Sarah Hall: The Beautiful Indifference: Stories

No you don’t, she said as I twitched away. Where’ve you been, you silly cow? Off shagging some mucky farmer?

When I looked at her she had a big smirk going. I knew she was pleased to see me.

Right. Come on, she said, putting her arm round my shoulders. Think we better have a quiet word — it’s been pande-bloody-monium. Get lost, the rest of you. Ah, shit it, there’s the bell! Meet you at twelve.

That lunchtime, in the bandstand in the park, Manda told me what had happened. Aaron had rung up their brothers from the Pheasant, and they’d come, because they always did come when it was put to them they had a duty. They’d searched the vicinity for the ratchety farmer — Lenny Miller was his name. She said the lads knew the fellow marginally anyway from the cockfights in the pits near Greystoke, and he was a sly git, so it was no trouble to them. They’d strung him up in the shed by his feet and cut the bastard with a riding crop right through to the putty in his spine. He was in Newcastle Infirmary, she said, not expected to walk again.

I searched her face for some sign of disturbance, and saw nothing favourable. Her eyes were that glisky blue, all bad charm and cheek.

I thought you already knew, she said. Thought you were just being canny and swinging wide. We’ve had the police up at the house about a million times. But it’s just his word.

Manda took my arm as she always did. We walked through the park gates down into town, past the sandstone terraces and castle tower. She talked about the parties I’d missed that summer, the fairs and driving trials, and asked if I’d had any lads properly yet.

No, I said. I didn’t get round to it.

Well, what you bloody waiting for? Or do you want Aaron to do the deed? Urgh.

As we walked I thought about the man, lying lame in a hospital bed.

What about the horse? I asked.

Manda shrugged. Her attention was on the building site across the road. A brickie in a red checked shirt whistled from the scaffolding. She blew him a kiss.

I knew if it’d been any other animal inside that barn, the Slessors would not have intervened. They wouldn’t have done it for the kicked-about hounds. And they didn’t do it for me. There was nothing sentimental to the family, nor could they be hired like mercenaries. It was simply the family’s creed. It was luck, if such a thing could be so called. To slow-butcher a horse was an offence too great to let pass. Their spurs were buckled on and used accordingly.

Mam says you’ve to come for your tea next week, Manda said to me as we headed back up to school. The hornies will have gone by then and she’ll take you riding. She’s got a new pony for you. And you’ll never guess what she’s called it. Sweet Kathleen.

Her lover had missed the train from London and would be arriving late. This was not uncommon after a night shift at the hospital. In the hotel room she studied herself in the mirror. The mirror was oval and full-length, in a hinged frame, which could be tilted up or down. She had bought a new dress. The blue was good on her, lighting her face and complementing her eyes. It was fitted through the bodice and waist but slipped to the floor easily when unzipped. He would like it. She finished making up her face, applying a layer of lip gloss, tidying the red spill at the corner of her mouth. Lipstick never lasted long when they were together; he would always kiss her just after she had applied it, as if he liked the smearing, viscous sensation. Sometimes she felt sure it was discomposing her that he enjoyed. She had lost a little weight since their last meeting. This was not deliberate. She’d been travelling a lot and had missed a few meals. The contours of her thighs and shoulders were pleasing. The previous night, after the reading, she had taken codeine and had slept well.

The room was hot but the window had jammed after opening only a few inches. Was this really designed to stop suicides, she wondered. Surely no one chose to jump from the second floor of a hotel. Better to use the bed, the bathtub. A soft pillowy ending or a wet red one. Outside, voices were loud in the street. The races had finished and people, made giddy by the early summer heat and grandstand cocktails, were shunting food containers into bins, shouting to each other about which venue to go to next. There was the sound of glass smashing, followed by juvenile laughter. Nearby a car alarm began howling. The tight northern gentility the city claimed for itself was coming unlaced.

She stepped away from the mirror and looked into the street. Light plumed over the buildings, a diffuse lilac glow like that which she had seen above the immense stonework of Paris on her first visit, coming up out of the Métro into its exquisite sordid heart. Perhaps they should go to Paris, soon. Or Florence. A last tourist carriage rattled on its way to the Minster, drawn by a white shire, the horse with its great, feathered hooves strutting on the cobbles. The driver leaned out from his position on the cab, talking into his mobile phone, shaking his head. A group of South Americans took photographs from the leather galley behind him.

The plan had been to meet and have a late lunch and then walk along the citadel walls. Now he would be coming here, to the hotel, and they would go out to dinner somewhere. It meant less time together, by a few hours. He would be catching the evening train back to London the following day. But perhaps it was better this way. Better to meet in the privacy of their room, so that they could be together for an hour, and empty themselves. A couple of times in the past the anticipation had led to problems; awkward exchanges, inappropriate behaviour. It had taken a few months to realise this initial discord did not mean incompatibility. She still found it remarkable: the spurs of desire, and the way desire interfered with all else. They were perfectly capable of having conversations, about politics, their occupations, anything. But they were not capable of corralling the animal necessity of ruining each other first.

She had recently mentioned this to a friend, not as a boast, more an observation, citing an encounter in a restaurant toilet, being discovered, and asked to leave.

Isn’t it a bit ridiculous, the friend had replied, tending to her young child, spooning paste from its chin. You aren’t a teenager. And actually, neither is he. Stop spitting out! What’s wrong with you? You liked this yesterday!

Do you think it’s unhealthy?

I didn’t say that. Relationships are all defined differently, aren’t they? If that’s your thing. Anyway. Isn’t it what you want, at the moment? Being with him means you can defer all the rest.

This had startled her. The tone. The implication that she was failing to make a sacrifice. Or that she had made a conscious choice.

What do you mean?

With exasperation the friend had turned away from the recalcitrant child, clattering the pot of orange paste and the plastic spoon down on the counter.

Oh, you know. Keep avoiding the hard stuff. Like this. The trouble is you probably don’t have long left. Do you? And you act like it’s not an issue. But everyone can see it is an issue.

She had noticed a change in the way her female friends responded to the relationship lately. At first they’d been enthusiastic, congratulatory, as if she were doing something avant-garde. She looked wonderful, they told her. She looked radiant. She should just enjoy it. But as the relationship had taken hold, becoming less casual, notes of disapproval had entered the discussion. Was it jealousy? Conservatism? She did not know. Perhaps she did seem ridiculous to them, now that it no longer constituted a fling, a desirability-affirming enterprise. Perhaps she was not entitled to the sex after all. Or the radiance. Men, on the other hand, had been unnerved from the beginning, as if she was not keeping to the natural order of things, as if she was performing an inversion. Or they had commented how lucky her lover was, recalling fondly an affair they themselves had had with an older woman during their youth. How they’d been taught a thing or two. After talking to them she was left with the dual feeling of being both transgressor and specialist. Only her father had been unreservedly for the relationship.