Конрад Уильямс - One

Jane pitched his tent in the field next but one to the cottage, at the leading edge of a wood. From here he could see the cottage and the driveway connecting it to the road. He built a small fire, taking care that the flames would not be seen. The smell of woodsmoke didn’t matter; everything smelled of woodsmoke. He heated a can of baked beans and spooned them down. The pork sausages included with the beans made him smile. Stanley loved them. The boy had trouble saying the word, and his face creased with concentration when he tried. Shoshidge was about as close as he got. Podgidge was another, whenever he was asked what he wanted for breakfast. And he struggled to separate the vowels in ‘orange’ with that initial ‘r’. Orrrnj . So cute it made your teeth itch. But Stanley was getting older. Five now. He no longer made such mistakes. He was in a rush to grow up and watched older boys and men for visual and verbal pointers as to how to behave. He was keeping secrets. His love was no longer unconditional.

Jane brushed his teeth. His gums felt swollen, irritated. Too much sugar and not enough with the Oral-B. He wished for a cup of coffee. Instead, he drank water from the bladder in his pack and read the letter from Stanley until the light was forcing him to strain his eyes. The paper was getting ever more creased and greasy. He didn’t know what he would do if it tore, or if he smudged the ink to the point where he could no longer read it. He folded it carefully and slid it back into the plastic compartment of his wallet. He checked his eyes and drew his sleeping bag around him and sat at the lip of the tent’s entrance, watching the cottage. There was candlelight in the window. He raised the binoculars and saw the shadows of the figures moving around the room. Maybe they were talking. Maybe they were arguing. They were restless, whatever. He tried to remember the body language he had shared with Cherry at the time things started to turn sour, but all he could remember were the words. The invective. The peeled-back lips and bared teeth. The finger pointing. The tears. He saw the shadows come together. Then, as one, they sank out of view. The candle remained burning. Jane was asleep before it died.

Jane wakened to a storm. It was dark, but he could sense the clouds low in the sky. The pressure at such times always gave him a headache. Rain was pummelling the fabric of his tent, a deafening wall of noise. The violence of it must have turned over the fields because there was an acrid, rank odour of death and earth and shit; it reminded him of walks in the woods with his father when farmers were grunting around the fields on their tractors, muck-spreading. He checked through the binoculars but he could not see the cottage, despite the occasional detonations of lightning that flirted across the underbelly of cloud. He checked his watch. Six a.m.; he had been asleep for seven hours.

He rolled up his sleeping bag and wadded it at the bottom of his rucksack. He breakfasted on dried apricots and a can of carbonated apple drink. He waited for another hour to see if the storm would pass over, but it seemed to have settled here, and intensified, if anything. But at least there was light seeping through now. He could make out the shape of the cottage. He doubted they would emerge until the weather improved, such as it could.

He pulled up his hood and left the tent. He walked into the wood a little, grateful for the scant shelter that it afforded him. This might once have been a thick, attractive copse, before its heart was burnt out. No trees meant nothing to absorb carbon dioxide and replenish the oxygen in the air. Cheery morning thought. He pissed long and hard into the loam; his water was dark but not bloody. He was grateful for that, at least. He washed his hands back at the tent, and absently prodded and poked at his teeth while he watched the edges of the cottage emerge from the dark and the mist.

It was another hour before he spotted movement, a naked figure shifting past the window. He could not tell if it was male or female. Twenty minutes later the door opened and the two red jackets emerged. He saw faces this time. Pale. Pinched. One of them heavy with a beard. They did not seem enthusiastic about moving far from the building. The man sat on the edge of an ornamental cart, which must once have been brimming with flowers and grasses. The woman hovered and dithered nearby, like a nervous dog on a short leash. Jane wondered if they had breakfasted; they seemed jittery. Every so often the man would raise both his arms in a monumental shrug, or an expression of pleading. They were at the end of their tether.

Jane raised his hand to his face and heard the rasp of his own beard. He ought to clean himself before making himself known to them. He didn’t want to scare them, although they must surely expect others to look the same. But it didn’t work that way. It had shocked him a little to see such a haunted, thickly bearded face, enough for him to put down the glasses without a more sedulous inspection. He had missed whether they were carrying weapons, but the pensive aspect to their movements suggested that they were empty-handed. He couldn’t say for sure, but he felt very strongly that they were foreigners. And as frightened to death as he was.

He pulled his rucksack close and delved carefully in one of the compartments for his razor. There was a tube of cream and a badger-bristled brush. On his knees, watching the house, he splashed his face and rubbed the cream in, working it into a stiff lather with the brush. He hacked at the beard, having to use his fingers to find purchase as he did not have a mirror to help. He kept his eyes on the couple – red, indistinct blobs at this distance. He was grateful for his stone-coloured tent, the muted cement shade of his jacket.

When the beard was down to a close stubble he took more care with the razor, rinsing it regularly, moving it tentatively over the contours of his face as if for the first time. He unbuttoned his shirt; poured water over his head and chest, tried to subdue the sour odours of fear-sweat. What he’d give for a hot, deep bath.

He pulled the shirt back on and finger-combed the knotty tangle of his hair. He no doubt looked filthy, hunted and mad. But at least he was cleanly shaven. Suddenly he thought that might make him look worse. What maniac took time to shave when sanctuary was to be sought? He pulled out the bottle of Bladnoch and took a few big swallows. Better. He started extracting tent pegs but then paused, thought about it. He left the tent where it was and stowed his rucksack in a corner, filling his pockets with dried fruit strips and canned hams. He would go to them as denuded of threat as it was possible to be. At the last, he picked up the whisky and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.

He began to trudge over the solid furrowed field, trying not to stumble, trying not to look like some shambling terror hot-footing it over for a first warm meal in weeks.

He slowed as he approached the cottage. They still hadn’t spotted him, or they were doing a good job of bluffing if they had. He heard her voice first, scratchy, raised, Australian: ‘But what the fuck, Chris? I mean, what the fuck?’

‘There’s no need to swear.’ Big shrug: throwing imaginary confetti into the air. ‘There’s no need to fucking swear.’

Their bickering carried on a little longer, then they fell silent and Jane knew they had seen him. They didn’t say anything; he sensed a withdrawal. Perhaps they were trying to shrink into the shadows to improve their own chances of not being spotted. He almost looked up, but he felt it would be better if they believed they had made contact first. It was a stupid game – he knew that they knew that any stranger would want to check out the cottage for inhabitants, or food – but he didn’t want to scare them away. All of the doubt that had squirmed through him had been misplaced, or misread: he desperately wanted company.