Thin Air

by Storm Constantine

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  The old woman shrugged. ‘Don’t know about that.’

  ‘Has he got a house or a cottage?’

  ‘Dunno, love. Only seen him a couple of times.’

  She knew his name. She must have spoken to him. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Can’t rightly remember. He was handsome, that’s all. And his name was Dex.’

  Jay leaned back on straight arms, turning her face to the late afternoon sun that was now dropping behind the branches of the trees around the village. She felt elated and tired. There was a point to being here now.

  A mournful sound came drifting towards her, wordless, yet summoning.

  The old woman beside her took a quick sip of her whisky, smacked her lips together, then said, ‘Sounds like your tea’s ready, love.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jay, standing up. She knew the call. ‘That’s Ida.’

  ‘Best go home, then.’

  ‘Yes.’ A cool breeze had started up, as if to sweep away the day. Everything was so quiet. ‘See you,’ said Jay. She walked back the way she had come, until she reached Ida’s cottage. There tea was waiting for her, and this time there was red jelly too.

  Chapter Four

  Days passed like dreams. The scented air was like a drug. Golden light poured down, colouring everything with warmth. On the occasional days of rain, there were magnificent thunderstorms, and the green of the trees and verdure burned against the purpled sky.

  Jay spent her time meeting with and talking to the villagers, staying for meals with them whenever she could. She made friends. The stories she heard, which now seemed more important than how the village functioned, were like myths of some long-forgotten pantheon. The people she met were the heroes and heroines of archetypal tragedies. Perhaps Lestholme was some bizarre Olympus, where they could hide themselves among the clouds.

  Jay met the old woman with the whisky several more times. Her name was Ada Blunt, and the reason she came to Lestholme was the aftermath of being raped by a gang of muggers. When Jay heard this story, which Ada delivered with astonishing sang froid, Jay felt sick and light-headed. Ada lived with four cats in a surprisingly modern bungalow at the edge of the village. Sometimes, Jay visited her in the evenings. On one occasion, Jay couldn’t help mentioning that she imagined Ada would be more at home in a setting like Sally Olsen’s.

  ‘Oh no, love,’ said Ada. ‘I like my modernities. Can’t be doing with all that dust.’

  So Ada had her dream home, too. Jay questioned her carefully about how she’d come to the village, but Ada seemed more fuddled than any others Jay had spoken to. ‘It’s my real home,’ she said. ‘It’s where I came to. An answer to my prayers.’

  ‘Can you remember leaving your old life?’ Jay asked her.

  Ada frowned. ‘It’s all too dark,’ she said. ‘Sunlight started here.’

  ‘How did you get this house? Do you rent it, own it, or what?’

  Ada shook her head. ‘It’s mine,’ she said. ‘It was ready for me when I got here.’

  Questions such as these upset the villagers, some more than others. Jay didn’t like to press too much. In her past, Ada had suffered, and Jay respected that. It was clear that here in Lestholme, Ada was very content.

  The old woman expanded slightly upon the meetings she’d allegedly had with Dex, but as time went on, Jay wondered how accurate Ada’s memory was. Still, she had recognised Dex’s name. Nobody else in Lestholme, however, appeared to have seen or met him. Jay did catch sight of a couple of shy young men, who looked a bit like him, but they were more like fairy-folk than burned-out rock stars. They would not talk to anyone, and lived among the trees, out of sight.

  Jay spent as little time as possible in the shadowed rooms of Ida’s house. Ida, Arthur and the perpetually sleeping old lady, Meg, disturbed her more than anyone else in Lestholme. She never learned their stories. They never offered to tell. The only thing that stopped her seeking somewhere else to stay was that Lestholme might then become just too comfortable for her. Jay wondered why Jem had chosen to live with Ida and the others, when she could probably have moved in with someone like Sally or Ada, who were both much more companionable. Their houses too were far homier. Jem insisted she liked her surrogate family and felt comfortable in their house. ‘I know they’re a bit strange,’ she confessed, ‘but that’s part of what I like about them.’ She was an imaginative girl.

  One morning, Jay went back to the church where Jem had found her. People worshipped here, but exactly what did they worship? There were no crucifixes, no images of saints, and even the stained glass windows were just of pastoral scenes. They appeared to be of local places, because one of them showed the hill with the monument on top. She resolved to return when people were present, to see what kind of service was held there. But when she asked Jem about it, she discovered there were no services. People went into the church as and when they felt like it. They would sit in silence there, thanking their god for all he had given them, contemplating the happiness they had found.

  One day, walking alone around the village, which had become as familiar to her as her old flat in London, Jay decided to walk away from it. She had been there for three weeks, and apart from the scanty information from Ada, had turned up no further evidence that Dex had ever been there. It was not that she was desperate to leave, but she needed to test a theory. She did not consider herself to be the same as the villagers, the kind of person who ran away from reality because it was too painful to bear. She’d always faced up to life’s traumas, and was disturbed by the thought she might be in Lestholme because she’d lost that strength. She wanted to taste the outside world once more, even if she only put her toes over the invisible boundary that must somewhere exist. She needed to know that she could return to reality if and when she wanted to.

  She walked and walked, seemingly for hours, but somehow every lane that she took led her back to the village. She must be walking in circles. She did not want to think that she couldn’t leave. Still, the walk was pleasant and the balmy air drugged her senses. It no longer seemed important to find a way out. Jay strained her ears to detect any noise of cars or machinery, but there was none. The fields on the left side of the road were perfect, and cows and sheep grazed there, but she had never actually seen any sign of agricultural activity around the village.

  There was no doubt that the village had, in many ways, healed and comforted her. She had no immediate desire to take up the life she had left, which she guessed must be the same for everyone around her. All that frantic worry and hurry seemed ridiculous now. Real life was experiencing the world in its raw state, breathing in its scents, bathing in the life-giving light of the endless summer sun. Real life was lazy afternoons and evenings spent with gentle companions, drinking tea together, laughing. There were so many things to talk about that had nothing to do with money or deadlines or social events. She no longer had a desire to drink alcohol; she didn’t even miss it. She could sit in a comfortable lethargy, listening to someone talking about the habits of foxes, or how to lay out a garden, or how to make jam. It was strange how the questions and mysteries that had been so important when she’d first arrived now seemed irrelevant.

  Father Bickery had taught her about art, and in his large shadowed house, she had made her first tentative efforts to paint. Mrs Cambourne, a trim middle-aged lady of the most genteel type, had lent her books, old classics Jay had always meant to read, but never had. After she’d devoured them, Jay had sat with Mrs Cambourne in her neat garden, analysing plots and characters. She’d sung songs in the hazy evening, with a household of confirmed bachelors, who all looked like they should be someone’s favourite great-uncle. She’d pricked her fingers learning to embroider in the kitchen of Sally Olsen, wrapped in the scent of vanilla and baking currants. This was life, surely? What had people like Gus, Gina and Zeke Michaels got to do with what was really important? All that bitching, all that keeping a tenacious hold of her position in a hostile, uncertai
n world; it held no attraction for her now. Yet, despite this, Lestholme was not enough for Jay. She sensed it deep within herself, a restlessness. Perhaps some cynical, hard-bitten part of her could not believe in the village’s Utopian perfection and found it cloying. Ultimately, she knew that she still did not really belong there. But the lanes would not release her. They twisted and twined, drawing her ever back to their heart. In some ways, she was relieved, in others anxious.

  Realising that she either had no sense of direction, or was being deliberately thwarted in her attempts to leave the village, Jay sat down on a milestone and lit a cigarette. She smoked less now, too. Of the two packets she’d had in her bag, one was still almost full. She faced a wood, where coins and bars of golden light made treasure among the lush ferns. Sitting very still, she saw a tawny doe glide between the sunbeams some yards from the road. Jay’s feet were firm against the gravelly road. Her fingers could feel every texture of the lichened stone she sat upon. The air itself entered her lungs with the surge and thickness of water, filling her body with energy and the greenness of her environment. The landscape was so real and so perfect, it was like the template for all idyllic spots on earth.

  She saw someone strolling towards her and recognised the erstwhile footballer, Terry Mortendale. Jay raised a hand in greeting, and Terry increased his pace to reach her.

  ‘Great day,’ he said, his hands in his pockets. He was a tall, heavy man, past the peak of fitness perhaps, but relaxed and healthy, a far cry from how he’d last appeared in the papers.

  ‘I have yet to experience a bad day here,’ Jay said.

  Terry laughed. ‘It’s funny, but you never get tired of it, do you. Years ago, I’d have said you would, that you’d get bored with a place like this.’

  ‘It’s a different slant on life,’ Jay said, stubbing out her cigarette on the road. She stood up. ‘I’m going back to the village now. Are you heading that way?’

  ‘Sure am. Want company?’

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  They strolled along in easy silence for a while, until Jay said, ‘I was trying to leave, you know.’ She expected Terry to ignore her remark or change the subject, but he didn’t.

  ‘Oh? Why’s that?’ He didn’t even sound surprised.

  Jay shrugged. ‘I just wanted to see whether I could.’

  ‘You can’t mean that,’ Terry answered, ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be here now.’

  Jay smiled. ‘Perhaps. Can people leave here?’

  Terry stuck out his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Don’t really know.’ He paused, then said, I’m not sure how big ‘here’ is. I did used to wonder about it, because Lestholme never seems crowded.’

  ‘When did you stop wondering?’

  Terry laughed, but there was a strained undercurrent to it. ‘The day I did what you did.’

  ‘How did you get here?’ Jay asked him.

  ‘My life, everything I was, everything I had, was all gone.’ He glanced at her rather sharply. ‘People don’t ask here. It’s up to us to tell. You’re a journalist, aren’t you?’

  Jay wondered how best to handle this. ‘Well, kind of, but...’

  Terry laughed. ‘Even some of you end up here. That’s rich!’

  He did not like the press. He blamed them for the breakdown of his marriage, the disintegration of his life.

  ‘But didn’t you have responsibility, too?’ Jay asked carefully, aware of feeling defensive. ‘You can’t blame other people for all of it, surely?’

  ‘It didn’t help,’ he said.

  Jay thought momentarily of Dex, of the stories that ran in the music press, week after week, when he was on tour; the reports that relished his bad behaviour. We all do things we regret occasionally, she thought, especially when we’re drunk, and the next day we might feel embarrassed about it, but the memory fades after a while. What must it feel like to know that you won’t be allowed to forget it, that everyone will be reading about your indiscretions a few days later, making judgements, voicing their own opinions? Failures and weaknesses would be emblazoned in headlines, fixed in the minds of those who read them.

  ‘That’s exactly what it’s like,’ Terry said, and Jay realised she must have been thinking aloud.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ Jay asked.

  He nodded. ‘It’s more than a word, or a passing pleasure. I am happiness.’ They had reached his cottage gate. ‘Call in sometime,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But no more talk like today, OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  He smiled in reply and sauntered up to his open front door.

  Jay carried on into Lestholme and met Jem coming out of one of the village shops. She was sucking a lollipop and carried an old school satchel over her shoulder. ‘Hi Jay, I knew you’d come by. I was waiting for you.’

  ‘I’ve been for a walk,’ Jay said.

  ‘I know. Fancy another?’

  Jay sensed immediately that Jem had something to say, and assumed this would be associated with Dex. She agreed readily.

  ‘Let’s climb the hill,’ Jem said. ‘You’ve never seen it. Ida’s packed me some sandwiches.’ She patted her satchel. ‘We can have a picnic up there.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ said Jay. ‘Lead on.’

  The hill was surrounded by ancient forest, thick with lush bracken, threaded by narrow tracks. Its smell was powerful, almost overwhelming; a composite of leaf and mould and flowers. The path they followed was steep, covered in loose stones. Sometimes Jay had to grasp tufts of bright green grass at the side of the track to keep her footing. Beside them, a narrow stream tumbled down the hill-side, splashing from pool to pool in a series of rocky waterfalls. Ferns hung over the water and, in places where sunlight came down through the trees, the air was iridescent with spray. Jay realised how out of condition she was. Jem climbed steadily ahead, her bare legs streaked with bramble scratches, her sure feet encased in scuffed leather sandals.

  Eventually they emerged from the woods onto the crown of the hill, which was blanketed in purple heather and gorse bushes in flower. Elderberry trees, laden with heavy white blooms, dipped their branches towards the ground. The air was full of the hum of bees and the flash of quick insects. There were ruins on the hill, now covered in dog rose. Jem said that once a house had stood there. She and Jay sat down on the warm stones of the ruins and ate their picnic. Jay could see the ghost of a garden in the profusion of bushes and flowers. Wild strains had strangled many of the cultivated plants, but tall, unruly rose trees still stood, gnarled and wild, draped in purple clematis. And some distance away, looking out over the valley, stood the soaring monument. The figure on its summit had its back to them, its arms outflung.

  ‘You can climb up it,’ Jem said, noticing Jay’s study of the ancient stone. ‘There are steps inside. But it’s dangerous at the top. There’s no safety rail or anything.’

  Jay shuddered, imagining the beating of the wind at the head of the monument, how a person could spread-eagle themselves against the statue’s stony flank, and be pressed against it or plucked away and flung to their death below. ‘I bet you come here a lot,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely spot.’

  ‘Yes, I like it,’ Jem said.

  They munched in silence for a while, then Jay said, ‘Do you have any friends your own age?’

  Jem frowned at her, then smiled. ‘My own age? I have friends. We’re all friends, but I like to come here alone.’

  ‘Then I’m honoured, am I?’

  ‘I thought you might like it too.’ She paused. ‘I have noticed your difference, Jay.’

  ‘Difference?’ Jay bit into a sandwich carefully. She would not push Jem because she’d already learned how flighty the villagers could be, how the wrong question could send them off at a tangent into their pasts.

  ‘Yes. You are in the present, very much so.’

  ‘Hmm. Do you think you’re the same?’

  Jem nodded, her face grave. ‘Yes. I think it’s because I didn’t give eve
rything up, and neither have you.’

  Jay sensed she must be careful. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  Jem took an apple out of the satchel and bit into it, talking with her mouth full. ‘People here don’t want to question things, but I did - like you do.’

  Jay held the girl’s gaze with her own. ‘I think it’s good to question things. It’s how we expand our knowledge.’

  ‘I know, but it’s not quite the same here. Part of coming to Lestholme means letting go of the questions and simply ‘being’.’

  Jay made sure she asked no questions, but just offered suppositions. ‘The people here were damaged. They were all running away.’

  ‘They are the missing,’ Jem said. ‘Except that for many of them, no-one has missed them at all.’

  Jay sighed. ‘Well, I guess it’s time I told you my story, if you want to hear it.’

  Jem touched her arm. ‘Of course.’

  Had all those things really happened to her? Jay felt removed from it now. Admittedly, her story was far less traumatic than the majority of those she’d heard in Lestholme, but now, speaking it aloud, her former life seemed so bleak and empty. Jem listened without interrupting, her brow furrowed.

  ‘I felt I’d lost everything,’ Jay said in conclusion. ‘So I drove out into the countryside, looking for Dex. Or at least I thought I was. It was winter time. I left my car and walked into a field, then it all gets muzzy. Somehow I walked into summertime, into Lestholme, and met you in the church. I don’t understand it, Jem. How long had I walked, or had I been somewhere else for a while? You can appreciate why I thought I might be dead and this was some kind of after-life.’ She risked a laugh. ‘I still wonder whether I’m dreaming all this.’

  ‘It’s not any of that,’ Jem replied. ‘At least, I don’t think so. But how can we tell?’

  Jay told Jem about her meeting with Terry Mortendale earlier, and now she had to start asking questions. ‘Does anyone ever leave here, go back?’

  Jem contemplated this for a moment, then said, ‘I think they must do - or else they go somewhere else - otherwise Lestholme would be a city, not a village.’