As Far as You Can Go (29 page)

‘What?’ Now she does meet his eyes. Bold. Green-flecked grey. A tiny snaky vein marring the white.

‘Have a nice time last night?’

She shakes her head, looks down at her tea. ‘OK. Bit boring. I made loads of Spag Bol thinking you’d be back, starving hungry. We’ll finish it later. I was
really worried
, Gray.’

‘He
said you had one too many.’

She shrugs. ‘Bet
you
had a drink.’

‘Well, yeah. But
three
bottles?’

‘He must have carried on after I went to bed.’

He gazes at her until she looks down. His fists clench till the nails bite the skin of his palms. He forces a breath into his constricted lungs. ‘We have to leave,’ he says, keeping his voice even.

She nods her head. ‘I feel a bit –’ He watches as she gets unsteadily off the bed and picks up a pair of knickers. As she puts them on he sees the long fuzzy smile between her legs. He looks at the shirt. ‘What’s with that? Is it his?’

‘I borrowed it.’ She shoves her feet, after a couple of misses, into her sandals.

‘Why?’ His heart thuds.

‘Oh later, Gray.’

He speaks quietly though the words want to shout themselves. ‘Did Larry – did he try anything?’

‘You ask me
that!’ She slams out of the door. He stares at it for a moment, gets up and kicks it. Bangs his forehead against it and stands there a moment, forehead resting against the wood. Heart hammering. Must keep cool. Must think. He must get them out of here and safely. He picks up the shirt and holds it to his face. Smells of Cassie. Smells of Larry’s poxy cologne. He screws it up and flings it at the wall. His bag is on the floor. He picks it up and takes out Cassie’s mirror frame. The broken glass gone now. He looks into the empty black oval a minute then shoves it in her rucksack. He picks up the shirt, examines it. Wine-stained, crumpled.
No
. He can’t bear it.
No
. Hears a car start and drive away. Fred leaving. They have to go. Tonight.

*

Cassie goes to the dunny, holds her breath. She can’t get her head straight. What happened with Larry? Can’t think. Don’t think. The flies, there must be millions down there, booming vibration, millions of maggots. Feels she could be sick and what a headache, hangover, how much did she drink? Worse than a hangover, kind of dullness, numbness of mind.

She comes out, looks back at the door of the shed, would love to lie down but can’t face Graham. She washes her hands, lathers and lathers, coal-tar bubbles, and walks out, away from the house, over to the trees. There’s a rock there, good rock for sitting, under the trees, her head bangs with the rhythm of her feet.

She sits for a while, eyes open but unfocused. Parrots shriek. A red feather stuck to a white streak of bird shit. A lizard motionless, as if glued to the rock. Tiny splayed grip of its fingers. She puts her hand under her dress and feels her warm wetness. Sticky tangle. Needs another bath. Not Larry, no. Don’t think about it. Must just – she frowns, trying to wind her messed-up mind back. Can’t remember. How it ended. Like a
bad taste in her mouth from something she can’t remember eating. The swab: what was that about? Fragments coming back. Like the radio, if there even was a radio, and something else. The wine. A wet cold something – a chilly sofa underneath – They must leave. How can they?

She closes her eyes, hangs her head back, so heavy, stretching her neck. Birds shriek from a long way off and then a touch. She jumps. It’s only Graham. He hands her a bottle of water. She swigs greedily, then feels sick.

‘What are you doing out here?’ he asks.

‘Why did you have to go off?’ Her mouth bends down to cry but suddenly she’s angry. Sparks of energy in her arms and legs. ‘What were you doing?’

‘I’ll tell you about it,’ he says, ‘but listen. Tonight we go. OK? I know where the spare car keys are. We get the hell out.’

‘How?
’ He looks so serious. Four parallel lines across his forehead. Are they new?

‘We play along today then we’ll leave. But don’t
say
, don’t show
any sign
. OK?’ He looks so unlike himself, so focused. She stares at him. He’s serious. He’s
never
serious. White hairs threaded through his hair line. More surely than before? The lines round his eyes, the pores round his nose emphasised by dust. A couple of white bristles amongst the black stubble. Soon he could grow one of those badger beards. She sighs and shuts her eyes.

Cassie curls round herself in the bed. Is he asleep? He’s quiet, breathing softly. She squeezes her arms round herself, excitement, fear and a kind of cringe thinking of the terrible meal. The terrible fist she’d made of pretending everything was normal. Yesterday’s Bolognese burnt and served up with stale bread and a salad with too much onion. Larry had looked at her quizzically but made no comment. He’d seemed so normal she’d almost started to wonder if she had dreamed last night. Maybe it
was
as simple as her getting drunk and passing out? How could he be so cool otherwise?

They’d sat on the veranda by the dull light of a smoked-up kerosene lamp with its corona of suicidal moths and bugs. The onions in the salad were wincingly strong, making their noses run. For once there was no wine. The atmosphere had been almost unbearable, contrived attempts at conversation.

‘Mara not well?’ she’d tried in the end. She could not bring herself to meet Larry’s eyes.

‘She’s recovering.’

‘Larry,’ she’d said, ‘you’ve got a radio, haven’t you? I
heard
it.’

He gazed at her, didn’t deny it.

‘Why didn’t you say?’

He sighed, disappointed, and spoke the way you might speak
to a tiresome child. ‘It’s essential to Mara’s – peace of mind – shall we say, to believe we’re entirely isolated. But I need a radio,
of course
I do, to contact Kip for instance, do you think it coincidental that he arrives when he’s needed? Fred too.’

‘Why lie about it though?’

‘Mara doesn’t know. It would seem … inappropriate for visitors to know things that the lady of the house doesn’t know.’
The lady of the house
. ‘It was the whitest possible
lie
. Now we’ve got that cleared up,’ Larry dabbed his mouth with his napkin, furled it into its ring of bone, ‘I’ve been rather expecting an announcement.’

He looked from one of them to the other. ‘No? Correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve had the feeling that perhaps you feel that this – experiment – is over. In other words, that you would probably like to leave.’

‘Experiment?’ Graham said.

‘Cassie’s experiment, to see how you –’

‘Not an
experiment,’
she said, face burning. The
stirrer
.

A great beetly thing, big as a wren, batted itself against the lamp and tumbled on to the table, on to its back, legs waving. Graham tried to right it with his fork but the stupid thing wouldn’t turn over, rocking on the table like a boat, motor buzzing. He brushed it from the table with his hand but it came back, idiotically battering itself against the flickering globe.

‘And when would you like to leave?’

‘Soon as we can,’ she said, pressing her foot against Graham’s.

‘Let’s see.’ Larry put his hands together as if in prayer, placed the points of his fingers under his beard: ‘You want to give formal notice.’

She sensed Graham practically imploding beside her but he managed to keep his mouth shut and she squeezed his leg gratefully.

‘Well – if that’s what we need to do.’

‘You realise, of course, that you’ll forgo the agreed sum of money.’

‘Yes.’

‘You realise that you’ll also be letting me down, not to mention Mara. You have no qualms about that, apparently?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. She made herself look up into his eyes. ‘We do have qualms but –’

‘Your minds are made up?’ He shook his head, laced his fingers together, made the knuckles snap. ‘Very well. I accept. The period of notice I require is two weeks. Now if you’ll excuse me.’ Larry got up from the table and went through the door into the house, leaving them silenced.

‘Two weeks,’ she said. ‘Can we stand two weeks?’

‘No way. No fucking way.’ Graham turned to her, frowning. ‘What experiment?’

‘Oh nothing.’

‘What?’

She took a breath. ‘Just us, whether it could work. You
know
.’

‘Didn’t realise you confided in him.’

She shook her head.

‘Has it?’

She was surprised by the harshness of his voice. ‘What?’

‘Worked?’

She’d pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets. Feeling better but still spaced out. Distanced from him. They were just such different people. ‘Dunno,’ she’d said. ‘What do you think?’

He’d got up and stalked off.

There’s a thin shimmer of moonlight leaking though the curtains. Is he asleep? If they could just stick two weeks, then they could leave properly, pack everything, finish off. It seems more sensible. But he wants to go tonight. Typical Graham. Dashing off into the night when they could wait two weeks and do the thing properly.
Is
he asleep? Doesn’t sound like it, too
quiet. More like pretending to be asleep.
Two weeks
, it’s not much. But he is determined. Maybe she should let
him
go. But then she’d be more or less alone with Larry.
No, no, no
. She tucks her hand protectively between her legs. Maybe nothing happened. No, something did. And she wants to go home. They might make it for Christmas. She wants Patsy. Wants home.

‘Gray,’ she whispers.

‘What?’ He’s as wide awake as she is. Lying there thinking what?

‘OK then.’

He sits up abruptly. Gets off the bed. She sees the small flicker of illumination as he presses the light on his watch.

‘Two-twenty,’ he says. ‘Come on then.’

‘Were you just lying there waiting for me to say that?’

He strikes a match and lights the candle. ‘I know where the car key is. We’ll drive.’

‘But you haven’t got a licence.’

‘You have. And I can drive. Come on.’ She stares as he starts to pull things from the drawers. ‘Come on.’

She gets out of bed. Shivery. ‘Really? But what if he catches us?’

He stops. Meets her eyes with a flinch. ‘He’ll go totally fucking ballistic’.

‘What could he do?’

Graham pulls his jeans on. ‘Come on.’

‘Maybe we should just be patient?’

‘Come
on.’
He goes back to stuffing things into his rucksack. His shadowy face looks serious and scared. He’s never scared. It frightens her.

‘It can’t be that simple,’ she says, pulling on her knickers. ‘Can it?’

‘Won’t know till we’ve tried.’

They haven’t got much stuff. It’s soon packed into their rucksacks. Graham gets his paintings and art things from his
studio, moving about with a sort of exaggerated tiptoe like a stage villain. She finds herself giggling, flopping back on the bed. She could get hysterical, can feel the fizziness like someone’s dropped an Alka-Seltzer in her blood. She pulls herself together, goes through the drawers, checking.

Graham’s already got the passports, tickets, money. Amazingly organised for him. They need water – they can fill a couple of gallon water bottles from the pump. As she wraps her precious photos in a sweater and stows them in her pack her mind leaps ahead: surely they’ll be able to change the tickets at the airport and if not they’ll just have to buy more on Visa. OK, so they’re losing a few thousand pounds. They can do without. They did without before. Even if they have to sell the car and live on lentil stew for months to catch up – lentil stew by the fire in their own home. Sounds like heaven.

‘What if you can’t find the keys?’ she says.

‘I know where they are. If not I’ll hotwire it.’

‘Gray!
Can you do that?’

‘Ready?’

She takes a deep breath, hoicks her rucksack over one shoulder and takes a last look round the room – unicorn curtains, raggy rug,
some
things she’ll miss – before she blows out the candle and follows him outside. This doesn’t feel real. So underhanded. Almost criminal sneaking off – but they’re not stealing anything (only borrowing the car) and they
are
free. There’s nothing criminal about it she tells herself, picking through the scrub. A breeze has sprung up. The sky is almost clear, bristling with stars, just a dirty smear of cloud to smudge the waning moon. The pump creaks but otherwise it’s oddly quiet, as if the night birds and creatures are holding their breaths.

They walk round to the pump and fill the water bottles. Then they stand by the car. Waiting there like an invitation. Graham opens the back door and they put their stuff on the back seat.
Cassie stands up, looks at the house for a sign of movement. Thanks God that Yella is deaf. And Mara, presumably, medicated to oblivion. She feels terrible leaving her without a word, just like the others did. She will feel so let down.
Sorry
, Cassie whispers to her shed door.

‘The keys are in the pantry,’ Graham says. ‘Shelf above the door.’ He goes towards the steps.

‘No I’ll get them,’ she says, knowing she’ll be the quieter.

‘But what if –’

‘I’ll say I need a cup of tea – couldn’t sleep or something.’

‘But you’re dressed.’

‘I’ll think of something.’

She goes up the steps quiet as she can. Yella is asleep by the door and groans as she pushes him out of the way. Very dark. The fridge hums. She feels around the wall and the table’s edge towards the pantry door. Her fingers meet the fruit bowl – would love to take it but just puts a couple of oranges into her bag. The darkness is absolute, can’t find the door – ridiculous – her hand touches something made of cloth and she jumps, thinks it’s a sleeve, what if Larry – but it’s only a tea towel on the back of a chair. Outside an owl cries and she has to smother a shriek. She steadies herself on the table. Takes a deep breath. Pictures herself going from the table to the pantry, to get some flour say. About three steps and she finds the latch, fumbles, hand sweaty, how would she explain if Larry came in,
sleep walking?