Natural History (18 page)

A week before, in revenge, Charlie had sex with a Minehead office girl. She was pissed, at a works-party, and Charlie had been working the bar.

He went to her room. The unfamiliar smell of her breath and her breasts in his hands; the colder flesh of her arse when she undressed. The sodium glitter and slow-shifting of the tinsel.

Charlie was mechanically aroused but unable to orgasm. At first, that was okay. But it became maddening, like a dream where you can't run from your pursuer.

He thought of Chris McNeil, grinding her hips below someone else, and the orgasm that followed was quick and violent and followed by an engulfing roller, a breaker of shame. He had to bury his head into this strange girl's neck—suffocated by her perfume and her tickly hair, her sweat and her tits squashed against him, her legs wilting like flowers at the small of his back—in order not to sob. She muttered something, some squalid joke, and she played with his hair and he saw her engagement ring.

That was five days ago. It felt like a hundred years. Charlie felt ancient; a creature of the Sumerian desert.

Now it was Christmas Day, and he got home to a noisy house. The kitchen was full of people—Don Caraway, the toothy vet with the comb-over, Jo's mad teacher. Patrick. All of them were doing something—peeling potatoes, topping up glasses, mixing stuffing.

They looked cheerful. And when Charlie walked in, Patrick called out
‘MERRY CHRISTMAS!'
And Jo said,
‘Whoooo!'
And the vet and the teacher looked at him bashfully.

Charlie said, ‘Merry Christmas,' back, then made himself yawn and said, ‘I might have a kip.'

Patrick's face softened, as if he knew something.

‘Get your head down, mate. We'll keep your dinner warm.'

Patrick was about to make a joke—the same non-joke he made every year, about whether Charlie wanted breast or leg, but now Charlie beamed it out through his eyes:
Please don't.

Patrick didn't. And Charlie raised a limp hand and went upstairs and crawled into bed. He was back at the Anchorage by 8 p.m.

Round midnight, Patrick carried Jo up to bed. It wasn't easy; she was taller than him, and he was a little drunk.

Downstairs, he found Don Caraway stoking the fire and John Nately in the tatty embroidered armchair, drinking whisky from a heavy tumbler. The TV was on but silenced, and the shadow of the flames licked at the higgledy walls, made them seem close and low and alive.

Patrick eased himself onto the sofa. He made a series of contented little groans and picked up his drink. The fire warmed and fascinated him. All three men, tending their drinks, stared into it.

Nately said, ‘She told me about the panther. Jo.'

Patrick looked at him. ‘Oh.'

‘She overheard you, discussing it with Don.'

Patrick remembered the meal, the two bottles of wine, their plans to capture the beast. His growing excitement. Perhaps they hadn't been as quiet as they supposed.

‘She felt she had to tell me. She was worried it might eat me.'

Patrick wasn't angry at Jo for telling Nately. He was too warm, too drunk, too amiable. It was good, to be content for a while, to have no secrets.

‘It's funny,' said Nately.

‘What's funny?'

‘Once upon a time, I discussed these big cats with a friend of mine.' He leaned forward and turned his head to Caraway. ‘ABCs. That's right?'

Don nodded. ‘Alien Big Cats.'

Nately settled back into his chair and watched the fire.

Patrick thought of the beast, crouching at the border of his land. And how it had flowed onto his property like ink, and then disappeared.

He glanced at Don, but Caraway too was staring into the fire.

Nately went on, softly, ‘A few years ago, he was walking—my friend—not far from here, and he saw a black shape spring over a fence. An impossible leap. He'd seen a big cat.'

And now both Patrick and Caraway were looking at him.

‘He was scared. Terrified, actually. But he's inquisitive; a scientist. Or anyway, a psychiatrist. So the next week, he went back. Same time, same place. And the week after that. He kept a vigil. It took him three months.'

‘And?'

‘And he took a photograph.'

Caraway and Patrick leaned closer.

‘Of a dog. A mastiff cross. Leaping the unleapable fence.'

Patrick and Caraway groaned like Christmas ghosts.

‘The strangest thing was, he had a very distinct memory of a tail. But the dog had no tail—it'd been docked. So he began to look into it; why he'd seen what he'd seen. Apparently, eye­witnesses often go on to insist they've seen a big cat, even when a dog is
proven
to be responsible.'

Don grunted reluctant confirmation.

Nately said, ‘It's because we were preyed on, once; mostly by felines. And now, certain stimuli—especially quick movements, on the edge of our vision—fit a mental template, a default setting that causes us to see big cats. It's better to be safe than sorry; better to think
Cat!
And run, and find out three months later it's a mastiff cross. So our minds fill in the details for us. The whiskers, the long tail …'

They watched the fire.

‘But John,' said Patrick. ‘I really did see a panther.'

Nately's face was cast in flickering shadow; it hollowed out his cheekbones and eye-sockets, and the fire shone on his corneas. Patrick saw no challenge there. But he did see fear.

That night, because he was drunk, Patrick actually went to bed. It felt unfamiliar—lying down with his head on a pillow. He stared at the ceiling and thought about the cat, and about something Jo had told him once about the fractal nature of nature, and how the Fibonacci series expressed itself in leaf patterns, in seed heads. He saw the world, briefly, as a series of numerical attributes, flowing towards and away from him. And he wondered if that was how his daughter saw the world, all the time.

And he thought of his wife, who had sidestepped into a different universe. He thought of making love to her on the wet grass beneath the rotting umbrella of stars. And he thought of women he had loved before—girls, really—and how that love had seemed eternal and now he could not remember what it had been like, to have those strangers in his heart.

Everything was connected to everything else. The iron in his blood was formed by exploding stars. His molecules had once belonged to other living creatures. He was made of borrowed life, from borrowed materials. Eating, he turned death into life. And when he died, his body would disperse—like the matter of an exploding star—and become part of other living systems; trees and foxes and worms and grass. And they would die and become still other things; he would pass into other people, as other people had passed into him. The rain that fell on him contained molecules of water that, as a child, he had sweated away. Everything was one thing; everything had once been compacted into a single point that discharged existence.

He took no comfort from this.

On New Year's Day, Patrick and Caraway set out to hunt the black panther. Don carried an old canvas knapsack with leather straps; it had a picnic inside. And he'd brought his 35 mm camera. It bounced on a strap round his neck.

They crossed onto the South-West Coastal Trail, and they walked for some miles north, towards Minehead. They returned with the sunset.

On 2 January, they repeated the excursion, walking some miles south—through the woods, and over the cliffs, and down to the salt flats, and past Innsmouth.

But they found no trace—no stools, no paw prints. There had been no reports of livestock damage, or of mysterious growling in the night. There had been no sightings. There had been nothing.

A mile south of Innsmouth, they watched a fat man on the desolate beach, throwing a stick for a black Labrador. The dog chased the stick into the surf, barked, returned it.

The sight of it brought Caraway and Patrick to a halt. They watched the Labrador for a while, silently. They watched the happy man who was walking it, stopping to throw sticks.

They felt old and stupid.

Patrick said, ‘It's not here, is it?'

And Don Caraway said, ‘No.'

Don snapped a shot of the man and his black dog, its barrel torso low to the ground on stumpy legs, and they pulled up their hoods against the drizzle coming in off the ocean, and they turned inland and headed for home.

13

FROM A LETTER TO PATRICK

God, we've had some strange Christmases! You remember the first years back in Wales, how you got carried away? We said we'd keep it all to one present each, something constructive, nothing commercial, nothing plastic, and you drove into Liverpool and came back with about two dozen Woolworth's carrier bags. And I was angry and we argued, and then when I saw the kids on Christmas morning I cried because you were right—although you did spend too much, and always did.

How many Christmases have we spent together now? I can hardly work it out. I keep forgetting what year we met. Isn't that funny? I remember myself when I was five and it seems you're there.

The bonobo died on Christmas Day. You won't be surprised to hear it. The infection cleared up, but she was too weak. She slipped away in my bed.

I held her in my arms, dead, and I sat in this crappy hotel room
a
nd sobbed. And it was so hot, and I could smell myself. So I went downstairs and got a pair of kitchen scissors and cut my hair.

I thought I should let you know that, in case you don't know me when I come home.

There's an American school in Kinshasa. Enormous grounds, covered in acacia trees. It's very beautiful; stupidly so, really, given the rest of it.

I've been speaking to them about the bonobos, about the idea of a sanctuary. God, I mean I've been talking to everyone. Embassies. Hotels. Anyone I can think of who might help. We've grubbed up a little money; enough to keep them fed for a few months. But the situation is so unstable.

We huddle round the radio at night. Every day or two I pop into the Internationale: they've got CNN there, and a decent bar, and journalists.

It's not easy to keep account of the factions, of who's doing what to whom, but it's bad. I can't see Mobutu walking away from it, but that could mean months and months more of this. It could mean anything, really.

But we're hanging on, and things are looking good with the American school. A few more months, I think, and we can do some real good and I can come home.

God, I want to come home. Homesickness is what children suffer from at camp, or during sleepovers. But I've got it now. It's not funny. Homesickness.

I love you.

Patrick read it a dozen times, then made an appointment at the bank, where he begged a young man with too much gel in his hair, to be allowed to raise a small mortgage on the house.

And he wired the results—a few thousand American dollars­—to Jane via the Internationale. Then he phoned the American school in Kinshasa. When he got through, at some length, he left a message.

It was,
Happy New Year.

In a dark garden on the western edge of England, under a bright and hollow sky, Patrick stood pointless guard over Jo and Nately. Wrapped in coats and scarves and hats, they were taking it in turn using Patrick's field-glasses to observe the comet.

It was visible even to his unaided human eye—a bright star with a hazy tail, like a wandering ghost in a wedding gown.

Patrick stamped his deadened feet. His fists were buried deep in his pockets. His ears were numb. He cast wary sidelong glances into the shadows at the end of the garden—the stile, the woods behind it. He could hear the sea, a slow wave of white noise. There was nothing there.

The sheep stood with them. It, too, was looking up.

Jo told him, ‘Some people believe there's a spaceship coming with it.'

‘I bet they do.'

Craning his neck, Nately said, ‘Have you ever seen a UFO?'

Patrick scoffed. ‘No. Have you?'

‘Yep.'

‘Really?' said Jo. ‘Where?'

‘Here. Or near enough.'

‘What did it look like?'

‘Like a UFO.'

‘And what does a UFO look like?' said Patrick.

‘Glowing. Moving. That sort of thing. It was a weather phenomenon. Some kind of weird weather.' He passed the field-glasses to Jo.

‘I've seen some weird weather,' said Patrick. ‘In Africa. Weird weather.'

‘Or it was a military aircraft.'

Patrick narrowed his eyes and looked askew at Nately. ‘John, are you pulling my leg here?'

‘Not in the slightest.'

‘You saw a spaceship. In Devon.'

‘You saw a panther.'

Patrick liked this waspish new Nately. Or perhaps it was the waspish old Nately; perhaps it was how Nately usually was, in the privacy of his mind.

‘The difference is, John, at least I know for certain that, somewhere in the world, panthers actually exist.'

‘Oh, what I saw
existed.
It wasn't an illusion, it was definitely there. But what it actually was—that I don't know.'

‘But you don't believe it was a spaceship?'

Nately squinted at the comet. His breath steamed in the cold.

‘I don't believe in spaceships.'

Patrick didn't want to keep standing out there, night after night, one eye on the shifting forest while Nately and Jo scanned the skies, ignoring his solicitations of hot cocoa followed by hints that it was time to go inside.

So, after feeling stupid five nights running, he arranged to drop them at Nately's house, to use the telescope. He'd pick them up round midnight. He waited at the wheel until they were safely through the red door, grey in the darkness, and he drove away—pleased at last, to have an evening to himself.

Jo and Nately entered the dark cottage. It felt very empty. Its residual heat had leached into the winter ground and the light bulbs, in the downtime, had lost their power to illuminate; their thin glow edged the darkness into the corners; it crouched there, licking its chops.

Nately went upstairs. Jo followed at his heels.

He opened the bedroom door. Dampness had settled into the candlewick bedspread from which Patrick had lifted Nately's head, to check for a pulse. The bedding was still disordered.

It was a strange, to look at it. They still had their coats on: they felt like explorers.

‘Well,' said Nately. ‘Here we are.'

A few days later, Nately moved back home and their lessons began again.

Twice a week, Jo stayed late to comet-watch. And Hale Bopp, the Great Comet of 1997, grew brighter in the sky, and brighter still, until—as it began to close on the sun—it sprouted two tails.

The Anchorage had shed its festive-seasonal staff, leaving behind a low-season skeleton crew. So Clive agreed that Charlie could put in all the night-shifts he wanted.

Jo phoned him a few times, and so did Patrick. But it seemed to Charlie that they sounded painfully distant, like voices carried by fading radio waves across galactic distances—and, on the far other side, they heard the strangeness in his voice and took it for indifference, or hostility, and did not bother to call again.

He worked alone at night, serving the creatures the Anchorage drew to it, and he slept all day.

Tonight, he took some clean towels to Room 11 just after closing time. He could smell the vomit even before the door opened.

At 2 a.m., the adulterous couple in Room 27 ordered sandwiches and Asti spumante. The man—hairy, wrapped in a white towelling dressing-gown—met Charlie at the door. He blocked Charlie's view of the room and peeled a fiver into his hand.

At 3 a.m., with Charlie nodding off at the desk, the buzzer went.

Sometimes, drunks pressed the buzzer, or kids on their way home from nightclubs. Sometimes, it was half of a newly separated couple, looking for somewhere to see out the remains of the night. Now and again, it was men with hookers. Charlie wasn't supposed to let them in, because Clive didn't want the Anchorage to get that kind of reputation; it might put off the respectable adulterers. But Clive didn't understand the Anchorage.

If it was early enough, if Charlie could get them out in time, he let the room, cash, by the hour, and replaced the bedding when they'd gone. He wasn't really interested in the money; it was what the Anchorage expected of him.

Sometimes, he answered the buzzer and was met by silence. And that's what he liked the least; it made his skin crawl. He feared robbery, murder, restless spirits.

Tonight, it was Chris McNeil. She was hovering at the door like a vampire, unable to enter without an invitation.

He said, ‘What are you doing here?'

‘Open the door and I'll tell you.'

‘I can't.'

‘Open the door.'

His body felt far away. She had on a long coat, belted at the waist. Earrings, necklace. Little clutch purse on a thin leather strap.

He opened the door and she came in.

‘Sit at the desk,' she said.

‘No.'

‘Sit at the desk.'

‘Be quiet.'

‘Sit at the desk.'

He sat at the desk. She walked behind it. She set down her little handbag, next to the computer monitor. She crouched. Pulled at his zip.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Apologizing.'

She rubbed his cock and kissed it; made famished noises. It took about five seconds. And when it was over, it withered in his lap and she grinned, sated, and swallowed. Then she perched on the edge of the desk. There were beads of semen in her hair, just behind the ear. And that's what he knew his mind would return to: Chris McNeil hovering at the door like a vampire, begging to be invited in, and opening her mouth and sucking out his life-force. And now, perched sideways, going through her bag, with his semen glinting in her hair, pearl-grey.

She put her cigarettes on the desk and wrote something on the back of her business card; the name of a hotel and her room number.

And she left without speaking, pushing the green
exit
button and pushing then pulling the door, and letting it swing slowly shut behind her. And she pixelated in the night, and was gone.

He met her at sunrise, on Minehead beach.

There were two early-morning joggers, some dog-walkers, some old people out for their widowed stroll. The wind blew off the sea and scoured his face.

Chris was hugging her knees. She was hungover, wincing. She hadn't slept. She smelled of booze and cigarettes; and his semen, dead on her breath. She was looking at the water.

He was next to her, still in uniform. They sat there like owls.

He said, ‘Are you married?'

‘No, I'm not married. Not for a long time.'

‘So you were married once.'

‘I'm thirty-eight years old.'

He shrugged, surly and chimp-like. He dug in the sand with a length of driftwood: curls and patterns.

‘Married ten years. Separated the last three of them.'

He thought about her on her knees, wolfing at him. He needed to go and masturbate; then he could think straight.

She lit a cigarette and flicked away the match. Charlie had an urge to reach out and grab it. Pocket it.

‘He got ill. The woman he was with, she couldn't cope. Didn't want to. And he had no one else. There was a sister; she's in New Zealand now.'

Charlie didn't care.

‘I kept working. Had to; you don't get time off to nurse dying exes. And even with your friends, it's complicated. And you get to a point where there's nothing to …'

He wondered if he was expected to touch her. She would drain him like a battery.

‘It's funny, my job—you get smiled at a lot. And I spend time in hotels, so there's always men. Propping up the bars, thinking because you're a woman on your own … But, the night I met you: that was the first time anyone had smiled at me for a million years. I mean, really smiled. Actually smiled.'

And he thought of her, swizzle-sticking her glass at some hotel bar: the fat men in cheap suits all around her. Her naked breasts swinging as she finger-cleaned her teeth.

‘I thought—a bit of fun. Where's the harm. He's young.'

‘Thanks.'

She guffawed at herself, mercilessly. Puffed on the cigarette.

‘Have you ever been to a funeral?'

‘No.'

‘They make you feel strange. They make you feel like sex. That's all it was meant to be. Sex.'

He held up his hands in surrender and walked away and never saw her again.

He stayed on the beach. He flexed his toes inside his trainers.

‘I keep meaning not to come back. And I keep rehearsing this—what I'm going to say to you. And each time, it made me sound like a
teacher.
And that makes me feel sick. That thought. Jesus.'

He wasn't looking at her.

He said, ‘So is that it?'

She was watching the sea.

He said, ‘So now you can fuck off and leave me alone.'

She flinched, then pursed her lips, as if about to whistle. Instead, she blew, once—a long, sad exhalation. ‘Oh-kay.'

And then she stood and brushed the sand from her arse. He looked at her shoes and there were scuffs on the toes; the heels were worn down. She put her bag on her shoulder.

She said, ‘Oh-kay,' again, and drew a shaky hand through her hair.

He kept looking at the water. What people took for the electric smell of ozone was just the smell of rotting seaweed. It was why people thought the seaside was good for you; the sea air. But it was just the smell of decomposition.

Her shadow fell over him. She was casting a shadow like a sundial. And then her shadow moved. And he listened to her footsteps, on the sand, moving to the promenade and he surged inside, as if the ocean had entered him.

He knew when she had gone: it was a light blinking out, behind him.