Ronny just mumbled under his breath, somewhat evasively.
Connie stared at Ronny blankly for a moment, as though something terribly obvious had just occurred but she’d missed it.
Ronny.
The sun was sinking and her shirt was cold against her skin.
“Really? So what was it about, this discussion?”
“Ronny was telling me how certain kinds of letters make you feel cheerful.”
“Letters?”
Connie shoved her hair behind her ear, away from her face.
“In graphics…” Lily turned back to Ronny. “How soon do you think before the sea comes right in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Won’t it wash away your tableau?”
“Probably.”
Ronny sounded unbothered. He stretched his spine as though it had grown uncomfortably stiff, then dusted some sand off his left hand by patting it on the front of his shirt. His right hand remained limp in his lap. Then very slowly, very gradually, he unwound, but without using his hands to push himself up, and keeping his feet close together so as not to disturb the circle of shells around him.
Once Ronny was standing he took in the circular sweep of his day’s work. He smiled, then he frowned. “Actually…” he scratched his leg, “I think I’m stuck.”
Lily stood up herself and was immediately involved in Ronny’s dilemma. “Can’t you jump over?”
He shook his head. “Not from this position. No leverage.”
He looked around him, almost panicky. “Where’s Jim?”
Lily glanced up to the top of the nearby sand dunes as though she still expected Jim to be standing there. “Jim? You mean the bald one?”
“The other bald one,” Connie murmured, studying Ronny’s body language with some curiosity.
“Yes,” Ronny nodded. “I think I need Jim. I think I need him.”
Lily put out her hand. From the edge of the shell arrangement she could almost touch him. “Why not grab hold of my fingers?”
“I can’t balance.”
Ronny began to wobble.
“Jim’s in his prefab,” Connie spoke, “shall I go and call him?”
“Would you?”
Ronny peered at Connie over his shoulder, his expression chiselled with a sharp anxiety.
“No. Let me. I’ll go.”
Lily would not be outdone. She would be indispensable. “I said I’ll go, Ronny.”
She rushed off, shoving past Connie in a slight demonstration of ill-grace. Connie stepped aside silently. She did not relish the notion of Lily stumbling across what she presumed to be Sara’s secret dalliance with Jim’s fat, tanned neighbour. But if Sara had any sense…
So they were left alone. Ronny was still wobbling slightly.
“Had you been sitting there long?” Connie walked around the shell circle so that he didn’t have to turn his head to see her.
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s cramp.”
“No. I’ve always had problems with my balance.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “Big toes.”
Connie stared at him. “Pardon?”
“I have none.”
“No big toes?”
“It’s the way I was born. I was imperfect.”
Imperfect. Connie disliked this choice of word, but her mind was temporarily distracted. “You know,” she cleared her throat, “there’s a special kind of ape…”
“Yes,” Ronny frowned but he nodded, “yes, I do know.”
He seemed unfazed, but slightly disgruntled.
“I mean, with no toes…” Connie continued, “a pale giant.”
“Of course. I know all about that.”
Ronny glanced over his shoulder as though keen to curtail their conversation. In the distance, Jim had emerged from his prefab and was jogging across the beach, followed closely by Lily. Ronny returned his gaze to Connie. She was staring at him, thinking how thin he was. The sun was setting and it had bathed him in a strange, pinkish light which reflected from his pale face and hands. His wrists were facing outwards, limply, and were oddly pearly; striped, like the belly of a tiger fish. The sun was refracting off his scar tissue. Connie stared at his wrists, and then at his fingertips which also seemed to glow.
“Did you see any black rabbits yet?”
She was shaken. “Pardon?”
She had almost to pinch herself.
“Black rabbits. They’re a local peculiarity. Jim told me.”
“Uh…no,” Connie was confused, “I’ve only just arrived here.”
“I see,” Ronny nodded but he seemed suspicious, “me too.”
Jim finally reached them. He was short of breath. “Ronny?” he panted.
He held out his hand, then stared at his outstretched arm with a look of genuine amazement. “Jim!” Ronny exclaimed and began grinning. Without thinking he walked over the tableau, right through the middle of it, kicking the shells aside. Not noticing Connie any more, not noticing Lily. Like Jim was everything.
He took hold of Jim’s arm. “I didn’t know where you’d got to.”
“I was in the prefab. We should eat something.”
“You’re right.”
They walked off together. Totally engrossed in each other. Like two stringy, rheumy old men.
Connie rubbed her arms. Lily stared after the two of them, irritated. “He’s such a prick.”
“Who? Ronny?”
“No. Jim. He’s such a prick.”
“We should go home. It’s getting dark.”
“Yes.”
Lily set off along the beach at a great pace, taking extraordinarily lengthy strides with her skinny legs. Connie struggled to remain several paces behind her, but she was not in pursuit, she told herself, merely taking Lily’s lead, quite submissively. And anyway, her mind was elsewhere. It was fuddled and rosy and darkening over. Like the giant sky above her. No sun left, no moon up, no stars yet. Just shadow. A great, wide, hugely improbable inky blink.
∨ Wide Open ∧
Thirty
Lily got up from the kitchen table half way through dinner, without uttering a word, and left them. Initially Connie thought she’d gone off to fetch something and anticipated her imminent return. But she didn’t come back. They were eating a giant spinach omelette with boiled potatoes. Sara had been in the midst of preparing their meal – swathed in steam, beating eggs in a giant bowl – when they’d finally staggered home.
She’d turned the immersion heater on specially so that Connie could have a quick bath and change her clothes before dinner. She was being an exemplary hostess and gave every indication of feeling perfectly at her ease. During the meal they discussed a variety of subjects – Connie’s work, Sara’s chickens, local industry, sightings of hawks in the area – Lily, however, spoke very little.
“Apparently you have black rabbits,” Connie paused between forkfuls of omelette, “I mean wild ones.”
“Yes,” Sara seemed indifferent, “you see them a lot. They’re very common. Down by the reserve especially.”
When Lily stood up and left the table, Sara kept on talking as if she hadn’t noticed. “I imagine a captive one was set free at some point and then the strain survived. We’re all very accustomed to them.”
“I’d love to see one.”
Sara smiled, vaguely amused by Connie’s enthusiasm. “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to if you stay in the area for any length of time.”
“Actually,” Connie put down her fork, “I was wondering whether you might know of any holiday cottages up for rent locally. Or hotels.”
Before Sara had a chance to respond, Connie glanced uneasily over her shoulder and added, “Is anything wrong? With Lily I mean.”
“No. She’s probably just gone to her room.”
Connie pushed a potato around her plate with her knife. “I thought I might have upset her, without realizing.”
Sara stood up to remove Lily’s unfinished meal from th
e table. She placed the plate on to the draining board. When she next spoke it was with her back to Connie. Her voice was low. “There’s no question of your leaving us. You must stay here for as long as you like.”
Connie smiled. “That’s very kind of you.”
Sara turned around. Her face was bright. She seemed aroused, giddy almost. “But you’re wrong. I’m not being kind at all. It would be useful for me to have another person around. As a distraction. For Lily.”
Connie felt suddenly vulnerable, as though the net was billowing out again and she was seeing inside, into a place where she had no business trespassing.
“I want to show you something…” Sara took several steps forward, lifted the tablecloth and yanked open a small cutlery drawer which was hidden within the main body of the table. From inside the drawer she removed a camera. She held it in both hands like it was something infinitely delicate; some old china or a fledgling.
“I took it,” she said, her voice full of awe.
Connie stared at the camera.
“You took it?”
“Yes. Luke, the man you saw me with this afternoon, he’s a photographer. This belongs to him. He thinks he’s lost it. But I took it.”
She paused, then smiled. “This is his favourite camera.”
Connie frowned. “But didn’t I see you using it earlier?”
“No. That was another one. This one was hidden in my bag all the while.”
Sara put the camera up to her eye. She stared at Connie through its lens, but she didn’t see Connie; instead she saw pink and white and yellow splashes. A dandelion. A marsh-mallow. She lowered the camera from her eye. “I’ve never had one before.”
“Why not?”
Sara sat down. She continued to inspect the camera. She fiddled with the flash and the lens cap and the focus. “Lily was born premature. Did you know that?”
Connie shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“There was some kind of problem with her bladder and her womb. Complications. Her blood doesn’t clot too well. We thought we’d lose her. So we never took photos. We didn’t do all those normal things that parents do with a new baby. Everything seemed so delicate, so fragile. We felt like we didn’t want to tempt fate.” Sara looked up at Connie. “And I never learned to drive, either, which was somehow another part of it. A kind of…” she coughed on the words, “wishful thinking.”
Connie nodded, although she wasn’t exactly sure what it was that she was agreeing to.
“When I first met Luke a couple of days ago, I saw all these photographs in his prefab. And I thought I’d felt some kind of strange connection with him, but the truth is, it was the photographs. The pictures. Time, crystallized. Life. All simple and clear and uninhibited.”
“What kinds of pictures?”
“Dirty.” Sara scratched her cheek. “Pornography, mainly.”
“Right.”
“Are you shocked?”
“No,” Connie shook her head.
Sara rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand, inhaled deeply and then said, “Actually I don’t think Lily’s father is coming home.”
Connie held her tongue. Sara seemed to appreciate it. “It’s only been two months but it feels like he’s been gone forever. In fact,” she inspected her fingers, “it’s begining to feel like he was never even really here.”
Sara’s nails were full of dirt and soil. Ingrained. She continued to inspect them. “We used to farm pigs and grow crops too, but after Lily was born he started farming boar. They’re less time-consuming. I think he thought she’d need him more, because she wasn’t too well. Or maybe that I’d need him more if we lost her. But we didn’t lose her. So I didn’t need him. And Lily’s never really needed anyone. She’s terribly independent…” Sara sighed. “Anyhow, in the end I think he got to feel slightly…redundant. We argued quite a bit. He did a whole lot of campaigning about the nudist beach, which kept him busy for a while, but because of the boar he didn’t really have a leg to stand on.”
Connie frowned. “Why’s that?”
“Local hostility. Lily’s right though, the whole thing was ridiculous. I lost a lot of weight. I’ve a yeast allergy. We got on each other’s nerves. And Lily’s too, probably. Then his mother got sick. So he went to look after her for a while. I imagine she’s better by now but he hasn’t come home. He doesn’t phone. It’s all been…” she shrugged, “well, empty, really. Blank. Boring. Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been a long, long wait for something horrible that never actually happened. Like I’ve been in water, up to my neck, fighting to stay afloat, year after year. But if only I’d felt for the bottom I’d have found it. It was there. The ocean bed, just below where I was treading. It was there.”
Sara pushed her chair back and pulled open the cutlery drawer again. She carefully placed the camera inside it.
“Coffee?” she said, smiling down at Connie, as if absolutely nothing of significance had just passed between them.
♦
Lily inspected Connie’s luggage. In the guest bedroom, open on the bed, lay a small suitcase. Next to it, a vanity case and a little bundle of papers tied up with a ribbon. Lily poked around in the case, lifting out and dropping several items. Then she turned her attention to the vanity case. She inspected a couple of Connie’s lipsticks and pocketed a pink one.
Finally, the papers. She slipped a single letter out of the ribbon and opened it. She began reading.
♦
Oh Ronny! Where were you? I needed you but you were nowhere. I needed you but you were everywhere. Why don’t you write back to me, Ronny?
Where are you?
I cannot speak. My two lips and my tongue are so inflamed that my mouth hangs open and I drool on to my shirt-front. It’s disgusting. And why? And how? Let me tell you. That demon. Louis. Him. Give me time and I’ll draw breath. Give me a moment…
Louis. The smell of him! He’s been drinking lately. In the dark, alone, cramped up inside that tiny shack. His pores ooze and ooze. He is relentlessly wet and hot and stinking. A foetid distillery. There is no escaping him. His eyes follow me. I can go no distance. He is behind me. And there is no private hidey-hole or secluded nook in this entire forest. In this whole giant hot green hell.
I hate him, Ronny. We are going crazy here together. Me with my radar and my fine-tuned hearing. Him with his pen, his finger, his flash and his eyes, all-seeing. Like one person, but fractured, each part pursuing the other. Hunting. Warring. He demands to know of all my movements. I am the enemy. He is under-cover. A spy. He is tracking me.
And somehow I feel like that great, white ape is watching us and laughing. We wanted to invade him but have only ended up invading each other. Sniffing and pawing and whittling.
It finally came to a head. It had to. Were you there, Ronny? Did you see it? I’ll write you my side of things, anyhow, and then you can tell me if my account is the true account. Louis’s is different. We keep lying to each other. We believe our own lies, religiously, but also each other’s. Oh my brain is fizzing. It’s curdling.
Here’s how it went, Ronny. Here’s the truth of it, honestly. Remember the bat cave? It all feels so long ago now; the clammy warmth of its darkness, its heady black blanket…Well, Louis got Monty and a couple of Monty’s friends to stake it out. You wouldn’t think it possible, but Louis made it so.
I arrived one morning, as usual, before dawn, and they were there by the mouth of the cave and they were building something out of leaves and twigs and straw. A giant bonfire. I asked them what they were doing. They were laughing at me. I said, “If you light afire in the entrance you’ll kill the bats. They’re just inside. Some of them are still returning home. See?”
I pointed skywards. In the air, above me, I could feel their radar.
Monty pulled a face like he didn’t understand me. He was shaking a box of matches. He shook them and shook them, beating out his own sick little rhythm. Finally he spoke. “We won’t light it,” he said, “until we absolu
tely have to.”
He cocked his head to one side. He grinned at me.
And I knew then that it was over. I’d been invaded. It was the end of the bat cave, Ronny. I could not enter. Instead, very quietly, so calmly and gently, I returned to the shacks. Louis was outside, sitting on an over-turned crate, cleaning his boots as though nothing at all was happening. I stood and I watched him. I said nothing.
He washed the mud off his boots. Then he dried them. He applied some polish with a cloth. He brushed them and brushed them. The sky was quite bright by the time that he’d finished. He was pleased with his job. He put the boots down in front of him and was about to pull them on when I tipped my head to one side. The slightest movement, but he caught it, Mr All-Eyes.
What? He glanced at me. What? I shrugged. What? “You should buff,” I said quietly. Buff! Like this one word was the most delicious, the most seductive syllable ever spoken. He peered down at the boots. Buff? I have the softest cloth, I said, in a tin, under my bed.
Louis stood up and went into our shack. One of the boots fell over, as he passed it, on to its side. He was gone a while. I watched the boot. And I saw, at its lip, at its giant, dark entrance, a small congregation of insects; termites, leaf-cutter ants, who knows what else, just guarding, patrolling. And then I saw my sister, the scorpion, standing close by, just willing them to allow her to enter.
When Louis returned, he held the cloth, the buffing cloth, and he straightened the two boots and he buffed them with the stupidest, stuffiest military precision. Then, when it was done, he threw down the cloth and he pulled them on, one by one, so luxuriously.
But the second boot was already inhabited, and its inhabitant made a sudden, harsh acquaintance with Louis’s big, boney ankle, his calf. She raised her tail – My sister! Just a warning, I tell you – but Louis doesn’t understand warnings, only attack. So she stung him.
He screamed. He howled. I stood and watched him, doing nothing, not even smiling. He yanked the boot off. He was bleating. He ripped off his sock. He shook it, the boot too. He needed to find her, to see her, to identify. My sister was so tiny. But it’s the tiny ones you have to watch.
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