But what could she expect? She'd taken him from the town and the friends that he knew and she'd brought him to this great, dusty mausoleum of a place where he didn't even like to run around because the echo of his footsteps sounded too much like someone faceless who was following too close. He spent two thirds of his day at a school ten miles away, and the rest of the afternoon looking through the older children's comics at Mrs Neary's until Diane picked him up at five. Aimless and with no company, what kind of a life was that?
Too much like her own, she was beginning to suspect.
By negotiation when the rain had stopped, the proposed deer spotting walk became a combined walk and trap shoot. Jed liked to pull the level which fired the clays into the air while Diane would blast away and try to improve her shooting. It took him both hands and all his weight, but at least it was exercise. They loaded the launcher and a box of black clays into the back of the Toyota, and drove up an old gated track to the little used range.
The range was a clearing in the forest with some open sky beyond, along with a couple of huts and an open frame for the would be marksman to stand. They brought out the launcher and fastened it to its base, and Diane spread out some plastic sheet for Jed and weighted it with the box of clays. She'd wrapped him up so well against the weather that he could hardly be seen in the middle of all his clothing. Around them was the silence of the dense conifer wood, a moment of stillness held forever in time while the rest of the world moved on outside.
Jed did everything by the book, sounding the warning horn before every pull and staying well clear of Diane and the gun. The launched clays zipped across the window of sky, and Diane followed each with a two foot lead before squeezing the trigger.
And then, if everything ran true to form, the undamaged clays would sail down to a landing somewhere out of sight.
Diane scored five hits out of twenty, which was the limit that she'd set herself because of the cost of the cartridges. Afterwards they went scouting for clays that could be re used; some cracked on landing, but others had come down whole. Diane carried the box, and Jed filled it. The trees around them stood tall and straight, like a phantom army. The ground sloped, strewn with fine moss and bark so soft and spongy that their footprints took minutes to disappear. The earth had been churned up black where forestry vehicles had passed through during the week, and there were cut and trimmed logs waiting for collection alongside the track.
"It's raining again," Jed said, looking up at the sky.
"Must be coming our way," Diane said. "We'd better hurry."
The rain put an end to their chances of a walk not that they'd have been likely to spot a deer anyway, after the noise made by the horn and the gun. They drove back to the hall, and Diane grilled a beefburger for Jed and put it on a bun. He insisted on tackling it with a knife and fork. Diane sat on the opposite side of the refectory table and watching him, chin in hand, as someone with nothing better to do might watch somebody mending a clock.
"You might as well pick it up," Diane said at last. "You're getting it everywhere."
"No," Jed said, with some determination as he attacked the bun from the other side.
"It's allowed, picking a beefburger up."
"No."
There was silence for a while as Jed ploughed on. And then Diane said, "So how's the school?"
"All right."
"Only all right?"
"The games are all strange. Everybody keeps touching everybody." He made a yuck face, and then carried on.
Diane gave a slight, wry smile, and looked at the rain on the window.
It was still raining steadily when she'd put him to bed, after a last half hour of television and a couple of chapters of Stig of the Dump. She stood at the beaded glass and looked out into the gathering darkness.
And, without really meaning to, she found herself wondering what Pete McCarthy might be doing.
Probably having big fun with that Russian waitress.
Damn, she thought.
SIXTEEN
He was in the bathroom that night when he heard her go. He was waiting for a couple of soluble aspirin to break up in a glass of water as he stood before the opened mirror cabinet. He looked up sharply at the sound of the door — Again? he thought disbelievingly, and he winced as the movement aggravated the mild headache that he'd brought home with him.
He listened for a while, and the silence of the house told him yes, again. Still carrying the glass, he went out into the hallway.
This time she'd closed the door behind her. He opened it, and looked out. She'd gone. Tonight there was a moon, starlight even, and he knew that after a few minutes away from the house it would be possible for her to see with surprising clarity; but moon or no moon, it seemed to make little difference to her and she'd been spending hours abroad at even the deepest, darkest point in the cycle.
This was the part that troubled him, that he found difficult to understand. He could remember how, after moving out here and having been a city dweller all of his life, he'd come to realise that he'd never known what true darkness was; even away from houses and street lighting there had always been a faint, reflected amber cast to the sky, but here there was nothing. He could remember the first time that he'd stepped outside into country darkness and closed the door behind him; it was as if he'd been struck blind with the click of the latch, and he'd begun to panic at his inability even to tell which way was up.
Alina said she'd been raised in the country. Maybe that was it, you grew up with a knack that you otherwise couldn't acquire, like the owls and the bats and the creatures of the lake. She had it, he didn't. Could it be that what he was feeling was a kind of envy, in the sense that he'd brought her here, to a place that he felt he'd made his own, and in a matter of weeks she'd already grown closer to it than he could ever hope to be?
No, he tried to tell himself, that wasn't it; nothing so mean, nothing so unreasonable. Even though he was looking forward to the day when she moved on, he was already beginning to sense that her leaving would be something of a wrench. As they'd agreed, there was nothing between them… but he knew that he'd miss her.
Without even realising that he'd moved, he found himself standing by the door to her room.
He put his hand on the handle.
Hesitated a while longer.
Took a sip of the aspirin.
And then, with a guilty look over his shoulder, he opened her door and stepped inside.
She kept the room neat, her bed made and her work clothes carefully preserved on a hanger on the front of the wardrobe. Her party dress was alongside, bagged in polythene to protect it from dust. Over on the dressing table, one of her notebooks lay alongside the photograph album. He went across to it, still thinking that it wasn't too late to back out and close the door behind him and pretend that he'd never even been in here.
But instead, he opened the book of photographs.
The pictures were strange. Not all of them, but some. A number were of the same place, some old village with nobody in it, the first a shot down a dusty road and the rest of individual buildings or, in some cases, of open fields enclosed by split rail fencing. The houses were all of dilapidated wood, with the tallest building a spired church right in the middle of everything. Fir trees grew in amongst the roofs, and weeds and flowers grew everywhere else. The village stood next to a lake.
A fast flick through some of the other pages showed images of a more easily recognisable kind — strange faces, old friends, scenes from a life. He closed the album carefully, making sure that none of the loosened pages could fall out and give him away.