by David Mark
Betsy doesn’t have time to answer before Jay wades, fully clothed, into the cool embrace of the pool. In moments he is up to his waist, then chest, and with powerful strokes he reaches the dead ram. Ducks under. He surfaces, dripping, and places his hands in the animal’s fur. Pulls it, as reverently as he can, towards the bank.
Betsy and Marshall glance at one another and suddenly the madness of the past few moments seems far away and inconsequential. All she wants is to be in the cool deep embrace of the pool. She wades in from the bank, Marshall splashing excitedly beside her. The cold takes her breath away. Her skin tingles. Something slithers through the fabric of her dress, nudging wetly at her hip. She gasps, and begins to giggle; teeth chattering, fizzing with cold in her every cell. Jude grins as he sees her. Laughs, wetly, as he hears her shrieking – the pondweed flirting with her ankles.
‘Oh God, it’s so cold! Oh my God … and deep, and the rocks are …’
She reaches out, grasping for something to hold onto, and then her hand closes on fur, then matted, sticky wool, and she disappears for a moment into the cold brown water, and then Jude is pulling her to the surface. And then her mouth finds his, and his hands find the shape of her beneath her wet clothes, and in moments all is mud and grass and tongue against tongue, and she feels as though a sort of magic is working within her, around her, deep inside her.
For a time, there is only pleasure. A bliss of connection; the sure and certain understanding that this, this fleeting now, is true contentment.
Here.
In the place where his wife died.
Where he seems so very much alive.
SEVENTEEN
She kisses him on tiptoe. He is no taller than she is, but she parts from his embrace the higher of the two. His lips exaggerate her limbs. She finds herself elevated; feet arched, a ballerina en pointe. It seems as though she is a mere vessel for something bigger than her own dimensions – that she must stretch and twist and wriggle to make room for the sensations that unfold inside her, as her mouth opens into his.
‘You’re a sunflower,’ he says, and his lower lip touches hers. ‘You’re heliotropic. A sunflower, searching out the sun …’
There is a fleeting contact; a dragonfly upon still water, as his embouchure forms the soft ‘f’ of flower. If she were able to live within a single moment it would be thus – half a heartbeat; a breath made flesh.
He is holding her the way she needs. She cannot fall. She is anchored here, pressed to him. She thinks for a moment of fossils and wings; brachiopods and footprints in ancient stone.
Within their kiss her senses feel heightened, as if every part of her is made of the skin that grows back after a scald. She feels intensified; she can isolate every individual sensation, from the wet grass that touches her ankles and calves, to the tickle of a loose hair – brushed free during their first caress – alighting half upon her collarbone and half upon her white blouse. She fancies that if she concentrated she would be able to pick out the sound of each separate raindrop as they tumble through the tall trees with their storm-blackened trunks and spill on to the mossy roof of the squat, tumbledown hut in which they take shelter. It was a farmhouse, once. Eight generations of men and women – only ever two surnames on the deeds – but empty since 1946, when the last of the Durrell men cut their losses and walked away. It’s a crumbling grey rectangle; the roof more holes than slate. Spindly trees poke their branches out through the glassless windows. The inside is sheep shit and weeds; an artwork drawn in broken bottles and indecipherable graffiti.
‘Where are you?’ he asks, and his eyes are so close to hers that she feels dizzy looking into them. She blinks, and he withdraws a little, as if chastened. He rests against the damp stone wall. She feels his arms leave her waist.
‘Your mind,’ he asks, again. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I was thinking of stones,’ she says, grinning. ‘Fossils. I’d like it if we turned to stone together. Have you seen the shapes barnacles leave on rocks? Or the patterns of leaf skeletons in soft rock? I’d like us to be like that. Do you think if we lie down long enough we could just sink into the ground and it wouldn’t matter any more? We’d just be together. Just one entity …’
She stops talking, annoyed at her own inability to precisely articulate her thoughts. Since meeting him she has become increasingly aware of the gulf between emotion and language. She occasionally feels that her declarations of love will sound asinine to his ears. It is as if the language of her passion necessitates a more physical, demonstrative depiction. Sometimes she longs to crush a peach within her hand and hold it to his lips for him to lick. She wants to shake apples from a tree by swinging on the branches. She wants to stick her head under the surface of a still lake and take a bite of the moon’s reflection. Wants to say … I love you this much.
‘Like towels,’ he says, twitching a smile. ‘Neat, hotel towels, stacked on top of one another. We’d be like that. It’s a nice picture.’
‘I haven’t stayed in many hotels,’ she says, and there is an apology in her voice, as if she has let them both down with such an omission. She pictures him as he was when he toured the world as a musician. Her mind floods with ugly erotica: Jude pleasuring and being pleasured; a flickerboard of images; fifty shades of flesh.
‘You will,’ he says. ‘You’ll stay in the finest hotels all over the world. You’ll dry yourself with pure luxury. I’ll take you places where they’ve trained pandas to hug the guests dry.’
‘You’re going to have to work hard to pay for that,’ she says, and stares out through the empty window at a landscape that drifts on, endlessly, until bleeding into the sky. ‘I don’t really understand how you make money. I know you cut down trees …’
‘I try not to cut down trees,’ he says, and he nuzzles his head against hers, the way she has seen horses do. ‘I’m a qualified tree surgeon, not a lumberjack. Major difference.’
‘Soz,’ she smiles, and slaps her wrist. ‘Bad girl. I just sort of told Carly you’re a farmer. But you’re not, are you?’
‘I’m not even a tree surgeon really,’ he says, chewing on his lip, thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know what I am. Everything I thought I was – I look back and realized I wasn’t.’
‘You’ve done a lot with your life,’ says Betsy, and she feels him adjust his position so he can press himself against her; his cheek against hers, arm around her waist. ‘You’re a great sax player.’
‘Thanks,’ he says, quietly. ‘I was OK. I’m not now. I’d love to be as good as I was when I was twenty-one.’
‘Are your family musicians?’ she asks. He hasn’t spoken about his family much. Doesn’t speak about anything personal unless she pushes.
‘My dad likes the harmonica,’ he says, and she senses him smile at some memory. ‘Mum could bang the pans together like she was Keith Moon midway through a drum solo. Not an easy woman. I’m sure there’d be a proper name for it nowadays – Dad just said she was highly strung.’
She considers this. ‘That sounds quite cynical,’ she says, a little frostily. ‘Jay never really understood mental health problems. I know that the things he got right were just the law of averages. All he really wanted was for me to behave. To be grateful. To be normal.’
‘That’s the last thing I want,’ says Jude, stroking her stomach. ‘I like your craziness. I’d rather deal with the fallout from your fires than live a life without a spark. Whatever your brain does to you – however it tries to ruin things, I’ll always see past it. I’ll always see the real you, underneath.’
She shakes her head. ‘You don’t know how I get. What I’m capable of. It’s only a few weeks since I was necking tablets like they were Tic Tacs …’
‘But you’re happy now?’ he asks. ‘You feel good, inside?’
She nods, meaning it. ‘But when I split – I think up such terrible things. I get so paranoid. I used to believe that Jay had a whole other family – a whole other life. I had software put on his phone to track his locations. I would ring
his work and do fake accents and try to get one of his colleagues to drop him in it by admitting he was out with Suzie from accounts …’
‘I’ll never give you reason to doubt me,’ says Jude, in her ear. ‘I know what trust means to you. I won’t spoil it.’
She readjusts herself, taking her weight on her left leg so she can lean against the damp wooden timbers of the doorframe. The wet earth has squished over the lip of her sandals and there is brown mud on her cold toes. He likes her toes. He told her so as he peeled off her damp socks on the riverbank. Likes all toes, as far as she can tell, but hers in particular. She has reconciled herself to such accommodations. He likes necks, but hers is best. Likes the scent of female shoulder blades and wrists.
She glances up as a sudden flash of colour catches her eye; a flash of earthy brown streaking through the heather that rises above the dry-stone wall. ‘Look,’ she says, squeezing his forearm. ‘A deer.’
‘A doe,’ he says, nodding. ‘There’s a family of them in the wood that joins up with the dingle. The stag’s a real bruiser. Intelligent eyes.’
‘I suppose you and I have different views on hunting,’ she says, hoping that she’s wrong. ‘Seems horrible to me. Cruel. I know you don’t like grouse shooting but aren’t you countryside types into your blood sports?’
He looks at her, hurt. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Just what I’ve read, I suppose. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to insult you, or anything …’
‘You know Maeve was an activist for animal rights, yes?’
Betsy curses herself. Why had she said that?
‘Sorry, I do know that. I don’t know why I said that. I say daft things sometimes. I’m sure you will too though.’ She wonders if she can distract him from thinking bad thoughts about her by making him think he has done something to upset her in return. ‘I’ve let stuff slide with you, haven’t I? You don’t need to make me feel like a shit about it.’
She turns away from him, whipping her neck so fast that it makes a noise like somebody stepping on a twig. She listens to the sound of his breathing. Wonders whether he’s going to say sorry and hopes to God he doesn’t.
‘I hate all the tally-ho stuff,’ he says, as if the unpleasantness hadn’t happened. ‘Hate anybody looking down at me from horseback and acting like I’m a peasant and they’re Lord of the Manor. But there’s far worse than foxhunting. Snares – they’re what eat away at me. People who think they’re safeguarding animals and then go set these barbaric traps. They say they’re catching foxes but I’ve seen badgers with the snare dug in their leg all the way to the bone. Housecats too. Maeve used to spend half her life dismantling them, walking the countryside pulling up traps and handing in snares. Never did a bit of good but it’s better than doing nothing at all.’
‘Is that how the bad blood started with Campion?’
Behind her, she feels Jude tense at the very mention of his name. ‘Yes, in a way. He runs one of the biggest grouse shoots in the area. Not as big as he wants it to be, but he hasn’t given up hope yet. Feeds the birds up until they can barely fly, then his rich mates blast away at them until they’re not much more than mince and feathers. Seventy-five pounds per bird, at least. You can see why it’s a rich sod’s game. I’ve always hated it. Did some work as a beater for the shoot at Slaley when I first moved back north and couldn’t stand being a part of it. Maybe that’s when I started rubbing people up the wrong way.’
‘Sylvia said you’ve got a few enemies.’
He shrugs. ‘I know there’s always somebody trying to impress their mates by spilling my pint or treading on my toes at the bar. People have selective memories here. There are grown men, fifty and sixty years old, who still give a damn about whether or not they’re thought of as the hardest man in their valley. You think toxic masculinity’s a new thing – believe me, men have been fighting over mating rights and territory since time began.’
‘Campion fled like a scolded cat when you came to help me that day,’ remembers Betsy, smiling. ‘Those men with him. They didn’t hang around either.’
She hears Jude let out a dry little laugh. ‘Likes to surround himself with macho types. His gamekeeper’s not a bad sort but the number two, Brendon – he’s more of an odd-job man. Been inside for taking a baseball bat to an animal rights activist. He knows people worse than himself and pays them well to do what they do best. He’s the one who hires in all these hard cases to scare his tenants into paying their increased ground rents, or insisting they open up parts of their land for Campion.’
‘Opening their land? How do you mean?’
He sighs, as if he’s been keeping the words inside him for a long time. ‘He’s got his plans,’ he says. ‘Wants to put an access road all the way up the fell to where his new grouse butts are – right through half a dozen farms, including the bastle. He’s been putting cattle grids in on the bridleway, just so riders stop going up a path they’ve had access to for centuries. Been some bad accidents. One poor yearling snapped both legs and there was a three-hour wait to put it out of its misery. Brendon and his mob just stood there. They’ve got everybody on board now – all willing to turn a blind eye to what he’s doing because they’re too scared to do anything else.’
‘And you?’
He laughs, drily. ‘Be a cold day in hell before I give that man anything that makes him happy. I’ve told him to do his worst.’
‘And you’re not scared?’ asks Betsy.
He shrugs. ‘I don’t see how that would help.’
She snuggles into him, feeling safe and warm and good.
‘What’s that tree called?’ she asks, nodding at the specimen with the purple leaves.
‘Andrew,’ he says, and reaches out from his side of the doorframe to take her hand in his. Impulsively, she raises his fingers to her face and kisses them. Neat, soft fingertips, clipped pink nails. He smells of soap and wood polish. Smells like the garden after a storm.
Over his shoulder, she watches the deer fade into the landscape, looking for her stag: the gentle brute with the big intelligent eyes.
Back off, she thinks, and turns to kiss him. He’s spoken for.
EIGHTEEN
During the years that she invested in trying to make things work with Jay, Elizabeth Zahavi developed a rich and multi-layered fantasy life. In her mind, she experienced idyllic outings, luxurious dinner dates and erotic assignations with all manner of made-up people – her projections of perfection utterly eclipsing the minor enjoyments of her reality. It led to accusations that she viewed the world as some sort of Hollywood movie; that she would be happier living her life in a different time, when being spun and dipped and kissed roughly while wearing petticoats were all that a person needed to feel fulfilled.
Life’s not life that, would be Jay’s stock reply, whenever she suggested a barefoot stroll on a moonlit beach: a half-bottle of champagne and a tartan rug laid out in preparation at some secluded cove. You’d say it was too cold. Flies would bite your ankles and you’d bitch about being itchy for the rest of the week. You don’t even like champagne – it gives you indigestion. And where would I park? Have you tried getting sand out of the upholstery? You look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles. You can’t handle reality. You can’t handle a grown-up relationship …
Betsy allows herself a wry smile as she pictures him now, pontificating about the real world and her ingratitude for not being satisfied with what she’s got. Here, now, she feels vindicated in her belief that there is another way to live and to love. She never actually pictured this precise scene, but she knows that if it had flashed through her imagination as a proposal for a perfect evening, she would definitely have plucked it from the slideshow and given it a once-over.
It’s early evening; the sun still working hard enough to give the soft blue sky a shimmering, hazy quality. The view from the little courtyard garden at the rear of Wolfcleugh Bastle seems somehow fabric in texture, as though the big sky and the endless, empty moors are made up o
f different coloured wools: mohair, alpaca, merino. Everything seems soft, as if the world has lost its rough edges.
Betsy is sitting in a white plastic garden chair beneath a pergola that is coming away from the ancient brickwork. The few roses that cling to the trellis are being throttled by a mass of some tangled creeper, but there is a prettiness to the way the two intertwine and overlap, as if it were all part of a courtship ritual that will lead to a splendid new species. She’s barefoot, wearing one of Jude’s work shirts, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She keeps smiling. Keeps giving deep, contented sighs.
She sips her drink; some purplish hedgerow concoction enlivened with a healthy measure of bathtub gin. Her lips, tender and slightly swollen, sting pleasantly each time they come into contact with the glass. She feels good. Soft and dreamy. She’s barely taking much in, just lolling, head back, half-watching the curve of the dirt track that ducks and weaves and rises towards the front of the farmhouse, and then on up the lane to where a couple of holiday cottages stand empty. Beyond that is another of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of abandoned houses, then nothing much at all until the dingle and the burn. The home of Campion and Candace Lorton-Cave lies beyond the valley. Were she a sniper, she could lie on the bastle roof and make all of Jude’s problems go away.
She listens to the nothingness. It’s never truly quiet here but she can make out no noises of modernity; no car engines or too-loud television sets or the chirruping of mobile phones. She hears birds, and the drone of bees, and the occasional scratching of paws against wood. If she strains her ears she can just make out the soft lullaby of Jude singing while he works in the kitchen. The smell of the elderflower champagne adds a golden lustre to the air; a sticky, sugar-sweet aroma that sweetens her lips.
‘You look comfortable. You look lots of things too. Irresistible, mostly.’
She turns towards the voice. Jude stands by the kitchen door, watching her, a pleasing light in his eyes. His forearms are patterned with elderflower petals and he gives off the smell he brought back with them from the burn: leather, sweat, the ripe green tang of moss and riverbed.
