I reach out to her and she slumps beside me on the bed.
‘It’s OK.’ I’m holding her, stroking her hair and she’s clinging to my neck.
‘You shouldn’t drink if you’re sick.’
‘I’m not sick.’
‘I heard you earlier. After dinner. I heard you outside, out in the rain, throwing up. Afterwards you sat by the fire. Your hair was wet.’
‘Too much garlic.’
‘Really? I didn’t notice. Abigail does her best with what she’s got.’
‘Yes, but she’s a salt and pepper kind of cook. Now she’s hiding the salt and using garlic instead.’
‘While stocks last.’
‘It grows wild in the woods. It’s the salt that’s irreplaceable. And the pepper. And sugar, chocolate, coffee, olives, oysters, crisp dry Muscadet…’
‘Don’t.’
‘Everything’s ending.’ She mumbles this at my chest. I feel her breath against me. ‘You can have me if you want, Jason. I mean obviously. That’s why I’m here.’
The wind rattles the window.
‘Or am I too pale for you, too white?’ She giggles nervously. ‘I could never get a tan. Five minutes of sun and I come out in freckles. I used to slap it on. Lovely brown legs out of a bottle. But you won’t notice in the candlelight. We’re all beautiful by candlelight. Pain and sweat and struggle and hunger, that’s our life from now on, and more beauty than we can bear.’
‘Your legs are fine.’
‘Because I’m probably not your type. I suspect you have a thing for exotic women.’
I lift her head away from me and look into her face. Green eyes, she’s got, and ash blonde hair, dark at the roots. ‘How drunk are you?’
‘One glass, that’s all. Maybe two. I meant because of the boy, because of Simon. Not that you can afford to be picky – given the way things are, I mean.’
‘He said something? Because you probably didn’t understand him.’
‘Yes, not much of a talker is he.’
‘He’s a good boy.’
‘Who said he isn’t?’ Deirdre shrugs, drinks from her wine glass, looks out at the driving rain. ‘So what was she like?’
‘Who?’
‘Simon’s mother. West Indian, was she? Afro-something-or-other? Gorgeous anyway, judging by his looks, which, no offence, he didn’t get from you.’
‘I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.’
‘Oh I’ve been paying attention all right.’ She moves closer, and her words are warm against my face. ‘But my own tastes are not angelic. In either sense.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ll get the idea.’
‘Aren’t you afraid?’
‘Probably. I’m afraid most of the time.’
‘Simon’s not mine, you know.’
‘Adopted?’
‘I’m his uncle.’
‘His uncle? Wow. Of course. Who’s left but orphans, widows, mothers of dead children?’
‘I assumed Abigail had filled you in.’
‘Let’s not talk about Abigail.’ Her mouth tastes of wine. Her hands are behind her, busy adjusting and unclipping. Then they’re in my hair and on my chest. She makes a noise in her throat. I’m assaulted by loneliness. It doesn’t stop me, but it’s there anyway, holding my mind separate from my body. Sorry, Caro. Sorry for you, dead and gone, bulldozed into the ground. Sorry for me, doing this, like everything else now, alone. Sorry, but there’s comfort in the contact, and my heart settles to it. It was racing back there with all that talk of Simon, and Simon’s parentage. But it’s all right. Deirdre doesn’t know. So Django doesn’t know, and what I see in his eyes is just his way of looking.
‘Ow, ow. It’s OK. Don’t stop. Ow.’
‘Sorry. I hurt you.’
‘They’re just a bit sore.’
I draw back and raise my head to find her eyes. I heard her in the garden throwing up, and I know it wasn’t the garlic. ‘Are you pregnant?’ The question feels arbitrary, the way it comes to me. I expect her to laugh, and she tries to, but her expression is evasive and gives me the answer. Even by candlelight I see the flush of colour on her neck. She settles on a defiant stare.
‘So that’s what this is about.’
‘What? You think I need a man to take care of me?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘You know nothing about me – what I’m capable of. Just because my moods are on the surface you think I must be feeble. But I can take care of myself. I managed fine before I got here.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
She climbs off the bed, wrapping herself up, and stands at the window. ‘It wasn’t easy on the road, you know, with the cart, and the goats to slow me down. There were times when I was pretty much a sitting target. And don’t think I couldn’t have just chucked some food in the Land Rover instead, don’t think I wasn’t tempted.’
‘You had petrol?’
‘Almost a full tank.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘Because getting to safety is nothing if you’ve got no way to live. Fat lot of use your car’s going to be.’
‘So you made the right choice. Congratulations.’
‘You make it sounds so easy. You haven’t a clue.’
‘About what? I know what’s been going on. I’ve dug my share of graves. I know what it’s like to survive on what you can steal, what you can fight for. Tell me what I’m missing, Deirdre.’
I think at first she isn’t going to answer. When she does, her voice is almost drowned by the storm. ‘So these two men stopped me on the road. They wanted to know what I was carrying on the cart.’
‘When was this?’
‘Weeks ago. Before Aleksy. One of them just began unloading my boxes on to the verge. A fat ape he was, with a nose like a pig. The other one said he wanted to see what was in them before wasting his time, and he took out a knife and started cutting them open. I assumed he was the boss. So I told him he could have me if he left the stuff. While he was unzipping his trousers I asked him what he’d been – you know, before – and he said a city trader. He seemed sort of harmless, quite nice in a way, except he stank. Next thing we were doing it right there on the verge. He hadn’t finished before the ape pulled him off me and said it was his turn. The trader swore at him and I said that wasn’t the deal, but the ape hit me and started anyway. The trader’s knife was just there, in the grass, where he’d left it. I got the pig-faced bastard in the thigh. Then I went for his back. I hit a rib, felt it jarring all up my arm. He got off me then, or the trader rolled him off.’
‘And then what?’
‘What do you think? The trader finished the job.’
‘Unloading the boxes?’
‘Not that job.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘He’s the father, probably. Though I can’t say for sure.’
I want to ask her how this ended. Did the trader keep his side of the bargain or what? But she’s finished talking. She looks out at the storm for a minute. Then she covers her face. After a while I hear small bleating noises.
She’s a mess, but I’m no better – just a different kind of mess. We’re none of us any better. Abigail drives herself like an ox. Maud’s lost the power of speech. Django, if he was ever normal, has retreated into his own world. Aleksy struggles with a repertoire of blinks and twitches.
‘You’ll be all right.’
‘How the fuck do you know?’
‘We’ll take care of you.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Abigail.’
She’s staring out the window again.
I used to think of myself as walking forward into the future, constructing the future I was walking into. I used to think of myself as not wasting energy thinking of myself as one thing or another, but just doing what had to be done. Now I seem to stand sideways on, watching some version of me that isn’t quite me. I notice myself feeling things. Or not. Or more than one thing at a time. Now, for example.