Stalking Tender Prey Read online

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked, sitting down. The twins looked at him with some surprise and the dog slunk away. He put the drinks down in front of them. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I feel like a bit of company and I’m afraid you ’ — he wagged a finger at the girl — ‘are the only person I’ve met around here.’

  She laughed without reserve, a reaction he hadn’t expected. ‘Hardly met!’ she said. Perhaps she felt safer with her brother there. The evening light suited her. How could he have thought her plain?

  Othman shrugged and grinned sheepishly. ‘I know, but everyone else in this place is...’ He pulled a face.

  ‘We call it a pre-graveyard,’ Lily said, nodding. ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘You’re Lily Winter, right?’ So far, he hadn’t yet looked at the boy.

  She didn’t seem too pleased he’d found that much out about her, perhaps because there were other things to discover, which she feared he’d also picked up. ‘And you are...?’ she asked, a little coldly.

  He told her.

  ‘Are you foreign?’ she asked. ‘No, of course not. Are you a Gypsy, then, or something? What an unusual name.’

  He shrugged again, offering no further explanation.

  ‘This is my brother, Owen,’ she said, gesturing to her companion, ‘or did you know that too?’

  Othman shook his head. ‘No. Pleased to meet you.’ He met the boy’s eyes for the first time, expecting territorial surliness, and found, to his relief, he was merely looking at Lily’s eyes again. Uncanny: a mixture of caution, amusement, and a certain cynical awareness of his purpose. He realised, half unpleasantly, that these two somehow knew him. Was this a disadvantage or not? The boy was more presentable than he’d first thought as well. How fortunate to find these creatures here; their acquaintance might provide more experience than he could have hoped for.

  ‘He lurked outside the post office for me,’ Lily said to her brother, flapping a hand at Othman. She did not deceive him. She and Owen had undoubtedly discussed the matter already.

  Owen smiled.

  ‘I do not deny it,’ said Othman. ‘As a contrast to the hags in there, you were like a goddess!’

  The twins exchanged a secret glance, but it did not altogether exclude him. They were willing to play, he felt. He experienced a delirious moment of weakness, as if the performance was not his, but theirs. It was a strange and unfamiliar sensation, but not unpleasant.

  ‘Are you on holiday?’ Lily asked him, drinking from the glass he had given her, but keeping it low to the table. Her eyes smiled at him over its rim.

  ‘A travelling holiday,’ he said. The twins both made noises of interest, so he began to relate some stories about his experiences, a few of which were fabrications and distinctly less interesting than the truth.

  ‘So, are you lost now?’ asked the boy. ‘This is nowhere. How did you end up here?’

  ‘I never know how I end up anywhere. I just keep moving. It’s the best way, I find. Sometimes, I discover wonderful things. I don’t look for them, I just make myself receptive. How did you end up here?’

  ‘We live here,’ Lily said.

  ‘You don’t seem typical of the natives.’

  She made a careless gesture. ‘Well...’

  ‘Our mother was an outsider. We inherited the house,’ Owen said.

  It was perhaps rather an odd way to put it, but at least implied they lived alone and might have spacious accommodation. The traveller had the distinct impression that Owen was thinking the words: ‘wasn’t that what you wanted to know?’ but was aware he might be projecting his own desires onto these people, reading more into their behaviour than was actually there.

  ‘So, what is there to see around here?’ he asked, taking a drink.

  ‘Nothing!’ the twins said, in unison. They laughed.

  ‘There is always something,’ Othman said, ‘anywhere. Always something.’

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Lily said. ‘What sort of thing are you looking for?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just places of interest.’

  ‘Monuments, ruins, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yes, that sort of thing. I like history.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of that here,’ Lily said. ‘History. No present though, and certainly no future. Nothing changes.’

  ‘Sounds idyllic.’

  ‘Depends on what you like, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Living here gets very boring.’

  ‘If you don’t like it, why stay?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you sell your house?’

  ‘We could,’ Owen said, ‘but if we went to a bigger town, we’d have to work. Our income is enough for Lil’moor. We don’t want to work for anyone.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame you,’ Othman said. It was a sentiment he shared.

  ‘You’re staying here, then?’ Lily asked.

  ‘For the time being. I acted on your recommendation.’

  ‘It was hardly that!’ she said. ‘What do you think of the Eagers?’

  ‘I don’t think Mister likes me. She seems all right.’

  Lily nodded. ‘They’ve only been here a year or so. Now, they think they own the place!’

  ‘They do a lot,’ Owen said, which implied criticism rather than praise.

  ‘She once wanted to start up some kind of church business,’ Lily said. ‘Must have got the idea from some sad, women’s novel about country life. Fetes and things, I ask you! It was absurd. Lil’moor doesn’t even have a vicar of its own. A man comes out from Patterham now and again, that’s all. Hardly anyone ever goes to church any more. It’s so old-fashioned!’

  ‘I didn’t see a church,’ Othman said.

  ‘Oh, it’s a way out of the village,’ Lily told him. ‘Almost as if Lil’moor was bigger at one time, and has just shrunk away from it. You’d like it; it’s very old.’

  ‘We could show it to you,’ Owen said.

  Lily looked at him sharply and then smiled. ‘Yes, we could. Do you want us to?’

  ‘It’s very kind of you.’

  ‘It’s just something to do!’ she said, and stood up. ‘Well, come on, then.’

  ‘What? Now?’ Othman was taken aback.

  ‘Better by moonlight,’ Lily said. ‘Come on.’

  There was no moon, but the clear sky lent a ghostly radiance to the land. As they walked together up the middle of the road, Othman again experienced a feeling of being helplessly overwhelmed. Lily appeared to have undergone a dramatic personality change. Gone was the reticent, innocent reserve of their encounter in the post office. She chattered the entire time they walked, mainly about other people in the village.

  ‘They don’t think much of us,’ she said.

  ‘Why drink in the pub, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Because they hide the fact they don’t think much of us,’ Owen said, ‘but we still know. They might think they don’t want us around, but they’d be disappointed if we weren’t. We’re part of this place.’

  ‘I don’t care what they think,’ Lily said.

  ‘You must get lonely sometimes,’ Othman said. The thought of them living alone together in isolation suddenly made him feel uneasy.

  ‘Oh no,’ Lily said. ‘Never.’

  ‘We have a car,’ Owen said. ‘We drive to places, don’t we, Lily?’

  ‘We drive to places,’ she said.

  Othman was beginning to wonder if they were not rather simple in the head.

  The church was really quite unremarkable, and not as old as the twins had suggested. Its most significant feature was that it had been built in such a bleak spot. It was surrounded by gravestones that were kept in check by a dilapidated fence. Several tired looking yew trees provided the traditional vigilance for the dead. It was a place where lone spectres might walk, but there were none in evidence tonight. The most peculiar thing about the place was that it appeared to have no name, but Othman supposed the large wooden board bearing the dedication and proclaiming service times and such like, had rotted away.

  ‘I
t’s locked up,’ Lily said. She was wearing her shawl low on her arms, and Othman could see her skin was pimpled with cold.

  The three of them stood against the fence, looking at the graveyard. It seemed they had made rather a pointless journey.

  ‘Let’s show him the ringstone,’ Owen said to his sister.

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  It seemed rather staged. The traveller was unsure what to expect, but wondered whether he was about to be on the receiving end of a joke.

  They went through a lych-gate that seemed unnecessarily imposing, or part of an older structure. A straight gravel path ran up to the church doors, and appeared to circle the building. Othman was bemused to see there was a TV aerial sticking out from the church roof.

  ‘It’s round the back,’ Lily said, running into the shadow of the church.

  ‘We used to come here a lot with our mother years ago,’ Owen said. ‘While she sat inside the place, dreaming, we played out here in the graveyard.’ He looked around himself. ‘I haven’t been here for a long time. It looks smaller now, and even more decrepit.’

  ‘It seems an odd place for a woman to come and dream,’ Othman observed.

  Owen shrugged. ‘Well, she was an odd woman, I suppose.’

  The ringstone was nothing more than a listing gravestone, its engraving long weathered into nonsense. ‘This is it,’ Lily said. She was leaning on the stone, her white hands gripping it at the top.

  ‘And what is it, exactly?’ asked the traveller.

  Lily and her brother started laughing. Othman felt decidedly uncomfortable. ‘We must join hands around it,’ Lily said.

  ‘How pagan,’ Othman observed, unimpressed.

  ‘Oh, probably,’ Lily agreed, ‘but it’s a custom.’ She held out her hands and waggled the fingers. ‘Join hands.’

  Reluctantly, Othman complied. Lily’s fingers were warm and dry, Owen’s icy cold. ‘Do we have to make a wish, or something?’ Othman asked. He felt absurdly awkward.

  ‘No, we circle,’ Lily replied. She pulled on his arm.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, Othman thought, stumbling round the stone. I have no control over these people. They are wild. ‘Whose grave is this?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Lily said. ‘It’s not important.’

  He suspected that circling the ringstone was a custom traditional only to the Winter twins, and strongly hoped no stray dog-walkers from the village would come along to observe this ridiculous ritual. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, after a few minutes, pulling away from their hands. They did not object.

  ‘Tomorrow, we could take you somewhere else,’ Owen said.

  They escorted him back to The White House and cheerily waved goodbye, promising further entertainment the following day. Othman was not sure of his feelings about Owen and Lily Winter. In some ways, they annoyed him, and Lily was not at all like he had imagined her to be. She should have been a shy virgin whom he could have initiated into the ways of the flesh, the uncharted regions of pleasure. He suspected now she was not a virgin at all. How disappointing. There would be no scholar’s bedroom, with bookcases full of slim volumes. There would be no delicate water-colours on the wall, painted by her own untutored hand. The scratches on her arms, which he’d fondly thought she might have incurred playing with a favourite cat in some secluded, scented garden, had probably happened while she’d been fixing her car, or something equally mundane. Still, she and her brother were unusual people, even if not in the direction he’d hoped.

  When Othman went back into The White House, Barbara Eager was still hovering around the bar cleaning glasses; it was not as late as he’d thought. She offered to make him some meat sandwiches, which he gladly accepted and sat down in the guests’ lounge to read a local paper while she made them up. Mr Eager sauntered in, pushing out his belly, and attempted to be sociable. He asked Othman whether he played golf.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Hrrm, hrrrh.’ The landlord was either clearing his throat or playing for time. ‘Sitting with the Winters, were you?’ he said eventually. ‘Rum pair, rum pair.’ Mr Eager shook his head in perplexity. Othman made no comment. ‘Bit of square-bashing wouldn’t harm the lad...’

  ‘They seem very young to live alone,’ Othman said.

  ‘Tch, yes!’ said Mr Eager. ‘The mother died two years ago, but they keep the old place up. They’re looked out for around here.’ He glanced at the traveller in a knowing, and slightly threatening, manner.

  Barbara Eager had come into the room, carrying a tray. She had obviously overheard her husband’s remarks. ‘Helen Winter was a very private person, I believe’ she said, offering the traveller a plate of sandwiches. ‘She came here when the twins were about twelve. Had a little money, I think. She always kept herself to herself, and never mentioned what had happened to her husband, but she was a good woman. The twins have run a little wild perhaps, since she died, but grief can do funny things to people, can’t it? You spent the evening with Lily and Owen?’

  The traveller nodded. ‘Yes, they’re very quaint, but I enjoyed their company.’

  ‘We look out for them here in Lil’moor,’ Barbara Eager said. ‘We have a close community.’ Her concern explained why she’d seemed a little frosty with him earlier on, but it was certainly at odds with the way the twins thought they were regarded in the village. Poor waifs. They lived in a fantasy world. How would his intrusion affect it? He hoped to find out very soon.

  Lily dreamed. She flew across the landscape, which was rendered black and white by the round, heavy moon. She could see her shadow rippling over the dewy fields, and could smell the scents of the earth, rising up to surround her in natural perfume. With her arms spread out like wings, she circled Herman’s Wood and dipped low into a valley, skimming the twitching ears of slumbering sheep. Then she was up, describing the curve of the hills in her flight, soaring towards the dark obelisks of Long Eden’s silent towers. The estate was spread out below her in moonlight, and it seemed the gardens were not quite so overgrown as they appeared in daylight. The seeding lawns were cut short, the rhododendrons trained back from the winding pathways. The gravel on the sweeping driveway looked freshly raked, and there were no weeds. Then Lily remembered she was dreaming.

  She flew high across the sinister yew walks, until her shadow was flung over the limpid waters of the lake. It seemed to her that the surface of the water was glowing. She imagined herself as a great swan coming in to land lightly upon the lake and swooped downwards. She could see the island, its tangled trees now neat and pruned. A lawn led from the water’s edge to a clearing in the middle of the island. Here, she could see the pale, glistering columns of a Grecian-looking temple. Such follies had been common in the grounds of stately homes, she thought. As she circled lazily around the temple, a tall, male figure walked down its shallow front steps. There was something vaguely familiar about him, Lily thought. Once on the lawn, the man looked up at her and held out one arm in a gesture of summoning. Lily was drawn to him instantly, and realised with some alarm, that it was the stranger she had met in the Post Office that morning. He was naked to the waist, his long, pale hair loose around his shoulders, spilling down onto his chest. She had never seen such a beautiful man before. He reached up towards her and the air let go of her. Weightlessly, she fell down into his waiting arms. His limbs seemed abnormally long, as if he’d stretched them out to pluck her from the sky. The man uttered no sound, but like a giant serpent, entwined his body with hers. The embrace was so complete, so overwhelming, Lily felt as if she might lose consciousness and slip from this dream into another. She did not want that: this was a dream in which she wanted to remain.

  The scent of the stranger was overpowering, redolent of ripened corn and ozone. Lily felt drunk on it. A thought floated into her mind like a drifting feather: I have come home. At last...

  Without speaking, the stranger drew her away from his chest and draped her across his extended arms, admiring her as if she were an exp
ensive garment. He held her sensitively and with ease. Feeling both insubstantial and paralysed with wonder, Lily stared up into his eyes. Within their shadowy depths spun a vortex of timeless stars. Lily began to feel that same vortex spinning within her belly, her womb, the core of her female power. The maelstrom of sensation began to spread throughout her whole body, encompassing her completely, until she felt that time itself was shifting and contracting around her.

  Still gazing down upon her, the stranger began to move towards the lake, holding her carefully, reverently, as if she was some precious, fragile thing. At the water’s edge, he gently set her down. When her feet touched the ground, Lily became acutely aware that the world around her was far removed in time from the world she knew. The air smelled different, somehow fresher, clear of industrial taint. And the stars filled the sky above her, their light unfiltered by the artificial radiance of street-lamps. They were so bright, they made her think of fierce angels, holding swords of flame to illumine the halls of Heaven. Holding court in their midst, the moon was enormous and fiery white, a queen among angels. Awed, Lily looked down at the lake. The water’s surface looked like polished glass in the moonlight, a mirror for her reflection. She too had moved in time. Around her pale legs hung a long, pleated skirt of turquoise dyed linen. Her breasts were bare and her hair was squarely-cut and waxed into coils with silver beads attached to the end of each lock. It was a style she associated with Ancient Egyptian women, although some instinct told her that her appearance and apparel were not Egyptian. Some other culture then, even more ancient, forgotten even in myth. As she gazed at her reflection, details seemed to form around her, become more definite, changing her appearance further. Now, she could see that her face was partly covered by a veil of penny-sized silver disks. As this awareness came to her, she was suddenly conscious of the veil’s weight upon her head, and could hear the silvery tinkle of the disks as she moved. Her eyes, visible above the veil, were heavily made-up, and there was a blue crescent moon marked upon her forehead. Her gaze slipped downwards. Even as she looked, an image formed on her belly. Through the sheerness of her skirt, a huge and startling eye stared out, completely covering her lower abdomen. She put her hands against the skin to trace its outline and could feel that the flesh was slightly raised. Not a painting then, but a tattoo.