Nicola Barker - Wide Open

Then he walked on, disgusted at himself. “What about eggs then?” Lily asked, catching him up, “what about jellyfish?”

“Pardon?”

“The whole fucking world’s synthetic.”

Ronny stopped walking. “Hold on a second,” he said, and made Lily stop too. She thought he was going to be sick again but he wasn’t. The problem was something exterior this time. His back and his neck were prickling.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know.”

He rubbed his neck and glanced around him. To his right lay a ploughed field. To his left a high wire fence. He was tall, though, and everything was flat here. He tried to adjust his sight-line. He looked low, and then lower. He froze. Lily chuckled. “It’s the beetroots. There’s a few of them dropped outside the fence. He wants one.”

‘He’ was a hairy beast; hunched and bear-like and giant and tusky. His eyes shone out, brownly. Wild, wild eyes. He was prehistoric. Ronny took a step backwards. Lily picked up a beet and tossed it over the fence. The boar ambled towards it.

“Get back to bed you silly bugger!” she hollered, then added, “See all the others?”

What Ronny had believed to be bushes and hillocks he now saw were animals, bristle-backed with a Bronze Age craggi-ness. Watching, waiting. Hoofy, toothy. “Meet the harem,” Lily said, “they don’t often come out at night, but it feels quite balmy and they weren’t fed today.”

Ronny moved forward and reached out his hand. Lily said nothing until his wrist was through the fence wire, then she said calmly, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t.”

He jerked back quickly and his fist caught in the wire. He yanked it through roughly.

“Aren’t they friendly?”

Lily snorted and walked on. Eventually Ronny followed her. He caught up at the gate. She held it open for him and then closed it behind them.

“See the bats?” she pointed.

He gazed into the sky. He almost tripped. It was a rough road.

“So how did you meet up with Mum?”

She needed to know.

“Uh…” he thought for a moment, “is it true that she doesn’t actually drive?”

“Yes.”

Lily wondered why it was that people invariably evaded her questions. She’d always presumed that the act of requesting information was fundamental to polite intercourse. Ronny was studying her. “So how did you hurt your foot?” he asked. Lily paused. It was such a fine dark night. She longed for some kind of spice. For significance.

“Bite,” she said, her voice vibrating, her mouth virtually champing on the thick night air like it was candy floss.

“Bite?”

“Yep.”

“What bit you?”

“A thing.”

Ronny smiled. “A bad thing?”

Lily shrugged. They walked past a cluster of dark caravans and some large, empty barns. “A freak,” she said, finally, and then, in case he didn’t understand her, “a demon.”

Ronny veered sharply to the side of the road and sat down on its grassy verge. “There’s no such thing,” he said calmly.

“Why are you stopping?” Lily wanted to walk.

“I feel bad. I might be sick again.”

She stood in front of him, twisting her feet about. Ronny collapsed slowly on to his back and looked up into the sky. “Demons are just something people invented to channel their feelings of anger and pain. Bad feelings. They’re like an excuse, that’s all.”

“What?”

“Take poltergeists…”

“Poltergeists?”

But Ronny chose not to follow this up. Instead he said quietly, “I was in Shepherd’s Bush,” he linked his fingers over his chest, “just wandering around, and I saw a small crowd of people outside this antique shop.”

Lily also glanced up into the sky, but nothing she saw there impressed her. She looked down at Ronny instead. He was too thin. She scowled. Something told her that this should’ve been her big moment, but she’d gone and missed out on it. Again.

“Anyhow,” Ronny continued, “I wondered what it could be that was causing all this excitement…”

“So?” She was rolling her eyes, plainly fatigued.

“A freak,” Ronny said, clearly relishing the single syllable.

Lily stopped rolling. “What do you mean?”

“In the window. In a little glass case. An exhibit.”

Lily quickly sat down next to him. He, in turn, pushed himself up on to his elbows. “A little beast,” he added.

“What?”

Ronny’s breath smelled of acid. His teeth were white, white. Lily steadied herself, preparing for some kind of a wind-up.

“A little beast in a glass case. For sale.”

“A beast?” Lily loved this word.

Ronny lay back down again.

“And so?” she prompted.

Ronny sighed. “A postcard at the front of the case said: The Cobham Beast. That was his name. That’s what they had called him. I imagine that he must’ve come from a place called Cobham but I’ve never heard of it.”

“I have,” Lily nearly choked in her excitement.

“Really?” He turned to look at her.

“Yes. I have an aunt who lives there. It isn’t very far from here.”

She was excited, a part of the story now.

“And what did it look like, this beast?” she asked with some agitation.

“Like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

“How big?”

“Small. Like a rabbit, but upright.”

“And it wasn’t a fake?”

“No. Absolutely not. But it had the loveliest, the sweetest face I’ve ever seen. A trusting face, full of gentleness.”

“Furry?”

“Short fur.”

“Black?”

“No. Brown. But it stood on its hind legs, like a small person, a baby, only it had four legs and two little arms.”

“A beast!”

Lily lay flat on her back and gazed at the stars. Her heart was red outside and all clogged up at its centre like a ripe ball of Edam.

“So what do you think it actually was?” she said, finally.

Ronny shrugged. “I don’t know. Itself.”

She liked this answer.

“But I had no money to buy it…” Ronny sighed.

“How much?”

“It didn’t say. A lot, I imagine. So I stole it.”

She sat up. “You’re kidding!”

Ronny sat up too.

“No. I don’t kid.”

“How?”

“I went back at night with a brick. I smashed it and then grabbed it and then legged it.”

Lily loved him then. It was as though a gorgeous butterfly had landed on her breastbone, its fragile antennae all aquiver.

“So what did you do with it?”

Ronny rubbed his stomach with his left hand. “Well, I wasn’t living anywhere at the time so I scratched my name into the wood on the side of the display case, put it inside a cardboard box and left it with a man I know at the Lost Property Office at Baker Street. I thought it would be safe there. And, what’s more important, it wouldn’t be on display.”

“You didn’t want people to see it?”

“No. Never again.”

“Why not?”

Ronny stood up. “Because,” he said, offering her his left hand, “he’d needed understanding and he’d received none. I wanted to protect him. I saw myself in him.”

Lily smiled and took Ronny’s hand. He pulled her up and then let go. She had expected his touch to be a real delight, but instead it was cold. Icy, in fact. Like the hand of a dead man.

♦

Once he’d got it home, the box immediately became just another part of the furniture. He placed his beer bottles upon it when he lounged on the sofa watching TV. The phone was temporarily balanced on top of it. A magazine, a paper, a listings guide. Stuff. But he wasn’t hiding anything. Not at all. It was right there, wasn’t it? Margery had brushed up against it several times and had even gone and laddered her stocking on a protruding staple. Yes. So she’d been fully aware of its sudden materialization, surely?