Hunting Unicorns

by Bella Pollen

  The choices were clear – wing it, or run. It felt like two storm clouds had collided over my head but running is for sissies and whatever else you can say about me, I hope I ain’t no sissy.

  The look on Dwight’s and Wolf’s face was comical as Rory virtually marched me into the dining room. I smiled wryly at them and when Alistair Bevan looked puzzled and said, ‘Oh so you have met Robert,’ Rory said grimly, ‘Yes, but it turns out we don’t know each other all that well after all.’

  At dinner, picking over the fragile bones of some bird on my plate I tried to imagine what it was like growing up in the lost splendour of that house. While Rory’s grandfather regaled Wolf and Dwight with war stories using the salt and pepper as tanks, while Rory’s parents drank and steadily became more removed, I watched, I opened my eyes and I tried to see. How Rory’s mother surreptitiously pushed the heater closer our way when she thought we weren’t looking. How only Wolf, Dwight and myself were offered a second helping. How Rory watched over his family so proprietarily, and God help me, I felt ashamed.

  There had to be a way out of this mess but I couldn’t see it. Whatever happened, I needed to talk to Rory before things got any worse – confession is a lot better than admission but it seemed I wasn’t even to be allowed that luxury.

  ‘We’re so pleased you’re all staying for the night this time,’ Alistair said and I closed my eyes.

  ‘This time?’ Rory said. ‘You’ve been here before?’ he hissed. ‘What exactly are you doing here again?’

  ‘I was invited by your father.’

  ‘That’s not very likely is it?’ and the biting sarcasm of his tone made me defensive.

  ‘Well ask him if you don’t believe me.’

  But Rory’s parents were unwrapping their anniversary gifts to one another. The packages were identical. A pair of police breathalysers. The Earl breathed into the tube then looked at the bag, eagerly awaiting the results. The indicator on the bag turned bright green; maximum over the limit.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Alistair said, ‘they work!’ He beamed at his wife. Rory’s mother looked indulgent. Rory just looked exasperated.

  ‘I will ask him,’ he said, ‘but in the meantime you don’t film one more thing in my home.’

  ‘Come on everyone,’ Audrey pushed back her chair, ‘let’s light the bonfire.’

  ‘And don’t think we’re finished with this conversation either.’ Rory added.

  * * *

  In the parklands, standing in huddles around the bonfire, many of Bevan’s old retainers and their families had ventured from cottages on the estate to celebrate the Earl’s anniversary. The Earl greeted them all, some with a handshake, others with a rough hug. Everyone arranged themselves in a loose circle around the base of the bonfire as the farm manager’s grandson, a thin sallow boy no more than sixteen, positioned himself at the top of the ladder and doused the 20-foot structure – looking more than ever like a witch’s hat – with petrol. The ladder was taken away and the tractor driven a safe distance from the bonfire while Rory and Alistair walked around its edge, tossing more petrol from watering cans onto the hacked off branches and twisted boughs. When that job was done, they retreated fifty yards or so. The circle of onlookers moved outwards. A bow and arrow covered in a rag was produced. Alistair tested the tautness of string with a finger then handed it to Rory.

  Rory pulled back his arm and took aim. Alistair held a match to the end of the arrow and Rory let fly. The burning cloth of the arrow cut through the darkness and buried itself into the hay piled around the brim of the hat. The bonfire whispered, crackled furtively, then to the cheers of the crowd, ignited with a sharp burst of light.

  I stood alone, a short distance from Wolf and Dwight, mesmerized by the flames. Onlookers howled appreciation as burning sap caused the occasional explosion. Sparks zigzagged like miniature fireworks up into the night sky. Children ran around brandishing smouldering twigs like swords and it occurred to me that had this been America, there would have been safety ropes and warning signs posted and the occasion would have lost its charm. The heat from the fire was intense, I turned one cold cheek towards it then the other. The whole scene was so far removed from anything I’d ever been a part of and I wondered how it would feel to be there under any other circumstances rather than hostile. Someone put a mug of hot whisky into my hands and I accepted it dreamily, strangely in love with everything that was going on. Eventually the structure of the bonfire gave up on itself and collapsed in a heap of sparks. Children who’d been steadily creeping closer jumped back squealing with excitement and I came back to reality. I scanned the outlines of woolly hats and lumpy coats for Rory’s rangy figure but he had gone.

  * * *

  Inside the house the sound of the piano led me to the drawing room. Rory and his father were playing a duet, one at each piano. It was a classical piece, which they played musically but very erratically. One after the other, chords jarred. I stayed hidden in the doorway and watched them.

  ‘You’re out of time, Rory,’ Alistair shouted good-naturedly. But even with my non-musical ear, I could hear it was Alistair who didn’t have the dexterity to keep up.

  ‘Rubbish,’ Rory shouted back. ‘We’re enormously talented.’

  Alistair missed another chord. ‘Goddamnit!’ He crashed his hands onto the keys.

  ‘Come on, Pa,’ Rory said.

  But his father stopped playing. ‘It’s no good,’ he said, putting his hands into his lap. ‘Too old.’

  Rory went to sit next to his father. He picked up Alistair’s hand and began rubbing his fingers with the bottom of his jumper, as if Alistair were a child who’d lost his mittens. I thought then of a proverb I’d once heard ‘When a father helps the son, both laugh: When the son helps the father, both cry.’

  ‘Not old,’ Rory said. ‘Just cold.’

  They began the piece again, one hand each, laughing, making mistakes, teasing one another. I felt a stab of something unfamiliar. I guess it was envy but there was something else – I’d spent my whole life revelling in the fact that I didn’t have to belong. Now whether I had any right to or not, I felt part of something and in a few days I was supposed to go home and betray them all. Nice one, Maggie.

  I was no longer alone. Wolf stood behind me, camera raised. I blocked the lens then took the camera from him. Wolf looked at me, then to Rory and his father. He gently touched my cheek with his big hand and walked away.

  Alistair and Rory were still playing. Every so often Alistair executed a fast whirly diddly movement. You could hear how good he must have been before arthritis had thickened his joints and bones.

  ‘Who’s going to look after your mother when I’m not around?’ he shouted.

  ‘Come on, Dad.’

  ‘No, I’m serious.’

  ‘Perhaps we can arrange something at auction.’

  Alistair laughed but stopped playing. He put his hand on Rory’s shoulder.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘well … maybe when Daniel died,’ he stopped short, as if he’d set himself a verbal mountain to climb but didn’t know whether he’d brought the right equipment. Rory sat perfectly still.

  Alistair took a deep breath, ‘Well, maybe we should sell this house.’

  Rory stared at his father, astonished.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ Alistair said heavily, ‘impossible, of course, absolutely impossible. Rory, I’m so sorry about everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rory said, and I could see he was struggling. ‘Really, Dad, it doesn’t matter.’

  They looked at each other, a million words unsaid between them, then Alistair broke the spell with a snort. He grabbed his beaker from the side of the piano, removed the lid, poured the brandy down his throat, then turned back to the piano and broke into a solo of vigorous chopsticks.

  * * *

  I know cold. I have been cold in many places. I’ve slept on floors, in the back of pickups, I’ve slept under horse blankets on the frozen earth. The body is prepared to pu
t up with all kinds of discomfort for all kinds of bullshit reasons, but this cold was different. This cold was ungodly.

  It took all my will power to strip to my underwear. In the bathroom a sign on the toilet read ‘No sharp yanks’ which made me laugh until I understood that the reason the toilet didn’t flush, sharp yanks or not, was because the water inside was actually frozen. I peered at it almost expecting to see miniature skaters in furry earmuffs gliding over its surface. The basin next to it was marbled brown with stains but at least there was a comforting dribble of water with which I brushed my teeth. This scanty hygiene routine chilled me to such a degree I put all my clothes back on, coat and socks included and was about to jump into bed when I noticed the electric heater in the fireplace. I flicked the switch and crouched expectantly in front of it. Nothing. On examination the cord led to the back of a dresser but it was too heavy to move. On my stomach I fumbled the plug towards the socket but it wouldn’t go in. I looked at the plug in my hand – three square prongs, I looked at the socket in the wall – three round holes. The two were entirely sexually incompatible. I gave up. I got into bed trying to dispel the image of myself being found the next morning, stiff, dead, frozen as solid as a Good Humor popsicle.

  daniel

  Rory sits in Pa’s office and works steadily through the mail. He slaps stamps onto twenty or so envelopes, flicking the bulb of the light to keep it going. He knows Maggie has gone to bed and wonders what she is thinking.

  Leona said that Bevan reminded her of a mausoleum. She’d shivered when she said it. That was the second time he took her home. The first time she’d said Bevan was ‘romantic’, ‘so pretty’, ‘like a castle in a storybook’. The cellar with its toads and chains was ‘amazing’. Later it was as though she watched those chains being attached to Rory’s ankle. It had been the day after the funeral and Rory suggested they took a walk. They’d got a quarter of the way down the drive before Leona looked sadly at the bottom of her camel trousers, lightly splattered with mud, and announced she’d try to do better next time. At supper she’d wrestled valiantly with the pheasant, but she’d stared at the bread sauce as though it was vomit. Rory promised she’d never have to live there, but she hadn’t believed him.

  Rory continues with his quest for fiscal law and order but his concentration is shot to pieces. Lethargic from boredom he slows to a crawl. He’s finally admitting to himself that his motive for keeping Maggie from Bevan has shifted, it’s never been the so called ‘unpleasantness’. As with Alistair, our grandfather’s secret has been so long buried, Rory doesn’t even consider it, it’s no longer to do with the threat of exposing the family to the derision of millions of viewers. That was his excuse. His reason is that increasingly he’s finding it hard to see himself independently of Bevan and he knows full well that acceptance is nine tenths of defeat.

  He imagines Maggie upstairs in bed, naked and pale against the bitter darkness of the room. He remembers the touch of her lips, the smoothness of her skin. He runs an imaginary finger along the line of her body, feels her ribs dipping into the curve of her waist. He traces his finger out over her hip, across her leg to the inside of her thigh, but his fantasy is somewhat moderated by the sure knowledge that Maggie naked and prone in a room in which the temperature barely reaches above freezing point even in summer, is highly improbable. The fire is gasping in the fireplace, the wood basket empty. In a burst of frustration, Rory picks up the remaining bills on the desk and shovels them into the grate.

  maggie

  This was crazy, I climbed out of bed. Somewhere in the house, there must be blankets. Blankets would be made of wool and right then wool was what I needed. I prowled the narrow corridors. A trunk in the upstairs hall looked hopeful but was full of antique Chinese baby clothes all beautifully wrapped in tissue paper. I opened a door into a room with a rocking horse in the corner. More of a nursery than a bedroom, the floor was stacked with boxes of broken toys and a line of silver cups sat on one of the bookshelves. The cups had been awarded for every kind of sport from running to cricket. I picked up a yellowing cutting of two teenage boys, their arms linked, tennis rackets raised. The heading read ‘The Fabulous Bevan Boys’. I crept out. The room was too sad, too full of ghosts. How much of himself had Rory left behind in that nursery? Distracted, I opened the next door I came across and was mortified to find Alistair and Audrey inside, huddled up in bed. Alistair was wearing an overcoat over his pyjamas and reading out loud from a paperback. Audrey was laughing up at him. On their bedside tables instead of the standard Evian water stood two bottles of Famous Grouse Whisky.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I backed out hurriedly, ‘I was just looking for a blanket.’

  ‘Linen cupboard, dear,’ Audrey called after me. ‘Down the hall, over the half landing, right at the side table with the serpents’ heads, second door on your left.’

  * * *

  It was less of a closet, more of a room. Heat blasted from the boiler in its corner. I can truthfully say I’d never felt so emotional about an inanimate object my entire life. I wrapped my arms around it, pressing my face to its hot dry surface.

  ‘Hey there.’

  I jumped. Rory’s angular body was curled up between the slatted shelves, his head resting on a stack of paisley quilts.

  ‘Rory! Jesus, you scared me.’

  He swung his legs to the floor, dropping the book off his lap.

  I retrieved it, mumbling something about hypothermia, lack of blankets, broken radiators and frozen fingertips.

  ‘You’re right,’ he interrupted gently. ‘It’s not exactly Claridges.’ He removed the book from my hand.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be, your fee will go towards repairing the central heating.’

  ‘Rory, we should—’

  ‘If you’re thinking this is a good time to talk, it’s—’ he cut himself off. ‘Look, you came for a blanket didn’t you?’

  He sifted through the shelves, forcing me back against the door. It swung open and a gust of icy air blew in. I leapt back inside, collided with Rory. Steadying me with one hand he reached slowly behind me for the handle.

  ‘Best to keep it shut,’ he said, pulling the door firmly to. ‘Purely for health reasons of course.’

  We stood close, swaying, not quite touching, until I felt myself start to burn round the edges.

  He dropped my coat to the floor, ran his hands up under my T-shirt and in one swift movement hitched me onto the slatted shelf behind, hand resting lightly at the base of my spine as he unbuckled his jeans.

  He pinned my wrists against the shelf, moving slowly inside me. My skin was slicked with sweat, the muscles on his shoulders shone under the light. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them again I caught him looking at me, and what I saw in his face wasn’t what I expected. The exposure felt painful, confusing, so I closed my eyes again. I didn’t want everything laid out so bare and raw in front of me, because what I’d seen in his face was anger.

  * * *

  ‘Look at the state of you.’ Rory gently rubbed at the lines indented onto my skin by the shelf.

  We were lying in a damp heap of tangled limbs and clothes on the floor. The ceiling blurred into focus above me. The cold, the heat, the sex all had a soporific effect. My whole body felt like it was slow cooking to sleep – just a small raw centre of emotion left.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said curtly.

  I felt my eyes slide away, but he held my face in his hands.

  ‘No, I mean it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You looked straight through me. You scared me.’

  ‘Maybe, but you’ve been scaring me for weeks.’

  ‘That sounds bad.’

  ‘It’s bad in the only way that bad can be good,’ he said.

  * * *

  Back in my bedroom I traced a finger over his eyelids. ‘Don’t sleep.’

  ‘Uh oh,’ he groaned. ‘High maintenance. I knew it.’

  ‘No, no, you’re wrong,’ I protested. ‘
I maintain myself. I’m zero maintenance.’

  ‘Of course you are, you’re Maggie the Cat.’

  I didn’t recognize the reference.

  ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Tennessee Williams. You’re Kipling’s cat who walks by herself,’ he said softly, ‘and all places are alike to you…’

  * * *

  I woke sometime near dawn. The night had washed out to lavender and the air was chilled and still. Morning was biding its time, waiting for the sun to come along and warm it. Rory was wrapped around me, our bodies interlocked.

  I lay awake, just wondering. When you tilt the axis of your world even a fraction off centre, the degree of fallout can be colossal. It’s fatuous to make comparisons but I had become so used to sex with the emotional contraception of barriers and checkpoints, I’d become so good at sanding down my expectations to match Jay’s. Don’t take much, don’t feel much, don’t depend at all. Here with Rory there was no future to consider, no rules to abide by, so the strength of my feelings took me by surprise. I stayed awake a long time, content, limp, slothful, dazed, I turned these unfamiliar words over in my head, all antonyms for my usual edgy self. It was as though somebody had pulled out a stopper and all the jumping beans had drained from my body. I felt like hurling them in the air and shouting hallelujah.

  * * *

  ‘The first earl had a penchant for little boys, the second liked nothing better than sleeping in all his wife’s jewels…’ Rory was propped up on one elbow, ‘The third was scorned by his love, a pickled-onion heiress, and so became passionate about the plight of seagulls, and the fourth, my grandfather’s grandfather, was sexually obsessed with the queen.’

  ‘Oh please,’ I laughed.

  ‘Truly. He was endlessly writing her filthy letters, “I must report that I dream of you, Sire, naked and dripping as you emerge from your bubble-bath,” … although in his younger days he liked to object at weddings.’

  ‘Now I know you’re making all this up.’

  ‘Absolutely not. You know that moment when the vicar says, “Speak now or forever hold your peace?” For a time he was the scourge of every young bride in the north of England.’