Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

As the man approached, Odell began to grumble. ‘How much further? My feet ache.’

I chose not to answer. Instead, I gathered a ball of phlegm into my mouth, rolled it on my tongue, then fired it past the end of her nose and into the ditch.

She grasped me by the sleeve. ‘I said, how much further?’

I shook her off and lengthened my stride, giving the man a curt nod as he passed by. The man grunted in reply. I watched him move on down the road, a stocky figure dressed in brown, the bird of prey so motionless that it could have been stuffed. Knowing it was alive beneath that hood sent a shiver through me.

‘Good,’ Odell said. ‘Just right.’

To the south the landscape brooded. The sky had lowered, and the air above the hills was smeared with rain.

By the time we reached our first village, something unexpected had occurred. My mood had soured. I was in a bad temper after all, a genuine bad temper, which meant I no longer had to worry about standing out.

As soon as we entered the village, Odell said, ‘I thought you told me we were there,’ and she stopped in the middle of the street and put her hands on her hips. ‘You fool,’ she said, ‘you stupid fool. Hey!’ And she grabbed me by the upper arm.

I’d always hated being touched like that. Swinging round, I raised my fist as if to strike her. At the last minute, though, I turned aside and slammed my hand into the front wall of a house. I watched the grazed skin ooze blood, then whirled away from her and stormed up the street, scattering the chickens that darted, cackling, across my path. I might even have trodden on one of them. I felt something squirm out from under my boot, but I didn’t bother looking down.

‘Oi,’ said a woman in an apron. They were probably her chickens.

I glared at her, and she sprang back into her doorway as though pulled from behind by an immensely powerful hand.

Rage surged through me. Such a rage.

The air filled with the jangle of fairground music, and I turned to see a white high-sided van grinding its way up the street, a loudspeaker bolted precariously to its roof. Every so often, the driver interrupted his music to proclaim the delights of his hams and sausages, his tongue. Odell stopped the van and bought a few items, then it passed me and dipped down an incline to the village green. A crowd had gathered there, beneath a large, gnarled oak, and once the racket the van was making had died away I could hear the shrieks and squeals of children. There must be an attraction of some kind, I thought. A juggler, perhaps. A puppet show.

As I drew nearer, Odell caught up with me and took my arm. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘Keep going.’

This time I didn’t shake her off. Something in her voice told me she wasn’t acting. She led me down the road, past grim, grey houses, their windows either too low or too high, and oddly asymmetrical, as if only dwarves and giants lived inside. Before long, the village was behind us, and the children’s cries had faded into the distance.

‘It was nothing you need know about,’ she said.

The smell of melted snow on the grass verges, the sky above the fields grey and pale-yellow.

After a while two men in work clothes appeared on the road ahead of us. I pushed my hands into my pockets, feeling the rips in the lining. Each new encounter was a test of our authenticity, our nerve, and I couldn’t help but believe that, sooner or later, we would be found out.

The men slowed as they reached us.

‘Seen the heads?’ said the shorter of the two.

‘We just came from there.’ Odell pointed back along the road. ‘There’s three of them. All bitches.’

The short man laughed lasciviously. He looked at his companion, eyes like bits of wet glass, then the two of them moved on, quickening their pace.

I waited until they were hidden by a bend in the road, then I went and leaned on a farm gate. I had received an image of a woman. Ears and nose cut off. An apple wedged into her mouth as if she were a suckling pig. Seen the heads? I retched once or twice, but nothing came up. Cold sweat all over me.

Odell laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that. It was the only way.’

I know , I said inside my head. I understand.

Do you want to get out of here or don’t you?

It was dark by the time we entered the next village, but Odell made no attempt to find a room. It might have been the gingerhaired twins sitting on a bench outside the post office, one gnawing avidly at his thumbnail, the other aiming a kick at a dog as it loped by, or perhaps it was the fat woman in her front garden who took one look at us, spat sideways and withdrew into her house. This was a sour embittered place, a place that had turned its fury against itself, and it would have no patience with the likes of us.

We had reached the edge of the village and were beginning to prepare ourselves for a night in the open when we saw a caravan parked in the corner of an orchard, a white shape seemingly afloat among dock leaves and thistles. Odell forced the door — a sharp dry snap, like the cracking of a nut — and we climbed inside. The curtains were already drawn, but a faint glow eased through the frosted-plastic sky-light, just enough to see by. There were cushioned bench-seats, ideal for sleeping on. There was even a sink, with running water. We fastened the door, using a metal catch. If anyone came, Odell said, we would escape through the window at the back.

Though she had promised me nothing but tantrums that day, she had broken her own rules within the first few hours. She had been aware of my fragile state, I think, and whenever we found ourselves alone she would link her arm through mine and tell me how well I was doing. Once, as we stood beneath a tree, sheltering from the downpour that had been threatening all morning, I turned to look at her. I had no memory of ever meeting her before, or even seeing her, but that now seemed irrelevant. In the tarnished half-light of the storm her eyes had taken on the strangest colour, a new commingling of green and black, ambiguous but vivid, and the breath stalled in my throat. All of a sudden I wanted to touch her. Did she guess what I was thinking? Possibly. Because she chose that moment to announce that the rain was letting up and it was time to push on.

By late afternoon we had left the Wanings behind. In a sense, though, we had merely swapped one set of dangers for another. The Wanings may have lapsed into anarchy, but we had just as much to fear from the so-called forces of law and order, whose reputation for corruption and brutality was common knowledge. As the sun was setting, we saw our first roadblock. Fortunately the two officers were facing the other way, questioning a man on a bicycle, and we were able to slip behind a hedgerow and flatten ourselves against the ground. As their jeep finally roared past, a cigarette butt landed in the grass no more than a hand’s width from my right elbow. Though it had been discarded, it continued to smoulder, all the virulence of the Yellow Quarter concentrated into that stubborn quarter-inch of ash.

Following a meagre supper in the caravan, Odell began to talk. Before too long, she said, we would be passing through built-up areas. Things would move faster, and I would have to be ready to act decisively. If we got into any kind of confrontation, for instance, I should leave immediately. Just leave. If we already had a place to stay, I should go back there. Lock myself in. If not, I should wait near by. She would extricate herself. That was her speciality. If for some reason she failed to reappear, I was to carry on towards the border. I would have to cross it on my own. In the darkness I reached out and squeezed her hand to let her know that I had understood.