The Sunlight Pilgrims

by Jenni Fagan

  —Were you close to Vivienne?

  —No. I was protective of her but she wasn’t maternal, she was more like an older sister really. It’s like there was something missing in her, truth be told. She was distant from life in general. But she was cool. On her tombstone it should say HERE LIES VIVIENNE, A WOMAN WHO THOUGHT THE PUREST FORM OF WATER WAS GIN—ROLL CREDITS!

  This is the most he has probably said about home since Vivienne died. Constance’s eyes are all gray and steely and honest, with flecks of orange as snow falls outside the window.

  They turn off through farm gates and up a long pebbled driveway covered in snow. Outside an old farmhouse there are two statues. A woman looks out of a kitchen window and waves them around the back. Constance parks and jumps down, opens the back doors; she takes the heavier end of the wardrobe. Dylan doesn’t even attempt to argue with her. They go up the metal staircase at the back of the garage into a flat with views out over the hills and forests. Everything smells of the stabilizing influence of money. There’s a stack of old home magazines and he could just sit there with a coffee. A place to lay your head. Constance smirks at him, catching his thoughts. They are giggling again when the woman from the house crunches back over the drive to pay them. She is wearing a scarf with a floral pattern and has red curly hair, and Dylan imagines she has just been doing something intricate with giblets or shallots. As they walk toward her, an outdoor light flicks on.

  —Half-and-half payment okay again, Constance?

  —Aye, thanks.

  —Have you been watching the weather in Europe?

  —Not this morning.

  —There was an avalanche in Italy. My son is over there—he’s fine but he can’t fly out, it’s pretty treacherous. Are there any warnings in place for the seven sisters?

  —Not yet, Constance says.

  —There will be.

  —Did you hear about the iceberg—it’s already past Tanby Island? Constance says.

  —I did indeed. My husband’s colleague’s wife works down at the harbor, and the iceberg is bigger than the whole of Fort Harbor. They gave it a code, C34, but the fishermen are still calling it Boo. If all the ice keeps melting, in a few years London will be gone, Venice, the Netherlands, most of Denmark, San Diego…I could go on. My husband is a scientist—this is the cheery stuff he brings home to discuss with me over dinner.

  —I’m glad I left London and came here, then. You’ve got all the good stuff. Triple suns, ice flowers, icebergs. I don’t even miss the strippers! Dylan grins.

  The woman ignores that.

  —You won’t be saying that when we all get snowed in. They certainly will be on the mountain and down at your trailer park, dear, perhaps for months!

  —They’re not trailers, they’re caravans. Dylan smiles.

  The woman counts out notes and then goes into a utility room. She comes back out with a wooden crate.

  —There’s fresh eggs in there, bacon and some herbs from the freezer; potatoes and a pound of good-quality butter; also some shallots and a tiny bit of honey from the farm.

  —Lovely, thank you!

  —How tall are you anyway? You’re very tall. He’s very handsome, Constance!

  —Isn’t he—quite dreamy! Constance says.

  —If you need any work…Dylan, is it? I sometimes need a handyman around here.

  The woman says this and flashes a flirtatious smile. He nods and smiles back. Constance mouths the words trailer park then loops her arm through his as they walk back to the ambulance. They drive out along farm lanes he hasn’t seen before. Constance sends texts, one after the other, steering with one hand, and her big boots don’t seem to hamper her driving style at all.

  She checks her phone again, one eye on the road, then chucks it onto the dashboard, clearly annoyed. Scattered in the front of the car are little glittery stickers that Stella usually has on her nails. Dylan peers out the window as snow begins to fall again. It’s getting darker out there, and colder. Stella probably doesn’t even have a flashlight with her.

  Constance rolls a cigarette with the ambulance door open. She jumps down and hauls out waterproof trousers and walks along and passes a pair to Dylan. They are a few feet too short when he puts them on, but he tucks them into his boots. The snow is falling steadily and heavily now. She takes out a torch and a blanket. They walk side by side down the farm roads, snow crunching under their boots.

  —Snow’s not going to stop falling any time soon.

  —Have you a signal on your phone?

  —No, she says.

  —Which way from here?

  There’s a big barn at the bottom of the field. They head that way without saying anything. Dylan isn’t even sure he’d find his way back in this snow, Constance’s nose is red and she squints at him.

  —What are you thinking about?

  —I was thinking about a dream I had on the night that Vivienne died. I was in this bright room and there were people, all from the Other Side, rushing around and I said to one of them: Is she going now? Is it over? They said yes, they said I could go now, that I wasn’t needed anymore. I walked out of that bright room because they were there to look after her, to take her over to the Other Side. See, you think it’s bullshit?

  —I never said that, she says.

  Snow pirouettes around them as they put their heads down and move toward the barn, their feet disappearing up to their ankles. Constance scans further up on the mountain. The trees are clad in snow. Her eyes are clear gray in this light. Long icicles adorn branches on all the boughs. There are tiny beads of crystals on her eyelashes as she turns to look at him. Dylan bends down and cups her face in his hands. He can feel the heat from her before he kisses her, and just gently their lips meet, then the shock of her tongue, hot and wet. All around them snow falls and their skin is cold as ice, but she is pulling his head further down, leaning her body into him. When they pull apart he is dizzy, blinking, looking around, her hand curling into his, smaller, gloved. He tries to settle his breathing down to something vaguely normal as they tramp across the field.

  —There’s a bar in Charing Cross—it’s called Yuki Ookami, it means Snow Wolf. Their gimmick was ice chairs and an ice bar and they only stayed open for three months, but I got mortally pissed on vodka shots after I realized Babylon was in so much debt. I ended up at some house party in Dulwich where they were having an orgy and there was a girl in a gorilla mask, with crosses of gaffer tape across each nipple. Is that the sound of the sea?

  —Yup. Just on the other side of that mountain. You were saying?

  —It was lame, a shit party. I have no idea what I am talking about, I’m gibbering, he says.

  They reach the barn and she grips his hand a bit harder, leading him through the barn doors. It smells musty and damp and there are a few old hay bales in the corner and small hoofprints across the floor. Long icicles have lengthened from the rooftop down into the dim.

  —There’s nothing in here, she says.

  —Except that.

  He points at tire tracks from a bike, in a figure of eight going back out another door.

  —She’s gone home, then, she says.

  Constance is trying not to look at him. She stands in between the wide barn doors with panels of stained corrugated iron on either side of her. Behind her there are the peaks of white mountains. Her hood is up and she turns again and they lean against the wall, their tongues the only heat in a world dropping degrees by the hour. Wrapping one leg around his hip, him wanting to pull her up and into him, undoing her jacket. She pulls her hood back.

  —This isn’t what we’re meant to be doing, she says.

  —Isn’t it?

  She pulls away. The snow has stopped and it is much thicker in the fields below them toward the bottom of the mountain, and farther up there are peaks of white, but there are still some fields too exposed to the wind to have had much snow settle.

  —Alistair lives there.

  She points up the mountain to a cottage with
a spire of smoke and claps her hands together in her gloves to keep them warm and glances back at him. It is a traditional white house, large sloping roof and a wide wooden platform porch all around it. The windows are dark.

  —Why didn’t you and Stella ever live with him?

  Constance doesn’t answer. She gazes up the mountain and he looks toward the field. They walk out, still holding hands. A cacophony of jagged bray and honk rises into the air and down below them there is a blue loch. Geese swagger around each other in the field next to it, hundreds and hundreds of them.

  —Barnacle geese—they’re late coming back from the Arctic and Iceland. It doesn’t look like they’re stopping, but they usually would. I’ve not seen any Bewick’s or whooper swans; we usually get them in autumn but they skipped it entirely this year.

  —Is that why Barnacle is called that? Dylan asks.

  —You mean Bill? No, he has been called Barnacle since he was a Casanova, back in the day, gambling away all his money and squandering the family estate on women and parties and classic cars. He hasn’t even one thing to show for it now. Look up Barnacle online—you’ll get the gist of why they called him that.

  —It’s a big-dick thing?

  —Huge, she says.

  —You’ve seen it?

  —Don’t be gross.

  —Just checking, Dylan says.

  —That was Barnacle’s place over there!

  She points over to the big estate chimneys poking out of the forests.

  —I want to see Clachan Fells in autumn when it’s all red and gold and yellow; and in spring. Even in the snow it is the most beautiful place, he says.

  —It’s something else, she says softly.

  Birds yak away in the fields, striding in circles. The flock calls out to each other, their gaggle getting louder and harsher, before the first few take a run forward and glide up into the air and then the whole flock lifts!

  He holds his breath.

  They begin to form a straggly V behind the leading geese; their wings beat harder and faster as they gain height and speed and swoop down the other side of the mountain across a frozen waterfall in the distance and then up over a cluster of whitewashed stone cottages. Chimneys stick out of the forest from the country house Barnacle used to own. The geese fly toward the coast—birds falling effortlessly back so that a longer V formation emerges across the sky. Dylan links his pinky finger through hers and she curls her finger back around his.

  —They can be a bit small-minded around here, Dylan. Most of the villagers don’t speak to me, just because I had two lovers all these years—or I have or…I don’t even fucking know what I have anymore, or what I want even.

  —You don’t need to explain anything to me.

  —I can’t stop worrying about Stella, it’s driving me nuts. You hear about some little kid who gets chased down in a community because they’re trans, or you read the suicide rates, or even the way the local boys look at her sometimes, you know. I don’t know how to protect her. When it comes right down to it, I can act as tough as I want, but I can’t always be there to make sure she is okay and it really fucking kills me!

  She drags her cuff across her face, blinks hard and studies the trails Stella has left with her bike, leading straight toward the farm road. She’s probably back in the caravan already. There are other trails in the snow, small ones: does or stags. Tiny three-pronged prints of a bird.

  —Think: one day she’s going to have to bring a guy home—to meet me!

  She giggles.

  —Don’t fucking envy him that one, Dylan says.

  Snow whirls down from the mountaintop and the tips of trees sway. All this snow is going to get so heavy they won’t even be able to open their caravan door. How long can they stay in the caravans without going out? How long will the fuel last? He’s beginning to think like Constance. Watching snow rise up the side of their caravans in inches. Checking the death rates online. This winter has tripled the usual amount already, and they are barely into the thing. Wind howls up around the back of the barn, rattling the tin walls. She takes his hand, the two of them silhouetted at the big dark square entrance to the barn as she leans up to kiss him.

  Stella marches down past the farm. She is wet and shivering. Her teeth clatter. She must keep moving so that hypothermia doesn’t kick in. The farmer’s dogs bark and it sounds so loud in the silence. They are all out in the grounds today. Nobody is going to be out hunting or herding sheep in this. The farm estate has a twelve-foot-high metal fence around it to keep the dogs back. She always clenches her fists as she walks by them. They can smell fear, so they jump up at the fence, jaws snapping, running up and down alongside her.

  If they got out they’d just go for her.

  She hates having to walk past them.

  The thing is to act like she’s not scared and push her bike, but the snow is deep up here and her boots plunge in up to her knees and she has to kick forward, using the bike to clear her way onto more solid ground. The dogs leap at the fence. Don’t look scared. Never let them know you’re frightened. Except they can smell it on her. To them she must look like walking dog food. She keeps her face a still mask and tries to appear angry, like she would kick their heads in if they went for her. There must be thirty dogs in there. They are all different breeds and most of them are so vicious they need to be penned in. It’s all teeth and slaver and flashes of pink gums with black marks on them. Last year Barnacle bought her mum an antler key ring made by the farmer’s son.

  A black dog runs up to the fence and rubs against the metal wire. It snarls, its fangs are yellow, it has tiny rabid eyes and its penis is out and that makes her want to vomit. She walks faster. Farther up ahead on a little hill there is a separate enclosure where two dogs are kept on their own. Both of the dogs in there stand up on top of their kennels, watching her. They sniff the air. Those two are not allowed to integrate or they’d just kill the other dogs. The farmer’s four-wheel drive pulls out from the front of the farmhouse and he has a big green metal barrel fixed on the back of it, with a little hatch made of four black bars.

  A dog snarls from inside the barrel, crazy, a flash of eyes and teeth. If it was able to, it would shoot out like a bullet to maul whatever it found. The farm gives her the creeps. The farmer’s wife lives up there surrounded by that and they hardly get any visitors. How does she do it? Night after night in the dark. All those dogs snapping around outside her house. The farmer slows down when he sees her and winds down his window.

  —What are you doing up here on your own?

  —I just came out on my bike.

  —I can see that.

  —I’m going home now.

  —You shouldn’t be up the mountain on your own in this weather—you’re asking for trouble.

  —I’m fine.

  —Get in.

  —No, thanks.

  The dogs are barking like crazy behind them both and he drives slowly, just looking at her for a minute, and she looks back at him the way she has seen her mother look at men to let them know she is not intimidated by them for even one tiny second. He nods briefly and begins to wind up his window.

  —I was only going to give you a lift back down toward the motorway, he says.

  —I’m fine.

  —You’re not fine, you’re soaking; you’d better get home pronto. Are you Constance’s girl?

  —Aye.

  —Tell her I was asking for her. Bye.

  His truck trundles down the road. His wife is the only woman in that farm all year round. There are men hired in summer time or for the hunting season to help out. Stella was up there a few springs back with her mum, sitting at their rough old wooden kitchen table, and there was clutter everywhere. Pieces of antler and bills with tea spilled on them; old oil lanterns and stacks of dog food. The farmer sat smoking one of those clear pipe things and filled it up with oil three times while they were there. He drinks in the old boat club with the other locals from this part of the mountain. Constance says the
y drink so much in there it’s a miracle they keep the land going at all. She has driven past at seven in the morning a few times and seen the bar lights still on from the night before.

  When the winter really kicks in, the farmhouse will be snowed in for months.

  It gives her the creeps.

  Nobody is laughing anymore. The Thames has frozen over and they are holding fairs on it and she saw a picture of Trafalgar Square with all the water frozen around the sculptures and snow on all the grand buildings. It looked like fucking Moscow! The cold is down in her bones but there is something clean about it. Honest. Nobody is dead yet on their street, but two people froze on the way home in Edinburgh yesterday. This is the coldest day so far. Stella turns out into the field behind the caravan park and she can see her mum’s ambulance away in the distance. It looks like it is parked. It looks like she might have walked up to see Alistair. She remembers seeing them fight one time and her mum was so angry, Alistair goading and poking and pricking and sneaky and mean, really, really mean. Dylan, he would be the one to be there for her mum.

  A truck races along the farm road.

  It screeches to a stop in front of her. There are two men in the front and she steps onto the verge to let them by, but they pull up closer. There is a skinny one and an older one who has ragged hair and a lumberjack shirt. She can smell them both right away, like they don’t wash, like they sleep in a room with their dogs, like they drink beer for breakfast. Stella looks along the farm road to see if her mum is walking along there, but nobody else is out. The older one winds down his window.

  —You seen a dog?

  Stella shakes her head.

  —S’been up the back fields worrying sheep, must be a big one—you’ve not see anything?

  —No, I’ve not seen a dog loose. There’s just the ones penned up back at the farm.

  —You the farmer’s girl?

  Stella nods, hoping the idea of having a father with a gun will make them move on and stop looking at her like they can see through her clothes.

  —You stay away if you see the dog. It’s a vicious one—it’s killed three sheep, it has. We’ve lost four along on the other side of Clachan Fells this morning. Going to sort it out when we find it!