Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— She sounds like my kind of woman.

— Gunn was fucking amazing. In our kitchen there was always the smell of olive oil, thyme, garlic, onion, red wine, and sometimes she’d cook up a batch of fresh black pudding and my mum would sit at the kitchen table smoking. Gran would knock back a shot of blood (as a tonic), with a second tossed down the drain for the sick and weary.

— That’s what she said?

— Aye, exactly like that. She’d play her old gramophone and I can remember, as a wee boy, hearing Bessie Smith sing ‘Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’ and watching the lights flash in the peep-shows and strip-bars outside.

— You never went in those, right?

— Not until I was twelve, and then only once a week or so. Constance laughs.

— Later Gunn would tell me all these stories, while through the floorboards we could hear the audiences laughing or clapping below. By then my mum would be seated in her projectionist booth chain-smoking and drinking gin until the credits rolled.

— Were you close to Vivienne?

— No. I was protective of her but she wasn’t maternal, she was more like an older sister really. It’s like there was something missing in her, truth be told. She was distant from life in general. But she was cool. On her tombstone it should say Here lies Vivienne, a woman who thought the purest form of water was gin — roll credits!

This is the most he has probably said about home since Vivienne died. Constance’s eyes are all grey and steely and honest, with flecks of orange as snow falls outside the window.

They turn off through farm gates and up a long pebbled driveway covered in snow. Outside an old farmhouse there are two statues. A woman looks out of a kitchen window and waves them around the back. Constance parks and jumps down, opens the back doors; she takes the heavier end of the wardrobe. Dylan doesn’t even attempt to argue with her. They go up the metal staircase at the back of the garage into a flat with views out over the hills and forests. Everything smells of the stabilising influence of money. There’s a stack of old home magazines and he could just sit there with a coffee. A place to lay your head. Constance smirks at him, catching his thoughts. They are giggling again when the woman from the house crunches back over the drive to pay them. She is wearing a scarf with a floral pattern and has red curly hair, and Dylan imagines she has just been doing something intricate with giblets or shallots. As they walk towards her, an outdoor light flicks on.

— Half-and-half payment okay again, Constance?

— Aye, thanks.

— Have you been watching the weather in Europe?

— Not this morning.

— There was an avalanche in Italy. My son is over there — he’s fine but he can’t fly out, it’s pretty treacherous. Are there any warnings in place for the seven sisters?

— Not yet, Constance says.

— There will be.

— Did you hear about the iceberg — it’s already past Tanby Island? Constance says.

— I did indeed. My husband’s colleague’s wife works down at the harbour, and the iceberg is bigger than the whole of Fort Harbour. They gave it a code, C34, but the fishermen are still calling it Boo. If all the ice keeps melting, in a few years London will be gone, Venice, the Netherlands, most of Denmark, San Diego … I could go on. My husband is a scientist — this is the cheery stuff he brings home to discuss with me over dinner.

— I’m glad I left London and came here then. You’ve got all the good stuff. Triple suns, ice-flowers, icebergs. I don’t even miss the strippers! Dylan grins.

The woman ignores that.

— You won’t be saying that when we all get snowed in. They certainly will be on the mountain and down at your trailer park, dear, perhaps for months!

— They’re not trailers, they’re caravans, Dylan smiles.

The woman counts out notes and then goes into a utility room. She comes back out with a wooden crate.

— There’s fresh eggs in there, bacon and some herbs from the freezer; potatoes and a pound of good-quality butter; also some shallots and a tiny bit of honey from the farm.

— Lovely, thank you!

— How tall are you anyway? You’re very tall. He’s very handsome, Constance!

— Isn’t he — quite dreamy! Constance says.

— If you need any work … Dylan, is it? I sometimes need a handyman around here.

The woman says this and flashes a flirtatious smile. He nods and smiles back. Constance mouths the words — trailer park — then loops her arm through his as they walk back to the ambulance. They drive out along farm lanes he hasn’t seen before. Constance sends texts, one after the other, steering with one hand, and her big boots don’t seem to hamper her driving style at all.

She checks her phone again, one eye on the road, then chucks it onto the dashboard, clearly annoyed. Scattered in the front are little glittery stickers that Stella usually has on her nails. Dylan peers out the window as snow begins to fall again. It’s getting darker out there, and colder. Stella probably doesn’t even have a torch with her.

CONSTANCE ROLLS a cigarette with the ambulance door open. She jumps down and hauls out waterproof trousers and walks along and passes a pair to Dylan. They are a few feet too short when he puts them on, but he tucks them into his boots. The snow is falling steadily and heavily now. She takes out a torch and a blanket. They walk side-by-side down the farm roads, snow crunching under their boots.

— Snow’s not going to stop falling any time soon.

— Have you a signal on your phone?

— No, she says.

— Which way from here?

There’s a big barn at the bottom of the field. They head that way without saying anything. Dylan isn’t even sure he’d find his way back in this snow, Constance’s nose is red and she squints at him.

— What are you thinking about?

— I was thinking about a dream I had on the night that Vivienne died. I was in this bright room and there were people, all from the Other Side, rushing around and I said to one of them: Is she going now? Is it over? They said yes, they said I could go now, that I wasn’t needed any more. I walked out of that bright room because they were there to look after her, to take her over to the Other Side. See, you think it’s bullshit?

— I never said that, she says.

Snow pirouettes around them as they put their heads down and move toward the barn, their feet disappearing up to their ankles. Constance scans further up on the mountain. The trees are clad in snow. Her eyes are clear grey in this light. Long icicles adorn branches on all the boughs. There are tiny beads of crystals on her eyelashes as she turns to look at him. Dylan bends down and cups her face in his hands. He can feel the heat from her before he kisses her, and just gently their lips meet, then the shock of her tongue, hot and wet. All around them snow falls and their skin is cold as ice, but she is pulling his head further down, leaning her body into him. When they pull apart he is dizzy, blinking, looking around, her hand curling into his, smaller, gloved. He tries to settle his breathing down to something vaguely normal as they tramp across the field.

— There’s a bar in Charing Cross — it’s called Yuki Ookami, it means Snow Wolf. Their gimmick was ice-chairs and an ice-bar and they only stayed open for three months, but I got mortally pissed on vodka shots after I realised Babylon was in so much debt. I ended up at some house-party in Dulwich where they were having an orgy and there was a girl in a gorilla mask, with crosses of gaffer tape across each nipple. Is that the sound of the sea?

— Yup. Just on the other side of that mountain. You were saying?