Emma Unsworth - Animals

His name was Sam and he had some interesting views on what constituted ‘proper books’ (crime fiction, thrillers, murder mysteries). He also kept going to the bar without asking what everyone wanted and buying pints for himself and Larry and halves for me and Tyler. When I said I was going outside for a cigarette he said I finally managed to get my mum to stop smoking last year , to which I said Teenagers these days .

Tyler joined me outside, lit my cigarette and then her own. ‘Having fun?’

‘Oh, yes. I’m finding myself perversely aroused by his outrageous sexism. I think it’s because I know he doesn’t really mean it.’

‘Oh, he means it all right. But you can afford to be turned on, that’s the point.’

‘You’re not actually going to do this, are you?’

‘I’ve never needed it more.’

Tyler didn’t have an upper age limit. I’d once asked her how high she’d go and she just looked at me.

Sixty?

A pouty squint.

Seventy?

Flat palms, Mafioso shrug. If they were a young seventy. You know all this age talk is bullshit anyway. No one ever feels any fucking different.

‘I just don’t get the appeal of younger men,’ I said. ‘They’re so giddy, like spaniels. But then I didn’t fancy teenagers when I was a teenager.’

‘He’s not a teenager!’

‘He’s not far off.’

‘I need distraction. And Nick’s getting a bit too close for comfort — I need to stop him thinking we have so much of a thing.’

A flash: had she lied, had Nick hit her, was the whole Marie thing a story… ‘Does he know what happened?’

‘Dunno. I’ve been dropping his calls.’

I eyeballed her. Nothing. ‘I don’t trust him. That stuff he had was so strong, I didn’t like it.’

‘Oho, you seemed to like it at the time! What’s the matter, puss? Jealous?’

‘Fuck you.’

Back inside the inn I let her go on ahead and walked up to the bar and bought myself a Lagavulin.

‘Where are you girls from?’ the landlord said, dropping my change into my palm as though he didn’t want to touch me.

‘ Cumbrian Life. ’

‘You’ll be wanting a receipt, then.’

Two hours and six whiskies later I was wake-drunk. I slurred a word. I fell over in the bathroom. I dropped my drink. Three strikes! That was that. An outdoor piss and then bed. Tyler gave Larry’s belt a firm tug for good measure and followed me towards the door of the inn.

‘Where are you going?’ he shouted after us.

Tyler turned with a flourish. ‘Country tradition.’

The landlord dropped a glass and picked it up again. Sam was finishing his pint. I followed Tyler outside and squatted beside her at the edge of the car park. Above us, a mad sprawl of stars. A background chuckle.

‘THE EXISTENTIALS!’ Tyler said, yanking up her pants. ‘They’ve found us! Quick — back to warmth, light, strong booze and sexual frisson!’

I left her an hour or so later, helping herself to crème de menthe behind the bar. Sam had gone home, Larry was indecipherable. I went up to the room, got undressed, took my phone into bed with me and opened Marty’s picture message. And.

Yep.

I woke up alone, the other twin bed still made.

‘Tyler?’ I looked under the bed and in the wardrobe. I looked at my phone. A message from Jim in reply to one I’d sent him before I fell asleep. I couldn’t remember sending it but it contained only two spelling mistakes. The time on my phone told me that I had missed breakfast so I packed, crept downstairs and smoked leaning on the car, my foot up behind me on the wheel arch. The cold air woke my brain as I breathed. Water, I should probably have some water , I thought, listening to the waterfalls, now visible as jagged white streaks down the hills, static from a distance, like stars.

A door banged and Tyler came running out from round the side of the inn.

‘GET IN!’ she yelled, opening the passenger door, throwing her hold-all in the back and haring round to the driver’s side. The black eye was back. Her hair was haunted. I clambered into the passenger seat. She started the engine.

‘What the—?’

We were halfway down the track before she said anything.

‘Landlord’s son. Just turned twenty. His mom just threw me out of his room.’ She took a hand away from the steering wheel to wipe the sweat from her brow and then put her hand back and gripped the wheel tighter. A car had to swerve out of the way as we passed in a non-passing place.

‘And that’s not the worst thing.’

‘What’s the worst thing?’

‘She threw his skateboard after me.’

I saw red in the hair at the back of her head. ‘Hang on… Tyler, you’re bleeding. You’re actually bleeding.’

‘I’m CONFUCKINGCUSSED!’

I wound down the window. ‘Stop, I’m going to be sick.’

‘That’s what she said… ’

I smoked a cigarette in the street outside the B&B, bilious with exam-nerves in my old university city. This is not a test , I reminded myself. ENJOY YOURSELF. ENJOY YOURSELF HARD.

When Tyler was dressed we walked across town to Charlotte Square Gardens. We bought a quarter-bottle of whisky on the way and passed it between us as we walked along the humped footpath that ran round the Castle. According to myth a serpent lay stretched out beneath the city, the path curving over its rounded back. In the gardens we bought two cups of white wine from a stall. Tyler flicked through the programme. Festivals, like cities, were places to lose yourself: pop-up holiday towns with all the attendant lawlessness. Bandit country.

‘AHA,’ said Tyler, stopping on a page and pouting, ‘I wondered whether he ’d be here.’

‘Who?’

‘Marty.’

I downed my drink. Pulsed once down low.

‘In fact, he’s on right now, interviewing someone over there.’ Tyler nodded to a marquee. ‘It’s just started. Here, grab this a sec.’ She handed me the programme.

‘Is there nothing else on?’ I said, leafing through it frantically. ‘I mean, it’s good to have options, isn’t it? The very essence of festivals is options, no?’

She put her hand in her pocket, fumbled around for a minute, pulled her hand out, sucked her finger. ‘You want?’

‘Where’s that from?’

‘I siphoned some off and hid it in the Christmas tree. Who says poetry doesn’t have its uses.’

Now.

You can judge me for this, but I think I’d reached such a point of disbelief and angst that… Yeah. Anyway. Whatever. I had some.

We walked across the gardens. When we got to the marquee, there was a NO ENTRY sign and a chain — an actual chain — across the door.

‘Fuck is this?’ said Tyler, yanking at the chain. A man in a suit with an earpiece came running over.

‘Sorry, ladies, no latecomers admitted,’ he said. ‘It says so on your tickets.’

We didn’t have — well, of course we didn’t…

‘She’s PREGNANT,’ Tyler said, pointing at me. ‘She needs to sit down. This is an infringement of human rights.’

‘There are seats in the refreshment tents.’

‘She has leukemia, too. It’s her dying wish to be at this festival and hear some words of comfort and inspiration before the end. With her doomed unborn in her poisoned womb—’

‘Tyler, you heard the man,’ I said. ‘Let’s go see something else. Anything else.’

The man glanced at my abdomen and walked away.

‘Fuck this shit,’ Tyler said. She tore off a piece of her t-shirt, dipped it in the remains of the whisky, set fire to it with her lighter and then lobbed it into a nearby bin. The bin burst into flames. Somebody screamed. The man in the suit ran off shouting FIRE! and returned with a fire extinguisher. As he was extinguishing the flames we dipped under the chain and crawled under the door-flaps.