"Oh really?" I go to the fridge for more milk so that he can"t see my face. "Then why has she bought a house with Jack?"
"She hasn"t, has she?" Graham wraps some ice cubes up in a tea-towel. He starts opening and closing drawers. Looking for the rolling-pin. "She"s just bought it on her own, straight from whoever owned it before. Not even a f.u.c.king mortgage or anything! And she just happened to be with Jack at the time, maybe. Maybe she wants to start a big hippy commune or something." He finds the rolling-pin and brings it down. Hard. On the ice cubes. "Imagine that," he says. "Imagine f.u.c.king her her. Jennifer. What would you give for that?" The worktop judders under the blows of the pin. I can hear the ice cracking. So Jennifer and Jack have an arrangement. That makes a little more sense now. I close the fridge.
Imagine it. I turn around and watch Graham. I put the four-pint bottle on the worktop. It jumps and skitters. Imagine it. I"d give everything. But I want more than her body. I want her mind. I want her fearlessness. I want her freedom. I want her time. I want her all.
Upstairs now we are all two or three White Russians to the wind. Taylor and Erin are sitting together in one armchair. Jennifer is sitting in the other.
We are listening to Hot Fuss Hot Fuss, the alb.u.m by The Killers. Graham"s party plan is spread out on the floor.
"When did this alb.u.m come out?" I ask.
"It was our first year at university," Taylor says. "Three or four years ago, maybe."
"No," Erin says. Laughing. "Try six or seven years ago."
"I don"t believe that," I say.
"It"s not as if we"re old, though," Jennifer says. "How"s your dad now, anyway, Francis?"
"He"s OK, thank you," I say. Grateful for the opportunity to look at her openly. "Well. He"s been better. But he"s not, um, he"s not dying, anyway. The operation went well. He"s still having treatment." Her eyes invite me to be honest. "I should give him a ring, but he"ll just go on and on about UFOs."
"Ha," Jennifer says. "Jack"s like that with his folklore. He loves it up there, though. It"s like he"s found another world. That"s what he keeps saying. Like he"s found another world where his stories might be true."
"I miss him, actually," Taylor says.
"Gay," Graham says.
"f.u.c.kwit," Erin says. Without too much affection. She prods Graham with her foot. He puts on a hurt face.
"Last week sometime, I woke up in the middle of the night and he was gone," Jennifer says. "He"d left a note saying he"d gone out for a walk. This was, what, two in the morning. He really seems to have fallen for it. I mean the landscape and everything. I didn"t like it, though. Being on my own in that house at night, when I didn"t expect it."
"What was he doing?" I ask.
"Just walking," she says. "Don"t think he"ll be doing it again though! Not without telling me first, anyway. Do you mind if I light up?"
"No," I say. "I don"t."
"Go ahead," Erin says. "As long as you share it with us."
"No worries," Jennifer says. She takes a small tin out of her woollen handbag. She opens it to reveal three neatly rolled joints. She removes one.
"What are we doing for food?" Graham asks. "Shall I order some pizzas or something? Well, I"m going to anyway. You lot can just tell me if you want something. You"ve got five minutes to decide."
"I like the theme," Jennifer says, later still. "Black and white. It"s a good one. Whose idea was that?"
She"s looking at me, as if she already knows the answer.
"Me," I say. "Mine."
"Yeah," she says. "I like it. And I like the name Cross the Threshold."
"That was mine," Graham says. He is sprawled across the sofa. Lying on his back with a pizza box open on his chest. From where I"m sitting, on the floor, it looks like he"s taking the slices of pizza out of his ribcage and eating them. "You don"t have to give me anything," he says. "But if you"re, like, you know, a proper free-love hippy and everything and you wanted to say thank you, then a blow-job would do."
Jennifer laughs. "I"d rather try and chew out my own eyes."
"How"s your virtual girlfriend, anyway, Graham?" I say.
"Yeah, it"s going well," he says. "We"ve been seeing each other most nights. Usually have s.e.x, too."
"Really?" Taylor says. "How?"
"Well, it"s a bit like masturbation at the moment," he says. "But with someone else telling me what to do. Got video and everything though. I"ve ordered some teled.i.l.d.onic bits and bobs to make it a bit more, you know. A bit more like proper s.e.x." He drinks from his gla.s.s. "She"s wicked, though. Really like her."
"You"re a one-off, Graham," Erin says, "and no mistake."
"I am," he says. "I"m f.u.c.king brilliant. Anyway. Let"s get back to this party, because if it goes well then I can show my brilliance off to lots of new women."
"Well, I"ll get all of the balloons and stuff in town tomorrow," Jennifer says. "And the drink. And Jack"s birthday present. You know, there aren"t any off-licences or supermarkets near where we live."
"We"ll bring some food when we come up," Erin says.
"You"ll be on the train though," Jennifer says. "Are you sure that"s OK?"
"We"ll bring what we can," Erin says.
"Have many people responded to the Facebook invites?" Jennifer asks. "We haven"t got the Internet at the house so I haven"t been able to check."
"Loads," Graham says. With his mouth full. "What are you getting Jack for his birthday?"
"Oh," she says. "You"ll see. What about you?"
"G.o.d knows," Graham says. "I was going to give Francis or Erin some money and ask them to get it."
"Well you can p.i.s.s off," Erin says, "if you think I"m running errands for you."
"Alright!" Graham says. "Jesus."
"We always used to get him the same things," Erin says. "Like, I would always get him a shirt. Taylor would always get him a CD and a poster. Francis would always get him a couple of DVDs."
"A good one and a bad one," I say. "Like, a really good film in a special edition case or something, and then some weird three-films-for-a-pound DVD from the tat bucket at the record shop."
"Graham normally got him some sweets, from what I remember," Taylor says. "Because they sell them at the corner shop."
"That"s it!" Graham says. "I couldn"t remember. Well, that"s what I"ll do this year too."
My bedroom is next to Jack"s old room. Now the spare room. Now occupied by Jennifer. I lie in bed and think about her. Just a wall"s thickness away. I have a headache. I want to go and knock on her door. I want her to tell me that she isn"t scared. My head aches like it"s too big for itself. Like there is something trying to get out. Like a moth from a coc.o.o.n.
If there was a way to be with her.
If there was a way to cut the anxiety out of me. Take all the fear and throw it away. If there was a part of me that I could just remove. I would.
I imagine that I can hear her breathing. I close my eyes.
If there was a way. I would.
JACK.
I watched as the little Metro beetled off down the track, into the mist of low cloud, and I was thinking that there was something too sudden about this trip to Leeds, something that didn"t make sense. I"d never even heard Jennifer mention Leeds before.
I let out a little shout and kicked at a cobble which clattered against the far barn and was immediately insignificant against the bulky building. The sound scared a bird or something, and the bitter, gnarled croak of it echoed sorrowfully around the yard. I looked up to see nothing; I couldn"t see anything up there, it was just a disembodied voice coming out of the thick white air.
She was going to see him. Francis. I knew it.
Back indoors I turned all the lights on and closed the curtains even though it was only midday. Having said that, the low cloud cover made the landscape dark and the rooms of the house seem dim so it was not entirely unjustified. I moved from the front door through the hallway to the front room, and the only sound, apart from the sounds of my own body, was the heavy cawing of the big black birds outside. I looked at all of the walls and the few unpacked boxes and the furniture and those things we had unpacked, like books and crockery and electronics and ornaments, and I looked at the stack of empty, flattened boxes in the corner of the room. hallway to the front room, and the only sound, apart from the sounds of my own body, was the heavy cawing of the big black birds outside. I looked at all of the walls and the few unpacked boxes and the furniture and those things we had unpacked, like books and crockery and electronics and ornaments, and I looked at the stack of empty, flattened boxes in the corner of the room.
Something tapped at the front-room window, a slight rat-a-tat-tat like a fingernail or coin or tooth. I looked at the curtains for a moment and realised that from outside the lit windows would be quite visible across the mountain due to the dark skies. I imagined seeing the thin edges of lights from a distance. I imagined looking in through the window at the curtains from the point of view of somebody standing out there. I felt my pulse speed up. Who or what could the electric light have drawn across the far reaches of the fell?
It couldn"t have been Kenny, could it? No. Why would he look for us? How would he have found us? I could just picture it, though, however unlikely it might have been, I could just picture him slouching across the barren slopes, too absent from himself to even notice the time and distance elapsing around him. I could picture him standing at the window, tapping, his huge mouth hanging open and his eyes all wooden and his body bearing the injuries from his jump. He would have come to see Jennifer.
I moved quickly over to the side of the window and looked for some sort of gap that I could peer out of without moving the curtains and drawing attention to myself, but I couldn"t, so I gripped the edge of the curtain firmly between finger and thumb and moved it ever so slightly. I couldn"t, so I gripped the edge of the curtain firmly between finger and thumb and moved it ever so slightly.
There was n.o.body there, or at least if anybody had been there, they were not there any more. It must have been something held in the wind, like a clutch of leaves or small insects.
The thought of Kenny getting his hands on Jennifer made me go cold, but then she wasn"t going back to Manchester, was she? So there was nothing to worry about, nothing to worry about at all. And also the house was as draughty as ever.
I started laying a fire in the empty fireplace, bunching up newspaper and pushing it tight into the grate. I went to stack some kindling on top of the paper but there wasn"t enough really, just a few sticks. There were no logs either. Which meant I"d have to go outside.
I sighed and put my shoes and coat on. I made my way to the front door and struggled to open it against the wind. The first fat drops of a heavy rain were falling, so I double-checked that the house keys were in my pocket and let the wind slam the door shut. I hurried round the corner of the house to a couple of outhouses that leant against the end of the barn before the rain started leaking in through the patchy roofs. One outhouse just had that chair and hacksaw in it, while the other held a pile of old wood. Some of it looked like driftwood from the beach, and some of it was sawn-up fence-posts, and there were a few sawn-up tree-trunks in there too. I gathered up a rotten armful and staggered back to the house, dumped them on the doorstep, and then went back to the outhouse for more I wanted enough to see tonight and tomorrow through. The rain was heavier now, and forceful. them on the doorstep, and then went back to the outhouse for more I wanted enough to see tonight and tomorrow through. The rain was heavier now, and forceful.
The second time, on the way back, I noticed something in one of the few uncobbled spots of earth, one of the places where the stones had sunk beneath mud or had been lifted completely. I stopped, despite the weight I was carrying and the precipitation, to look more closely, to double-check that I wasn"t being tricked into seeing things by my jumpy mind. But no, it was real.
A footprint. Not immediately recent, necessarily, because it must have been made the last time the ground had been wet, but also it couldn"t have been very old. A footprint itself wouldn"t have been that strange, it could have been mine, or Jennifer"s, except this one had been made by a naked foot with no shoes or socks, and an unusually shaped foot at that. It was very narrow, and the pads of the toes seemed just a little too far away from the heel.
I stood back up and looked about me, and both the outhouse doors looked guilty, as if they could have been hiding something, as would the barn door if I could have seen it. I turned all of the way around, scanning the near, middle and far distances for non-meteorological movement, but all I could see was the ever-worsening rain and the speeding clouds and scrubby gra.s.s being buffeted by the wind. Some animals were groaning down in the valley and the wind made a hollow sound as it fluted between the buildings of our home.
Back to the house, as quickly as I could go. I dropped the wood on the step on top of the last load, unlocked the front door and spilled inside, dragging some wood in with my feet and shovelling the rest of it in with both hands so that I could get the door closed as soon as possible. This meant that the more rotten pieces started to break up, spreading black flecks across the floor, along with tiny spiders and gluttonous orange slugs covered in thick mucous. Once the door was shut I locked it from the inside and leant against it, panting. the wood on the step on top of the last load, unlocked the front door and spilled inside, dragging some wood in with my feet and shovelling the rest of it in with both hands so that I could get the door closed as soon as possible. This meant that the more rotten pieces started to break up, spreading black flecks across the floor, along with tiny spiders and gluttonous orange slugs covered in thick mucous. Once the door was shut I locked it from the inside and leant against it, panting.
FRANCIS.
Two weeks since Jennifer"s visit. Two weeks of trying to figure out the unemployment-benefits system. Looking for another job. Wasting money. We"re on our way up to Jennifer"s. And Jack"s, of course. But a small, rickety train carriage is no place for a hangover. The four of us sit on two pairs of seats that face each other. We all have our heads in our hands. I want to protect mine from the bouncing of the train. It hurts enough without being bounced around like this. The four of us would probably look quite funny to some sober local. But the carriage is empty.
I listen to some music on my MP3 player. But quietly. Again, I think about the stories that appear all the time, in certain newspapers. About the electromagnetic fields given out by electronic devices. Like personal MP3 players. Mobiles or laptops. Computers, TVs, telephones, games consoles, hi-fis. About how they somehow corrupt the body. Twist and warp cells into ravenous cancers. You don"t know what to believe. I tell myself it is just another attempt by the lunatic mainstream to scare us. To shepherd us away from the future. To make us so scared to live and look forward that we subscribe to their miserable, backwards world-view. And become fearful, bitter and pliant. Ready to lay the blame for all of our made-up problems on whoever they point their b.l.o.o.d.y fingers at. All the while shrivelling up and shaking our heads and wondering why we"re not happy. This is what I tell myself. Even so, I start to imagine that I have a headache. I find that I"m cradling my t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es through the pocket of my jeans. Checking them for lumps. In public. I stop. by the lunatic mainstream to scare us. To shepherd us away from the future. To make us so scared to live and look forward that we subscribe to their miserable, backwards world-view. And become fearful, bitter and pliant. Ready to lay the blame for all of our made-up problems on whoever they point their b.l.o.o.d.y fingers at. All the while shrivelling up and shaking our heads and wondering why we"re not happy. This is what I tell myself. Even so, I start to imagine that I have a headache. I find that I"m cradling my t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es through the pocket of my jeans. Checking them for lumps. In public. I stop.
I see Taylor stand. I turn my MP3 player off and rise, shakily, to my feet.
"We"re here," he says.
"Where?" I whisper.
Graham and Erin stand up too. We all move into the aisle. Taylor signals to the conductor, who"s further down the train, that we want to get off.
"Request-only stops," Graham says. "Amazing."
I don"t like trains. I don"t like being on my way. Or in between one place and another. It"s like being unanch.o.r.ed. As if, not being either here or there, there is nothing to prevent me from floating away. Just disappearing. Trains are strange things. And aeroplanes. But they pretend to be normal and perfectly ordinary. Trains and railways are at the edges of the world.
We get off the train. But I"m still slightly nervous. The wires and the rails are humming. The track is straight in both directions. The station is near a beach. I can see the sea down a long straight road. I look the other way. Shadowy purple mountains rise upwards. The grey sky thickens into darker clouds around their peaks. I feel like I"m in a desert. A cold one. The tracks are polished silver. The sky is pale grey. Everything is touched by sand. As if the whole place has just suddenly been revealed by some freak wind in the Gobi. As if ancient dunes have just been swept away to reveal the concrete platforms. The shining tracks. sea down a long straight road. I look the other way. Shadowy purple mountains rise upwards. The grey sky thickens into darker clouds around their peaks. I feel like I"m in a desert. A cold one. The tracks are polished silver. The sky is pale grey. Everything is touched by sand. As if the whole place has just suddenly been revealed by some freak wind in the Gobi. As if ancient dunes have just been swept away to reveal the concrete platforms. The shining tracks.
I look down the tracks one way. Then down the other way. There is something moving on the tracks. A cat. Or maybe it"s a little bigger than a cat. It looks like it"s playing with something. A little bird or a mouse. But I can"t see exactly what it is, or what it"s doing, because it"s too far away. It jumps on to the tracks. And then it jumps off the other side. Good luck or bad luck, for an awful lot of people. Whichever. I can"t remember. Taylor is holding a big shopping bag full of birthday presents for Jack.
We head across a tiny car park. Over a small humped bridge. Jack is approaching in his Metro. He waves at us through the windscreen.
"Have you got satellite TV set up yet?" Graham says. He sits in the front pa.s.senger seat. He drinks from a can of Guinness. It looks tiny in his huge hands. Erin, Taylor and I get in the back. We are moving slowly. Trapped behind a caravan. The caravan is low and looks heavy. It looks like it"s full of people. Every now and again their faces press outwards from the caravan windows.
"Do you think they"re immigrants?" Graham says.
"What?" I say. "Like Erin?"
"No, d.i.c.khead," he says. "Like, illegal immigrants."
"Then say that. And what if they were?"
"I"d report them," he says. "Might be terrorists."
"Are you trying to p.i.s.s me off?" I say.
"Yeah," he says. "f.u.c.k, yeah. p.i.s.sing you off is so easy."
"There have been loads of caravans and stuff," Jack says. "Seems to be a bit of a gathering going on, down by the lake. Or something. See, that car behind us with the roof-rack bet they"re going too. Car"s full of tents."
"New Age travellers," Graham says. "Sc.u.m."
"Anyway!" Jack says, before I can react. "It"s good to see you. It"s really good of you to come. I know it"s a difficult place to get to."
"It"s not a problem, Jack," Taylor says.
The grey, brown and green landscape rolls by. We slowly creep up the side of a mountain. The sky is grey and getting darker.
"It"s mostly cloudy here," Jack says. "Sometimes the clouds are all bright white, with the sun behind them. But sometimes at night the sky is clear. It"s funny. Jennifer went to visit a friend last week, she took the car to Leeds, and looking at the mileometer, it was exactly as far as going to Manchester and back! Who would have thought it?"
Erin and I look at each other. He suspects something.
The house is big. Really f.u.c.king big. Old, grey and big. We see it from a distance first, and then turn off the road on to a b.u.mpy, muddy track. We carry on for a minute or so before creaking to a stop in front of a metal five-bar gate. The bars are dented and bent. The words Fell House are painted across the top bar. Jack gets out of the car and opens the gate. We see it from a distance first, and then turn off the road on to a b.u.mpy, muddy track. We carry on for a minute or so before creaking to a stop in front of a metal five-bar gate. The bars are dented and bent. The words Fell House are painted across the top bar. Jack gets out of the car and opens the gate.
"We"re going to get a proper sign," he says, getting back into the car. "Made out of some sort of stone." We drive through into the yard. I get out of the car and stand in front of the door, which is huge and ancient-looking. The paint is peeling off. Underneath there is more paint, and under that there is more, and more, and more. And more beneath that too. I am staring at it when it swings inwards. And there, right in front of me, is Jennifer.