Thames Gateway 01; Wide Open

by Nicola Barker

  While she spoke, Ronny was sick again, up against a wire fence. “I’m sorry about this.” He wiped his mouth.

  “It’ll merge in. This is a farm. In the country every-fucking-thing merges.”

  “Sick doesn’t merge,” Ronny muttered hoarsely, “it’s always synthetic-looking, don’t you think?”

  “Synthetic? How?”

  Lily peered at his vomit in the darkness. She was a farmer’s daughter with a cast-iron stomach. She saw nothing amiss.

  “The colour,” he said, “the texture.”

  Then he walked on, disgusted at himself. “What about eggs then?” Lily asked, catching him up, “what about jellyfish?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The whole fucking world’s synthetic.”

  Ronny stopped walking. “Hold on a second,” he said, and made Lily stop too. She thought he was going to be sick again but he wasn’t. The problem was something exterior this time. His back and his neck were prickling.

  “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He rubbed his neck and glanced around him. To his right lay a ploughed field. To his left a high wire fence. He was tall, though, and everything was flat here. He tried to adjust his sight-line. He looked low, and then lower. He froze. Lily chuckled. “It’s the beetroots. There’s a few of them dropped outside the fence. He wants one.”

  ‘He’ was a hairy beast; hunched and bear-like and giant and tusky. His eyes shone out, brownly. Wild, wild eyes. He was prehistoric. Ronny took a step backwards. Lily picked up a beet and tossed it over the fence. The boar ambled towards it.

  “Get back to bed you silly bugger!” she hollered, then added, “See all the others?”

  What Ronny had believed to be bushes and hillocks he now saw were animals, bristle-backed with a Bronze Age craggi-ness. Watching, waiting. Hoofy, toothy. “Meet the harem,” Lily said, “they don’t often come out at night, but it feels quite balmy and they weren’t fed today.”

  Ronny moved forward and reached out his hand. Lily said nothing until his wrist was through the fence wire, then she said calmly, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t.”

  He jerked back quickly and his fist caught in the wire. He yanked it through roughly.

  “Aren’t they friendly?”

  Lily snorted and walked on. Eventually Ronny followed her. He caught up at the gate. She held it open for him and then closed it behind them.

  “See the bats?” she pointed.

  He gazed into the sky. He almost tripped. It was a rough road.

  “So how did you meet up with Mum?”

  She needed to know.

  “Uh…” he thought for a moment, “is it true that she doesn’t actually drive?”

  “Yes.”

  Lily wondered why it was that people invariably evaded her questions. She’d always presumed that the act of requesting information was fundamental to polite intercourse. Ronny was studying her. “So how did you hurt your foot?” he asked. Lily paused. It was such a fine dark night. She longed for some kind of spice. For significance.

  “Bite,” she said, her voice vibrating, her mouth virtually champing on the thick night air like it was candy floss.

  “Bite?”

  “Yep.”

  “What bit you?”

  “A thing.”

  Ronny smiled. “A bad thing?”

  Lily shrugged. They walked past a cluster of dark caravans and some large, empty barns. “A freak,” she said, finally, and then, in case he didn’t understand her, “a demon.”

  Ronny veered sharply to the side of the road and sat down on its grassy verge. “There’s no such thing,” he said calmly.

  “Why are you stopping?” Lily wanted to walk.

  “I feel bad. I might be sick again.”

  She stood in front of him, twisting her feet about. Ronny collapsed slowly on to his back and looked up into the sky. “Demons are just something people invented to channel their feelings of anger and pain. Bad feelings. They’re like an excuse, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “Take poltergeists…”

  “Poltergeists?”

  But Ronny chose not to follow this up. Instead he said quietly, “I was in Shepherd’s Bush,” he linked his fingers over his chest, “just wandering around, and I saw a small crowd of people outside this antique shop.”

  Lily also glanced up into the sky, but nothing she saw there impressed her. She looked down at Ronny instead. He was too thin. She scowled. Something told her that this should’ve been her big moment, but she’d gone and missed out on it. Again.

  “Anyhow,” Ronny continued, “I wondered what it could be that was causing all this excitement…”

  “So?” She was rolling her eyes, plainly fatigued.

  “A freak,” Ronny said, clearly relishing the single syllable.

  Lily stopped rolling. “What do you mean?”

  “In the window. In a little glass case. An exhibit.”

  Lily quickly sat down next to him. He, in turn, pushed himself up on to his elbows. “A little beast,” he added.

  “What?”

  Ronny’s breath smelled of acid. His teeth were white, white. Lily steadied herself, preparing for some kind of a wind-up.

  “A little beast in a glass case. For sale.”

  “A beast?” Lily loved this word.

  Ronny lay back down again.

  “And so?” she prompted.

  Ronny sighed. “A postcard at the front of the case said: The Cobham Beast. That was his name. That’s what they had called him. I imagine that he must’ve come from a place called Cobham but I’ve never heard of it.”

  “I have,” Lily nearly choked in her excitement.

  “Really?” He turned to look at her.

  “Yes. I have an aunt who lives there. It isn’t very far from here.”

  She was excited, a part of the story now.

  “And what did it look like, this beast?” she asked with some agitation.

  “Like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

  “How big?”

  “Small. Like a rabbit, but upright.”

  “And it wasn’t a fake?”

  “No. Absolutely not. But it had the loveliest, the sweetest face I’ve ever seen. A trusting face, full of gentleness.”

  “Furry?”

  “Short fur.”

  “Black?”

  “No. Brown. But it stood on its hind legs, like a small person, a baby, only it had four legs and two little arms.”

  “A beast!”

  Lily lay flat on her back and gazed at the stars. Her heart was red outside and all clogged up at its centre like a ripe ball of Edam.

  “So what do you think it actually was?” she said, finally.

  Ronny shrugged. “I don’t know. Itself.”

  She liked this answer.

  “But I had no money to buy it…” Ronny sighed.

  “How much?”

  “It didn’t say. A lot, I imagine. So I stole it.”

  She sat up. “You’re kidding!”

  Ronny sat up too.

  “No. I don’t kid.”

  “How?”

  “I went back at night with a brick. I smashed it and then grabbed it and then legged it.”

  Lily loved him then. It was as though a gorgeous butterfly had landed on her breastbone, its fragile antennae all aquiver.

  “So what did you do with it?”

  Ronny rubbed his stomach with his left hand. “Well, I wasn’t living anywhere at the time so I scratched my name into the wood on the side of the display case, put it inside a cardboard box and left it with a man I know at the Lost Property Office at Baker Street. I thought it would be safe there. And, what’s more important, it wouldn’t be on display.”

  “You didn’t want people to see it?”

  “No. Never again.”

  “Why not?”

  Ronny stood up. “Because,” he said, offering her his left hand, “he’d needed understanding and he’d r
eceived none. I wanted to protect him. I saw myself in him.”

  Lily smiled and took Ronny’s hand. He pulled her up and then let go. She had expected his touch to be a real delight, but instead it was cold. Icy, in fact. Like the hand of a dead man.

  ♦

  Once he’d got it home, the box immediately became just another part of the furniture. He placed his beer bottles upon it when he lounged on the sofa watching TV. The phone was temporarily balanced on top of it. A magazine, a paper, a listings guide. Stuff. But he wasn’t hiding anything. Not at all. It was right there, wasn’t it? Margery had brushed up against it several times and had even gone and laddered her stocking on a protruding staple. Yes. So she’d been fully aware of its sudden materialization, surely?

  Surely. Yet Margery didn’t think to enquire about the box. She simply let it ride. There are no secrets here, Nathan thought, righteously. No secrets. It ]ust fitted. The box.

  And inside? Inside?

  Nathan had retrieved Connie’s card from the top of it. Then he’d paused for a moment, slipped the card into his pocket and kneeled down to touch the box, carefully exploring the texture of the smooth brown tape which sealed it so well and protected its corners. Slippery. He felt it with his finger. His index finger.

  Then he found himself doing something stranger still. He leaned forward and applied his tongue, his tongue to the tape. He licked it. He withdrew again. Salty. Synthetic. Soapy. He discovered – there was no denying it – that he’d developed a powerful erection. A. Powerful. Erection. What? He blinked. He found himself thinking – couldn’t stop it, couldn’t – how beautiful this closed tight thing was. This sealed thing. This secret. This hidden. This sticky tape. How beautiful this closed tight thing. Was.

  No. He gasped. Oh no. He drank four stiff brandies. One, two, three, four. All in a row. Then he steadied himself and didn’t look at the box again.

  ∨ Wide Open ∧

  Twenty

  Connie was sleeping. But not properly. Intermittently. And she was dreaming. She was dreaming of a journey, of an island, of a place on the edge of everything. Kitty, her mother, tucked the clean blue duvet under Connie’s chin. She picked up the empty teacup from the bedside table, straightened the rug, returned the doctor’s chair to its niche under the desk. On the desk were some papers, and letters.

  ♦

  Ronny,

  Everything’s fruity. Fruity and plush and flowery. I am well. I am celebrating. Here’s what happened. Louis and I went on a trip with Monty and two of Monty’s friends to see the world’s largest flower, Rafflesia arnoldii. It’s something of a botanical celebrity in these parts and Louis was taking his camera to get a few shots of it in bloom. It blooms in August. In July it ripens and clusters and glistens. In August it blares like a trumpet.

  And I would stand next to it, Louis said, to give his shots a sense of proportion. I had no choice in the matter. We desperately need the money he raises from these bread and butter jobs to keep the whole investigative kit and caboodle on track. Anyway, Louis was determined that I should come along. I’ve been hanging around in the bat cave – but more of that later – so was slightly niggled at the neccessity of spoiling my routine. “Won’t Monty do?” I asked. “I mean if it’s only proportion you’re after?”

  But no. Louis was emphatic. In fact he even demanded that I bring a hairbrush and some lipstick along for the ride. We would be two bright flowers together, he chuckled. But there would be no competition. I would be the lesser flower. I would be the unripe bloom, the pale imitation, the pansy, the wallflower, the weed.

  Well, you know me, Ronny.

  We travelled by bus, initially. It was packed at first but then it emptied, until finally just our foursome and the driver remained on board. Whole segments of road had been washed away in the floods. We bumped and gyrated. We shuddered and bucked. I was too hot. It was hell. I opened my knapsack to dredge up an aspirin and pulled my hand out puce. The lipstick had melted. My bag’s interior was like the skewed belly of a calf half ravaged by some wild beast. And my arm was a vulture, dip, dip, dipping. Pecking and schmoozing in its ruby guts.

  The road was peppered with pot-holes, some so large the bus could hardly have filled them. At one particularly giant one, our driver slowed down and then ground to a halt.

  “What is it?”

  I clambered to the front. It was no mere hole, but a crater, and way too deep to negotiate. We needed to sidestep it. But in the measly straggle of road that remained lay a snake. A small python. And he was writhing, but not naturally.

  “Oh my God, did we hit it?”

  Louis, already at the front, merely shrugged. He was thinking about the flower and how the light wouldn’t be with us for an infinite duration. The snake arced and fell, arced and fell. Its neck was cock-angled, its jaw slack.

  “Did we hit it?” I asked the driver. He only frowned. Louis cleared his throat and suggested, quite calmly, that we drive on over it.

  “We could get over easy,” he said, “if we steer with care. The wheels are widely spaced.”

  I couldn’t abide the idea. I couldn’t tolerate even the slightest possibility of damaging it further. “Can’t we just move it instead?” I asked, “away from the road with a stick or something?”

  Monty laughed.

  The snake kept dancing its gruesome dance. I spoke to Louis again. “We should shoot it. Monty has a gun. Let him kill it.”

  “No. It’s protected.”

  “But he’s killed protected creatures before, hasn’t he?”

  Louis gave me a bad look. He turned to Monty. “Tell the driver to go over it.”

  He put his hand in his wallet and jangled. Money.

  “No,” I said, “let me at least try to move it.”

  Louis caught hold of my arm. He had the snake’s grip. He would squeeze me and devour me. And just for a photo. The driver started up the engine. Coins rattled a little tattoo in his pocket. I closed my eyes tightly, feeling every bump and judder. And once we were over, I ran to the back of the bus.

  Louis didn’t twitch a whisker. He had his light detector out. “The light’s all fucked,” he kept saying. And through the dusty back window I saw the snake, on the road, but not dancing, its tail now crushed but still living. Only its middle moving, like a skipping rope. Kind of scything. Either-ended. A terrible, mud-stuck, tyre-tracked U-bend. And my hands were red as blood, like I’d dipped them in his injury, Ronny. Like I’d washed them in him.

  We got to the spot. The flower was one great, big love-in. Its white horn, its giant throat, the focus of a thousand insects, marching and buzzing and jumping and swanking. I stood next to the bloom. It dwarfed me. I was its ugly little sister. A rat to its sex-kitten. My throat was still tight, like that python was draped right around it. I would have my revenge. I would, I would. I made a vicious little promise to myself in that flower’s dark shadow.

  Louis was suddenly very obliging. Did he feel bad? Monty and his chums had disappeared for a while. They had other fish to fry. He asked me to tuck my red hands behind my back. He took a shot. He took several. One at each and every angle. “You know what?” I said eventually, having timed it, having bided my time, “maybe it would be nice if you took a snap or two of yourself. You could send them to your wife and to Lucy.” (his daughter )

  He wanted to oblige me. I said, “Should I take the picture?” (My own camera still moist and scarlet, so I’d have to use his.) I knew he would refuse me. “No,” he said, “there’s the tripod and the timer. I’ll do it that way.”

  He set up under the giant spread of a durian tree. Every delicate adjustment to his camera and the tripod a kind of mute tribute to me. An apology. I said a little prayer. Where did I direct it? I don’t know.

  “Are you sure,” Louis asked, “that this is really the best possible angle?”

  I nodded. He blinked back his chauvinism. Because it wasn’t the best angled shot, by any means. And he came to stand next to the flower. He reached out his a
rm to me. He wanted us shoulder to shoulder. Like comrades. I obliged him.

  We both stared into the lens. Louis counted down, under his breath. Ten, nine, eight, he said, seven, six, five. We weren’t even propped and stilted and steadied yet when the fruit came down. The durian fruit. It falls in July and early August. A giant, spiky bomb of a fruit. A menace.

  Phut!

  It killed his camera. Yes! It killed it stone dead. And that, I told myself, is the law of this fucking jungle. M.

  ∨ Wide Open ∧

  Twenty-One

  “Ronny was sick four times,” Lily shouted, like she was proud of his achievement. Jim didn’t answer. He was skulking in his bedroom, hiding. He couldn’t face her. She busied herself around the prefab. She rescued the pie from the pan in the kitchen which was threatening to boil dry and then tried to invite herself to dinner. She craved a slice of something meaty.

  Jim listened as Ronny ejected her. He did it so gently. He said her mother would be worried. He said it was getting late. He said he needed to rest a while. He played every stroke with such grace and finesse. Jim envied him. And Lily, in turn, wanted to nibble him all over. Her foot didn’t even sting any more. This was a new reality, she told herself. This was a brand new world. She could step right into it. She could shed her old skin.

  Ronny finally closed the door on her. He went and found Jim sitting on his bed. He had been upset by something. Ronny could tell. His eyes were red. He wore no hat. He was round-shouldered, diminutive, buff-headed. “Guess what?” Ronny was jovial.

  “What?”

  “Kidney stones!”

  “Really?” Jim didn’t brighten.

  “Kidney stones. They can be very painful. And he’d been having these bad rumblings for ages but he’d been too frightened to go and see anyone about it. He thought he was dying. That’s why he came here.”

  Jim shook his head at Luke’s apparent weakness.

  “Sara gave me directions but stayed hiding in the car. I took him in. It worked out just fine in the end. I left the Volvo at the farm. You could pick it up tomorrow. Luke can get a cab home when he’s ready.”