The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

Author:Benjamin Myers [Myers, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2022-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Finessing the final section of crop that constitutes the tip of the Dodman’s final antenna, they fall into stride.

‘I forgot to ask you,’ says Calvert. ‘Did you see that farmer?’

‘Which one?’

‘The one on the local news.’

‘No.’

‘The one at Trapping St Edmunds. You didn’t see him?’

‘No. I don’t have a telly, do I? What about him?’

‘He’s put a padlock on his gate, set up a makeshift tollbooth in a chemical toilet and has been charging folk to see our Solstice Pendulum ever since he first set eyes on it. He’s using raffle tickets.’

Redbone stops and laughs at this. He laughs loud and long.

‘How much?’

‘Fifty pence a head. He’s coining it in, especially from all the dingbats. Apparently he had a research team of biophysicists from Bristol University, a coachload of Swedes. Plus there’s the media, who have to pay double. There was even two fellas who flew in from Wyoming with some weird contraption they’ve built out of bike parts and aerials to prove that it was all clearly the work of alien visitors. They’ve been there every day for weeks now and have got more colleagues flying in to join them. Oh yes. It was all over the news.’

‘Does the farmer give repeat visitors a discount?’

‘Not likely. He’s doubled down and is charging them to camp in the next field too. Free milk and butter, though, to be fair.’

Redbone laughs again, even louder and longer than before. For once Calvert does not tell him to keep quiet. They know that there is unlikely to be anyone around for half a mile or more in any direction. Not tonight. Tonight they might be cloud-drenched and dripping, but in this moment they are free from all thoughts of intrusion or interruption, past or future. They are in the present moment, living every second of the act of creation.

Not long after 4 a.m. they finish and trudge back to the van as the night drains away like dirty water, leaving them feeling as exposed as one who sits in an emptied bathtub.

‘Look,’ says Calvert, wincing slightly, ‘we’re soaked. You can stay at mine if you want.’

Redbone is taken aback by the offer. And though he appreciates the significance of the gesture, he also knows that he cannot accept it, for to do so would be to change the dynamic of an effective working relationship, and a friendship too, one based on discretion, space and mutual understanding. A friendship based on things largely left unseen and unsaid. He also knows that Calvert will almost certainly not make the offer again.

‘I’m alright, thanks.’

‘It’s somewhere to get dry.’

‘It’s fine, Ivan,’ says Redbone. ‘There’s a hot day forecast for the morrow. The sun will sort these clothes out. I thought I might go for a swim anyway.’

‘A swim? Where?’

‘I’m not sure. I quite fancied having a break from the dusty crops and the hum of the pylons and getting a bit of sea air in my lungs.’

Calvert grimaces at this. ‘The sea’s miles away.’

‘The sea’s never miles away in England.

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