Stories from Other Places by Nicholas Shakespeare

Author:Nicholas Shakespeare [Nicholas Shakespeare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473521728
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

3

She was unable to sleep. She had offered herself as Princess Tatiana and Clem had rejected her. She listened out, awaiting his return from the barn.

The windmill squeaked, and the light she had left on for him in the hallway stretched flat and pale under her door. They slept in separate rooms, but how she longed sometimes for Clem to open her door, come in with the rest of the light. She imagined that same light, unused, building up over the nights and weeks until the weight was too much to endure and he burst into her room, silent and fluent, with his body composed of the same athletic grace as when he had retrieved her map.

He never came.

At five in the morning, Isabel was woken by the sound of a lorry. Next door she heard Clem rise, feeling for his slippers in the dark. Her imagination followed him into the bathroom, through the kitchen, down the hill. In the hiatus of the abattoir and scraping hooves, of slaughterhouse offal and the shouts of itinerant butchers, he would tread in a daze until dawn.

At seven she got up. The rain having eased, she decided to spend the morning riding. The need to be away from the house, the farm buildings, all of a sudden overwhelmed her. She never was able to harden herself to the killing, and Clem’s behaviour last night disturbed her.

His boots stood under the kitchen table where he had left them. He must have taken hers in the dark. Clem’s, although bigger, would do for her ride. She would watch the ewes lambing.

Isabel guided the bay up the hill, a pair of Dettoled gloves in her saddlebag. Her horse trod in nervous steps through the damp char grass and once or twice a hoof slithered in the mud. Last time she rode this way, Clem was burning the grass and the stumps were black and the smoke got into her eyes and stayed there.

She came to an earth bank and kicked, intending to pause at the summit where the clouds were biteably close. At that moment, concealed in the grass, a chimango thrust itself from an armadillo carcass and beat into the air.

The horse shied in fright at the hawk, and when Isabel lost balance broke into a gallop. She tried to fall, but Clem’s boots remained stuck in her stirrups.

By two o’clock, the men had finished loading the warm meat into the refrigerator van. Exhausted, they sat around on bloody bales, prolonging the ritual of maté, until the foreman barked, ‘Time to go.’

Clem, surprised to find that Isabel had not prepared lunch, concocted a sandwich for himself. After eating most of it, he lay on his bed. Half an hour later he was standing at his window, buttoning on a clean shirt, when he saw her horse grazing on the hill.

He ran to the pickup, accelerated up the bank, wheels spinning and careering in the wet soil.

At first, he thought she was dead. Her body lay stretched out on the grass, not moving, the trousers splattered with mud.

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