by Sarah Till
‘It’s inevitable. We both know it. We might as well get it over with.’
I sigh heavily. The sad thing is, I think he’s right. There’s a definite spark between us and I’m so starved of affection I’m tempted. Just for a second I see myself underneath him, my legs wrapped around him and my fingers in his hair, but fear kicks in. Hadn’t I been there, done that, got the police warning for soliciting? I remind myself that cheating on David would be stooping to his level. The best way to solve that little situation would be to catch him at it, not to fuck his friend. And besides, if David suspects even the lightest flirting, he’d kill me. I knew from bitter experience of smiling at a young blonde man at the school Christmas do. I know what happens if David feels the attention isn’t on him.
‘As I said. Anyway, I can’t. I just can’t.’
He stares at me hard.
‘What’s wrong with you, Patti? Your bloke’s having an affair and you can’t confront him. I come on to you and you tell me you’re not interested, even though your neck flushes every time you look at me. You’ve got a dubious past, yet you act like butter wouldn’t melt. You don’t have to hide anything.’
I grip the steering wheel tightly and stare ahead. For a second I wish I could tell him everything, all about the beatings and the withdrawal of affection, but I can’t.
‘How do you know about my past?’
‘I did a bit of research before I got here. I wanted to know who I was staying with. Asked around town a bit. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Patti. No one expects you to be Snow White. I just don’t understand why you’re still with David if you think he’s being unfaithful.’
I think for a moment. Research? I wonder why he would bother, but my obsession overtakes. Gabriel might know more about David and Sam than he’s letting on. He might tell me more than he means to. I brush over my past and go straight for the main prize.
‘Yeah. You’re right. But the thing is, I have no proof one way or another. There’s the texts and the phone calls and the working late, but I’ve asked him and he says he isn’t. So I can’t exactly ask him to leave on the basis of something I can’t prove. Can I?’
Gabriel winds down the window and lights a roll-up.
‘Why? If you really believe that he’s having an affair, even if you can’t prove it, and you’ve seen evidence. Enough to convince you, so why are you staying around? It’s not the sex. Anyone can see you’re a tad frustrated.’
I glanced at myself in the rear-view mirror. That was the second time in twenty-four hours someone had said it. Was it that obvious?
‘It’s not that I want to stay. If I could, I’d go.’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘The heather and the moor. I need to stay here because of the birds and the bees. It’s my life’s work. If I don’t finish this experiment, with this hive and these particular birds, I’ll have to start all over again with another piece of moorland. I’ve put a lot of time into it. And the house. It’s bought with my parent’s money. From their inheritance. I lost touch with my family, my aunt and cousin back then. If I leave, I may lose it, and it’s the last thing I have of theirs.’
His face is suddenly animated and I’m sure I see him lick his lips. My aim was to get extra information about David from Gabriel, but I suddenly feel that I’ve given him exactly what he wanted. I can’t put my finger on it, but he’s smiling and nodding.
‘Yeah. So why not do your own thing in the meantime, you know, until you find out for sure?’
‘You mean cheat? Because I don’t want to. I’ve got self-respect. I know what I used to do for a job, and I don’t care if you know or not. I wasn’t Belle de fucking Jour, you know, lots of people knew I was shagging half the town to pay for a master’s degree. So what? But that doesn’t mean that I’m easy meat for you. OK?’
His face contorts into laughter.
‘Sure. Sure. Whatever. But you can’t blame a guy for trying. C’mon. I wasn’t trying to force anything on you, I was actually being nice. And I probably won’t give up. You’re a very attractive woman. If David is seeing someone else, he must be crazy.’
If, if, if. I was no nearer knowing any more about David or Gabriel, but Gabriel now knew a lot about me. I start the car and drive home. He’s humming all the way. I don’t speak as we unload the shopping, and he immediately lays the lamb on a baking tray, pours on some stock, and lights the oven. He reaches for a large dish and pours the flour.
‘Come here, Patti, let me show you how to do this. Once you’ve done it my way, you’ll never want to do it any other way.’ The lamb is in the oven now and I’ve given up on any ideas of preparing dinner. Gabriel appears to have it all under control. He pours in oil, water, milk, salt and yeast and begins to mix with his fingers. ‘All the ingredients for life. It’s alchemy, is bread making. Creating something. Making a life.’
I stare at him.
‘It’s a loaf, Gabriel. Just a loaf.’
He’s rolling the dough into a tight ball now.
‘Yes, just a loaf. But just a minute ago it wasn’t anything, just a few ingredients scattered about the supermarket. In a couple of hours it will be something wonderful.’
‘But it’s not life is it? It’s just a loaf.’
‘It’s part of life, Patti, made from the same things as our bodies, and it sustains life.’
I marvel at how shallow he sometimes appears, yet how deeply he thinks about bread.
‘What about the lamb? That’s not life, is it? It’s death?’
‘Death that gives life. I don’t think of death as so final.’
I laugh now.
‘So you believe in life after death? Bloody hell, you’ll get on well with Sarah.’
He shakes his head and pushes the mixture together harder.
‘No, no. I don’t believe in ghosts and all that. What I’m saying is there has to be death for there to be life. That lamb had to die so that we could nourish our bodies. The bread has to bake so that we can be healthy. It’s like your bees. The queen has to die so that the hive can go on and produce honey. It’s the circle of life, but also the circle of death. Some people would say that every time we breathe in an out we experience the death of the cells we expel. A little death.’
I suddenly think of Sarah’s La Petite Mort and feel my neck flushing. Gabriel kneads the bread and then lays it on the wooden worktop. He gently pulls my arm and places me in front of him. His fingers force my hands deep into the dough.
‘Push it and stretch it. Push. Stretch.’
My heart beats fast and my legs feel a little weird. I can see David’s reflection in the utility room window, he’s chatting on his phone now. Gabriel’s long arms allow his hands to be level with mine, and he mimes the pushing and stretching with me, his body working with mine.
‘Gabriel...’
‘It’s OK, Patti, he can’t see us. It’s just fun. Just a bit of fun.’
The dough feels like flesh between my fingers, and I massage it firmly into itself, my movements becoming faster and faster. Gabriel’s body pushes against mine and I can feel his erection on my spine. A drop of perspiration drips down my chest and I can feel every millimetre of its track across my skin. My breath, in and out, shallow and fast, is hitting the dough as we push and fold. Suddenly he stops.
‘OK, roll it into a ball and put it in a dish with Clingfilm over it, on top of the oven. I’ll be back later when it’s risen.’
He’s gone. I stand there, not really knowing what to do, my legs like jelly. I go upstairs to the bathroom wash off the sweat. As I pass his room I can hear his deep, rhythmic breathing, fast, like mine was on the dough.
The Moorland Predators and Tricksters
The moor is plagued with intelligent predators like foxes and crows which steal the eggs of breeding birds. Cuckoos, a member of the pigeon family, have been known to take over a ready built nest for their own eggs, laying eggs and encouraging the host to hatch the eggs and raise the young. The maturing young
push the host’s chicks from the nest in order to survive.
Another impostor, Cuckoo bees, make up about 20% of all bees. The cuckoo bee will lay lots of eggs in the nests of unrelated pollen collecting species. The cuckoo’s larvae then hatch out before the host’s larvae and eat all the pollen in the store and then will kill and eat the host bee larvae. The cuckoo bees do not themselves have a pollen scoop like other types of bees and are therefore of no use in the pollination cycle. The cuckoo bees can either enter the nest by stealth or by force. Some species creep into the nest and become part of the colony laying eggs wherever possible. Others aggressively attack the nest, killing any worker bee in their way and ultimately killing the queen of the colony.
Cuckoos of one type or another are prolific throughout nature, sneaky, flighty predators who trick their way through life. Often posing as a benevolent helper, cuckoos weasel their way into the home under false pretences and make off with precious bounty.
Chapter Four
I’m just lifting the lamb out of the oven when Gabriel reappears. He peels the Clingfilm from the bread dish, and it’s doubled in size. He quickly deflates it and shapes it on a tray, covering it with a tea towel and placing it back on the oven top. Peeling some potatoes and carrots, he throws them in with the lamb.
‘Another hour and it’ll all be done.’ He gets a glass of water and sits beside me. ‘So what are you going to do with all that knowledge?’ I mess with the edge of the tea towel nervously. ‘Your Master’s Degree? And all the research? You’ve been researching, right?’
‘Yes. I’ve been researching the moorlands and heaths, and how they’re becoming extinct. The heather is dying, and if we don’t do something about it, the moorland vegetation will be affected, as well as the birds and the bees and everything else that lives here. It’s about the pollination rates.’
He smiles.
‘And what’s your hypothesis?’
‘That the loss of moorland heath is directly proportionate to the change in climate. I’m going to measure the interaction of the moorland life with the heather and then the heather with the groundings.’
‘But you don’t go on the moor. How can you research it?’
In the absence of a suitable answer, I lie.
‘I’m in the preliminary stages. I’ll be doing the moorland study in the next phase.’
‘You’d better be quick. Doesn’t the heather die off in the winter? And the birds migrate? And don’t the bees die too?’
‘No. Some of them hibernate. The heather is perennial, and so are the bees. Some of the birds migrate, but some stay. Lots of the other moorland animals hibernate too. They don’t die, they just go into another phase of their life, another rhythm until the temperature rises. It’s sort of a natural signal. Anyway. There’s a different kind of death going on up here. Not so much the heather, it’s thriving, it seems. More like people. It’s like a magnet, the moor. For people who like death. And I don’t, which is why I don’t go on there all the time. I like to show some respect.’
He taps his fingers on the wooden surface, and I feel hot again.
‘Hmm. Maybe they don’t like death, as such. Maybe they just recognise death and something that has to be for the world to turn. Like we talked about earlier. There are all kinds of death. And all kinds of life in between.’
‘But I think this is something different. The people who come here are obsessed with seeing death. It’s like when people slow down on a motorway to see an accident, it’s not because they like what’s happened. It’s more a sense of misplaced sympathy for the people involved. I mean, visiting a decades-old plane wreckage? What’s that all about?’
He scratches his head.
‘Empathy, I’d say. We all recognise it on some level, I think, and we all experience it every day. It’s just that our ego, the part of us that tells us we are the centre of the universe, won’t let us believe it. Because that means that, at some point, we will die too, as well as those around us. We can ignore it and hide from it, but eventually, it’s right there, staring us in the face.’
I snigger.
‘Very jolly.’
‘Yeah. But I think you’re right. This place is a magnet for those with an interest. I guess there’s a sense of uncertainty, and undiscovered death about it, a chance that we might stumble over death by accident. Where death happened. Or maybe it’s the mystery of where those who were never found went? Hope, maybe?’
As if on cue, Sarah arrives. She circles Gabriel and sits on the other side of the counter. I glance at the workshop reflection and see David has his back to us. His phone is pressed against his ear, as usual. I feel a little guilty about earlier and wonder if he saw us.
‘Oh. You must be Gabriel. How nice to meet you.’
She holds out her hand and Gabriel’s eyes are on her body. I wonder if he has this effect on all women, and my hackles rise. Then I remember he isn’t mine.
‘And you must be Sarah? Can I get you some wine?’
He pulls the cork for the bottle, his eyes never leaving her face. She’s not red or flustered like I was earlier; she merely pushes her hair from her forehead and secures the clip holding it back. He hands her the wine and pulls his chair closer. Sarah leans into him.
‘So. Here we are. Patti tells me you have some strong opinions? We’ll have to discuss over dinner, yeah? So why are you here, Gabriel? Tell me a little bit about yourself.’
It flashes through my mind that if she was such a fucking great psychic, she’d know this already, but I remind myself that I’m being unkind.
‘I’m here to write a book. About the moor. Not about the plane crash, as such, but as to why people come here. And how that’s affecting the vegetation.’
I freeze. Hadn’t I just said that?
‘Gabriel, that’s my idea. I’ve been researching that. You can’t just steal it.’
He smiles.
‘All’s fair in love and war. I’m not stealing it. I just think it’s interesting. Standing on the heads of giants, and all that? The main part of my book is a secret. Anyway, I was going to ask you if we could work together on it?’
I fume and turn away.
‘Like I said, before. I’m not interested.’
He brushes it off and Sarah swishes the wine around her glass.
‘Have you got a publisher for this book, Gabriel?’
‘I’ve had some interest, but I haven’t sold it yet. But I’m confident.’
I butt in quietly as I fiddle with my sleeve.
‘You can say that again. Shall we go through to sit?’
Gabriel takes the lamb and vegetables out of the oven and places them on the top of the stove. He smears the lamb with honey from one of my jars and rubs it in. I watch as he pops our bread in and shuts the door. I sit at the table and see that he’s already put some olives in a dish and some taramosalata and hummus out. He’s somehow found time to make some carrot and cucumber crudités and thrown them on a wooden cutting board with some pea stalks around them. Sarah hovers and waits for us both to sit down, then she sits closest to Gabriel. She’s dipping the carrot sticks in the hummus and sipping her wine, and the bread starts to smell delicious. Gabriel smiles.
‘It’ll take about twenty minutes, mine and Patti’s creation. By then the lamb will have rested.’
I get up.
‘I’ll go and get David. He must be starving by now.’
I go through the utility room and peer through the glass in the workshop door, already knowing he isn’t there. The emptiness registered as I missed his reflection in the glass. I take my phone out of my pocket and dial his number. He answers immediately.
‘Where the hell are you? Our guests are here.’
‘I had to go and see to a broken piano. This is my job, you know. I’m on call twenty-four seven.’
My anger rises but I talk quietly so that Sarah won’t hear.
‘For Christ’s sake, David, you’re not in the emergency services, you know. You speak like you
are saving a bloody life, or something. It’s a piano. It can wait until Monday, can’t it?’ There’s a silence and then an echo, and I suddenly realise that I’m on speaker phone. I hear a giggle. ‘Who’s there with you? David?’
‘Oh, don’t start that again. Who’s there with me, who’s there with me? What about you?’
I suddenly remember this afternoon and my episode with Gabriel in the kitchen, well within David’s eye line. Had he seen me? Then I remember I had only made a loaf. I hadn’t fucked Gabriel on the worktops. Not quite.
‘What about me? What do you mean?’
‘Organising bloody dinner parties without even telling me. You always assume that I have nothing better to do. And it’s only Gabriel and loony tunes from across the road, so what’s the big fuss?’
‘I told you this morning.’
‘I mustn’t have heard you then. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’re breaking up.’ Giggling. Then phone down.
I stand for a moment and breathe deeply. I can sense the anger is his voice, anger he was hiding for the benefit of another person. I feel sick with the thought of what my punishment for talking back will be, and when he will get me. I need to stop this. I need to stop it now. I go back to Gabriel and Sarah, who appear to have been chatting about music. Gabriel is waving a hummus-loaded carrot crudité around.
‘... so I was on the road for a while with the band and then I met Ellie so I stopped touring.’
Sarah is transfixed. Her mouth is slightly open and she’s waiting for his next sentence. Instead he gets up and starts to prepare the main course. I look at my place setting, then at David’s.
‘He’s not coming.’
She frowns.
‘Not coming to his own house for dinner? Bloody hell. Where is he?’
‘He’s with her. I heard her in the background. They had me on speakerphone. I’ve got to do something about this, Sarah. As soon as possible.’
She’s staring at me as if I’m mad again.
‘We’ve been over this. If you’re sure and you have something to go to your solicitor with, then do it. But as far as I can see, you haven’t. If you won’t admit to looking at his texts and confront him, he probably thinks he’s got away with it. Yes?’