Sweet Sorrow(10)

If I rolled a little from side to side, I could make a sort of military dugout, invisible from the house above or the town below. Straining for soulfulness, I took in the view, a model-railway kind of landscape with everything too close together: plantations rather than woodland, reservoirs not lakes, stables and catteries and dog kennels rather than dairy farms and roaming sheep. Birdsong competed with the grumble of the motorway and the tinnitus buzzing of the pylons above me but from this distance, it didn’t seem such a bad place. From this distance.

I took off my top and lay back, practised my smoking with the day’s cigarette, then, using the book to shield my eyes, I began to read, pausing now and then to brush ash from my chest. High above, holiday jets from Spain and Italy, Turkey and Greece, circled in a holding pattern, impatient for a runway. I closed my eyes and watched the fibres drifting against the screen of my eyelids, trying to follow them to the edge of my vision as they darted away like fish in a stream.

When I awoke, the sun was at its height and I felt thick-headed and momentarily panicked by the sound of whoops and shouts and hunting cries from the hill above: a posse. Were they out to get me? No, I heard the swish of grass and the panicked gasps of their quarry, running down the hill in my direction. I peered through the high grass. The girl wore a yellow T-shirt and a short blue denim skirt that hindered her running, and I saw her hoist it higher with both hands, then look behind her and crouch down to catch her breath, forehead pressed to her scuffed knees. I couldn’t see her expression, but had a sudden, excited notion that the house was some sinister institution, an asylum or a secret lab, and that I might help her escape. More shouts and jeers, and she glanced back, then straightened, twisted her skirt further up her pale legs and began to run directly at me. I crouched again, but not before I saw her look back one more time and suddenly pitch forward and crash face first into the ground.

I’m ashamed to say that I laughed, clapping my hand to my mouth. A moment’s silence, and then I heard her groaning and giggling at the same time. ‘Ow! Ow-ow-ow, you idiot! Owwwwww!’ She was perhaps three or four metres away now, her panting broken by her own pained laughter, and I was suddenly aware of my skinny bare chest as pink as tinned salmon, and the syrupy sweat and cigarette ash that had pooled in my sternum. I began the contortions required to get dressed while remaining flat on the ground.

From the house on the hill, a jeering voice – ‘Hey! We give up! You win! Come back and join us!’ – and I thought, it’s a trap, don’t believe them.

The girl groaned to herself. ‘Hold on!’

Another voice, female. ‘You did very well! Lunchtime! Come back!’

‘I can’t!’ she said, sitting now. ‘Ow! Bloody hell!’ I pressed myself further into the ground as she attempted to stand, testing her ankle and yelping at the pain. I would have to reveal myself, but there seemed no casual way to leap out on someone in a meadow. I licked my lips, and in a stranger’s voice called, ‘Helloo!’

She gasped, pivoted on her good leg and fell backwards all at once, disappearing into the grass.

‘Listen, don’t freak out but—’

‘Who said that?!’

‘Just so you know I’m here—’

‘Who? Where?’

‘Over here. In the long grass.’

‘But who the fuck are you? Where are you?’

I pulled my T-shirt down quickly, stood and, in a low crouch as if under fire, crossed to where she lay. ‘I was trying not to scare you.’

‘Well, you failed, you weirdo!’

‘Hey, I was here first!’

‘What are you doing here anyway?’

‘Nothing! Reading! Why are they after you?’

She looked at me sideways. ‘Who?’

‘Those people, why are they chasing you?’

‘You’re not in the company?’

‘What company?’

‘The Company, you’re not part of it?’

The Company sounded sinister and I wondered if I might help her after all. Come with me if you want to live. ‘No, I—’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘Nothing, I was just, I went for a bike ride and—’

‘Where’s your bike?’

‘Over there. I was reading and I fell asleep and I wanted to let you know I was here without frightening you.’

She’d returned to examining her ankle. ‘Well, that worked out.’

‘Actually, it is a public footpath. I’ve got as much right to be here—’

‘Fine, but I have an actual reason.’

‘So why were they chasing you?’

‘What? Oh. Stupid game. Don’t ask.’ She tested the bones of her ankle with her thumbs. ‘Ow!’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Yes, it fucking hurts! Running through meadows, it’s a fucking death-trap. I put my foot right in a rabbit hole, and fell on my face.’

‘Yeah, I saw that.’

‘Did you? Well, thank you for not laughing.’

‘I did laugh.’

She narrowed her eyes at me.

‘So – can I help?’ I said, to make amends.

She looked me up and down, literally up then down again, an appraisal, so that I found myself trying to jam my fingertips into my pockets. ‘Tell me again, why are you here, perving about?’