by Alex Preston
‘It sounds amazing,’ Marcus said.
‘I don’t know if David would get jealous, us going on someone else’s retreat.’
Mouse strutted over to them, carrying an armful of lilies, the pollen running orange streaks through the white fur of his stole.
‘Abby and I would be delighted if you’d join us for a trip to pay homage to our great lords of the high road, the titans of the tarmac. I want to drop flowers down on the lorries, let the blessing of nature purify their sooty hearts.’
Abby was already gently easing a fur out from beneath one of the sleeping twins. Lee wrapped herself in a rabbit-skin coat that hung down to the ground. She left the front open, revealing her low-cut black top. Marcus pulled a bearskin around his shoulders like a cloak. He thought it was probably supposed to be a rug: it trailed behind him as he walked out into the misty night. Mouse and Abby had already started down the path ahead of them. The mist deadened sound as they made their way down into the valley; Marcus could no longer hear the motorway. Lee stopped to light cigarettes for both of them, struggling to get the flame to catch in the damp air. Marcus helped her and took a long drag, blowing the smoke out to meet the misty air. When he looked up, Mouse and Abby had disappeared. Lee took his hand and scurried along the path, making her way fleet-footed over the red earth, skipping above half-hidden roots and tree stumps. Marcus thrust his cigarette into his mouth and struggled to keep up with her.
There was no definite point at which Marcus realised that they were lost. The mist had an extraordinary disorienting effect, and Lee’s scampering flight had been so swift that he hadn’t noticed that the path, which had seemed well-worn and familiar in the daylight, had merged into the surrounding earth. He let go of Lee’s hand and looked around. She turned back towards him, laughing, gesturing him onwards.
‘We’re not on the path any more,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, ‘we just need to carry on down until we reach the motorway embankment. We can make our way along to the bridge from there. Come on, this is fun.’
Marcus stopped. He peered further into the trees around them. It had grown lighter, and when he looked closely he could see that all of the trees around them were dead. The spindly skeletons of pines stretched skywards, the wizened fingers of branches white in the moonlight, the trunks reaching up from the mist that swirled around their roots. There was no foliage on the branches, nothing but mist to impede the searing white light of the moon. Bark peeled back like diseased skin. Marcus pressed his hand against one of the trees and felt the crêpelike wood dissolve under his touch. The world was only whiteness and shadow and the skeleton fingers of the trees all seemed to point at Marcus. He made out a darker shadow in the distance.
‘What’s that through there?’
He took her hand, which was damp and hot, and led her across the uneven ground, around the rotting trunk of a fallen tree and over a small ridge into a clearing. They were beside the lake, whose surface was trapped under a thick cushion of mist. The shape that Marcus had seen was the boathouse. One of the grain drums stood next to them, its rook corpse turning slowly in the mist above.
‘How did we end up here?’ He looked up and could just make out the dark mass of the house above them. ‘I thought we were much further down. At least we know that this path leads to the motorway.’
Lee didn’t answer. She was standing on the bank of the lake, looking out into the thickly packed mist, which glowed where it was illuminated by moonlight away from the shadows of trees. Marcus came up behind her and put his arms around her, pulling the bearskin rug about them both. She was breathing very quickly, and he saw her breath on the air in front of them. She half-turned her head and leaned back against him. He could feel his own heart beating as it pressed against her back.
‘It’s like the Morte d’Arthur,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
She pulled away from him, walked over towards the boathouse, hesitated for a moment, and then stepped out into the mist that sat above the lake. Marcus jumped towards her, ready to pull her from the cold water. Only when he was beside the boathouse did he realise that she had stepped out into a rowing boat that was moored to the deck in front of the small wooden building.
‘Come in. Let’s row out into the lake. I want to look up at the moon through the mist.’ She moved up to the prow of the small boat and lay back, her legs folded beneath her.
Marcus stepped unsteadily onto the boat. The misty air was a cold blanket around his shoulders. He sat down upon the central bench and felt on the floor for the oars. He rowed them slowly out into the centre of the lake. The water slapped gently against the sides of the boat. After a while he let them drift and made his way towards Lee. The mist was very thick around them; it was as if it were something solid that re-formed each instant to accommodate the gentle passage of the boat through the water. The moon was a faint silver smudge above them, the surrounding trees were shadows. Marcus lay down on the floor of the boat, his head in Lee’s lap. He pulled the bearskin over them. He felt the shifting of the water beneath him, imagined the fish moving among the weeds below. Lee ran her long fingers through his hair.
‘We could be anywhere. Anywhere, at any time. Floating through an endless night.’
The boat rocked as Lee shifted and leaned over him. He looked up at the halo of her short, damp hair, then shuffled further into the warm darkness of her lap.
‘Do you ever think about that time at university?’ Her voice was a whisper. He heard her light a cigarette. After taking a drag she held it in his mouth. With one hand she continued to stroke his hair. He spoke into the coarse hair of the rug.
‘Yes. I mean, I try not to think about it. It makes me guilty. But it was only a kiss.’
‘Yes, it was only a kiss.’
They lay and felt the air thicken around them. Marcus tried to work out whether she could also feel whatever it was that was building in the mist, grabbing hold of his heart and his groin, making his breaths come in shallow gasps. One of her hands continued to caress his hair, finding new paths to trace across his scalp, exposing new trails of nerve-ends that thrilled as her nails travelled across them. His face was pressed against the softness of her belly. A night bird called somewhere in the trees over the boathouse. She stopped stroking Marcus and pushed him gently away from her, lifting the bearskin and wrapping it about herself. He moved back to sit on the central bench. Lee’s voice came at him as if from a great distance, as cold as the mist that surrounded them.
‘You fake it, don’t you, the speaking in tongues? I can tell. I can tell when I watch you because I fake it, too.’
Marcus drew in a cool, damp breath.
‘I don’t know, Lee. It’s tough. Have you ever done it, you know, properly?’
‘Maybe once, at the very beginning. I felt like I was drifting away. It was like I get sometimes when I listen to a really beautiful piece of music, or read a poem that really speaks to me. But recently, I haven’t felt anything at all. I so wanted it to be this big revelation. I’ve been waiting and waiting for it, my Damascus moment, but it has never arrived. I think tonight I might have given up.’
A gust of wind skimmed across the lake, billowing the mist. Marcus shivered.
‘It always made me feel close to you,’ Lee said, ‘that neither of us could do it. That we were both faking it. It was a secret we shared.’
Now the moon had disappeared entirely; its only relic was the silver glow that suffused the air. Everything was mist, so thick that Marcus felt that if he reached his arm out from his shoulder, he might never see it again. He could hardly make out Lee across the boat. He grabbed one of the oars and paddled listlessly at the water, moving them in slow circles. He felt Lee shifting around in the boat, caught a glimpse of movement from the prow when he strained his eyes towards her.
‘Come over here.’ Her voice a heavy whisper. As he sank to his knees, she began to appear more clearly through the gauze of mist. The first t
hing he noticed was her eyes. They sparkled dangerously and fixed upon him, drawing him towards them. He kneeled on the floor of the boat between her legs. Lee was lying back on the warm pile of furs, bare from the waist down. Her skirt was rolled beneath her head as a pillow. Her black blouse served only to accentuate the pale legs that stretched out from the shadowy mound between them.
‘I’ve always wanted you to go down on me.’ She leaned forward and knitted her hand into the hair at the back of his head. He eased himself down until all was blackness and the slick saltiness of her against his tongue. Goose pimples on her thighs. He closed his eyes. The boat rocked as he flicked his tongue over her; she twisted his hair between her fingers as he moved faster. She began to arch her back, pressing herself against him, grinding his head down into her lap. He tried to stretch up and cup one of her breasts. She gently batted the hand away. He buried his face further into the bulge of her pubic hair. He remembered when, as a child, he had built himself a den in the middle of a clump of ferns in the woods at the back of his house, tramping down a circle at the centre and then pulling the encircling green fronds over himself. It was damp and the ferns tickled his skin, but he had felt very safe there. He thought of the den as he whipped his tongue over the soft tufty dampness of her pussy. Lee let out a sighing squeal like air released from a bicycle tyre. Marcus rose back up to kneel at her feet; leaning over, he tried to place a kiss on her lips but she turned away, presenting him with a cold hard cheek. Her teeth were chattering. She pulled on her pants and unrolled her skirt, snaking her way into it on the floor of the boat.
Marcus rowed them back to the shore and tied the boat to the deck in front of the boathouse. He reached out an arm and helped her to step onto the bank. They walked in silence down the path towards the motorway. Marcus lit two cigarettes and passed one to Lee. She took it without thanks. Finally, they heard the noise of the surging traffic in the distance. She quickened her pace, walking a few feet ahead of him as the slope steepened. The mist still wove its fingers between the trees, and Marcus kept thinking he saw shapes forming in the corners of his eyes, figures watching him from behind the adumbrated trunks of the pines. He scurried to catch up with Lee.
‘Is it true Philip left earlier?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I drove him to the station.’
‘Did you tell David?’
‘No.’
‘He’ll be cross.’
‘I know. I think he has the impression that all he has to do is get people as far as the Retreat and then any reservations will be blown away by the beauty of the voices, by the sense of community and friendship and safety. But Philip was just, I don’t know, disappointed.’
Lee sighed and flicked her cigarette into the misty foliage that surrounded them.
They rounded a bend in the path and saw Mouse and Abby coming up the hill hand in hand. Mouse was carrying a bottle of wine. Each time he took a swig he would pass it to Abby, who gulped in turn. They were both laughing and Mouse raised the bottle in the air when he saw Marcus and Lee on the crest of the hill above them.
‘Hey you two! Where did you get to? You missed an inspiring ceremony. Abby and I scattered lily petals onto the roofs of the lorries. We allowed nature to cover over the abomination of the motorway-beast.’
He stood before them, panting, and held out the bottle. Lee took it and swigged greedily. Marcus, whose head was beginning to pound, smiled and looked at Abby. Her cheeks were flushed and she had turned up the collar of her coat so that her wide face nestled in a frame of fur. Her eyes were soft and kind and she reached out her arms to him. Marcus stepped into her embrace and tried to return the love that he felt flowing from her, but all he could think about was the boat’s hard floor against his knees, the taste of Lee that still flooded his mouth and his nostrils, the sin he had committed. The four made their way back up the hill towards the house, Mouse still chattering wildly.
Lee and Abby went up the stairs together while Mouse and Marcus struggled to impose some sort of order on the chaos of the dining hall. Marcus woke the twins, who stretched and yawned like cats, smiling up at him as he attempted to eject them from their wardrobe lair. Mouse collected glasses and bottles, stacked chairs and straightened the tables. They worked quietly, the house heavy and silent around them. When they had finished, Mouse clapped Marcus on the back and they made their way upstairs together.
‘I’m just having the most brilliant time. I live for this, you know?’
Abby was already asleep when Marcus came into their room. The curtains were open and a banner of moonlight fell down across the bed, illuminating Abby’s pale skin, her white pyjama bottoms. He crossed to the window and looked out into the night. The mist had receded and now hung only over the lake, which was a silver cloud in the valley below. He pressed his hands against the cold glass of the window. Abby turned over in bed and sighed. Marcus took off his clothes until he was standing naked in the bright whiteness of the moon. There was something purifying about the light, and it was with a sense of regret that he pulled the curtains closed, the darkness covering Abby. He crossed to the sink and brushed his teeth in a thin needle of water, keen not to wake her. He slipped into bed next to his wife, who groaned in her sleep and turned over again, gathering the duvet between her legs. Marcus lay on his back, not minding the cold, and fell into a deep, dark sleep.
He woke twice in the night from nightmares where the decomposing rooks, oscillating in the misty air above the pheasant feeders, came suddenly alive, screeching and flapping their bone-wings, trying to escape the wire that held their feet. Each time he woke, his heart racing, his face hot despite the coldness of his uncovered body, he felt that someone had been in the room until just a moment before he opened his eyes. His mouth was dry but he couldn’t move from the bed, frozen by a creeping horror that unfurled in his mind when the night’s events came back to him. He heard noises echoing around the dark house, thumps and creaks and, once, the faint sound of someone crying out. He slept fitfully until the sky lightened outside his window. When the hands of his watch moved around to seven o’clock, he rose and dressed silently. He needed to speak to Lee.
Three
The curtains of Lee’s room were open, revealing a grey world where the pine trees huddled in conspiratorial conference above the still waters of the lake. The abandoned nests of rooks and jackdaws hung in the trees’ tallest branches like lookout posts on ships’ masts. Marcus saw Lee’s clothes strewn across the carpet and thought that she too, on returning to her room the night before, had crossed to look down upon the lake. Her bed had been slept in. The sheets were crumpled and the duvet kicked to the floor. He could see streaks of the orange pollen from the lilies scattered across her pillow. He wondered if she had taken one of the flowers up to bed with her.
He walked along the corridor and looked down on the empty courtyard below. The photographs of the Earl’s ancestors seemed to pass judgement upon him as he crossed in front of them. He stepped down the main stairway and the silence and the gilt-framed portraits and the cool light coming down from the atrium roof made him feel like he was in a museum that had been closed to the public for many years, a repository of dead memories. When he came into the kitchen the lights were off but Mouse was sitting at the table with a mug of steaming coffee, staring out into the bleak morning. His hair was a wild shriek above his head, his shoulders slumped as he sipped at the coffee.
‘Hi, Mouse. Are you OK?’ said Marcus.
Mouse jumped and turned to look at Marcus.
‘Hello, sport. What are you doing up?’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Me neither. It was a big day yesterday. I feel a bit sad that it’s over.’ He spoke very quickly, and Marcus noticed that his hands were shaking enough for coffee to spill from the mug.
Marcus sat down next to Mouse and felt his friend’s leg jittering beneath the table. He gently put his hand on Mouse’s knee. Marcus could smell body odour, vegetation, coffee. The bags under Mouse’s bulging eyes
reached down his cheeks.
‘You know Philip went home?’
Mouse took a sip of coffee.
‘Did he?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a shame, but there’s always a few who get freaked out. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up too much. I always thought he was a bit flaky.’
They sat together in silence as the house slowly woke around them. They heard doors banging and voices and then Mrs Millman came bustling into the room.
‘Well then you two, sitting here in the dark. Let’s have some lights on and I’ll make bacon and eggs for you both.’
The light surprised Mouse and he turned quickly away from Marcus. The smell of the rashers sizzling on the stove brought down most of the Course members. Abby was wearing one of Marcus’s jumpers over her pyjamas and helped Mrs Millman to serve breakfast. She sat down next to Marcus.
‘I wonder where the old folks are?’ she whispered to him. ‘I can understand Lee having a lie-in, but David and Sally went to bed really early.’
Marcus was about to speak but took a mouthful of bacon instead. After a while the Earl and David came into the room together. David hadn’t shaved and the stubble made his face look grey and drawn. Marcus wondered if they had carried on drinking after leaving the younger members the night before.
‘Morning, guys.’ David clapped his hands together as he sat down. ‘Doesn’t this look splendid? Thanks so much, Mrs Millman.’
After breakfast the Course members went up to their rooms to change for the morning service. Marcus shaved in the small sink, trying not to look too hard into the age-spotted mirror. Abby sang under her breath as she dressed. He watched her move around the room. She stood in a white bra and passed a deodorant stick under her arms, reached across him to wet her toothbrush under the tap and stood looking out of the window as she brushed her teeth. Finally, she pulled on a shirt and a red pullover and came up behind Marcus as he finished shaving. She hugged him from behind, reaching around to stroke his smooth damp cheek with one hand.