After the kiss, Matthew releases her and turns to unlock the car door, and at that moment, Maria looks around and sees the young woman from reception in her navy jacket, standing in the hotel entrance, behind the glass-panelled door, looking out at them both. Maria is close enough to see her own reflection layered against the young woman’s face and to know that the young woman is, in that moment, seeing her for who she is. It would take no more than a couple of steps.
Matthew turns, puts his hand on her arm again and pushes her gently into the car. By the time Maria has put her seatbelt on and looked back at the hotel entrance, the young woman has gone – or maybe she is still there, and it is simply that Maria herself has moved away and is no longer reflected in the glass panel of the door. Perhaps it is just that the light is different.
Maria thinks, She will have forgotten me before she has crossed the hotel lobby, lifted the wooden hatch on the reception desk, and gone to join the pale young man who will talk about his twins.
On the long drive back up to the Midlands, Matthew chats away about what he has been doing, about how the cat threw up on the bedspread yesterday, but he was in such a panic about finding her, he left it. It’s going to be her job when they get back, sorry, but she can hardly blame him.
Maria sits with her head resting against the side window, staring at the flash and rush of the passing countryside as they speed up the motorway, and when she doesn’t respond, he makes a snort of disgust – she knows he will bring her surliness up later – and turns on the radio. He turns it up so loud that the signal is distorted and the music wavers and blares. He sings along, loudly, tapping the steering wheel with his fingers and accelerating as he changes lanes in a way he knows makes her nauseous.
Maria says nothing. She thinks about the sea. She thinks about the red flag that flew in the wind on the pebble beach, and the shush and crash of the waves, and how the sounds seemed to magnify on that first evening in the hotel, as darkness fell, as if they were all that there was, out there in the calm of night. She thinks of how the rise and fall of the waves felt like the rise and fall of her own heart, how she could see her body rising and falling in that water, arms splayed as she floated on her back, hair pooling around her head. She thinks about her reflection in the hotel-lobby door that morning, twinned with that of the young woman.
The young woman is called Anya; her pale male colleague is Neill. When Anya returns to the reception desk, she says, ‘Have you done the printouts yet?’ and Neill replies, ‘No I was going to go on my break now, I can do them later if you want.’
Anya shrugs, thinking that it’s so quiet, these winter mornings, they go by so slowly, she would rather be busy any day. ‘No it’s all right,’ she says, ‘go on your break, I’ll do them.’
Neither Anya or Neill will think again about the sallow young woman with dark curly hair and the brother who came to pick her up, not even when they hear on the news the next day about the accident that afternoon, the two fatalities on the M23. The inquest into the deaths, some months later, will blame the driver of the car, Matthew Burton, for changing lanes too quickly, but it will get little publicity and there will be no reason for either Anya or Neill to make the connection.
Neill’s wife will have given birth to their twins by then, a boy and a girl. Anya will never tell him that she has loved him since the first week they met on their training course two years ago, the same course where he met his wife, loved him distantly and without hope, as you might love a pair of shoes or a cashmere wrap you can’t afford to buy.
February passes slowly in Brighton. On the pebbled beach, the waves continue to lift and crash, the red warning flag flies for the rest of the month, and to Anya it seems as though winter is never-ending, just keeps rolling around and around, and that summer and the busy season is both a far memory and will never come.
ANIMA
* * *
GRACE MCCLEEN
THE MEN ARRIVED IN the afternoon with horns and with dogs. Rain came in swathes; mist was cold on my skin. I slipped out after lunch. There was only packing to be done, and I didn’t want to stand and watch. ‘You’ll like it,’ they told me, ‘you’ll see. Just give it time. You’ll learn to be a lady,’ they said. ‘Oh miss, such airs and graces, you’ll have – you won’t know yourself!’
It was this that concerned me. ‘But can I come back?’ I asked them.
‘Of course,’ they said. ‘But you won’t want to. You’ll be so busy with your new life there. It’s time you grew up, anyway. You’ve been left to your own ways too long. You can’t stay here for ever. It’s time you went into the real world.’
I was sure I would be content to stay here, amongst these fields and woods, this hill, for the rest of my life; I did not care if I never discovered the ‘real’ world, but I said nothing. I could always run away, I thought; if the new place was as bad as I imagined, I could run away and come back here. But then I couldn’t stay; they would send me back. Could I live in the wild? I wondered, as I watched them label vests and socks; What would I need to survive there?
It wasn’t sadness I felt that day, but disbelief that this could be happening. I had never lived anywhere but here. I didn’t know if I could. It seemed inconceivable. I wasn’t sure how my body would function. So there was no sadness, only shock, only amazement that such a thing was taking place. Stupor, I suppose.
I couldn’t stand around and wait for the car to come any longer, so I crept away that afternoon, despite the weather, and, hidden by the bare blackberry canes, stole down to the fence at the bottom of the garden. Nothing seemed real, though I strove to experience each and every thing as I never had before. I passed the place where I fell and scarred both knees when I was four, the tree where John the gardener had built the lookout for my seventh birthday, the orchard where every September we harvested apples, the place where I laid out supper for the hedgehogs. I touched lichen, caught the sharp stink of badger, noticed the colour, even now, of the dead leaves on the ground, stepped on mushrooms and heard the curious slippery squeak their flesh made as it sundered – and I saw, smelt, heard, and felt nothing. I couldn’t yet feel the rain, which was heavier now. Each drop left only a numbness behind it that might be cold or might be hot, a small presence then absence, a coming and going too slight and too numerous to keep count.
I reached the fence and looked over the land. There was not much to see, I realised; nothing remarkable to another; but each bush, each stream, each thicket, was essential to me. I wondered suddenly if it would remain when I had gone, and then wondered, because I could feel nothing, if I had already left it.
I stood, thoroughly wet now, knowing I would be in for it when I got back. And that was when I saw you: a low brown shape slipping by the hedge, your gait dishevelled, paws black, your tail a little too long. A few minutes later I heard the hunt.
I saw them in the distance, saw the horses, dogs in troops, tails a forest of spears, caught the whining and shouting, squelching and screams, shouts; ‘Get over!’ ‘Get up!’ Whipping and hupping: ‘Hup! Hep! Hup! Hep!’ You ran right by me, and my heart beat once, so hard that for a moment I couldn’t breathe. And there and then I came to life.
Horns blared. You answered in sharp breaths and a patter of feet. You were still trotting – why didn’t you run? Perhaps you were already tired. I didn’t know how far you had come. But as I watched you disappear, it was my legs that turned to water, my skin that stung, my chest that was suddenly tight. I had forgotten I had to get back. In a second I had climbed the fence, snaring my skirt, and dropped down the other side. Then I was up and running after you, through the empty field, rain blinding me. I entered the wood after you. There was screaming in the air. I wasn’t sure if it came from within or without. And in the grey midst of winter the whole world caught light.
I lost you, and when they came crashing behind me, I fell back and waited. I knew you would outwit them – you always outwitted them, dozens of times. You would double back and leave them panting, a
nd then you would disappear, and later, when it was safe, I would find you. I ran through the thicket. I hacked brambles apart. I knew where your den was; I would meet you there and see that no harm came to you. I said the words in my head and I know you heard me. I would get there before them. But even the ground could not hold you. Even earth vomited you out. Like some prophet of old, there was no place for you, or for me that day; we were driven out, dispossessed, disinherited, and I knelt, or rather my knees did, when I saw they had found you before me; I watched as they hit the ground with pipes and with spades; as at one end of your home dogs began to bark. The dogs wagged their tails – they were such stupid creatures! They yapped and they whined; foolish noises for such large animals to make. If you made a noise it would mean something, I knew; it would make sense. I had heard you at night and you sounded like a demon. There was thunder now and rain like tarpaulin, banging in sheets, or maybe the banging was in my head, and I watched as they clamoured for you, unashamed in their lust. I should have shouted. I should have screamed and run at them. Could a child have done that? A girl of twelve? Perhaps. Why didn’t I, then? Why didn’t I stand up and save – I see now – both you and myself?
The first time I saw you, you were trotting along the top of the cornfield. The sun was rising, and when it caught your fur you looked as though you were cloaked in blood. I had never seen anything so beautiful and at once so familiar; I had the strangest feeling that I had, for the first time, seen me. After that I always looked out for you. I knew there was only one. You were the one the grown-ups spoke of. And they too spoke as if you were one, not many; not really animal and not really human. Not spirit either. What, then? An exile, a devil, the whipping boy of centuries. An ancient carrier of wrongs. You were the massacre, I learned. You were the terrorist. You were the alien. You and me both. And though they hated and killed you, they wrote stories about you and sang songs. You were a trophy. They eviscerated you and stuffed you, over and over, as if to reassure themselves there was no way you could come back to life. They put you in glass cases above fireplaces, or painted you on signs above doors where you swung in the breeze at the end of chains – as your brothers and sisters swung at the end of ropes, and, now, unable to move, I realised you would too this day, before they were done.
You were a legend and didn’t even know it. You were immortal. And that afternoon I understood: they must kill you for you to live on.
So they dug down. They sank steel rods into the ground and pushed you out. A difficult birth; you did not want to be born. Who would into such a world? They sent in forceps: a mastiff. He came out dragging you, but before he could kill you they took you away and let you hang, and I began to see that my worst fears were not dark enough: these men had a plan, but death was only a fraction of it; time made up one half and pleasure the other. They took you down and gave you to the jaws of the dog. He received their offering ungraciously, tugging clumsily in his hunger. Your skin was pulled back from your skull. You looked absurd, surprised, as if you were smiling. Absurd was the first thing you would look. There would be others.
The dog was excited, then confused. He could not pull any harder, but they made sure that he did: one pulled you, another his hind legs. Short sharp pulls. Your head came away bloody, dishevelled, fur in your eyes. You looked concussed, stunned. Stunned was the second thing you became. There would be more.
Your eyes were so bright at that moment. They were enormous. I was not sure if I was kneeling or standing or lying down; my own body seemed to have evaporated. We were both merely eyes, mine weeping, yours steely; looking on at the world’s fun; playthings both; whirligigs; spinning, elevated, enthralled; borne high on a rhapsody of pain. They held you by the fur so that your mouth panted, showed small teeth. You looked like you were grinning. You looked mad now. Mad was the third thing you became.
‘Look at this creature!’ they said. And you certainly were a spectacle. They laughed and spat now, having removed their king and vanquished their leader – for you are their leader: you led them, not the other way around. The hounds bayed and jostled, in frantic anticipation. Their saliva descended in strings. The men held you aloft by the scruff, and you hung like a dead thing. You knew you must use only awkward effort each moment called for. You knew already, as I did not quite yet, that it was too late, yet still you played the game; you were a magnificent player – the best; you played your part so beautifully, down to the puny snap at the pole with which they touched the side of your jaw; down to the way your mouth clapped shut as they dropped you – careful to keep their hands out of harm’s way – into a sack. And there you hung for an instant; a man on his way to the gallows. Though there would be no more trial now, that chapter was over; or if there were to be one, I sensed even now, it had barely begun.
The company were overly loud as they rode back through the wood. They were washing their hands with their laughter; without laughter they would honour you even as you were destroyed. I followed, breath rasping, stumbling over bare furrows, blinded by rain and by tears. I, your witness, your watcher, your other. Betrayer. Self.
Did you know me? Even now, in this hour I disowned you? When I stood silent by? I knew you. It was I who watched you from the beginning. You are the one who came out of the woods at the end of the day. You came out of the woods where the thorn trees grew thickly, out of the woods and into my life. They said not to encourage you, but I couldn’t help it. A person can’t look truth in the face and go back again. And you were truer than anything I had ever seen and more alive. So I watched and I courted you. At night when you played with your children, or fought, or made love. Early in the morning and late in the dusk, I saw you saunter leisurely with a bird or rabbit slack-necked in your mouth. Left you scraps from the table when their backs were turned, though I also knew that you slaughtered far more than you could carry away; hens, ducks, geese; night after night. I smelt your stink, heard your rustle, found the hole in the ground where you came and went that looked like an empty socket in a head. I thought you saw me too, because once or twice you stopped and looked back or looked up, and our eyes met, and when they did it was as if we had spoken, though not in any language I knew of. Once we stopped feet apart, surprising each other in the lane. Your expression changed but a whisker. You barely lifted your head, simply slipped sideways into the hedge. Afterwards I thought there must be some residue, evidence, but I came away empty-handed as if waking from a dream, and, as if bereaved, found I could not remember your face.
So here we are. At the end of all things, it seems. They have taken you to the long field, and when I reach it I fall to the ground winded, and though it lurches beneath me like a wave, strangely, I am almost at peace now, in the midst of utter loss; because the loss is utter, because I am in the midst of it. Perhaps I would not be if I were further from the centre, if the loss were one degree less.
They whirl you once in the air and then let you go. And even now, for a moment, my heart leaps in hope and I think they are setting you free, it is over, they were simply teaching you a lesson! It was just a trick, a nightmare – they have caught you and now they will throw you back! I clamber to my knees then stagger forwards, weeping, cheering, ridiculous, as I watch you scarper. But a sound makes me turn. Dogs, pouring over the field after you. There is no reprieve. It is simply round two. They have not forgiven you at all, they hate you more than I knew. And I stand as if halved, split asunder, and watch you. A small thing, moving slowly.
In dreams I have seen you since that time, wearing a diadem of thorns. I have seen you at the foot of a tree, a wolf with a red hide, a man in sheep’s clothing, with a snout and hairs on the backs of his hands, a creature who bids me speak. I, your cowardly apostle, your doubting disciple, your false friend, was silent when it mattered; was with you and was not; went with you to the end of the earth, was there when the field came alive and leaped like a wave. I was there when you ran your last race.
The rain was too heavy to see. I saw. The wind blew sound this way
and that. I heard. You were running all out now. I told you, you should. I told you that earlier, but you wouldn’t listen, you would only trot. I am sorry to say you were not a great runner; the dogs were. I didn’t see when they overtook you. I looked away. I understood heart attacks now.
I couldn’t see what the dogs were doing, there were too many. They swarmed, climbed over and under. I guessed you were at the centre. For minutes blackness wiped me out. When I looked again you had escaped. You were so much cleverer – and still had strength left, even now. But numbers prevail; someone spots you. You are recaptured. And finally, they deign to murder you. Piece by little piece.
I learned that day what a slow business it is to die; how tenacious life is even when the creature who possesses it doesn’t want the gift any more. My heart was everywhere now, in my fingers and eyes, in the balls of my feet, beneath the soil, running through streams, through veins of leaves and of trees. My heart took up the skies. A man came with a terrier on a rope. The group broke for a second, and I saw you, huddled, still standing.
Imagine being eaten alive.
The intimacy. Do you form a bond with your consumer? I thought you would be dead many times over, but the dogs took tiny bites. It was as if they were humans; we could eat things just as well as they. They took tiny bites, but there were hundreds. I couldn’t imagine all of those mouths. The hatred in them. The desire.
At some point I fell down, went out like a light. When I came to they were hoisting you up and a dog came too; thrashing and mad-eyed. You were limp now. No more than a piece of rag. I saw then the secret: you were attached to a rope; whenever you were close to quitting they lifted you up. Now they were swinging you by your tail, and the dogs jumped after you clumsily, threshing mid-air. You flew, suspended above that sea of saliva, breath, rain, and teeth. I thought you were dead. But you were not. The man knew you could not last. You jerked to life – still had such power! You had been playing, an excellent sportsman; you didn’t flinch, even in agony. The dogs became delirious. You were let down amongst them.