shirt and shorts, and wondered what we would talk about, what Juliet Lundy and I would say to one another when I appeared in the kitchen. Coffee and toast would be good. But it couldn’t be as simple as that, after yesterday and last night.
Nothing was simple. I was bursting, and it should have been the easiest thing, without thinking for a fraction of a second, to pause beneath a tree on a beautiful summer’s morning and piss into the long grass. But where? The woodland was cleansed by the tremendous rains in the night. The oak and beech had had a work-out and a spring-clean, they’d shaken down a flutter of leaves and a litter of twigs and the whole world was sparkling fresh. So it wasn’t that easy, after the almost religious experience the boy had had in the nettles near the house, to just stop and do it.
Ridiculous. The ridiculousness of it made me stop and huff. Back home, at night, after a few beers on my balcony, I just strolled down to the river... dangerous and exhilarating, to stand in the dense shadows of nippah , to stare into a gruesome tangle of mangrove roots, to piss for a long long minute and think of the crocodiles lurking nearby. Every few months a man or a child would be taken and drowned and eaten, not uncommon in the Baram river. But I was literally careless, the beer and just being in Borneo were a great source of bravado.
Now, in a Lincolnshire garden, it was complicated. I was reluctant to piss in case I conjured the spirit of a lost airman, whose body was nibbled and gluey at the bottom of the North Sea.
I pushed through the reed bed and pissed into the pond. So I left no trace, and there were no crocs to worry about. Only, far out in the middle, there was a slow, oily-green swirl on the surface, as though something big and old was moving in the darkness.
Juliet was in the kitchen. She was wearing a faded, pale-blue cotton blouse and faded denim jeans. Her hair was still wet from the shower. She turned towards me, from where she was standing by the kettle, and we looked at one another for a silent moment until we both said, ‘Hi,’ at exactly the same time. She smiled at the chiming of our voices, a small smile, fragile with the hope that I would smile too. When I didn’t, she said, ‘Coffee? Toast?’ as if everything might be as simple as that.
She gestured me to sit at the kitchen table. Strong coffee and home-made bread with butter and thick-cut marmalade. She remained standing, leaning against the counter where she’d boiled the kettle. When she bit into her toast, the butter ran onto her chin and she did a tiny squirmy giggle as she dabbed it with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so hungry,’ she said, ‘something’s made me so hungry.’ And I was hungry too. The nervousness in my stomach was still there, and another undeniable, disconcerting feeling which made my mouth go dry. I’d looked at her before, of course I had. In my first days at Chalke House I’d glanced at her throat and her neck and, in an oblique, abstracted way, imagined the small of her back. But now that I’d held her and touched her and tasted her and knew that I might do so again, something jumped inside me at the thought of it. Unsettling too, as I remembered how utterly invisible she’d been, in the coffin-darkness of the hearse.
‘Batik.’ The word sprang into my head. I said it without pausing to think.
She stared at me over the rim of her coffee cup. She gulped and licked her lips and set the cup down on the counter.
‘A funny coincidence,’ I said. ‘Lawrence showed me what he’d done in school, and I was going to tell him I’d seen the kids in Borneo doing it too. And then, last night, I was reading those old newspapers in my Dad’s car and there it was. The word, I mean. A bit unusual. Batik.’
She didn’t say anything. She raised her eyebrows and tried to smile, to show a polite interest in what I was saying. And then, giving up, she folded her arms across her chest and narrowed
Nothing was simple. I was bursting, and it should have been the easiest thing, without thinking for a fraction of a second, to pause beneath a tree on a beautiful summer’s morning and piss into the long grass. But where? The woodland was cleansed by the tremendous rains in the night. The oak and beech had had a work-out and a spring-clean, they’d shaken down a flutter of leaves and a litter of twigs and the whole world was sparkling fresh. So it wasn’t that easy, after the almost religious experience the boy had had in the nettles near the house, to just stop and do it.
Ridiculous. The ridiculousness of it made me stop and huff. Back home, at night, after a few beers on my balcony, I just strolled down to the river... dangerous and exhilarating, to stand in the dense shadows of nippah , to stare into a gruesome tangle of mangrove roots, to piss for a long long minute and think of the crocodiles lurking nearby. Every few months a man or a child would be taken and drowned and eaten, not uncommon in the Baram river. But I was literally careless, the beer and just being in Borneo were a great source of bravado.
Now, in a Lincolnshire garden, it was complicated. I was reluctant to piss in case I conjured the spirit of a lost airman, whose body was nibbled and gluey at the bottom of the North Sea.
I pushed through the reed bed and pissed into the pond. So I left no trace, and there were no crocs to worry about. Only, far out in the middle, there was a slow, oily-green swirl on the surface, as though something big and old was moving in the darkness.
Juliet was in the kitchen. She was wearing a faded, pale-blue cotton blouse and faded denim jeans. Her hair was still wet from the shower. She turned towards me, from where she was standing by the kettle, and we looked at one another for a silent moment until we both said, ‘Hi,’ at exactly the same time. She smiled at the chiming of our voices, a small smile, fragile with the hope that I would smile too. When I didn’t, she said, ‘Coffee? Toast?’ as if everything might be as simple as that.
She gestured me to sit at the kitchen table. Strong coffee and home-made bread with butter and thick-cut marmalade. She remained standing, leaning against the counter where she’d boiled the kettle. When she bit into her toast, the butter ran onto her chin and she did a tiny squirmy giggle as she dabbed it with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so hungry,’ she said, ‘something’s made me so hungry.’ And I was hungry too. The nervousness in my stomach was still there, and another undeniable, disconcerting feeling which made my mouth go dry. I’d looked at her before, of course I had. In my first days at Chalke House I’d glanced at her throat and her neck and, in an oblique, abstracted way, imagined the small of her back. But now that I’d held her and touched her and tasted her and knew that I might do so again, something jumped inside me at the thought of it. Unsettling too, as I remembered how utterly invisible she’d been, in the coffin-darkness of the hearse.
‘Batik.’ The word sprang into my head. I said it without pausing to think.
She stared at me over the rim of her coffee cup. She gulped and licked her lips and set the cup down on the counter.
‘A funny coincidence,’ I said. ‘Lawrence showed me what he’d done in school, and I was going to tell him I’d seen the kids in Borneo doing it too. And then, last night, I was reading those old newspapers in my Dad’s car and there it was. The word, I mean. A bit unusual. Batik.’
She didn’t say anything. She raised her eyebrows and tried to smile, to show a polite interest in what I was saying. And then, giving up, she folded her arms across her chest and narrowed
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