Read Two Cows and a Vanful of Smoke for Free Online

day when they became landowners. “Father set up a trestle table over there.” He pointed to the middle of the front yard. “We killed a pig, bought gallons of cider, mother baked bread, and neighbours came from miles around. Father never spoke much, but that day he didn’t stop. He had plans for this place, big plans. I had plans too, but the War did for them…”
    You didn’t ask Mr Evans personal questions. I got that straight away. You just waited for him to come out with it, but if he didn’t you either waited or forgot about it. So I let what he’d said hang in the air, and when he started talking about the time they’d swapped horses for a tractor, I listened and nodded and told him that I sometimes wished I could have been alive in those days, days when things were simpler and slower.
    “And harder,” he said.
    We talked for another half-hour, and then he said he was going to watch the news. I held up my bottle of beer and said, “Thanks for this.”
    “You’re welcome,” he said, “and I just wanted to say…” but then he stopped.
    “What?”
    He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, and he got up, steadied himself and shuffled across the yard to his front door. As he walked he held his hand up in parting, and left me sitting on the step.
    I was watching a kestrel hovering over the farmyard when Spike turned up. The bird had its eye on a vole or mouse, and as it hung in the air it adjusted itself with little tweaks of its tail, head down and still, a bullet hanging in the place where threat meets wonder. As I’ve said, Spike is a wiry man, but as he loped towards the caravan I thought he was even more wiry, as if the wires had been tightened and tensed against the season. And he was wearing a stupid expression on his face, more stupid than ever. He banged on the door and let himself in, clapped me on the shoulder and said, “What about it?”
    “What about what?”
    He took a beer from the fridge.
    “I’ve had a hell of a day.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Oh yeah.” He rolled a cigarette. “A hell of a day.”
    “You said. What’s been going on?”
    He lit the cigarette. “I want to show you something.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And I have to tell you something, Spike.”
    “What?”
    “My mum told me to tell you to step away from whatever you’re doing.”
    “She did what?”
    “You heard me. She’d been smelling fire and…”
    He laughed. “And seeing flying cats?”
    “Believe me, Spike. She’s serious.”
    “Of course she is. But you know what they say about her in The Globe?”
    “I can guess.”
    “You want to forget her fucking mumbo-jumbo. Real life.” He tapped the table and drank some beer. “That’s what it’s all about. Grabbing a bit of real life.”
    “And what the hell does that mean?”
    “I’ll show you. Come with me.”
    “Where?”
    “My place.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s a surprise.”
    I know about Spike’s surprises, but there was nothing I could do to say no, so five minutes later I was on my bike, following him through the lanes to Greenham.
    He lived in a small and draughty bungalow with a sitting room, a bedroom, a kitchen and a bathroom, and a garage to one side. It rattled in the wind, baked in the heat and wept with damp in a bad autumn. If you stood in the kitchen in September, the mould caught in your throat as the wind and rain banged on the window and laughed. It was that sort of place, and when he said, “Got to show you something in the garage,” I was pleased he wasn’t going to make me drink a cup of tea. His tea was shit, and always came in a dirty mug. I said, “OK,” and followed him like a man in a song that echoes in my head when I’m drunk or think I can play the guitar. I’ve never played the guitar. I suppose I’ve thought that I could once or twice, but I try not to think. I remember the harmonica I was given for Christmas when I was six and how it fucked with the cat’s head, but I didn’t dwell. I followed