A Rip in the Veil (9 page)

Hector leaned his brow against the window, and in his head danced Dolores, pretty, pretty Dolores. He wondered at times if, once he found himself at rest, he might see her again. It almost made him laugh. If Dolores got the opportunity, he was sure she’d tear his balls off and feed them to him. In his more introspective moments, he admitted he deserved it.

Chapter 7

On the seventh day of this her new existence, Alex walked downhill in the direction of the spring, compiling a list of things she missed the most from the twenty-first century in her head. As the effects of her concussion waned, the enormity of her predicament became increasingly clearer to her, leaving her with an urge to dig a hole somewhere and hibernate, sleep her way through this extended nightmare. Totally unproductive behaviour, the logical part of her brain remonstrated, and so instead she made lists.

“Lemon meringue pie, or maybe a cappuccino with a brioche?” She was constantly hungry, her stomach protesting in long, angry rumblings at this sudden and brutal change in diet. In the end she decided none of these made the shortlist – after all, she wasn’t starving. “Toothbrush,” she nodded, “toothbrush, soap, clean underwear, toilet paper and…” Hmm. Sanitary pads, she added some minutes later. Talk about inconvenient.

She hesitated by the road on her way back. Every morning she’d hurried to look at it, hoping that it would have resurrected itself in its modern form overnight. It hadn’t. So far, she’d avoided setting foot on the crossroads itself, having to ward off vivid memories of that churning hole whenever she got too close. But today she took a deep breath and shuffled to the middle, forcing her legs to remain straight.

She closed her eyes and raised her arms. Please; take me back. Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened! What had she expected, a revolving door through time? John. He swam before her, blond hair flopping over his forehead. She folded together around his name, cradling it to her. She fell to her knees, clasped her hands as her grandmother used to do, and prayed, a gabbled stream of words in Swedish – the only language she’d ever heard used to invoke God. Maybe if she did this long enough something would happen, taking her back to her world and her people – Isaac, john and Magnus.

“What are you doing?” Matthew’s voice recalled her to the empty moor and the dirt track that went for a road.

“Nothing.” She stood, feeling ridiculous.

“You were praying, weren’t you? Begging the Lord to whisk you back to your time, I reckon.”

Alex shrugged. “I guess I thought it worth a try at least.” She made an effort and smiled at him. “If wishes were horses, hey?”

“Ah well; I wouldn’t much mind a horse myself, but one has to make do with what one has, not yearn for what one doesn’t.”

“Easy for you to say.” She had absolutely nothing here.

“But true none the less.” He adjusted his bundle. “Ready?” They were leaving today, Matthew having pronounced her foot was good to go.

“All set.” She threw one last look at the crossroads before following him up the hill.

The sun was directly overhead by the time Matthew decided to stop. Alex sat down under a stunted tree and lifted her feet to inspect the soles.

“It’s been years since I walked barefoot. Look, I have bruises.”

“No you don’t, that’s dirt.” He handed her the water skin and tilted his head at the soft murmur of water. “Would you eat frogs?”

“Frogs?” Not if she could avoid it.

“They can be quite tasty, mayhap not the sort of food you’re accustomed to, but all the same.” He did a quick scan of their surroundings. “I don’t think we’ll find any – what was it? Chocolate? – anywhere close.”

“No, probably not.” All morning she’d been telling him of the food she was missing. Frogs seemed a poor substitute for hamburgers and tandoori chicken, and it definitely was a far cry from one of Magnus’ chocolate cakes.

“It’s food,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice. “Better than walking on an empty belly.”

“As long as you cook them.”

Alex tore into the frogs with determination. Chicken, pretend it’s chicken. She’d picked dandelion leaves and tried to convince him to try some. He did, but told her such green stuff was best left to horses and cows. But he ate more than his share of the raspberries she’d found, laughing at her when she tried to keep her own hoard safe from his raiding hands, laughing even more when she jumped him in a playful attempt to get her berries back. Matthew stuffed them in his mouth and flung himself down beside her.

“I haven’t laughed like that for many years.”

“Well, I suppose being in prison does that to you,” she smiled. He nodded and closed his eyes. Long, long lashes and she liked the way his eyes shifted colour, from not quite gold to muddy green.

She woke with a start some time later, her head pillowed on his chest, and sat up so fast she woke him up as well. How had that happened? He got to his feet looking as embarrassed as she felt, and they kept their distance when they resumed their walk.

“You said you were born in Seville,” he said once they were back in stride.

“Yes. I’m half-Spanish, half-Swedish, although Magnus insists I ended up French given my temper.” She smiled at the thought of her father. “I miss him, and I’m so sorry that he’ll never know, maybe he’ll think that I just took off, you know?”

“Why would he think that? You have a bairn, don’t you?”

“Yes, but still; what else is he to believe?” And now Magnus would be all alone; no wife, no daughter.

“Aye,” Matthew nodded. “So what’s he like then, your Da?”

“He’s the best,” she said, stooping to brush her hand over a cushion of pink moss campion. “He’s a botanist, like his father was, and his grandfather and his father before him…you get the picture, right? According to Magnus, one of his forefathers actually was a disciple of the great Linnaeus.” That drew an absolute blank, and she frowned, trying to remember when Carl Linnaeus was born. He wasn’t in the making yet, it was fifty years at least before he’d be born.

“He has a thing about roses,” she went on. “You should see his garden in the summer, at the last count he had over forty varieties, and in spring he’ll spend weeks cutting them back, talking to them in Swedish.”

“He talks to his roses?”

Alex laughed at his incredulous expression. “He talks to all his plants, he says it’s good for them.”

He laughed. “Fortunate he isn’t a farmer; he’d have a right dry throat.”

“He used to tell me stories when I was little, scary Swedish stories about trolls and goblins and fairies, and then I’d wake up crying in the night, and he’d take me down to the kitchen and we’d sit and talk over milk and cookies.” It had always been Magnus; Magnus who walked her to school that first day, Magnus who’d spend hours helping her with her science projects. And now she’d never see him again. She cleared her thickening throat; get it together, Alex Lind. But why the hell should she? She drew in a long, shuddering breath.
Pappa, min Pappa
.

The following days they walked more than Alex had ever walked in her life before. They rose at dawn, ate whatever they could find, and walked until late afternoon. Sometimes Matthew snuck down to isolated farmhouses, procuring an odd loaf of bread, some eggs or the occasional chunk of salted pork.

“Do you steal it?” It seemed an unnecessary risk.

“Nay, I buy it.” He held up a worn leather pouch and shook it, letting a soft jingle of coins leak through. “But this I stole.”

“Oh,” she said, eyeing the very small pouch. “I’m sure he doesn’t miss it.”

He looked at her sternly. “Of course he does. I took two months wages off him.”

*

He had never spent so much time with a woman before. Not only did they walk, they talked – long rambling conversations about this and that, although mostly it was about her life in the future, because Matthew couldn’t get enough of hearing about it. He bombarded her with questions, and Alex talked and talked, about everything from showers to television. This last had him fascinated; a wee box filled with people? Whatever for? And when she laughed and talked about entertainment he shook his head. How entertaining could it be to gawk at other people’s lives? Why not live your own? But most of all he liked all these new games she taught him – in particular as he consistently won.

“You cheat,” Alex protested one evening, giving him a sullen look.

Matthew grinned back. “No, I don’t. I’m just better than you are.”

“I taught you this. Of course you’re not better than me!”

“The tally board proves differently.”

“Huh; again.” She wiped the sand clean of noughts and crosses, handed him a stick. “And this time we have to get five in a row.”

“It won’t help,” he laughed, “but you get to start.”

“Of course I do. You won the last time. But this time I’ll win.” She shook her head, making her curly hair dance around her. In the light of the setting sun it glinted bronze and gold.

“Nay you won’t.” She committed the same mistake every time, but he had no intention of telling her that.

“And if I do?”

“Then you’ll get the last egg.” He shifted somewhat closer to her. “And if I win?”

“The egg?”

Matthew pretended to think. “No, if I win I want you to dance for me.”

“Dance?” She’d gone a very bright red.

“I saw you dancing yesterday.” She’d been singing something strange, doing dance steps he’d never seen before, many of them quite provocative.

“That was private!”

“You knew I was there, didn’t you?” He laughed out loud at the wave of pink that flew up her face, making her glower at him. “Anyway, if I win, that’s what I want.”

“I’m going to beat you silly!”

But she didn’t, and Matthew made her dance for a very long time. But he did give her the egg.

*

On the fifth day she insisted she had to wash. “Not only me, but my clothes as well.” Matthew sighed but found her a small pool, retiring further upstream to fish while she washed.

When he came back, she was sitting chastely wrapped in her blanket, and he kept his eyes off her bare shoulders and the soft hollow at the base of her throat where he could see the pulse thud. She was attempting to untangle her damp hair, and he followed the movement of her arms, her hands. Finally, he couldn’t stand it, and moved closer.

“Shall I help you?”

She just nodded, and Matthew kneeled behind her, sinking his fingers into all those curls. He took his time, and she sat stock still. Neither of them said a word.

“There,” he said when he was done. He got to his feet and turned his back on her while he adjusted his breeches. “I caught us some fish; hungry?”

“So, what is it today?” he said once they’d eaten. His ragged spare shirt was spread to dry, and his three stockings hung like garlands from the branch above him. He still wondered what had happened to the fourth stocking. He scratched at his beard, now somewhat less bristling after a long session with his knife, and looked down at her, lying half-asleep in the grass.

“Huh?”

“What makes the top five today?” He liked these lists of hers, yet another opportunity to hear about a world so different from his it made his ears want to drop off with incredulity.

“Number one is still the same,” she grinned.

“Toothbrush,” they chorused.

“Shower,” she went on, “phone, car and trainers.” None of them were new things and he settled back with his head pillowed on his arms.

“Who do you miss the most today?” He heard her sigh, and without opening his eyes he knew she’d be sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped hard around them.

“Isaac, today it’s Isaac.”

He wasn’t sure if he believed her, because it seemed to him that while she spoke very much about her father, and now and then about her son, she rarely mentioned her man, John. In his experience, the one you didn’t speak of was the one you missed the most.

*

After a long nap, Alex stood up and dressed, grimacing at the dampness of her jeans. She packed together her stuff, and seeing as Matthew still lay dozing, she shook out his blanket before bending down to roll it back up around his things. The folded paper looked like a deed of some sort, and she spread it flat, trying to decipher the curling handwriting.

“What are you doing?” Matthew sounded very cold.

“Nothing.” She attempted a smile.

He took the paper from her, folding it back along the original creases before stuffing it inside his shirt, eyes never leaving hers.

“I’m sorry. It isn’t as if I could read it anyway.”

“It’s not for you to read my private matters.”

“I know, I just said I’m sorry. And as I also just said, I couldn’t read a word of it.” Except for the one word in the heading that had stuck out like a neon sign; divorce.

Matthew obviously didn’t believe her, throwing her angry looks as he rolled his blanket round his belongings and shoved his feet into his worn shoes. He didn’t even stop to make sure she was ready to go before he strode off along the stream, leaving her to make her way best she could.

*

“You’re doing this on purpose,” she yelled an hour or so later. “You know it’s going to be hard going for me, barefoot as I am, right?” She rolled up her jeans and splashed into the stream instead.

He didn’t reply.

“Well fine! See if I care.” She came to a stubborn stop and limped over to sit on the bank, holding her breath as she pulled out an evil looking thorn from her big toe. The thin skin over her healing burns was irritated, and one of her ankles was covered in a nettle rash.

“Bloody sadist.” She threw a concerned look around her. The woods stood thick, and she had no idea in what direction she was heading. Well, she wasn’t going to follow him, that nasty brute, instead she’d walk back to the clearing. From there she could see the hills, and she much preferred sleeping up there, however bare, than here in this teeming, buzzing green. She paddled her feet in the water, hoping that he’d come back before it grew too dark. When she pulled her legs out of the water, three leeches hung like curling decorations on her calf and she regarded them with disgust.