Wintering

by Krissy Kneen

  Something in her eyes. Jessica remembered her dream from last night, the sudden shock of nightmare. She reversed out of the carpark, almost into the path of an oncoming logging truck that slammed down on the horn as she slammed on the brake. A second near miss. She was cracking up.

  She looked up. The woman was still there, staring. Jessica eased back and out onto the road.

  Paws thumped against the door of the four-wheel drive. A labrador, not a newborn puppy like the one in her dream, but a young dog. The animal let its tongue loll, claws scrabbling on his paintwork. Matthew would be angry. Matthew loved that car.

  ‘Hey. Brutus. Hey.’

  The sight of William filled her with a sense of relief.

  ‘Meet your trusty hound.’

  ‘What?’

  She slipped out of the car and the dog was on her. She laughed. The sound felt odd, unfamiliar. How long had it been since she laughed? The puppy stomped sandy paw prints onto her stomach, her thighs.

  ‘Brutus, down boy, down.’

  She dropped to her haunches and took the soft dog head in between her palms and felt the wet tongue catch her neck and the smell of the animal’s terrible breath and she buried her face in one of its ears and she was crying. Tears spilling onto her cheeks and a sob coming, dragged up from the depths of her, loud and full and interminable. Once she had begun to cry it seemed she could never stop.

  ‘Oh, hey, Jess, hey,’ he said, stooping to rest a hand on her heaving shoulder, but she couldn’t stop.

  She spoke to him through gasps. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t feel anything. I honestly don’t feel sad.’

  But she was howling now, no possibility of explanation, and the dog hopping up to rest its front paws in her lap and licking away her tears, loving the salt, and snuffling at her ear and burying its soft muzzle in her neck. William pushed the dog away and eased Jessica towards the front door of the shack.

  ‘Got the key?’

  And she heard him but could do nothing to respond. He lowered her down onto the step and the dog was on her once more, the relief of a warm body hopping up into her lap. She wrapped her arms around it and buried her head in the soft fur. William went back to the car and got the keys from the ignition. She let herself be picked up, manoeuvred into her own house, half-dragged, half-carried, with the comforting thump of the dog’s tail against her thighs.

  She found herself in bed and a cup of tea beside her and the warm weight of a dog on her feet. It was getting dark. She must have slept. She had a story to file. Jessica swung her feet over and onto the icy floor. Her head hurt. She reached over and pulled a jumper over her head. She was still wearing her day clothes, which was a relief.

  ‘Will? William?’

  She could hear him in the kitchen. She struggled into her shoes, feeling hungover, unbalanced and stumbling as she got out of bed. The dog stuck fast to her side—what was his name?

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I made dinner.’

  ‘I have to file a story.’

  ‘A story…When?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘Fuck. An hour ago.’

  ‘Do it. I’ll keep the dinner warm.’

  ‘It’s almost done. Just have to do the conclusion.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She sat at the table and pulled the laptop towards her. The dog placed his warm muzzle in her lap. ‘What’s his name again? Your dog?’

  ‘Brutus. Your dog.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘You said you wanted one. I got his sister.’

  ‘He is beautiful.’ She ruffled his ears. ‘Brutus. I’ll welcome you later. Giant cuttlefish come first. Environmental disaster or natural rhythm of the ocean? What do you think, Brutus?’ The dog settled onto her feet and started licking the toe of her boot.

  She had lost a lover, she had killed a man. She owned a dog. The whole world had changed in a handful of weeks, but the giant cuttlefish were still absent from the western waters, a new dinosaur had been identified from fossils, a new species of microbe had been discovered in a spacecraft clean-room in Florida.

  Science remained an ever-ticking clock. The secrets of the universe revealing themselves day by day, and there is no magic, only things that we do not yet understand.

  The dog liked the boat. At first he ran from one side of it to the other, setting it to rocking as if on a bad sea, snapping and barking at gulls. The net was a challenge, unravelling it without exciting him. He stood and shifted his weight from one paw to another as if he were expecting a game.

  ‘Brutus, no,’ and he pleaded, whining, a high excited sound at the back of his throat.

  But he settled in time, turning a slow circle to curl up awkwardly on the wooden bench. He added a feeling of weight and stability that the boat had been missing.

  Approaching shore, he became excited once more and jumped out before she could catch hold of his lead. He swam for the beach and ran back and forth at the tideline waiting for the boat to slide in and settle. She dragged the boat up higher, tied it to the tree and picked up his lead. The road ran close to the front of the shack and she didn’t want him racing out in front of a car. As they climbed the rock wall he began to bark and the sound of it changed from play to fury.

  ‘Quiet, Brutus, quiet.’

  But nothing would silence him. She saw him drag his lips back and bare his teeth in a vicious snarl. At the base of the stairs he was straining at the lead, choking on the chain collar, and then she smelled it too. That wild animal reek.

  ‘He’s been here.’ This to Brutus, but the dog was not listening. She clipped his lead onto the rail. If she let Brutus go, if he were to meet the thing, the tiger, Matthew, if he were to aim himself at her lover with so much fury. Not Matthew. Of course it couldn’t be Matthew. But standing here with the smell of the wild strong in the air she remembered the hunt. A clear image of the thing she saw, more cat than man, the smell, the gun in her hand… She was losing her mind. Just like the women. She was becoming just like them.

  She left the dog chained up at the base of the stairs. The sliding door to the porch was open. A tiger could never open a sliding door. Something else then, someone else. Maude, who had let herself in through a locked door. Maude, who had offered to protect her, made veiled threats when she wouldn’t accept the kindness.

  ‘Hello?’

  No sound. The curtains brushing her arm in a gentle breeze. She stepped inside and the scent of it was stronger. The lounge room looked untouched. Papers spilled over the table, her copies of New Scientist, still in their plastic, piling up beside the couch. Her laptop listing at a gentle angle on top of it all.

  The kitchen empty, the smell stronger in the corridor. He was in their room. That was where the smell was coming from. What if she opened the bedroom door and he was there on her bed. She remembered the pleasure of finding him each morning, the soft pale skin smelling of sleep, the pale pink kiss of one nipple peeking out from under the sheet, his skin prickling to goose bumps as he woke and realised suddenly that he was cold, pulling her warm body towards his chest.

  How fiercely she had loved him. She felt it now, a bolt of pure desire.

  She swung open the door, and it smelled like a den full of devil cubs. The scent of the wild so strong that she coughed, held her hand up to her mouth. The smell was in her bed, on her sheets. She bent and sniffed her way towards the strong heart of it, his pillow. An indent in his pillow, the book he had been reading no longer poised on the side table, but splayed out on the floor, his place lost forever. She bent, her hand trembling; held the edge of the sheet and exhaled as if she were taking aim. She pulled at the covers and they slithered off the empty mattress. She bent slowly in the soft mess of linen and blankets and peered under. Nothing. Dust. Nothing. She stood and moved to the clothes basket at the end of the bed, untouched since he was lost. His clothes were still tangled with hers. She picked out a shirt, blue, stained at the armpits. Held the fabric to her face and breathed
in.

  Matthew. This was what Matthew smelled like, not the terrible stench of whatever had been lying on her bed. She clutched a jumper and breathed him in, flooded with a bitter sadness. She felt a lump forming in her throat, her grief reaching up to choke her.

  She picked up a T-shirt, green, with a picture of a monkey printed on the front. She had bought him this shirt, ordered it on the internet. She held it to her face. The smell of Matthew, and… Something else.

  She pulled her face away and stared at the shirt. Pressed her face against it once more and breathed in. Something not quite familiar; she struggled to place it. Sickly sweet, like a soft drink, or a…

  Jasmine. It was the smell of jasmine.

  She dropped the shirt back into the basket. Took a step backwards.

  Jessica turned and ran down the stairs to where Brutus was growling, straining at the lead. She unclipped it and watched him scramble up the stairs, hurling himself inside. He had found his way to the bedroom and started tearing at the mattress, eviscerating it, the stuffing coming free in great clumps. Growling, snarling, barking between bites. If the mattress had been an animal it would have been disembowelled. Then, when the mattress was hollowed out, the dog started ripping and tearing at the sheets. Jessica picked up the green T-shirt. She pulled the dog away from the mess of torn cloth and pressed his muzzle into the T-shirt.

  ‘Smell it?’ she asked. ‘Smell her? Have you smelled her before?’

  But of course she had not had the dog when she stood at the Dover shop waiting to be served, with the blonde woman standing too close, staring angrily at her shoulders, stinking of this same perfume.

  The dog pulled away from her, turned back to the bedclothes and continued to tear them till they were unrecognisable.

  She would have to sleep on the couch. It pulled out into a bed—uncomfortable, the mattress thin and worn, but it was always warm there by the fire. She would sleep by the fire.

  Brutus started barking at 7 p.m. William wasn’t due till nine. His shift finished at eight and it would take him an hour to navigate the dark and winding roads. What if he doesn’t arrive? What if he texts—leaving now—and then, like a recurring nightmare, there is no sign of him? The dinner cold, a police car pulling in to her drive.

  She was making paella for the first time and had started early. All the ingredients weighed, sliced, separated—Jesus, do you really need to wash the rice?—then the dog barking, furiously; snapping at his own reflection in the glass. Salivating. Why would a dog begin to salivate? She remembered the way he’d torn her bed apart, as if he were searching for a deadly enemy in there and would eat them whole.

  She checked her watch. Seven o’clock was the time of the gathering. The women would be at Maude’s place, waiting for her to arrive. Maybe they knew she wouldn’t be coming; maybe they’d decided to arrive on her doorstep instead? She felt grateful for Brutus, but that was illusory—those frail old women had guns.

  Past eight, and the barking persisted. The dog’s snapping and snarling had made her nervous. She had locked every window, bolted the front door. She pulled the curtain and slid a lounge chair in front of the glass, which was no protection at all, but which lent a vague sense of cover. She opened the oven and slipped the cooked paella inside to crisp the top, unconcerned about overcooking, making the mussels tough. She was thinking about the moment William would arrive. The body of the man dwarfing her, making her laugh, forcing her to relax.

  Surely the dog was getting hoarse by now, its mouth frothy, its eyes stretched wide so the whites showed. Surely it would run out of anger at some point.

  ‘Good boy,’ she muttered. ‘Good puppy.’

  He was early. Jessica was surprised by the relief she felt at the sound of his car pulling up beside hers, running to the door, unbolting it, close to weeping with the release of tension. She stopped. Breathed. Tried to calm herself. She smiled as she opened the door, but he frowned, looked past her.

  ‘Is that Brutus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘He’s been doing that for almost two hours.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Brutus? Here, boy.’

  And the dog paused reluctantly and ran up for a pat before placing himself back at the sliding doors, barking, barking, barking.

  ‘Is someone out there?’

  And the cold shuddering down her shoulders, worming its way along her back and settling sour and heavy in her stomach.

  ‘Want me to have a look?’ William put his hands against the glass, shielding his eyes from the glare of the inside light. ‘Is there a porch light?’

  She flicked the switch and there was movement, something, gone now. William stepped away from the window. Rested his hand on Brutus’ head. ‘Shhhh, boy. Shhhh. It’s just a stray, I think.’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘I think. Or a bloody big feral cat. But I think it was a dog. Skinny dog.’

  Brutus lay down as if he’d thought about it and decided William was right. Nothing to worry about. But there was a low percolation deep in the back of his throat and she noticed his ears twitching.

  ‘Smells good.’

  Jessica had forgotten the paella. She slid it out of the oven and tapped an open mussel shell with the edge of a spatula.

  ‘That’ll be tough now.’

  ‘But tasty.’

  She scraped some of the rice onto the plates, the bottom crisp as a pie crust, and it smelled good. She sat opposite William, the dog close to her feet, and thought: there were things that could distress her if she dwelt on them, the dog out there in the dark, the women meeting to discuss that other thing, the thing she absolutely wouldn’t let herself remember. But Jessica wanted to carve out this tiny moment for herself. She let herself smile when he made a joke, enjoy the food despite the overcooked mussels, warm herself in the glow of fire and the company.

  At some point they moved on to the couch and it seemed easy enough to lean into his shoulder. The sheer physicality of the man made her feel safer than she had since Matthew disappeared.

  ‘Look at your hand.’ She touched his hand, tentative. He could rest his thumb on her hipbone and his little finger just near her knee: a hand as long as her thighbone. She measured it out in flesh and inches and held it there when she was done.

  The mood shifted. There was a pause, a moment for decisions. She needed to think…and yet thinking led her down a terrible path. The mess she was in; what had happened to her and what she had done. A decision would mean an acknowledgment of cause and effect.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it. Is that okay?’

  He nodded.

  ‘If I try to make a decision about all this I’ll explode.’

  ‘I don’t want you to explode.’ His voice rough suddenly, deep and husky.

  She stretched her own small hand out, thumb to little finger, and it was a tiny span across the top of his thigh. She would need four hands to mark out the length of it.

  ‘Hah,’ she said. ‘Too small.’

  ‘Really?’

  And when he moved her hand up and over slightly, it was clear her outstretched fingers were the perfect measure after all.

  She was obliterated. She was dwarfed by his body. Sitting astride him on the couch she was a child taming a great beast, hanging on to his shoulders hoping she would not be thrown. He picked her up and she held her place with her legs, stretched as wide as they could be, wrapped around his hips. Not a single piece of clothing removed, but as she sat, cradled and lifted by the man, she knew the clothes were no protection. Half of her understanding this was one more complication, another disaster like a landmine in her life, the other half wanting to crawl out of her clothes, her skin, her memories and emerge naked as an earthworm. Blind and blinking into a new world.

  She unbuttoned her shirt and the dog growled, then William’s mouth was on her breast and there was nothing but this. Sex like the ocean, obliterating everything but the immediate sensation. His tongue
, the pulling of his lips, a line cast out from his mouth, hooking her there and falling down through her stomach and down again, curling around the hard anchor of his cock which rubbed against her with an exquisite pressure.

  The jeans had to go: this thought so urgent and immediate that she didn’t care if she fell. She let go of his back and unclasped the fly and unzipped, held up and against him by his huge, solid arms. Somehow he held her and cradled her body in one arm and tugged the jeans off her with the other. All this while she was cut loose, unmoored and unmuddied, and when he pressed her against his body once more she was so wet already it was as if this was no more than swimming. Just a kick of her legs and her hips tipped with the waves and she felt the size of him, too big, she thought, too big and too naked, but it didn’t matter now. All the hurt had been done to her already.

  She shut her eyes and rocked down and the pain split her in two, and she wanted the pain because of the dead man, because of the loss and the fear, but this wasn’t pain. This was just a feeling of gluttony, of taking too much inside. She held still. Let her muscles relax around his cock and when the pain had been observed and reinterpreted, she nestled her hips down on him for more purchase. Tipped them back again to press her clitoris onto his pubic bone. She looked up. His eyes were closed and his expression…Grateful. Joyous, like a child on Christmas morning.

  It was too soon, but she felt herself climb, rising up as he rose up into her. His eyes locked to hers, his pupils dilated, the strangeness of his body, so alive, and the pulse of their movements massaging her back to life. She was breathing quickly now. His skin flushed, she could see that her pleasure excited him, a feedback loop escalating her own joy.

  ‘I can’t…’ she said, but there was no time to warn him how close she was, her muscles tensed, her head leaned back, her hips bucked and she was coming. And he clamped his arms tight around her and stumbled a step forward before righting himself. She felt the heat and the pulse and the dampness like her heart restarting, hidden as it was in the depths of her body. She felt him buck hard up into her and she arched her hips towards him, every thrust a gasp of breath.