Thin Air (26 page)

How
did
people get here
exactly? She knew instinctively that nobody arrived by accident.
Supposing she was not imagining the place, how could this have
happened? Was it the result of carefully-worded adverts in the
property section of a local paper, or merely word of mouth?
Evidence seemed to suggest some kind of invisible benefactor, but
the villagers spoke only of God in this respect. Jay thought it
unusual that so many people in a community had a religious life.
Were they some kind of Born-Again Christian set-up? But they didn’t
have that fanatical edge she associated with such converts, and
there was never any mention of Jesus. Their god, to them, was as
much a part of their life as the sky above them. It, he or she was
a permanent presence, but they were not fervent about it. As to how
and why they were in Lestholme, they seemed to find Jay’s enquiries
mystifying. They were simply there. They had found their place.
What more was there to it than that? Everyone accepted their
position with relief. They felt they had found respite from a cruel
world. As for people they might have left behind, they might as
well have been dead. Lestholme was a focus, a fountain of life;
nothing else mattered other than to be there. Jay was intrigued
about how the village functioned economically. No-one seemed to
work. Was it possible they were all living off the state in their
hideaway idyll? It seemed unlikely, but what other explanation was
there? There were a few shops in the village that provided just
about everything that people required - and she had to admit their
requirements were minimal in comparison to people outside - but
again all her enquiries as to how merchandise came into Lestholme
were not answered. All the shop-keepers would answer obliquely.
‘God provides for us,’ they said, as if faith alone stocked their
shelves.

Jay tried to keep an eye on the
time, but her watch had stopped. The afternoon seemed endless; she
was awash with tea and cold drinks, filled to bursting with cakes
and biscuits. Her mind was a whirl.

Late in the afternoon, she
paused to smoke a cigarette on the village green, and was joined by
an old woman, who despite the heat wore a heavy overcoat and a
headscarf. Jay gave her a cigarette, and asked, ‘Is there a pub
here?’

‘Up there.’ The old woman
pointed up the narrow main street. ‘But it won’t be open until
after tea.’ She paused. ‘Fancy a drink, love?’

Jay sighed. ‘Yeah.’

The old woman pulled a small,
battered thermos flask from the pocket of her coat that had sticky
marks all over it. ‘Drop of Scotch in there. Help yourself.’

‘Thanks.’ Jay took the dubious
receptacle and unscrewed the top. The whisky smelled warm, smoky
and earthy. She took a sip, but it didn’t burn her throat. She
suspected it wasn’t alcohol at all. ‘Do you know a man called Dex?’
she asked, without much hope.

The old woman giggled girlishly.
‘The pretty one. Oh aye.’

Jay nearly choked. ‘You do?
Great! Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s around,’ said the woman,
taking her flask back.

‘Where can I find him?’

The old woman shrugged. ‘Don’t
know about that.’

‘Has he got a house or a
cottage?’

‘Dunno, love. Only seen him a
couple of times.’

She knew his name. She must have
spoken to him. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Can’t rightly remember. He was
handsome, that’s all. And his name was Dex.’

Jay leaned back on straight
arms, turning her face to the late afternoon sun that was now
dropping behind the branches of the trees around the village. She
felt elated and tired. There was a point to being here now.

A mournful sound came drifting
towards her, wordless, yet summoning.

The old woman beside her took a
quick sip of her whisky, smacked her lips together, then said,
‘Sounds like your tea’s ready, love.’

‘Yes,’ said Jay, standing up.
She knew the call. ‘That’s Ida.’

‘Best go home, then.’

‘Yes.’ A cool breeze had started
up, as if to sweep away the day. Everything was so quiet. ‘See
you,’ said Jay. She walked back the way she had come, until she
reached Ida’s cottage. There tea was waiting for her, and this time
there was red jelly too.

Days passed
like dreams. The scented air was like a drug. Golden light poured
down, colouring everything with warmth. On the occasional days of
rain, there were magnificent thunderstorms, and the green of the
trees and verdure burned against the purpled sky.

Jay spent her time meeting with
and talking to the villagers, staying for meals with them whenever
she could. She made friends. The stories she heard, which now
seemed more important than how the village functioned, were like
myths of some long-forgotten pantheon. The people she met were the
heroes and heroines of archetypal tragedies. Perhaps Lestholme was
some bizarre Olympus, where they could hide themselves among the
clouds.

Jay met the old woman with the
whisky several more times. Her name was Ada Blunt, and the reason
she came to Lestholme was the aftermath of being raped by a gang of
muggers. When Jay heard this story, which Ada delivered with
astonishing
sang froid
, Jay felt sick and light-headed. Ada
lived with four cats in a surprisingly modern bungalow at the edge
of the village. Sometimes, Jay visited her in the evenings. On one
occasion, Jay couldn’t help mentioning that she imagined Ada would
be more at home in a setting like Sally Olsen’s.

‘Oh no, love,’ said Ada. ‘I like
my modernities. Can’t be doing with all that dust.’

So Ada had her dream home, too.
Jay questioned her carefully about how she’d come to the village,
but Ada seemed more fuddled than any others Jay had spoken to.
‘It’s my real home,’ she said. ‘It’s where I came to. An answer to
my prayers.’

‘Can you remember leaving your
old life?’ Jay asked her.

Ada frowned. ‘It’s all too
dark,’ she said. ‘Sunlight started here.’

‘How did you get this house? Do
you rent it, own it, or what?’

Ada shook her head. ‘It’s mine,’
she said. ‘It was ready for me when I got here.’

Questions such as these upset
the villagers, some more than others. Jay didn’t like to press too
much. In her past, Ada had suffered, and Jay respected that. It was
clear that here in Lestholme, Ada was very content.

The old woman expanded slightly
upon the meetings she’d allegedly had with Dex, but as time went
on, Jay wondered how accurate Ada’s memory was. Still, she had
recognised Dex’s name. Nobody else in Lestholme, however, appeared
to have seen or met him. Jay did catch sight of a couple of shy
young men, who looked a bit like him, but they were more like
fairy-folk than burned-out rock stars. They would not talk to
anyone, and lived among the trees, out of sight.

Jay spent as little time as
possible in the shadowed rooms of Ida’s house. Ida, Arthur and the
perpetually sleeping old lady, Meg, disturbed her more than anyone
else in Lestholme. She never learned their stories. They never
offered to tell. The only thing that stopped her seeking somewhere
else to stay was that Lestholme might then become just too
comfortable for her. Jay wondered why Jem had chosen to live with
Ida and the others, when she could probably have moved in with
someone like Sally or Ada, who were both much more companionable.
Their houses too were far homier. Jem insisted she liked her
surrogate family and felt comfortable in their house. ‘I know
they’re a bit strange,’ she confessed, ‘but that’s part of what I
like about them.’ She was an imaginative girl.

One morning, Jay went back to
the church where Jem had found her. People worshipped here, but
exactly
what
did they worship? There were no crucifixes, no
images of saints, and even the stained glass windows were just of
pastoral scenes. They appeared to be of local places, because one
of them showed the hill with the monument on top. She resolved to
return when people were present, to see what kind of service was
held there. But when she asked Jem about it, she discovered there
were no services. People went into the church as and when they felt
like it. They would sit in silence there, thanking their god for
all he had given them, contemplating the happiness they had
found.

One day, walking alone around
the village, which had become as familiar to her as her old flat in
London, Jay decided to walk away from it. She had been there for
three weeks, and apart from the scanty information from Ada, had
turned up no further evidence that Dex had ever been there. It was
not that she was desperate to leave, but she needed to test a
theory. She did not consider herself to be the same as the
villagers, the kind of person who ran away from reality because it
was too painful to bear. She’d always faced up to life’s traumas,
and was disturbed by the thought she might be in Lestholme because
she’d lost that strength. She wanted to taste the outside world
once more, even if she only put her toes over the invisible
boundary that must somewhere exist. She needed to know that she
could return to reality if and when she wanted to.

She walked and walked, seemingly
for hours, but somehow every lane that she took led her back to the
village. She must be walking in circles. She did not want to think
that she
couldn’t
leave. Still, the walk was pleasant and
the balmy air drugged her senses. It no longer seemed important to
find a way out. Jay strained her ears to detect any noise of cars
or machinery, but there was none. The fields on the left side of
the road were perfect, and cows and sheep grazed there, but she had
never actually seen any sign of agricultural activity around the
village.

There was no doubt that the
village had, in many ways, healed and comforted her. She had no
immediate desire to take up the life she had left, which she
guessed must be the same for everyone around her. All that frantic
worry and hurry seemed ridiculous now. Real life was experiencing
the world in its raw state, breathing in its scents, bathing in the
life-giving light of the endless summer sun. Real life was lazy
afternoons and evenings spent with gentle companions, drinking tea
together, laughing. There were so many things to talk about that
had nothing to do with money or deadlines or social events. She no
longer had a desire to drink alcohol; she didn’t even miss it. She
could sit in a comfortable lethargy, listening to someone talking
about the habits of foxes, or how to lay out a garden, or how to
make jam. It was strange how the questions and mysteries that had
been so important when she’d first arrived now seemed
irrelevant.

Father Bickery had taught her
about art, and in his large shadowed house, she had made her first
tentative efforts to paint. Mrs Cambourne, a trim middle-aged lady
of the most genteel type, had lent her books, old classics Jay had
always meant to read, but never had. After she’d devoured them, Jay
had sat with Mrs Cambourne in her neat garden, analysing plots and
characters. She’d sung songs in the hazy evening, with a household
of confirmed bachelors, who all looked like they should be
someone’s favourite great-uncle. She’d pricked her fingers learning
to embroider in the kitchen of Sally Olsen, wrapped in the scent of
vanilla and baking currants. This was life, surely? What had people
like Gus, Gina and Zeke Michaels got to do with what was really
important? All that bitching, all that keeping a tenacious hold of
her position in a hostile, uncertain world; it held no attraction
for her now. Yet, despite this, Lestholme was not enough for Jay.
She sensed it deep within herself, a restlessness. Perhaps some
cynical, hard-bitten part of her could not believe in the village’s
Utopian perfection and found it cloying. Ultimately, she knew that
she still did not really belong there. But the lanes would not
release her. They twisted and twined, drawing her ever back to
their heart. In some ways, she was relieved, in others anxious.

Realising that she either had no
sense of direction, or was being deliberately thwarted in her
attempts to leave the village, Jay sat down on a milestone and lit
a cigarette. She smoked less now, too. Of the two packets she’d had
in her bag, one was still almost full. She faced a wood, where
coins and bars of golden light made treasure among the lush ferns.
Sitting very still, she saw a tawny doe glide between the sunbeams
some yards from the road. Jay’s feet were firm against the gravelly
road. Her fingers could feel every texture of the lichened stone
she sat upon. The air itself entered her lungs with the surge and
thickness of water, filling her body with energy and the greenness
of her environment. The landscape was so real and so perfect, it
was like the template for all idyllic spots on earth.

She saw someone strolling
towards her and recognised the erstwhile footballer, Terry
Mortendale. Jay raised a hand in greeting, and Terry increased his
pace to reach her.

‘Great day,’ he said, his hands
in his pockets. He was a tall, heavy man, past the peak of fitness
perhaps, but relaxed and healthy, a far cry from how he’d last
appeared in the papers.

‘I have yet to experience a bad
day here,’ Jay said.

Terry laughed. ‘It’s funny, but
you never get tired of it, do you. Years ago, I’d have said you
would, that you’d get bored with a place like this.’

‘It’s a different slant on
life,’ Jay said, stubbing out her cigarette on the road. She stood
up. ‘I’m going back to the village now. Are you heading that
way?’

‘Sure am. Want company?’

‘That’d be nice.’

They strolled along in easy
silence for a while, until Jay said, ‘I was trying to leave, you
know.’ She expected Terry to ignore her remark or change the
subject, but he didn’t.

‘Oh? Why’s that?’ He didn’t even
sound surprised.