Animal Lovers by Rob Palk

Author:Rob Palk [Palk, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2018-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

The soup was good, in a murky, lentil-heavy, spinachey sort of way. It was early evening but it had been dark for a few hours, a whale-black sky. We sat on stools or perched on the frosty ground, warming our hands on our bowls. From Henry’s van I could hear the sound of two voices singing, alongside some awful plucked instrument. The song seemed to be about badgers. Brian was explaining, lengthily, about the hidden reasons for the cull. Something to do with developers, something to do with Tesco’s. ‘Black and white, forever strong,’ came the song from Henry’s van. When the song finished, or at any rate, stopped, Marie and Henry came out and sauntered to our table, both of them glancing over as if they’d expected me gone. I felt caught out sitting next to Kerry. George, who I hadn’t thought was around, slunk out of one of the tents and came to stand on the edge of our group. He wasn’t wearing a coat despite the cold, not, I think, because he didn’t feel it himself, but because he enjoyed other people’s feeling discomfort on his behalf. He greeted me in a familiar way I was sure that everyone noticed. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, his teeth were speckled with green. Kerry kept talking too loudly and telling jokes and nobody except for me laughed. They were a mopey bunch right then, the Badger Patrol. Defeat and winter sapping their spirits, Stalingrad all over again.

Marie was livelier than the rest. Her subject was direct action. She was furious, flabbergasted, that the cull had not brought down the government. What was needed was something drastic, something real. ‘We should actually go for the farms,’ she said. I worried, but said nothing.

Henry started talking about Gandhi in a patient way, as though we might not have heard of him. He always spoke as if we were at a slightly lower reading level. I said violence got people nowhere – I was rewarded with a glare. Marie wasn’t adjusting to my presence. Kerry agreed with me, said she thought violence was counterproductive. Henry snorted, as though the word ‘counterproductive’ were an alienating and fancy bit of jargon. Kerry tore a crust of bread in two, with some force. I wondered if she had a bit of a crush on Henry. I found I disliked this idea.

After we were done, and were rinsing our bowls at the sink, I found myself next to Marie.

‘Henry,’ I said. ‘Why do you like him? He’s an arse. He has wristbands for causes. He plays the ukulele.’

‘Please leave that alone,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s a banjo.’

‘I’m here because I love you,’ I said. ‘I love you more than he’s had time to. You understand that, right?’

She flicked her fringe with one hand, looked at the ground. ‘It’s not that I don’t love you,’ she said. ‘It’s just that these things change. We’re different, Stu. Different sensibilities. And I’ve got to fight this cull now. This place, it feels like home.

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