primal need that surfaces when a family has been threatened, the need for survival, for replacement. Throughout the mating, Jack cried silently against her shoulder.
Once at home again, he dictated a detailed account of the
shimmer,
which Angela noted carefully.
‘Was there any sense of the runners?’
‘No … except that …’
It
was so hard to define, like trying to explain Angela’s presence in his dream, his certainty that a middle-aged man was her own partial presence
…
‘I was watching from the tree line, behind the girls. I have a sense of my own face looking out, a striped, grey face, concealed in the light and shade of the underbrush, watching curiously. Perhaps I was Greyface …’
‘No sense of the woman at all?’
‘None at all. Maybe it was
just
a dream, a daydream. Maybe it doesn’t connect.’
Angela was scrawling furiously, pushing her auburn hair back over her head, absorbed by her thoughts; after a minute or so she wound back the tape and started to transcribe it.
Jack went outside where Natalie and her cousin, Ben, were splashing in the paddling pool, supervised by Ben’s minder, a cheery Australian girl who made sudden gasping sounds and begged a beer. Jack popped back into the house to fetch a cold lager, then went down to the bottom of the garden, staring out across the downs to the distant line of hills.
A patch of woodland, a copse known as Battle Clumps, marked the part of those hills where the city of Glanum had flowed from the Deep, surfacing to entice, to capture John Garth, ten years ago.
It was this view of the Mallon Hills that had finally convinced them to purchase the house, a ramshackle property on two floors overlooking Exburgh from the south, needing somuch modernization and decoration that family life had operated constantly in the dust and debris of builders, the chaos of refurbishment. The large garden was mostly given over to an orchard, with paddocks beyond where a few sheep and three retired horses grazed. Its sense of boundary with wild country made it popular with Natalie’s friends, and they always seemed to have visitors.
He looked, now, at the trees on the horizon that marked the drop down to the valley where Garth had hidden and lived for more than a year, and he felt, for the first time in ages, a need, almost a compulsion, to go back to the shrines of the hidden city, to the masks of the travellers, carved in antiquity, according to conventional wisdom; faces that had seemed alive when first exposed.
Angela wanted to come with him, to watch him as he returned to the Hercules shrine, curious to know what was happening to her husband; but Rachel would be leaving at three in the afternoon, so Natalie would have to be supervised. ‘Why don’t we all go tomorrow?’
He stood in the low-ceilinged room, looking at the bespectacled and beautiful woman, at the flow of her precise handwriting, the tumble of hair, and he heard:
running
And Greenface was close to him, her breath sweet, the sweat on her body oily, staining her tunic, making the green tattoos on her face seem to writhe like snakes as she came towards him
running
Close now, and desperate. She was alone. Greyface was not around. She was behind him, around him, before him
inside him.
‘They’re coming back,’ he said to Angela, who at once rose from the table and came to him, feeling his skin, smelling his skin, looking closely for any sign of the
shimmering.
‘Are you sure?’
‘No. Not sure. It feels like it, though.’
‘Then you shouldn’t go out now. Stay home. If they’re close, we can record it.’
‘Not that close … Not yet … I need to go …’
He was gasping for breath. Why?
‘Got to go,’ he stammered.
Hooks pulled him. Memories of Garth were strong. He could feel the city shifting below the town, imagine the ochre crumbling from the walls, the masks, the frescoes …
‘It’s something I want to do alone.’
‘You’re not to drive. Jack, I absolutely
Once at home again, he dictated a detailed account of the
shimmer,
which Angela noted carefully.
‘Was there any sense of the runners?’
‘No … except that …’
It
was so hard to define, like trying to explain Angela’s presence in his dream, his certainty that a middle-aged man was her own partial presence
…
‘I was watching from the tree line, behind the girls. I have a sense of my own face looking out, a striped, grey face, concealed in the light and shade of the underbrush, watching curiously. Perhaps I was Greyface …’
‘No sense of the woman at all?’
‘None at all. Maybe it was
just
a dream, a daydream. Maybe it doesn’t connect.’
Angela was scrawling furiously, pushing her auburn hair back over her head, absorbed by her thoughts; after a minute or so she wound back the tape and started to transcribe it.
Jack went outside where Natalie and her cousin, Ben, were splashing in the paddling pool, supervised by Ben’s minder, a cheery Australian girl who made sudden gasping sounds and begged a beer. Jack popped back into the house to fetch a cold lager, then went down to the bottom of the garden, staring out across the downs to the distant line of hills.
A patch of woodland, a copse known as Battle Clumps, marked the part of those hills where the city of Glanum had flowed from the Deep, surfacing to entice, to capture John Garth, ten years ago.
It was this view of the Mallon Hills that had finally convinced them to purchase the house, a ramshackle property on two floors overlooking Exburgh from the south, needing somuch modernization and decoration that family life had operated constantly in the dust and debris of builders, the chaos of refurbishment. The large garden was mostly given over to an orchard, with paddocks beyond where a few sheep and three retired horses grazed. Its sense of boundary with wild country made it popular with Natalie’s friends, and they always seemed to have visitors.
He looked, now, at the trees on the horizon that marked the drop down to the valley where Garth had hidden and lived for more than a year, and he felt, for the first time in ages, a need, almost a compulsion, to go back to the shrines of the hidden city, to the masks of the travellers, carved in antiquity, according to conventional wisdom; faces that had seemed alive when first exposed.
Angela wanted to come with him, to watch him as he returned to the Hercules shrine, curious to know what was happening to her husband; but Rachel would be leaving at three in the afternoon, so Natalie would have to be supervised. ‘Why don’t we all go tomorrow?’
He stood in the low-ceilinged room, looking at the bespectacled and beautiful woman, at the flow of her precise handwriting, the tumble of hair, and he heard:
running
And Greenface was close to him, her breath sweet, the sweat on her body oily, staining her tunic, making the green tattoos on her face seem to writhe like snakes as she came towards him
running
Close now, and desperate. She was alone. Greyface was not around. She was behind him, around him, before him
inside him.
‘They’re coming back,’ he said to Angela, who at once rose from the table and came to him, feeling his skin, smelling his skin, looking closely for any sign of the
shimmering.
‘Are you sure?’
‘No. Not sure. It feels like it, though.’
‘Then you shouldn’t go out now. Stay home. If they’re close, we can record it.’
‘Not that close … Not yet … I need to go …’
He was gasping for breath. Why?
‘Got to go,’ he stammered.
Hooks pulled him. Memories of Garth were strong. He could feel the city shifting below the town, imagine the ochre crumbling from the walls, the masks, the frescoes …
‘It’s something I want to do alone.’
‘You’re not to drive. Jack, I absolutely
Similar Books
