Beast of Burden

Beast of Burden

It was with frazzled nerves that I drove my car slowly up to the wooden farm gate which was the entrance to my parent’s estate. My father had had it modernised so it could now be opened electronically, that was of course if someone was monitoring the CCTV camera which was angled down at the driver’s side window. I leant out of my window, the underused muscles in my short arms yelling in disapproval as I stretched over to the button on the intercom that was nestled amongst the tall hedge. I waited and was surprised when I heard a voice respond to my buzz, it was my sister, Lucinda.
“Who is it?”
“Lucy, its Matt,” was all I said, I heard her quick inhale that could have been a sob.
“Matty! I’m letting you in right now!”

The gate began to moan as it edged open, at one point I wondered whether I would have to get out of my car and help it along. When it was completely open I slipped the car easily down the bricked driveway up to my parent’s Tudor farmhouse and parked up in the courtyard. I cut the engine and watched my hands pull the keys free with a Parkinsonian shake that I had only developed while driving the last hour into Somerset. I blew out a quick breath, checked my eyes in the mirror.

They were bloodshot from booze and lack of sleep not crying. I gave a flick of my head so that my hair would fall over my face and hide my eyes. I got out the car, pulling my holdall with me and saw Lucinda opening the large iron studded door. I raised a hand, feeling stupid as I did so and walked towards her. Like an eager puppy she leapt into my arms and I held her, I squeezed my eyes tight but could not stop them from opening again and looking straight over her head to the large, sprawling, dark wood staircase that dominated the foyer of my parent’s home. Even in the middle of the day, the dimness of the room cast shadows in a way as to lure your imagination into play. I saw him then, crumpled and broken at the foot of the stairs even though I knew his body was in the morgue. I couldn’t let Lucinda know that father being dead was the only time I didn’t stop at the side of the road and vomit before visiting. I was so ashamed of my lack of grief. I wasn’t here when my father tumbled to his death down the stairs but I should have been. My mother had called earlier in the week and said father wanted his children home for the Easter weekend. I could see my mother as her erratic voice reached out to me down the line, her warbling pleas for me to be there, not because she wanted to see me but because she didn’t want to tell my father I wasn't coming. She would be twisting her pearls around her fluttering, long fingers, pulling them tighter unconsciously until they pressed against her windpipe. I knew that she wanted to pull tighter, the hard line of beads against her delicate neck a threat and a temptation to end it all. The only reason she didn’t was because father didn’t approve of suicide, even the accidental kind. I refused to come home, saying I was needed at the veterinary practice where I worked. That wasn’t true. I just couldn't stand the thought of being in my childhood home, biting my nails down to their cuticles while my father barked suggestions about why my life was as desolate as it was, why my future was so bleak, why I wasn’t married.

I broke from Lucinda’s embrace and looked about sheepishly, I couldn’t look at Lucinda too long. As much as I loved her, for she was my companion in the fear and burden our father placed on us, she looked too longingly at me to be her saviour.
“I have no idea what to say, Lucy,” I said lamely, truthfully, “I just can’t believe it …”
I trailed off but Lucinda, with uncharacteristic calm, placed her chubby hand on my cheek and shook her head.
“We’ll talk later,” she said conspiratorially, “go see mother now.”

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Going to see mother after my father’s death was one of the most awkward moments I had ever faced since leaving home. I wasn’t close to either of my parents, I was a constant disappointment to one and I wasn’t ever really sure what I was to the other. My mother simply existed to be my father’s property. I don’t know what she was to him, I can’t imagine that he loved her. I think she was once useful to him then she was no longer. He kept her around to be merciful, to spare her the shame of divorce. I couldn’t help feeling as I watched my mother glug down glass after glass of brandy that my mother would have flourished if he hadn’t been so ‘merciful’.
I had needed some time to myself after that encounter and went straight to my room, stripped naked and climbed in bed. I slept deeply into the night only to be woken sporadically by the strangely frightening shrieks of some beast of burden in my family’s stables. I was too tired to care what was wrong with the creature but made a note to see the poor animal the next morning if I remembered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning came and I, still unable to face a family gathering, retreated to the paddock my father owned under the guise of inspecting the livestock. I was surprised to see a single mule tethered securely to the fence post. It looked a dour old thing but when it saw me it began to heave and pull furiously against its binds. I rolled my eyes thinking that I couldn’t get any peace in this bloody place! Though I was a little surprised as in my experience mules were typically stubborn but placid animals. I turned to go and barrelled straight into Lucinda who was loitering right behind me.
“God, Lucy, climb on my back, why don’t you?” I said laughing, she bent and rubbed her foot I had stepped on.
“How did it go?” she asked as she straightened, I blew out a sigh and turned back to the mule that had gone eerily quiet and was gnawing at the grass.
“As well as could be expected. I think she’s beyond help, Lucy.”
“Probably,” Lucinda said indifferently, I slid a sideways glance at her, she wasn’t normally so callous about mother. That was my job. Lucinda leant on the fence next to me, she held something clasped between her palms. I was about to ask what it was when she spoke to me.

“You’re not sorry he’s dead, are you, Matty?” She asked directly, I flushed but could not lie to Lucinda, not about father at any rate.
I shrugged, “I’m like all sons that hate their fathers, I was afraid of him. Aside from the fear he meant nothing to me.”
“Me too,” she whispered and stared off into space, I didn’t comment but simply gazed at her side profile. The years hadn’t been kind to my baby sister. She was three years my junior and yet she looked at least seven years older than myself. Her once unremarkable brown hair was greying fast, turning coarse as it spread out from her centre parting into the fall of her hair. It put me in mind of an oil spillage, flowing out into unspoilt open sea, tainting it.
Her skin was sallow, her eyelids wrinkled like old paper, her jowls sagging and her chin hairy. She had an amorphous bulge through her cashmere jumper that her breasts hung heavily on top of. She looked nothing like the girl I had known and that, more than my father’s death, caused me sorrow.
I wanted to say something to her, something brotherly and affectionate but those kind of feelings, though very much there, were stunted and awkward. A side effect of growing up in a house where open affection was scorned. A noise from the other end of the paddock had me looking over to the mule in irritation. It was spitting, actually spitting, grass in our direction.

“What the devil is wrong with that thing?” I demanded frowning now, I saw Lucinda’s eyes widen and an agitated look passed over her face.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said cagily, “it’s just a very sensitive mule, that’s all.”
“I had better have a look at it,” I said sidestepping her, my vet instincts telling me all was not well. I climbed the fence and marched over to it with Lucinda waddling frantically behind me. When I reached it I stopped, horror froze me in my boots. The grass has been chewed up in precise, neat little patches to expose the dark soil beneath spelling out the words: HELP ME LUCY. Then a little further down, not so neatly made was the word SON. I whirled around and stared at Lucinda who knew what conclusions I had drawn, impossible conclusions. She looked unrepentant, defiant, nothing at all like the down trodden sister I knew. My shakes had returned with a vengeance, I drew my hand across my mouth, terrified, incredulous.

“Mules are strange creatures, don’t you think?” she whispered, her face impassive, “they get so worked up about the silliest little things.”

What was between her palms was revealed, a silver flip lighter – a cherished trinket of my father’s. From her back pocket she drew out a folded piece of paper and opened it. The mule shrieked and I gasped, it was the certificate he’d had made that detailed our family tree. It was usually found in a frame above the fireplace in Father’s study, next to a picture of himself shaking hands with Prince Charles. I had a scar on my shoulder where father had broken a cricket wicket over my back after I had knocked the frame from the mantelpiece when I was eighteen. Lucinda flicked the lighter and the flame bloomed into life, without taking her eyes from the shrieking, bucking mule she brought the paper and flame together, gently, like a kiss and the paper was destroyed. It was only then that I noticed debris scattered about the grass, I recognised some. Like the splintered remains of a pearl plated cigar box my father loved, the shattered corpse of his pocket watch given to him by his father. Lucinda threw the blackening, curling paper onto the grass and the mule made a noise like it was weeping.
“Lucy, how long have you known?” I asked, “How long have you been torturing him like this?”
“It’s nothing less than he deserves, Matty,” she hissed vehemently, “after the life he led us! We were treated like animals without feelings, well … now it’s his turn.”
She turned loathing eyes on the mule that shrank back in terror. “That self-portrait he loves so much is going to be excellent on a bonfire, don’t you think, Matty?”
I was striding across the paddock with purpose when she spoke, her voice edged with trepidation, “where are you going?”
I turned with half a smirk, excitement filling my blood like cocaine.

“I’m a vet, Lucy … I’m going to put him out of his misery.”