Too Old for this Shit

As dawn approached on the fourth day, Mike lay gasping in his ten quid tent – a sagging neon pyramid fashioned from a revolutionary fabric which seemed to keep oxygen out and suck water in, and which somehow rendered light brighter on the inside than in the world beyond, meaning daybreak fried his eyeballs as he lay there lamenting, lamenting – a middle aged man boiled in a bag and steaming cider from every pore. Three days and nights of burgers and scrumpy had left him with thick-shake guts and fantasies of porcelain.

“I’m too old for this shit,” his cracked lips rasped.

Outside, he could hear the chatter of mostly younger people, their words not quite audible – or perhaps it was simply a tongue beyond his grasp – a language made of the same words he used but given new meanings. A laugh here, a rant there, and every now and then a whisper, a… “go on!” And do what, Mike wondered? His nephew had been to Reading and he’d heard its animals would burn tents in the night. Mike felt like a man on Safari, as shadows moved across his tent and somewhere close wild beasts growled.

Zzzzzzziiiiiiiiiiiiiiipp went the zip on his tent.

“Morning Mikey, how’s the head?” said his sister Rose.

“You scared the fucking life out of me!” said Mike. “Thought the little raving savages had come for me.”

“Have a swig of this, lightweight” said Rose. “Come on. We’re not done yet.”

They trudged along a path to where fast food stalls opened towards a large stage with a canopy shaped, Mike thought, rather like a helmet. They’d seen a few bands there yesterday, he thought, or was it on another stage? It all looked different in the emptier dawn. Most of the bands had been OK – though not patch on his day when, after all, you were talking the originals. It was all recycled now – Nu this, post that – he wondered if there were any moulds left to break or if they’d just go round and round from here on in, like a needle on a 45.

Mike and Rose paused on the edge of a muddy plain to behold an apocalyptic vision of dawn: steam rising from a million tents, litter scattered by a hundred thousand locusts, five thousand revellers still moving slowly through the mire, some just up, some off to bed, some rushing on a rumour to an end of night event. On Rose and Mikey strode, through a field lined with monsters twisted from the carcasses of cars, through trees hung with giant plastic butterflies and fresh paper lanterns which flickered in the darker light beneath the boughs – reminding Mike of a Sargent painting: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.

They emerged onto a slope, tasting smoke which drifted across their path from campfires around which people talked and strummed and sat and stared, faces warmed by the rising sun which looked like it might dry the earth, given a chance. There were a lot of ponchos and woolly hats in evidence, and crushed cans and dirty faces and eyes not ready to close, and a woman selling mushrooms from a basket over her arm, and men who slipped things into the palm of your hand, and people who danced on the spot to tunes in their heads and others who slept where they had fallen. People stood and watched as the sun rose, flooding the beautiful carnage with heightened light, and Mike felt suddenly like he’d walked through the back of the wardrobe, out of the Acme festival of identikit tents and bands and into a ragged land a million light years from home.

Fishing for Felix

“What shall we dine on tonight?” Felix said to himself.
“As long as it’s not squirrel,” Felix replied.
“I thought a little écureuil grillé. Nothing too fancy.”
“What’s that in English?” asked Felix.
“Grilled squirrel.”
He cut and whittled a skewer of hazel then passed it through the skinny body of the beast. He fetched a tobacco tin from a hollow in an oak and took out his matches. He shook the box, producing a weak rattle. He knelt, struck a match, cradled the flame and set it to the dry grass at the bottom of a pyre. Above a spit was a structure of branches and leaves tiled with sods of turf. Very little smoke escaped. Presently, he quartered the roasted meat and sat the pieces on a tin plate atop a bed of mixed leaves: hawthorn and dandelion. He tried to cut the meat with his knife and fork but, as usual, the knife made little headway and the prongs started to bend, so he sighed and ate the meat and leaves with his fingers.
“You promised us fish,” he said to himself.
“I’ve told you a million times,” he sighed.
“Can’t you make a line from vines or bark or something?”
“Can you?”
“What about fashioning some kind of net?”
“We tried that. We nearly got caught – remember?”
“The spear nearly worked.”
“But it didn’t.”
“We gave up too easily.”
“We can’t hang around all day by the river.”
“What about at night?”
“How are we going to spear fish in a dark river at night?”
“I think you like squirrel.”
“Keep your voice down!” Felix said in a loud whisper.
“Touch a nerve?” he whispered back at himself.
Felix sat in silence listening to the sounds of the forest. The last rays of the sun fanned higher and higher through the trees until the patches of gold they cast dissolved. He walked to the little clearing and looked through the gap in the canopy to the village across the valley. Lights were coming on in the streets and windows. It was already night in the forest. He wondered if the old man was watching.

George sat at the table, fat in his vest, and watched her. Elsa opened the door of the oven and stood back to let the steam rise, ducking her head away – so her glasses didn’t mist over. Flavours rushed into the air: butter, almonds and the gentlest burn of the fish’s skin. She rolled up her sleeves, put on oven gloves, leaned down and picked out the dish, which she placed in the middle of the round table on a raffia matt. She took off the gloves and spooned brown juices over the wrinkling silver skin of the trout as he filled her glass with white wine. She wiped her hands on her apron, rolled down her sleeves and sat down close to him. Their eyes met and they smiled.
“Looks a beauty,” she said
He leant over and turned off the bare bulb above them so that the room was only lit by a slim candle in the middle of the table.
“To bigger fish,” she said and raised her glass.
“To bigger fish,” he said.

Felix couldn’t sleep, so he sauntered over to the clearing and lay on his back on the mossy ground looking up through a gap in the leaves at the starry sky. After a while he wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed, but he saw insects with fluorescent eyes swimming in the pixelated light gobbling woodland particles as they floated to the earth. A breeze moved the trees and flowed across the sky and he wondered if old George would ever venture into the forest to find him again, as he had on the first few nights, before he fell over one of Felix’s traps and nearly broke his leg. And Felix thought about the big brown shadow he’d seen sliding across the bottom of the river down at the foot of the woods, slipping into the deep pool by the big rock which nestled in the crook of the bend. Was there really a fish in there that big? He closed his eyes and wondered if the fish was awake and gradually he drifted off. Leaves fell all night in the woods and floated down to where he lay.

In the morning George got up, made Elsa a mug of tea and placed it on the bedside table. She whimpered and smiled but didn’t open her eyes. He ate porridge, listened to the weather on the radio, polished his old black boots on the doorstep as the sun came up. Then he wheeled his bicycle into the street. He smoothed his uniform, put on his cycle clips and hauled himself into the saddle. Through the streets he bobbled, past the church, ignoring a couple of kids who jeered as he past, “you couldn’t catch a cold!”
George cycled round the bend which turned the road back under the village and lead into the valley beneath the woods. He coasted to a halt, chained his bike to a ring he’d fixed into fallen tree, and stood by the roadside for a few minutes looking across the field at the spread of the woods on the steep side of the valley beyond the river. Felix was up there somewhere, he knew it, whatever the others might say. He stared at the bank of trees which spread along the long valley as if a ripple in its surface might be betray the whereabouts of his quarry. He took an overgrown path to the edge of a meadow from which the forest looked darker and steeper. He ambled through the long grass, careful not to trip, until he reached the bushes which lined the edge of the chalk stream. He ducked through branches until he could see the water running clear and fast over stones. He sat and watched the water, his eyes instinctively locking onto pools where fish might lie. He wondered how many fish he’d had from this river in his life. Three thousand? There would be one or two in the pool over there beneath that log; another to the right tight under the bank where you wouldn’t think there was room. After a few years you developed second sight. George wandered along the path, his eyes on alternating between the river and the bottom of the wooded slope beyond. He thought about finding a place to cross – it was easy in places, the river was only 10 yards wide. Presently he came to where a giant boulder sat in the corner of a bend and the trees grew thicker overhead so that there was little light even at this bright hour of the morning, He sat on a tree stump, as he had a thousand times and looked for the giant fish. Twice hooked, never landed. One day you’ll be mine, he thought.

Felix sat high up the slope, his heart beating a little fast, and watched fat George stare into the pool.
"What's it to be, copper, me or the big fish?"
"There is no big fish, eejit."
"So what's he looking for?"
"Just fish. Any fish."
"That wasn't just any fish."
"We didn't see anything."
"We've got to catch it."
"We'll get caught."
"Imagine the feast we'll have. Imagine his face when he sees the skeleton."

In the afternoon George returned with his rod and sat on a rock beside the pool. He watched damson flies bob like puppets in the edges of the stream as he threaded a nymph onto his line, his fingers working without eyes. The beast would be on the bottom of the pool and maybe a glittering nymph would lure him up to wrap his lips around the invisible line Ponder, ponder, mighty fish – thought George – your time must come one day, no beast on earth can live forever. As George flicked his line across the pool and watched the nymph sink and beckon to the silvery beast, Felix watched him from between the leaves of a silent bush barely twenty feet away.
“It’s cheating to use a nymph,” he said to himself, beneath his breath.
“We’ll show him how it’s done,” he nodded in reply.
George’s line floated and rested, floated and rested for all the afternoon, as Feilx watched with barely a wink and the lines on the old man’s brow sank deeper as the shadows grew. Midges and gnats and dragonflies whirled in the soft warm air of dusk, and Felix smiled and rubbed his hands and risked a little jig behind his bush, as fish rose and once or twice were hooked – but not the one George craved. Finally, when light had nearly gone and all you could see of the fishing George was the rise and fall of his casting arm against the last of the silhouetted light, Felix decided that night would be the night.
"We'll bring it all to a head," he said.
"We'll be undone!"
"We can run again..."
"Why did we have to run, again?"
"It was the maths, my friend, the fucking numbers..."
"...always running through our fingers..."
"...out of our heads..."
"... and into other people's pockets."
"They always wanted to keep score..."
"...how many we had, how many we owed..."
"...too many things were always gone..."
"...so we borrowed a few and swallowed a few and we never gave them back."
"There aren't any numbers in the forest."

Long after dark, Felix daubed himself in mud, grey from the river bank, taken a little way along from the pool, lest he disturb his darling fish. He walked naked through the field, moonlight flowing on his skin. As the mud dried, here and there, the patches seemed like camouflage on his flesh, though soon he was smoothed pure grey by the night. He reached the road and felt each crack and stone on the soles of his feet, so different from the florestal carpet which nowadays kissed his toes. He walked into the village, feeling the stone of walls against his skin as he swam through the darkest parts, avoiding the patches of light dried out by streetlights and open shutters. As a man passed whistling his way home, Felix paused against the wall of George's house, his skin hidden against the stone, eyes closed to hide the whites.

George lay on his back, a white sheet drawn across the hillock of his tum, and tried to make animals out of the patterns of light on the wall, trying not to think of the fish or Felix, but all he could think of as his eyes closed and he slipped under the skin of the night was Felix lying at the bottom of a pool, blowing bubbles from the smiling corners of his mouth as he flicked his silver tail and slid away. On the edge of a dream George heard a man whistling in the street and he felt as if Felix was sitting on the end of the bed, but he couldn't open his eyes.

Felix found a piece of wire in a dustbin behind the general store, and half a sandwich, which he ate, then used the wire to pick the lock of the shop, and it felt like the good old days of breaking in and breaking out and roaming the village by night with a beating heart. That thrill of being in the homes of others without consent, of looking out of their windows unbeknownst, of running your fingers over their things, wearing their clothes, imagining conversations in a stolen world in things which just for an hour or two belonged to you, instead of them. At first he hadn't taken anything, but it seemed a shame to leave them all behind, when seemed much happier in his world, so he borrowed an item or two he thought they wouldn't miss, and put them back the next time he broke in. But sometimes he couldn't remember them back in their former lives, and when he came to take them home he could see they didn't want to go, so he let them stay for another night or two, just this once. Once became twice, as once will do, and twice became thrice, as it will as well. And soon the people missed their clothes and clocks, and money and books, and jewels and hats, and dogs and cats and they wanted to know why they had eloped to live in Felix's house. That was when he ran.

The fish moved through the dark water of the pool and looked up at the stars which shimmed through the water's skins and he wondered what it would be like to live on the other side of the divide, with the fat man and the mad man and the kids that threw pebbles into his smashing the light into fluid splinters. It did not seem fair that he could not roam like them in the other world. All he could do was swim and eat and hide and hope he was never lifted into their world the only way a fish could go.

Felix sat in the corner of the shop, with a chocolate bar in his left hand and a chicken leg in his right, turning from one to the other, taking bites.
"We mustn’t eat too much."
"Must save some room for the fish."
When he'd had enough of a nibble, he found the fishing section of the shop and chose some line and box of assorted flies. From a shelf he plucked a couple of rods, took them from their cases and flexed them a little to see which felt best. Then he ran through town, enjoying the feel of the air on his skin and in his matted hair, raising a howl from his lungs as he passed the church and the central square and down the little street where George snored in his bed and dreamed of swimming like a slender fish.

In the morning, Elsa woke first.
"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said, as she scuttled to the door.
Presently, George sat up to hear her say, "It's Jerome. There's been a break-in at the store." Old Jerome waited in the kitchen as George put on his uniform. Elsa would normally have offered him a coffee, but his leg was already shaking and she could tell he was on the point of breaking into a stream of mutters.
George followed him to the store.
"Chicken bones!" said Jerome, "chocolate wrappers and chicken bones and muddy footprints... and pictures of fish on the walls in lipstick, and a cartoon of a fat man with clown's grimace blowing numbers like bubbles from his mouth... you've got to get him this time, George, it's past a joke! My wife is frightened to the end of her wits, and you know far away her wits are... Shoot him, snare him, snag him in a man-trap, burn the forest to its roots - he must be stopped!" When they reached the store, George saw that it was exactly the way Jerome had described it: chocolate wrappers and bones and laughing cartoons of himself. But there was another drawing on the wall which Jerome had not described: a picture, like a cave-painting, of a wild man sitting on a rock by the ribbon of a stream, with a big smile and a knife and fork... and next to him on a rock the skeleton of a mighty fish.
"Did he take anything?" Asked George.
"Just some fishing stuff," said Jerome.

Felix stood in the shallows of the mighty pool and flexed his arm from the joint so that a whip of line flew out and settled the damson fly on the end of his line at the far edge of the pool, not far from where he swore he'd seen a bubble rise, right above the place he'd once seen the mighty shadow lurk, in the very place he'd hide were he the monster fish, just as he knew the monster fish would hide in the forest where Felix hid - were the fish a wild man fugitive.
"You're like me, and I'm like you," he said to the fish, "if anyone should catch you up it should be me."
He cast again, in the same spot, then a little to the left... then a little to the right. Then as he cast a final time and thought he saw a shadow move, he heard a voice.
"Don't move," said the voice of George from a few feet behind, and Felix could hear George wheezing from the run across the field, and wondered if George was pointing a gun at him - or maybe he held a mighty net, or a harpoon for a whale, or was there a noose on the end of a pole being dangled over a bough?

The fish looked up from the bottom of the pool, through the angled light saw the mad man standing rooted, as his scrawny little fly wobbled on the surface fooling no fish. If I ate flies like that I'd have been dead a decade, thought the fish. The fish rose a little, maybe enough to give the mad man a sense of his shadow, and as he did he caught site of the fat man standing on the edge of the bank, and through the rippling light he could see the silhouette of an outstretched hand, in which he held something which at first he thought was a gun, but he couldn't be sure. The fish knew a gun when he saw one, because down the years the old person had tried to shoot him out of his pool, and one of his friends had been winged once, ever since which he swam alone. But it was the wrong shape for a gun, or at least he held it differently, and so he rose a little to see if he could work out what it was.

"I'll make a bet with you, Felix," said George.
"He wants to make a bet with us," said Felix to himself, his back still to George.
"Don't listen to him," said Felix, his eyes still on the river, in which he thought for a moment he could see the outline of the biggest fish a river had ever seen.
George was closer now, near to the bank to, almost at the shoulder of Felix. He looked at the water.
"If I catch the fish - right here, right now," said George, "you come with me."
"You'll never catch it in a million years," said Felix.
"A trillion," he said again.
"Do we have a deal?" asked George.
"And if you don't?" said Felix.
"Name it."
Felix thought for a while, then said: "I'll get your bicycle and I'll ride to your house each night where Elsa will cook me fish - every day - just like she used to before the numbers started ganging up on me, and Jerome will give me free chicken and chocolate and I will paint a mighty mural of fishing scenes across the walls of town."
"Ok," said George.

The fish looked up at the two men, who were standing side by side, and he didn't like the look of this, they'd never stood together before, and he knew he ought to swim away, but he couldn't help but wonder what they thought that they might do - he wasn't going to swallow anything they cast at him and he'd flash his tail and flick away if the fat man raised a gun. The fat man did raise his arm, and held a thing in front of him, and took another thing from his pocket which released a little flame. Fire couldn't hurt him - that he knew - because the children had floated candles down the river one May, many years before, and he'd seen the fire of the candles snuffed out by his river world. The fat man touched the flame to the end of the stick he held, and the fish saw it flare with light, and watched as the fat man threw the sparkling object in the air, where it spun for a while beneath the canopy of boughs, before it sank spinning towards the membrane of his world where it alighted with a mighty splash leaving all quiet for a second or two before the fish's world ended with a monstrous BOOM!

Waiting in Kensington Gardens in a Suit

I am waiting in Kensington Gardens in a suit – a sentence with very different connotations to a Londoner. Brighton’s version of Kensington Gardens has no trees, nor blades of grass, nor princess Di memorial fountains – though in a window across the street, strapped to a mannequin, there is an outfit for a Goth princess, all PVC with a tiara lined with spikes.

The Brighton version of Kensington Gardens isn’t a posh tart of a park, but a tight street lined with very Brighton shops selling fat trainers and art-house books and knickers patterned with skulls and roses. People seem to have been funnelled into this narrow thoroughfare from all the ends of town, as if to get from any A to any B it is compulsory to pass through here, to clash with other shoppers as if between the gnashing rocks of the Bosphorus. If Brighton were an earthquake, the epicentre it would be.

I stand, in my suit, outside Resident – every town should have one – trying not to look like I’m in a suit, and presumably failing, because I am. I haven’t been here in a suit before, and I wonder what people think of me. They don’t think anything, I shouldn’t wonder, though I can’t help feel a bit like Captain Kirk, beamed down in a neat pyjama uniform to mix it with the ragged aliens. I wear a tie – I feel dirty nowadays without one, ever since David Cameron decided they were surplus – and shiny shoes and cufflinks, and it feels all wrong, though no one seems as bothered about the fact as me. I see youths in bandanas and skinny jeans, street vendors and pierced folk and pierced vendors and street folk, and I wish the girl I’m meeting would hurry up.

I spot Tommy, who does a double-take – probably thought I was one of those Londoners about whom people love to carp – usually people not in Brighton more than a few years themselves. Perhaps that’s the wonder of Brighton: it feels yours as soon as you arrive. And once you settle, still fresh from the London train, it becomes the anti-London, with its sea and pier and Downs and ability to walk everywhere in half an hour. The pubs are better, the air is fresher – you bump into people in the street! ‘Thank fuck it isn’t London’, you proclaim – and yet without extreme proximity to London, what would Brighton be? Eastbourne! Worthing! Hastings! London might be hell on earth, but better the fiery torture of the metropolis than the purgatory of forgotten towns yawning by the sea.

It starts to rain, so I go for a browse in Snooper’s Paradise, where I wander the cluttered aisles looking for I know not what. A gramophone? A Star Wars toothbrush? 46 episodes of Casualty on VHS? I try on a pork-pie hat, which makes me look very Jazz, I think, but I haven’t the balls to stand in the street and wear it while I wait, so I wander up and down Kensington Gardens with the hat in a flimsy plastic bag, wondering if people can see the hat in the bag and if it makes them think of me differently. If only I had a musical instrument case in the other hand... I consider going back to Snooper’s to see if they have any, but realise this is a bit ridiculous.

I enter a bookshop, where it feels like they’re trying to read me by the books I might have read. I look in a clothes shop, try on some trainers, and the guy in the shop says, ‘give ‘em a spin with the hat,’ and the whole ensemble doesn’t look too bad, I have to say, and it makes me wonder how long you’d have to wait for someone in Kensington Gardens before its artefacts overwhelmed you to the point of being perfectly camouflaged.

I don’t buy the trainers, but I keep the hat on. It has stopped raining and I walk up and down the narrow street, wondering why she’s so late, until my eyes lift to the balcony of Kensington’s café. There she is, laughing, and pointing quizzically at an imaginary hat on her head. I shake a comic fist at her, duck into the doorway and climb the stairs.

[Piece read at "The Brighton Moment" literary event, part of 2008 Brighton Festival]

Ghost Racers

Every night in the scrapyard, ghosts raced in the wrecked cars in which they died – half of them fuelled by anger, half by shame, as the angry tried to beat the scum who’d smashed short their beautiful lives, and the guilty tried to rev away their shame – to prove it was so much better to be killed than kill, that anyone could have a lapse, a flash, a moment of impulsive selfishness – that none of us are innocent.

Dawn broke as they tore along the final straight, and before the chequered flag could wave the sun wiped them all away.

The House in the Woods

A jacket of tweed on his back, Alec walks, cloth charred at the collar. Socks holey, soles smarting from hours of feet falling, falling. The back of his neck burned red. His hair wet salted straw, sweat running into his eyes. It is just past two o’ clock on a Monday afternoon when he finally reaches the Spanish village half-way down the mountain.
Alec thumbs slippery coins. One teases through his fingers.
“Bloody hell!” he says. “Made for kids.”
He finally pushes one into the slot, jabs the numbers and puts the receiver to his ear. He tries to slow his breathing and coughs to clear the clog from his throat. The line rings. Rings. Rings.

On a clear lilo Jane lies, her white bikini making the water seem electrically blue. Wrinkled fingers stroking the cool surface, feet soothed to the ankle, a smile on the point of parting her lips. Pimples rise in the breeze floating across her skin.
“Telephone! Señora Jones.”
Jane holds a white towel wide, like wings, then folds it around her, under her arms, and knots it at the side. She slips her feet onto pink flowered wedges and walks over the grass. Mown in perfect lines, giving pleasantly. The phone rings. Rings. Maria holds it on the terrace, on a tray. Jane climbs five steps, sits at a marble table, takes the phone and puts it before her. She lets it ring while she ties her hair with a Hibiscus band.

“Come on you bitch,” growls Alec. “Pick it up!”
The ringing halts and a couple of seconds later a voice comes on the line.
“Alec?” Jane says, unable to stop a smile from settling on her lips. “Is that you?”
When the answer comes, her smile takes flight.
“Yeh!” says Alec. “Me. Get over here. Now.”
Jane puts her hand over the receiver as she swears to herself: “fuck!”
“Did you hear me?” Says Alec.
“And… Christopher?”
“He’s at the house, what’s left of it.”
“Is he¾”
The phone goes dead.

€ € € € € € €

On Saturday, two days earlier, there had been a party on the lawn. Pink parasols shaded trays of canapés. Starched servants topped up glasses of champagne, nails manicured, brown hands working from white cuffs.
“It’s too bloody hot for a party”, said Alec to Jane, as she waved across the lawn at a new arrival. “Should have had a barbecue, an evening do…”
“We’ve been through this, darling. Last night was the Navaja’s party, and there’s just no other time. Besides, you’ve got to leave enough time to reach the woods and prepare the guest chalet in time for dear Christopher.”
Alec gulped champagne too fast and it burnt in his throat.
“And why can’t you bloody come too, eh?”
“It’s your business not mine, he won’t listen to me.”
“I wasn’t born yesterday. Was I born yesterday? Is that what you think?”
“I’m sure he’ll give you a little more time.”
“You know damn well he’d listen to you, he’s your bloody brother, for crying out loud. But no, you won’t talk to him. And we know why that is¾”
“I never said I wanted you to sell.”
“You know how much that place is worth. It’s greed, pure and¾”
“I’m not the one that owes my brother a million.”
Alec grabbed the fullest glass of champagne from a passing tray.
“I just need a little more time,” he said.
“So tell him. Keep the house, the land – if that’s what you want.”
“What we want.”
“I just want what’s best, for all of us.”
Jane wandered among the guests. She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth and tiny wrinkles. She touched her fingers on forearms, pressed her face to cheeks, one side then the other.
Alec got a refill and chatted to Señor Carnicero’s new wife, whose name he couldn’t remember. He rubbed the back of his neck as he kept a smile on his face and watched her lips moving. His ears caught sounds but his brain absorbed little meaning, at least until she mentioned the house in the woods. She smiled and hinted at an offer. Old Carnicero had made most of his money in timber. Alec didn’t have the energy to have another go at Jane for her indiscretion. Christ. Did everybody know about his predicament? Alec’s shirt felt moist beneath his linen jacket. He thought about the house in the woods and what he was going to say to Christopher about the money.

The next day, Sunday, Alec reached the little village near the woods just after one. He parked his jeep by the only phone booth in the square and bought a bottle of chilled water from the old lady in the only shop. She wore black and kept her eyes on his, unblinking. She said nothing, then closed the shop behind him for the afternoon. Alec sat in the empty square, drank from the bottle and looked out over the ochre rooftops. Smoke rose here and there from the plain. Glass glinted. Birds with serrated wings spiralled.
He went to the phone and ducked his head under its bulbous canopy. His vision cut off from the world, he took a coin from his pocket and slid it into the slot.
“I’m here,” said Alec. “In the little village.”
“Fabulous,” said Jane, phone in the crook of her neck, eyes on a magazine. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Are you sure he knows how to get here?”
“I’ll describe it in the most intricate detail, darling. He’ll find it with his eyes closed. I’m sure he’ll be there by sunset, our favourite time¾”
“And what about you?”
“I’ll be up in couple of days.”
“Tuesday, then?”
“Tuesday, yes.”
Alec drove up the only road into the mountains. He twisted the wheel back and forth, back and forth, easing the car round bends. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, avoiding the ever heightening view of the brown plains. Drops of sweat clustered into trickles on his brow and upper lip. Then over the top of the pass he drove and down the other side where the curves formed wider sweeps and the view was now all green, as a million trees flowed from the bowl of the valley and up to coat the sides of the mountains.
The car entered the woods. The air was dark. The further he went the more the car bumped on the track and the more he slowed. After half an hour or more he turned a corner and shaded his eyes from the sudden blaze of the sun. He crossed the circular clearing to where buildings were waiting against the trees on the far side, a hundred yards or so away. He pulled the car up to the garage door. Alec got out, stretched and looked around. The grass was high all across the meadow and the swimming pond his mother had dug held a green lid of weed. The encircling pines obscured the mountains. Browned stems poked from the tubs on the veranda and from the bowls hanging from the balcony. There was lots of work to be done, as every year, but the house still looked magnificent: broad and solid against the soft line of the trees, its high windows enticing you to lounge within. Alec put away the car then climbed the wooden steps to the porch. He unlocked the door, then stood on the threshold and looked into the front room.
He listened.
He was always moved by the silence of a place which held so many sonorous memories. Yet even after forty years of coming here, the room never looked quite the same as he remembered it. Everything was a touch bigger or smaller, a fraction closer or further apart. It would take a few days of habitation for it to feel familiar again. He walked through to the hall, then up the wide stairs, through the master bedroom and out onto the balcony which ran along the front of the house. The sun was sinking closer to the tips of the pines around the clearing. He put on his sunglasses and leaned on the balustrade. The wood felt warm beneath his fingers. Alec looked at the slight parting where the track emerged from the trees and wondered when Christopher would arrive.
In the kitchen Alec poured himself a brandy, then turned on the fridge and filled the trays with ice. He brought supplies in from the car and stocked the cupboards. He put clean sheets on the bed in the guest chalet, and noticed that branches were growing over the windows. He went into the garage and found his working clothes: a tatty tweed jacket, some tatty jeans and boots. Then he sharpened his machete with a file and set about chopping back the bushes.

Meanwhile, Jane sat on the terrace and enjoyed the feel of late Sunday sun on her face. She drank a Martini with a lemon twist. The phone on the table rang and she picked it up straight away.
“Christopher?” she said.
White hair neat, long back flexed under the canopy he drummed clipped nails on top of the phone.
“Jane, my love. I’m in the little village.”
“Will you call me afterwards?” she asked.
“Of course, Jane. How is he?”
“He won’t listen. He won’t sell. He’s adamant.”
“Well, it can’t be helped, then.”
“You will call won’t you, tomorrow?”
“Don’t rush to the phone. Act as if it’s Alec. Let it ring for a good while. Maria’s not stupid, Jane. She mustn’t suspect.”
Christopher hung up.

The sun sank behind the trees. Cicadas sang. Alec lay on his bed, machete dormant, drinking a half-cold beer. He felt sleepy from the early start, the labour and the drive. He thought how it wasn’t so bad that Christopher was coming. It felt good to be dealing with the situation right here – It would give him strength, he thought. And in spite of what Jane said, she loved the house, really. She’d bought new furniture and fittings to replace his mother’s stuff, which had been looking a little dated. She wouldn’t want to lose the house. There was another way, Alec could feel it. He would show Christopher the house, the chalet, the lodge in the woods, the pond and the caves – where he and his cousins used to play as kids. You couldn’t think of this place on paper, you had to breathe it and, once he was here, Christopher’s lungs would fill with the soul of the place as everybody’s did. His resolve would be sure to weaken. And Alec would feel tall, he knew it! No matter what he owed or how it all added up or whatever it was that Christopher might have planned. No – Christopher’s visit was welcome, now Alec thought about it.

Jane wandered the garden cutting flowers. Cicadas sang as the last of the sun turned the walls the colour of peaches. She thought about the house in the woods and how many summers they had spent there and what a thrill it had been the first time Alec had taken her to stay – in spite of his mother’s constant attempts at terrorisation. Jane had swum in the stinking green pond, had played the witch’s requests on the piano, had peeled infinite potatoes as she listened to acid anecdotes about her ageing friends. Then once the malevolent trout was rotting in the ground – poisoning worms, no doubt – Jane had stayed behind when Alec returned to work. Christopher had come to stay, unbeknownst to Alec, and they’d stripped the place of everything the witch had loved. They had built a pile of it all in front of the house, sat on the terrace drinking Martinis, and watched it burn.

Alec snored. In his dreams Christopher lay on a burning pyre. He could hear the fire roar, smell the burn of his hair, feel the heat of the flames. His eyes opened and he saw that the roof above him was a dazzling orange. He could smell petrol. After a dawning second he rolled off the bed onto smoking planks and felt his skin smart as he dashed through shimmers of flame, slashing his machete as he went – as if he could hack the flames away – and tore down the stairs and out the back door. He ran for the woods.

Jane lay on her back in silk sheets, her breathing deep, a smile beneath her lips. She dreamed of an island in a lake where she lived with Christopher. There were pines around a white house and ponds and waterfalls spilling into streams which trickled to the glassy water. She remembered the dream when she woke at dawn and kept it with her throughout that morning as she lay on a lilo in the pool.

Alec scrambled through the woods, pine needles like combs on the bottom of his feet. He ran in a wide arc from the house, back towards the start of the track. As he crouched near the edge of the clearing he could hear the fire’s roar – studded with crackles and pops and the claps of shattering glass. Through running eyes he saw that the garage burned and the chalet burned and the whole house was swelling into a mansion of flame. He watched a hole in the roof burn outwards like burning paper. He saw the balcony fall. He noticed the air was becoming bright and he could feel the heat upon his face. He was about to take off through the trees when he saw the shimmer of a man against the orange.

€ € € € € € €

The next day, Monday, Alec walks out of the woods, along the sweeping bends of the road, over the pass and down the zig-zag road. It is just past two o’ clock on a Monday afternoon when he finally reaches the little Spanish village half-way down the mountains. He calls Jane. She takes her time coming from the pool, as Christopher requested. She smiles at the subterfuge of speaking Alec’s name, when she knows she’ll never speak to him again. But it’s Alec on the phone, not Christopher.
When Alec hangs up, she slams the receiver down and screams, screams. She tips the table over and bellows for Maria. Maria tells José to get the car out of the garage, then packs a suitcase for Jane. Jane sits on the terrace, swigging a triple vodka and tonic, biting her nails. Her breath heaves and she swears she can feel a pain in her arm. She fights the urge to smash her glass to the floor.

In the little village, youths kick a ball around the square. Kids stare as a strange man in a singed jacket walks to the shop. Alec buys water, wine, bread, chorizo and peaches from the silent woman. Then he sits on a bench and looks out over the ochre rooftops. He waits, as the sun spins toward the line of the distant hills and the air cools into shadows. At around five o’ clock he calls the Carniceros. At six o’clock he hears the motor of Jane’s Mercedes before the sound of the tyres on the grit of the street. He keeps his eyes on a sliver of moon above the plain, until he hears the engine hush. He walks towards the car and climbs in.
“Drive,” he says, without looking at Jane.
“I’m not moving a muscle until you tell me what’s happened to Christopher.”
“Fine.”
“Where is he?”
“At the house.”
“Is he…”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“He was when I left.”
“What have you done to him?”
“Fire is a terrible thing.”
“Alec!”
“If you get a move on you might find out.”

Wheels spraying a hail of shingle, she fights the car round bends. Alec grips the handle on the inside of the passenger door. His eyes take in the plain, the snake of the road below – brown, like the yellow-eyed snakes in the woods they used to bait as kids. He feels great relief, an urge to smile, but contents himself with the pleasing feel of his stubbled chin in his smoky fingers. Jane tries a array of persuasion techniques: from rage to pitiful whimper. But Alec won’t reveal the fate of her darling brother.

Señor Carnicero sits on the terrace of his pink house and looks out over the bay. He smiles and chews on an Esplendido he’s been saving since he tied up Cuba. Across from him his wife swims in the pool and sings an Abba song. He waves to her and she laughs and performs a somersault, slick as a dolphin. A champagne glass sits on a step in the shallows. Señor Carnicero makes phone calls to his timber mills, the logging crews, the chief of police.

Jane’s Mercedes jerks to a halt in the opening to the clearing. She swings her legs from the car, white slacks creased from the tortuous ride. The scene is apocalyptic: the charred wreck of the house, smoking, smoking. Fumes slide across the grass and the khaki pond. Jane remembers the water more green.
“Wherever…?” She says, and sees a shape at the water’s edge. A long shape curled with the line of the bank. She moves on distant feet, catches sight of a glimpse of hair, white against the mud. Skin grey, blood drained into the water.
There’s a flash of red and silver in the evening sun. An arc created by Alec’s hand, gripping the handle of the machete. It feels familiar this time. Jane feels the strike for an instant she’ll never remember. There is barely a sound. Alec rolls her next to her brother and the pond darkens.
Alec takes a final look at the blackened house, runs his gaze around the edge of the clearing, lets his eyes rest on the sunken shapes at the edge of the pond his mother dug. Then he gets into the car, turns it around and drives back into the forest.
Across the mountains, lorries rumble hungrily across the brown plain.

The Cave

They slept in a chicken coop under a mango tree. Barry was woken just before dawn by something scurrying at the bottom of his sleeping bag. He hopped to his feet and shook out a cockroach, stamped it into the dirt. He put on his jeans and fleece and sat against the chicken-wire. He lit a cigarette and looked at Chris. Sleeping like a lamb. Breathing gently through his nose, wearing a saintly smile. The bastard could sleep through anything: even the racket from the fucking hippies in the barn. Maiming guitars ‘til three in the morning; torture by out-of-tune Dylan. Jesus! Had they never heard of house music? Burn their guitars and make them wear industrial club gear. Force feed them burgers.

Barry shivered and breathed into his hands. How could you be cold in the bloody tropics? They had to get off this farm. “An oasis” the guidebook said. “Sleep under the stars. Chill out away from the gringo trail.” Barry had stayed at The Oasis, Bali. That had the only stars he cared about, five of them.

The sun came up, stretching shadows across the meadow. The orange light was soon burning white, heating one of Chris’s pink cheeks. He sat up and smiled at Barry.
“Morning,” Chris said. He looked at the clear blue sky and lush green of the land. “Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“Yeah,” said Barry. “Maybe we should head for the beach.”
“What about the cave?”
“Great,” said Barry with a snort.
“We’ve paid, um… Miguel. Thirty dollars.”
“I’ll pay double not to go.”
“Oh come on, man. It’ll be fun. It’s different. We’ll go to the cave, do the waterfall thing, come back and go to the coast. By ten o’ clock tonight you can be sipping a Margarita by the pool, if that’s what you want.”

Chris took his clothes out of his rucksack and spread them out flat. He rolled each item as tight as he could, fixed it with an elastic band, then squeezed them all back into the bag. He filled a plastic cup with sterilised water from his canteen, cleaned his teeth, drank some water, then added some muesli which he kept in a little Tupperware box.

Miguel came at nine-thirty. He had straight black hair to the shoulder and deep brown skin. He was about five feet five and wore a pair of blue running shorts, flip flops, a yellow T-shirt stretched over his belly, and a blue baseball cap. He had a small rucksack over his shoulder.
“Nos vamos, rubio?” Miguel looked up at Chris without a smile.
“What did he say?” Chris asked.
“He called you blondie,” said Barry.

They left their rucksacks at the farm and walked for two hours through scrubby grassland. Miguel had a slight limp which became more noticeable. He had a scar on the back of his knee. Chris and Barry tried to keep pace. Their shadows hugged their feet more closely as the sun climbed. Barry wore a red T-shirt and a baseball cap turned backwards over his brown locks. He was past wearing sun-tan cream. Let the sun burn him browner and browner, he thought. Chris wore a straw hat and long grey trousers – light-weight, vented, draw-stringed and toggled. He stopped every now and again and applied thick lotion to his fair arms and face. The third time Miguel shook his head, pointed at Barry’s arms and said “crema.”
“What did he say?” asked Chris.
“Cream,” said Barry.
“Want some?” said Chris, reaching into a pocket.
“Nope.”
Chris offered round his canteen. Miguel swigged with a “gracias”. Barry didn’t drink.
They walked on. Every now and again Miguel would stop, raise the peak of his cap and point at a particular plant, explaining its use to Barry.
“What’s that one for?” asked Chris.
“Toothache,” said Barry.
“Tell him I’m a doctor,” said Chris, grinning.
“Es médico,” said Barry to Miguel.
“Tiene pinta de médico,” said Miguel nodding, looking at the ground.
“What did he say?” asked Chris, trying to catch Miguel’s eye.
“He looks like a fuckwit,” said Barry.
“What did he say?” said Chris.
“He looks like a doctor,” said Barry.
“Ask him how much further it is to the cave.”
“Ask him yourself,” said Barry.
“I can’t,” said Chris.
“You had lessons. Try.”
Chris blushed. “Cuanto… distante… es...”
“Tres kilómetros, más o menos,” said Miguel to Barry.
“He said three­­—“
“Three ks,” said Chris. “I got that.”

Presently, they walked up a hill and into rainforest. The path was wide and there were bright butterflies and bird calls. Chris thought he heard the buzz of a hummingbird. They climbed a ridge and descended into a ravine. The air was dark now, and seemed to darken as they approached the mouth of the cave which opened into one side of a slope. There was a sound of running water.

Miguel sat on a rock and massaged his knee for a while. He opened his rucksack and took out tomatoes, a bunch of tiny bananas and a cloth bundle from which he unwrapped maize tortillas. From one side pocket he took a packet of cigarettes and a pair of black-rimmed spectacles. From the other he produced a book: Las Uvas de la Ira.
“What’s he reading?” asked Chris.
“Grapes of Wrath,” said Barry, and they raised their brows.
Delving into the very bottom Miguel pulled out two sealed, clear plastic bags, each containing a torch. A loop of string was fixed to the top of the bags. Miguel put one round his neck and turned on the torch. He mimed the breast-stroke and pointed into the cave. He grinned and told them to swim to the left. He said it was half an hour to the waterfall.
“Jesus,” said Barry.
“Ask him if it’s safe,” said Chris.
“Safe? Jesus!” said Barry, examining his torch-bag.
“Con médico, sí,” said Miguel to Barry, before he could ask. “Con médico, todo está seguro, siempre.”
“He says it is with a doctor,” said Barry. “Everything’s always safe with a doctor.”
“Well, the book said it was,” said Chris.
“Fuck the book.”
Chris wanted to say “fuck you,” Barry could see it.

They stripped to shorts and trainers and hung the plastic bags around their necks. They checked the torches worked and left them switched on inside the bags. At first, the water felt beautifully cool after the heat of the walk. The guide book had said there would be a short swim and then a scramble along a stream into the depths of the hill towards the waterfall. Sure enough, after about fifteen yards, they could put their feet on the ground. They walked and swum and waded along the cave, flashing the torches onto the walls and the roof. They could hear only the splashing of feet, the running of water over rocks, drips falling from the ceiling twenty feet above. Sometimes there was rock beneath their feet, shaped in places into razor edges. At other times they walked in pink-brown mud which squirmed into their shoes. The tunnel twisted down, further from the world. After forty minutes there was still no sign of the waterfall.
“This isn’t funny,” said Barry.
“Go back, if you like,” said Chris.
“Look, I’m not being difficult,” said Barry. “Look at these things. What if water gets in? What if we get lost?”
“We can’t get lost, we’re in a tunnel. We just go back the way we came.”
“If we can see which way that is.”
“We can see.”

Barry could feel his heart beating, fast. His flesh was pimpled from cold. A chill was starting to creep into his spine. Chris’s torch flashed on the walls as he scrambled on. Barry followed.
At last, after an hour, they came to a huge cave. The water they had followed swept past their feet, over the edge of a shelf and into a pool of water fifteen feet below. They stood on the edge, shining their torches down onto the swirling surface.
Chris gave Barry a great big smile. “Hey-hey! We made it! Look at that! It’s awesome!”
Barry tried to smile, but his cheeks felt tight.
“It’s great,” he said. Instead of fear and mounting panic, he felt relief with an undertow of fear. He looked at his torch. He could swear it was getting dimmer. More yellow, less white. Calm, calm, he thought. Let Chris enjoy it for a moment, then we’ll go. In an hour it’ll all be over. In nine hours we’ll be watching the stars over the sea. To think how hard he’d been on the beautiful stars.
Chris moved towards the edge.
“Chris—”
“Come on,” said Chris. “Let’s jump.”
“Don’t be an arse. Come on, mate. I think my torch is going. We’ve seen it now, let’s head back, seriously.”
“No way! When did you ever jump off a waterfall in a cave? Not in Bali, that’s for sure.”
“It can’t be safe, it—”
“The book said it was.”
Before Barry could argue, Chris was flying through the air, plunging to the echo of a mighty scream. Then a big splash and a champagne fizz of bubbles as the torch and Chris found their way to the surface. Chris yodelled as he broke into the air. Barry shone his torch on him as he swam to the edge of the pool.
“Come on, man! It’s amazing! Jump!” said Chris.
Barry moved towards the edge.
“If I jump can we go?”
“Just do it!”
Barry leapt. He fell with a shriek into the cold, cold water. Bubbles lit up before his eyes as he scrambled to the surface, pulling air hard into his lungs, his face breaking into a smile.
He swam to Chris and they both got out, grinning.
“Let’s go back up,” said Chris. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Look,” said Barry, “I think­—“
“One more jump and then we’ll go. Scouts honour.”
“I bet you were a scout …”
They climbed around the side of the cave, up to the top of the falls.
“Stand next to me,” said Chris. “OK, give me your torch.”
“Fuck off!”
Chris took Barry’s torch and turned it off. Then he turned off his own.
“Chris!”
“Shhhhhh! Just chill for a second. Feel the darkness. It doesn’t get any darker than this.”
Chris left it what he thought was two minutes, though in a world without light it seemed like it could have been two years. Barry heard the chatter of his own teeth. He waved his fingers in front of his eyes but could see nothing.
Barry felt Chris spring. Then silence, silence, then the splash. It echoed from the walls and for a moment Barry felt his balance go. He started to sway and bent his knees to keep his feet on the ground, lest he fall over the edge, wherever that was. He listened for Chris, for the laugh or the scream, but nothing came.
“You’re really fucking funny,” said Barry.
Was that the sound of swimming, or the running of the stream?
“Come on Chris, mate. Don’t fuck with me now. I can’t see a thing. What if I fall over the edge? Then what? Come on… Chris.”
Only the water spoke.

Outside the cave Miguel finished the last tortilla. He shook crumbs from the cloth and folded it into a neat square. He put the cloth and the banana skins in the bottom of the bag. As he did so, he heard the crumple of plastic packaging. He chuckled as he reached into the bottom of the bag, past the damp banana skins, and pulled out two packets of fresh batteries.

From the pool below Barry a torch flashed, lighting a grimace on Chris’s face. Chris cackled a horror-film laugh.
“That wasn’t funny, you twat.”
“Your turn.”
“No way, man.”
“Just look at a spot on the water.”
“No.”
“I’m going to turn off. Just pick a spot.”
“No!”
“When it goes dark, jump.”
Chris turned off the torch. Barry swore and curled his toes around the edge of the rock and looked down. All was black. Barry could hear his breathing. Then he sprang with his toes and spread his arms wide. For an age he was falling through the blackness, unable to tell which way was up or down or if it was day or night or if he was alone or surrounded by a thousand faces. Then his feet hit the cold liquid of the pool, and the blackness all around looked the same as when it had been the air, except now he fell through something thicker, which ran over his invisible skin like iced silk. Then up again as the black air in his lungs forced him to the surface, where he swam in the void like a bat.
Chris turned the torches on and Barry swum over and they sat together on a rock by the side of the pool and screamed and shouted and beat their chests.
“Shit!” said Barry.
“I told you!” said Chris.
“Yeah!”
“Shall we go again?”
“Let’s do it! Together this time.”
“Now you’re talking!”
Up to the top they went and jumped in the dark, holding hands. Then again – bombing the water this time; and again – diving head first. And although they knew the water was there, there was always a stretching moment when they felt they might be falling infinitely.
They stood at the top one last time. Neither wanted to end the moment.
“Come on,” said Chris. “I can hear the call of the Margarita.”
“Let’s just feel the dark once more,” said Barry.
In the dark, Barry mouthed silent words at Chris, knowing he couldn’t see: “Chris you are a wonderful, wanker, son of a bitch, bitchin’, beautiful, barmy, boring, bountiful—” until Chris’s torch came on.
Barry laughed until he noticed that Chris wasn’t smiling.
“Is it me – or has my torch gone orange?” said Chris.

The coil of filament was indeed of a much more orange hue, and thinner. And though Barry’s torch was brighter, it didn’t seem as bright as it had been, though they couldn’t be sure, and before the debate about brightness had got very far they found they were splashing as fast as they could. Barry fell and cut his knee, but there wasn’t time to even think about blood or wounds because Chris’s torch went out and they were an age from daylight. The water was running against them this time, and seemed to cling to their thighs, slowing their legs, and mud sucked hold of their feet. They had to swim in one place. Had they needed to swim on the way? And as they kept close together, sharing the ever more orange light of the remaining torch, they tried to remember if they’d seen this stalactite or that stalagmite on the way, though there wasn’t time to doubt. And just when it seemed that the torch was finally going to die, they came around a bend and found they could see the walls way on ahead, and there was a whiteness there which grew and grew and they started to scream with joy. They hugged one another and fell down into a pool of sludge and whooped with joy. On they ran, as if it might be a mirage, as if the cave might suck them back in, until they came to the pool by the entrance which they swam through at top speed, doing front crawl, until they got to the other side, where Miguel was standing, grinning, smoking a cigarette.

Barry and Chris panted like dogs, devouring the tropical air, feeling the warmth of the afternoon start to comfort their shivering muddy skins. Barry sat on the rock, Chris cleaned his wound, and they both drank long from Chris’s canteen.
With a grin and a shrug, Miguel showed them the fresh batteries.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” said Miguel, starting to laugh.
“Gentlemen?” said Barry. “Hijo de puta—”
“Hijo de puta!” said Chris. “I know that phrase.”
“Si! Son of a bitch, médico,” said Miguel. “I’m a son of a bitch too.”

They laughed with thumping hearts, then threw Miguel in the pool at the start of the cave, taking care not to hurt his leg. When they all calmed down they smoked the rest of his cigarettes and set off back through the forest, chattering like schoolchildren, asking Miguel the name of everything and telling him he ought to be reading Steinbeck in English if he thought he was so clever. That night Chris slept like a lamb again in the coop and Barry, unable to sleep, mounted a one-man-mission against the hippies in the barn.

Eels and Catherine Wheels

It was very dark, the night they drove along the river. A sliver of road curved to follow its bends, but they couldn’t tell how far away the water lay. All was black to the left, below, but was it the black of a field by the riverside or a dark mass of water?
“The river’s engorged with eels, this time of year,” Mack teased. “Slimy and black they slither through the Fens. If you keep an eye out you might just catch the glint of their skin as they break the surface.”
“Urgh!” Josie shivered, and felt pimples roughen her arms.
“So many they swell the body of the water, pushing out toward the banks, turning the river into a mighty eel of its own, sometimes spilling over the banks to writhe on the very road we drive—”
“ENOUGH!” She yelped, so that he jumped.
They drove in silence and Josie tried to stop her eyes from darting to the left. She wanted to put her knees up and embrace them, but she couldn’t get her heels on the little seat of their decrepit Peugeot.
Mack was wondering why Josie had agreed to come to the cottage at all. She hated the place, complained it was cold, devoid of soul.
As she swayed in her seat and tried not to let the eels wriggle into her thoughts, Josie thought about Drew’s skin and how it had felt next to hers last weekend. Like magnetic silk. It occurred to her that her heart was beating fast, and then it occurred to her that this was the thought of a romantic imbecile. She wondered if she would tell Mack this weekend; then she almost tutted as she remembered she was thinking about herself here, not some other girl in control of the comings and goings of her relationships. A slow descent into catastrophe was the only break-up method she knew. She was hoping Mack might already suspect. Perhaps he’d lurch into a rage, hurl her out of his life. At least that would bring some fireworks, she thought. Where were the fireworks?
“It’s a lie,” Josie said, quietly.
“What is?” said Mack.
“There aren’t any eels, are there?”
“Not many,” he said, smiling.
Fog started to shade in the beams of the headlights.
“Barely enough to have with pie and mash,” he said.
“Stop it,” she said.
The camber of the road was out - something to do with draining floodwater – and the sinews in Mack’s bare right forearm flexed as he wrangled the car round bends. Josie wanted to tell him to take the wheel in both hands.

Mack carried in the bags, then stood on the doorstep of the cottage and rolled a cigarette. The red-brick cottage stood on its own, down a track, off the main road. The river curved across the front to the right. Mack thought he could feel the water, fifty or sixty yards away across the paddock, though the fog meant he couldn’t see it. Sometimes you could hear birds ruffle its surface, but tonight the river made no sound. He smoked and thought about eels, wondering how many there really were. His mother told him she learned to swim in a river five feet deep. The nuns had known the bottom was covered with eels.
He felt Josie, thickly jumpered, put her arms around him and lean her chin on his shoulder.
“Gissa drag,” she said. She took a puff. “I’ve lit the fire, but there’s hardly any coal.”
“They only check if the scuttle’s full in winter.”
“Autumn, winter – it’s still cold,” said Josie with a chatter of teeth she was proud to engineer.
“Why don’t I get some now?” said Mack.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Look at the fog!”
Mack was already zipping up his Parka.
“I’ve got to; it’s perfect!” he said. “When do I ever get to be a hunter? I can hardly forage for gas for the flat. When do I get to row a boat across a river, to fetch coal from a farm – to provide for my wench?”
Josie held his sleeve, half affectionately; half afraid he might really go. Once he got an idea into his head…
“I’ll wench you! You’re not rowing anywhere… Take the bridge, if you must, Mack, baby, please…”
But he was walking.
“It’s a bridge too far, baby,” said Mack.
“That’s not funny. It’s only half a mile to the bridge, and what about all the…”
She couldn’t say the word.
The furred hood of his Parka formed a shaggy halo as he turned and disappeared into the fog.

Mack set about untangling the rope which tied the rowing boat to a little post. The boat was wedged in the mud, but swayed gently, and it would only take a shove to get it into the water. He took the oars from the bottom and banged them into the ground: to test if they were solid, and because it seemed right. He looked into the fog but couldn’t see the other bank. He climbed into the boat, hitched one oar into the rollicks and used the other to push off. As the boat eased from the shore with a slick ripple, the name just came into his head: Drew.

Josie put the supplies Mack had bought for this romantic weekend into the fridge: half-fat milk, purple sprouting broccoli, a free range chicken, three types of beer, a bottle of Pinot Grigio, a chocolate fudgey pudding. She remembered that they needed spuds from the farm to go with the roast. Mack and his “famous” roast potatoes. Just like his mum’s... Surely a relationship was doomed when you started getting excited about the excellence of cooked vegetables. She opened the fridge again and extracted the white wine. Uncorking it with a stagger, she wondered if Drew had any pet recipes she ought to know about.
Josie jutted her bum in front of the weedy fire for a while to store up some warmth. Then she put on her duffle coat and sat on the step, with a glass in her hand and the bottle by her side. She listened for the boat, though perhaps its sound would be muffled by the fog. She watched the fog and counted: one, two, three… willing Mack to appear when she got to ten.

Mack trudged across the field with half a sack of coal on his back and a dram of single malt warming his tum. He felt pleased with the twenty minutes of fraternisation with farmer Jack; though he was disappointed he hadn’t been offered any animals to skin for the pot. It was a long time since he’d walked on ground that gave like this, or since the tops of his boots had been caressed by grass as long and lush. He found a bush on the river bank, set his feet apart, unzipped his Parka from the bottom, unbuttoned his flies and let a warm stream steam the nettles. Everything was better in the open air, he thought as he chuckled aloud. Then as he turned towards the boat he heard a great KERSPLOSH!

By the time Josie got to five hundred and ten, she’d finished the wine. Feelings were starting to burn inside; in ascending order: concern, boredom, irritation. Grasping the empty bottle of wine she got to her feet.
“Eels schmeels,” she said. “I’m comin-ta-getcha!”
Josie walked down the slope, stopping half-way to roll up her jeans a little, as the grass was making the bottoms wet, which annoyed her. As she neared the river the fog started to lift. As she stood on the bank, she heard a sound. She crouched. She drew short breaths. She looked out over the water. It was a slither or a hiss, a ripple from out of the fog, perhaps the sound of a hungry eel. Josie felt a jab of panic and stared wide-eyed at the water. She backed away, still low, balancing on her toes, clutching the bottle in defence against the rush of the beast.
The fog started to clear, and as it did she heard what sounded like a laugh, then another. Mack’s laugh! She started to stand, panic turning to joy, eels receding from her inner vision, and as the fog cleared, she saw indeed that it was Mack, and that he was… pissing. She hurled the bottle as hard as she could towards him.

Josie sat on the sofa and toasted her toes. A few minutes later, Mack came in from the back garden and fed more coal to the greedy fire. Then he sat and pressed close to Josie.
“I can’t believe you went into the river!” she said.
“Only up to my knees; big deal. I can’t believe you threw the bottle in.”
“Urgh! And to think I mistook you for an eel,” winced Josie.
“Easy mistake to make,” said Mack, and raised a comical brow.
“Don’t flatter yourself, you filthy man.”
She tried to imagine Drew urinating on a bush. She couldn’t. She was surprised to find herself thinking that she didn’t really want to be with a man who would always think to go before he left. No matter how good his skin felt. What an absurd way to evaluate a man, she thought and laughed to herself. What am I like?
“Are you warm enough yet?” said Mack.
“I’m not going out again.”
“I got something from the farmer.”
“If it’s the spuds—”
“Sod spuds; this is better.”
“Five minutes,” she said, hoping he’d give up.
“Ok, how about some gossip?”
“Now you’re talking… about?
“Drew,” he said with a smile.
Josie curled in her toes and pulled her feet beneath her. She crossed her arms and sat back into the arm of the sofa, facing Mack, limbs a barricade.
Chuffed he had an attentive audience, Mack continued: “It seems he’s got two on the go. He’s being very coy about it, wouldn’t tell me names or anything, but I know he’s seeing an American girl, Cassie, and now he’s met this other girl, though he wouldn’t say much about it­­. It think he’s trying to work out where to place his bet, or—”
Josie stroked her arms and tried to sound interested, amused, calm, disinterested: “But he must have said something, I mean, how did you find out—”
“We went for a drink and he just came out with it, started babbling, and then when I started taking the piss, he just clammed up and… I think he thought he’d gone too far… maybe he’s worried Cassie’ll find out, though I’m not one to gossip and I hardly know her… what d’you think of that then?” Mack looked as pleased as can be.
“Let’s go and see what you got from farmer Jack,” she said and went to find her trainers.

Outside the fog had cleared and the sky was sprayed with stars. Mack made Josie close her eyes and put her fingers in her ears.
“If it’s an eel, I’ll murder you,” she said.
Through muffled ears she heard a fizzing-wish of a noise that took her back to winter childhood nights down at the rec: Wearing Mittens, a duffle coat buttoned to the neck, holding her father’s hand, waving sparklers, grinning at everything, the taste of toffee apples on the roof of her mouth. It made her think of the first time she met Mack at the Guy Fawkes Gala. Performing unsafe stunts with fireworks; buying her candy-floss; taking the piss out of her mittens.
She opened her eyes to behold three Catherine wheels whooshing round, showering multi-coloured sparks.
“You ready?” said Mack, who was on his knees before her, wine-bottle between his knees, Zippo in hand. He lit the touch paper and up the rocket went, nearly taking off his head, shooting high into the air to explode into a thousand golden stars.