Animals (22 page)

‘Fuuuuuuuuck you.’

We stopped in Wasdale, a deep back-pocket of Cumbria, tucked away to the West amongst the highest mountains, as good a place as any to hide. The Wasdale Head Inn was at the end of a dirt road. Tyler’s car shuddered over a cattle-grid and onto the final stretch of track. On either side of the mounds of green ferns on our right, the purple depths of Wastwater loomed, backed by slopes of scree, lunar-like in their colour and lifelessness. The whole side of the mountain looked to be sliding down into the water, grey rocks and pale bushes in a sad, slow descent. Small waves scuffed the surface of the lake. As we turned a corner we came across a flock of foamy grey Herdwick sheep who turned to stare at us with identical expressions. In the distance, the word INN was painted on the side of a white building in large black letters.

Call me masochistic (no, call me it
harder
) but I’d asked Tyler to drive past the wedding venue in Patterdale, to see what it did to me. The View was a shuttered, tilting Seventies hotel. Long ago, so it felt, I’d fallen in love with the shabby tragedy of the place – its drab corridors like something out of
The Shining
and its background fizzling bleakness – but when we pulled up outside it that day I was dismayed to see it looked as though it had been refurbished. I leapt out of the car and ran into the foyer.

‘Hello!’ said the man behind reception.

I looked around. The lobby was bright and clean and smelled of wet paint. I put a hand over my mouth.

‘Are you all right, madam?’

I looked at him and my hand fell. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Oh, a few weeks ago! We wanted to get it done before the weddings. We have a lot of weddings coming up.’

I heard Tyler’s voice behind me. ‘Hers is one of ’em.’

The man raised his hands. ‘How wonderful! You must come and see the new function room …’

We followed him. Something was different about the bar, as well as the new décor, something else, something missing. The piano. The old piano was missing from the corner.

‘Where’s the piano?’

‘Oh, we got rid of it. Decrepit old thing, really. No one ever got a decent note out of it. Well, there was this one fella once, he did all right, must have been a professional or something …’

I zoned out from listening and did an about-turn, pushing past Tyler. I started crying as soon as I was inside the car. She got in and rubbed my back. ‘Look, we can do Edinburgh tomorrow, whatever you want.’

Two hours later we arrived in Wasdale. We sat opposite each other in the snug. A bottle of wine spoked the dark-wood table between us. I studied Tyler’s face – the made-over bruises, the mole on her left cheek defiantly steadfast in orbit. The scar on her top lip a lonely scar no more.

‘Damn beer bottle,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ She picked up her glass. ‘Motherfucker.’

She looked at me and there it was, the final mystery between us, stretched and stuffed with bright new beady eyes. Oh, I’d known, though, hadn’t I? I’d seen her so many times, in my dreams, under that vast Midwestern sky, eight and twelve and fifteen years old, waiting for the storm to break. It swept through the house with slammed doors and slung bottles; it retreated with beds unslept-in, phone calls from her mother’s sisters. (The way the day begins decides the shade of everything.) She looked away. Knew I knew. Did she know that part of me also envied her dark causality? Oh god, no. Not there. Not yet.

‘Cigarette?’

Dusk was falling and swallows flitted around the inn’s fascias. The moon was a steady spotlight over the fells. On the nearby campsite a group of campers were sitting in folding chairs, dividing a box of wine into plastic goblets. There was the sound of laughter, ebbing and flowing like water or music.

‘Define happiness,’ Tyler said.

‘Peace,’ I said. ‘Calm. Something like that.’

‘Didn’t you always hope it would be something more?’

‘Yes. Maybe that’s why we fuck things up – so that peace, when it comes, feels like enough.’ I thought of Ezra Pound but I didn’t say it, it was too sad too sad:
And the days are not full enough, and the nights are not full enough, and life slips by like a field mouse, not shaking the grass.
The great tragedy of not being remembered is the time you waste worrying about it in advance.

The inn was done out like a saloon with leather-set booths, a long bright counter and three-quarter-height slatted doors swinging into the kitchen area. Tankards were hung along a picture rail and, beneath these, a row of chalkboards detailing the day’s specials. Gammon and pineapple. Vegetable lasagne. On the other walls were framed photos of mountaineers standing in heroic poses.

‘Let’s go ringside,’ Tyler said and we sat up at the bar on a pair of high stools with torn red leather cushions.

There was a group of big, strong-looking lads by the bar. Quiet, less sure hikers and campers drank pensively at tables, reminding me of sheep.

‘My people, my people,’ Tyler said, nodding. ‘Livestock handlers all.’ She smacked her lips.

‘Maybe you should chew on a piece of wheat,’ I said. ‘Just so they know you’re one of them. It might get us free drinks.’

‘Oh, they know,’ Tyler said. ‘They can
sense
me.’ She took another swig of wine and put her glass down nicely. Then she let out a long whistle. ‘Oh boy. I think I just ovulated.’

‘What?’

‘Constitution of an ox, two o’clock.’

I waited a moment, sipped my drink, discreetly turned to look. ‘Oh
boy
is right,’ I said. ‘Way too young.’

‘He’s not! He’s at least twenty-one. And a half.’

‘He’s a child.’

‘Look at his hands. He would cup my butt. He would cup it. Capably. Seriously, I am getting the major fanny gallops.’

‘Tyler.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to go over there and start fisting him.’

‘Oh god please really.’

‘Fisting’s too good for kids.’

‘You take my point, then.’

‘He is ripe for the picking. Seriously. They should put up pictures of him in IVF clinics. He looks like he could fertilise you just by looking at you.’

‘Let’s hope not.’

Close up he had soft blonde hair along his jawline and a mouth that never quite closed fully. His name was Larry For Short.

‘What happened to your eye?’ he said.

‘I’m a Thai boxer,’ Tyler replied. ‘Pendlebury Pythons. I’ve got the kimono upstairs if you want to see.’

At nine o’clock one of the three boys made his excuses and left and I wondered whether there had been some unspoken nod, some agreement at the urinals pertaining to how this was all going to pan out.

‘You know what I think,’ Tyler said while we were outside smoking. ‘You might as well.’

‘Tyler.’

‘All I’m saying is to dismiss possibilities is to –’

‘To not dismiss possibilities is immoral.’

‘Big talk for a –’

‘You know what stops me making this even slightly –?’

‘It might just be a simple case of –’

‘The thought of Jim eating rice.’

‘Huh?’

‘Jim loves rice. You should see his face when he’s eating rice. I couldn’t do anything when I think about him eating rice.’

‘Rice-fan Jim is probably fucking every flautist in Finland as we speak.’

‘Stop.’

I’d once watched a chat show with my mum, the topic of which was ‘Affairs – Could Your Relationship Survive?’ One of the experts on the panel kept saying how it was wrong to use words like ‘unfaithful’ and ‘infidelity’, that you should use the term ‘concurrent relationships’ instead. My mum scoffed at this. Concurrent relationships. But I’d always wondered about how practical monogamy was, especially once you had longevity in the mix. The night had flung things my way and I’d taken them more than once, usually towards the end of a relationship, I did console myself with that. Not that it provided much in the way of self-charming when you were on a commuter tram with a turned-off phone and bruises on your thighs and a hangover so bad you felt as though you’d been shat out of Satan’s own starry arsehole. Catalysts, that was how I categorised those briefless encounters, confirming to me that things had changed irreversibly from love to not-love. One-night stands spawned of begged cigarettes and night buses to nowhere. It was my way of cementing the death of feeling. If you could do that then you didn’t love someone, not when you had a pact that didn’t allow for Other People. I wasn’t judgmental where other people’s relationships were concerned (other people’s relationships, like sex, had always been one of my least favourite topics of conversation). Swinging was fine if you both swung (always visions of chandeliers, of lines of unfathomable cocks awaiting legs-akimbo acrobatics. Sometimes I thought my imagination was constantly on drugs …). But if you had an agreement to be monogamous, if you believed in the holiness of (not marriage, but) sexual exclusivity, i.e. you are free to be many things to many people but you are only
that
to me, then there was a line, and once you crossed that line it was all over. It was just rags and bones. Shit and sawdust.

His name was Sam and he had some interesting views on what constituted ‘proper books’ (crime fiction, thrillers, murder mysteries). He also kept going to the bar without asking what everyone wanted and buying pints for himself and Larry and halves for me and Tyler. When I said I was going outside for a cigarette he said
I finally managed to get my mum to stop smoking last year
, to which I said
Teenagers these days
.

Tyler joined me outside, lit my cigarette and then her own. ‘Having fun?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m finding myself perversely aroused by his outrageous sexism. I think it’s because I know he doesn’t really mean it.’

‘Oh, he means it all right. But you can
afford
to be turned on, that’s the point.’

‘You’re not actually going to do this, are you?’

‘I’ve never needed it more.’

Tyler didn’t have an upper age limit. I’d once asked her how high she’d go and she just looked at me.

Sixty?

A pouty squint.

Seventy?

Flat palms, Mafioso shrug.
If they were a young seventy. You know all this age talk is bullshit anyway. No one ever feels any fucking different.

‘I just don’t get the appeal of younger men,’ I said. ‘They’re so giddy, like spaniels. But then I didn’t fancy teenagers when I was a teenager.’

‘He’s not a teenager!’

‘He’s not far off.’

‘I need distraction. And Nick’s getting a bit too close for comfort – I need to stop him thinking we have so much of a thing.’

A flash: had she lied, had Nick hit her, was the whole Marie thing a story …‘Does he know what happened?’

‘Dunno. I’ve been dropping his calls.’

I eyeballed her. Nothing. ‘I don’t trust him. That stuff he had was so strong, I didn’t like it.’

‘Oho, you seemed to like it at the time! What’s the matter, puss? Jealous?’

‘Fuck you.’

Back inside the inn I let her go on ahead and walked up to the bar and bought myself a Lagavulin.

‘Where are you girls from?’ the landlord said, dropping my change into my palm as though he didn’t want to touch me.

‘
Cumbrian Life.
’

‘You’ll be wanting a receipt, then.’

Two hours and six whiskies later I was wake-drunk. I slurred a word. I fell over in the bathroom. I dropped my drink. Three strikes! That was that. An outdoor piss and then bed. Tyler gave Larry’s belt a firm tug for good measure and followed me towards the door of the inn.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted after us.

Tyler turned with a flourish. ‘Country tradition.’

The landlord dropped a glass and picked it up again. Sam was finishing his pint. I followed Tyler outside and squatted beside her at the edge of the car park. Above us, a mad sprawl of stars. A background chuckle.

‘THE EXISTENTIALS!’ Tyler said, yanking up her pants. ‘They’ve found us! Quick – back to warmth, light, strong booze and sexual frisson!’

I left her an hour or so later, helping herself to crème de menthe behind the bar. Sam had gone home, Larry was indecipherable. I went up to the room, got undressed, took my phone into bed with me and opened Marty’s picture message. And.

Yep.

I woke up alone, the other twin bed still made.

‘Tyler?’ I looked under the bed and in the wardrobe. I looked at my phone. A message from Jim in reply to one I’d sent him before I fell asleep. I couldn’t remember sending it but it contained only two spelling mistakes. The time on my phone told me that I had missed breakfast so I packed, crept downstairs and smoked leaning on the car, my foot up behind me on the wheel arch. The cold air woke my brain as I breathed.
Water, I should probably have some water
, I thought, listening to the waterfalls, now visible as jagged white streaks down the hills, static from a distance, like stars.

A door banged and Tyler came running out from round the side of the inn.

‘GET IN!’ she yelled, opening the passenger door, throwing her hold-all in the back and haring round to the driver’s side. The black eye was back. Her hair was haunted. I clambered into the passenger seat. She started the engine.

‘What the –?’

We were halfway down the track before she said anything.

‘Landlord’s son. Just turned twenty. His mom just threw me out of his room.’ She took a hand away from the steering wheel to wipe the sweat from her brow and then put her hand back and gripped the wheel tighter. A car had to swerve out of the way as we passed in a non-passing place.

‘And that’s not the worst thing.’

‘What’s the worst thing?’

‘She threw his skateboard after me.’

I saw red in the hair at the back of her head. ‘Hang on … Tyler, you’re bleeding. You’re actually bleeding.’

‘I’m CONFUCKINGCUSSED!’

I wound down the window. ‘Stop, I’m going to be sick.’

‘That’s what
she
said …’

I smoked a cigarette in the street outside the B&B, bilious with exam-nerves in my old university city.
This is not a test
, I reminded myself.
ENJOY YOURSELF. ENJOY YOURSELF HARD.