up the next box and fitted it into place. Then the catch … and the slide. The same frightened squeals from the mice — three of them this time — and the same helpless panic.
‘Nature red in tooth and claw,’ Matt had always quoted whenever she accused him of cruelty. ‘It’s their natural food. That’s the way all animals live.’
‘But in the wild some at least manage to escape,’ she’d told him fiercely. ‘They’re not sacrificed callously, with no way out, to die in terror.’
‘Aren’t they?’ he’d shouted back at her on that occasion, slapping his hand down on the table. ‘Aren’t they? Look at that hand! Look at my face! I know what it’s like to be hunted for food. Remember?’