No sooner had I turned away from the house with the intention of setting off down the drive than I caught sight of the figure of Toby advancing from a right angle across the gravel. He was striding from between the hedgerows, naked to the waist, his hair unkempt, stray wands of straw clinging to his jeans. I froze in my tracks at this vision, which had aroused in me an immediate feeling of panic.
‘Hal-lo!’ he cried, waving one hand while the other clutched his shirt. He was extremely red from the sun, the burnish of activity rather than the perilous scarlet of sunburn, and a varnish of sweat glinted across the tantalizing geography of his chest. I deduced that he had just come from his work in the top field: the labour, I felt, suited him far better than his customarily sybaritic demeanour. His face wore an almost joyous expression, although it struck me that it was perhaps in the novelty rather than the virtue of manual work that he had found pleasure. He drew close, grinning and panting; at which his physical presence became so overwhelming and pointed that it took on a distinct embodiment, as if a third person were with us whom it would be impolite, or at least strange, not to acknowledge.
‘The sun always makes me horny,’ he said presently, grinning wider still. ‘Doesn’t it you?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said bravely, after a pause. The words, or at least the sentiment with which they concurred, were unsuited to my voice. So clearly did they mark me out as an impostor in the region of sexual banter that I was certain Toby would expel me from it with a scornful laugh; but he merely stretched luxuriantly, showing me the bearded nooks of his armpits.
‘Off for a walk?’ he said, stroking his flat belly. I had a curious sensation as I watched his hands touch his own glandless flesh, the sense of some void or lack.
‘Yes.’
‘Very energetic of you, I must say, I was just going to wallow in the pool for a bit. I’ve been sweating like a pig all morning.’ He surveyed me idly. I wondered if he was going to invite me to wallow with him; but then his attention sauntered away. ‘How do I look?’ he said, flexing one arm and then the other and looking down at himself. ‘I’m turning into a bit of a hunk, don’t you think? It’s the equivalent of spending all day weightlifting. And you get far browner moving around than you do just lying there.’ He ran his fingers over the skin of his arm and peered closely at it, rapt in the science of his own vanity. ‘You’ve gone quite a nice colour,’ he added, extending his investigations to me. He held out his forearm, crooked at the elbow, as if offering to partner me in a dance. ‘Let’s have a look. Yes,’ he concluded, when I placed my arm beside his own, ‘you see, you probably won’t get much darker than that because you’re fair-skinned. I’m lucky, I go really black.’
‘Apparently it ages you terribly,’ I unkindly remarked. ‘It can also give you cancer.’
‘Oh, you don’t believe that, do you? People who say that sort of thing just want to stop everyone else from having fun. I didn’t have you down as a killjoy, Stella,’ he added reproachfully.
‘I’m not,’ I said quickly, wounded by his judgement. ‘Apparently it’s true.’
‘Appawently it’s twoo!’ he mocked. ‘Don’t tell me’ – he opened his eyes wide and looked exaggeratedly over his shoulder – ‘don’t tell me, it’s all a conspiracy.’
‘No, I—’
‘Oh God, they’re all out to get me! They’re following me! Help!’
He stopped and doubled over, incapacitated by laughter. Watching him I had a feeling of despondency which made me want to get away from him. Even his physical beauty seemed all at once remote and unsatisfactory. It was a mere spectacle, and one I was weary of watching.
‘I’d better go,’ I said.
Toby abruptly stopped laughing.
‘Enjoy.’ He shrugged disdainfully. ‘Rather you than me.’
I turned and began to walk away from him down the drive, my posture awkward with the thought that he might be watching me. Before I had got very far, a shout caused my shoulders to stiffen.
‘Cheer up!’ he cried from behind me. ‘It might never happen!’
The walk to the village seemed even more arduous than usual. My irritation with Toby had set my heart pounding, so that it seemed to thump in unison with the angry bang of the sun against the sky. Several times I forgot entirely why it was that I was going to the village at all, and as my motivation wavered my steps frequently slowed to a trudge. My promise to visit the creature was by turns oppressive and insubstantial. I wished that I had not made it; and yet I had a small, worrying consciousness of what it would signify were I to renege. To turn around and return to Franchise Farm would have been a form of submission to the Maddens; although what precisely would have been relinquished by doing so was not clear to me.
‘Hello, dear,’ said the creature, emerging from the back room just as I staggered in from the street, inadvertently slamming the door so that the bell gave a wild shrill. ‘You look all in. You shouldn’t go hiking about in this heat without a hat and water. You wouldn’t catch a rambler gallivanting in that fashion. What’s wrong with your back?’
‘I fell down the stairs,’ I panted, leaning sideways against the post office counter and clutching at my spine.
‘They’re not taking very good care of you, are they? You won’t last the week at this rate.’
‘It’s not their fault.’
‘Touchy on that subject, are we? At any rate you should mind how you go. You’ve got to be a bit more careful in the country than you do in town. Got to watch yourself. Can’t just go running about as you please and then catch the bus home.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Let’s have a look at that back, then.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘That’s as maybe, although I don’t see how you’d know. A back’s a tricky thing. You may have chipped a bone, but it’s unlikely you’d have got here if you had. Probably just a bit of bruising, for which I have the very thing.’
The creature shuffled across to the door to the back room and held it open commandingly. Obediently I headed down the gloomy corridor, its strong and now familiar smell confusingly assailing me like a memory, and waited at the end while the creature switched on the light.
‘Let’s have that shirt up,’ it said matter-of-factly, crossing the room – which was exactly as I had last seen it, although now it looked shabbier and more pitiful somehow – and opening the cupboard. I took the opportunity of looking more closely at the newspaper clipping by the door which had caught my eye during my last visit. There was the blurred picture of Pamela, with the words ‘Lovers’ tiff behind farm attack, say police’ above. Beneath it was written the following:
The apparently motiveless attack on a local farm, which left several farm buildings and expensive machinery badly damaged, and which is thought to have resulted in a serious fire in one of the barns, may not have been the work of hooligans as was previously thought, Sussex police said last night. Franchise Farm, near Hilltop, was vandalized late on Monday night, in a devastating attack not discovered until the following morning when the farm manager, Mr George Trimmer, arrived for work.
‘Them’s snuck in, the b****s,’ Mr Trimmer told the Buckley Enquirer. ‘Must’ve greased their shoes. Never heard a dickey-bird over the big house.’
Police spent several hours at the scene, where damage included extensive graffiti, much of it reportedly obscene, spray-painted on walls, in the hope of finding some trace of the perpetrators, but by Monday night could not even confirm whether the attack had involved more than one person. On Tuesday, however, a telephone call to Buckley police station shed some light on the mystery. The caller, whom police have refused to name, alleged that the attack had been carried out by a spurned lover of the farmer’s wife, Mrs Pamela Madden.
‘It did seem to make sense,’ said one officer, who asked not to be named. ‘Many of the expletives were aimed at a specifically female target. It was pretty strong stuff, and all. I had to ask my teenaged son what some of it meant!’
Mrs Madden, who has lived at Franchise Farm all her life and has four children – the youngest of whom, a six-year-old boy, is disabled – refused to comment on the incident and is reportedly very distressed. Police confirmed that they had brought in a man for questioning, but would not comment on speculations that the man was the father of Mrs Madden’s youngest son, nor give any clue as to his identity.
‘Ancient history,’ said the creature, who was by now standing directly behind me. ‘They had to let him go in the end. She didn’t want to press charges.’
‘But was it true?’ I said sadly.
‘More or less. Not that I’d want to pay that old rag the compliment of saying so. Pack of scandalmongers, if you ask me. It’s the only time I’ve ever felt sorry for Mrs Snooty-Drawers. I dare say she could be forgiven for liking a bit of the rough stuff. But if you play the game like she used to, you can expect some trouble.’
‘Used to?’
‘Oh, she’s good as gold these days. Reformed character, from what I hear. The cripple put paid to all that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Retribution, dear. Thought she was being punished for her sins. Not that God came into it, as far as I can see. People like Pam, they like to think they’re lucky, do you follow me? Oh, they may act like they were born to it and all that, but deep down they’re frightened. They’ve got less freedom than you and me. Because if things go wrong for them, they’ve got nothing to blame it on. They just put up and shut up. They’ve got nowhere to go, see? No flexibility. So when little Pam saw it coming down, she changed her story, turned misfortune to her advantage. These days everyone thinks she’s a saint. Isn’t it marvellous the way she looks after that boy herself instead of putting him in a home. Course she never lifts a finger. That’s what you’re for. Clever.’ The creature tapped the side of its head. ‘You couldn’t accuse her husband of that, mind you. He should have made tracks. You can’t forgive a betrayal like that, not really. It eats you up inside, turns you funny in the head. She made a laughing stock of him. But he’s just the same, see? Nowhere to go, nothing without his money and his house and his privilege. So he just shuts it out like they all do, pretends nothing’s happened. It’s heart cancer, dear. A very middle-class disease.’
‘So why do you attack him?’ I cried. ‘He’s got enough problems as it is! He doesn’t do it deliberately – he thinks people are after him. That’s why he sabotages the footpaths. Mr Trimmer told me. It isn’t because he’s malicious. The whole business with Geoff only happened because he must have run over one of the trip-wires.’
‘Geoff died an honourable death.’ The creature paused and looked sombrely at the ceiling. ‘Why he does it isn’t my concern. Adolf Hitler might be after him for all I care. The point is that innocent people are in danger.’
‘But he’s obviously not well!’
‘In that case he should be put in an institution. But people like that, you see, they don’t get put away, do they? They’re above the law. Let’s see what’s under that shirt, dear. Lean on the table there. That’s it. No, he’s a danger to himself as much as anything. Should never have married that flibbertigibbet. There’s a piece of advice for you. Never marry someone you can’t be sure of hanging on to. You’ll end up thinking the whole world wants to take her away from you. Especially if she’s got the money. How does that feel?’
‘Much better,’ I said, surprised. I had barely felt the creature’s fingers on my skin, but a luxurious heat was beginning to penetrate the tender bruises.
‘You’ll find it’ll heal up nicely in no time. You watch yourself in future. You only get one body. And there’s not much of yours, at that. Are they feeding you?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’ll have your heart and soul as well if you don’t mind out. That’s the way they are. I see that young Casanova’s already circling. He didn’t waste his time getting down here to have a look at you.’
‘Toby?’
‘The very same. He’s another one. If he’d been born where he deserved to be, he’d have been locked up by now. You keep away from him, my girl.’
‘And where have you been all your life? He only got the last one pregnant, didn’t he? Got her up the spout and got her the sack. She was a silly enough little thing, but nobody deserves that kind of luck.’
‘He’s not interested in me.’
‘He’s interested in anything he can shag, if you’ll pardon my French, dear. You keep your knickers on. Off you go now. I’ve got business to attend to.’
The creature opened the door and stood beside it.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And please don’t be too hard on Mr Madden. He’s nice really.’
‘You’re a soft touch, aren’t you? We’ll see. I’ve been thinking of getting out of rambling anyway, diversifying a bit. There’s interesting things going on in bloodsports at the moment. Take care of yourself.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Toodle-pip!’
That evening over dinner, Pamela announced that she and Martin would be away the following day.
‘We’ve been summoned to visit Aunt Lilian in Oxford tomorrow, Stella, so you’ll be pretty much at liberty for most of the day.’
‘Do we have to?’ whined Martin.
‘Yes, we bloody well do. The old girl’s on her last legs, and if we’re to stand a chance of getting anything out of her then we’re going to have to sit there and smile if it kills us. Come to think of it, Toby, it wouldn’t hurt you to come along too. Can you spare him tomorrow, darling?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Madden firmly.
‘We should be back by teatime, Stella, so if you could give me a hand with tomorrow evening then I reckon we’ll have just about settled the score.’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Actually, I could use a bit of extra cash at the moment,’ interjected Toby. ‘Can’t we just slip something into her tea and speed things up?’
‘That’s awful!’ shrieked Pamela delightedly. ‘Aunt Lilian,’ she added, addressing me, ‘is a very perverse old lady. She’s got pots of money, which she’s always threatening to leave to some dreadful organization – what is it again?’
‘The Animal Liberation Front,’ said Martin.
‘That’s right. So we all have to go rushing up there once or twice a year to try and talk her out of it. I think she does it to get attention. She probably thinks we’d never visit her otherwise.’
‘We wouldn’t,’ said Martin.
‘I suppose it’s rather sad really,’ sighed Pamela. ‘She never married, so we’re all she’s got. She’s had quite a lonely life. She adores the children, of course, but they were always rather frightened of her.’
‘She’s a crone,’ said Martin. ‘She’s got these scaly hands and when she pinches your cheeks her nails dig into your skin.’
‘Little boy!’ cackled Toby, leaning across the table and pinching Martin’s cheeks so violently that his head flew backwards and forwards. ‘Come here, little boy!’
‘Get off!’ shouted Martin, pushing him away. His cheeks were scarlet where Toby’s fingers had been. ‘Just fuck off!’
‘Enough of that,’ pronounced Mr Madden from the other end of the table, without looking up. He was examining his hands intently and his face was dark.
‘I’m simply longing for tomorrow evening!’ said Pamela brightly. ‘It’ll be the first time we’ve all been together as a family since – since when?’
She looked wonderingly about the table.
‘Since the last time,’ said Martin morosely.