Pat Barker - Double Vision

‘There’s a torch in the glove compartment. Can you find it?’

He heard her hand poking about in the recesses, and then she got out into the road to hand it to him. They walked back up the lane together. The forest stretched out in all directions, full of furtive rustlings that froze as they passed, noses twitched at the air, unseen eyes followed them. A few flakes of snow, fat, splothery, loose flakes that wouldn’t lie, drifted down into the wavering circle of torchlight.

‘Do you know, I’m beginning to think we might have missed it?’

Stephen kept his voice casual, but inside he wanted to sing. He didn’t want this drive to end in death.

He followed Justine with the torch as she climbed up the right bank and stood brightly illuminated against the dark wood. As she turned to face him, he lowered the torch to avoid dazzling her. ‘What do you think it was?’ she asked.

‘I thought it might be a fox.’

‘Could be. I heard one barking last night. They’ll have started mating. It woke me up.’

He wanted to get back home, to draw the curtains against the darkness with its indistinguishable screams of lust and pain. ‘There’s no sign of it. I think we’d better leave it.’

‘I’ll just have a look in here. There’s a little path, can you see?’

Before Stephen could say anything, she’d ducked under the barbed-wire fence and disappeared into the darkness of the wood.

He stood in the lane, while all around him the snow fell faster, spiralling down into the light of the headlights, though when they reached the wet road the flakes disappeared. Blinded at first, he slowly became accustomed to the dark. He didn’t want to go too far away from the car, which wasn’t parked particularly safely because the grass verge wasn’t wide enough. He waited, walked up and down, stamped his feet. The full moon clung to the crest of a pine tree high above his head. Once or twice he called her name, but the sound echoed eerily up and down the green tunnel of the lane, stirring the darkness with its echoes. In the end it seemed simpler, safer even, to wait in silence. He didn’t want to attract attention to himself. The thick darkness of nights in Africa came back to him, pressure building behind the thin membrane of everyday life like matter in a boil. ‘Justine,’ he called again.

When she didn’t answer, he climbed up the bank to look for her. Here on the edge of the wood there were clumps of cow parsley almost as tall as he was. Dry, brown stalks that creaked a little as he brushed them aside. He waited on this side of the fence, in darkness because the torch battery seemed to be dying. At last a rattling of feet through dead leaves told him she was returning. He switched the torch back on and his heart turned over, for there, walking along the path between the trees, was a white-faced creature with glowing eyes.

As she came closer, he saw she looked nervous. Perhaps it was his silence, perhaps the deadness of the woods beyond. She was breathing quickly.

‘Nothing?’ he asked.

‘No, nothing.’

Their whispering restored normality of a sort. He turned and began scrambling down the slope towards the car, his feet catching in the ferns. Then he heard her gasp. He looked round to see her doubled up, halfway through the barbed-wire fence, her jacket caught on one of the barbs.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should’ve…’

He went back and in silence began working to free her. It took a long time because he didn’t want to tear the cloth, and by the end he was breathing rapidly and his fingers had become clumsy. He caught his hand on one of the barbs, and was glad of the stinging because it made him think of something other than her nearness. She was grinning, embarrassed by the situation, as aware of him as he was of her. Finally he straightened up and asked, ‘Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?’

She lifted the weight of hair, and there, on the side of her neck, slanting down into the sweater, was a long red line, beaded with drops of blood that in this light looked black.

‘That looks nasty.’

He was hardly aware of the words. He could only stare and stare at the red tear in the white skin. He wanted to put his hand over it. He wanted to touch it with his fingertips. It was as if his mind had been torn, a rent made in the fabric of his daily self and through this rent, slowly, all previous inhibitions and restraint dissolved into the night air. He reached out for her and kissed her. After the first shock, she started to kiss him back. He was dazed by the speed of it. His hands came up to hold her head. Her hair felt so alive, as if his exploring fingers might strike sparks, and down there at the roots were the marvellously interlocking bones of her skull. His mind went numb. There was no past, no future, only their two bodies pressing against each other in the darkness at the edge of the wood.

They stepped back at last, looking into each other’s faces. Not the intimate lovers’ gaze of both eyes into one pupil, but the scanning of people who are still strangers.

‘Well,’ he said, trying to sound casual, and not succeeding. He hadn’t enough breath left to support the tone of voice he wanted.

She stared up at him, doubtful, as wary now as he was himself.

He swallowed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘that wasn’t meant to happen.’ What a ludicrous thing to say. He’d blurted it out without thinking, and immediately asked himself, why the hell not? Consenting adults, both single. She’d returned the kiss. The silence became a problem. He tried again. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you home.’

She turned and strode off down the bank, looking neither to right nor left. He followed her more slowly, flashing the torch well ahead of him so it would light her way.

He’d almost reached the car when he saw it: a red mess of spiky fur and splintered bone. As he got into the car and started the engine, he was grateful she hadn’t seen it. Against all reason, that thought still had power to console.

There was silence in the car. They stared straight ahead as, more slowly and carefully now, he drove along, his headlights probing the darkness between the trees. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t apologize again, and anyway she hadn’t objected. It was just that He’d precipitated a situation he didn’t want and was trying, clumsily, to claw his way back. He could hardly repeat that he hadn’t meant it, and so he said nothing, trying to convey by silence that the incident had been trivial, but silence didn’t seem able to carry that message. With every minute the kiss seemed to acquire greater importance. They were both taking quick shallow breaths, as if afraid the other would hear deeper breathing and misinterpret it. His chest felt tight. He was aware of her thighs, slightly apart, of the way the seat belt separated her breasts.

‘This must be where Adam found the badger,’ he said.

‘Just back there. Beth doesn’t like him coming this way on his own.’

‘It’s a long way.’

‘I know I wouldn’t want him coming here if he was my kid. If animals can’t see the cars coming, how can he?’

Gradually, the trees thinned and they left the forest behind. Searching for something to talk about, he asked if any of her friends were taking a gap year, and had she ever thought of doing that herself? Yes, but she’d decided against it. Apparently medical schools weren’t keen on the idea. ‘They think you go off the boil,’ she said. ‘And they’re probably right.’ Her voice, which had been husky and constrained, became clearer and more confident as she spoke. She was having an unintended year off and she’d certainly gone off the boil. Brains turned to mush.