“Is this where they film zombie movies?” asks Snowdrop, coming to a stop. “Is it abandoned?”
Rowan grins at the run-down, seemingly deserted property. Gradually, more objects emerge from the gloom. There are two outbuildings a little further down the track and a battered grain silo blocks the view of the rising fell beyond. Vehicles in various states of disrepair litter what passes for the driveway. There are doors and bonnets missing in places and each has its bonnet up; great blooms of rust consuming the paintwork. He can make out an ice cream van, tyres gone, propped up on bricks and a green-slimed statue of a Roman deity. He walks towards the house, noticing a horse-box peeking out from behind a parked RV. The back of the box is open and Rowan can see that the storage space within has been given over to creates upon crates of cardboard boxes. He squints, and realises that the tinny high-pitched noise that has been pecking at his ears is coming from the dozens of tiny finches that are poking their beaks through the air-holes of their cardboard prisons.
“He’s grand,” says Rowan, quickly, as Snowdrop spots the birds. He jerks his head in the direction of the house. No two curtains are the same and each of the window panes seems to held together by sticky tape, holding together cracks in the glass. The front door is wedged open with a breeze block, offering a tantalising view of a mazy floral carpet and the edge of what looks, to Rowan’s untrained eye, like a Wurlitzer organ.
“Pickle! Is that you, you sexy beast?”
Rowan turns at the sound of the great cheerful voice, spilling out from the nearest outbuilding. A grin breaks out on his face.
“Why’s he calling you Pickle?” asks Snowdrop. “He’s called Pickle, isn’t he?”
“He calls people ‘Pickle’,” explains Rowan, hastily. “We don’t really know why. Every person he meets, he just calls them ‘Pickle’ and that’s kind of him become his nickname as a consequence. It’s weird.” He stops, feeling the explanation to be a little inadequate. “Just go with it. He’s a good lad.”
“Mum doesn’t say so. Does he call her Pickle?”
“I should say so,” affirms Rowan. “Probably does with your other mum too, though in her case I can see why. Probably to do with the vinegar.”
The man who emerges from the little brick outbuilding is, in every observable way, a catastrophe of a human being. Pickle is a lumbering mess of a man: with limbs that look as though they belong to a recently racked orang-utan. He’s 6ft 7” and would probably be taller still if he ever walked upright. Instead, his gait suggests he is trying to use his forehead to keep the rain off his Wellingtons. As he lollops down the track, Rowan and Snowdrop take in the full horror of his clothes. Today he’s wearing a police issue, high-visibility coat and a bobble-hat which sports ear-flaps made from the pockets of old jeans. His face is dirt and oil and bacon grease and there’s a rolled-up cigarette hanging from the bottom corner of his mouth. Like a half-pulled tooth.
“I’ve seen him before,” whispers Snowdrop. “He ran the canoes on the lake at Ennerdale…,”
“Aye, he lost that job,” says Rowan, discreetly. “I think he still refers to that time as the ‘sinking of the Armada’. He bought the canoes off a mate of his – more hole than wood. Patched them with some timber from his log pile. Got hold of some old Scout life-vests that were discontinued around 1953. It was his finest hour. Didn’t work, but you had to admire the gumption.”
“Did you write about that?” asks Snowdrop, nervously.
“No,” he says, shocked at the very suggestion. “No, Pickle’s the sort of mate that you don’t want to throw away on a page 5 lead. If you ever do throw him under the bus, you’d better hope you’re bringing down a Cabinet member or a TV presenter.”
Pickle reaches out to take Rowan in a bear hug but stops himself as he spots the bandages protruding from his sleeves. He stops a few steps away and Rowan catches the familiar smelclass="underline" that wet-dog tang of clothes dried in damp rooms. He smells of smoke and wet grass. Rowan coughs, eyes watering, as he gets a sudden whiff of pungent cannabis. It seems to emanate from Pickle’s skin and clothes and hair like steam from a compost heap.
“Heard you were around,” says Pickle, in a breezy Cumbrian accent. He gestures at the hands. “You been to Glasgow, have you? They’ll eat owt up there.”
“Deep fried,” explains Rowan, grinning. “Pickle here is a master in the cultural stereotype.”
“Indeed,” laughs Pickle, whipping off his hat and performing an elaborate bow. “Stick around and we’ll take the piss out of just about everybody. It’s equal opportunities. None of it’s offensive because I’m hardest on the English.”
“You’re not English,” smiles Rowan. “You’re not even officially classified as human. You’re a breed apart.”
“He’s not human?” asks Snowdrop, moving closer to her uncle. She seems to be struggling with her manners. She’d like to shake his hand and introduce herself as she has been taught, but she’s also remembering the instruction that she avoid strangers. Pickle may be her uncle’s friend, but she doubts she’s seen anybody stranger.
“Skin grafts,” says Rowan, and a little of the light fades from his eyes. He shrugs, holding up his hands. “They’re healing. My niece here is my hands until then.”
“Poor girl,” says Pickle, giving Snowdrop his attention. His pupils are pin-pricks – the nucleus of an unfertilised cell. “The stories those hands could tell, eh? What’s he like to work for? Grateful? Diligent? Reasonable? I have my doubts. Once this lad’s got the whiff of something in his nostrils he’s like a greyhound out of the traps. You’re Serendipity’s daughter, aren’t you? You’ve got a look of her. Batty, but likeably so.”
Snowdrop gives him a once-over, clearly deciding that being identified as ‘batty’ by a man so extraordinary in appearance, is probably a compliment of sorts.
“I’m rolling, if you’re tempted,” says Pickle, pointing back towards the barn. “Got a fire in the brazier. Knocked a chimney into the roof with a sledge-hammer when I was a bit stoned. Heather’s got a video of the moment when I realised I probably shouldn’t have stood on the roof to swing it. You should have seen me – went through in a cloud of dust and bricks and asbestos. Woke up with my face all bricks and bird nests. We pissed ourselves later…,”
Rowan glances at his niece. If she understands what he is being offered she’s not showing any signs. He wonders whether it would make him a terrible person if he were to go and smoke weed in a draughty barn with a convicted murderer and his 12-year-old niece. He has a suspicion that the right thing to do would be to say no. Instead he hears himself telling Pickle to lead the way.
“Were you passing or did you want me in particular?” asks Pickle as their boots slurp noisily through the muddy path. “You know the door’s always open ..,”
“Aye, quite literally.”
Pickle looks down at his friend, his gaze softening. He looks upon Rowan like an injured bird. “You okay? You look proper green around the gills. You’ve gone skinny again – the skinny you go when you’re misbehaving. I’d have come to see you but I heard about the hands.”
Rowan swallows. “What did you hear?”
“Just that you were staying at your sister’s place to convalesce. I like that word, don’t you? Convalesce, convalesce, conversation, conservation, lets rise up destroy the nation!” He starts to repeat the impromptu lyric to himself, jerking his beck forward and back to some imagined rhythm.