He smiled. At first it makes you irritable, because the body and the brain hate doing things the hard way. But its simply a question of working through that initial hostility, and once youve worked it through, you feel this intense kind of joy. Really intense.
Jim tore a piece of bread in half. At length he said, You must have been extremely miserable at some point. I mean before all this.
I was, Ronny grinned, but not any more.
He then ate four mouthfuls of his meal and pushed his plate aside.
Jim focused on the plate. Its very he considered for a moment, well, frustrating. Its frustrating to see you push your plate away when youre obviously still hungry.
Ronny shook his head. Im not hungry. He rested his elbows on the table. Youre much bossier than you think, Jim, he added cheerfully.
Jim was taken aback. Hed been considering Ronny and his unhappiness. He hadnt considered himself as a part of any equation. Me? Bossy?
He saw the guiding light in his life as a palpable indifference. A supreme, a superb, a spectacular indifference. Ronny shrugged. If you ate less you might feel better about things. The way I see it, the less you eat, the less energy you have to expend on unnecessary stuff. If you were hungry you probably wouldnt be the slightest bit interested in what I did or didnt do.
Jim wasnt impressed by Ronnys reasoning, but for the sake of argument he pushed his own plate away for a moment and said, Everyone has a few stupid habits. Im sure I have plenty, but I try not to dwell on them, and I certainly wouldnt want them to influence my life any more than they do already.
So what are yours?
Ronny was smiling as though he imagined Jims habits would be nothing to write home about.
Well Jim disliked talking about himself but he resolved to do so, just this once, to make his point, when I was a kid my dad used to break things if I formed an attachment to them. To teach me a lesson about dependence. And in a way it set me free, although I really hated him for it at the time. But now Jim twisted his fork in his hand, now, if ever I form an attachment to something, to anything, I feel the need to break it myself.
Ronny was clearly impressed. He looked around him, at the furniture, at the walls.
What kinds of things?
All sorts of stuff. Cups. Clothes. Watches.
And you still do it?
Jim nodded. Sometimes.
Why?
I have no idea. I dont bother analysing.
But you should.
Jim shook his head.
No, really, you should. Its interesting. Ronny frowned for a moment and then continued. By rights you shouldve grown up to really treasure things. In fact, by rights you shouldve become a real hoarder. Dont you think?
Jim was happy to accept this theory, but he wouldnt think about it.
Look Ronny took something from his pocket and unfolded it, I got this from your neighbour.
What is it?
A pamphlet. It mentions the black rabbits.
Jim began eating again. And so?
For a second back there I thought youd gone and made it up.
Jim stopped chewing. Why would I have done that?
To get me here.
Jims stomach convulsed. But why?
Ronny shook his head. I dont know. I felt uneasy. Just for a split second, which was stupid.
You said I had an honest face, Jim sounded pathetic, to himself. You said it was an instinct.
It is an instinct. Thats just my point. I was right about your face. This simply confirms it.
Ronny tossed the pamphlet down on to the table, then stood up and went to the doorway to stare out at the sea. Look, a tanker! he exclaimed. Do you see the lights?
Jim didnt respond. He put down his fork. Hed lost his appetite. He felt very strange, all of a sudden, like this was a dream he was living, like this was a tired, old dream, and he didnt like the feel of it. Not one bit.
For a second he wished himself inanimate. It was a knack hed always had; the capacity to disengage himself from any situation, to empty his body and to go elsewhere. And for a fraction of a second he got his wish. He was no longer inside, but outside, and from outside he saw two men in a bare prefab by the brown sea. It should have been a simple image, thoroughly uncontentious. But it suddenly transformed, it was peeled like a banana, and while the outside had been fine, had been firm, the inside was soft and brown and bruised. The inside was marred and scarred and tarnished. Jim felt a profound, jarring sense of unease. Everything was curbed and complicated and twisted and blocked. Could this be right? Even from the outside, from the cold, cold outside, it all seemed so pleasureless.
He blinked and then looked around him, bewildered. He was back, he was back, but who was this man? What was this place? He put up a hand to his cheek, to his nose. He felt his own face. What am I playing at?
For a brief moment Jim questioned his own motivation and then, just as abruptly, he stopped questioning.
Ronny, he said quietly, what happened to all your stuff?
My stuff?
The box. The box you had.
Ah! Ronny murmured, I gave it away. I lost it.
Jim shuddered. He didnt know why. Suddenly, though, he was wide awake. His nose was tingling. It was getting cold.
Cold outside. Cold. Cold inside.
Eight
As far as Lily knew, her father, Ian, had been in Southampton for eight weeks taking care of her grandmother, who had suffered from a minor stroke three months before and was now fresh out of hospital and finding her feet back at home.
Lilys mother, Sara, was taking care of the farm in his absence. Luckily, the farm pretty much looked after itself, because Sara was in a state of flux. She was forty-two and had shed over four stone during the previous year. A yeast allergy. When shed avoided bread and buns and all those other yeasty temptations the pizzas, the doughnuts, the occasional half pint of stout the weight quite literally fell away. Shed been prone to extended attacks of thrush before, and now that had cleared up too, which was definitely an added bonus.
She was a new woman.
They had forty boar altogether. Which wasnt many, actually. But the market for them had become increasingly lucrative over recent years. They were organic. They were shot at the trough. One minute they were gorging, the next they were dead. Quick as anything. The other boars took the shootings phlegmatically, each one just as keen to shove in their shoulder and take anothers place.
And in that respect, Lily felt, they were just like people.
Lily enjoyed the boars. She preferred them to pigs. They were hairier and even less genteel. They were bloody enormous. They were giant bastards. But they could be fastidious. They could smarm and twinkle if the mood took them.
Pigs, though, shed observed, and with some relish, had very human arses. Like certain breeds of apes. Big, round bottoms. And they tiptoed on their trotters like supermodels in VivienneWestwood platforms. But oh so natural. Boars were less human and they were less sympathetic, but they were so much more of everything else. They were buzzy and rough and wild.
Sara didnt like Lily. Lily was not likeable. It was a difficult admission for a parent to make, but Lily was a bad lot. She was rough and she had no soft edges. Shed led a sheltered life. Shed been born premature and had lain helpless and bleating in an incubator for many months before they could even begin to consider taking her home.
And there were several further complications; with her kidneys, parts of her stomach, her womb. Things hadnt entirely finished forming. Nothing was right. She was incomplete. So fragile.
And the bleeding. Her blood would not clot. Not properly. Even now, mid-conversation, her nose might start running, her teeth might inadvertently nick her lower lip, her nail might catch her cheek, her arm. Blood would trickle and drip, then gush, then flood. It wouldnt stop. There were never any limits with Lily. There was never any sense of restraint or delicacy.
She was an old tap, a creaky faucet, she was an overflow pipe that persistently overflowed. She would ooze, perpetually. She seemed almost to enjoy it. She was a nuclear-accident baby. She was improperly sealed. She was all loose inside. She was slack. Thin. Pale. Blue-tinged. She was puny.
At first theyd thought theyd lose her. Theyd prepared themselves. Theyd almost bargained on it. They were on tenterhooks, year after year, just waiting for the life to be extinguished in a flash or a spasm or a jerk or a haemorrhage.
But Lily didnt die. Her own particular brand of puniness was of the all-elbow variety. All-powerful. It burgeoned. It brayed and it whinnied. It charged and trampled. It essentially ran amok.
Her body remained weak but her mind hardened. She got stronger and stronger and crosser and crosser and wilder and wilder. She needed no one. And yet theyd made so many accommodations! Theyd changed from an arable farm to a pig farm and finally to boar. Boar were less trouble. Less time-consuming. Theyd stiffened themselves for some kind of terrible impact, but the impact never came. It never came. And so things began to fray. Slowly, imperceptibly. Down on the farm.
Sara, staring but never seeing, looking but never focusing, tried to search out probable justifications for Lilys obnoxious-ness, but she could find none. She searched her own heart. She wished Lily would do the same. But Lily wouldnt. She didnt. Not ever. And yet Lily had her own moral set-up, her own fears and beliefs, which were complex, abundant, comprehensive. They were simply well hidden. Like potatoes. Several feet under.
She worshipped a deity. It was her secret. The deity had a special name. It was called The Head. It survived in spirit but had been born and had died on one long, still night in 1982. An August night. So it made perfect sense that August should become the month that Lily set apart to celebrate The Head with some special rituals of her own making. She wasnt unduly creative, usually, but in August she made an exception. In August she cut a neat incision on her arm with a piece of wire from the boar pens. Special wire. Then she killed one of the hens and blamed it on a fox.
Fox mustve done it.
With the blood from the hen, and with her own blood, she soaked the earth behind the yew tree where she pretended that The Head had been buried. But The Head had not been buried there. It had been taken away by her father and incinerated, in all probability. Although theyd never discussed it.