‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing.’
A beech had fallen over the track which would lead us to the woods and out onto the road. Lloyd sucked air through his teeth. I didn’t slow down, we would go around it, because this was exactly the kind of thing a four-wheel-drive vehicle was built for.
‘Gosh,’ said Lloyd and looped his other hand through the door handle. I stopped and clunked the gear stick into four-wheel drive and the engine took on its deeper growl and I ground us off the road and into the field with the truck bouncing from side to side and Lloyd saying over and over, ‘Gosh’ and ‘Hoo’ every time the truck rocked. ‘Right!’ he said loudly as we powered at the incline that would get us back up onto the road, and it was then that I knew we wouldn’t make it, the empty sound of the wheels spinning without purchase, of the truck sinking deeper into its hole, digging itself in, relaxing and staying put. I revved the engine until the air stank. The windows fogged. I hit the steering wheel and closed my eyes and shouted, ‘Shit and fuck and balls,’ and in the silence afterwards, Lloyd said,
‘Whoops. Stuck in the mud. Been a lot of that today.’
The water still ran, and steam made it out from under the door while Lloyd showered in the downstairs bathroom. I scanned the spare room. There were sheets that had been left in the cupboard when I moved in, and I made what I decided was a bed that was not welcoming, but adequate. Good enough for one night but not encouraging a long stopover. The blanket was itchy at any rate. He had helped with the sheep, I reminded myself. He had pushed the truck when I’d asked him too, had taken a face full of mud and had suggested filling the trenches the wheels had dug with sticks for grip, but we had only sunk deeper. It was a job for Don and his towbar, another mark in the incompetency column, but when we’d got back to the house, freezing and soaked, Don hadn’t answered the phone.
I opened the window as an afterthought; the room smelled of damp and dust. Dead moths blew in from the window sill, and I scooped them into my hand, suddenly embarrassed.
When Lloyd came out of the bathroom, he had the towel wrapped around his midriff. I tried not to look at the bare parts of him, but that was the larger part. There was a lot of hair on his chest, some of it grey. He ambled towards me and I felt a horror that the towel might drop.
‘Is there somewhere I could wash these?’ he asked, holding up his mud-soaked clothes. ‘Or even just dry them?’
‘I can put them in the wash,’ I said, but my voice came out in a squeak I wasn’t expecting. I cleared my throat and spoke in a voice that was deeper than my own. ‘And then they can dry on the radiator.’
‘If it’s not too much bother,’ he said, ‘thanks so much. Feeling better already.’ He smiled. I frowned, and turned away.
He sauntered around the room in his towel, looking at the pictures that hung on the walls. ‘These yours?’ he said, pointing at one of a set of men in uniform.
‘Here when I moved in.’
He had an annoying habit of flexing the calf that showed through the gap in the side of the towel.
‘They belong to Don — I bought the place off him.’
Lloyd nodded and made a mooing noise. ‘He left them for you?’
‘I guess.’
‘Huh.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but it was something annoying. Would we just sit there and wait until his clothes were clean and dry? I tried calling Don again. There was no answer. It was getting late — if he didn’t answer soon, it meant he was staying the night in town. I tried to calculate the time we would spend waiting for the storm to pass, for night to be over, for Don to come home and answer his phone.
‘Would you like something to eat?’
Lloyd looked at me and so did Dog. ‘I–I hate to put you out.’
‘Well,’ I said.
I put the same stew on the stove I’d been heating the night before. Lloyd sighed and sat heavily on the sofa. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, knew that the sigh of comfort was in fact an intake of breath through pain, because he had thrown himself down on the dividing bar of the sofa where it was hard and broken. I turned my back, pretended not to notice him do it, but I could see him in the reflection of the window. He rubbed the sore spot on his lower back and Dog clambered up next to him and Lloyd fondled his ears. I forced my shoulders to drop.
Lloyd’s leg peeped out of its towel again, flexing. He leant his head on his arm so that I saw his armpit. I went to the cupboard and found a dressing gown Don had also left behind. I put it on the side of the sofa.
‘You can wear this,’ I said and went back to the stove.
‘Lovely,’ he said and when I turned around he was tying it up, his wet hair now done up with the towel in a turban. The dressing gown had belonged to Don’s wife, I assumed. It had a trail of daisies down both lapels and a trim of cartoon mice. Lloyd sat down a little more carefully and he said, ‘Very nice,’ quietly to himself.
The time passed slowly.
‘Would you like a drink?’ I blinked at myself.
‘If it’s not too much of an imposition,’ he said, ‘that would be so lovely.’
I poured him some whisky and he held his glass with both hands as he lifted it to his mouth.
I sat at the kitchen table and he sat on the sofa and every now and then he sighed in a way that was supposed to seem like the start of a conversation. We drank our whisky; I drank mine quickly because every time the silence became uncomfortable, I took another sip.
‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing up here?’
I didn’t reply, just watched him. He shuffled forward and put his glass down on the floor next to his foot. ‘Look,’ he said in a tone that was too warm and comforting for my liking, ‘I just thought it might make you feel a little odd that I just turned up.’ His voice went up at the end, like he had an accent I hadn’t noticed before. I sat up straight.
‘Where are you from?’ I said, with more aggression than the question needed. He frowned.
‘Originally?’
‘Are you from Australia?’
‘Barnsley. My mother’s from Stockton, my father from Leeds. I grew up in Barnsley. I live in London.’ And the accent was gone, just a trick of my ear. I settled back down in my chair. There was a silence. ‘And you — obviously — are from Australia.’ And then it came: ‘What brought you to the island?’
‘Sheep.’
‘Oh?’ he said in a way that meant I was supposed to carry on talking. Instead I got up and poured another drink. After a second’s thought I decided it was more out of the ordinary and awkward not to pour him one too, so I refilled his glass. He looked up and smiled. Drink made men dark but it also made them sloppy. I added water to mine.
The stew had cooked too long and stuck to the pot. I put two bowlfuls out on the table with the bread.
Lloyd took the towel off his head and shook out his hair, which dried into waves, grey around his ears.
I searched for a moment for a bread knife and remembered it was still upstairs.
‘I’m out of knives for the time being,’ I said, ‘so you’ll have to tear the bread, and spread butter with the back of a spoon.’ Lloyd nodded like this was not unusual.
12
It’s so hot I feel as though I’ll bloat up and explode like a dead possum, and after checking the sheep, I find myself on my bike, with wind through my hair. The feeling that Otto won’t know exactly where to find me takes hold and I keep going. I cycle into the mirage, can feel the sun flaying my back and shoulders, the lids of my eyes, but it’s worth it to feel like I’m en route to something. I imagine finding a waterhole that’s not dried up in the drought; I think over and over, I’ll just ride to the end of this mirage, but there’s nothing here. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, but I become aware of the heat in a new way. Thirst comes and then goes again. The mirage is replaced by black and red stars. All I want to do is keep going, if it takes a week of riding, if the sun kills me, I want to be at the coast, I want to open my eyes in the water to see the deep cool nothing below the surface and to let the tide take me where it likes. Away.