The policeman studies my passport briefly then flips it shut and hands it back to Tom. “Mark,” he says giving me a nod as he opens Tom’s.
“Tom,” he reads. “Tom Gambino.” His voice rises so noticeably as he says, “Gambino,” that I turn back to study his expression.
“Gambino?” he repeats. “Italiano?”
Tom shakes his head and nods at his passport. “Inglese,” he says, nodding his head for emphasis.
“Un momento.”
The policeman walks to his car, leans in and reaches for the walky-talky.
“What’s that all about?” I snigger. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Don’t!” Tom says.
“Is it Italian?” I ask. “I never really thought about it.”
Tom nods and shrugs. “Yeah, grandparents, well, one of them anyway. Never met him though. He died before I was born, came over in the thirties…”
“I always knew you were exotic,” I say.
Tom raps his fingers on the armrest and pulls a face. “Yeah, sure am,” he laughs, nervously glancing at the policeman. “Born and bred in Wolverhampton.”
When the policeman returns, he rattles off an even longer bout of Italian, hands Tom his passport and winks at him. “Buona Notte Signor Gambino,” he says, a definite smirk on his face. Then he bangs the side of the van, and spins sharply back towards his car.
“Okay… So he says the third campsite is full …” Tom tells me.
“Shit!”
“But he says there’s a farm he knows where we can camp.”
My skin prickles with relief. I was actually thinking he might book us for trespassing. “So, you escape the law once again, Signor Gambino,” I say.
“Don’t!” Tom admonishes. “There’s a siding or something a few meters behind you. He says to reverse into it.”
“And then?”
“He says to reverse a bit into the bushes so he can get past and then turn around and follow him. It’s not far…”
“Oh,” I say, the stress now falling completely away. “Cool.”
Tom frowns. “Yeah,” he says thoughtfully.
“And?”
Tom shrugs. “I’m not quite sure, but I think he said he’ll tell him…” he pauses and shakes his head.
“Yeah?”
“Sorry, I’m just thinking about the words he used. Carino.”
“Carino?” I repeat.
“Yeah,” Tom says dubitatively. “I think it means cute.”
“Cute?”
“Yes. I think he said he’ll tell his friend – the one with the farm – tell him how cute we are,” Tom says.
“Oh,” I say, starting to reverse again. “Was that both of us then, or just me?” I ask with a chuckle.
“Well actually, I’m the one he winked at,” Tom laughs.
The police car squeezes past, and I turn in the clearing and head back down the track.
“At least we have somewhere to stay. Quite a result, considering …”
“Hum,” Tom says mockingly. “What would you do without me? I mean, cute or not, I can’t help but wonder how you manage when I’m not around.”
“I’m not sure either, Signor Gambino,” I say.
*
Tom is snoring, oblivious to the shifting shadows of the countryside around us, dead to the chilling noises in the distance. I try to resist the urge to peer out through the curtains again – it only makes things worse – but I can’t help it. We may have been told to camp here by a friendly cute policeman, but I’m freaked.
The overhanging trees are moving spookily in the cold blue light, casting twisting shadows from the nearly full moon. Every few minutes a metallic scrape breaks the rustling quiet of the forest, followed by a dull thud. I try to imagine what could make such a noise in the country at 2 AM.
A guillotine being raised, and then repeatedly dropped? “Ridiculous,” I tell myself.
I snuggle to Tom’s back, hoping that he will awaken and reassure me, but he just groans and rolls away, so I prop myself up on my elbows and peer out at the night.
Grate – thud. The guillotine falls again.
It seems that I will never get to sleep.
Tom’s arm pulls me towards him until we’re as snug as spoons in a drawer. I open one eye and squint at the orange brightness. The air inside the van is stifling. The roof of the van is so hot I can feel the heat radiating from it.
“Hot,” I mumble.
Tom reaches behind and slides open one of the small windows letting in a welcome gust of oxygen, and then slithers and snuggles back against me.
“Morning gorgeous,” he says. “You sleep okay?”
I laugh. “Not really,” I say. “I got spooked about noises outside.”
“Noises?” he says with a yawn. “You should have woken me; I slept like a log.”
“You slept like a log because I didn’t wake you,” I mumble.
Tom rolls away with a grunt and, worried that I have offended him, I follow his movement and enlace him with my arms.
“Sorry,” I say. “Bad night.”
Tom shrugs and yawns. “Sunny,” he says. “Again!”
I nuzzle the nape of his neck, and reach down for his dick but he pushes my hand away again with a simple, “Nah, not now.”
Behind his back, I frown and sigh. “Is something wrong?” I ask.
Tom strains to look back at me. “No,” he says. “Why?”
“It’s just you didn’t want to yesterday either,” I point out.
“I was knackered yesterday,” he says.
“And today?”
“Today you’re knackered,” he laughs.
I push against him. “Doesn’t stop me though; see?” I say pushing my dick against his buttocks.
Tom nods towards the window. “It just feels a bit public,” he says.
I laugh and push him over onto his front then roll my weight onto his back.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I laugh.
A gust of wind ripples the tiny curtains so I reach up to pull them closed. And freeze. A face is staring back at me, mere inches beyond the window. Piercing green eyes, deeply tanned, maybe even a little dirty – jet-black dishevelled hair, late thirties maybe early forties. Good looking, but wild.
“Jesus!” I say.
Tom looks up. “Jeeze!” he repeats, tugging at a coat to cover himself.
“Buongiorno,” the man says. He lifts a small carrier bag to the window and waves it at us. “I bring eggs and milk. You English?”
Tom nods. “Yeah, thanks, but…”
“I scare you,” he says. “Sorry.”
“No,” Tom says. “It’s okay.”
“Sure scared the shit out of me!” I mutter.
“And you busy,” the man says with a wink. “I understand. Here.” He waves the bag at us again.
Tom glances at me and when I shrug, then he reaches out and takes it. “Thanks, sorry… Look, I’ll get up,” he says.
But the man shakes his head. “No, you have a fat morning,” he says. “You travel and tired.”
He gives us a little wave, before adding, “You come find me later, you come find Dante.” As he says his name he points to himself, then to the right. “In farm.”
And then, as though he is in a lift, his face slides downwards and vanishes from the window.
I take the bag and peer inside. “Fuck, he scared me,” I say, handing it back to Tom.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too! Fresh eggs for breakfast though.”
“So there shall be buns for tea,” I say in my best posh accent.
Tom frowns at me and I shrug. “Never mind. It’s from the Railway Children.”
“Weird looking bloke though,” Tom says.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Cave man. Do you think he saw us, I mean…”
“Can’t see how he could have missed it really,” Tom says, reaching for his jogging bottoms.
“Hey, don’t get up,” I say, “I haven�
�t finished. I haven’t even started actually.”
Tom pushes me away playfully and kneels on the bed. “As I was saying,” he says. “It’s a bit public here.”
I step from the van and scan the surroundings; in daylight everything looks stunningly mundane. The headless man is a warped olive-tree trunk; the weird crop circle – nothing more than a flattened area where some farm machinery has stood. The eerie moonlight has been replaced by sunlight dappling the forest floor through vibrant green leaves.
Tom jumps down beside me and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Demons all gone then?” he asks, reading my mind.
I nod. “Looks that way,” I say. “Best to move on before they come back though,” I add.
“Eggs for breakfast then?” Tom asks with a shrug.
I smile at him. “Yeah, and those dry toasty things,” I say. “We’ve still got some of those.”
Tom brews coffee and scrambles eggs, and I fold out two deckchairs and sit and watch the swirling of the long grass in the summer breeze. Behind me the clattering of utensils and the opening and closing of tiny cupboards sounds familiar and reassuring.
“Milk?” I ask as Tom hands me the coffee pot.
He wrinkles his nose. “I wouldn’t,” he says. “It smells funny…”
“Funny?”
“Yeah,” he laughs holding the bottle towards me.
I shake my head. “Nah, it’s okay,” I say. “I’ll take your word for it.”
As we walk, I strain to peer over the straggling bushes at the farmhouse beyond. Tom, beside me, is studying the ground.
“You looking for tracks?” I ask.
He kicks a rusty beer can lying in the field and looks up at me. “Uh?”
“You look like you’re tracking someone,” I say.
Tom shakes his head. “Nah, mushrooms,” he says. “It looks like a field where we used to go mushrooming… near Brighton, but I think it’s too dry here.”
I nod towards the gate. “We just pop in, say goodbye and bugger off, okay?”
Tom shrugs. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess so.”
“I don’t want to get caught looking for a campsite in the dark again,” I say.
We push through the rusty gate, which creaks and grates – I realise that this is the noise I heard during the night – and cross the dusty farmyard. Chickens cluck and scatter around us.
Bits of disused farm equipment lie around and just to the left of the front door sits a sofa – it’s been covered with a mouldy tarpaulin.
We knock on the weather-beaten front door, and peer through the dirty windows into a functional, but threadbare kitchen – a worn wooden table and unmatched chairs, a black wood-burning range.
“Looks like he lives alone,” I say.
“How can you tell?” Tom asks.
I shrug. “Wives don’t let places look like that,” I say.
“Yeah,” Tom agrees thoughtfully. “A bit of a hermit by the looks of it.”
We walk the length of the building and peer down the side of the house. It’s exactly the same as the front – dusty ground picked dry by the hens, an old lawnmower, a rusty oil-drum, three car tyres piled up…
“Looks like he’s gone out,” I say, inexplicably relieved. “Maybe we should just leave a note.” I check my pockets for a pen.
“And maybe we could leave some cash for the eggs? He doesn’t exactly look rich,” Tom says.
“Hey,” I say, nodding at something on the ground. “Rainbow flag,” I say, pointing.
As Tom walks over and lifts one corner of the faded flag, I jerk my head sideways. “Come on Tom,” I say. “Lets just go.”
Tom nods, and I wonder if he too is relieved that we haven’t bumped into the wild-man. We turn to go, but freeze. I hear Tom take a sharp intake of breath.
“Again!” I say, laughing tightly. Dante is standing only a few feet away. He’s grinning broadly, madly even. And he’s covered in blood.
Tom too laughs nervously. “Oh, hello,” he says.
Dante nods and wipes his hands on the stained apron but says nothing.
“We came to say goodbye,” I tell him.
He shakes his head and continues to smile. “No,” he says. “Not goodbye. Not yet.”
Dante drags the tarp off the sofa revealing an unlikely leather chesterfield. “You sit,” he says, as he goes inside.
“He makes me nervous,” I whisper.
“We’ll have a coffee and go,” Tom says. “Relax.”
“Relax…” I repeat. “He’s too smiley.”
Tom snorts discreetly.
“He could be an axe murderer,” I whisper. “He’s covered in blood.”
“It’s a farm,” Tom laughs, as if this explains everything.
We sit and wait in subdued silence. Occasionally a gust of wind blows the tall grass beyond the fence, and then a few seconds later the dust of the yard swirls in delayed sympathy.
“Our lives are mad really,” Tom says after a moment. “I mean, you never really realise it, but there are loads of people still living like this.”
“Not sure I’d want to though,” I say looking around and wrinkling my nose.
Tom wobbles his head from side to side. “Sure, not exactly like this. But it would be good to slow it all down sometimes, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, well, it’s certainly slow round here,” I say. “It’s still about, what, 1950?”
Tom laughs. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It could still be the thirties really.”
“Allora!”
We turn to see Dante backing through the door. He’s carrying a tray with a hexagonal espresso pot and three mismatched cups.
“Breakfast is good?”
I smile. “The eggs. Lovely!” I enthuse.
Dante has changed his top and removed the apron, but his shoes are still bloodstained. He follows my gaze and looks down at his feet. He frowns, then says, “Pigs. I…”
He places the tray at our feet and looks up at us and then makes a slitting action across his throat.
Tom nods. “You killed them?”
Dante nods enthusiastically. “Yes, I kill them,” he says proudly.
He positions a plastic crate opposite the sofa, then sits on it and pours an inch of the thick black coffee into each of the cups. “You don’t like pigs?” he says peering up at me from beneath heavy brows, “Jewish?”
“Jewish?” I say wrinkling my brow quizzically.
“You don’t eat pig?” Dante repeats.
“No,” I say. “It’s not that… No not that at all… I don’t eat any meat, neither of us do.”
Dante pulls a face and hands me a chipped yellow cup.
“We’re vegetarian,” Tom explains.
The bitter scent of the coffee reaches my nose. “You have any sugar?” I ask.
Dante shakes his head. “Sugar will kill you,” he says. “No sugar.”
I nod. “We have some in the van,” I say, pointing. “Maybe I should just nip…”
Dante frowns. “No sugar,” he repeats.
I force a smile. “I’ll just have it without then,” I say, casting a nervous glance at Tom.
“So you don’t like to kill pig,” Dante says.
I shake my head, and wonder if he’s ever met a vegetarian before.
“Why?” Dante asks with a shrug.
I shrug back and smile dumbly. “I don’t like to kill animals,” I say.
Dante nods.
“There are lots of vegetarians in England,” Tom says.
Dante nods and sips his coffee.
“So you farm other things, or just pigs?” I ask.
He frowns, and seemingly ignores my attempt at conversation. “So if you are in the forest and you meet… Come si dice cinghiale?”
“Wild pig?” Tom volunteers.
Dante nods. “You meet cinghiale… So you kill or cinghiale kill you?” The question is directed at me.
I shrug again. “It never happened,” I retort.
Dante
frowns.
“I never had to face wild pig in the forest,” I explain.
“We live in the city,” Tom adds.
Dante nods knowingly. “But philosophy is about the what not happen,” he says. “So?”
Tom shrugs and turns to Dante. “If I had to kill it to survive then I would,” he says.
Dante nods. “And then you eat? When you have kill it?”
“What is it about meat-eaters?” I think. “Why are they always so challenged by the presence of a vegetarian?” I force down another sip of the coffee and wonder if I will really have to drink all of it before we can get away.
“It’s not so much the killing,” I say. “It’s the way it happens, the suffering, the factory farming… That’s what I hate.”
Dante frowns and looks to Tom for a translation. “Fectory?” he repeats.
“Erm, allevamento?” Tom says hesitantly. “Intensivo?”
Dante nods knowingly. “So, not…” He sighs in frustration. “Not la sostanza,” he says. “la forma.”
Tom shakes his head indicating that he doesn’t understand.
“It’s like the French,” I say. “Not the substance, but the form… I can’t think how to translate it though.”
Dante nods and winks. “A very good philosophical point,” he says. “Because the form?”
We both nod.
“The form, is the sostanza.”
“The form is the substance?” I say adding an almost indistinguishable shrug to show Tom that I only vaguely understand what he means.
Dante tuts and shakes his head then sips his coffee. “So you never kill a pig?” he asks.
I smirk at the question and shake my head. “No,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “I don’t want to either.”
“My pigs are very happy,” he says.
“Except when you kill them,” Tom laughs.
Dante frowns.
“Pigs not so happy when you kill them,” Tom paraphrases.
Dante squints thoughtfully. “La forma,” he says. “e’ molto importante.” He stands, and for a wonderful moment I think that our coffee break is over, that we can stop talking about executing pigs and get out of here.
In fact Dante moves behind the sofa, behind me.
“Toma,” he says, sliding an arm across my chest.
I stiffen and glance back over my shoulder at Dante who is grinning.
Tom shakes his head. “What exactly…” he says, puzzled; I see him chew his lip, hesitating between amusement and concern.
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