Kelly saw herself in the mirror and thought she looked good. She knew she could look good given the right circumstances but she was never completely sure what the right circumstances were. Clean hair and enough sleep and the right amount of make-up had a lot to do with it but that wasn’t the whole story. Bad hair days and sleepless nights didn’t necessarily spoil the effect. Sometimes no make-up was good, sometimes a thick layer of slap got the job done. She felt she looked better now than she had done when she was younger. Her features had cleaned themselves up, become more defined. At twenty-five she’d looked better than at twenty, better at twenty than at sixteen. She’d never fetishized her own youth, though there had been others who had. But was she heading for some glorious late flowering, a perfect older woman, or had she already bloomed? Had there been a day, an hour when she could have gazed in the mirror and said, ‘I look my very best at this very moment. This is as good as I’m ever going to look. It was all leading up to this one moment and it’s all downhill from here.’? And if that was the case, when was that moment? How could it have passed unknown and unremarked?
When she arrived at the Phoenix Inn Dexter wasn’t ready to leave. He’d had a late night, drinking with the locals in the pub and now had a hangover. ‘If you won’t drink with me I have to find other people who will,’ he said.
She took him to Orford, to the Ness, a long spit of grassland running parallel to the coast. They took a ferry across in the company of keen birdwatchers and a few restless, late-season tourists who didn’t know quite what to expect. Dexter fell into this category.
‘I guess we’re not going across to see the wildlife, are we?’ he said.
But he already had a shrewd idea of what was attracting Kelly. Visible on the Ness through the soft blue haze of distance was a group of bizarre structures. They might have been sinister garden pavilions, though they were too big, ugly and industrial for that. They had a concrete base, with a number of pillars along the open sides supporting a flattened pagoda-style roof. They seemed both purposeful and inscrutable.
‘This land used to be closed off, some kind of military area,’ Kelly explained. ‘They told a lot of lies about what they got up to here. The story is they were just testing detonators. If the tests went wrong the pillars were supposed to collapse, blow out, and the concrete roof would drop down and keep a lid on the explosion. But I never really believed that.’
When they set foot on the land and walked round the structures, the story seemed even less probable. The wind whipped through the barren concrete pillars, long marsh grass swayed up to them like a tide.
‘Are we talking chemical warfare?’ Dexter asked.
‘Who knows?’ said Kelly. ‘I always thought these would be great places to have sex. You’ve get the sea air but there’d be something over your head so you didn’t feel too exposed.’
‘You don’t like to be exposed?’
‘No.’
But there would be no sex here today, not while the birdwatchers patrolled the area with their binoculars and zoom lenses. And if you weren’t a birdwatcher there was a limit to how long you could entertain yourself looking at enigmatic concrete. Kelly and Dexter were happy to return to the mainland.
‘Is it time for that drink?’ Dexter asked.
‘Yes, I suppose it probably is.’
Kelly didn’t like drinking in the middle of the day, hated that end of the afternoon feeling of not quite elation, not quite a hangover, but all the rules seemed to have changed over the last few days. She didn’t intend to drink too much, but if she did, then what the hell, they could always call a taxi.
They went to a pub she knew: old fashioned, exposed beams, painted plaster, a real open fire, though they hadn’t got around to lighting it yet. The place was almost empty, and it was cold. They were on their second drink when the door was hurled open and a drunken woman stumbled in. She was by herself and Kelly didn’t recognize her at first, but she made straight for Dexter and Kelly realized she was the plump, flashy woman who had been part of Peter’s group at the bungalow in Thorpeness. The woman apparently had fond memories of Dexter.
‘Hello, Dexter,’ she said grandly, then kissed him on the lips. ‘That black eye’s coming along nicely. Mind you, Pete’s got one even worse.’
Dexter smiled. He thought he was quite a rogue. ‘Hello, Jane,’ he said. ‘This is Jane. This is Kelly.’
They didn’t feel the need to say hello to each other. Jane sat down opposite Kelly and tapped into a rich stream of drunken consciousness about men, sex and alcohol. It flowed fast and unmediated until the need for the last of these things reasserted itself.
‘Let me buy you a drink,’ Dexter said.
‘Sure. Double rum and Coke.’
Dexter went to the bar leaving the two women alone.
‘Sorry if I’m spoiling your little lunchtime rendezvous,’ Jane said.
‘You don’t seem all that sorry.’
‘Actually I’m not. This is a pub, right? A public house, not private, and I’ve as much right to be here as you have. More right probably.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Yes, I do say so. And I’ve a right to sit at this table if I want to and I’ve a right toó’
Kelly feared she might be about to enumerate a full list of what she considered to be her rights.
‘Look, kid,’ said Kelly, ‘why not fuck off home and sober up? Or failing that why not just fuck off?’
If there’d been a drink in Jane’s hand, it would no doubt have found its way into Kelly’s face. As it was, Jane stood up empty-handed and looked as though she was about to burst into tears.
‘You’ve no reason to think you’re better than me,’ Jane said blearily.
‘Yes, I have,’ said Kelly.
She got to her feet too and Jane stepped back, thinking she was about to be attacked, but Kelly walked away towards the bar where Dexter was still waiting to be served. ‘Come on, Dexter, we’re going.’
‘Are we?’
He sounded confused, looked over at Jane who was now sitting lumpenly at their table, but that didn’t tell him anything.
‘Have we finished drinking?’ he asked.
‘I expect you’ll have another drink at some point in your life.’
‘Did you two have a fight?’
‘Yeah, we both desired your body so badly, Dexter.’
Reluctantly Dexter followed Kelly out of the pub. He was limping badly now, and Kelly saw more clearly than she ever had before just what a conveniently variable condition it was.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Are we driving somewhere?’ Dexter asked.
‘No. It’s near enough to walk, even for you.’
Kelly hurried along to the edge of the village, to a bridle path that went up behind the houses, between tall trees and rough hedges until it came to an ornate but rusted iron gateway. It was not locked and she pushed it open and stepped inside.
‘What is this?’ Dexter asked.
‘It’s a garden. Just a garden.’
They were standing on a track lined with unkempt bushes and undergrowth. It didn’t look much like a garden. There were no borders, no lawns, no signs of care or cultivation. It seemed more like a patch of neglected woodland. It wasn’t clear where the garden began or ended, and it was impossible to see the house to which it was attached.
‘Whose garden?’ Dexter asked, but Kelly only shrugged in reply.
She walked further along the track and Dexter followed, slowly becoming aware of odd things lurking in the untidy growth at either side of them. There were plaster heads staring up at them, broken columns made from painted wood. There were ivy-edged shards of broken mirror that caused uneasy glints and reflections, and peering from a swathe of ferns was a dragon made out of wire and plaster.
At the end of the path was a man-made archway, created by tying together the tops of two tall pine saplings. Vines and pieces of coloured cord had been strung from the curves of the arch and dangling from these tassels were shells, stones and old razor blades. They swung at a height that would hit a careless passer-by fully in the face, though Kelly ducked under them effortlessly and swept them aside for Dexter to pass.
They arrived in a circular clearing, about twenty feet across, various points of its radius marked by hefty white-painted rocks. These were irregularly shaped, and had been very carefully arranged, a job that would have required enormous effort and strength. Outside the circle, amid the trees, were taller piles of flattened stones placed one on top of another to form rough pinnacles and obelisks, and sitting on each pile, set in a messy little pool of cement was a different scrap object: a toy robot, a doll’s head, a car headlamp, a model of the Eiffel Tower, a Coke bottle with a plastic rose in it.
‘Is this art?’ Dexter asked.
‘Or is it just entertainment?’ Kelly countered, and she was walking away again, out of the stone circle down another path. On the left was a fir tree, tall, shapely, neatly symmetrical. Things had been hung on it, as though it was a decorated Christmas tree, but the decorations consisted of wheel trims, pastry cutters, rusted spanners, bare umbrella frames, tin cans with top and bottom removed. There was some movement in the air and the metallic detritus swung and scraped together in a series of thin, unmusical sounds.
Kelly looked back at Dexter and saw him smiling uneasily, trying his best to enjoy this incomprehensible little adventure but not quite succeeding. His discomfort didn’t displease her at all.
Up ahead something white was lying on the ground, something about the size and shape of a prone human figure; a very crude sculpture, not much more than a filled-in outline. But as they got closer they could see what had been used to make the sculpture – animal bones. There were thousands of them, some larger than others, but mostly very small; chicken and rabbit with a few sheep and cattle bones to create the main structure. They could also see that the figure was female. Two mounds of bones had been shaped into crude breasts, and between her legs where her pubic hair should have been was a clump of miniature roses.
Dexter reacted to a bad smell, something dead and decaying. He looked up into the branches of the trees above the bone figure and saw a dozen or more fox and squirrel carcasses hanging by their necks in little wire nooses. They were in various stages of decay, some very fresh, others reduced to a curl of ragged flesh on bare bones.
‘Who designed this place?’ Dexter asked. ‘Mistah Kurtz?’
Kelly laughed. She had been coming here a long time. She knew the owner of the garden, an old man called William, a village eccentric, a weird, old, hard-drinking, somewhat feeble-minded recluse who’d inherited the house and garden from his mother years earlier, and for as long as she could remember he had been doing strange and wonderful things with it. He’d started simply enough making wishing wells and miniature versions of Stonehenge, but there was no doubt that he was getting weirder as he got older. Naked female figures and rotting carcasses were a new development.
They walked on, through more of William’s handiwork: strange chairs made out of tree stumps and bed springs, privet bushes carved into jagged pieces of abstract topiary, a holly tree decked out with masks, strange bodies carved into the trunks of trees, branches painted to look like snakes and penises, with nails driven into them.
At last they came to what Kelly considered to be the end, the focal point of the garden; a temple of sorts. It had started life as an ordinary shed or summerhouse but was much transformed. The outside had been coated with plaster, and while it was still wet fragments of tile, coloured glass and plastic had been set in it. Not quite content with this effect, endless little fetish objects had been attached to the walls and roof: old radio speakers, toy cars, lampshades, hats, spent fireworks – arranged randomly yet evenly all over the surfaces.
There was no door on the hut but lengths of barbed wire had been looped around the frame and it was not an inviting entrance. The pelvic bone of a cow was hanging above the doorway and arranged in front of it to form a perverse welcome mat was a neat expanse of broken glass.
‘I’m not sure I like the look of this,’ said Dexter.
‘Oh come on, step inside the temple.’
She left him again and walked towards the doorway, striding swiftly over the broken glass and disappearing inside. Reluctantly Dexter followed. The inside was scarcely less strange than the outside though it was less cluttered. It had been thoroughly, meticulously lined with different types of fur, both real and fake. There were the pelts of rabbits and foxes, pieces of old fur coats, but also patches of lurid nylon car-seat covers in tiger- and pony-skin patterns.
‘Is this supposed to be a womb?’ said Dexter.
‘Or a vagina,’ Kelly replied.
Dexter took that as a signal. He moved close to Kelly and put his arms around her. She was surprised, though ready. She pressed herself against him and pushed her head back so her mouth was in place for him to kiss her. He was much stronger, more solid than she’d expected. She found herself flushing, her body feeling tense and liquid. She pulled her shirt out of her jeans so Dexter could reach up and touch her breasts, and after they’d kissed and fondled long enough her hand went down to his crotch, pressing and massaging, then she unzipped his fly and pulled out his penis. She was holding it fondly, working the skin back and forth when she heard an old man’s voice behind her say, ‘Hold it, hold it right there.’
The line was so unintentionally inappropriate that she couldn’t help giggling, but she did immediately let go of Dexter’s penis. Quickly but fumblingly he zipped up. Then, more slowly, they turned round and saw old William standing in the doorway. He was fiercely, dangerously drunk. In his hand was a shotgun, battered, rusty but quite possibly functional, and he raised it, eyeing Dexter and Kelly as though wondering which of them to use it on first. Although he was old, he was anything but frail. He had a heavy labourer’s build, a broad chest and thick forearms. He was angry, and although his drunkenness was making him loose and imprecise, that didn’t make him any less threatening.
‘It’s only me. It’s Kelly, you remember me.’
It was apparent that he didn’t, and even if he had it would probably have made no difference in his present condition. His kingdom had been invaded and he wanted to hand out punishment.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘We’re just admiring your garden,’ Kelly said.
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘It’s a really nice garden, William. You’ve shown me around it before. You told me to come back any time.’
William seemed to remember nothing, and his anger wasn’t abating.
‘We weren’t doing any harm,’ Kelly said.
‘You’re bloody trespassers,’ William said. ‘And mucky buggers as well.’
‘Not buggers,’ Kelly corrected.
‘I’m calling the police,’ William said. ‘They’ll sort you out.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ said Kelly. ‘Why don’t you go and call them. We’ll stay here. We’ll explain that we just wandered in by mistake.’
His face showed the workings of ponderous mental cogs and gears. Kelly’s words hadn’t had at all the effect she’d been hoping for.
‘Yeah. You’re right. Police’11 be no bloody help. I should sort this out myself,’ William said.
Kelly was still not really frightened. She assumed the cloud of anger would soon roll away and William would put down the shotgun and give her a good telling off as though she were a naughty schoolgirl. She might even have just pushed past him and run away, but Dexter’s presence complicated everything. Finding two people in your garden was a lot more threatening than finding one, especially if they were having sex, and Dexter could not have run even if he’d wanted to, but she discovered that running was not Dexter’s inclination at all.
William adjusted his grip on the shotgun, and Dexter chose that moment to act. He whipped his walking stick through a hard, flat arc and slammed the end with the crocodile against William’s fingers. The precision was startling. The shotgun fell to the ground. Dexter moved forwards, swung the cane again, this time into the old man’s face, causing him to yelp and grab his cheek. Then Dexter hit him in the belly, then across the side of the neck, then in the groin, and before Kelly could do or say anything, William was on the ground and Dexter was standing over him as though he seriously intended to crack the old man’s skull open.
‘Hold it, Dexter, hold it,’ Kelly shrieked.
She grabbed his arm to prevent him using the cane to do any more damage. Dexter struggled. He was raging, and it seemed possible that he might turn on Kelly and attack her too.
‘Jesus, Dexter. Please. Calm down. You’ll kill him.’
Dexter let his walking stick drop, but his rage was still on him. He took a couple of deep breaths before he said, ‘No old fuck with a shotgun is going to threaten me.’
Kelly stroked his arm as though trying to placate a dangerous hound.
‘Or threaten you,’ he added.
‘For God’s sake, Dexter, he’s just a crazy old man.’
‘An old fuck who slaughters squirrels and makes sculptures out of bones.’
Kelly wanted to think the best of Dexter. She wanted to put it down to cultural difference again. In America, if someone waved a shotgun at you he was probably a murderous psychopath. In England he was just a sad old man. But the savagery of Dexter’s response still shocked her.
‘It was another problem that needed fixing, so I fixed it, OK? Come on,’ said Dexter. Let’s get out of here.’
Kelly knelt over the old man to make sure he was all right. He was cowering, holding his arms round his head in anticipation of further punishment, but at least there was no blood, no evidence of permanent damage. She touched him gently.
‘I’m sorry, William,’ she said softly. ‘I hope you don’t remember too much of this when you sober up.’
She and Dexter left the ‘temple’ and hurried back the way they’d come.
‘Let’s go to your place and finish what we started,’ Dexter said.
‘You Americans amaze me,’ said Kelly. ‘You really do think sex and violence go together, don’t you?’
He looked at her so blankly she knew there was no point trying to explain. They spent the night alone in their separate beds.