Nicola Barker - Wide Open

He made several deep indentations but the cuts didn’t bleed. He became more frantic and slid the shell along his calf. Here the shell sliced wonderfully and the blood flowed freely. Thank God, he muttered. Thank God I’m alive. Thank God, thank God I’m alive. Thank God.

He threw the shell away and rolled down his trouser. He pulled his shoe back on. He sat for a while, breathing heavily.

Then something occurred to him. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He withdrew some tablets. Three types: little whites, little blues and some brighter, brasher capsules, all neat and curtailed in their foil and plastic. He chose randomly. The white ones. He took six, chewed, swallowed, without wincing.

When he returned the packets to his pocket Ronny discovered something else there. Monica’s letter. He pulled it out. He felt so alone. He was alone. Jim had abandoned him. He opened it.

Dear Ronny , he read. Dear Ronny . He blinked a few times, gulped, then read on.

♦

In a dream The Head had told her exactly what to do. Every detail. The Head was very interested in Ronny. He felt a connection , an empathy. The Head was convinced that Ronny had entered Lily’s life for very specific reasons, although he didn’t specify what these might be exactly. Specifications weren’t really his strong point.

Lily sat on the bus trying to make sense of it, but not trying particularly hard. She didn’t like making sense of things. It wasn’t an especially helpful process, making sense. It wasn’t one of her regular indulgences. But what she did decide, finally, was that a burial of some kind was necessary. A ceremony. Something formal. A gesture.

And tied up, linked, entwined in the burial process would be the death of something else (something raging, foetid, unspe-cific), or the birth, or the rebirth, an awakening. Something .

Sometimes Lily wished she’d been raised a Catholic. Then she wouldn’t have needed to improvise so much. Things would’ve been so much more formal and lucid and constrained. In the well-worn form, the predictable angles of confession, forgiveness, catharsis.

Ronny had said…what was it? She couldn’t remember. She stared out of the window. Was this an A road or a motorway? How big was London? Was it easily navigable?

What Ronny had in fact said was that devils and demons were created simply as a means for primitive people to express their feelings — overwhelming feelings, engulfing feelings — of anger and guilt and panic. That was all. Easy.

Ronny had said these words but Lily hadn’t understood what he’d meant by them exactly. Was it a denial? Was it ridicule? Was it all just lies? What she did understand, though, was that Ronny was more than just a pretty face. More. More. More. He was a missionary. He was an emissary. He was downright fucking edible.

A burial. That was it. What was needed. A burial followed by a wake a wake awake.

She licked her lips.

♦

It was a long, straight road and they saw each other approaching from far, far away. Like two prize-fighters, all hips and holster and spur-twinkling stagger. Except that Ronny alone staggered — it was his habitual gait — and if Sara was ready to draw, to burst, to explode, it was merely an illusion, an aftertaste of the morning’s fireworks.

She was finding herself. Even here, step after step on this long, straight road. Even here. But it was a curious journey. Hard on the feet. Tricky terrain.

They drew adjacent to one another. Ronny was in his own world. He seemed colourless. He barely noticed her.

“Ronny.”

“What?”

His voice was almost fractious. She could’ve been anybody.

“It’s me. Sara. Remember?”

“Yes.”

He nodded but he hardly glanced at her. Then he walked on.

“Where are you going?”

She called after him.

“Nowhere.”

He kept on walking, hoping she’d forget about him if he held his breath. He held it. It worked.

Sara stood still and smiled to herself. She had the camera slung around her neck. It bumped against her breasts. Was she invisible? Was she truly invisible? Was everything too late now? She shook her head and walked onwards.

♦

Ronny located the farm with ease. On the final leg of his walk he was accompanied by a strange group of companions. The boar. Each small pack trotted together in unison along the perimeter of their individual enclosures. They followed Ronny in relays. He was their skinny baton, and they all kept perfect time with him.

But Ronny didn’t focus on the boar. He was focused elsewhere. Somewhere hot, somewhere scalding and dense and deep inside. The front door of the farmhouse was locked but the back door wasn’t. He pushed it open. The kitchen smelled of coffee and of cabbage. He inspected the taps, the sink, the table, the crockery — a pale blue colour, standing jauntily on an old dresser, spotless.

He’d never had a proper home. Was this a proper home? He breathed it all in. The hallway. The stairway. He inspected the walls as he climbed the stairs, searching out residue from Lily’s previous misadventure.

He drifted from room to room. First, Sara’s bedroom. It was plain and powdery and vaguely mussed. The cupboard doors were open, and inside her clothes were hung on old metal hangers like a threadbare assemblage of frustrated sighs. He fingered the assorted fabrics. He looked down at the shoes. A hat-box on the top shelf, and, in the corner, under dense plastic, a long white dress. A wedding dress. He lifted the dress from the cupboard. He pulled off the plastic. Net and dust and old yellowy silk fell from his clumsy fingers and frothed on to the carpet.

He caught sight of himself in the dresser. He got a shock. He stared grimly, as though he almost didn’t recognize his reflection, but it was the actual possibility of recognition that bothered him. He looked down at the dress again. He unfastened the zip. He used both hands. He pulled it wide, to its fullest extent, so that the dress lay open, like a fine cocoon, like a silk sleeping bag. He stepped into it, and pulled it on, over his clothes. He zipped it up again. It was big on him. He turned around slowly and then inspected himself in the mirror. He smiled, because now he was truly unrecognizable. He lifted his skirts with a swish and left the room.

Lily’s bedroom. Books. Magazines. The bed unmade. A set of drawers. He yanked open the top one. Underwear. He closed it. The second one: T-shirts, jumpers, socks. The third. In the third drawer he discovered a selection of small animal pelts. Stiff. Some of them quite old. A vole. Two rabbits. A weasel. A bat — dried up — even a cat pelt. A small collection of pellets, deposited, he presumed, by an owl or something, containing, in crushed up perplexity, little bones and bits of skin and gristle and other stuff. He could’ve sworn he saw a jaw. A tiny jaw. A mouse’s jaw. He marvelled then withdrew.

Also, some pieces of wire. Two knives. Both sharp. He tested them on his thumb, lovingly, kept hold of the sharpest, lifted his skirts and slipped it into his pocket, then put the other back. He continued inspecting. A lipstick (somewhat incongruous, he frowned) and feathers. Mainly pigeon and hen feathers but also some which were smaller and brighter.

Ronny pushed the drawer shut. He mopped at his face with his skirts. His face felt hot. Dust from the skirts made him feel like sneezing. He wheezed and then vacated. Connie’s room. On the bed, a suitcase. He walked straight over to it, feeling like he was inside some kind of tunnel. With so much focus, so much magnification that it almost made him topple. This was the moment. He knew it. Something told him. The moment .

Ronny opened the suitcase. Clothes, cosmetics. An extra pair of sandals. But tucked into a corner, wrapped up in a ribbon, just as Lily had described them, the letters.