Incubus

By Patricia Young

Melissa’s marriage into a traditional farming family was a mistake. Mathew came from a line of men who had thrown physical fury at the land until it was tamed. His aggressive conservatism and the Deeps Farm culture are ubiquitous. Nobody meant to drive Melissa mad, but a bigoted husband and a mother-in-law with an incestuous agenda create the perfect conditions for the disease to take root.

Melissa decides to recreate herself, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, better to live briefly than to remain dully earth-bound. Sexuality, metamorphosis and flight become dangerously interwoven. When she encounters her Incubus, the dream lover, it is inevitable that the affair will end in a violent reckoning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: patriciayoungbooks
• Release date: May 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839782213

Book preview

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Awell-made man came over the limestone ridge grasping the feet of a turkey carcass, its neck swinging limply in time to his undulating progress across the rough pasture. Its closed eyes gave the impression of a creature that had passed sublimely into oblivion. Silhouetted by a swollen low-hanging sun, the man could be taken for a pagan about to sacrifice the bird in honour of the winter solstice. He had been following a drove road that ran, as straight as a ley line, to a gap in the dry-stone wall. He hopped over the tumbled stone with heavy male grace and began his descent toward Deeps Farm. Shortly after, a border collie took the wall in a single agile wave then set her own course homeward, looping back from time to time to nudge at his palm. Like the pull of the mud on his boots and the swish of coarse cloth between his thighs, that damp, velvet kiss gave him tactile and intimate reassurance about his presence in the landscape.

When Deeps Farm came into view, he turned back to consider the wild summit dotted with wind-tousled sheep. On the leeside where he halted, away from the wind’s buffeting, the land was mellow, tamed by market gardening and dairying. He turned from the frowning heights and continued. The collie, drawn by her own microcosmic image of food and shelter, quickened her pace. No such simple animal notions drew Mathew Legett to the hearth. When he thought of Deeps, he did not think of going home or being indoors. Whenever he thought about it the place took on the stature of the factory or the business. The Legetts were not a wealthy family, conspicuously spending their earnings to show how far they had come in life. Instead, they had etched their success into the valley, making themselves proudly visible in the huge modern milking parlour, silage pits, grain silos and extensive acres of well-managed pasture. The only higgledy piggledy intrusion into their otherwise symmetrical achievement was the jagged profile of a derelict seventeenth century bake-house. His Grandfather had started to restore it when death overtook him, leaving behind a cairn of grey moss-covered stone. One day he would continue the restoration in honour of the old boy’s memory. One day he would put the last block of stone in place on the monument with pride, thus marking the ascent of the family from peasants to modern dairy farmers.

The collie trotted ahead like an eager outrider. She squeezed under a five-bar gate, legs splayed to flatten herself. She was getting on in years, not many more and she might have to go the same way as other elderly predecessors unable to earn their keep. Perhaps he would make an exception for this one and allow her to remain at the farm until despatched by natural causes. To do otherwise would bring tears and recriminations from young Biddy. It was this and the dog’s good-natured tolerance of the child that weighed in her favour. At the far end of the farmyard a wooden gate led to a kitchen garden. Beth nudged it open and trotted along a concrete path that led like a causeway over the bare winter soil. Even in summer the garden reflected the same puritanical hygiene, since neither flower nor weed invaded it. It was Mathew Legett’s pleasure to grow only food for the table. Beans, carrots, onions, all sprouted to attention like ranks of upright soldiers.

In the kitchen window overlooking the garden a lamp had been lit. Within its defining light a woman stooped over some bookwork, the set of her shoulders signalling that she found the task irksome. Beth scratched at the door just as hailstones began to patter on the pane. The woman leapt to her feet and rushed to the door. Skirting irritably around her husband’s bulky frame as if it were a tiresome obstruction, she went to snatch at billowing laundry on the washing line, her hands blue from the icy onslaught of sleet. Once indoors she kicked the basket of partly frozen washing under the kitchen table. Mildly amused, Mathew watched her hunch stiffly again over the farm’s accounts, dismissing her hostile body language as female truculence. ‘Time of the month or sommut?’ he asked in a deliberately colloquial drawl.

‘Time of the year more like,’ she snapped without looking up.

‘It’ll soon be Christmas.’ The season was no more welcomed by Melissa Legett than the turkey that dangled from her husband’s hand. ‘Our Christmas present from Jack Beasley,’ he held up the annual gift from his tenant to entice her seasonal goodwill. None was forthcoming, so he landed the carcass on the kitchen table with a bony thud. Melissa glared narrow-eyed at the freshly slaughtered bird on the clean surface. Mathew picked up its limp neck and turned the head reproachfully towards her. ‘Pluck me, gobble, gobble.’ She saw the quivering beads of coagulated blood on its beak and turned away in disgust.

‘Pluck it yourself.’ She underlined a sub-total as if slitting the paper with a knife. Unperturbed, Mathew ambled off to find a bucket to catch the feathers and guts.

*****

Melissa’s mood had been simmering for a week, with irritation bubbling to the surface through a mixture of gloom and anxiety. Anything Mathew did, be it slurping his tea or whistling tunelessly, annoyed her. The word festive came to lodge in her brain, then swelled in the manner of skin reacting to an insect bite. She had never enjoyed Christmas at Deeps. It was all so predictable, she grumbling about the cooking, her brothers-in-law overdosing on turkey, pies and pudding. With their bellies distended they would spread themselves across the sofa, belching and farting. Walruses sunning their blubber were more attractive. Unable to tolerate the sight of them, she would remove herself from their ubiquitous presence to scrape plates in the kitchen. Just as it seemed the physical exercise of washing up might dispel her irritation, she is joined by her mother-in-law who insists upon burbling cosily about the possibility of more grandchildren. Two strapping sons still at home, she would say, two strapping sons. You’d think they could produce something between them, wouldn’t you? For twelve dreary Christmases Margaret had said the same, causing the same irrepressible imagery - two swollen pricks worming their way to procreation from beneath beer-bloated bellies, two wives for two walrus brothers, flattened paper-thin by copulation. To avoid the realisation of this appalling possibility, Melissa was tempted to suggest to their mother that they donate their sperm to a sperm bank instead.

It was always the same, Melissa washing up in grim silence. Margaret, who took silence in others as a cue to say more, would continue to drool over the subject. Wine flushing her cheeks and reducing her inhibitions she would pass onto the question of her own uterus, a self-indulgent monologue that would begin...Mathew, Mark, Luke and,......John, Melissa would supply the name of the miscarried foetus, leaving Margaret to return, via the birth canal, to the gynaecological source of the problem. Melissa would look into the squidgy, morbid sentiment and shudder. For twelve Christmases the story of the hysterectomy had been repeated. Time had not diminished the tale, rather more its constant telling had added embellishments so that it always seemed that twelve separate hysterectomies had been undertaken, each ending with an unfair remonstrance with the medical profession.

She was not looking forward to spending a thirteenth Christmas afternoon listening to the hysterectomy story. Margaret had always irritated her, but now the thought of her uterine domination of the festive season found her facing it with a feeling of despair. She put forward a reasonable alternative, Mathew, she had said, let’s do something different this year.

What’s thee mean, different’? Sensing change he dug his heels in.

I don’t want to spend Christmas at Deeps this year.

Where’s thee want to spend it, up on Tupper Stump? Mathew referred to the trig point on the hill above the farm.

I just thought it would be a good idea if you me and Biddy had Christmas dinner at the Bell, that’s all. He had wheeled on the suggestion as if she had proposed a radical, irreversible upheaval in his lifestyle.

What about Mother, Mark and Luke?

Sod your brothers, let your Mother cook their Christmas dinner for them. Great fat lumps, they don’t need knives and forks, a couple of grain hoppers would do the job.

Although she had spat out the words, Mathew just guffawed loudly over his brothers’ gluttony, thus dismissing her plea as not worth even considering. Reduced to the status of an unreasonable child, she spent the rest of the week brooding and presenting herself before him in varying poses of discontent.

*****

The turkey lay supine, its head swinging loosely upside down and its beak tapping rhythmically against the side of a metal pail as Mathew plucked. ‘Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,’ he chanted.

‘It doesn’t pay to be fat at Christmas,’ she said. Mathew looked up sharply, needled by the quirky observation, but saw only a wistful expression of sympathy for the turkey as its dimpled flesh rose to release the quills. He shrugged and returned to plucking the poultry, which now displayed an alarming baldness. Melissa turned her back on the spectacle, folded her arms and announced bravely, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to say it, but I don’t want to spend Christmas here this year.’

‘You’d best take a packet of sandwiches up Tupper Stump then if you don’t want to eat with I this Christmas.’

‘I never said I didn’t want to spend Christmas with you. All I said...’

‘I heard what you said.’ Mathew hunched over his task, lips compressed.

‘They’re doing Christmas lunches at the Bell’ she persisted. ‘It’s an all-inclusive ticket, only twenty pounds a head.’

‘Are they?’ he acknowledged curtly.

‘That includes a present for the kiddies, wine and a liqueur...’

‘Oh arr,’ he continued to pluck stubbornly.

‘It’s good value and I don’t see why you, me and Biddy shouldn’t enjoy ourselves for a change.’

‘You can enjoy yourself yere.’

‘Not by watching your brothers stuff my food down their throats like a couple of Périgord geese I won’t.’

‘If you don’t want to cook Christmas dinner for ‘em, say so, I’ll get Mother to do it.’

‘You’re deliberately missing the point.’

‘What point? You tell I.’

‘I said…’

‘I know what you said, I heard you first time round.’

‘There’s no point asking me to repeat myself then is there.’ Picking up the accounts book she slammed it shut, jolting Beth from her sleep by the kitchen range. She got to her feet and shifted nervously, head down, before lowering herself into sleep again. The thought that Beth wasn’t the only one expected to come to heel drummed up the anger. ‘Your Mother is not coming here to cook Christmas dinner.’

‘Alright, I’ll cook it myself,’ Matthew offered with deceptive amiability and ambled off to the larder to retrieve a chopping block and butchers cleaver. With painstaking deliberation, he aligned the turkey carcass on the board so that its head hung accurately over the metal bucket on the floor. He raised the cleaver slowly in a manner that would hold her attention. This is my will suspended said his large work-calloused hand and the tension of the tendons in his forearm. There was an awesome authority in the way he grasped the haft of the cleaver.

He was a big man, the progeny of generations of men who, driven by the work ethic, had thrown physical fury at the land, like oxen, until it was tilled and tamed. Mathew had always kept his bullish temper in check, but the fact that it was buttressed behind self-awareness was no guarantee that it would not stampede. It was uncertainty rather than any act of violence that cautioned Melissa not to push him too far. ‘I’ll cook it myself,’ he repeated before the blade fell on the turkey’s neck. The blow was inaccurate and the cleaver too blunt to sever the head cleanly, which angered him further. He brought it down a second and third time accompanying his actions with a chanted proclamation, ‘I don’t care who cooks the sodding dinner so long as I get some fucking peace Christmas day.’ The severed head nose-dived into its own feathers in the bucket. Shortly after, he inserted his bare hand into the creatures’ anus, felt about then pulled out its innards. This violent cleansing, which Melissa normally regarded with a matter-of-fact distaste, now took on a disturbing significance. Gathering together the paperwork she rushed out of the kitchen, her stomach beginning to heave.

*****

Staring across the fields from a small bedroom window, Melissa sought comfort in the encroaching twilight, a dismal solace that detached her from the confrontation with Mathew. The incomplete farm accounts lay on the bed where she had thrown them. They would need to be finished that night, ready to be lodged with an accountant in Dutton the following morning, but anger had solidified into stubborn refusal to concentrate on anything in Mathew’s interest. The trouble was, if she asserted her own authority by refusing to complete them, Mathew would say, if you don’t want to do the books, just say so. I’ll get Mother to do them, she always managed them alright when our Dad were alive. Thus his Mother’s skills would be buffered to a shine and her own made to look as dull as pewter.

Below her in the kitchen she heard him lift the lid of a chest freezer and commit Jack Beasley’s turkey to an icy internment. The sound was conducted by a defunct gas pipe in the corner of the room, one of many such conduits cut off and capped years ago. Together they formed an acoustic highway conducting messages from the floor below. Of late these messages had taken on a slightly sinister resonance. They sounded covert, like whispered communication, baffling and difficult to trace to a source. Without doubt Margaret too surfed these sound waves, logging on for tell-tale, trouble-making data. In fact, Melissa had come across her once or twice, in places where she had no cause to be, straightening her back outside a door. Of course, she would have a ready excuse to hand which made her spying, although habitual, difficult to prove. Mathew always appeared remarkably well-informed whenever his Mother came to Deeps.

Melissa glared at the point where the pipe disappeared through a crudely cut hole in the floorboards. The old farmhouse provided ears and eyes in plenty for Margaret’s domestic espionage. She dragged her eyes away from the hole in the floorboards, only to have her attention snatched back by subversive creaks and whispers that seemed to emanate from it. The building sighed and wheezed as if somebody with a breathing difficulty was stooped to listen outside the door.

One day, haunted by the illusion of straining ears and a wagging tongue scuttling along the pipes like furtive agents, Melissa indulged in a little counter-intelligence. To this end, a number of interconnecting attic rooms were invaluable. Such junk-filled spaces were ideal for beating Margaret at her own game, since it was possible to disappear from one room and reappear at the far end of the building. Squatting in the dusty darkness she eavesdropped on one of her Mother-in-Law’s frequent interrogations of Biddy.

Where’s your Mummy?

I don’t know.

Your Mummy shouldn’t go off like that without telling you, should she? The four-year-old remained prudently silent. Should she? insisted apple-cheeked Gran Legett. Once Margaret’s descending footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, Melissa crept from her hiding place and entered the bathroom to give the cistern a victorious flush. Shortly after, she presented herself in the kitchen, brandishing her fait accompli with an ear-to-ear smile.

There you go, Margaret, I didn’t disappear after all. I was in the bathroom all the time.

But I checked the bathroom and I didn’t see you in there.

Well, I was there. I must have been, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard you telling Biddy that I shouldn’t go off like that. She turned her back deliberately on Margaret and addressed Biddy. So, Mummy didn’t disappear after all, did she? Unable to dispute the empirical evidence of her Mother’s presence, the child shook her head gravely. There you go, she wheeled breezily on Margaret’s trouble-making, just a storm in a tea cup.

Alone, in the cold, wintry room above the kitchen, the memory of her small triumph was no longer gratifying. She did not recall the occasion from the silent source of her own memory. It was as if it had been mockingly broadcast by a malevolent alter ego determined to reduce it to a shortcoming in her character. A cloud darkened the sky bringing sudden gloom, and fistfuls of hailstones hit the window like grit. She was glad of the outburst, so much louder than the chattering trepidations that dominated her thoughts.