Cold Fusion (14 page)

But right now I wanted to chop something in half. I made a notch, and the saw’s teeth found a bite. That was better. I braced one hand on the log and got to work. As soon as my back began to ache, I laid Alan Frost down on the sawhorse in place of the log, and that gave me a fresh burst of energy. Once I’d beheaded him, I let him morph into my father, and then for some reason my poor aunt Lil herself, and then…

Just before I’d got around to slaying Viv in effigy, the back door creaked open to reveal the man himself, shining a torch beam out through the snow. “Mallory?”

I stopped at the end of one vicious slice, panting, muscles popping up and down my arm. “Here. Where the hell have you been?”

“You asked me to look for resources. I think I may have found some.”

I followed him back into the house, knocking snow off my boots. A low door in the hallway stood open. Politely Viv stood aside for me, directing the light down the short flight of stairs that had appeared. Cautiously I made my way down them, steadying myself on the whitewashed wooden panelling on either side. A smell of clean, cold earth engulfed me, sparking memories.

“I’d forgotten this,” I called back to Viv. “Is there anything left down here?”

“Have a look.”

The torch beam caught a ruby glow. Viv followed me down the stone steps, directing the light around the walls of a square space dug into the hill behind the house, about six by six and lined with shelves.

“Aunt Lil’s cellar,” I said, looking around me in wonder. “Bloody hell. I think she was expecting a nuclear strike any day. Look, we’ve got soup, tinned sausages, beans…” I ran my hand along one shelf containing nothing but canned sardines and tuna, the labels all turned precisely face front. “Pretty much tinned everything. We could hold out for months.”

“Will it still be safe to eat?”

“As long as the tins aren’t pierced or bulging. Don’t believe those best-before dates. My Peace Warrior crew once occupied an old fallout shelter during a demonstration, and we ate pretty well from the stores.”

Viv reached over my shoulder to adjust a tin I’d knocked half a degree out of line. “Your aunt seems to have been a sensible woman.”

“She’d definitely have liked you.” I resisted the urge to knock the tin back, and continued my inspection. The rich gleam that had caught my eye was one of a dozen glass jars, all of them tagged in an uncompromising block-print hand. “Look at this. She made jam out of the blackberries and wild raspberries that grow around here. She used to send me out to pick them.” I took one of the jars down and turned it over in the torchlight. “A pity we can’t touch any of this. The seal looks good, but even the best-preserved fruit won’t keep for more than a couple of years.”

“There’s plenty of wood, though.”

“Yeah, but I’ll have to get it chopped down to fit the range before we can—”

“No, right here. Look.”

He lifted a strip of canvas that concealed the bottom shelf along the cellar’s back wall. I sent up a fervent prayer to the soul of my wilderness aunt. All along the wall were beautiful pine pieces, chopped and stacked and dry as a bone. “Oh, man. Aunt Lilian, we love you. Here, Viv—help me fill this basket, and I’ll see if I can get the stove going. At the very least we’ll have a fire.”

He’d been serious about offering to do as he was told. He set down the torch and moved like an elegant robot, reaching to pick out the fragrant chunks of wood and fit them into the double-handed pannier, ready to be taken upstairs. I was so busy choosing bits for kindling, and planning what combination of tinned veg and sausage we’d have for supper in due course, that I just let him get on with it. Then his hands brushed mine over the basket, and I drew in a short breath. “Shit. I forgot about your burns.”

So had he. I saw that in the way he glanced at his reddened palms, the disorientation and surprise. “It’s all right,” he said. “As soon as I felt better down at Loch Dubh, I…must have put the pain back into a box.”

“Well, there’s some excuse for you.” I had a box of my own, it seemed, although it wasn’t as benign as his. When I wanted to be angry, I chucked everything in that wasn’t convenient, including my concerns for Viv’s welfare. I’d happily slammed down the lid. “A couple of your blisters have burst. You won’t be able to put a case of septicaemia into a bloody box, mate, so never mind those logs. Leave everything and come with me.”

Back in the kitchen, I saw at once why he’d taken so long to come and find me. The two wind-up lanterns I’d bought were set out, shedding their pale glow from exact positions at opposite ends of the table. He’d not only brought everything in from the car—he’d unwrapped it, flattened out the packaging, rolled up the plastic bags into a neat cylinder and found a proper home for every item. The dried food I’d bought was arranged by order of packet size on a shelf by the range. A glance into Lilian’s bedroom told me that our bedrolls had been laid out chastely on either side of the room, and one set each of the dreadful orange thermals folded on top.

“Bloody hell,” I said. “You don’t waste much time.”

“I like it here. I want to feel settled in.”

“I should think by morning you’ll feel snowed in. Where have you hidden the first-aid kit?”

“In the bathroom, of course.”

Of course. I went through and retrieved it from the cabinet, then pointed him towards one kitchen chair while I pulled the other round to sit facing him.

“Hands out,” I ordered, and he turned them palm upward for me. He sat unflinching while I cleaned out the blisters, but shot me a quick, unsettled look when I began to apply the burn gel. I understood the problem straightaway. It was hard not be tender with him. Nevertheless I altered my caressing motions to a more clinical touch and got the job done as fast as I could, following up with a light bandage around each hand. “There. Is that better?”

“Much. Is it the light in here, or do you have a black eye to add to your prizefighter lip?”

“Walked into the fucking hatstand, didn’t I?”

Just as well I hadn’t been hoping for sympathy. He broke into another of his sudden, irresistible chuckles, as if his sense of humour had leapt out of nowhere and ambushed him again. “Oh, dear,” he choked. “I’m sorry.”

“Great.” I left him to enjoy himself, and crouched by the stove. Lighting it had been my job on chilly mornings. I pulled back the heavy iron door and shone the torch into the flue. Other than a few hoodie feathers and some twigs it looked clear, so I ran down and retrieved an armful of kindling and logs from the cellar. The tissue paper from my Loch Dubh clothes purchases would do for firelighters. I scrunched them up tight. Out of habit I carried a cigarette lighter. I didn’t share Lilian’s weakness, but at that moment I could have murdered a scotch, and I was simultaneously glad and resentful that we had none.

The kindling took straightaway. I opened the dampers and sat back on my heels, watching the little blaze gather strength. Once I was sure of it—the last of my anger draining from me, leaving me limp and weary as though I’d lit the fire from sheer temper—I straightened up. I took back my seat beside Viv.

“All right,” I said, folding my arms and examining the time-polished flagstones at my feet. “Just what exactly is so bloody interesting about that video clip?”

“I don’t want to upset you again.”

“What made you think I was upset?” I gave him a sidelong look so that he’d know I was joking. That I was aware I’d behaved like a bull moose all afternoon. I wasn’t sure he understood, so I bit the bullet. “I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have torn your head off for showing me the clip. I’m assuming you had your reasons, if I’d given you time to tell me what they are.”

He was expressionless in the firelight. For all his oddness, he seemed a forgiving soul, and I wondered if I’d pushed him too far. “It would be best,” he said cautiously, “if we could watch it again. But I don’t have any obliging ladies here to loan me an iPad.”

I snorted faintly. “She’d have taken you home with her, I reckon. You don’t know the strength of your own charms. There’s my phone, but you’d have to climb up Glencathadh hill at the back of the house to get a signal, and we’d best keep the last of the charge on it for an emergency. Tell me about the clip. What can you remember?”

“Every detail.”

“Really? Is that part of the Asperger’s thing?”

“I don’t know. Asperger’s is a condition I have, but I can’t always distinguish between what I have and what I am. I don’t always want to. At all events, my memory is eidetic for visual input, and what I found interesting about the video is this—forty seconds in, the launch takes a sudden dip to starboard. That movement dislodges both passengers right away. They’re good swimmers, yes?”

“Excellent.”

“So a ditch overboard shouldn’t have killed them. They’d have got back to the launch, even if it had capsized.”

“And they’d have hung on to it. Yes.”

“But exactly four seconds after the first jolt, the boat goes down. Completely, without a trace. The prow sinks a fraction of a second before the stern. Is that what would happen with a RIB?”

I rubbed my hands over my head. Viv was holding an imaginary iPad now, running one fingertip along the video’s control bar. His gestures were so vivid that I could almost see the screen. “No. If anything, it would be the other way round, but those boats are hard to take down. Nearly impossible. Particularly not that fast.”

“Then, when she’s gone, there’s a sudden disturbance on the surface of the water here.” He sketched the empty air. Such fine hands. I was very tired. I wished he would let me take hold of one of them again, being careful with the bandages. I struggled to concentrate on what he was saying, but my mind wanted to be far, far away. “Is that what would happen?”

“I dunno. If one of the tubes had burst, or if she flipped, maybe, and there was air caught under the hull. Did you see her turn over as she went down?”

“No. She just sank. A RIB’s tubes are tough, aren’t they?”

“Tough as old boots, on those Redbays.” I couldn’t take my mind away. Viv was pinning it down, making the fractures run together, their hidden connections reaching out. I got up and began to pace the flagstones instead. “Right. You think there was some kind of foul play, like at Spindrift, and the only link between this and what happened at Spindrift is Alan Frost. I know what you’re saying, but…”

“Mallory.
You’re
saying those things.”

I came to a halt in front of him. “You don’t understand,” I said miserably. “When I wanted to set up that stunt with the whaling ship, Alan was the one who tried hardest to stop me. And when it was all over and Alice and Oskar were dead, he…nobody was as hard on me as he was. He practically disowned me in front of the Norwegian captain. He left me alone to deal with the police and Oskar’s family, and…and he dumped me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not telling you this to get your sympathy.” Christ, I’d learned better than that by now. “It’s so you’ll understand—Alan couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with sinking the Peace Warrior launch. There was only one person responsible for that whole fuckup, and it’s me.”

Vivian sat watching me. The fire was settling in the stove, beginning to put out some serious heat. I prayed it was the warmth that was slackening the muscles in my spine and the backs of my legs, not the deep blue serenity of his eyes. He was waiting for me to stop, for my attention to settle on him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ve never had that kind of relationship. It doesn’t come naturally to me to imagine it. I have to think about it, just as you’d have to think about solving an equation.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to…”

“But I
can
think about it. I’m sorry for the way Alan treated you.”

I turned away from him. I didn’t want to offend him, but how could I explain that if I didn’t find something immediate to do, I would drop to my knees in front of him and lay my head on his lap? His compassion was all the more potent for its rarity.

“Thanks.” I felt the top of the stove. “This is nearly hot enough to cook something, I reckon. What do you fancy—tinned sausage or tinned ham?”

“The sausage, I think. With some of the tinned asparagus I saw down there.”

“Yes, your lordship.” Anyone would think he was enjoying himself. Well, life was certainly simpler here. Maybe the lack of choices meant he had fewer distractions, less to tug at the edges of his mind. Then a bad thought hit me. “For the love of God, tell me you’ve got a tin opener on that knife of yours.”

He stared at me in open-mouthed horror. I said, “Oh, no, Viv,” and then realised with a shock that he was teasing me. He pulled out his pocketknife and snapped out the appropriate blade. His face was lit by the faintest of smiles. “You’re funny,” I told him flatly. “If I was to murder you out here, no one would find out for months, you know.”

“You can’t. I’m already dead.” A strange taut silence filled the room, and he added, “We both are, aren’t we, as far as the world’s concerned? Back at Spindrift.”

“That’s right. We’re just two ghosts.”

His brow creased. “You look tired, Mallory. We should eat our gourmet tinned supper and go to bed.”

“Better let the place warm through a bit first. We’ll freeze in Aunt Lil’s best bedroom.”

“We can bring the bedrolls through here.”

“What—one of us over by that wall and the other one in the far corner?”

“No, both of us by the fire. I feel as if I’m used to you now—we won’t need the rolled-up blanket.”

Chapter Ten

From any other man,
we won’t need the blanket
would have been an invitation. I lay wide-eyed in the darkness, trying to fathom the differences between Viv and other men. He was barely an arm’s reach away from me, his long, lean shape still visible inside his sleeping bag. His back was to me, his head pillowed on one arm. His curls were a glossy tangle, reflecting shades of chestnut and obsidian in the fire’s last glow. My fingers itched to smooth them. There was a place under his ribs, a little dip like a notch in a sunset horizon, where I longed to rest my hand. He’d gone into Lil’s bedroom and discreetly closed the door. He’d emerged looking so handsome and absurd in his orange thermals that I hadn’t had the heart to tell him they were a base layer, not pyjamas.

For myself, I’d settled for a wincing cold-water wash and the clothes I’d spent the day in. Anything more complicated could wait until the water tank heated through and I was less exhausted. I didn’t want to feel less dressed than I was in such close proximity to him. Without the barrier of our rolled-up blanket, God alone knew what would happen in the polar bear’s dick department. I found him bone-meltingly attractive.

That was a huge problem, or it would be if I had any plans for letting the bear out of its cage. His differences were extreme. Never having had a girlfriend or a boyfriend was one thing, but I was beginning to wonder if there was more to it than that. Beautiful as he was, I couldn’t envisage him in any kind of sexual scenario. I did try, because it seemed unlikely that anyone so eligible could have made it into their mid-twenties untouched. First I picked out a nice lady for him, the French social historian who’d arrived in North Kerra last year to record the death throes of our fishing industry. She’d been sophisticated, and probably bright enough. No—I could picture them having tea together, but that was as far as it went. Next I tried the princely cousin of the royals whose annual hunting visits set hearts aflutter through the north-coast villages. He didn’t seem overburdened with brains, but he was wealthy and sexy as fuck. No joy there either. He backed Vivian up into the four-poster bed in Calder Castle, took one look at the ascetic bewilderment in those expressive eyes, and recoiled in horror at his own barbarity. Next time I looked, they too were having tea, the young prince pouring, patting Viv’s shoulder in apology.

Maybe my imagination was falling short, but I was beginning to think I was yearning after a man who’d had no sexual experience at all. That was fair enough, if unusual—I’d tenderly deflowered one lad in the hold of my dad’s trawler, and a bit of beginner’s luck hadn’t hurt. Danny had been ready, though. Everything about Viv—his detachment, his clumsy grasp of everything that lay outside of his academic field—told me that he wasn’t. Far from it. Even if he had been, his awkward kindness over my treatment at Alan’s hands should restrain me. Getting over my ex-lover this fast seemed positively rude.

“Mallory,” he said huskily, and shifted onto his back. I’d thought he was asleep. I’d pushed up onto my elbow to watch him, and there was no point in rolling back down now. He lay looking up at me, burnished lights coming and going in his eyes, as if being watched while he was sleeping was pleasant to him, somehow reassuring. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

My heart began beating faster. My theories about his virginity crumbled to glitter and dust. He looked ready for anything, lying there with parted lips, one arm still tucked behind his head. Served me right for theorising in a vacuum. He might have been the scourge of his boarding-school dorm, for all I knew. “Ask me, then I’ll tell you if I mind.”

“You like this place, don’t you?”

I was a bit taken aback. A request for a blow job might have surprised me less. I’d certainly have obliged, Alan or no Alan. “I guess so, yes. I’ll like it more when we’ve got the windows fixed and it’s less likely to kill us.”

“But it’s a good place. You were happy here.”

I considered. “Do you know the Philip Larkin poem where he’s off cycling somewhere and he stops to visit a church?”

“‘Church Going’. I know of it. But I don’t read poetry—the irrationality and the compression of meaning disturb me.”

“Oh, the best poetry’s deeply rational. Anyway, he calls the church
a serious house on serious earth
. And that’s what I felt when I first came here. This valley’s as old as time. You wouldn’t build here, wouldn’t live here, unless you absolutely had to or really wanted to.”

“Yes. I can understand that.”

“So why are you asking me?”

He ran his hand up and down his chest outside the sleeping bag. His expression grew intense. I thought for a moment that he was going to touch my face. “You sound upset when you talk about your aunt. Angry too.”

I shrugged. “I’m tired. I probably sound grouchy at everything.”

“Okay.”

He would leave it like that if I wanted. He might ask, but he’d never insist. His calm acceptance left me free to look at the pain that waited for me beneath every inch of this serious house.

“I think my aunt liked me,” I said slowly. “I didn’t ask her if I could come to stay, though—I just turned up. I’d pissed my dad off about something, and I honestly thought he was going to kill me.”

“She let you stay, though?”

“Yeah, she did. She didn’t know what to do with me, but I was happy enough reading and helping her out with anything she needed doing. I asked her not to tell my parents I was here, and she didn’t. I was here for nearly a month. I was starting to think I could stay.”

“What happened?”

“My dad turned up one day, and she didn’t even argue with him. She just let me go.”

Words had too much power. I was twelve years old again, staring at this same implacable face of the stove, because I’d gone to crouch beside it with my book—Susan Cooper’s
The Dark is Rising
, which had lifted me out of my own world before and might do so again in this moment of crisis. But the old man had yanked me up by the armpit, and I’d dropped the book on the hearth. Lilian had stood by the door with her arms folded, looking at the floor. Had she even spoken? Yes—I’d forgotten, but now I heard her voice, vividly as if she were in the room with me, her north-coast accent rough and clear.
He’s no’ a bad boy, Davey. Don’t you twist him.

I’d thought he hadn’t. I’d thought I’d got away. But here I was—twenty-five years old, homeless, jobless, with blood on my hands and every chance of turning into as monumental a drunk as he was. Maybe the twisting had become part of my growth, an inner wrench so deep I no longer knew it was there. I felt distorted, crippled.

“Sorry,” I said gruffly, returning to my warped adult flesh. “Long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”

“Was she afraid of your father?”

“I don’t think so. But she’d worked hard to get away from him and have a peaceful life, and she must have known I was the price of keeping it.”

“Come here, Mallory.”

I lay down beside him. His arm went around me and drew me in. My head landed on his shoulder, and he didn’t flinch or try to move me away. His collarbone was like a drawn bow beneath my cheek, but still he was the most comfortable resting place in the world, his bony warmth like sunshine. I was blind with exhaustion. I couldn’t believe I’d had thoughts about hitting on him. I could have taken a vow of chastity right now and not felt a sense of loss, even if we hadn’t both been unromantically bundled up like caterpillars in our separate sleeping bags. I just wanted to lie with him.

His fingers trailed over my scalp. I didn’t have any curls for him to disentangle, but I closed my eyes and shivered as he did it again, losing awkwardness, finding a rhythm. The force-warped fibres of my life began to straighten out under his touch. I inhaled his scent—expensive sandalwood fading under the layers of his day, scorched Spindrift dust and a rich, essential tang that was simply him, to be found nowhere else in the universe—and my tangles became like reeds, combing out in a clear-running stream. Before I could pull myself out of the water, I was floating too. I drifted through the walls of Aunt Lil’s cottage, rage cracking off me like shells of dried river mud, dissolving harmlessly. The house was only a house. And she’d had no supernatural charge over my destiny, no powers to help or destroy. She’d been a quiet-hearted woman, as helpless as I was in the face of a violent man. The stream opened up into a sun-drenched ocean, and Viv and I set sail.

* * * * *

“What does Glencathadh mean? My Gaelic should be good enough, but I don’t know the
cathadh
part.”

I sat up as if electrocuted. My mouth was dry, my eyes gritty with long sleep. I was sure my hair was up in spikes, and I made a pawing, ineffectual pass or two to try and tame it. There was a bright light in the room. I’d have taken it for sunlight, but it was coming from all angles, as if the ground and the trees outside were all blazing with their own light. I knew it from childhood waking in winter—watching the ceiling, knowing from the crystalline brilliance dancing on the plaster that the night had brought real snow. “God. What time is it?”

“Sixteen minutes past ten.”

“Sixteen?” I echoed, unzipping my bag and wriggling out of it. I was stiff, my limbs heavy as if I’d been doped. “Could have been worse, I guess. Could have been seventeen. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did try. You rolled over and told me to bugger off.”

A vague memory floated in. “Er…yeah. Sorry.” I scrambled upright. The stove had gone out, and the room was freezing. Viv had pulled on a sweater over his thermals, but his feet were bare, tucked up beneath him on the window seat where he was perched. The bedroom door was open, and as I stood swaying, trying to adjust to the light and waking reality, a wind-blown flurry of white flakes swept across the place where the old lady’s bed had stood. I stumbled over to the window, leaned my hands on the sill and looked out. “Glencathadh means
valley of the snowdrifts
.”

“Ah. Then it’s living up to its name.”

It was. Three or four feet must have come down in the night. Against the south side of the house, the wind had piled the three feet into almost five. We wouldn’t get the front door open until I dug us out. Great carved waves followed the dry-stone wall and swept around the lee side of the rowans, their crests catching rainbows in the sun. The untrodden purity of it all was heartbreaking, and for a minute I took it in as nothing more than an incredibly lovely sight. Viv was part of it, his enigmatic profile touched with enchantment. His presence on the window seat, his graceful sprawl, was a painting I would have liked to own, a poem I would maybe one day write.

Before that, though, I would kill him. “You dozy sod. It’s freezing in here. You could’ve at least got dressed.”

“I was watching the
cathadh
.”

“And the fire’s gone out. Once a stove like this gets going, you have to keep it ticking over all the time. I suppose you had Alfred to do all that kind of thing for you.”

“Well, yes. His staff, anyway.”

“Oh,
his staff
,” I echoed. Viv unfolded from the window seat, and I winced at the sight of his bare feet on the flags. “Don’t tell me—you’ve put the cold in a box. It’ll be you in a box before long if you don’t start taking some bloody care of yourself.”

“I’m sorry. What would you like me to do?”

He was waiting for instructions. The trace of anxiety that often shadowed his brow was gone, as if at some point during the night he had taken the measure of my nagging and grumpiness and wasn’t bothered by it anymore. As if he was relieved for me to take charge of him in this strange environment. I was happy to oblige. “First off, put your clothes on. Socks. Layers. I bought you a nice new woolly hat at Loch Dubh yesterday—wear it. Then I want you to go and scavenge through the cellar and the outbuildings for something we could use to patch the windows—stiff card, plastic, plywood, anything. I think Lil kept some kind of toolbox out there as well. See if you can find that.”

“Yes, Mallory.”

Was he taking the piss out of me? One corner of his mouth was rising into the ghost of a teasing smile, and his eyes had a suspicious glimmer.

“Right. I’ll see about getting the stove resurrected, and in about an hour we might be able to heat some water for tea. You wouldn’t have had to wait so long if you’d kept the fire fed, would you?”

The glimmer intensified. “No, Mallory.”

* * * * *

We sat facing each other across the kitchen table. Snow-light filled the room, and the silence was backed by the agreeable crackle of the stove. Viv had found a grand if somewhat eclectic range of materials in the garage, plywood and sacking and a posh plastic wrapper from Jenners in Edinburgh. Aunt Lil used to make her own curtains, and she’d had a weakness for expensive fabric. I wondered where the curtains had ended up. Certainly not in our miserable box of a house in North Kerra, not all those roses and summer flowers and fruits. Maybe a charity shop somewhere, drenched in Febreze to hide the smell of smoke. You could barely detect it now in the stripped-down house, aired as it had been for years by the wind, but the trace of it was comforting.

I poured a bit more powdered milk onto the freeze-dried porridge we were enjoying for breakfast. I’d found some sugar down in the cellar, so the tea I’d made was almost drinkable.

“What happened, then? After your father took you home?”

I was getting used to this. A conversation Viv had found interesting would simply go on hold in his mind until his next chance to continue it, and then without preamble he’d press
play
. “I’m not sure I remember much about it.”

“Was he very bad to you after you’d done something like that?”

“Not immediately, no. That’s part of the problem. He shelves it until the next time he gets drunk, and then boom, out it comes.” I shivered. I’d switched to the present tense, as if the old bastard could come barging in again any minute through the front door. Not much chance of that today, unless he had a shovel. “He’s not important. Tell me a bit about your family instead.”