‘I wish you’d told me this before.’
‘I didn’t know you and she were involved until … recently. Didn’t think it would matter to you.’
‘Oh, man.’ Phinn heard the effort in Link’s breathing, the unshed longing and pain pulling at his words. ‘Bax.’
‘She made me think I was worthless, y’know? Over and over, all I heard was how crap I was in bed, how I should beef up, work some weights, get out there and lay myself on the line to get noticed. Be somebody. She left me feeling that the only way I’d get a woman again would be to drug her and lock her up, that every other woman would look straight into me and see what she saw, this pathetic, transparent jelly of a guy.’
Link made a noise somewhere between a snort and a sob. ‘She told me I was a sexist pig with all the sexual technique of Cro-Magnon man and being in bed with me was like sleeping with a rutting boar. Of course, she could have meant B.O.R.E but, you know, I never asked her to spell it, so jury’s out on that one.’
A silence fell. Phinn stayed where he was, arm halfway across Link’s shoulders, wishing he could see the expression on his face. The shoulders under his arm were trembling, either unshed tears or ones being shed very carefully, designed not to be seen. Phinn decided to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
‘So, you’ve been using your charms on Molly’s friend, eh? That where all the “horsey” stuff is coming from? Could be well in there. She owns a bloody farm, so not exactly after you for your money, is she?’
The inward breath was so deep it made his arm brush Link’s ear. ‘Can see you weren’t brought up with horses, man. They’re like Lamborghinis. Expensive, uncomfortable and unreliable.’
‘Yep.’ Phinn kept his voice light. ‘Anyone who thinks differently never met Stan.’
‘But now you’ve got the telly deal you can get out there and Armani yourself up the wazoo, and, let’s face it, if you’re a “Personality”, no bugger cares if you’ve got the upper body strength of a flatworm, you’ll have the chicks rolling over and begging for you, and it won’t just be the science-groupies any more, you’ll get your pick!’
For the first time since they were about fourteen Link gave him what they’d called at school a ‘noogie’, rubbing his knuckles over the top of Phinn’s head. Phinn had never liked to tell him that it hurt like hell, and now was certainly not the time.
‘I don’t want groupies.’
The noogieing stopped and was replaced with another slap. ‘So, why did you come back then? Caro says … I mean, you and Molly?’
‘I want it to be. I thought I’d got it straight in my head, but now I’m here I’m having second thoughts … I’m worried maybe she might expect me to be something I’m not, after that night when I … I took those pills, Link.’
Link’s face was, as they say, a picture. But it was the Laughing Cavalier. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. And they made me – they made me someone else. The kind of person that I think she deserves. She said she loved every second of it, but, false pretences, you know?’
‘Man. Oh, man, you are such an idiot.’ Link was laughing out loud now and the laughter had an undertone of relief. ‘How long? How long have you known me? Come on!’ Another, harder slap, this time around the back of the head. ‘Seriously?’ The laughter threatened to block out the words. ‘You think I’d waste good gear on a four-eyed twat like you?’
Phinn stared at him. ‘You are making even less sense than usual, and for you, that’s really going some.’
‘The stuff I gave you.’ Link wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, tears of laughter seemed to have wiped out the previous ones. ‘Aw, come on, man! They were just headache tablets I got from the chemist! You looked so down, so head-up-your-own-arse, I just thought I’d make the gesture, y’know? You mean you …? And you seriously thought …?’
It was me. The sudden realisation rocked Phinn back on his heels. I thought it was the drugs making me all macho and take-charge, and all the time … it was me. All me. Everything before, sabotaging relationships, the wimpishness, it’s all been me trying to hide. Trying to be all things to all men. Women. But one stupid trick and I let myself be the me I knew I could.
Oh my God.
‘I think, maybe, I do need to see Molly.’ His hand hurt and things began to slide into place.
‘Reckon?’
Phinn slowly opened his hand to reveal the small plastic square that had been embossing itself on his palm for the last twenty-four hours. ‘This. This is what it’s all about.’
‘Lego?’ Link spun away, laughing. ‘This is it, you’re officially a nutjob. You’re going to build yourself a woman?’
Phinn shook his head. He could feel the smile spreading across his face, unstoppable now, driven by the kind of certainty he couldn’t remember ever having felt before. ‘Not Lego. Molly.’
‘Okay then. You get Molly and I get the groupies, deal?’
Phinn half turned. Link’s face was so close that, even with his trial-and-error eyesight, he could see the expression in his friend’s eyes. A wariness that said he still wasn’t sure that things were okay between them, a tight withdrawal behind those pale lids. He’s as screwed up by his childhood as I am. Looking for something in all the wrong places.
‘Groupies are all yours, Link,’ he said, and saw the guardedness drop away into relief.
‘Always have been, my man, always have been.’ And Link patted his groin. ‘Now, put some of your TV clothes on, because we are going visiting Moll and her mate and, as my wingman, you owe it to me to reel ’em in so that I can pounce.’
Phinn sighed. ‘Sexual revolution really passed you by, didn’t it?’ But he felt lighter, as though that clockwork coil that had kept him running for the last year had finally reached a limit and unwound. As though he was managing himself now.
‘Vive la revolution!’ Link shouted, and Phinn shook his head. Life might change, his whole outlook on the future might change, but Link … Link would remain Link until the day he died.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was one of those still, crisply warm days that spring occasionally throws our way to reassure us that summer will, eventually, come and we shouldn’t give up and move to Rio or wherever. Stan and I had pottered up onto the hill, where I’d scanned the skies but seen nothing more than flocks of starlings wheeling over the field boundaries, the peat had smelled like coffee and the ground squidged under his hooves. The world was as empty as the sky, just a blanket of unfurling bracken and winter-grey heather and my heart flopped about in my chest like a deadweight.
Sod it. When I get back I’m going to ring all those people I knew through Tim, get myself some proper writing gigs. I’ve had enough of martyring myself to the cause of some stupid illusion. My grip on the reins must have tightened, because Stan peeled through the mud to a standstill and I had to nudge him forward quite hard, turning his head so that we went down the trackway to the village.
The river was running in full spate, I could see and hear it before I even came down onto the bridge. The flat area alongside the banks was waterlogged and the green where the children would be dancing around the maypole in a couple of weeks’ time, was under six inches of murk. I halted Stan on the bridge and looked down. Tree branches were sweeping underneath us like drowning arms, jamming briefly against the underside of the bridge before the force of the water ripped them clear and bore them downstream in a roar of meltwater. I shuddered.
‘Molly!’
I thought I’d imagined the call, that the water was making me hallucinate, but Stan’s head came up and, when I looked, I could see Phinn running towards us, taking no notice of the fact that he was splashing through liquid mud. He was wearing what I thought of as his ‘astrophysicist’ clothes, normal black jeans and his old jacket, not his TV stuff, so I knew he must have been back at Howe End.
‘Phinn? What are you doing here?’
He puffed up, stopping just before he got within eating distance of Stan, and eyed him w
arily. ‘I came … to see you. To tell you stuff. Things.’
I didn’t know whether those things were good or bad, but couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the sight of him. ‘You—’
‘This,’ he said. ‘It was this.’ He uncurled his fingers. ‘Look.’
I leaned forward in my stirrups to see. On the centre of his palm sat something square and white that looked like a sugar lump. Clearly Stan thought so too, because he leaped forward to intercept the snack, his hooves slithered on the wet road and his shoulder dropped as he tried to keep his feet underneath him. I grabbed for his mane, but the chopped nature of it meant there was nothing to get hold of. I lost my balance completely and fell, scraping myself on the bridge parapet before I plunged down into the racing water below.
* * *
Phinn and the horse stared at one another for a second. ‘Shit,’ was all Phinn could think of to say. ‘Shit!’ His mouth was too dry for anything else.
He leaned over the stone bridge, catching a glimpse of her hair, an arm – and then Molly was gone, swept along with the flotsam of a moorland winter, in the nightmare black water. In his hand the edges of the plastic brick cut into his palm and made his fingers ache. For a second he stood there in the middle of that bridge, balanced between one bank and another, one life and another.
‘Okay, okay.’ He whirled on the spot a couple of times. ‘Nobody about. Houses too far to go to. No phone signal.’ Another quick look down into the stained waters cascading beneath his feet. ‘Fuck.’
And then he looked at Stan. Stan looked back at him. There was an air of quiet panic about the horse, Phinn thought, although he couldn’t say how he knew, and Stan stepped towards him, reins flopping along one side of his neck.
‘Okay,’ Phinn said again, his heart loud in his ears even over the sound of the water. ‘Death Star time.’ And he grabbed the saddle, hauled himself on board and, using a combination of yanking and kicking, Phinn forced the horse into a shuffling run.
* * *
The breath clanged out of me, squeezed by the shock of the fall, and I sank. Currents and eddies pulled at my clothes, my boots came off and I felt my feet trail against rock, slam into boulders and then trawl briefly along a sandy bottom before I broke surface again. Couldn’t call out, the water was too cold to allow me to draw breath, too fast to fight, dragging me, forcing me scarily fast downstream.
I caught one quick glimpse of Phinn’s face, shocked white, before I was pulled back under the surface again, turned around and hustled past the bridge supports, the water in my ears and over my head banging and clattering and muffling until I didn’t know which way was up and took one brief lungful of what turned out to be liquid mud.
Couldn’t cough. Not enough air. The world stung and spun, my head surfaced again and I saw the blurry image of the village, vanishing, pulled away from me by the speed of the water. The weight of my clothes pulled me under but the force of the current kept shoving me to the surface again, I could hear my riding hat clonking and banging against objects in the water with me, but I was travelling so quickly that I couldn’t grab anything to help me to float. All I could manage to do was to flap my arms, almost insurmountably heavy in their sleeves, and breathe whenever my head broke water.
Couldn’t call. Now too cold even to move. My back slammed into something hard and I found myself wedged in a tree trunk that had itself jammed in the centre of the river, a whole heap of detritus caught where its dead branches dipped the waters. And there I hung, unable to fight the current to move towards the shore, no air to shout with; just another piece of flotsam waiting for a small alteration in the flow patterns to be knocked free and carried further on downstream to where the river widened and deepened and the farmers fetched the bodies of the cows out with hooks on poles every winter.
I’m going to die.
Mud filled my eyes. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist and what I could feel above it didn’t feel healthy. My lungs ached as though a huge fist had closed around them and there was an equally tight band around the top of my skull where my hat had gone sideways and wet hair flailed around my face.
So this was it. I was going to die, a stupid, careless death. Why had I got so close to the water, when I knew the river was dangerous? Why had I lost concentration, let Stan take me unawares? Stupid, stupid … but too late. I was going to drown, or die of exposure or hypothermia or some obscure river-borne disease and my body would be washed up on some strange riverbank, embedded in the mud with half my clothes missing, torn off by rocks. By the time Phinn had run to one of the houses, found someone to help, phoned the Emergency Services, it would all be over.
I’d resigned myself now. A curious warmth was beginning to slide over me, as though mild currents were travelling down the river, it made me feel sluggish and I was glad. Through numb lips I muttered ‘just let it be soon’.
And then there was a thundering noise above me where the banks of the river rose high and vole-pocked, a pounding sound that was familiar and yet strange, echoing down this stretch of river like a drummer accompanying the apocalypse. If I stretched my head back I could see the edge of the bank and a shape, stretched and strained through the mud in my eyes. A long shape, bunched and uneven in the middle, a shape that wheeled away almost as soon as I’d seen it, disappearing out of my vision. I closed my eyes. Hallucinations. A volley of water struck me in the chest and swept me from my perch to whirl me around once more rootless and then pitched me back into the tree’s embrace, this time pegged on a series of branches which impaled my shirt. So cold now that I’d stopped being cold.
And then another sound, this time coming closer. An evil, blowing sound, a bit like someone trying to start a recalcitrant chainsaw, a regular chuffing, deep and threatening. I opened my eyes again.
A dragon?
No, but something coming for me, nostrils first. A curled back lip over yellow teeth, coming closer, a wet-black neck suspending a Loch Ness head above the water in an attitude of strain. And behind it … no, on top of it …
‘Phinn?’
And then I saw what I was seeing. Stan swimming towards me through the sweeping waters, snorting and puffing to keep the river out of his nose. Phinn astride, one arm wrapped around Stan’s neck to keep him from being swept off, eyes wide, glasses gone.
‘Molly.’ His voice was quiet but carried to me over the noise of the rushing water and the horse’s constant snorting. ‘If you can hear me, lift your hand.’
Feebly I tried, but my limbs weren’t working well. One wrist broke the surface amid the twig and plastic nest that was accumulating around me. It was the best I could do.
Stan swung round to face upstream, coming at me now around the wedged tree, hooves thrashing at the water like a paddle steamer from hell. One leg clouted me from below and then Phinn was reaching down, disentangling me from the branches and hauling me across the broad back, looping his arms around my waist to keep me on board as Stan huffed and spun gently around to face the way he’d come, head extended above the water as far as it would go, all the veins on his neck standing out with the effort of swimming against the current.
‘Phinn.’ I could barely speak.
‘It’s okay, I’ve got you.’
With some signal to the horse that I couldn’t detect he steered us down to where he must have entered the water, a shallow stretch of bank where cattle came down to drink and the water level was parallel to the ground. With one mighty heave Stan dragged himself up out of the river, cantered three strides into the field and then floundered to a halt, sides dragging in and out, head down and gasping.
Phinn slithered to the ground and pulled me down along with him, wrapping his body around me until he could feel my heart beating.
‘Oh my God,’ he was saying. ‘Oh my God,’ over and over again with each breath, with each thud of my heart. ‘Oh my God.’
Beside us Stan shook himself like a dog, looked around for a second then began to graze.
‘Phinn, you �
��’ I started to cough and carried on, coughing until I retched up some black water, then felt better. My lungs still felt as if they were on fire and my ankles ached, but feeling was coming back to everywhere else in slow dribs and drabs. ‘You came for me.’
Phinn leaned forward, hands on thighs and started to laugh. One more round of ‘Oh my God,’ and then he couldn’t speak, just laughed and laughed so hard that I thought he’d fall over. Laughter that was the wrong side of fear. I reached out and touched his hand and he turned to look at me out of eyes that were full of tears.
‘Molly.’ And the laughing turned to crying and he was sobbing, holding on to me while his whole body shook. ‘Molly.’
And then I was crying too, with his arms tight around me and his chest hauling and dragging at the air and we wept ourselves to a standstill while my horse steamed himself quietly dry and ate thoughtful dandelions around us.
Eventually we moved, letting reluctant fingers disentangle. He tipped my chin to see my face. ‘We need to get back. You’ll need a doctor.’ He began reeling Stan in by his reins. ‘You can ride, I’ll walk. I think both of us might be a bit much for him at the moment.’
‘But you can’t. Ride. Couldn’t ride. You fell off. How did you …?’
Phinn paused, halfway to helping me to my feet. ‘Well, I decided that riding a horse shouldn’t be that difficult for someone who knows what the Large Hadron Collider is actually for, so I just put my mind to it. It might not have been pretty or accurate, but it got the job done.’
How I Wonder What You Are Page 25