Chapter Fourteen
As arranged, we met as the sun vanished behind the hunch of moorland, staining the clouds a bright red and the ground a sinister blueish tinge.
‘Through here.’ I led the way up the drive into the stable yard. ‘Here.’ The bolts slid open and Stan stepped towards us, half a hay net hanging from his lips, wearing the same expression that I would expect on the face of a lifer receiving an unexpected reprieve. ‘This is Stan.’
‘It’s a horse.’ Phinn hung around outside the loose-box, outside biting range. ‘An ugly one.’
‘He’s not that ugly,’ I said, affronted. ‘And he’s better than any kind of All-Terrain Vehicle. He’ll get us up onto the moors faster than walking, and we can go direct up the bridle path instead of having to drive up the road and then walk. So? What do you think?’
Phinn’s eyes looked deep. He didn’t really seem to be listening to me or even seeing what was in front of him and his face had a haunted kind of look. ‘Er, yeah. Okay. I’ve never really liked horses much. Bit unpredictable. I deal with things that happen over millions of years, horses tend to act a bit quicker than that.’
‘Can you ride?’
‘Dunno. Probably. I can calculate wavelength shifts to two decimal places, so I shouldn’t think riding a horse can present much of a problem.’ He put the holdall he was carrying down onto the cobbles and took his time about straightening back up, flipping his hair away from his eyes with a gesture that looked unnecessary, as though he was trying not to have to speak to me. ‘Except for the horse element.’
‘Phinn, are you all right?’ I nudged Stan out of the way and took a step forwards. ‘If you’re upset about earlier . . . I said I was sorry.’
‘What? Oh. no, Molly, it’s not you. And there I was thinking I was being all subtle . . . no. This is . . . something else. Some one else.’
Stan poked his nose forward and showed his teeth, which made Phinn flinch.
‘And you’re not all right,’ I said quietly.
Phinn stared at the ground. ‘I just . . . oh, I probably misunderstood or something. It’s nothing, Molly, me being stupid, that’s all.’
I touched his sleeve. ‘But you’re not stupid, are you? You might be all those other things you call yourself, but you certainly aren’t stupid.’
He spun round to face me properly. The last light from the sun caught the angles of his cheekbones, made his face look wild and despairing. ‘Please let me be stupid, just this once. Let me be wrong, let me have jumped to a conclusion that won’t turn out to be right, just this once. Otherwise . . . everything’s gone.’
‘Phinn . . .’
‘Are we going to go look for the lights? Because we’ll need to be somewhere more open, somewhere we’ll see them coming, it’s too enclosed here with the roofs and everything.’ Speaking quickly he moved away, talking over his shoulder as he headed out of the yard and down towards the village street. ‘So far they’ve come from the south west, if we direct ourselves towards that quadrant and do occasional sweeps of the whole sky we should see them approach in good time. And then, I’m guessing, we bring out the errr . . . four-legged transport, I suppose.’
By now we were both standing in the road. ‘Perhaps if we stood on the bridge?’
‘No. Not the bridge. It’s too . . . the water is too dark. Can’t . . . there’s too much water.’ With a dismissive wave of the hand he started walking again, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched up to his ears. ‘Here.’
‘What, on the village green?’
‘It’s a good clear space.’ From his jacket pocket he produced a camera. It was slick and black with a long lens screwed to the front and it sat in his hand like a malignant growth. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not very good company tonight, Molly.’
‘It’s okay.’ In the dying light I could see the way his fingers clenched around the camera strap, the irregular beat of his pulse in the gap between his jacket and his T-shirt neck. Every line of him was tense, wary, he looked like a horse about to bolt. ‘You’ve been through a bad time. You’re allowed to have rough days.’
I was having to fight the urge to move in and give him a hug, he looked as though he badly needed some kind of physical comfort, but I didn’t dare. There was something dangerously attractive about his edginess and his guarded words and I was slightly afraid that, if I touched him, I might not be able to stop at a hug. Damn the return of my sex drive, without it I’d have been able to offer at least a little reassurance.
‘Thanks.’ A slight smile. ‘I mean, I don’t need your permission to be a miserable sod, obviously, but it’s nice that you can appreciate that it’s nothing to do with you. I mean, it’s not your fault, not that I’m telling you to mind your own business. Shit, I’m going to shut up now.’
‘Maybe we should—’
‘—watch the sky. Yes. Good idea.’
But I was still watching him as he tipped his head up and scanned the far horizon. YouTube told me that under that scraggy overgrown stubble was a sexy, firm jaw, and that body looked terrific in a carelessly-worn designer suit. It also had things to say on the subject of his ability to project himself, to appear as a capable, dynamic educator with a grin that was wide with confidence and eyes that were alight with mischief and fun.
And yet. Here the real man stood. Scruffy and ungroomed, his only confidence seemed now to come from holding a conversation and his grins were almost diffident, as though he was waiting to be slapped down or reprimanded for being enthusiastic. Even his stance was different. Now he kept his hands in his pockets, his body averted, he seemed to be waiting for the final punch, the one that was going to lay him out.
‘Phinn.’
‘Mmmm?’ His head came round and, just for a second the Phinn from the stage was there in a focus behind the eyes and the tilt of the head, until he seemed to remember himself and bring everything back down. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. Sorry, I just thought I saw something.’
‘The stars are coming out.’ One long arm swept the heavens. ‘Look. Aren’t they beautiful? All those distant suns, all those other planets sitting up there. When I was little I used to think that the night sky was like a blanket and the stars were the lights that shone through from the day on the other side.’ A shy smile. ‘God, I must have been a whimsical little bugger, no wonder my parents sent me to boarding school.’
‘That’s a bit harsh. Did you enjoy it? Boarding school?’
‘Nothing to compare it to. It was all right, I suppose. Better than — well, the alternative.’
‘What, being with the rest of us plebs at an ordinary comprehensive?’
‘Being dragged around by my parents on the lecture circuit. A series of hotel rooms and theatres with a shedload of travelling in between, not really my style. It’s no way to bring up a child. If I ever have children I—’ A sharp half-laugh. ‘Christmas stockings and beach holidays with buckets and spades and being there. That’s how it should be, not being raised like some rare plant in permanent education-compost. Kids need love and attention and games and bedtime stories and all the other stuff I never got.’
‘Yes,’ I said faintly, past a lump in my throat. You might have been raised as a genius, Phinn, but your wishes for childhood sound a lot like mine.
We stood back to back for a while. He seemed to have relaxed a bit now, wasn’t holding himself aloof as he had been. In fact, to my wishful thinking mind, it almost felt as though he too was leaning in against me, returning the pressure of body against body. I started to wonder what would happen if I turned, if I let myself move into him. Would he move away, or would he turn too, would we end up face to face? Would those soul-black eyes search mine for permission before that quirky mouth touched mine, or would he go straight in for the macho lip lock? Would his hands . . .
‘There.’ He spoke, quickly erasing the whole of my fantasy in one syllable. ‘Coming in fast from the west.’
‘I’ll get the horse.’
We ran towards the yard, Phinn occasionally pausing to point the camera at the sky and fire off a series of shots with the whining of the camera ricocheting around the chilly night air. We reached the stable, I flung the door open and dragged Stan out, flipped his rug back off onto the hayrack and leaped aboard.
‘Jump up behind me. He can carry both of us easily.’
Phinn’s face was a masterpiece of doubt. ‘Are you sure?’
‘He was purpose-built for carrying eighteen stone farmers around the hills, of course he can carry both of us, unless you’ve got lead bones. Grab the bag and come on .’
I shuffled my way forward, until I was sitting almost on Stan’s neck.
‘I don’t know.’ Phinn was practically rotating on the spot. ‘I don’t do horses. Or animals of any kind really, we didn’t have pets.’
‘He won’t hurt you,’ I said, and then, remembering it was Stan. ‘At least, he might nip a bit but he’s pretty well meaning really.’
‘Can’t I walk?’
I glanced up into the sky. The lights were moving slowly, drifting in a breeze we couldn’t feel. ‘I thought you wanted to keep up with the lights. Riding Stan up the hill is the fastest way.’
Phinn was pacing tiny circles now, the bag clonking against his legs. ‘He might, I dunno, run away with us. What do we do if he runs away with us, Molly?’ There was a note of panic in his voice that was bordering on real fear, so I indulged in some snap-psychology.
‘Phinn, it’s not Stan you’re afraid of, is it? This is a control thing. Well, I’ve been riding since I was ten, and I can tell you that if there was ever a horse that was most emphatically not going to run away with us, it’s Stan. Besides, I’m the one doing the steering and the starting and stopping and after eighteen years I’ve pretty much got a handle on the whole thing. You just have to sit here and hang on, all right?’
‘You sure you can stop him?’ Phinn stopped pacing, but stood out of reach of Stan’s front end.
‘It’s more the getting started that’s the problem. Honestly.’
Phinn looked dubious but, with a good deal of ‘oomfing’ and awkward rearrangement, got up behind. ‘Now what?’
‘Now we find out if you can ride.’ I turned Stan using his halter rope. I hadn’t bothered with saddle or bridle to save time, and I’d ridden him this way often enough for him to get the message that if I was hauling away at his headcollar then I probably wanted him to do something. He set off out of the yard at a swift, bone shaking trot. ‘Which way?’
Phinn’s hand came from behind me. ‘That . . . way. Ouch. Do you mind if I . . . grab hold?’
‘You can grab anything that doesn’t wobble. And if you grab something that does wobble but shouldn’t, then I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention it.’
I steered the horse towards the steep bridle path that led along the edge of the moor and was the fastest way up onto the high ground. Stan knew the route, and even broke into a canter along one of the even stretches. Phinn wound both arms around my waist, put his forehead down on the base of my neck, and swore all the way.
When we reached the top of the path where the moor flattened out in front of us, I pulled Stan up and Phinn inched himself slightly further back. ‘Oh God. I thought falling in the septic tank was bad but at least my balls didn’t get alternately punched and squeezed.’
‘Sorry. Where have they gone?’
‘Into my body cavity, I suspect, never to return.’
‘The lights, you fruitcake.’ I scanned the skies. ‘I can’t see them.’
‘That way. Heading over towards the east, just before the horizon.’ The camera grazed my neck on its way up. ‘No point getting the video out, they’re too far away. We need to be faster !’ Snap snap.
I caught sight of the tail end lights whisking almost joyfully away over the moor and forced Stan to stump around in a circle in order to watch them as they dropped away over the curvature of the earth. Phinn muttered and grabbed a firmer hold with one hand, using the other to keep snapping but I could tell the camera was wobbling wildly around from the way it kept poking me in the neck. ‘Sit still. You won’t wobble so much.’
‘Ha! That’s easy for you to say.’ Another wobble and Stan reacted by shifting his weight to counteract the lack of balance, there was a moment of anxious grabbing at my body and then Phinn slid sideways and parted company with both of us, landing on his back in the heather with the camera held up above his head. ‘Ow! Shit!’
‘I thought you said you could ride a horse.’
‘ Probably. I said probably . And that . . .’ he waved the camera at Stan, ‘. . . is not a horse, that is an instrument of the devil. My genitals haven’t been this pummelled since—’
‘Since your wedding night?’
A wry smile. ‘Not even then I don’t think.’ He sat up and began to get to his feet, rotating his shoulders and checking his limbs. ‘I’m walking back. I’m sorry but I don’t think horses and I were meant to be acquainted.’
‘You did all right,’ I said, staring away in the direction the lights had taken in case there was still anything to see. ‘Tim fell off first time out and he had a saddle. And a neck strap. And we were only walking.’
Phinn stopped waggling his elbows as though he was trying to take off. ‘Tim. Was he your . . . ?’
‘My fiancé, yes, he was.’
Phinn started checking over the camera. ‘What was he like?’
‘Successful. Clever. Rich. You know, all the things a girl looks for in a potential mate.’ My hands started plaiting at Stan’s mane. ‘And, in the end, a bastard. Well, no, not really a bastard but a cheat and a liar and . . . all the things a girl calls her ex.’
He was staring at the camera screen, looking back through the pictures he’d taken. ‘And he is why you’re here, is he? Why you’re hiding? What was he, some kind of mafia boss?’
‘He was . . . is a journalist. You might have heard of him, Tim Arnold.’
Phinn’s eyes flicked to mine. ‘The Tim Arnold that won the Anderson Prize? That guy?’
I looked away. ‘Actually, we both won the Anderson. It was a jointly authored book, but Tim picked up the award because I had flu and couldn’t get to the ceremony. I didn’t care at the time because we were a couple but since then — well, he’s pretty much pretended that I had nothing to do with it. And I won’t stand up and say “oy, I won too”, because . . . I never want anything to do with him again.’ Beneath me Stan sensed my tension and shuffled his feet. A knife-edge of wind slid under my jacket and I shivered. ‘We should go back.’
‘So why are you living way out here? I’d have thought that winning the Anderson would make you in demand — what was it you did again?’
My stomach tightened. ‘It was exposing the waste and corruption in government. I was working as a sort of freelance reporter based around the Houses of Parliament, picking up bits and pieces of stories here and there, and then, one day I . . . Look, it doesn’t matter. I worked with Tim on the book, we won a prize. We got engaged, we split up. I don’t want to go back to doing what I did, but writing is all I can do, so working for Mike, for the magazine, it’s making the best of it and can we talk about something else now, please?’
I turned Stan’s head for home and prodded him into walking back the way we’d come, my hands buried deep in his mane to hide the fact that my fingers were digging into the palms in my attempts not to think about it, not to remember what had happened.
‘Wow. That has got to be the most simplified version of someone’s life I’ve ever heard.’ Phinn started walking alongside me, a careful distance away from Stan. ‘I did something, I won a prize and then I stopped doing it. Are you deliberately trying to be enigmatic or something, Molly?’
‘I just don’t like talking about it, all right?’
Phinn stopped. ‘No, not really.’
‘What?’ I tugged on Stan’s rope until he stopped walking, then tugged a bit harder until he turned a small circle to face back the way we’d come.
Phinn was leaning against a standing stone, one of the many which jutted from the moor like broken teeth, with his arms folded and one leg bent, his foot resting on the step of stone at the base. His pose was casual but I could see him shivering, the leather jacket clearly wasn’t providing much protection from the niggling little splinters of wind. The darkness lent him a magazine-cover glamour; the way his hair blew back from his face, that stubbled jawline — he looked like a Burberry advert.
‘What?’ I repeated, irritated for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘What do you mean?’
He chewed his lip and tipped his head back. Those incredible eyes, accentuated behind his glasses, seemed to be reaching into my brain, slowly unpacking all my tawdry secrets and I felt my palms get a little sweaty. There was something in that look, something uncalled for and yet something I half-wanted to see, a cool appraisal of me as a woman. ‘I told you about Suze. It would be nice if you felt you could tell me a bit about yourself in return.’
I felt my hackles rise. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise it was some kind of “tit for tat” confessional thing we had going on. I thought you told me about your wife to stop me wasting unnecessary sympathy on you, not so that I’d be obliged to give you chapter and verse on my own nasty little secrets.’
Stan, seeming to sense that this one was going to run and run, put his head down and started to graze. Phinn didn’t move. ‘We don’t have a “thing going on” as you put it, as though you’ve been possessed by some kind of Spirit of Nineteen Fifty. I told you what happened because . . . because you seemed to care. And because I thought you needed to know that relationships are — well, they’re not all good. You aren’t alone in having screwed up yours, it happens to all of us some time or another.’
‘I did not screw up! I did everything right, everything that I should have done. It was Tim who screwed up.’
Phinn just raised his eyebrows and uncrossed his arms so that he could shrug. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said, with disbelief in every line of his body.
I slithered down off Stan so that I could confront him better. ‘Yes! He cheated on me, he ran off and left me, and the worst of it all is that he didn’t even go off with someone young and sexy and gorgeous; he ran off with my mother ,’ and then I’d said it and it couldn’t be unsaid and I was left standing biting my tongue, trying to decide whether I wanted to burst into tears or kill the man in front of me.
He stepped away from the stone. ‘There,’ he said, and his voice was gentle now. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Then he patted me on the shoulder and headed off down the path.
‘Wha—wait a minute, is that it ?’ I trotted after him and, after a moment’s consideration, Stan trotted after me. ‘You trick me into saying something like that and then all you can do is walk away ?’
Phinn stopped again, so quickly that I bumped into him. ‘What were you expecting me to do?’ he asked over his shoulder.
‘I don’t know! A small show of concern might be nice.’
His jacket brushed against me as he turned round. He was so close I could smell woodsmoke and soap from his clothes and feel the trace of warmth he was giving off. ‘Concern, hmmm. Okay.’ Chilly hands touched my face, his eyes hung before me like holes in the sky, and then his lips brushed against mine bringing a warmth greater than the sun. ‘Enough concern?’ He stood back.
I stared at him. ‘You kissed me,’ I said with, I think, understandable aggrievement.
‘Yes, I know. My face was on this side of it.’
‘Why?’
Now I got the first hint of uncertainty from him. ‘It . . . You wanted concern. It was either that or phone Crimewatch. Why, what did you think I was going to do?’
‘I didn’t know! Not that!’
Stan nudged me between the shoulder blades and I turned around to fuss with his headcollar, anything to avoid having to look at Phinn. Even that brief physical contact had made me pink and sweaty under my coat and I was having to restrain myself from running a finger over my lips in a bewildered way. ‘I just thought you might say something.’
There was no reply and when I looked back I found that he was ten yards away, moving swiftly over the soft heather and bracken like a ghost.
We walked back to the village in silence. At the bottom of the track, Phinn, still a little way ahead, stopped and turned. ‘I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to . . . I’m feeling a bit shaky, my responses are a bit off and I’m seriously not behaving normally. Believe me, kissing women without at least a written invitation in triplicate, is completely atypical.’
Stan got more fussing. He gave me an ‘am I going to die?’ look, and then bit my shoulder in response, but it was useful to have something to look at that wasn’t Phinn. ‘No. You were right, you were just showing concern, I’m completely out of the loop on . . . well, being kissed like that.’
‘What the hell did Tim do then, Masonic handshakes?’ He hunched himself against the wind and poked his hands into his pockets. I wasn’t sure if it was the weather conditions or the subject of the conversation that was making him so uncomfortable.
‘My boyfriends . . . even before Tim . . . they’ve all been, well, older. Than me, I mean, not, like older than God or something,’ I added, hastily. ‘I was a bit of a . . .’ I tried to think of a way of summing up my teenage years and early twenties without making me sound as though I’d never worn knickers, ‘. . . a bit of a wild child. I liked older men.’
Phinn gave me a smile that looked pulled down at the corners. ‘I think you’ll find, physiologically, we’re pretty much the same. Lips, teeth, noses, all that. Age doesn’t really come into it much. Unless,’ and his smile went a bit oddly-shaped, ‘we’re talking dentures.’
‘I meant . . .’ I said, and stopped. How did I sum up the difference between all my previous kisses and the one he’d given me? The difference between a kiss that had always had something of the business transaction about it, trading my youth and energy for financial solvency and solid security and Phinn’s almost tender tentativeness. ‘I have to go and put Stan away.’
Phinn sighed. It made him sound empty. ‘Of course. Goodnight,’ and with an additional hunch to his shoulders he turned towards Howe End, walking as though he’d given away a fortune.
‘Phinn!’ Driven not to let it end this way, I called after him, watched his stride break as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to turn, stop or walk back to me and his legs were waiting for a final decision.
‘We’ll talk about the lights later. Tomorrow. Another day. Goodnight, Molly.’ He spoke without turning round, raising a hand in a loose-wristed farewell gesture, and I watched him all the way down to the bridge before I turned Stan and headed him back to the yard and possibly the most energetic brushing session he’d had for months.