And as luck would have it, this struck her as a perfectly fair assessment.
♦
When Jim awoke – his neck aching, his throat sore – he found himself still on the sofa. Ronny was sitting close by, on the floor, wide awake, fiddling with some of the embers in the fireplace. He was holding a charred remnant with a red tip. He was blowing on it and watching the heated end brighten.
Jim focused on him, blearily, slowly regaining his senses. He saw Ronny apply the ember to several surfaces. First, to another piece of wood. Then to the bottom of his white shoe. Finally, he held it in front of his nose and gazed and gazed. Then he moved it an iota and set fire to his fringe.
He was so slow. Jim expected him to jolt, at the very least, and then to jump up with dispatch to quell the flames. But Ronny did not move. He remained where he was, just watching, as though he wasn’t in the least bit affected, as if he’d actually intended it.
Jim thought he must be dreaming. But he was not dreaming. So he roused himself, bounded off the sofa, shouted something…He grabbed a pillow from behind him and belted Ronny about the head with it. He hit him and hit him until the flames were all gone. Then he picked up the ember from the carpet, where it burned, slightly fractured now, and tossed it back into the fire.
Ronny lay, prostrate, just smiling, with a black hole in his fringe and the stink of burning surrounding him. Jim held on to the cushion. He inspected it. It was blackened but seemed otherwise undamaged. Neither of them spoke. Eventually Ronny sat up. He felt around in his pockets with his left hand. He drew out a pair of nail scissors. He offered them to Jim. Jim threw down the cushion and took hold of them.
“Are you burned?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The smell of scorched hair is sickening.”
“Cut it off then. All of it.”
Jim inspected Ronny’s scalp.
“The hair’s melted, like plastic.”
“Cut it short and then shave it.”
But Jim had misgivings. “With no hair and a beard you’ll look like Lenin.”
“Then get rid of the beard too.”
Jim hesitated. “If I do that then we’ll both end up looking like members of some kind of crazy half-arsed cult.”
“True.”
Ronny chuckled. He clearly relished this notion. Jim shrugged and began snipping.
“I never worked out,” Ronny said, eventually, watching his hair fall in clumps down on to the linoleum, “why it was you had that razor. Did you ever need to shave?”
“No.” Jim was wary.
“Then why?”
Jim continued cutting. When he spoke it was without emotion. “It was my father’s razor. I was planning to kill myself with it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jim took a deep breath. “It would’ve been too easy,” he said softly.
Ronny smiled. “The way you explain things,” he scratched his chin, “it’s so,” he paused, “it’s so sweet.”
∨ Wide Open ∧
Twenty-Six
The prison was like a set of dirty teeth, and the land around it was like a bad mouth, and the sky above it was like the grey face of the person who owned the teeth and the mouth and didn’t care a damn about either of them. Inside, however, people were surprisingly helpful. Connie used her father’s name – like it was a badge, a medal – and that at least seemed to count for something.
Eventually she met a man who claimed some vague – if unspecified – level of significance and so she asked him about Ronny. But he was new, he said, and while he had a file (which he flaunted) he claimed that there were certain things which, in all good conscience, he could not tell her.
She asked if Ronny had shared his cell, if he’d left any belongings behind him, and whether she could – at the very least – take a peek at the cell itself. Yes, the man said, although he wasn’t certain he thought that Ronny may have shared his, cell for a short while, and yes, a meeting with his old cell-mate wasn’t inconceivable – if he proved agreeable – but unfortunately the man in question was elsewhere, had a child sick in hospital so was on a temporary transfer. But he was due back, eventually. Soon even, maybe. Connie scribbled down her forwarding address, in Sheppey, and the unfamiliar digits of her new phone number. She was grabbing at straws. She knew it.
On the understanding that it wouldn’t help her one iota, they took her to the cell. It was bare and smelled of fresh paint. She didn’t feel Ronny there. On her way out they mentioned Nathan. They said, “Ronny’s brother has everything. The books, the clothes, the other stuff. All that was remaining.”
Then finally, when she’d almost given up hope, they threw out a bone. A scrap. A parting gift. “I find your concern strange,” the man said, “given that the dates don’t match up.”
“The dates?” Connie was lost. “Which dates?”
“Ronny was long gone by the time your father visited us.”
“So…” she paused, “you’re suggesting that they never even met?”
“No. I’m suggesting that they didn’t meet here. Perhaps they met after. Or maybe even before.” The man gave her a straight look. And that was that. Connie sat in her car for a long while afterwards. She was foiled. She was blank. She was dead-ended, already. She reached over on to the back seat and picked up Monica’s letters. She looked at them. She felt their weight. She sniffed them. New paint. Floor polish. Then she asked herself a question. Is it Monica I’m really tracking down here or is it Ronny? Because Monica was right there. She was ink and fuss and rage and lust. She was life. And Ronny? Who was he? What did he amount to?
The truth of the matter was that she’d never had much of an interest in the present. It was her chief foible. She despised the present. What she craved now – what she’d always craved – was not the present, not the past, but the absent. Not the possible but the impossible. It verged on the perverse, this craving.
It was almost pathological.
And so, by this token, it was not Monica who fascinated her, but Ronny. It was Ronny. It was not the voice that spoke but the ear receiving. It was Ronny. And it was her father. And it was her own sweet and dumb and stupid self. All absent. All vacant. All gone.
Connie rested her forehead on the steering wheel and she S, howled. Hot tears, dry lips, red cheeks. The business. She allowed herself three whole minutes. That was all. Then she wiped her face with her hands, quite brutally, and started up the engine.
♦
Lily prowled around the green Volvo while Sara fed the boar. She had a bucket of beets which she kept on refilling. They had a ton of them, under tarpaulin. She kept glancing over at Lily.
“If only you could drive,” Lily was griping, “then we could take the car back to the prefabs.”
“But I can’t drive.”
“I know, stupid.”
Sara winced. “You could give me a hand if you felt like it.”
Lily kicked the Volvo’s front tyre.
“No.”
She peered over. The boars were lining up, close to the electric fence. The larger male butted away any female who drew too close. The females – broad hessian parcels with cocked ears – squealed unceremoniously. There’s a whole lot of feeling, Lily thought, in a good squeal.
“I think a fox is around.” Sara spoke.
“Really?” Lily inspected her trainers.
“I found one of my best hens dead this morning.”
“Really?” Lily repeated, smiling to herself.
“Yes.”
Sara pushed some hair behind her ear. Lily sniffed. “You should count yourself lucky that it took only one.”
“Only one, but a good layer.” Sara turned back to the boar. “And this lot have been digging…”
“Where?”
“Towards the back. Part of the fence was down near the gate. I still don’t know how they managed it.”
“Instinct…” Lily squinted, th
en added, “Car coming.”
Sara put down her bucket and gazed off into the distance. A blue car. She felt an intense surge of delight at the prospect of a distraction. Not for herself, but for Lily. She had her own particular divertions meticulously planned already.
∨ Wide Open ∧
Twenty-Seven
Jim intended to subtly alter the pattern of his life. It was clear to him – and few things were ever clear to him – that Ronny needed significance. Because he barely existed. He wasn’t located. Not anywhere in particular. He was all things to all people. He was malleable. And that was how he had survived, and that was the disease that devoured him.
Jim was willing, if Ronny wanted, to give himself over. To give himself up for Ronny. Because what did he have to lose? It was surely no sacrifice. His name, his gold watch, his shoes, his brother, his home? None of these things amounted to anything. They held no real value. Except to Ronny.
And who could it hurt? Temporarily?
Jim watched Ronny from the edge of the beach. He guarded him. He had eaten no breakfast, as a bolster to Ronny, and he had cut Ronny’s hair with his right hand. He had drawn Ronny’s attention to it. It had taken him hours.
Later, in the mirror, staring at their two reflections, Ronny had said, “You know, Jim, we are very nearly the same person.”
Jim had laughed. Then Ronny pulled open the bathroom cabinet. “If you do things my way,” he said, inspecting the bottles of pills, the packets of tablets, “you won’t need these any more.”
“Fine.” Jim nodded.
“But I mean it.”
“And so do I.”
Although in truth he did not mean it. Not yet.
“Then let’s get rid of them.”
Ronny went and fetched a plastic bag and tipped the bottles and the boxes straight into it. He tied up the handles – using his left hand and his teeth – then took the bag off with him. Later, after no lunch – Ronny’s idea – Jim suggested he go down to the beach to sort out some shells. Ronny was obliging. “Only this time,” Jim said, “you could decorate the wall at the back of the prefab. You could make something permanent.”
Ronny frowned and said he’d give it some thought.
So Jim stood, like a heron, in the reedy fringes of the beach, just watching. Ronny – wearing a baseball cap, his thin face chiselled and clean like a chip of marble – began sorting the shells, then arranging them, then laying them out in some private semblance of order.
He used only his left hand. He seemed cheerful, his equilibrium apparently completely regained. And Jim watched him. He guarded him, like he was a special pedigree poodle, an exotic canary – its wings carefully clipped – or the most lovely and precious little pearl.
He was starving.
♦
While Connie sat at the kitchen table cradling a mug of tea, Lily lounged up against the Aga, occasionally putting her hand on to the cover of the hot plate to see how many seconds she could hold it there. Connie felt a genuine sense of relief that she wasn’t actually related by blood to this skinny, wasted, round-faced creature. Sara, meanwhile, with admirable diligence, tried to calculate the nature of Connie’s family connection.
“So,” she said, “your father is Lily’s great aunt’s husband’s brother?”
“Yes, he was. But he died.”
“Which makes you something removed.”
Connie smiled at this. She felt like something removed.
Lily, in turn, removed herself from the Aga and sat down next to her. “You drive then?”
She peered at Connie intently, as though this driving characteristic might well prove to be the most interesting thing about her.
“Yes,” Connie nodded.
Sara interrupted. “We farm boar, actually,” she said.
“Really? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a boar before. Do they have husks?”
“Tusks.”
Lily snorted.
“The males, yes.” Sara nodded.
“Are they aggressive?”
“Do bears shit in the woods?” Lily revealed her dimples.
“They’re wild,” Sara scowled, “but very…”
“Indigenous,” Lily interjected, “although you wouldn’t think it with all the bother we get.”
Sara cleared her throat. “People can be wary. Other farmers especially. We’ve been keeping boar for a good few years now, but the myth that they escape all the time and wreak havoc…”
“So what!” Lily expostulated. “It’s our land. We can do what the hell we like on it.”
Connie was intrigued. Sara and Lily spoke directly across her, as if she were invisible. Yet she sensed that this was not the sort of conversation they’d usually have. It was as though she acted like some kind of filter. “Could I see them?” she asked.
They both turned to look at her. Sara put down the teapot. “Pardon?”
“The boar. Could I see them?”
“When you’ve finished your tea,” Lily said, “I could take you on a tour of the area. There’s a nature reserve and a beach…”
Connie picked up her mug, took a sip, put it down again. She felt inexplicably genial. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I think I might really enjoy that.”
♦
When Nathan arrived, the gallery was closing. He had at best only fifteen minutes, a guard warned him. Nathan ran up the stairs and into the new Sainsbury Wing. It seemed huge, the ceiling so high. Everything hushed and hollow and reverential. He began walking, quickly, from painting to painting. Ravenous. The gold leaf, the flat faces, the beautiful colour. He gorged on the angels, the devils, the other stuff. He appraised each picture. He paused, he passed on. Is it Christ? He was muttering. But he saw nothing that moved him. Nothing that connected. There was Christ on the cross. The tears, the torment, the suffering. There was Christ down from the cross, surrounded by mourners. A dumb time, a numb time. There was Christ preaching. Open face, open palms. The goldest halo. But nothing.
Is it the artist? He found several other paintings by Antonello. Each so serene and beautiful. One, a self-portrait of the artist himself – with black hair, heavy stubble, blue eyes and a red felt cap. That was all. And another Antonello Christ, but actually on the cross this time, and tiny, and damaged, and nothing spectacular. A picture of Saint Jerome in his study. An exercise in perspective, and wonderful…
He checked his watch. Time up. His heart was pumping.
♦
Sara had disappeared on a mission to borrow some netting from a nearby farm. The pens needed securing. Or so she’d declared. Once she was gone, Lily ransacked the house in search of Luke’s keys but she could not find them. She turned everything upside down, she tipped, she ripped, she swore, she expostulated, but she refused, refused to believe that Sara had hidden them to foil her. She wouldn’t believe it.
Connie went for a wander around the boar pens, supremely oblivious to Lily’s frustrations. There were five different fenced-off sections, each holding eight or ten boar. A single male and his mates. One of the sections contained some smaller boar of varying sizes which she presumed to be adolescents. They were brown and muddy and rather endearing. The big ones, however, were very large, awesome, in a barky, hoary way, and quite intimidating.
Eventually Lily joined her. She seemed disgruntled.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Connie asked.
“No.” Lily shook her head.
“Shall we go for our walk now?”
“I suppose.”
Lily started off. Connie followed.
“So how are boar different from pigs?”
“The meat’s less fatty.”
“They seem fairly excitable.”
Lily made a little gun out of her right hand. “Click, click, bang! They’re shot at the trough.”
“Really?” Connie felt vaguely stricken at the notion.
“But they’re so fucking powerful that even if you shoot them right in the chest, they run and run, like an e
ngine, like a machine. They’re tough as…uh…” she searched for an appropriate metaphor, “shit,” she said finally.
“They certainly look happy.”
Connie found herself smiling. The boars’ ferocity made her feel buoyant. And Lily’s.
“They are happy. Totally independent. Totally self-sufficient. I mean, we feed them every so often, but not each day because that would make them complacent. They’re wild. Complacency’s like a disease to wild things.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Lily strode on. Connie struggled to keep her pace.
“I was told you kept pigs.”
“We did, years ago, but then we found out about the boar and Dad began interbreeding.”
“With sows you mean?”
“Yep. Same chromosomes. Thirty-six. Strange, huh? It means that you can breed pig and boar without too much difficulty. You get a kind of weird, hairy hybrid…” she shuddered and then continued, “but after a spell he decided that it wasn’t quite right. Boars have a greatness, a purity. And that shouldn’t be tampered with. It should be treasured.”
They had walked well beyond the pens now.
“And they’re much easier to keep than pigs. They even give birth without any fuss. Pigs weren’t as uncomplicated…” Lily scowled at the memory. Connie nodded. “So are we going to the beach?”
Lily ignored her. “And they got terrible sunburn,” she said, “the pigs. Traditional British breeds were very hairy originally but people don’t like pork with hair in the crackling so now they’ve been specially adapted. They have much longer backs, which provides more convenient cuts of meat, but it’s unnatural and causes problems. And their hairlessness means they burn in the sun.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Lily shrugged. “Boar are less work, but you’ve got to be careful to keep them securely.”
“So they do escape sometimes?”
“Once in a blue moon. It’s no big deal.”
Lily stopped walking. “That way is the nature reserve, but if we head straight on we reach the beach.”
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