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.