Rottenhouse (12 page)

The wind blew Lucy’s hair across her
face and she swept it back with her hand. Her eyes looked at Simon
like her fathers had done the night before and like they had done
when they fucked the night before. He could see she wanted to say
something, it was on the tip of her tongue and her chest heaved in
and out and her throat rose and fell as she attempted to get it
out. His gut dropped about thirty feet as he realised that what
Stevie had done might not have been done to Mr Rowling. It might
have been done to her.

He lowered his voice, ‘Please tell me.
If it’s bad I’m sure…’

‘
Stevie called him
Bob.’

‘
I’m sorry,
what?’

‘
Called him
Bob.’

Simon fell to the floor laughing,
hitting the stone and gravel path hard making him freeze for a
brief moment and then continued laughing at the sheer madness of it
all. His laughter echoed around the valley and it filled the green
and pleasant land with the sound akin to a bunch of loonies in a
room bustling with balloons and clowns.

5

‘
What’s so funny?’
Lucy asked, raising her own voice over his seemingly uncontrollable
laughter.

‘
What’s…so…funny?
What’s so funny? My God Lucy, that’s all the guy did? That’s it?’
Simon tried to contain his laughter seeing that the
String
was about to pop
but he couldn’t help it. Of all the things a man could do to
another man, of all the things men
have
done to each other over the many
years poor old Stevie was torn a new one just because he used
someone’s first name. Another bout of laughter boomed from his
throat and that seemed to be the stick that broke the camel’s
back.

‘
You know what, Simon;
you can be a real dick sometimes.’ And she stood up and brushed the
dust from the arse of her shorts. ‘I told you it’s a different
world up here. There are rules and that lad broke one of them. You
may not understand, you may not like it but hey.’ She stopped then
for a moment, her eyes far off, and Simon could see that computer
generated egg timer ticking over as her brain thought of the words
to say. ‘That’s the way it is. If you want to marry us, then you
will have to live with it.’

Simon stopped laughing and his throat
seemed to close in on itself. He thought for a brief moment that he
was being strangled by his own muffled laugher as it crawled back
down his throat. Finally he managed to breathe.

‘
Marry us! What the
hell does that mean?’

She looked flustered now. Her face
turning a hot red – she didn’t make mistakes, especially during
arguments, and that darned egg timer appeared again in the dark
recesses of her eyes.

‘
Marry me, I meant.
You know what I meant, stop being a fucking arsehole.’ She lowered
her voice now to something a little more reasonable. ‘I love you
Si, I really do. These last years have been amazing and I want to
spend the rest of my life with you. I know things can be weird up
here, really weird, trust me;
I
know, it’s why I left. But you
have
to realise that this isn’t
Guildford, Si, this isn’t London. This is where I was born, this is
my past and down there is my dad and he reached out to me as much
as I reached out to him. Don’t forget, he lost his wife and his
daughter, Si, and that must change a man. Now he wants one of them
back and I am willing to put in the time to make that
happen.’

Simon sighed. What she was saying was
true, he supposed, but still, there were a few points he needed to
get over. He couldn’t just go with the flow, especially now that
the rest of his life was dependant on the next few days. He stood
so that she was no longer talking down to him and him up to
her.

‘
I get that. I do. I
can’t imagine what it must be like to lose your wife and daughter.
The thought of losing you makes me want to be sick. I just thought
things would be different I suppose. You guys have barely talked;
you’ve spent no time together. I thought it would be all hugs and
long talks and stuff and I would be like a fifth wheel for most of
the time. I feel if I were to ask him right now for permission to
marry you he would laugh in my face and call in the Chairman with
his large truncheon.’

Lucy smirked and then realising how
that must have sounded Simon chuckled. He moved in close to her and
the two of them shared a brief cuddle.

‘
I guess I thought it
would be a bit different too,’ Lucy said as she removed herself
from the embrace, ‘But he isn’t that type, yaknow. He doesn’t
really do that kind of thing I guess.’

Simon nodded.

‘
Give him another day
or two. That should get him used to having company again and maybe
then I shall speak with him. Don’t worry, Sausage, by week’s end it
will all be alright and I am sure that you won’t have to have the
old Chairman’s truncheon waved in yer face.’

Simon lent down and picked up his
camera and the backpack whilst Lucy looked at her watch. She looked
tired but content. Up here, in the clear air with the wind whipping
around she looked more beautiful than she had ever done before.
Simon could no more understand the rhyme or reason of why she was
with him than he could understand the fundamental laws of quantum
mechanics. But maybe that was the problem, there was no problem,
but sometimes we can’t see ourselves for what we really are.
Sometimes it isn’t about the looks; it isn’t about what we wear,
and from what circles we climb. Occasionally, like with Simon and
Lucy, it came down to two people that met, fell for each other, and
now want to make that bond eternal. Love is blind and all that.

Simon had endured many obstacles in his
life. What was one more?

‘
Do you mind if I head
back.’ Lucy said, ‘You can’t really get lost up here, and the house
you can always see. Especially with Big Boy.’

Simon shook his head and put on the
backpack. ‘Nah, it’s cool. I shall only be out for another hour or
two anyway. Be careful.’

The two kissed and just as she was
about to head off Simon added, ‘The sex, last night. Were
you…okay?’

She turned and looked at him, the sun
glistened off the stream in the background and up above them a crow
cried out.

‘
Dunno. Don’t remember
much. Twas I not to your liking, sir?’ She curtsied, pretending to
outstretch her invisible dress.

There she goes
Simon thought,
there you
go, dodging the subject with a joke. Usually it’s a counter
argument, isn’t it, but I’m guessing the air has you all a
fluster.

‘
You weren’t your
usual self, is all. Bit;
lay there and
take it for England
, that’s
all.’

‘
Must have been more
tired than I thought. I’ll make it up to you I’m sure.’ With that
she turned away with a wave.

And that’s that I guess. Conversation
over…

‘
Simon!’

He turned and saw that Lucy was stood
there; her light blue vest top hitched up revealing her pert
breasts in the summer sun. She had a massive grin on her face, her
eyes wide with enjoyment and glee as she bobbled up and down so
that her tits moved in time with her.

Simon laughed and grabbed his
camera.

‘
Fuck off!’ she yelled
and as quick as she had got them out they were put away again and
she was headed off back down the valley laughing as she
went.

6

Twenty minutes later, as Simon was
trying desperately to capture the right angle of a gnarled old
tree, there came a blood curdling scream from down in the valley.
He ran to where he and Lucy had been and looked down to the valley
floor. He couldn’t see much, the sun was bright today and a haze
was all around him. He narrowed his eyes and knew; even though the
person that was down there could have been anyone, that it was
Lucy.

Another scream came, a scream he knew,
he recognised, and this set him into a death defying run down the
valley slope. Skidding down the hill Simon leapt the wall like a
hurdler making sure to hold his camera tight so that it didn’t bash
his teeth out. Big Boy jumped about in his back pack and he could
feel it digging into his spine. The straps of his bag dug into his
skin under his arms and the weight of it threatened to topple him
over onto his arse. The closer he got, the steeper the slope seemed
to get and he was sure that there wasn’t so many rocks and rabbit
holes to contend with on the way up. And when the ground began to
level out and the small wooden bridge could be seen he saw that
Lucy was stood next to the stream but looking away from it and
facing him but her eyes were closed and her hands were covering her
mouth and her hair was blowing wistfully in the breeze.

7

A few meters from Lucy he slowed to a
jog. His heart was pounding its way out of his rib cage and his
legs burnt. Whatever had made her scream he couldn’t see, it was
hidden behind a tangle of bush and river grass that poked up from
the edges of the stream like old man’s hair.

‘
Lucy? You okay?’
Simon said breathlessly

She shook her head keeping her hands
over her mouth and her eyes closed. He could see her chest heave in
and out in, much like a woman in childbirth was trained to do.

Simon was closer now, his heart still
raced like a thundering train. He could hear the stream as it
careened through tiny rapids. But there was something else in
there, a bigger obstacle that was throwing up splashes of crystal
clear water into the air and over the bank.

‘
What it is?’ Simon
was close now and was just about to take hold of Lucy but she stood
away from him, turned and threw up; her sick flowing onto the crisp
green grass like a spilt paint tin. ‘Fuck.’

Lucy continued to throw up as Simon
took off his backpack and placed his camera on top. He walked over
to her and now that she was knelt down; her hands on her knees,
Simon held back her soft but sweaty hair as she brought up what
remained of her breakfast. Simon held her hair back and stroked her
bony back for a few minutes, looking occasionally over his
shoulder, until Lucy seemed as though she was done.

‘
Aww Christ,’ she said
spitting out a wad of brown phlegm.

‘
Salright, Luce,
salright.’ Simon let go of her hair and rubbed her back one more
time before standing.

Lucy coughed, seemed as though more
sick would come up, and then wiped her mouth with a tissue she had
taken from her shorts. Still hunched over and with a hand on her
head she used the other to point to the stream. It looked like she
went to say something and her mouth opened a couple of times but no
words came out.

Simon patted her on the back. ‘There’s
water in the bag.’ Said distantly as he walked over to the edge of
the stream. His heart picked up pace again, blood pooling in his
ears, heating them up and his hands were sweaty. The memory of when
he was a boy and had found a dead tramp in a back alley came to
him; how he had felt scared, sick, but at the same time excited
that he had seen death and not ran away like the rest of his pals.
Still he couldn’t see what was in the water and what was causing
the splashes of water to venture high up into the air.

Now that he was closer the water
splashed onto his shoes and he could feel the coldness seep through
the fabric, through his socks, and touch his skin.

The smell coming from behind the bright
green grass and tangle bush intensified the memory of the dead
tramp in the back alley. It had been stinky, really stinky, like
age old meat left in the sun for too long. The tramp hadn’t left
its mortal coil for long, perhaps two days Simon had been told, and
so wasn’t in the gloopy stage yet, but still the smell that had
oozed from it and flowed up Simons nose like a thick putrid
milkshake had, and still was, the most disgusting thing he had ever
smelt. Simon’s thoughts then turned to the splashing he had heard
the night before. The footsteps that he had heard on the road
outside of the house and then the sounds of the animal as it
trundled across the bracken and fallen twigs and then splashed into
the stream in search of a drink.

Dead animal. That’s all this is.
Probably half eaten by wolves or some shit like that

8

Craning his neck so to see whatever
dead animal it was that was lying in the river his stomach churned
and his throat became a nursery of sick as the lifeless left eye of
Stevie Johnson stared right back at him.

9

Simon took a step back in shock, ‘Aww
jeez.’

There was a soft whistle as the wind
whipped up from the stream and through the rushes across from the
body. He went to say something, felt his guts ripple, decided not
too and took a step forward. He thought his own breakfast was about
to come hurtling up the one way express backwards but it stayed
down and he took some careful breaths, much like he did when there
had been about seven pints of Peroni piled down his throat. The
water lapped over Stevie’s corpse. As it flowed over him the water
was tarnished with blood which dissipated further downstream. His
legs and feet were completely submerged whilst the rest of him
poked out of the water like a stick in a pile of mud. His body was
twisted round as if startled by some silent whisper and it looked
as if the current of the stream, strong after yesterday’s rain, had
dragged him some twenty meters from where he had entered.