Chapter Twenty-Four Zig
Zig stared in admiration. Then he whistled.
Si’s old bike had been a crappy little thing, barely better than a moped, but riding on the back of it, his arms around Si’s waist, Zig had felt .
. . looked after, somehow. Like when he’d been a kid and his gran’s bloke had driven them around in that old Morris Minor he’d somehow kept going for, like, a century or something.
But, bloody hell, this was something else. Si had an honest-to-god Harley-Davidson now, a great monstrous thing in black and chrome.
“What do you think?” Si asked.
“I think I’m in love,” Zig answered honestly.
Si just laughed, which was . . . probably for the best. Then he tossed Zig a black helmet with blue flames painted on the sides. “There you go. Matches your hair. Put that on and we’ll take her out.”
They climbed on the Harley, Zig sitting snug behind Si. There was no bar behind him to hang on to so he slung his arms around Si’s waist and that familiar feeling of safety came flooding back, bringing with it a curious pain in his chest that Zig did his best to ignore.
Si started the engine. It roared like a fucking tiger, all muscle and power. Then he hit the accelerator, and they sped down the road.
The ride took them out of Glastonbury into open countryside, past farmers’ fields and through villages and small towns, all brightly lit and decorated for the season. The ends of Si’s hair hung below his helmet and danced wildly in the strong wind.
After they’d been riding for around an hour, as good as Zig could guess, Si brought the hog to a halt on a quiet country lane and they got off, removing their helmets. Zig tried to fluff up his hair in a wing mirror, but it was a lost cause. He scowled at his reflection.
Si laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re still pretty.”
Zig straightened, brandishing an eloquent finger at him. “So where are we now?”
“Wessex,” Si said proudly.
“Uh-huh. You know that ain’t a real county, right? Thomas Hardy made it up.”
“I know it ain’t called that in real life, but I looked it up, and it’s all based on real places.
See, first I reckoned I’d take you to Bath, cos of Jane Austen, you know?
But then I checked to see if there was anything going on, and it’s the last weekend of their Christmas market and there’s a match on, so it’ll be heaving.
Not that it ain’t always. So I thought of Wessex. And here we are.”
“I can’t believe you remembered I said I’d read Thomas Hardy.”
“You only told me it this morning.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Zig shrugged, not sure how to explain. “You like all that science-fiction stuff. Comic books and that. Modern stuff. All them dead authors I read—I didn’t think they’d mean enough to you to stick in your head.”
“Course they did. You like ’em.”
Zig’s rib cage was doing some weird thing that made it feel two sizes too small. “So what part of Wessex is this, exactly?” he asked, keeping it light.
“You’ll find out. Come on, we got a bit of walking to do. It ain’t far.”
Si led the way down to the end of the lane, then got out his phone and frowned at it a bit. Zig tried to see what he was looking at but the bastard danced out of his reach, moving lightly for such a big bloke. “Ah ah ah! It’s a surprise.”
“What am I, five?”
“You ain’t never too old for a surprise,” Si said firmly, putting his phone into his pocket.
“Depends on the surprise,” Zig muttered darkly, then couldn’t help flashing Si a smile.
They walked on until they came to an ancient stone bridge.
It was long, with several arches over the water, and bulged out at intervals with what Zig could only imagine were places for ye olde peasants to stand while crossing so they didn’t get in the way of any carts or carriages coming the other way.
“See that?” Si pointed to a big old house—mansion, really—with steep pointy gables and three unreasonably tall chimneys, like the people who’d built it were too posh to breathe their own smoke when they popped outside to check the gardener wasn’t slacking.
“That’s Woolbridge Manor. Or Wellbridge, if you ask Thomas Hardy. From Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
Zig blinked. “That’s where she and that bloody hypocrite Angel Clare went to stay after they got married.”
“That’s right. Least, that’s what the internet’s been telling me. It ain’t got much about this Angel bloke, though. Why’s he a hypocrite?”
“You know the story of Tess, right?” From Si’s look, Zig realised he didn’t.
“She’s this innocent country girl who gets date-raped in her teens by a posh bloke and has a kid out of wedlock.
Years later, she meets this so-called angel and marries him.
On their wedding night, he confesses to her he’s had a lover before her.
So she’s all, ‘Thank God, I can tell him what happened to me.’ Except he then throws a massive wobbly and basically tells her she’s dead to him cos she’s not a virgin.
And then it all goes downhill from there. ”
Christ, what if Si had reacted like that when Zig told him about being inside? How many blokes would want a convicted criminal taking up house room? Zig couldn’t take his eyes off the house, and found he was hugging himself.
Then a thick, leather-clad arm draped over his shoulders and squeezed him. Was Si maybe thinking about Zig’s confession too?
“Bastard,” he rumbled in Zig’s ear. “Guess I shoulda read up on that one a bit more before bringing you here.”
“No—no, it’s good. I mean, yeah, it’s sad, and it makes me fucking mad, but it’s amazing, seeing the actual place he had in mind when he wrote it.
I always thought it was smaller, you know?
Dunno why.” Warmed by Si’s embrace and hoping it’d never end, Zig shook his head, then he laughed.
“Weird to think of the bloke going round scouting out locations. Wonder what the people who lived there then thought about it?”
“Now that the internet didn’t tell me. But guess who used to own it? Family called Turberville.”
“No way!”
“Way. Not since the eighteenth century, mind.”
“So, Hardy went around borrowing places and names and only changing a letter here and there? Huh. And here was me thinking writers actually made up stuff.”
“Well, I s’pose they gotta get inspiration from somewhere.”
Zig pulled out his phone and took a couple of pics of the manor.
Then he swung and took one of Si, who was leaning on the parapet of the bridge and gazing into the water.
Si glanced up and smiled, and Zig caught it on camera with a twist in his gut that was half pleasure, half pain. “Any more book locations around here?”
Si scratched his beard. “Well, there are, but it’s a bit of a trek. We can do it another time. You gotta get back for work, and there’s one more place I wanted to take you today.”
“Yeah? What’s that— No, don’t tell me, it’s a surprise?”
Si grinned. “You’re learning.”
They retraced their steps to the bike and got on. Si headed more-or-less back the way they’d come, riding for around half an hour before he turned into a National Trust car park and stopped the bike. He pulled off his helmet, his hair and beard springing out and fluffing up in the breeze.
Zig followed suit and ran a self-conscious hand through his hair as they got off the bike. “What are we here for?”
“To see a bloke who was around in Thomas Hardy’s time. And maybe a few thousand years before that.” Si cocked his head towards a neighbouring hill.
As he did, a pale sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating a massive line drawing carved into the chalk of the hillside. It showed a man with a raised club—and that wasn’t all that was erect, either.
Zig blinked. “You brought me here to show me a giant prehistoric dick pic.”
Si nodded solemnly. “Classy, that’s me.”
Zig cracked up. After the sombre thoughts Woolbridge Manor had roused, seeing a gigantic chalk carving with a massive stiffy seemed bloody hysterical.
“Thought the Cerne Abbas giant might cheer you up if all the Tess stuff got too depressing,” Si said with a smile.
“Not gonna lie, giant dicks have been known to have that effect. Course, they’re better in real life.” Zig cast a sidelong look at Si.
He got a raised eyebrow in return. “I ain’t getting mine out in public. For starters, it’s gotta look a bit small in comparison. Specially in this wind.”
“Eh, don’t sell yourself short.” From what Zig could remember very well indeed, Si didn’t have anything to worry about in that department. To cover all the weird mixed feelings that recollection stirred up, Zig jogged over to an information board.
Si followed him and read over his shoulder, his beard tickling Zig’s ear. “Says the giant’s 180 feet tall. So by my reckoning, that’s a 40-foot dick, give or take. And that, my lover, I cannot compete with.”
“Fair enough.” Zig leaned back into Si’s solid warmth, just a little, hoping Si might take the hint and put his arms around him.
It wasn’t crazy to hope, was it? Zig had been in the West Country long enough to know that Si calling him my lover meant absolutely nothing, but he’d brought him here, hadn’t he?
To see the world’s biggest dick pic, and if that wasn’t flirting, what the hell was?
And that was after taking him to see Tess’s honeymoon hotel.
It had to mean something, didn’t it?