Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

CONSTANCE THUDS back out of the caravan and shuts the door behind her and leans against it. Dylan nods at the axe she left sticking out of a tree.

— You couldn’t do that in London, he says.

— Stella’s still not answering my texts.

— We’ll find her.

— I’m going to finish painting this one really quickly and then we can go, okay?

Hail is battering off the tarpaulin in her back garden. The bones in Constance’s wrist jut out and her brush swishes up and down furiously as she attacks the dresser, and the air smells of oil and wet wood and she sits back for a minute to appraise her work. He can’t figure out how she doesn’t know he wants to touch her. Trying not to think about it. Circles of other thoughts. Setting up the projector in his caravan to see if it is still working and finding a bit missing, and wondering if Babylon has had her guts ripped out and thinking he should set up his old media website to see if he can track down any old friends from Soho because there were a few, and how this morning he opened the kitchen cupboard and the smiley sticker on Vivienne’s Tupperware urn was already looking faded. If Constance or Stella knew what he found in Vivienne’s sketchbook. If they did. He will have to tell them. If he is completely, totally honest, he doesn’t want to tell Constance until he knows if she will sleep with him. If they just lay down. If she was on top. Dragging him further into her. Sweat against the cold air even in their caravans. A bed as a refuge. Just to lie there. Pass ownership of your body to someone else. Yes, you can lick me here, touch me there; you’re angry, it is okay to use me, it is fine to suck and fuck and pull and scratch and bite. It’s the only place in life we do it. Someone else touches us when we’re little, to have a bath or get dressed or be hugged, then our bodies walk around surrounded by air until you want someone like this, and he feels like it is only a matter of time before they are naked, but then that intoxicating thrill that says what if they don’t? What if this want keeps getting bigger and nothing comes of it at all? It’s that unknown quantity: add this to this, her to him, what will come out of it, they don’t know. When he sees Constance looking back up the mountain toward Alistair’s house or the postcard she has on her fridge from Caleb, he gets it. If Marina turned up now, he can’t say he wouldn’t sleep with her again. They were together seven years on and off. Perhaps some bits of love never go. He picks at his cuffs and watches the way she turns on her heels to paint the other side of the wardrobe, her eyebrows so pale and that frown she always seems to wear. Constance has to come to him. That’s how it works. She must feel him waiting. He’s not being obvious about it. But it’s there. An unspoken question they both skirt around when having a bottle, or two, of wine, wrapped in blankets, last night on her porch. He tries not to feel like he knew her before, to imagine her face in the dark, her lips. They’d have to use his place. This is the other reason why people have jobs. So they don’t stalk their neighbours. She is beautiful. He just likes her. It’s not creepy. Even if Alistair is his cousin, if it is right — the family tree Vivienne has left — and he wants to tell her that he found out exactly why Vivienne bought him a caravan right next door to them, but it might mean she’d never give him a chance and right now he is too selfish to take a risk on that. The guilt sits uneasily on him so he makes himself a deal: he’ll tell her in one week, and he’ll look at the tree Vivienne wrote down again and he’ll double-check the details. Constance finishes touching up the metal 1950s larder. The inside has already been fitted out with patterned vinyl and the door knobs are plain white; she is precise and focused as she finishes up the final touches of paint. As the hailstorm stops, the snow begins.

— Stella should be back by now, Constance says.

— Hello!

Dylan knows who it is before he even turns around. He feels angry before he even looks at him. Irrationally hostile. There is a tension in the air. Alistair grins at him and goes over to kiss Constance on the cheek, an electricity between the two of them as well, and Dylan is caught in the middle of it, some of it is diverting around him from both of them. Alistair is looking him up and down. Dylan looks down at the guy, glad to be taller. He’s looking to see his mother in this stranger’s face. Or his gran. It would be Gunn, if she is Alistair’s aunt and if Alistair’s father is possibly Vivienne’s dad. If the family tree Vivienne left is right, it means the guy standing in front of him is his mum’s cousin and all he can think about is that he wants to bash the bloke’s face in and go to bed as soon as he can manage it, with the love of his life.

— Pleased to meet you, I’m Alistair.

He holds a hand out, Dylan does not shake it.

— What are you doing here, Alistair?

— Do I need a reason to visit you now, Constance?

She glances toward Dylan.

— I’m busy.

— Aren’t you going to introduce me?

Dylan holds his breath.

— No, I’m not, Alistair. Don’t come down here again until you apologise to Stella.

Alistair laughs. He is a sinewy guy with bright eyes; they are black and penetrating and he is handsome enough, Dylan will give him that. His hair is dark and he’s wiry, narrow, a bit mean-looking, but Dylan’s no doubt he could take him, if it came to it, arm-wrestle, Scrabble, pub quiz, fist to the face. Just if he had to. Not that he’d try. Unless this offensive-looking faux-artist was game.

— Doesn’t she know we are seeing each other again, darling, he says, looking at Dylan the whole time.

— I don’t know, Alistair. Does your wife know we had a one-off, darling? I can always let her know how truly mundane the whole thing was, she hisses.

— I’m making a present for Cael, he says.

Dylan steps forward and flicks him on the nose as hard as he can.

— What the fuck are you doing?

Alistair grabs his nose while looking up at Dylan towering over him, blocking out the light, squaring his shoulders even more.

— Her name is fucking Stella, he says.

— Who the fuck are you?

Alistair looks right up at him and for a minute Dylan thinks the bloke recognises him. Constance is staring between the two, a little in shock, but there’s a definite hint of amusement.

— That was fucking unnecessary, Alistair says.

— No this would be fucking unnecessary. Dylan curls up a ham-sized fist.

— I cut up bodies for a living, pal, you’re not intimidating me.

— Animal bodies.

— Obviously!

— I’ve cut up animal bodies before, for meat, not to try and be interesting.

— I’m not trying to be interesting!

— Good, cos if you were, it wouldn’t be working. I never met a taxidermist that wasn’t a total bore, d’ye know that?

— I bet you’ve never met a taxidermist in your life.

— I have and he was boring, and an arsehole!

— Okay, guys, you can stop waving your dicks at each other and I am going to go and find my daughter. I’m serious, Alistair: you want near this house, then you apologise to her, and you mean it.

— Aren’t you going to make him apologise? I might call the police!

— For what? Nose-flicking? Dylan says.

Alistair crunches away down Ash Lane wearing his big Russian hat with thick furry flaps. Dylan realises his heart is pounding and his right hand is still curled up. It’s just the idea of it — that this guy’s dad could be his great-uncle and, worse than that, his granddad as well. He feels dizzy. He wants to sit down. He is losing it. He just flicked her lover’s nose and she is quietly packing her brushes away, not looking at him. He shouldn’t have tried to work out the rest of the family tree in Vivienne’s sketchbook when he was drunk. Maybe he got it wrong. Why would Vivienne leave this kind of information to him? What is he meant to do with it? He is furious with her. He has fallen out with his mother and she isn’t even here for him to tell her about it, and so that anger is just fermenting in his head. A tiny childish part of him thinks if he gets angry enough at her, she’ll have to come back. Just to put him in his place. And she could do that. Vivienne did it plenty enough times. With that, he feels that weight of missing her and Gunn, wanting to tell them things, make a drink, annoy them by his presence; get a hug on the way to his projector booth and look up mid-film to find a coffee or a beer has been slipped inside the door for him; go to Borough market and buy them olives and bread. Nothing much, yet everything. They are never coming back and he is clearly flipping out. Constance checks her phone again.