Fauna (39 page)

Stephen needs to lie down. “Well,” he says, standing, “good night.”

They answer him with one voice: “Good night, Stephen.” Then Guy on his own: “Want another beer?” And Kate: “What the hell.”

The apple green door seems to shimmer. He lets his floating head lead him through it to his room. The bed isn’t his, not really—it belongs to the old lovers, Ernie and Jan. Lowering himself down beside it, he stretches out long on the floor. The cries start up as soon as he’s on their level. He rolls onto his side and drags the carrier out into the gloom.

The kits come tumbling the moment he swings open their door. Three make for the far reaches—one of the greys already fingering the curtain’s hem—but the brown runt decides to stick close. Stephen lies back, allowing her to clamber up on his thighs. She waddles away down the length of his legs, pausing to sniff his boots thoroughly before turning and scampering back. Little fingers at his kneecap, his hip bone, his ribs. Her eyes are shining. She comes face to face with him, practically nose to nose.

Guy rarely has trouble getting to sleep; as a rule he’s out like a light after a chapter or two. Tonight he reads until the words swim, and still he can’t seem to drift off. Not
Ring of Bright Water
—he’ll have to leave that one for a time. Maybe even for good.

Aunt Jan used to do the bookwork when she couldn’t sleep. In the weeks following Ernie’s death, she laid her hands on every invoice and order sheet in the place. Guy could walk round to the office and give it a try—only Stephen handles that end of things now, and ever since Guy followed his advice and bought the computer, the bookwork involves few if any actual books.

He ought to get a lesson on the new system.
This is your place, Guy
. Uncle Ernie with the blowtorch, or the caulking gun, or the plunger in hand.
There shouldn’t be a job on the property you don’t know how to do
. Besides, Stephen might decide to move on. Which would leave Guy on his ownsome again.

No sense kidding himself. Two evenings in a row now she’s stayed away. He should never have loaned her his key, let alone mentioned having one cut; it’s enough getting used to the place without thinking he’s planning on her moving in. No sense dwelling on it, either, something else Ernie taught him.
The more you feel sorry for yourself, the sorrier you feel
.

Guy sits up. Swings his legs out from under the covers and pulls on the day’s dirty clothes. Cocoa. That’s what his uncle used to do on the rare night when he couldn’t settle. Cocoa and smokes at the kitchen table—Guy always knew by
the saucepan left to soak until morning, the ashtray loaded with butts. He’ll have to make do with cocoa on its own; it’s nearly four years since he lit up.

The air in the kitchen is relatively fresh, a sweet cross-breeze sweeping in through the locked screen door. Maybe he’ll step outside and take a few deep breaths. Remind himself of the wider world.

His hand is on the latch before he sees her. She stands still as a doe, looking out over the shadowy sprawl of his yard. He’s gentle with the lock, but she hears him and turns sharply. He snaps on the light.

“Oh, God.” Her face is pale. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He steps out onto the stoop.

“I should give you your key back.”

“Keep it.”

“Oh, no, I—”

“Go on, it might come in handy.”

She touches a hand to her chest. “What about the chain?”

“Keep that too.” He comes to stand beside her. For a time neither one of them speaks.

“I was wondering,” she says finally.

“Yeah?”

She points into the darkness. “What’s that?”

“What?”

“That thing over by the loader. It looks like—I don’t know, like a mouth.”

She’s right, it does look like a massive, parted mouth from this angle. He can remember the afternoon he helped Ernie make it, marking out the first cut around the belly of the oversized drum while his uncle flipped down his mask and
fired up the torch. The following cuts were subtler, made on the oblique down the drum’s curved flank. The shape they cut free was lovely. They might well have called it the mouth, but Ernie had another name in mind.

“That,” Guy says, “is a half-moon.”

“A half-moon.” She smiles. “What’s it for?”

“Turns the fork into a bucket.”

“What?”

“The loader. It turns the forklift into—” He halts, gripped by an idea. “Wait here.”

The coveralls hang where he left them, just inside the door. After a quick sniff to make sure they’re not too ripe, he grabs them and ducks back outside.

“Put these on.”

“What? Why?” But she’s already drawing them on, leading with her left foot in its slim canvas shoe, her bare left leg. Soon she’s all zipped in. The colour suits her; she actually looks good in grease-stained elephant grey.

He reaches for her hand. “Come on,” he says, pulling her after him.

“Where are we going?”

“Just come on.” He drops her hand when they get there. “In you get.”

He expects her to question him, but she only smiles, stepping blithely into the crescent cup of the half-moon.

“That’s it,” he says. “Now sit down. Make sure you tuck in your feet.”

She arranges herself tidily and looks up at him.

“There’s a fresh pack of earplugs in the breast pocket. You better put those in.”

Again, she does what he says. He vaults up into the loader and slips on the earmuffs. Two tries before it starts with a hacking roar.

Turning to track in close, he drops the forks so they skim along the ground. He takes it easy slipping them under the half-moon’s rusty base, lifts smoothly, only a metre or so to begin. She seems calm enough, but it’s difficult to judge from the top of her head.

He tracks upland first, keeping to even ground. At the top of the yard he lifts Edal so she’s level with the uppermost layer of wrecks. He trundles past several stacks, giving her a good long look, before lowering the forks again. Shunting round, he tracks over to the tire pile and shows her the highest tire. After that, he heads for the old willow that overhangs the southern fence. He holds her up there a little longer, watching her hands fan through the shadowy curtain of leaves.

The tree’s a hard act to follow. Buying time, he eases her down to half height, executes a restrained one-eighty and tracks back to the centre of the yard. He comes close to overlooking the next attraction, just catching it in the top corner of his eye. The true moon is nowhere near half, little more than a sliver left. He raises Edal up to make sure she sees it too.

The key to a great show is knowing when it’s over. He lowers her to the ground with care, kills the engine and springs down from the cab. She’s already standing by the time he reaches her. Having taken her up in the loader’s arms, it’s only natural to close her in his own.

Lying two abreast in Guy’s skinny bed ought to be a squeeze, but there’s no such thing as crowded when a body truly lets go. For the first time ever, Edal understands the mammalian habit of sleeping in clumps—the dug-out dens and warrens, the tree holes packed with tangled limbs and ticking hearts. Her shoulder fits precisely into the red-haired hollow beneath his arm. Her cheek, pressed to his breastbone, receives the beating message therein. Yes, she thinks, she would like nothing better than to live in a cave with this man. The tighter the fit, the better.

It happened fast, the initial kiss like the click of a stopwatch. Edal was first through the bedroom door, catching her finger in the long zipper of the coveralls and crying out. It took her a second to realize the muffled sensation in her head was down to the earplugs, a second more to pluck them out. Guy was awkward too—slamming the bedroom door, wrestling his T-shirt up over his head. It didn’t matter, they were graceful enough in the end.

He stirs. She lifts her face to watch him, feels something tear loose inside her when he opens his eyes. This time she’s the one reaching for the nightstand. She rips the little packet with her teeth, rolls the condom on with as much care as her trembling allows. He keeps his eyes open as she climbs across him. At no point—not even when the helpless sound escapes her lips—does he look away. He comes staring up at her. “Edal,” he says, rocking, “God, I love that fucking name.” She folds down to kiss him, long and deep.

The laughter comes when she sits back. It starts innocently
enough, but soon she’s making ape sounds, hiccuping hysterically, covering her mouth. Guy beams back at her but doesn’t crack. He works a hand gently beneath her butt to hold on the condom, the nudge of his knuckles making her shriek. She’s laughing so hard now she could pull a muscle, maybe even give herself a hernia. Then suddenly she’s crying—an unkind observer might even say bawling—and still, she can’t help but register through the gaps between her fingers, he hasn’t so much as blinked.

“Hey,” he says gently, “hey.”

“Sorry.” She wipes at her eyes. Watery snot threatens to escape her left nostril, decorate his chest like the path of a snail. There are no tissues, at least none she can see, so she sucks it back up noisily. “Sorry.
Jesus.”

“It’s okay.”

She takes a shuddery breath. “Christ.” She drags the back of her hand under her nose. “Is there any tissue?”

He feels among the sheets and hands her his T-shirt.

“Really?”

“It’ll wash.”

She holds the sleeve to her nose and blows.

“Better?”

She nods, balling up the shirt.

No avoiding it—she has to climb off him now. She does so slowly, careful not to catch him in the balls with her heel.

“Come here.” He pulls her close.

“Sorry.” She says it in his ear this time.

“What the hell for?” He draws back to look at her. “I’ve never felt this good in my entire life.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He smells of beeswax—if there existed a subspecies of bee with a rippling coat and dark, magnificently feathered wings. She breathes deeply, drifting to the brink of sleep.

“There is one small problem, though.”

She opens her eyes. “What?”

“Condom. It’s got to go.”

“Oh.” Edal hears herself giggle like a fourteen-year-old—like she never did when she was actually fourteen. She rolls back to free him, her bare ass meeting the wall.

He sits up. “You want something to drink?”

“Water, please.”

He scoops up his boxers and pulls them on. Twists at the waist to kiss her. “Won’t be long.”

Edal lies for perhaps a minute in the negligible light before turning on the bedside lamp. Its yellow glow pleases her; she wants to see him properly when he comes back. Arranging the pillow lengthwise against the headboard, she sits up a little, tucking the sheet in under her arms.

On the nightstand, the Kipling lies stacked atop a handful of other books. She reaches for it, intending to browse the chapters she missed, but sets it aside upon spotting the title beneath. She studies the cover closely. It’s the edition she knows, boy and otter walking together along the shore. When she looks up again, Guy’s standing in the doorway. He’s brought a single tumbler for them to share, the way lovers do.

“Your turn,” he says, closing the door behind him.

“My turn?”

“Yeah.” He sets the water down on the nightstand. “You can read, right?”

“Of course I can read.”

He climbs across her to take the side by the wall. “So, read to me.”

There are several pages marked. Edal opens to a Juicy Fruit gum wrapper, the flap of a matchbook, an actual bookmark from the library, torn in half to keep two places instead of one. “Where are you up to?”

“Doesn’t matter.” His hand finds her thigh beneath the covers. “Read something you like.”

“Okay.” He’s patient while she finds the passage. “‘For the rest,’” she begins, “‘she was a small, exceedingly heavy body inhabiting a rich fur skin many sizes too large for her. It cannot be described as a loose fit; it is not a fit at all. The skin appears to be attached to the creature inside it at six points only: the base of the nose, the four wrists or ankles, and the root of the tail. When lying at ease upon her back the surplus material may be observed disposed in heavy velvety folds at one or other side of her, or both …’”