He made several deep indentations but the cuts didnt bleed. He became more frantic and slid the shell along his calf. Here the shell sliced wonderfully and the blood flowed freely. Thank God, he muttered. Thank God Im alive. Thank God, thank God Im alive. Thank God.
He threw the shell away and rolled down his trouser. He pulled his shoe back on. He sat for a while, breathing heavily.
Then something occurred to him. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He withdrew some tablets. Three types: little whites, little blues and some brighter, brasher capsules, all neat and curtailed in their foil and plastic. He chose randomly. The white ones. He took six, chewed, swallowed, without wincing.
When he returned the packets to his pocket Ronny discovered something else there. Monicas letter. He pulled it out. He felt so alone. He was alone. Jim had abandoned him. He opened it.
Dear Ronny, he read. Dear Ronny. He blinked a few times, gulped, then read on.
In a dream The Head had told her exactly what to do. Every detail. The Head was very interested in Ronny. He felt a connection, an empathy. The Head was convinced that Ronny had entered Lilys life for very specific reasons, although he didnt specify what these might be exactly. Specifications werent really his strong point.
Lily sat on the bus trying to make sense of it, but not trying particularly hard. She didnt like making sense of things. It wasnt an especially helpful process, making sense. It wasnt one of her regular indulgences. But what she did decide, finally, was that a burial of some kind was necessary. A ceremony. Something formal. A gesture.
And tied up, linked, entwined in the burial process would be the death of something else (something raging, foetid, unspe-cific), or the birth, or the rebirth, an awakening. Something.
Sometimes Lily wished shed been raised a Catholic. Then she wouldnt have needed to improvise so much. Things wouldve been so much more formal and lucid and constrained. In the well-worn form, the predictable angles of confession, forgiveness, catharsis.
Ronny had saidwhat was it? She couldnt remember. She stared out of the window. Was this an A road or a motorway? How big was London? Was it easily navigable?
What Ronny had in fact said was that devils and demons were created simply as a means for primitive people to express their feelings overwhelming feelings, engulfing feelings of anger and guilt and panic. That was all. Easy.
Ronny had said these words but Lily hadnt understood what hed meant by them exactly. Was it a denial? Was it ridicule? Was it all just lies? What she did understand, though, was that Ronny was more than just a pretty face. More. More. More. He was a missionary. He was an emissary. He was downright fucking edible.
A burial. That was it. What was needed. A burial followed by a wake a wake awake.
She licked her lips.
It was a long, straight road and they saw each other approaching from far, far away. Like two prize-fighters, all hips and holster and spur-twinkling stagger. Except that Ronny alone staggered it was his habitual gait and if Sara was ready to draw, to burst, to explode, it was merely an illusion, an aftertaste of the mornings fireworks.
She was finding herself. Even here, step after step on this long, straight road. Even here. But it was a curious journey. Hard on the feet. Tricky terrain.
They drew adjacent to one another. Ronny was in his own world. He seemed colourless. He barely noticed her.
Ronny.
What?
His voice was almost fractious. She couldve been anybody.
Its me. Sara. Remember?
Yes.
He nodded but he hardly glanced at her. Then he walked on.
Where are you going?
She called after him.
Nowhere.
He kept on walking, hoping shed forget about him if he held his breath. He held it. It worked.
Sara stood still and smiled to herself. She had the camera slung around her neck. It bumped against her breasts. Was she invisible? Was she truly invisible? Was everything too late now? She shook her head and walked onwards.
Ronny located the farm with ease. On the final leg of his walk he was accompanied by a strange group of companions. The boar. Each small pack trotted together in unison along the perimeter of their individual enclosures. They followed Ronny in relays. He was their skinny baton, and they all kept perfect time with him.
But Ronny didnt focus on the boar. He was focused elsewhere. Somewhere hot, somewhere scalding and dense and deep inside. The front door of the farmhouse was locked but the back door wasnt. He pushed it open. The kitchen smelled of coffee and of cabbage. He inspected the taps, the sink, the table, the crockery a pale blue colour, standing jauntily on an old dresser, spotless.
Hed never had a proper home. Was this a proper home? He breathed it all in. The hallway. The stairway. He inspected the walls as he climbed the stairs, searching out residue from Lilys previous misadventure.
He drifted from room to room. First, Saras bedroom. It was plain and powdery and vaguely mussed. The cupboard doors were open, and inside her clothes were hung on old metal hangers like a threadbare assemblage of frustrated sighs. He fingered the assorted fabrics. He looked down at the shoes. A hat-box on the top shelf, and, in the corner, under dense plastic, a long white dress. A wedding dress. He lifted the dress from the cupboard. He pulled off the plastic. Net and dust and old yellowy silk fell from his clumsy fingers and frothed on to the carpet.
He caught sight of himself in the dresser. He got a shock. He stared grimly, as though he almost didnt recognize his reflection, but it was the actual possibility of recognition that bothered him. He looked down at the dress again. He unfastened the zip. He used both hands. He pulled it wide, to its fullest extent, so that the dress lay open, like a fine cocoon, like a silk sleeping bag. He stepped into it, and pulled it on, over his clothes. He zipped it up again. It was big on him. He turned around slowly and then inspected himself in the mirror. He smiled, because now he was truly unrecognizable. He lifted his skirts with a swish and left the room.
Lilys bedroom. Books. Magazines. The bed unmade. A set of drawers. He yanked open the top one. Underwear. He closed it. The second one: T-shirts, jumpers, socks. The third. In the third drawer he discovered a selection of small animal pelts. Stiff. Some of them quite old. A vole. Two rabbits. A weasel. A bat dried up even a cat pelt. A small collection of pellets, deposited, he presumed, by an owl or something, containing, in crushed up perplexity, little bones and bits of skin and gristle and other stuff. He couldve sworn he saw a jaw. A tiny jaw. A mouses jaw. He marvelled then withdrew.
Also, some pieces of wire. Two knives. Both sharp. He tested them on his thumb, lovingly, kept hold of the sharpest, lifted his skirts and slipped it into his pocket, then put the other back. He continued inspecting. A lipstick (somewhat incongruous, he frowned) and feathers. Mainly pigeon and hen feathers but also some which were smaller and brighter.
Ronny pushed the drawer shut. He mopped at his face with his skirts. His face felt hot. Dust from the skirts made him feel like sneezing. He wheezed and then vacated. Connies room. On the bed, a suitcase. He walked straight over to it, feeling like he was inside some kind of tunnel. With so much focus, so much magnification that it almost made him topple. This was the moment. He knew it. Something told him. The moment.
Ronny opened the suitcase. Clothes, cosmetics. An extra pair of sandals. But tucked into a corner, wrapped up in a ribbon, just as Lily had described them, the letters.
Where have you been? he asked, out loud, quite matter of factly. Then shoved in his hands like a surgeon attending a routine caesarean grasped hold of the letters and delivered them.
Jim couldnt tell the difference between waking and dreaming. There was no precise moment when he entered consciousness.
Just hotness. Confusion. He didnt even know that his eyes were open. But they were open. He was looking into the face of a girl. She was sleeping. It was all so calm. He was not thinking. Just staring, blankly.
A little face. Its brow puckered. He stared at the brow and the pucker. He wished the pucker would go. He imagined it gone. And no sooner had he imagined it than it went. His eyes slid down her nose and landed on her lips, which were neat and dry. He stared at her lips.
A thought entered his head. It said: You could do anything.
He considered the thought. Anything? What did that mean?
I know that I am evil, he told the thought, but I will do no harm here.
There. His heart lifted.
He circled his eyes around her face. Her chin, her cheeks, her brows, her crown. He circled, lime and time again. A mental massage. And as he circled he was sure of it her face relaxed, and relaxed, and all the sadness in it departed.
Her breathing grew deeper, then deeper still. The corners of her lips lifted. She was smiling, pretty much. Then she stopped breathing, just for a moment, and finally her eyes opened. She was staring into his face. He did not blink. He expected to see fear in her eyes, but there was nothing there but blue.
I was dreaming of my father, she said, her voice riddled with a dozy amazement, he was standing over me, touching my face. And all the hurt was drawn right out of me. Pulled out in one go, like a bee sting yanked free by tweezers.
Jim continued to stare, without blinking, stifling everything in his chest, his face; deadening, ignoring what shed said entirely, determined to feel nothing and, he told himself, succeeding.
Hello? Are you awake?
She leaned closer, frowning. Or are you sleeping?
He felt her breath on his face.
Are you sleeping? she asked again, with your eyes wide open? Am I in your dreams? Do you see me?
Connieimagined herself lost deep inside Jims head. This thought tickled her, somehow. She didnt dare wake him then, so she withdrew, very softly, a mere thought, a twinkle, a Tinkerbell, an Ariel; floating and golden and embossed. Beatific.
Ronny,
Whose fault is this? Is it my fault? Louis trapped me in a corner and started telling me about how animals had no fear of man before he made them fear him. In the Americas, he said, when people first landed on the Pacific islands, and in New Zealand tooIn New Zealand. I dont know. Hang on. Let me get my facts straight. Should I brush up on my geography?
Screw the facts, anyway. Heres the gist: there were over sixty types of flightless bird at one time. In the world. Some were up to half a ton in weight. But because they lived in parts of the globe unexplored by man, they had never actually seen him before this scrappy, fragile, two-legged creature and so they had no reason to fear him.