This book has been planned and completed, honestly, carefully, solemnly, even fearfully, with a keen sense of all it might do.
You stand, pocketing the little tome.
Lesson 54
Courage inexhaustible! Sustain it under difficulties, misfortunes and rebuffs of every conceivable kind
Now you’re wandering his house, agitated, the air laden with its coming storm. The stillness is banking up at the windows, pushing at the walls, wanting in before the rain comes and hammers the valley in great sheets; you can read this sky. His sky. Yours. You are nervy, skittery, you take off your flannelette shirt and wipe your brow with it; bathing your skin in coolness, God knows when you’ll get rescued from this place. You return to the bedroom and lie like a Goldilocks on the mattress, your head in the hollow of the pillow. It smells adult – hair oil, male sweat, ingrained sleeps.
Time slips by. The storm threatens, all talk no substance. Your cheeky little Victorian manual is your only comfort in the fading light.
My young lady friend, your time, and the use of it, is as essential to you as to any father or brother of you all.
A lady of my acquaintance has as her sine qua non of domestic felicity, that the ‘men of the family’ should always be absent at least six hours in the day.
In this much-suffering world, a woman who can take care of herself can always take care of other people.
Far safer to call crime by its right name – treating it even as The Ragged Schools did the young vagabonds of our streets.
You wonder what a ragged school was, smiling as you curl on the bed, devouring the tiny print. The sky is still pregnant with rain yet it doesn’t fall, everything is waiting, poised: the world outside softens as night comes stealing in, dusk is like a thin film of milk washing over the land. You read on, fast, before you lose the light; there are candles but no matches in this place. The night pushes up the band of sunset in the sky and finally you close your book, defeated by the gloom. The distant thunder rumbles in the floorboards, far away, moving on to somewhere else and you can feel the house talk, willing you out, leaving it to its darkness. If you don’t return to Beddy soon it will mean search parties – your father will be home shortly from his afternoon shift, wondering where you are. It will mean helicopters and sniffer dogs and you stand, in panic; don’t want anyone to find this, your fragile discovery, don’t want anything from your real world crashing in on it.
Taking it from you.
Your hidden place, that you will find a way back to.
To help. To mend. To patch up. To watch his hands as he works, as he caresses his dog. If he is like that with animals what must he be like with people? A tenderness you have never seen in a man before, a grace, and you just want to watch, nothing else. You have not grown up with the expectation that someone will look after you and it’s not what you want from this world – it’s the promise it holds. Of a different life, a different way, an escape. You just want to watch and learn and be nourished by it. So much enchantment in this place.
But first you have to get home.
To keep it safe.
Lesson 55
If there is no joy like the rapture of a first love, God’s great mercy has also granted that there is no anguish like youth’s pain
A car. Its sound as it climbs, carefully, the rough winding road. You leap to a window. Can see the search of its headlights threading through the dust. Rescue. You shut your eyes in relief.
The old Volvo. Back, thank God, back. You are safe, this world is safe, no one will find it; you can go home now. A screech of the handbrake and a slam of the car door and then he is here, the great loom of him striding in strong and you are rushing out with his dog jumping about you in a mad flurrying cacophony of barks. The dog grabs your wrist in its jaws and has you tight by its gums and its owner is exclaiming in shock and stepping back, as if he’s seen a ghost, dropping his groceries and a bottle of wine is smashing and a thread of red shoots out fast across the floor.
‘What –’ In absolute bewilderment.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ as you try to bend down and clean up but the dog has you firm.
He can’t comprehend, someone here, in his space, now. How? He sees the book you’re still holding.
‘Is that –?’
Your face reddens. ‘I wasn’t stealing.’
You hand it back with the quickness of guilt. He looks at the the title, the cover falls off. Frowns as if he didn’t realise he had it. Is it his, is it yours, did he break it, did you?
‘Any tips?’ he murmurs.
You don’t know what to say, whether to laugh or explain or run. Totally stumped. By this man, six foot tall with his vigorous strap of black hair over his high forehead, and green eyes, curiously pale, a paleness that doesn’t match the vigour of everything else about him, that feels all of the mind, seems so wrong in this house. Physically, he is not of this valley world. The dog still has your wrist in its gums, you try to extricate yourself. He suddenly realises.
‘Bec, down!’
Free.
‘I – I got stuck. By mistake.’
‘What?’ As if it’s impossible that anyone but him could be in this place, could have stumbled across it let alone got into it.
‘The gate was open. By accident. You drove away and locked me in. I want to go home.’
‘But no one lives around here. Where on earth did you come from?’
‘B–Beddy,’ you stumble out.
He looks at you as if he has no idea what language you’re speaking; sideways, as if he can’t make head nor tail of it. Looks at the book – nope – it’s not going to yield a clue.
‘Beddington.’
Your head indicates, frustrated, over the ridge.
It dawns – obviously not from these parts. He nods. Right. One of them, now he has you placed. He looks you up and down and you see, suddenly, what he is seeing – the horror of your clothes, wild hair, general grubbiness – a bush scrap of a thing. Everything that you are, that you represent. He looks at your pockets as if he suddenly expects them to be bulging; at the book as if he can’t believe someone from there would be reading it. Would be reading full stop. Flips it open like he’s expecting stolen sheets of gold to fall from it. Snaps it shut, pockets it in ownership.
‘Can you leave now, please. I have work to do.’
You stare at him, rooted to the spot.
‘Shall I involve the police?’
As if you are about to bring an entire mining community of thieves and claimants crowding into his place.
Too much gap.
Not seeing you. Who you are, who you’re not.
Just wanting you gone and his world back.
The piracy of indifference; and your hackles rise at it.
Lesson 56
Some instinct warns you that you are making yourself ridiculous
Anger unlocks you. You’d never be able to talk to him but for this.
‘I’m stuck. I need to get home but the gate was locked.’ Indignant, slow; as if it’s him, now, who doesn’t understand. ‘I’m not staying.’
‘Well off you go then.’ He scoops up his groceries. ‘I left the gate open again, I’ve just realised,’ he mutters absently, furiously. ‘And yes, it’s the last time that’ll be happening.’
As if he suddenly can’t bear to have you here, in his secret place; an uninvited encroachment from the surrounding world – he’s been found out and he’s consumingly distracted by the thought of that. As he lifts up his groceries they tumble out of a slit in the plastic: tin cans and sausages, bread, chocolate biscuits.
‘Blast.’
He has to bend to scoop them up, awkwardly, with those gammy hips. It makes him curiously vulnerable and it spines you up.
‘I need a pump.’
You’re reaching down to help; he’s snatching things up, doesn’t want you or need you – scat!
‘What?’ Incomprehension. ‘Could you go now, please, or I will call the police.
’ And he bundles away his groceries, awkwardly cradling them in his arms and they’re tumbling to the floor but he doesn’t pick them up, he’s in too much of a hurry to get away, to his study, to get you out.
‘Wait.’ You stride after him but he shuts the workroom door, leaving the dog and you looking at each other in perplexed solidarity. The dog whines, you rap loudly. Silence. Almost laugh, ‘Haven’t you got the wrong room there for the shopping?’
No laughter in response.
Right.
‘Um, my bike has a puncture. I need a pump. That’s all. To get home.’ And never come back, you almost add.
‘I am not a cyclist.’
Quick as a flash: ‘What about that shed? Out the back.’
You had a look earlier. Behind a dusty window was a stack of cobwebby bikes.
‘So what else have you sized up?’
Silence. Your hot cheeks.
‘Help yourself to a pump – if there is one – then go, immediately. Thank you.’ You’re a pest, nothing else. ‘And don’t even think about the bikes.’
Yep, you know exactly what he thinks of those Beddy people.
‘Or the books.’
I bet he never even knew he had bikes until this moment. The anger rises in you, magnificent.
‘I wasn’t taking your book, I was reading it.’
God this would never work. You want to throttle him.
‘And don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of coming back,’ you throw at him in parting, in the voice of a kid with their tongue stuck out.
Lesson 57
If you want a thing done, go yourself
There is a pump, of course; you know bike sheds. You find it in the fumbly gloom, dragging cobwebs furiously from your face. Fill the tyre outside, fast, the light is now rapidly fading. He’s watching from his kitchen window; watching like you’re going to curl up in that shed and make a right home of it or grab for the taking a different bike.
You fling his pump back inside the shed. An almighty clatter. Don’t care. Ride off without looking back. Cycling fast, swerving wildly at a twisted bit of muffler rearing up like a petrified snake and righting yourself hurtling on but in less than three minutes the tyre is flat, again; now you’re speeding on the rim and feeling every jeering bump. You fling the bike down in disgust, it’s not going to work. Turn back to the window. Yep, still watching. Of course. The little girl inside you screams. You sweep your hands out theatrically before the carcass of your useless bike: behold. You’re going to have to go back, whether he likes it or not.
A loud rap on his workroom door.
‘I’m stuck.’
‘So I see.’
‘You’ll have to drive me home or I’m here all night. And you’ve got a lot of books.’
Despite himself, the snort of a laugh.
The door snaps open. Car keys are in his hand. The voice is low, warning, but there’s just a hint of a smile.
‘Never, ever mention that you’ve found this place.’
‘What’ll you give me?’ You grin, can’t help it, naughtied up. ‘My uncle knows the inside of every house in this valley … except this one.’
The shudder is almost visible. You eye the book in his pocket. He clamps his hand protectively to the little Victorian volume and turns on his heel, to the car.
‘Your reward is a lift home which I’ve really got no time for because I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to finish. Tonight.’
He pats his pocket, his back to you.
‘And besides, she may have something to teach me. Thanks for that.’
Lesson 58
They who are little spoken of in the world at large
You’ve overtaken him, leaping into the passenger seat before he’s near his car. Bec is flurrying all over you with snuffles and licks, all the unconditional love which you return, laughing in relief; at least someone appreciates you in this place.
‘You’re very … alive … aren’t you?’ the man says in bemused distaste, as he starts the ignition.
‘And you’re not?’
Annoyance is smoothing your self-consciousness, and being in a car, and with a dog; if you were in any other situation you’d never be able to talk like this. Just the careful way he’s dressed would usually stumble your talk – all he’d need is a Gauloises to complete the image and Lune has told you, wild-eyed, about the men who smoke them. He takes a deep breath.
‘I’ll drop you on the outskirts of Beddington. And remember, you’ll never be able to come back here, I’ll see to that. Don’t even think about it.’
Intrigued. By all of it. Too much you don’t know and it’s right at your doorstep and you’ve got weeks of holidays ahead of you and a home you need to escape and he’s reeling you in and has no idea of it.
His voice is smooth and sure, a hidden creek overarched by the bush, strong and cool and self-sufficient. You, on the other hand, are a desert before him: wide open, ready, aching for nourishment. And he smiled, he laughed – was it once, twice – you got him to do it, just.
The car roars through a cathedral of trees, you’ve never driven so fast.
‘Whoo hooooo!’ You’re suddenly laughing, winding down your window and butting the wind with your face.
‘Get your head in,’ he snaps, ‘or you’ll lose it.’
Silence, glary, as he flies down the axle-breaking road. Trees lean in close, branches slap against the car and your hand sneaks back outside: trying to grab the night’s coolness with your palm.
‘Get in!’
You withdraw your hand from the slap of the air but put your bare feet on the dashboard, as you always do.
Violent braking.
You jerk forward.
The car’s clicking stillness.
He looks at you in that stopping as if he’s never come across anything like you: half wild, half human, utterly incomprehensible, impossible to contain.
You spurt a laugh, in nervousness as much as anything. ‘What?’ You shrug, perplexed. Your feet remain on the dash.
He revs and shoots forward, your feet can’t grip, they drop.
‘Good one, mate,’ you giggle and raise your thumb.
He chuckles, shaking his head; he’s given up. For a moment there’s a slipping into something else.
His hand. On the leather gearstick. The fingers you’ve never seen before. Not worker’s fingers. No coarseness, no calluses, no grubby black collecting in crevices. You want to lick them, like an animal; learn them. Hold each tip still and savouring in the cave of your mouth. You lift up both your own blunt hands in front of your face and turn them around in wonder, as if you’ve never seen the like of them before; staring at the dirt compacted in crescent moons under the nails and the river map of lines in the cracks of your palms and not just your hands, of course, but your bare feet, too; you sit cross-legged on the seat and drag them up – yep, filthy black, as they always are, with the skin ridged up the sides in deep fissured cracks; and then your knees, you’re curving right over now and examining the coal dust permanently tattooed across them in thin leeches and you lick them and of course the black doesn’t come off and how bizarre you must seem to someone like him and it is as if you have awareness of your bush self, for the first time in your life – all the raggedness, the loudness, the rawness in this place – the vast affront of who you are and what you represent. To someone like him.
You stare across, at his eyes, resolutely not engaging with you.
With everything he is not.
Lesson 59
The age of chivalry, with all its benefits and harmfulness, is gone by for us women
The gate to his property.
Locked.
You burst out laughing. Despite himself, he does too.
‘Yes, I am going mad. Alright. You win. Don’t ask. Too much in my head.’ He shakes it as he stops the car, as if trying to clear it out, takes the keys from the ignition and hands them across. Looks at you. Cocks his head.
‘It’s the small silver one.�
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Well, that’s one rule of the bush he’s absorbed. You jump out grinning and swing the two halves wide. Glad to help, mister, glad to help. He drives through and stops abrupt.
‘Padlock it.’
‘Aren’t you coming back?’
‘You might get back before me.’ He raises his eyes to the heavens. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’
You fiddle with the lock, standing with the sole of one foot resting on your knee, as you always do; it takes a while, you can’t make the loop click. He toots in exasperation.
‘Come on. Your dinner’s getting cold.’
‘But it’s not fair, I want to come back,’ you tease, standing tall at the front of his car, your feet on his bumper and balancing with your hands on the bonnet, the ten year old wheedling to her dad. ‘Pleeeeeeeeease.’
Something shuts down his face like a roller door on a shop. In an instant his mood has changed. You’ve gone too far. He gets out of the car.
‘I have work to do. Alright? And you’re not welcome in this place.’ He grips your shoulders hard and lifts you out of the way and propels you towards the passenger seat. You rub your collarbone and examine the affronted skin on your upper arms, the bruises like pale yellow petals already rushing onto it.
A clotted silence.
That you’re wrong in some way. That you have no idea.
A silence you have faced for much of your life.
Lesson 60
It is in transactions between women and women that the difficulty lies
No more talk, no more teasing, as you bullet south to Beddington. Dust hangs among the trees like smoke. You drink in the watchfulness of the moon, it’s following the Volvo like a hovering mother on the edges of a first date. Dusty old cassettes under his car radio have Ephemera 1, 2 and 3 written on them. You’d love to know what’s on them, would love to know what Ephemera means. You run your fingertip along a spine, tracing the distinctive boldness of the handwriting. Someone who is very sure of themselves, oh yes. Glance across to a stony concentration on the road. You retreat. Drum your hand on the car roof.
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 29
