THE NUMBERS

CHRISTOPHER BURNS

A sun the colour of paper edged above the farm and the wooded hill. He walked quickly because he understood that if he slowed he would become thoughtful, too nervous, and then lose confidence and turn back. Crows, shiny and black as blotches of spilled ink, strutted and clacked in the misty field, and at its far perimeter a low shape slid through the greyness and then vanished. He immediately recognised the russet brush and purposeful slink.

Mud webbed the dark farmyard and a heavy reek of cattle layered the still air. Near the farmhouse door a dark green Land Rover was partly illuminated by a light from the kitchen window. Two dogs, Border collies, ran up with vigorously wagging tails and dirty paws. Danny scratched their ears contentedly: they had made no judgement on him. Quite suddenly the door opened and his brother stood there, his back against the light.

“For God’s sake,” Martin said. “Danny, what are you doing here?”

“I saw a fox,” he answered quickly, as though that alone were the reason for his presence. “It was in this field just now.”

“You didn’t come all this way to tell me that,” Martin said, settling a cap on his head and closing the door behind him. Danny noticed that he had lowered his voice, as though he did not wish his wife to overhear. “And where’s your car? You haven’t walked all this way, have you?” After a pause he added, with a touch of resignation: “I can see that you have. It’s just like you.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Listen, it’s not right that you show up unexpectedly at this hour. It’s not the kind of thing that rational people do. Understand?”

Danny looked at the ground and traced an arc across a cobblestone with the toe of his shoe. “It could go for your chickens,” he explained. “Take the Browning; we could find its earth and dig it out.”

“What are you here for? Forget the bloody fox and just tell me why you’re here.”

“I try to help. You know I do.”

After a few seconds Martin sighed and pulled his cap further down on his forehead. Eager to be at work, the collies circled round the brothers’ feet, nostrils raised, their breath condensing in the chill air.

“I know it’s early,” Danny said, and the words resembled a plea. “And I should have thought harder about things. But I didn’t want to wake you up.” He paused, and added: “Both of you, I mean.”

Even as he spoke, the details of his last visit shifted uneasily in Danny’s memory and he felt his confidence begin to fail. But Martin hadn’t yet mentioned the gaffe, the perceived insult, so it was possible that Sarah had never told her husband about what she had been asked.

“We still have to get up at the same time as you and I used to get up,” Martin said. “Farming hours never change. Ten, fifteen minutes earlier and we’d have been eating breakfast. But I don’t suppose you’ve eaten breakfast, have you?”

Danny did not answer. His brother could easily make him feel ashamed.

Martin walked past him and unlocked the Land Rover’s back door. As soon as it was open the collies jumped inside. Danny could hear the gritty brush of their paws on the floor as they turned round and round before settling down.

“There must be something I can do,” Danny said. “Give me some animal feed, or a spade, or a hammer and nails—anything. Just tell me what needs done.”

Martin unlocked the driver’s door, opened it a fraction, and paused. “I can’t think of anything that I’d want you to do,” he said flatly.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“As I said, I can’t think of anything,” Martin repeated without varying his tone. He climbed into the driver’s seat but kept the door open.

“I tried to get office work but no one will take me,” Danny said.

“That’s because of the mess you got into; didn’t that occur to you?” There was a pause, and Martin added: “No, I don’t suppose it did. You’re not the brightest with numbers, are you? Not the world’s best planner. Figures don’t mean much.” He closed the door and wound down the window. “I’m going to check the flock in the west field. They’ll be lambing soon. I’ll be back in twenty or thirty minutes.”

“I’ll come with you,” Danny said eagerly, and added; “we should look for that fox.”

Martin did not answer, but instead shook his head like a man confronted once again by a problem he had never been able to solve. And then he started the car engine and banged on the horn several times. In response an upstairs window opened fractionally and yellowish light glanced down into the farmyard. Danny did not dare raise his eyes.

“I’ve got my brother here,” Martin called, his voice like a herald’s.

Danny could not hear an answer, but he saw the light withdraw and heard the click of the closing window.

“Sarah will fix you something to eat,” Martin told him. “After that, it’s best that you go back home. Understand?”

“Is she all right?” Danny asked, a little hesitantly.

“Of course: why shouldn’t she be?”

“No reason. I was just asking.”

“She’s fine,” Martin answered, and closed the door.

Danny watched the vehicle bump down the road, its tail lights fading into a mist whose upper layers were melting beneath the angled sunlight. And then he opened the farmhouse door.

He stood in a small whitewashed room that had once been an outhouse. It had double hooks with working clothes and hats, shelves stacked with tins and opened boxes, waterproof jackets and footwear, a gun and shells, a small dismantled engine thick with oil, gardening tools, bags of what he assumed must be some kind of grain, and a flagstone floor spotted with dried mud. A spider hung in a web across the bulb in the ceiling. It annoyed Danny that he should be accused of a lack of discipline by a brother who had such a disorganised room. The next door led to the modern kitchen and it had been left open so that he could smell hot food and feel the warmth. He pushed his hands through his hair, which was damp and which he had allowed to grow too long. His shoes were muddy and he wondered about taking them off and leaving them on the floor next to Martin and Sarah’s boots and wellingtons, but decided against it. It was possible Sarah would not be pleased to see him; she could even demand that he leave.

He called her name, at first quietly and then loudly when there was no response. He heard her shout a hello from somewhere upstairs; he was not sure where—maybe the bathroom.

“It’s me—Danny,” he shouted, although he knew it was not necessary to announce his presence.

There was a pause of six seconds—he timed it—before she called back that she would come down in a few minutes. He unlaced his shoes in readiness but did not take them off.

When Sarah appeared in the kitchen he could see that her hair was still damp from the shower, and that the strands were curled up at their ends; she had dyed it blonde again since they had last met. She wore an old thin sweater and jeans that were ripped across one knee, but the sweater appeared to sit awkwardly on her body, as though parts were sticking to damp patches on her skin. Once again, he could see why his brother had married her.

“Don’t tell me, you’d like something to eat,” she said drily.

“I don’t expect you to make me anything,” he replied, trying to be considerate.

“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to eat,” she answered, opening the fridge. “I can do eggs, bacon, fried tomatoes, and toast. I’m sorry but Martin has just finished the last of the sausages. And I can make more coffee.”

Danny kept his coat on but took off his shoes and walked into the kitchen. The tiled floor was pleasantly smooth. There was a hole in one sock that his big toe poked through: until that moment he had not noticed it, but now he realised how incongruous it must look.

“Martin didn’t say he was expecting you,” Sarah said. She had switched the cooker on and was arranging food in a frying pan.

“He wasn’t. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Something on your conscience?”

Danny thought it best not to answer, not just yet, anyway. “I offered to help but he didn’t seem to want any,” he said. “It’s not like it was when we were kids together.”

“That was a long time ago. We’re all different people now.”

He was not sure how to answer, and rather than leave a silence, Danny thought of the food he was about to eat and said, “You’re very kind.”

Her response was so quick he was not even sure that he had finished speaking.

“Yes,” she said, “I am. In view of what you said to me last time.”

Danny looked down at the tiled floor. “I picked things up wrong,” he murmured, although he was certain that other men would have responded in a similar way to Sarah’s careless teasing.

“You needn’t hint that it was somehow my fault,” she told him, as though she had read his thoughts. “What I said was normal conversation: you’re the one who took it to be something else. You get carried away by your imagination, don’t you? It’s not the first time it’s got you into trouble.”

“Sorry,” he said weakly.

“Danny, let’s get it straight. I’m married to your brother. We’re very happy together. We intend to stay that way. So let that be an end to things.”

He looked up, ready to defend himself. “It was when you suggested—”

“I said an end. We’ll forget that it happened and never speak of it again. All right?”

“All right,” he agreed, and bowed his head so that she would not see his discomfort.

It was obvious now that Sarah must have remained silent and told Martin nothing. Danny felt both pathetically grateful and at the same time angry that he was morally in her debt.

“Sit down,” she instructed. Her voice had not softened.

Danny sat on the far side of a polished wooden table that stretched between them like a barrier, and he tucked his feet under the chair so that his bare big toe was out of Sarah’s sight. He searched for something neutral to say.

“How’s my nephew?” he asked after a short pause.

“Andrew takes his finals in a couple of months. Everything’s going well. He’s confident. And when he comes back home he’ll be going into partnership with us.” Sarah went on as if making a company announcement. “He has a really good business brain and lots of ideas about taking the farm in a new direction.”

“A family business, then,” Danny said, but she did not react to the edge in his voice.

“You should have let Andrew advise you,” Sarah told him. “If you were too proud to listen to your brother you should have listened to your nephew.”

But Danny believed it would have been absurd to take advice from a twenty-two-year-old. And besides, he felt nothing but contempt for academic theory, especially when it was concerned with the practical skills of accountancy, management, and farm practice.

Food sizzled and spat in the frying-pan and when the smell hit Danny his nose began to run. He had not eaten a cooked breakfast since the last time he was at the farm. He searched in a pocket for a handkerchief, realising as he did that the only one he had was dirty. Sarah pushed a box of tissues towards him.

“Sorry,” he said after blowing his nose noisily and then searching for a container to drop the tissue in. “It’s a cold,” he lied.

“There’s a bin over there,” Sarah said, pointing, and once again he felt inadequate for not noticing. “Mist never helps a cold,” she continued. “And the farm has been built in the shadow of a hill. As soon as Andrew gets here we’ll take a holiday to anywhere that’s hot.”

“Martin and I always played on top of that hill when we were kids. The trees weren’t as tall then, of course. We could climb the lower branches together. And I used to swear to Martin that I could see the sea.”

“I hope he didn’t believe you. The sea’s ten miles away. It must have been your imagination.”

“It seemed real to me.” Danny paused, and could not help but continue. “In those days I thought we’d own this farm together for the rest of our lives.”

Sharpness returned to her voice. “Don’t bring that up again; Martin gave you a good price for your share. If you’d taken advice you’d still have most of that money.”

The kettle began to boil.

“Sarah,” he said with a kind of mild insistence, “these buildings and those fields used to be my property.”

“Yours? Only half of them were, and you couldn’t manage your share anyway. You don’t have the sort of brain that Martin and Andrew have. The partnership would have been bankrupt if we hadn’t bought you out.”

Sarah lifted the breakfast onto a large plate and put it in front of him along with a knife and fork.

“Danny,” she told him firmly, “farming’s not an occupation for lazy people or daydreamers or people who can’t understand elementary accountancy.”

The comment hit him like a slap. For a few moments he held the cutlery in an upright position, like a character in an animated film, and then he pressed the point of his knife into the fried egg so that bright yellow yolk spilled from it.

Once the food was in his mouth it was evident to Danny that he was generating too much saliva, so he reached across for another tissue. He felt foolish because he had become so clumsy. Maybe being misunderstood was a natural consequence of being gauche. And it was demeaning and unjust that all the valuable work he had done on the farm had never been given its true value, either morally or financially. Not only that, but his contributions were habitually dismissed with a guiltless ease.

“I could help,” he said, like a supplicant repeating an appeal.

“Martin doesn’t want you to help. Not any more.”

“I’m good at practical work. You and Martin don’t think so, but I am. I’ve fixed guttering and fed the animals and dug ditches and delivered lambs.” He was not sure if he sounded eager or desperate. And then he added: “It would help if I could earn some money.”

“Yes, Danny, if the task is simple then your work is acceptable. But you nearly lost us some of those lambs. And you’re no good at all if the work involves thinking ahead or seeing consequences. Deep inside, you know you’re not.”

He nodded weakly as though he agreed to the wisdom of such an arrangement. This was how it was, Danny thought as he sank into self-pity: he had never been appreciated. Instead he was exploited, unrewarded, and often unable to make himself understood.

Sarah put a mug of coffee down in front of him. On its side there was a picture of a Victorian strongman lifting a gigantic weight. And then she spoke with an artificial brightness, as if she needed to close off any further discussion of the future.

“You look as if you’re enjoying that breakfast,” she said, walking to the sink. “You’re nearly finished.”

It took a few seconds for Danny to answer.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I am. Thanks.”

“I have things to do,” she said briskly, turning to the kitchen sink. “When you’re finished, maybe you could make your way back home.”

It was not a question, but Danny answered with a justification.

“I think it was just as well that I came here. I saw a fox outside. He was very close to the buildings. Something needs to be done about him.”

Sarah did not answer but he noticed the momentary despairing shake of her head. She was standing at the sink and facing away from the table. Danny studied her back for a moment and noticed how her clothing was still sticking to it. He fantasised idly about peeling it from her skin. And then, unexpectedly, overwhelmingly, he was seized with a kind of desperate clarity.

He stood up and pushed back the chair so that its legs grated harshly on the floor. “I’ll be back in a second,” he said.

Everything was different. From this moment on both past and future dissolve and Danny lives only in the present, and when he acts he feels as pure and as faultless as a rainwashed stone.

He goes to the outer room, picks the Browning shotgun from the wall, loads it, walks into the kitchen and discharges one barrel into Sarah’s back. She is catapulted forward across the sink, her sweater punched with holes, and then she slides backward and sprawls on the floor in a clatter of falling dishes. The room is still shuddering with the noise and smoky reek of the blast and her eyes swivel helplessly towards the ceiling. Danny walks across the tiled floor and looks down. Sarah’s lips are moving but he doesn’t know if she is actually saying something or if he has been momentarily deafened. He uses his free hand to stick a finger into each ear and waits until his hearing returns. Her words are distant, muted, like whispers from beyond a wall. He shoots the second barrel and her face disintegrates.

Danny goes back to his seat, finishes eating his breakfast and drinking his coffee, and then returns to the outer room and puts his shoes back on. He is still annoyed that there is a hole in one sock. For a short while he rotates the shell cylinders in his hands, and then he breaks and reloads the Browning. Its metallic clicks are as reassuringly engineered as the tumblers of a safe. Then he puts two extra shells in his pocket and goes back outside to wait in the chill of the farmyard with the shotgun held in both hands and level across his hips. In the barn the cattle are lowing, but the mist is clearing and the rising sun is the colour of a communion wafer.

He cannot tell how long he waits, but as he is growing cold he never stops hoping that his brother will return soon. Eventually the Land Rover bounces back up the track and stops at the very spot where it had been parked. Martin opens the door. He looks puzzled and annoyed and unforgiving.

“I don’t want you to shoot that fox,” he says firmly. “This is my farm. I make the decisions. So you can put the gun back where you found it.”

Danny fires one barrel and his brother is flung across the seat so that his body is bent backwards and half in, half out of the cab. The engine is still running and crows are rising in a racketing wave from their roosts. In the back of the Land Rover the terrified collies yelp and whirl in circles trying to escape. Martin slides forward, moving in a heavy, ungainly yet unstoppable manner as though his centre of gravity has shifted downwards. He comes to rest on the muddy cobblestones with one leg crooked beneath him and the other held straight out. His hands flutter ineffectually and he makes a strange noise, part exaggerated sigh and part bubbling hiss. Danny aims at his brother’s chest, fires again, and Martin’s clothing is torn into shreds. Then Danny takes the spares from his pocket, reloads, shoots the dogs, and pulls them out of the back. Their bodies smell of blood and wet fur.

He returns to the outer room, picks up a box of shells, and loads two. He does not check their specification and he does not count how many are in the box. Then Danny walks to the Land Rover, steps over his brother, props the shotgun against the passenger seat, and closes the door. When he sets off he hears a dragging thud as Martin’s body slips to the cobblestones. He can still smell the dogs so he opens the window. Chill air courses like a balm into the interior. As he drives away he does not look for the fox.

For the next half-hour Danny fires at any figure that he considers a target. At first there is a car that he waves down as if asking for help before shooting its astonished driver through the side window. Next he kills two men waiting at a bus stop: one sprawls inert on the pavement with outstretched arms, the other sits with his head bowed and hands clasped to his chest, as if in prayer, while a third man runs away with a curious loping gait and is out of range by the time Danny has reloaded. He drives on and sees a young nurse coming out of a shop with a newspaper in her hands. He knows her face but not her name, and when he fires he watches her body collapse as if somehow it has deflated and become smaller. Another man is shot in a doorway, his glasses knocked from his face by the blast, but Danny drives away before he can tell how badly the man has been hit. Next there is a woman walking her spaniel on a lead: she seems to understand what is about to happen and she raises one hand as if that might offer protection. It does not, but this time he spares the dog. Suddenly freed, the spaniel runs away, stops, and then slowly returns, dragging its lead along the pavement behind it. Minutes later Danny halts opposite a mailbox. A postman is scooping letters into a bag and has left the engine of his van running. Danny calls across to him. The postman looks up and is shot full in the face. Mail scatters around him like pages from a destroyed book. And lastly Danny murders a young girl with a child in a pushchair. She lies on the pavement as still as a butchered animal while he broods about killing the terrified child, but when he checks his ammunition he finds that there are only two shells left so he decides that he must drive away.

Danny does not know how many shots he has fired or how many people he has slaughtered. Numbers mean nothing to him, and neither do names or personalities. And only when he has reached the coast does he understand that this has always been his destination.

He leaves the Land Rover at the roadside with the door open. A path leads through grassy dunes to the shore and he follows it with the Browning still in his hand. In the weak sunlight his shadow is just visible as it passes like a ghost across trodden sand and scattered litter. From the road far behind him comes the distant penetrating wail of police sirens.

Danny reaches a broad pebbled beach that leads to a cloudy sea. The grey and brown stones crunch and grate under his weight and he sits down heavily above a contour left by the last high tide. The air has a thin vinegary smell, and he can see tiny flies covering a dead gull that has been washed up on a nearby strand of blackened seaweed.

He takes off his shoes and his socks, placing a sock into each shoe. One sock has to be folded carefully so that its hole is hidden on the inside. Then he reverses the Browning and pushes it into the shingle with its barrels pointing upwards. He looks ahead to an unclear horizon. The sea has retreated across dark sand and the distant water has the dulled sheen of corroding metal.

Danny crooks his right leg so that his toe is near the trigger, but his movements are restricted and clumsy and unreliable so he rolls up his trouser leg and tries again. This time the clothing is tight against his flesh, like the inflated cuff on a blood-pressure monitor, and he has to force his toe inwards before it can touch the guard. But the toe slips and the shotgun fires.

The blast flings him backwards and for several deafened whirling seconds he does not understand that he is stretched out on the shingle like a castaway. For a while he stares at the grey indifferent retreating sky and then he struggles to sit up. There is a pain along the right side of his head like the touch of a hot iron and a clotting ferrous taste in his mouth that he thinks could be both blood and explosive.

His fingers are quivering and there are garbled shouts from somewhere behind him but he cannot tell what the words mean or how near are the people who are yelling them.

Danny lifts the shotgun, breaks it open, transfers the remaining shell to the barrel alongside his right leg, and closes it again. Then he pushes the stock back into the pebbles. The stones click against each other like celebratory ice in a glass. He forces the stock deeper until it is lodged securely. A sudden breeze from the sea blows across him and ruffles his hair and he remembers that he had intended to have it cut.

He puts his mouth close to the muzzle, flinches, and wonders if his lips will blister with the heat. Then he takes his mouth away and tilts his head to check how close his right leg is to the guard. He bends the leg so that the toe is near to the trigger. It will be difficult to get it right but this time he is confident he will succeed.

After all, Danny thinks, everyone deserves a second chance.