‘Then walk faster. I do not like it in here one little bit.’ Her hand touched my shoulder with a slight shove. ‘Go,’ she said impatiently. She got round me okay. We must have reached the start of the bend because the light in the tunnel entrance had squeezed to a pale quarter moon.
Small rocks turned over as Kath charged on ahead. Once she stopped and called back, ‘Ray, are you still there?’
‘Still here,’ I said.
A moment later I heard her cry out. ‘Jesus. Ray, I’ve dropped my stick.’
She was on all fours. I couldn’t see her of course. But I could hear the light scuffing sound of her hands feeling around the loose rocks for her dropped stick.
I called ahead of me, into that darkness. ‘Okay. Don’t move. Just stay where you are. I’m coming, Kath. Keep talking to me.’
At the same time I began to wonder, what if a train was to come through now? It was a stupid time to wonder what we were doing here, and how it was we had arrived here at all. It was kind of a stupid moment to realise you did actually care for somebody else after all.
‘Kath,’ I said, pushing her name ahead of me.
‘I’m here, Ray.’
Thank god. She was ten metres or so ahead.
‘Kath. Make sure you are against the tunnel wall.’
‘I am, Ray. I’m kneeling on the side of the track, I think.’
I told her to keep calling to me. Finally, a voice almost underneath me called up, ‘I’m here, Ray.’ Her hands touched my knees. My thigh. My jacket. She climbed up me like this, until she had regained her feet.
‘Hold my hand, Kath.’ She took hold of my left hand. My right hand held the stick. It was pitch-black; the only sound was the stick end dragging against the wall.
‘I shouldn’t have rushed. I’m sorry, Ray.’
‘Shush,’ I said. ‘Listen.’
We could hear the sound of the stick against the wall. Behind us it was impossible to see, and so it was ahead, too, but I felt we must be at the curve, now, and that soon we would have something to aim for.
dogs
She wasn’t talking to him, and he wasn’t talking to her. It was over the dog again. Their own dog, Elgar, and the mutt across the road. Elgar and the dog in question were always sniffing each other’s butts. She was worried about the consequences. She thought Elgar and the other dog were totally unsuited to each other. Elgar was short, built low to the ground, a tail-wagger. The dog across the road stood on spindly legs and was known to be a depressive. His wife had gone on at length; at first it had been amusing, but then she got so over-the-top she wouldn’t let it alone, and so he had begged to differ. He had put it to her that breeding followed its own logic, that the laws of nature sorted everything out in the end. Why get wound up over nothing? The word ‘nothing’ seemed to have done it. She rounded on his laziness, his come-what-may attitude to everything in life. He dared to ask if she was premenstrual, and things went from bad to worse.
The dog looked miserable. It sat on its mat in the kitchen looking up at the two of them. It looked so sorry to have caused all this. For that matter, even the trees out the window looked sorry.
She had a way of making anger rise from her shoulders. Right now her shoulders were furious as she stood with her back to him, working at the bench. His own hands were deep in his pockets. Something needed to be said. Definitely something needed to be said. This was silly. He thought, I should really say something. I really should. And then: Why is it always me? Why was it always up to him to make the situation better? Besides, he could see how it would end up. It was boring even to think about. He would offer to talk to the neighbours about their dog. Then he would apologise for picking up the ball after she had told the dog in no uncertain terms that it was to leave the ball alone. The ball only got the dog excited. It would run around inside the house and in its excitement fart a lot. And they were expecting guests, and she didn’t want to see their faces suddenly tighten up and the tips of their prissy little noses dance around the odour in the hall where the dog had leapt farting in the air for the ball. So he would say he was sorry. Then what? She would sigh and lean her head back against his chest and she would say she was sorry too—she probably shouldn’t have used that tone. She knew he meant well. He loved the dog. The problem would turn out to be not the dog, but some shitty office stuff she’d brought home from work.
What he said in the end was that he would take the dog out for a walk. The time wasn’t right, he knew that: the guests were due to arrive any minute. But that was half the point: he didn’t care. Normally it would have provoked a cry of disbelief from his wife. ‘What do you mean? Joe and Cass are due here any minute. They’re bringing a house guest, someone or other. What do you mean …?’ But instead she said, ‘Go,’ because to maintain her staunch silence was marginally more satisfying than to remind him of his responsibility. ‘To our guests,’ she might have added. But she had said ‘go’ like she didn’t care if he was there or not. She didn’t even turn around. She snatched at the vegetable knife. As he backed out the front door with the dog on the lead he could hear the knife on the chopping board. Boy, was she pissed off. Good, he thought. He nodded down at the pavement. Good. Fuck her. Good—again, nodding at the house, and now inhaling the cool night. It felt good. It felt fantastically good.
The dog looked up at him with its moist, trusting eyes and he felt a surge of love for it. Well, he wasn’t missing anything, really, was he? The dog opened its mouth to release its tongue out the side of its gummy jaw. Sometimes a dog knew exactly what you were thinking. The dog dropped its eyes. It sniffed at the road ahead. It wagged its tail and walked with a skip in its step. He thought, I love this dog. (And: I have never really shown it enough love, the love that I really actually feel.)
His wife would be aerosoling the hallway and swinging the front door back and forth to let in the night air. Any minute now the guests would roll up. This was the time to turn around; if he did he’d probably make it back in time. But look at what was happening: he was walking in the other direction. There is, he thought, a certain momentum to following a dog with a wagging tail. He could imagine the scene at home. The guests in the lounge, exchanging glances and whispers. From the kitchen the false cheer of Gina’s voice. That in itself would be enough for the guests to put two and two together. Gina would roll in with a plate of filo pastries. Probably it would be as she lowered the plate onto the coffee table that she would let it out that they’d had a fight. ‘Bill’s got the pip. He’s gone off into the night somewhere …’ And that would be that. The funny thing is, having imagined this little scene, it was like it had already happened, and now there was no point in turning back. The only problem was staying out until the guests left.
It was cold—not too cold but cold enough that if he stopped walking the air would seep through his clothing and attack his bones.
They were by the edge of a small park. Elgar sometimes liked to crap on the grass there. Elgar stopped and raised his snout. He moved around on his short legs and stared intelligently into the dark, from which direction came a low growl. And Elgar leapt. The stupid mutt forgot he was on a lead. He seemed to fly forwards and backwards at the same time. Mid-air he wore a disgruntled look, a look of canine annoyance.
The other dog emerged from the shadows, walking around and sniffing the grass the way dogs do right before they lift a leg. It was a small, shaggy-haired Great Dane, if there is such a thing. One of those haphazardly crossed dogs Gina was worried about Elgar fathering.
Now he was aware of someone else there, at the edge of the dark, sitting on the bench.
A woman’s voice said, ‘Hello.’
‘Hi,’ he said back, and he was of half a mind to apologise because at night the world was a different place. People preferred to lay down some distance between themselves. The park was small to begin with. If it wasn’t for Elgar the woman would have cause for concern; she would have seen a man straying into her territory without reason. She probably would
have stood up and called her dog to her.
Instead she called Elgar to her and Elgar walked happily over. He sniffed her feet, her legs. The woman didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she laughed. She even allowed Elgar to lick her hands. She didn’t sound scared at all; if anything she was actually quite friendly. She asked about Elgar’s breed.
‘Elgar is a Jack Russell,’ he told her.
‘Elgar.’ The way she had said Elgar—it was with an accent. Even Elgar stopped what he was doing to look up at the woman. She gave a fluttery wave. ‘Hello, Elgar. How do you do?’ she said. Elgar stared back at her with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth. He was expecting food of course.
‘That’s a nice name. My dog, it is called Jess.’ The other dog looked up at hearing its name. It looked at the woman, and now at Bill. While Bill thought about what he could say next, the dog stared through him as if, Bill thought, it had just comprehended the moment at hand and seen right through it.
The woman moved to make space for him on the bench, and Bill made a shivery noise as he sat down.
Well, it was cold—that much was true. It was that slow, seeping cold. He stuck his hands in his pockets for warmth. The woman wore a ski jacket with a hood. She wriggled closer. He could feel the bulk of the ski jacket. He could feel the cold of the slats pushing up through his thin trousers. For the moment they watched the dogs. Elgar was sniffing Jess’s butt. Jess’s patient snout and Elgar’s wagging tail—it was as if they were the one dog. He had a terrible feeling about what was going to happen next; he knew Elgar’s moves. The scratching of his front paws. The darting excitement which now, sure enough, resulted in the appearance of his little pink dog prick. Jess moved away and Elgar skittishly caught up and placed his paws on Jess’s back.
The woman laughed. She raised her knee and crossed her legs. Now Jess rolled over onto her back. She dropped her front paws and looked over at the two strangers seated on the bench. Elgar looked as well. His ears pricked, his tail still wagging madly.
The woman said, ‘I like your dog. He’s cute. Aren’t you, Elgar?’ Elgar grinned back.
Bill thought he should probably get up from the bench and drag Elgar off. His little prick was showing eagerness. A year ago, after he’d pulled Elgar off a dog tied up to a bike-stand outside a dairy, Elgar had snapped his jaws on his wrist. ‘Come here, Elgar,’ he said now, and clicked his fingers. Besides, he was cold. It was too cold to sit around at this hour of night. He needed to get moving. It was still too early to go back to the house. The guests would have only just sat down to the main.
He was about to get up when the woman said it was unusual to see anyone out. She said she had brought the dog here at night all week and this was the first time she’d encountered another soul. This time he caught her accent. Polish, she said, when he asked. When she said Polish it had felt like an invitation to look deeper into her face, to perhaps ascertain a Polish look. Her skin was very pale but in a luminous way. Her eyes were bright. He tried to think what he knew of Poland. Gdansk. The name filtered up from the television news of a decade ago, men with moustaches, gathering in mist, fists raised. ‘Poland, really? And whereabouts in Poland?’ he asked. She replied with an unpronounceable name—somewhere he’d never heard of. He really didn’t know that much about Poland. He was on the brink of mentioning Zátopek but worried that he had that wrong, that the runner was Finnish, or maybe even Hungarian. It was a muddled part of the world. So he asked her the inevitable question: What she was doing here in this part of the world? In a park with a dog named Jess? She couldn’t have brought Jess from Poland. Once upon a time film actresses did that sort of thing, but no one who was serious in the world did that sort of thing anymore.
She said Jess belonged to the kind people she was staying with. She said she was here for a conference. What kind of conference? She smiled into the dark. This time he noticed her mouth, her lips more full than he had appreciated. Well, it was a special kind of conference. It was a conference for the physically disabled. Really? She didn’t look disabled. Maybe she was a spokesperson, maybe an academic? No, she said. She was disabled. As she said this she smiled and nodded at the ground. He could tell she was pleased at his surprise.
‘Really?’ he said, because it really was that kind of surprise. And in spite of himself, he couldn’t help making a quick inspection of her body and limbs. The woman didn’t notice or care. She was looking over at the dogs. Elgar was licking Jess’s private parts. Bill felt a heave in his gut. He was on the brink of calling Elgar off the other dog. First, he turned his head—he had the impression the woman wasn’t thinking anything like, This is disgusting. He had a good view of her face and nothing Elgar was doing seemed to have changed her opinion of him. She moved her leg next to his. She said, ‘Here, you may touch, please.’
Bill laid his hand on her thigh. She was wearing jeans.
‘Lower,’ she said, picking up his hand and now dropping it below the knee. ‘Harder.’ He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel. It just felt like a leg. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘make a fist please.’ She had to close his fingers for him. ‘Now knock on leg.’ He knocked and Jesus it was as hard as knocking on a door. She told him, ‘I lost both legs in a car accident.’ She explained what had happened. She wasn’t even driving. She was walking across a car park. That’s all she remembered—walking across a car park, and then waking up in hospital. Luckily there were witnesses and what they saw went like this. A ten-year-old kid left in the car by his mother jumped into the driver’s seat. He was fooling around with the ignition and playing with the gears and the next thing the car reversed at great speed. The car bumper caught the woman just below the knees and pinned her against a wall. The witnesses said the kid had no idea what he had done. He didn’t know he’d pinned a woman to the wall. He was just freaking out over the car taking off backwards. The car had gone as far as it could but the kid must have panicked because he kept his foot down on the accelerator, the wheels spinning. Jesus, he thought.
It occurred to him to ask her name.
She told him. She said her name meant ‘flower’. He told her it was a beautiful name. He wasn’t bullshitting. It was a beautiful name. Both its sound and its meaning. It was the most beautiful name he had ever heard. She laughed. No, really, he insisted. It’s beautiful. He had never sounded so sincere.
It was cold, though, and this time when he shivered she made the comment: ‘They said it would be spring and so I brought no winter clothes. I had to borrow this jacket. But there is no spring. Here the flowers appear and the trees bud but it is an ice sun.’
She moved closer until their sides pressed together, his leg against her. He said, ‘You’re right. It is bloody cold here.’
The woman took his hand and blew. She said he could have some of her Polish heat. Laughing, she blew into both hands. It was strangely erotic—ticklish, of course. Bill said he liked her heat, her Polish heat. She laughed at this as if he had told a joke. She said she was pleased to find someone out at night. He was pleased too. As pleased as she was, if not more so. It wasn’t every day that he met someone like her—someone from Poland whose name meant ‘flower’. In fact she was the first Pole he had ever met.
‘You are welcome,’ she said, in that foreign way of aping American politeness, which ordinarily was even more grating coming from foreigners.
He rubbed his hands together, even though he wasn’t really that cold anymore. Excited, but not really cold.
‘You are cold,’ she said.
‘Just a bit,’ he said. And with that she reached her arm behind him and pulled him into her side.
‘I am cold. It is so cold here,’ she said. ‘They said it would be spring … I expected warm …’
‘Are you cold?’
‘Yes, I think …’ She shivered for him. ‘Feel.’ She placed her face next to his, cheek to cheek. Her face was shiny with cold.
They laughed and as they turned their faces in towards each other they kissed. It took him by su
rprise but only for a fraction of a moment. He wasn’t expecting to kiss her, but now that he was—or they were—it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world. His first Polish kiss. She kissed hungrily, and when they broke away he was pleased to hear her breathe excitedly. She tore at the zipper on her ski jacket. He reached inside to all that warm clothing and found her breast, her Polish breast. He felt her smiling Polish cheek against his own. Once more they turned to kiss.
The next time they broke off—to breathe—Bill noticed the dogs. Elgar’s prick was out. Crudely pink and practically trembling with its own little urgency. His own prick was trying to break out of his trousers. The Polish woman whatshername ‘flower’ had her hand there. Now she took his hand all very daintily and placed it over her crotch.
Here, she told him. Take these things off. He had to stand up to pull off her jeans. Well, he had to take off her shoes. He got those off, peeled off the jeans. He had started on the stockings when she told him not to bother. The stockings came with the lower legs. She told him to take off her legs. He hadn’t ever thought about a thing like this before. He imagined they would unscrew at the knees. He didn’t want to ask but he thought they probably would come off clockwise, though in Europe these things sometimes worked in reverse, like light switches, and hot- and cold-water taps. Anyway, it wasn’t like unscrewing legs off a table. It was nothing like what he expected. The moulded parts fitted over the leg ends like capped teeth. He had to help her with the strappings.
It was much easier than he would have imagined, had he at any point previously—say while travelling alone in a bus through the night—stopped to think what it would be like to remove a woman’s legs. He unstrapped the left leg. He placed it next to the other stump on the bench where he had sat. It was funny how much he knew, how much of it seemed to come naturally to him, this practical side of making love to a legless woman. The logistics—for example picking her up in his arms and seating himself in the same place she had sat, balancing her on his thighs while she undid his belt. He wriggled out of his trousers and underpants and raised her. Clearly she was practised at the rest. It was a great fuck. If anything it was helped by the fact she didn’t have those legs. The weight of the Polish woman was more centrally condensed. He had to provide most of the movement but that was okay. She came. Then he came. She slumped forward and over his shoulder. He saw that the dogs were still fucking. Elgar looked up, and he felt embarrassed to have his own dick out in front of Elgar. Elgar calmly dismounted Jess and walked over to sniff some grass and gaze up at the dark treetops. Elgar was in one of his quiet, contemplative moments. An intelligent calm settled between his snout and his eyes. Whereas the Polish woman’s dog ran around in small excited circles. Elgar ignored her. He sat patiently, ready to move on.