By Bread Alone

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  “All right then, read me out a bit and I promise not to agree with it.”

  “‘Mysteriously non-aging Lothario Jeffrey Timms,’” Esme read out loud, “‘threw an extremely high energy fortieth at a friend’s villa in Little Venice during the week. “It’s amazing, really,” a crinkled blonde slurred to me in the hallway, “we went all the way through school together yet I’ve just turned forty-six.”’” Charlie let out a hoot of laughter, which Esme quashed with a look. “‘Mr. Timms, fueled by nothing, I am sure, that ends in “tini,” greeted guests at the door with a display of cartwheels and handstands, made all the more exciting by the fact that he was wearing a kilt, sans undergarments. Still, he was the belle of the ball until the caterers set fire to a side of beef and the local fire brigade turned up, fully dressed and oozing truly youthful charm. Next to them, Mr. Timms’ offering seemed somewhat dry and withered, to say the least.’”

  Charlie could not contain his mirth.

  “But it’s not funny!” Esme said.

  “It is so!” he sputtered. “An old wrinkly Jeffrey Timms cartwheeling down the hallway with a dry and withered offering? Normally, you’d think that’s hilarious.”

  “I would not.”

  “You would so!”

  “I would not.”

  At that moment, Rory saved them from drawing out their childish spat by appearing at the top of the stairs, in his karate suit; his hair, Esme noticed, brushed neatly back and, if she was not mistaken, slicked down with some of the hair gel she was constantly buying Pog. She had wondered where it was going as it certainly wasn’t ending up on her husband’s head. “Hello,” the little boy said with feigned nonchalance to Charlie.

  “You’re up early,” Esme said, entranced by Charlie’s effect even on a small boy. Was that normal? God! What if Rory was gay? She contemplated this possibility as she abandoned the newspaper and absently got her son’s breakfast together. Actually, come to think of it, she would probably prefer he was gay. Little Cosmo Jones was clearly gay, after all, and that didn’t seem to bother anyone. Rory could go into business with Pog as an interior designer and he would never get the neighbors’ teenage granddaughter pregnant or wear dirty jeans that looked as though they were about to fall off his hips or a smelly sweatshirt or a baseball cap on backward.

  The sound of her possibly gay son fishing around in the pantry brought her back to earth as Rory emerged with a blue-and-white-striped Cornishware jug. “Very nice,” Esme said looking at it. “Fashionably modern yet authentically retro. What made you choose that one, darling?”

  “It’s the only one I could reach,” answered Rory plainly. “Come on.”

  “You know what,” said his mother, “I’ve got a fantastic idea. Why don’t you take Charlie out and he can show you how to milk The Goat.”

  Before Charlie could finish his snort of derision, Rory had grabbed him by the hand and was tugging him toward the stairs. Charlie turned back to Esme with a disturbed look on his face. “How many steps down?” he groaned, as Rory pulled at him. “What’s a goat again? Is it the one with the twisty horn on the front of its head?”

  “That’s a unicorn, silly,” said Rory. “They don’t exist.”

  “Help, Esme,” Charlie whined pathetically.

  “I’m sure your magic works just as well on the animal kingdom as it does on the human one,” Esme said with a sweet smile. “Think of it as a challenge, Charlie. Now go and do your thing. Rory will help. Oh, and there are plenty of wellies by the door—I strongly suggest you grab a pair.” She never had got around to poo patrol. She sliced herself a wedge of yesterday’s bread, almost better than fresh with one day under its belt, smeared it with blue cheese and quince paste, poured herself a cup of tea and moved a kitchen stool to one of the tiny windows for a good view of what was about to happen in her garden.

  From her position near the clouds, Esme could see The Goat tense up as she lifted her head from the newly planted nasturtiums on which she was feasting and clapped eyes on the boys coming toward her.

  As Charlie and Rory moved nearer closing in on The Goat, however, Esme was amazed that instead of leaping away at great speed in the direction of whatever was handiest, more often than not a nerve-shattered Brown, The Goat stood her ground. As the familiar little boy and the strange new man approached she simply looked at them with interest, her head cocked to one side in a contemplative and not particularly combative fashion.

  “Don’t tell me the bloody Charlie Edmonds charm does work on goats,” Esme said to herself as she pressed her face closer to the window and Brown, eager to stay wherever The Goat wasn’t, pressed his head against Esme’s knee. “Unbelievable!”

  In the garden, Charlie and Rory got within five yards of The Goat before Rory’s confidence clearly gave out and he stopped and handed the jug up to Charlie.

  Rory pointed at The Goat’s rear end and Charlie’s gaze followed the little boy’s finger. Esme could not see the look on his face but just imagining it gave her a thrill.

  She sipped her tea as Charlie took a tentative step forward. The Goat, whose face Esme could see, seemed to be looking almost coquettishly at him. Esme could swear the ruminating bloody mammal was batting her eyelids as Charlie came right up to her and slowly, slowly, slowly, apparently taking instruction from Rory, started to bend down and proffer the jug toward The Goat’s nether regions.

  At that moment, the delightful creature spun around, quick as a flash, lifted both hind legs in the air and kicked Charlie so hard in the bollocks that he staggered backward, the jug flying in the air as he tripped over a spade lying in the grass behind him, and fell on his behind at Rory’s feet, clutching his groin and clearly in considerable pain.

  Esme, her smirk gone, leaped to her feet, the stool screeching across the floor behind her, and ran to the stairs, leaping down them and shouting in panic, “Pog! Pog! The bloody Goat’s got Charlie!” Brown skittered and scampered behind her as she bounded down the stairs two at once, still a time-consuming effort, grabbed a tennis racket from the hallway and dashed outside and around the side of the house to where she could see that The Goat was now scratching at the ground with her front hoof, clearly getting ready to charge her wounded foe and his little friend.

  “You evil bloody bitch!” Esme cried as she ran toward them, hurling the tennis racket in her fury as she did. Charlie was sitting up, looking pale and shaken but clearly conscious at least and Rory was crouched behind him, being brave but obviously frightened.

  The tennis racket sailed nowhere near the offending animal—Esme had never been good at throwing things—but The Goat saw it all the same and did not appreciate the sentiment. Turning her attention away from the boys, she narrowed her nasty little eyes and instead launched herself with an almost balletic spring after the exposed and weaponless Esme. Esme gasped and spun around, only to see Henry coming out of the house toward her, red in the face and waving his stick. Despite her fear of being mauled by The Goat, her dread of leading the vicious animal to her father-in-law and having to live with the consequences of that forced her to half-spin again and swerve around the other side of the house. If she could make it to the gate, she reasoned, trying not to hear the rat-a-tat-tat of The Goat’s hooves beating a frightening and fast approaching rumpus behind her, she could probably jump it, despite her jeans being a size too small, and leg it up the steps of the windmill to safety.

  “Help!” she gasped, as the hoof beats got closer. The Goat had very pointy horns, after all, and hysteria was snatching at Esme as she imagined those horns piercing her bottom and removing big chunks. “Help!” Her bottom was not her best feature, but she was attached to it, nonetheless.

  The fence lay straight ahead hardly more than ten yards away as Esme’s legs burned with adrenaline and her breath tore at her lungs. She was so close! But not close enough. With an evil rent, she felt something rip at the denim of her jeans just behind her left knee, and hysterical and panicked, she stumbled and plunged forward with a desperate
cry, hearing as she did a terrifying clanging followed by a spine-chilling shriek and a loud thump, none of it anything to do with herself hitting the ground.

  Gasping for air and in a state of total confusion, Esme realized that she was still alive, but that it was very quiet. She twisted around to see Charlie towering, perilously close to her, over The Goat’s motionless carcass, which lay near her feet. The shovel he was holding appeared to still be vibrating slightly, which left Esme to assume that The Goat had worn it around her head with quite some force.

  Before she could think or speak or move, Henry limped around the corner, equally breathless and agitated, with Rory gingerly bringing up the rear.

  Esme watched their faces fall at the awful sight of The Goat lying there with her tongue hanging out of her mouth and blood dribbling out of her nose. At that moment, Pog’s head, wet from being in the shower, appeared out of the window on the fourth floor above them. He squinted, as if he couldn’t quite make out what he was seeing.

  “What on earth is going on?” he asked.

  Henry had not yet regained his breath, Charlie was still stunned at the level of his own violence and Esme remained riding an emotional roller coaster between bewilderment, horror and hysteria.

  Only Rory had the wherewithal to answer his father.

  “The Goat’s dead, Daddy,” he said with much less emotion than one might have expected. “She kicked Charlie in the nuts and he killed her.”

  Esme grabbed at a lungful of air and looked up at Pog, who was frowning now in a strict fatherly way.

  “Don’t say nuts, Rory,” he said. “It’s not nice.”

  She felt a small amount of astonishment that her husband would correct her son’s language, mild really in the circumstances, when a family friend had just killed their goat. It didn’t seem entirely appropriate.

  “Well,” she said, ignoring Pog and getting carefully to her feet, examining herself for serious injury, “you know what Granny Mac would say.”

  She looked at Rory, who looked straight back, his face remaining blank for a few seconds until like the sun breaking through the clouds on a bleak, gray day, it lit up, transforming the entire landscape of his personality. “There’s bin a murrrrrder,” he cried enthusiastically in a perfect Scottish burr as he beamed at his mother, then Henry, then Charlie. “There’s bin a murrrrrder.”

  There was a split-second’s silence before Charlie and Esme both started to laugh. Rory, thrilled with this impact, started jumping up and down around the dead goat shouting, “There’s bin a murrrrder! There’s bin a murrrrrder!” while Pog retreated inside the window.

  Henry, shaking his head with customary disgust, ignored everybody and moved stiffly closer to The Goat, prodding her corpse with his stick.

  At this, the infernal creature scared the living daylights out of the lot of them by leaping to her feet in a show of being very much alive. Esme shrieked, Rory ran behind his grandfather and Charlie’s hands flew to his aching private parts to protect them from further attack.

  The Goat, however, had quite lost her vicious streak. She stood wobbling on all fours, then blinked and teetered unsteadily toward them, like a nervous young hostess trying to keep her composure after overdoing it on the vodka tonics. Esme and Charlie stood aside and watched as she proceeded to walk straight into the side of the house. She remained there, her head against the wall, as they all looked on.

  “Yes, well,” said Charlie. “Not a murder after all, eh? Not even manslaughter by the looks of things.”

  Henry pushed past him, leaning heavily on his stick. It must have hurt his hips getting down the stairs so quickly, Esme realized and felt, briefly, bad for him.

  “Much as you find this all terribly funny,” he said in a cold, pinched voice, approaching The Goat and reaching for her collar, “it would probably be a good idea to take the poor creature to the vet.”

  Pog’s head popped out the window, two stories below where it had been before, placing him on the landing between his father’s floor and Granny Mac’s.

  “Did you say the vet?” he asked. “Really, Dad. Do you think that’s absolutely necessary? It’s Sunday, it will cost a fortune.”

  “The Goat has been hit very hard in the head with a shovel,” Henry said through clenched teeth, “and now appears to be blind.” He looked at Charlie. “The least we can do is take her to the vet in case she needs to be put out of her misery.”

  Charlie thought about offering to go another round with the aforementioned garden implement but decided against it, instead going to Henry’s aid and pouring on his charm.

  “Of course, sir,” he said, “you are absolutely right. I shall take him myself and meet the cost, of course. It’s entirely my fault. I’m most terribly sorry.” He patted The Goat’s back, rather awkwardly, and indicated for Rory to come and help him.

  Esme turned to assist her father-in-law, but he shrugged her off and hobbled unaided back toward the house. She looked up to where she had last seen Pog and saw that he was still there. She smiled. “Don’t worry, Pog,” she said. “All under control.”

  A couple of hours later, after Charlie had taken The Goat to the vet in his Audi convertible—causing quite a stir in the village by all accounts—and the animal had indeed been proclaimed blind but in all other respects remarkably healthy, he and Esme sat in the kitchen drinking tea and reliving the event.

  “Well, I can’t see Nigella Lawson topping that, Es. You should really have your own column.”

  “Don’t talk to me about columns,” Esme shot back. “You friend of Jemima Jones.”

  “I don’t think Jemima Jones is the problem,” he said.

  “God, you and Granny Mac!”

  Charlie looked confused, but plowed on.

  “About last night, Esme,” he said carefully. “I’m worried about you, sweet.”

  Esme put her cup down on the well-scrubbed oak table and felt an acute attack of embarrassment. “It was all that champagne,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t know what I was talking about. God knows where it came from. It’s not about Louis, Charlie. That was years ago. I probably wouldn’t recognize him if I fell over him and he probably wouldn’t even remember me. I was just Holiday Romance Number One-hundred-and-seventeen.”

  “No you weren’t,” Charlie said with such uncustomary tenderness that Esme found herself pressing on.

  “It’s just that sometimes,” she said, “when things get on top of me, I wonder, that’s all.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “Wonder what it would be like if things had been different, back then, in Venolat, if it had turned out differently. If he and I had ended up together. It’s silly, Charlie, really it is, but when things are tough I just remember that feeling of being in love with him and it was such a wonderful feeling. So strong and powerful and all-consuming. Delicious, really. And I wonder what it would be like to feel like that again.” Her mind started to drift into the comfort of her memories. “Nothing could permeate that feeling, Charlie. It was so strong. Nothing could beat it or ruin it. It made everything seem perfect.” She stopped, suddenly feeling naked and silly. “Well, you know what I mean. You’re the expert after all—falling in love every five minutes.”

  Charlie looked blank. “I’m not the one to talk to about love, Esme. I wouldn’t recognize it if it came up and bit me in the backside. I’m more of a lust chap, really. Less complicated that way.”

  “There must have been someone, Charlie, somewhere along the line who was different—someone who made you feel sick and obsessed and despondent and ecstatic and crazy and all mixed up.”

  Charlie laughed. “Why would anyone want to feel like that? It sounds horrible. I’ve felt very attracted to people before, obviously, and wanted to rip their clothes off sort of thing but all that other business sounds dreadful. Why would you want to put yourself through it? I can’t remember you putting yourself through it with Pog. Did you?”

  “Pog was different,” Esme said. “I lo
ve him plus I know for a fact that he loves me but”—and she hated the sound of that little word—“it’s just not like it was with Louis.”

  Charlie looked at the old railway clock on the wall above Esme’s head and pushed back his chair.

  “Crikey, I’d better be going,” he said. “Sorry to not be more help, Es, but you know I’m hopeless on the deep and meaningful stuff and much as I would like to stay and deafen your sheep or amputate your bees, I am actually pretty whacked after blinding the goat so I should head off.” He came around the table to kiss her good-bye, then caught sight of Jemima in her gold bikini, still lying brazenly on the table.

  “Bloody hell, is that her?” he breathed. “Nice boobs, I must say. She’s looking pretty fantastic, isn’t she, Es? Well, I can see why you are miffed. She looks smashing. God, look at those shoes—they must have cost her a fortune, twelve hundred quid, I’d say.”

  When Esme realized he was not joking, but truly impressed, she snatched the page of the newspaper up off the table and screwed it into a ball.

  “Thank you for your support, Charlie,” she said. “This is the woman who is taunting me with her global success and all you can do is ogle her slingbacks and leer at her fake boobs, which are of no use to you whatsoever.”

  Charlie snatched the page back and unscrewed it. “I really don’t think they’re fake, I hate to tell you,” he said, looking as close as it was possible to without seeing only colored dots. “Of course, I’m hardly an expert, but still . . .”

  Esme grabbed it away from him and ripped it in half.

  “I don’t know what you’re so put out about,” Charlie said. “Jemima Jones might be bitter and twisted about not living in a giant birdhouse in the country, for all you know. It’s just a matter of choice, Essie. You made yours and she made hers. It’s as simple as that. She just gets better shoes.”

  Esme gave him a not completely playful slap on the back of the head.

  “If I had wanted advice from the Dalai bloody Lama,” she said, “I would have invited him here for the weekend, not you. And I wouldn’t have such a crippling hangover either. Now, on your bike.”