Read Online Touch by Graham Mort - Free Book Online

There’ll be worse to come. And there’d been another foot-and-mouth cluster near Longtown. It’s getting closer. Like in the sixties when they’d closed down the farm. The disease had spared them that time. You’d think this time the Ministry would stamp it out. But these days all sorts of rubbish went into the feed. Cattle and sheep were being carted from one end of the country to another to be sold or slaughtered. Mostly they were worth nothing, or next to it.
    Now he’s out again, wrapped up in a trench coat and balaclava, making sure that ice is broken on the water tubs, checking the sheep licks, watching the ewes. When he gets back to the Land Rover, it’s almost dark. He doesn’t know where the day has gone. But he’s kept busy. Kept on top of things. He starts the engine and lets it grumble for a moment, staring at the dim fascia. Then he drives back to the farmhouse, silencing the dogs with a yell of mock anger at the gate. With a little grunt of surprise, he finds the house empty, the fire almost out.
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    Daniel rouses the embers, banking up the fire with coal. He throws on a log and presses it home. The smell of sulphur stings his nostrils. The chimney needs sweeping. He opens a tin of cat food and shakes it into a dish. The golden jelly is appetising and the cat nuzzles his hand. Stripping off his overalls, Daniel washes himself at the kitchen sink. Then he opens a tinned meat pie and puts it in the Aga, boiling a few potatoes and brewing a pot of tea to see it down. The wind rushes up to the windows and turns away in little shrieks and howls. The wind’s company for a lonely man. That was the saying. Daniel picks up an old Farmer’s Weekly , meaning to catch up on an article about feed supplements. But he’s mislaid his reading glasses and can’t be bothered to find them. What the farm will yield hardly concerns him now. It’s like hay and silage: he’ll do what serves him best, not the bank manager.
    He sits, watching the fire rouse itself, gazing towards the blank television screen, waiting until it’s time for the news. News of the world beyond this world. It’s hardly real, all that, but it’s there. And he’s part of it, somewhere. This farm a tiny bleb on the turning world. Indiscernible in all the blackness of space. A needlepoint of light to be swallowed up in time. A part of everything and nothing. Daniel dozes off, then wakes with a jerk. Again that little grunt of astonishment. Opposite him is Annie’s empty chair. Apart from the sleeping cat, apart from the wind, he’s alone. The dogs are restless again, yapping at the night. He dozes, letting the bluster of wind fade.
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What wakes him is the full-blooded baying of the dogs. Beyond that, the bleating of sheep. It’s an agitated tumult, a sound beyond the usual call and answer of ewe to lamb. The cat is prowling at the windowsill, its tail flicking, fur brindled all the way down its spine. Daniel rubs his forehead. The skin of his hands is dry; his nails are chipped and roughly cut. He rises from the chair and struggles into his overcoat. The longer he sits these days the stiffer he gets. His knees are cold despite the fire. It’s a draughty old place, the doors sagging on their hinges to let in the freezing air. He puts his feet into his Wellington boots and feels the cold gulp at them. Unlocking the gun cabinet, he takes out the twelve-bore and a handful of cartridges. He buttons his coat, breaks the gun, loads both barrels then drapes it over his arm, just as his father taught him.
    When he steps from the house, the wind has dropped. There’s a brilliant crescent moon, as if the full moon was pressed against a horn-shaped slit in the sky. He passes the dogs straining at their chains. He doesn’t speak or comfort them. The fox knows they are chained, that he is free and they are slaves. And the dogs know it too, savage in