Love Your Enemies

The Butcher’s Apprentice

If he had come from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’

His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same, it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’

Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep’. She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’

His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.

In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’

When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.

Later that afternoon he phoned J. Reilly’s and spoke to someone called Ralph. Ralph explained how he had bought the business two years before, but that he hadn’t bothered changing the name. Owen said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t bother you then it doesn’t bother me.’

Ralph asked him a few questions about school and then enquired whether he had worked with meat before. Owen said that he hadn’t but that he really liked the sweet smell of a butcher’s shop and the scuffling sawdust on the floor, the false plastic parsley in the window displays and the bright, blue-tinged strip-lights. He said, ‘I think that I could be very happy in a butcher’s as a working environment.’

He remembered how as a child he had so much enjoyed seeing the arrays of different coloured rabbits hung up by their ankles in butcher shop windows, and the bright and golden-speckled pheasants. Ralph offered him a month’s probationary employment with a view to a full-time apprenticeship. Owen accepted readily.

His mum remained uncertain. Over dinner that night she said, ‘It’ll be nice to get cheap meat and good cuts from your new job, Owen, though I still don’t like the idea of a butcher in the family. I’ve nothing against them in principal, but it’s different when it’s so close to home.’

Owen thought carefully for a moment, then put aside his knife and fork and said, ‘I suppose so, but that’s only on the surface. I’m sure that there’s a lot of bloodletting and gore involved in most occupations. I like the idea of being honest and straightforward about things. A butcher is a butcher. There’s no falseness or pretence.’

His dad nodded his approval and then said, ‘Eat up now, don’t let your dinner get cold.’

Owen arrived at the shop at seven sharp the following morning. The window displays were whitely clean and empty. Above the windows the J. Reilly and Sons sign was painted in red with white lettering. The graphics were surprisingly clear and ornate. On the door was hung a sign which said ‘closed’. He knocked anyway. A man with arms like thin twigs opened the door. He looked tiny and consumptive with shrewd grey eyes and rusty hair. Owen noticed his hands, which were reddened with the cold, callused and porkish. The man nodded briskly, introduced himself as Ralph then took Owen through to the back of the shop and introduced him to his work-mate, Marty. Marty was older than Ralph – about fifty or so – with silvery hair and yellow skin. He smiled at Owen kindly and offered him a clean apron and a bag of sawdust. Owen took the apron and placed it over his head. Ralph helped him to tie at the back. Both Marty and Ralph wore overalls slightly more masculine in design. Owen took the bag of sawdust and said, ‘Is this a woman’s apron, or is it what the apprentice always wears?’

As Ralph walked back into the main part of the shop he answered, ‘It belongs to our Saturday girl, so don’t get it too messy. We’ll buy you a proper overall at the end of the week when we’re sure that you’re right for the job.’

As he finished speaking a large van drew up outside the shop. Ralph moved to the door, pulled it wide and stuck a chip of wood under it to keep it open. He turned to Owen and by way of explanation pointed and said, ‘Delivery. The meat’s brought twice a week. Scatter the sawdust, but not too thick.’

Owen put his hand into the bag of dust and drew out a full, dry, scratchy handful which he scattered like a benevolent farmer throwing corn to his geese. The delivery man humped in half of an enormous sow. She had a single greenish eye and a severed snout. He took it to the back of the shop through a door and into what Owen presumed to be the refrigerated store-room. Before he had returned Ralph had come in clutching a large armful of plucked chickens. As Owen moved out of his way he nodded towards the van and said, ‘I tell you what, why not go and grab some stuff yourself but don’t overestimate your strength and try not to drop anything.’

Owen balanced his packet of shavings against the bottom of the counter and walked out to the van. Inside were a multitude of skins, feathers, meats and flesh. He grabbed four white rabbits and a large piece of what he presumed to be pork, but later found out was lamb. The meat was fresh and raw to the touch. Raw and soft like risen dough. He lifted his selections out of the van and carried them into the shop, careful of the condition of his apron, and repeated this process back and forth for the next fifteen or so minutes. While everyone else moved the meat, Marty busied himself with cutting steaks from a large chunk of beef. When finally all of the meat had been moved Ralph went and had a cigarette outside with the delivery man and Owen picked up his bag of shavings and finished scattering them over the shop floor. On completing this he called over to Marty, ‘Do I have to spread this on the other side of the counter as well?’

Marty smiled at him. ‘I think that’s the idea. It should only take you a minute, so when you’ve finished come over here and see what I’m doing. You never know, you might even learn something.’

Owen quickly tipped out the rest of his bag over the floor at the back of the counter and scuffed the dust around with his foot. It covered the front of his trainer like a light, newgrown beard. Then he walked over to Marty and stood at his shoulder watching him complete his various insertions into the beef. Marty made his final cut and then half turned and showed Owen the blade he was using. He moved the tip of the blade adjacent to the tip of Owen’s nose. ‘A blade has to be sharp. That’s the first rule of butchery. Rule two, your hands must be clean.’ He moved the knife from side to side and Owen’s eyes followed its sharp edge. It was so close to his face that he could see his hot breath steaming up and evaporating on its steely surface. Marty said thickly, ‘This blade could slice your nose in half in the time it takes you to sneeze. Aaah-tish-yooouh!’

Then he whipped the knife away and placed it carefully on the cutting surface next to a small pool of congealing blood. He said, ‘Rule three, treat your tools with respect.’

Owen cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘Will I be allowed to cut up some meat myself today, or will I just be helping out around the shop?’ Marty frowned. ‘It takes a long time and a lot of skill to be able to prepare meat properly. You’ll have to learn everything from scratch. That’s what it means to be the new boy, the apprentice.’

Ralph came back into the shop and set Owen to work cleaning the insides of the windows and underneath the display trays. Old blood turned the water brown. Soon the first customers of the day started to straggle into the shop and he learned the art of pricing and weighing. The day moved on. At twelve he had half-an-hour for lunch.

After two o’clock the shop quietened down again and Owen was sent into the store-room to acquaint himself with the lay-out, refrigeration techniques and temperatures. As he looked around and smelt the heavy, heady smell of ripe meat, he overheard Ralph and Marty laughing at something in the shop. Ralph was saying, ‘Leave him be. You’re wicked Mart.’ Marty replied, ‘He won’t mind. Go on, it’ll be a laugh.’

A few seconds later Ralph called through to him. Owen walked into the shop from the cool darkness of the storeroom. The light made his eyes squint. The shop was empty apart from Ralph and Marty who were standing together in front of the large cutting board as though hiding something. Ralph said, ‘Have you ever seen flesh, dead flesh, return to life, Owen?’ Owen shook his head. Marty smiled at him. ‘Some meat is possessed, you know. If a live animal is used as part of a satanic ritual at any point during its life, when it dies its flesh lives on to do the devil’s work. After all, the devil’s work is never done.’

As he finished speaking he stepped sideways to reveal a large chunk of fleshy meat on the chopping board. It was about the size of a cabbage. Everyone stared at it. They were all silent. Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the meat shuddered. Owen blinked to make sure that his eyes were clear and not deceiving him. After a couple of seconds it shuddered again, but this time more noticeably. It shivered as though it were too cold, and then slowly, painfully, began to crawl across the table. It moved like a heart that pumped under great duress, a struggling, battling, palpitating heart.

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