Corvus

  Laura was astounded by how swiftly the mood of the crowd changed. The scattered whistles became admiring, interspersed with some cheering. Heads turned when someone yelled, 'That's showing them, Corvus!' Zach's anyone else kept their mouth shut, and while Owen repeatedly licked his lips, he didn't seem inclined to speak up for his mates. Laura almost felt sorry for him.

  Without so much as a downwards glance Zach stepped over Tim and addressed Owen in an undertone. 'You're hanging around with the wrong sort, but you're not stupid and you're not vicious. And you've been misled. That's why you're not horizontal right this minute.' Zach cast a sidelong look at Laura. 'Laura owes you an apology.'

  As Laura's cheeks reddened, Olivia pushed her way forwards. Smiling broadly, she reached out to lay a hand on Zach's forearm. He swayed out of reach. 'Haven't you noticed nobody touches me unless invited?' Acidly, with a nod towards the two still on the ground. 'I think your friends might appreciate a hand, however.'

  If there had been hope of a reconciliation, it was now lost. The blood rushed to Olivia's head, providing her brain cells with plenty of oxygen to fuel her fury. 'You two deserve each other. I hope Zach here has panoramic vision. He's going to need it to watch his back.'

  *****

  Zach answered Laura's questions in monosyllables, or not at all, as they made their way to his motorbike. While he fiddled with a saddlebag, Laura glanced back towards the milling kids, most of whom seemed reluctant to leave. Owen was crouching next to Derek, a wad of tissues staunching his nosebleed, but Tim had already risen to his feet. His eyes were fixed on Zach. There was no mistaking the look on his face, a look of malice so potent that Laura flinched and laid a hand on Zach's arm. He turned and saw the direction of her gaze.

  'Don't worry about him,' he said. 'He's just a bully.'

  It wasn't until they were underway, Laura's face pressed into the shelter of Zach's back against the bitter wind, that she recalled Tim's shooting medals.

  *****

  A quarter of an hour later Zach took a sharp turn into a churchyard, slowed along the yew-lined walk until he found an opening, and brought the motorbike to a halt behind a knurled trunk wide enough to hide at least two vehicles. Like a stern monk, its girth of pleats and tucks mounted guard against desecration under a cowl of snowy white. And yet when Laura looked up, her eyes again watering in the cold, a face seemed to be smiling kindly at her. She blinked, and the features dissolved into knobs and whorls of bark.

  Zach switched off the engine. The sudden quiet was thicker than the clean, rimpled snow, and more suffocating. Laura waited, breathing with some effort.

  'What is it, Zach?' she eventually asked, not quite sure why she was whispering.

  For a long while he didn't stir. The fight had drained her as well. She laid her head against his back and closed her eyes. School she would think about tomorrow.

  'Sorry, I need to get down for a couple of minutes.' Zach's voice roused her from the drowsy cloister of meandering half-thoughts. With a soft grumble she clambered from the saddle for him to let down the kickstand and dismount. She yawned, then stretched while he walked off towards the small graveyard. She was a bit surprised; he wasn't usually shy about peeing in front of her.

  The limbs above her creaked in a gust of wind, splattering her with loosened snow. By the time she brushed herself off, Zach had halted by a tombstone. She watched as he cleared the top of the rectangular slab. Watched as he traced his gloved fingers along what must be a carved epitaph. Watched as he pulled off her elastic, tipped back his head, and held his arms out cruciform, an angular scarecrow in a scrim of skirling snow. The headstones like godswept windrows the cold and dead of a winter dusk. His hair blowing wildly. A landscape empty of colour, empty of days; deathwrought.

  She began to flounder towards him. He turned, and she could clearly hear the scream he wasn't screaming. He came to meet her.

  'Please will you hold me.' Almost begging.

  She struggled to contain his shivering. He leaned into her while her rage at the world gave her strength to remain upright. How could you fight every fucking Tim? She slid her hands underneath Zach's clothing and splayed her fingers against his back, its fretted ribboard sounding at her touch.

  'Nine,' he whispered.

  In counterpoint she leaned backwards to look into his face. And dug her fingers into his flesh to keep from falling.

  'Nine died straightaway in the blast,' he said. 'And fourteen, fifteen more are in critical condition.'

  'Oh god, Zach.'

  'I—' He stopped, took a shuddering breath. 'I can't—' All at once he gripped her head between his hands and rammed his mouth to hers so violently that their teeth clashed. She tasted blood, his or hers she couldn't tell. In the space of a semibreve it was over, however, and he was tearing off his gloves and wiping her mouth and holding her temples, stumbling between apology and breathless rant, jumbling fact with guilt with barely swallowed sob.

  'Zach,' she said. 'Zach, listen. Please listen.'

  In the end there was nothing to do but hold on and wait till he exhausted himself. Which he did like an engine running out of petrol, shuddering and gasping, then catching again with a last spurt of go, then dropping his head onto her shoulder and subsiding into silence, thoroughly spent.

  She stroked his hair, stroked it with mute tenderness in every fingering; with solace in every ghost note. Patiently she stroked his hair, and stroked, and stroked.

  After a long while Zach noticed that she was beginning to shiver. He lifted his head. 'We ought to leave. You're cold.'

  'Can't you postpone the meeting? I don't think it's a good idea right now.'

  'There is no meeting.'

  'But you said—'

  'I needed to know.'

  They broke apart while she gazed into his rawsilk eyes, still shot with tears. With a garbled sound, half oath and half endearment, she grabbed his hair in both fists, pulled his head to her level, and kissed first one, then the other eye.

  'Now you know.'

  His first smile this whole long afternoon.

  'When's the next occasion to dandle wet nappies and duck rotten eggs?' she asked.

  'Day after tomorrow.'

  'OK. It'll give me a chance to prepare.'

  He shook his head. 'No.'

  'No what?'

  'You're not going. I told you, it's too dangerous.'

  'Frot that. From now on we do this together.'

  'No.'

  She was close to hitting him. 'Look, either I'm there with you, or I'm back fucking Owen after school. Which will it be?'

  'Is that some sort of ultimatum?'

  'You're damn right it is. You force me to make a choice in front of practically the whole school. Now it's your turn to choose. If you want this relationship to work, then you get to wash just as many dirty knickers as me.'

  Now he laughed. 'As long as I don't have to wear the lacy ones.'

  'Only buy them.'

  This time their lips, though chapped, cold, and slightly bruised, conversed fluently without exchanging a word.

  A few minutes later, when Zach slid her jacket zip far enough down to speak to the tender chakra of her throat, she wondered what it would be like to make love in the snow, then remembered the ice sculptures during the Festival of Angels, and giggled.

  'Tickling you?' he asked.

  'No, but let's go see if the church is open.'

  *****

  Open, but not particularly warm. Zach gave Laura a quizzical look when she worked the wooden bolt on the church door into place, but said nothing. They made their way slowly along the nave, where the age-darkened tiebeams and kingposts seemed low enough to clip Zach's forehead, so that he ducked reflexively as they passed under the first support. It was a small stone church with a Norman tower, dignified but rather damp and bleak; and probably unlocked because there was nothing much to steal or vandalise. The most interesting feature was a monument slab in the floor, which Laura stopped to examine.

 
; 'She was so small,' Laura said. 'Not much taller than a child.'

  He crouched and ran a hand over the face of the incised effigy, delicately, as though he were caressing someone beloved. 'I wonder if she died in childbirth. So many women did.'

  'Or from a fever.'

  'Maybe there was a young child who survived to mourn her. To remember her laughter, her voice when she sang him to sleep, her last—'

  Laura looked up swiftly but he'd turned his head towards the pews to his left. She touched his sleeve but he rose and began to walk through the gloom, his footsteps too muffled to echo. Lives trod in memory to stone. After a moment she followed him.

  They sat side by side beneath the altar, the only area of the church which was carpeted.

  'Where did you learn to fight like that?' Laura asked.

  'At boarding school. There were a couple of incidents, so we were offered martial arts training.'

  'But the way you moved—that's way beyond school sport.'

  'Simus have a physical edge, you know that. And I kept it up when I left, took a few private lessons.'

  'A few?'

  He shrugged but despite the failing light she could see the amused gleam in his eyes.

  'It's getting dark,' she said.

  'Shall we go?'

  'That's not what I meant.' She rose to her knees, unzipped her jacket and tossed it aside, then tugged her jumper and camisole over her head. As usual she wasn't wearing a bra.

  'Laura—'

  'Don't you think it's time I got a share of that physical edge?'

  'Don't talk like that.'

  'Owen fancies the way I talk just fine.'

  Zach sprang to his feet. Rapidly he shed his jacket, his jumper. 'Go on, finish undressing.' His jeans. 'You're absolutely right. It's time you got your share.' His boxers.

  Laura stood up and stared at him. She put a hand on the button of her jeans, hesitated, then dropped it again.

  'You think I'm a slut, don't you?'

  'You don't want to know what I think.'

  'Of course I do.'

  'Sure of that?'

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest, trying not to shiver. 'Yes,' she whispered.

  'I think'—no, she was wrong, she didn't, absolutely did not want to hear—'I think you're so confused that you don't know the difference between fucking and making love. That you're so desperate you can't bear to be even a single day without a boyfriend, any boyfriend. That you're so terrified that you swim in the hope of outracing whatever's chasing you. That you're so damaged you'll sabotage anyone who tries to—' He shuddered to a halt, whirled, and gripped the edge of the altar with both hands. His breathing tore jagged chunks from the air.

  Laura closed her eyes but this time the hedges were near enough for her to feel their fetid breath on her neck, hear the snapping of their thorny teeth. Close to tears, she bent to fumble for her clothes. Get dressed. Walk to the road. Thumb a lift. 'Tart,' he'd call her just before he came. 'Sweet cunt,' his tongue beastly with slobber. Men will always give you a ride on their gearstick.

  In the day's last light she glimpsed the muscular cut of Zach's buttocks, the bass clef of his spine bowed over the altar. Once, years ago, her mother had taken her backstage to meet the members of a visiting string quartet. Laura had been more interested in the sensuous shape of the cello, the mellow glow of its fine-grained wood, than the musicians. She'd surreptitiously stroked the cello's sonorous belly when the adults hadn't been looking—warm, satiny, alive. It had purred beneath her fingertips.

  She crossed the short distance to the altar. Zach didn't move until she bent and brushed her lips across the mossy hollow at the base of his spine, the small secluded spot where he loved to be kissed. At her touch he shivered, and Laura heard his breath catch.

  'You're wrong,' she said softly. 'I've known the difference between making love and fucking for a long time. A very long time.' She paused to swallow. 'Since I was seven, to be exact.'

  He straightened and turned to look at her but said nothing. His eyes were impossible to read; an impossible colour.

  She licked her lips and glanced behind her. He was dead, why did she keep thinking he'd overhear, he'd somehow pounce on her?

  Still without speaking Zach laid a warm hand on her cheek and ran his thumb along her jawline, which felt less like a caress than a warrant of safe passage. After a moment she was able to continue.

  'When I was seven Max was ill, seriously ill, and contagious. At least that's what my parents said when they sent me to my aunt's house for a few weeks.' A hoarse whisper. 'My mother's younger sister Elizabeth. There was only my cousin Toby, a small baby then, and—' She faltered, and dropped her eyes.

  'And?'

  'I need a drink of water.'

  'Laura, whatever happened, it wasn't your fault.'

  'My uncle,' she squeezed out. 'He—he used to read to me at bedtime. And kiss me goodnight. And soon—' Her voice trailed off. It was no use; she couldn't tell him.

  But of course Zach understood. He drew her into his arms and stroked her hair. His voice, however, would strip the flesh from a corpse. 'I'll kill him.'

  He tightened his arms at the sound of her laugh. 'Too late. He's dead.' She continued to laugh, which even to her own ears sounded like a rising scream. 'Ssh, it's OK,' Zach murmured, 'you're safe now, ssh,' over and over again as the hedges crept closer and she edged towards the place where they couldn't reach where nobody could reach her and she'd be safe forever dark and safe and

  'Laura!'

  She shuddered and began to hiccough.

  'It would have helped,' he said when she rested her head on his chest, 'if you'd have been able to confront him. To see him punished.' He clasped her as if she might race off. 'But you're strong, good and strong.'

  'Swimming muscles.'

  'Stop that. You've got muscle where it counts.'

  'Now you'll never want to sleep with me.'

  He held her at arm's length. 'You're mad. It's all I can do to keep from jumping you about a million times a day.'

  'But now—'

  He gave her a small shake. 'Now more than ever, you muggle.'

  They stared at each other, Zach's irises lustering the way they did when he was aroused. Snowflakes are fractals; so too DNA sequences and the distribution of galaxies in the universe. Only a fool could believe there was something unnatural about his wonderfully strange eyes.

  'Do you still think about them?' she asked. 'You know, the cottage.'

  'If you step in dogshit, you wash it off, not let it foul your soul.' A harsh laugh. 'Sometimes.'

  'Zach, if you can't. . . I mean, if that's the reason . . . I know how ashamed men are but I don't mind. Really. We'll find a way to sort it.'

  Now he gave a genuine laugh. 'Dysfunction, you mean?'

  'It wouldn't matter.' She was quiet for a moment, then touched his lips with her fingertips. 'I love—'

  'No!' Hurriedly he covered her mouth with the flat of his hand. 'Don't say it.'

  She twisted away. 'Why? Why don't you want to hear?'

  'Words scare me. They're so potent . . . so loud. Mock if you like, but somehow I feel the universe is listening, just waiting for a chance to fuck us over.' He couldn't be that superstitious, could he? With all the girls he'd slept with, candyfloss declarations probably sickened him by now. Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because he added, 'Isn't it enough to know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you?'

  And then, here in this cold and dark and dreary little church, it was suddenly easy, and the chancel floor served them very well, and no words could have been as articulate as the promise of this double concerto. Laura lost all sense of the dark backward and abysm of time once Zach was, at long last, inside her. A consummate musician, he understood the fierce and tender emotive depth of a lento movement rather than the dazzling flourish of vivace.

  Afterwards they lay quietly together, wrapped in their shared warmth, until the chill from the stones
beneath the threadbare carpet raised gooseflesh. Laura kissed his tattoo before getting up to dress.

  'You didn't pretend?' he asked.

  'No.' She thought of Owen. 'And I never will.'

  'Only music comes close to this kind of ecstasy.'

  *****

  Laura awoke from a place so flooded in light that her eyes were swimming with tears, and they continued to tear as she squeezed them shut in order to sink back into dream. She'd been hang gliding towards a yolky sun low on the horizon, its rich, almost oily colour spreading across the griddled sea beneath her. Ten minutes. Or even five of that wondrous flight, before the shell of sleep cracked open on the blunt edge of morning, on greasy dishwater light, and school.

  'Tea?' Zach said, a mug in each hand.

  Fully dressed in cords and black jumper, though barefoot, he sat down on the bed, then set the mugs on the bedside cabinet when he saw the moisture on her cheeks.

  'A bad dream?' he asked, his fingers gentle. She could hear the misgiving in his voice; the unvoiced question.

  'No regrets,' she said.

  He picked up his mug and sipped, then watched her through the rising steam.

  'Tears of happiness,' she said. He said nothing, his lengthy silence drawing the words up like water from a deep well—cold, clean, unadulterated. 'I'm so afraid, Zach. I don't deserve to be this happy.'

  'That's your uncle's voice.' He kissed her forehead, his hair falling forward to tickle her. Still damp, it smelled of the fruity shampoo she preferred to his usual sort. 'Do you want some breakfast? I've got to leave soon.'

  'What time is it?'

  'Just gone six.'

  'Why so early?'

  'After breakfast, I'll drop you off at school.'

  Laura closed her eyes. 'I don't know . . .'

  'It won't get any easier. And you promised your dad.'