Conrad Williams - Decay Inevitable

“How far will the line take us, do you think?” Sadie asked.

“It would be nice if it took us to the front door of Sloe Heath,” Will said. “But I doubt it will. Let’s take advantage of it though. Try to walk a bit further than usual today.”

They talked little, but the further they went along the tracks, the more Will’s thoughts turned to what he might find at Sloe Heath. He had no contact name and no understanding of what kind of facility it was. Presumably he wouldn’t be allowed to just walk in and start hunting around for clues. He wondered too if he would see any of the men that had broken into his and Cat’s flat. His palms itched. He hoped so.

Sadie was slowing them down with a series of games. First she had been playing hide and seek, which distressed Elisabeth, and now she was walking along the line, arms outstretched, pretending to be a tightrope walker. Irritated, Will barked at her to catch them up and stop fooling. His charity towards her was lessening by the minute.

“I knew it was a bad idea, bringing you along,” he snapped.

“Will,” Elisabeth said, in a voice that he recognised from their past. It was her stop it now or we’ll have an argument voice.

“Well, it was. We’ve got enough to worry about without playing mum and dad too.”

“Pretend I’m not here,” Sadie retorted. “I don’t need a nanny.”

“What were you doing back there, anyway?” Will stared at her. “What were you doing hiding in that old farmhouse? Where are you from?”

“Never mind.”

“No, come on,” Will persisted. “I want to know. You could be a missing person for all we know. The police could be trying to find you. Which wouldn’t be helpful, let me tell you.”

“What difference would it make? The police are after you anyway. They think you killed your wife.”

Elisabeth stepped between them. “We aren’t getting anywhere. Why don’t we talk while we walk?”

“Elisabeth, she could be, I don’t know, she could be helping them out.”

Elisabeth frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“She might be on their side. She might be – oh, I don’t know .” Will stalked away, angry with his inarticulacy and the lunatic thought that Sadie might somehow be plotting against him. If he was going to do something for Cat, it wasn’t going to happen with his head full of wool. Elisabeth caught up with him.

“What is wrong with you, Will? She’s just a girl. What does it matter where she’s from? If she doesn’t want to talk, she shouldn’t have to. She’s with us. Friends. Let her feel secure for a while. At least until we get where we’re going.”

Will’s eyes were fixed on the horizon, where perspective made the tracks vanish. “I’m sorry, Eli. I’m not myself. I can’t stop it. I feel as though I’m being hollowed out, chipped away. I just want to get there and find out what it is I have to find out.”

Elisabeth rubbed his arm. “You’re harder than this,” she said.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Ten days ago I was sitting in an armchair, wearing a pair of sheepskin slippers, while Catriona read out crossword clues. We were drinking tea. We were being a couple, in any of the million dull ways people are couples. Like we were a couple once. Just getting on with things, quietly.”

Eli pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “I wonder if we should have had children,” she said. “I mean, obviously, considering what happened between us, it was better we didn’t. But I wonder if you’d be better with Sadie if you had kids.”

Will couldn’t speak for a while. Cool wind swept down from the top of the gulley, spiced with burnt wood smells. Bonfire smells. It would be darkening within the hour.

“Go and talk to her,” Eli said. “She might offer some information about herself before too long. It could be that she just needs to get to know us first. Feel happy around us.”

Will nodded. He turned to Sadie, trying to smile. But she was gone.

“THIS IS EXACTLY what we don’t need,” Will said again. It was all he had said for the past hour as they hunted though the trees and bushes that sidled up the gulley. Elisabeth had given up shouting out Sadie’s name.

“We should just go,” Will said. “She’s pissing us around. She’s probably watching us now.”

Elisabeth was pale with worry. “We can’t just go, Will. We can’t leave her.”

“Why not?” Will snapped. “ She left us . She’ll be fine. She’s not a child.”

He couldn’t explain to Elisabeth, but the need to get to Sloe Heath had changed him. Instilled in him was a fresh impetus, unbidden yet as critical as the life force. He could no more ignore it than the instinct to get out of the way of an oncoming train.

“If we hang around here much longer,” he complained, “this track will be re-opened.”

“She can’t have gone far,” Elisabeth countered.

“I hope she has.”

“ Will .”

“Okay,” he said. “Another quarter of an hour. Then it will be dark and we’ll have to go on. But I promise you, she’s sitting in some tree, wetting herself watching us.”

The search proved fruitless. The smells of the bonfire were thickening. Elisabeth said, “Maybe we should...” and though Will didn’t relish the thought of mixing with strangers, he saw how they must at least investigate. As much as he cursed Sadie’s selfishness, it would be better if he knew where she had run to.

FOUR OR FIVE fires had been ignited across a patch of concretised wasteland comprised of a couple of acres that must once have been some kind of service depot for the long-departed trains. Ancient barrels of diesel lay around like fat drunks. Jagged holes in the metal showed how they had been siphoned of fuel. The foundations of a large building – some kind of maintenance shed – had left their outline in the ground. Lengths of scaffolding had turned the concrete it touched orange with rust. Into the grey surface, which was slowly being invaded by dandelions, pictures had been scratched in an infantile hand: cats and alien spaceships and steam engines. A skinny black dog trotted across the wasteland, giving Elisabeth and Will only cursory attention. Up ahead, where the fires were clustered together, came the occasional sound of laughter and swells of music. The tubercular grind of a car’s failing engine would at times drown out any other noise.

“I’m not too happy about this,” Elisabeth said, reaching for his hand.

There was a party in full flight. The fires contained it and illuminated it and encouraged it. Beyond the ring of flames, four or five caravans stood in the gloom like ruminating beasts. Will counted about half a dozen men sitting on blankets on the ground, passing a huge glass jug around that contained what looked like scrumpy from where they stood. The music worked on the three women in the ring like the moon on the tides, pulling and pushing them into fresh configurations. Barefoot, they wore wraps of fabric across their hips, slit to reveal legs tanned by the fire. They wore nothing on top. Four children played with toy cars in the dust at the far edge of the circle. From Will’s viewpoint, they looked misshapen, though that must have been down to the unreliable light. Sadie was not among them.

They moved forwards into the clearing. “Hello?” Will called out, trying to project his voice above the music, but not so powerfully that he startled his intended audience. One of the children looked up, then turned to the men and, waving to get their attention, pointed to Will before going back to his miniature traffic jam.

The music was turned off.

A man in a fleece zipped up to his throat sauntered over to Will and Elisabeth. The women reduced the energy of their dancing by degrees until they were gently swaying from side to side, all eyes turned on the visitors. Their skin seemed incandescent. Perspiration had failed to bead; it coated the flesh of their arms, their breasts, which were silvered by the moon or gilded by the flames, depending on the tilt of their bodies.