A Day and a Night and a Day: A Novel by Glen Duncan

croft and wandered down to take a look. Augustus, unconscious, soaking, had been sprawled across the threshold, legs bleeding. She’d run back and got Maddoch.
    â€œLucky for you, Mr. Rose,” Maddoch says. “I was just about to go in for the wife’s prescription.” Throughout he’s avoided Augustus’s eye. The scars have unbalanced him, confirmed the croft arrangement’s a mistake. Augustus foresees the clipped attempt at eviction, the thought of which, the effort it’ll require to talk Maddoch down, makes him dizzy.
    â€œI came here f’ra holiday when I was little,” the girl says. “Always thought I’d come back one day.”
    â€œI’ve told her,” Maddoch says. “There’s no work. Summer, maybe, but not now.”
    â€œBest be off anyways,” she says, standing suddenly. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know?” This is her catching herself. She relaxes into things, makes quick friends—then snaps awake, remembering you don’t relax into things, the friends turn out to be not friends. Best be off anyways.
    Augustus knows the timing for the fifty pounds has to be right if he doesn’t want Maddoch interfering. He waits till they’re both out of the door then gets up and, after a moment’s adjustment to the floor’s pitch and swing, goes after them. Moving’s a succession of cattle-wire shocks, dull bites in the bones. The wallet’s in the overcoat where it should be, as is the gun. At the croft’s threshold cold air surprises his face, neck and hands, sets the fever’s pins-and-needles off again.
    â€œJust a second, Miss.”
    Her face when she turns shows a reflex fear that she’s to be called to account, smothered quickly in a smile. Augustus beckons her, aware as he does so not just of Maddoch observing, realizing he’s missing something, but of the wet land and low gray sky, the sheep nibbling the hill. This place avers the planet going on without people, the giant facts of rain and sunlight, the sculpted bulk of deserts, fish-heavy oceans, a wealth of spectacle for no one and nothing.
    â€œHave a drink on me, okay?”
    â€œOch don’t be daft,” she says. It’s her natural attitude but there’s no disguising the double take and scurry for adjustment when she sees it’s a fifty. Suddenly Augustus knows she spent last night not in a hotel. All these things he knows and doesn’t want to, survival’s gift of vacuous penetration. He shivers.
    â€œGo ahead, take it. I insist.”
    She shakes her head but her hands sing from the jacket pockets. He wonders if she’s on drugs. Doesn’t look like a user but you can’t tell these days. “If it makes you feel better,” he says, “I’m loaded.” A gust of wind whips her ponytail forward and what feels like a wet bedsheet against him. He sways, rights himself. Her head’s down, shoulders up.
    â€œMiss?”
    She lets out a laugh then sniffs and he wonders if she’s crying. It only lasts a couple of seconds but in that time he suffers a surge of claustrophobia, caught between the hot room and her bowed head.
    â€œYou don’t look loaded,” she says, not looking up.
    Whatever’s trying to form Augustus doesn’t want it. The room’s heat presses his back. Everything has to stop and he has to put the fire out and lie down and them not be here.
    Maddoch cranes his neck, owl eyebrows raised.
    â€œHere,” Augustus says. He takes her hand (the cold knuckles are prominent) and forces her fingers around the crumpled note.
    He doesn’t want to look at her but she says, “Okay, thanks,” and lifts her head so he gets one glimpse of her face that suddenly looks exhausted before she turns and walks away.
    Â 
    T hey’ve left him alone. Harper sent the guards out for a break, followed them to the door but hung back. For a