Kate threw the mole behind the barn and the flies found it. The green flies which feed on the wounds of sheep and lay their eggs in them this time of year, so the sheep have to be dosed all the time. They laid eggs on the mole as it began to stink. The skin on its face and hands dried up and stretched and beetles took it so half of the face was bone now and you could see the teeth. The eyes go first. Sexton beetle larvae broke down the meat and guts and the things inside and soon there was a hole in the side of the mole and the flies buzzed round it constantly. Even small birds came and took maggots that were feeding on the mole to feed their chicks, and took fur as well, to line their nests.
The beetles too ate the fly maggots and dug a shaft below the mole and dragged it some way down, rolling off the skin so some of the mole was in the ground and was above too. It was too big for the beetles to use totally. They laid eggs close by and fed the hatched larvae with partially digested bits of mole. Later, the beetles bit an entry hole in the rotting carcass and helped the growing larvae in. They fed themselves.
When much of the goodness of the mole was gone and the bigger insects went the ants came, cleaning the bones and the lining from the skin, and taking the weak maggots. They worked beautifully, with blind obedience, blind as a mole until all the mole was gone with them into the ground again, and only some parts of bone would be left if you found it now.
__ the Cats
She sees the cat cut slyly across the lawn. The cat had long been tormented by the gentle terrorisms of the children. In defence, he had adopted a placid, somewhat bourgeois cynicism; he also smouldered with the simple fury of having had his balls cut off and in defiance of his emasculation paced about the place with the slow steps of a tiger: it’s a threatening ability in nature to look like you can put down great weight gently.
The other cat, whom Emmy had insisted on naming ridiculously, used different tactics, she being a she. She was beautiful — a tortoiseshell with teardrop eyes and the inbuilt mischief anything with lovely eyes has naturally. She loved Gareth, and seduced him every chance she got. She was frivolous as only the beautiful can be. She was the hunter.
The other cat brought bigger things in, like baby rabbits and once, remarkably, a seagull, as if to say ‘if I wanted to I could’. But the constant offering of small rodents and slow birds were brought by her.
There had been a third cat, a sister, but she was gone. She was weaker from the start and, as she would, Kate loved her the most. She went missing at hay-making and no one wanted to believe that she had gone under the machine, so they decided to accept that she must have been kidnapped by holidayers, as happens. Gareth was convinced the dogs next door had taken her.
Fire
Gareth comes back along the road in case the cow has broken through the hedge, but he knows she has not. There is no sign of her. In the hedge, bordering the piece of land he wants to buy — he sees the houses in his mind — is the dead black ash of old fire. All summer there have been little fires in the hedges where people have thrown cigarette ends from their cars. They throw out the cigarette and drive on, as the flame curls and starts and rips up the very dry grass of the bank into the brittle hedge. It takes nothing, this year.
He wonders if the vet will come. Curly now is very old. He’s had him since he was a pup.
When Emmy was very small she used to drag the dog round by his ear, as if she were using him to help her walk. They joke that the dog taught her to walk, not them. Now he is very old and can’t clean himself properly and has developed a painful lump the size of half a football on his side. Yesterday he was bitten by a rat, so the vet has to come now. It is time.
__
He goes over the style that joins the footpath cutting through their land — the strange, ambiguous green arrow — and as he lands he turns his ankle. It hurts sharply for a moment, and he suddenly feels tired and angry. He can’t stop thinking of the dog. Often, the ground here is crossed with tracks — foxes and cats, walking boots and strayed sheep. Now there is nothing — no sign of movement; just the deep shape here and there of a horse’s hoof made long ago, when the mud was wet. The immoveable fact that the cow is missing begins to anger him as he follows the footpath, the shock of his ankle slowing to a dull pain. He must be very careful with his anger because it is very big when it comes.
The footpath runs between two hedges for a while before breaking out into open land, following a line of blackthorn down towards the river to the beach, still some miles away. The view is stunning, with the land going gently away and the sea before you, silk and blue above a line of thick gorse, bursting into yellow. In this weather, in this heat, the gorse sometimes smells of coconut and honey, and you can hear the seed pods exploding in the sun with sharp snaps.
The scent comes to him and he hears far away the ducks in the water, and the Transit cutting back, he guesses, into the farmyard. Looking out over the sea he thinks of his son; he does not want to farm, but he’ll know one day what a wonderful place this is.
A pheasant lifts in front of him, a claxon call — the call they always make, just twice, before thunder. He’s losing his hunger to shoot now. Before, he would trace the line of the gun at his shoulder and imagine the shot and the pheasant falling. It’s incredible how beautiful a pheasant is.
He sees, some way in front of him, a strange thing, something dead and crushed. He finds it is a rabbit, crushed and broken under the weight of broken bits of concrete. He stares, looking at it, thinking of the dog, hollow for a while. It infuriates him that men are capable of such articulate cruelty.
__
the Rabbit
The two boys had come along and found the rabbit dying by the bank. The breeze was up a little and it was nice because it had been dry for so long, and still; and the rabbit was wet and matted like a cloth, like a dog when it gets wet. At first they thought it was dead. It had the shapelessness of meat.
The boy saw it lain in the short grass by the bank, by the dry droppings and the scuff marks of other rabbits and the thick hard blackthorn above, coming into fruit.
‘Hey, look,’ said the boy. He didn’t want his brother to see it, but he knew now the other boy would see it anyway so he said it.
The other boy stood away from the rabbit for a moment then edged to it and peered over it and neither of them were sad because the rabbit was dead.
The eyes were open and they did not move. Around them the breeze was going warmly through the blackthorn and the ticking sound of a tractor working came to them across the fields. Then the rabbit’s eye moved.
The smaller boy went to prod it with his toe because he needed to understand better. He screwed up his face when he stretched out his foot. The eye moved slowly, just half-closing but not quite: as if it were willing itself just to close.
‘Don’t prod it, it’s still alive,’ said the other boy. The tractor ticked and chugged far away. They were both of them sad then but they did not want the other to see it. They stood around and nearly walked off and they knew it wasn’t a right thing.
‘I’m going to finish it off,’ said the older boy. It was simple and brave, what he said.
When he said it the rabbit kicked but could not get up so it just combed round in a half-circle and it was like the rabbit was helping the boy to do what he said. Like it was trying to tell him with his desperation that it was the right thing. And they knew they had to kill the rabbit then because it was dying.
They looked around and there were some old stones by a wall and the younger boy picked up the biggest stone he could in both hands and looked at the older boy bravely because he was hurt when he saw the rabbit kicking and was confused and would do it himself.