When the stream pooled and calmed under trees, she halted, relaxed.
There was an earthy and sandy bank, silent for footfalls and cool.
Dorothy had no precise idea which type of trees were stretched above her. Something in the style of birches.
She just stood.
It was clear there were fish in the pool, although she wasn’t close enough to see, because a Labrador was wading about shin-deep and chasing them. The animal was avid: pouncing and stalking, tail wagging as it combed and quartered every hollow. Occasionally its belly dabbed down into what Dorothy guessed might be a pleasant chill. Beyond the damp and shadows, sunlight was sharpening overhead, already suggesting the need for reliefs.
Dorothy considered removing her shoes and paddling.
Perhaps once the dog had gone.
The animal seemed very busy, though, and jolly and disinclined to leave. As she watched, it snapped at the water, pressed its head full under and then shook itself free again, empty-mouthed, in a big startle of light that arced all round before landing in rings and sparks. Then it studied the wavelets again, entirely satisfied with the futility of its search. The pursuit was perfect, a twitchy and bright excitement. Finding, getting, that wasn’t required.
Dorothy tried deciding — experimentally — that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to wait here and see the dog being happy and have the shelter of dense-leaved, if unidentified, trees for a good while. Until dark, even. That could be a prudent choice.
Except then the dog’s owner — she had to assume some kind of link between the two — began shouting what sounded like, ‘Ankle, Ankle. .’ and came into view: middle-aged guy, wading along and naked except for faded and overly short denim shorts and with a balding ponytail, as if such a thing should be possible in a kind and proper world.
‘Ankle! Ankle!’ And, at this, the hunt stopped and there was a whiskery sneeze of delight and a paddling trot from the dog to bring it gladly beside its master. Then both glanced over at Dorothy, the man’s expression implying that he — creepy, scraggle-armed and too undressed, his browned and hairy little stomach pouched shamefully over his waistband — he belonged in this place and was here every morning, and what the hell was she doing, intruding on the scene and peering at him and his beloved Ankle as if they were not quite right?
She didn’t outstare him. She was aware, in fact, that she’d started to blush and therefore had a kind of admission of guilt rising on her cheeks and neck, as if she’d intended to be here and to solicit bad interactions that ought to stay nameless. Like Ankle.
Who would call any pet Ankle?
The leaves sniggered hotly at her back as she withdrew, retraced her steps.
This left her alone with the path again and steering for town, because there was nowhere else aside from genuine hiking routes that led into the southern hills, for which maps were available from Reception. She didn’t yet have a map, even though part of coming here had involved semi-plans for vigorous climbs and then worthwhile views accompanied by fruit, or bread and local sausage, regional cheese, decanted tap water from the metal bottle she’d packed with her boots and the largely superfluous compass intended to give her efforts an adventurous gloss. Every route was clearly and frequently signposted. There were inns every ten or twelve miles with rustic verandas and hygienic toilets. This was in no way a wilderness.
Possibly a wasteland. Probably. But not a wilderness.
In the pretty high street the pretty restaurants were crowded with lunching tourists. The tourists were not pretty, they were noisy and bewildering. Dorothy pressed open doors on clique after clique of happy tables, threaded herself under terrace parasols, found no comfortable space, found no space comfortable.
She wasn’t hungry, anyway. That banana. Sustaining.
And the sunlight was making her head throb.
In the end, it turned out she could sit on the dark side of a repellent municipal statue, because no one else wanted to be there. Or because no one else was currently aware of its — she might term them — evasive charms. Others had been here, however: at the base of the thing, in under a mossy confusion of mythical tails and feet, was a shallow trough. Small-denomination coins lay calmly winking and shivering under its water, where they’d presumably been thrown: moderate, circular hopes or thanks for good luck, coming safely back, going safely home, finding contentment. She trailed her hand into the trough, made ripples and then stilled them. She lifted her fingers and licked them. They had no particular flavour: no hint of metal, no hint of luck. They were just colder than her lips.
She kept the imprint — index finger, second finger — in between her tongue and the roof of her mouth and let it be a reason for not speaking when she got up and searched again for an empty seat, found one, pointed to a laminated menu where it listed types of coffee, then sipped and paused and sipped and paused and then mimed — thumb snibbed against index finger in a tiny beak — the scribble of a bill.
She paid.
She scraped back her chair with a motion which seemed to her childish and liable to suggest that her limbs were uncivilised and out of scale. She felt it must surely be visible that she didn’t share the range of interests and activities tucked up nicely inside the other visitors. She was trying to kill a day, make it go. Tomorrow she would have to try and kill another. It was making her feel brutal. It was worsening the headache.
Back at the hotel there would be, she was certain, no change and only another instalment of defeat.
She realised once more, kept realising, as if the information wouldn’t stick, realised again how likely it was that someone you’d given the option of leaving, someone you’d said was free to go, that someone might not discover a way to come back. They might not have been looking for one, might always have intended the space that they’ve spent away should become permanent. It wasn’t away for them any more — it was a different here. And someone might have got confused about who really left and what was lost and what broken and where the source of all the pain was; in absence, or presence, or alternative positions allowed to stay unexplored.
It was unclear.
And the streets were exhausted quickly, turned her constantly back to the unavoidable hotel.
A cool shower. A lie-down. Those wouldn’t be bad things. She could appreciate them. If you operated at that level, it was relatively easy to be content.
Still, the foyer was slightly vicious in the way that it tumbled her up to the lift, hungry and amused, tilted her downhill so she couldn’t help but rush to the room, to its door and the opening, the wide opening and the swing of revealed information: here was the wardrobe, here was the shuttered window and slivers of light, here was her case on the stand for cases, here was the bedside table, here was the bed.
Here was a different here and a different bed.
Here was the bed.
Here was her headache slowing, relenting so unexpectedly that it made her close to tearful.