She gets on my nerves. I thought about us splitting up all the time. We had been together seven years and were due to get married in the next. I did not go to bed thinking about white dresses an ornate cake and lazy cocktails on far away beaches. I went to bed thinking how annoying it was to hear her eat. It seemed she spoke to her food as she chewed away, making love to it with little grunts of pleasure. Certainly in a more adoring way than our actual love making. She'd laugh at nothing, then not laugh when something was funny. The overly blue eye shadow she put on made me think of ABBA.
One day she said to me, "let's go for a walk." She had caught me rolling a joint on her dead mother's bible. It was a bad habit of mine but the bible always seemed to be handy. I told her I truly felt bad and would never do it again but she seemed to have something else on her mind. We walked through the May spring, the bluebells were out and birds flitted around with important work. She was wearing that skirt that caught men's eyes, and heaps of blue eye shadow. We didn't talk whilst we walked, in fact we hardly ever talked, conversation had been scant for a long time, but that was because we were overly comfortable with each other surely? As we threaded out way through the beech wood, I felt guilty for getting annoyed with her. How she ate? What was wrong with me. I knew what was wrong with me, I didn't want to be with her, and in my defence, she didn't want to be with me.
We left the beech wood and the old chalk hill fort rose before us. It was a strange place, solemn. I felt a sudden coolness as the equinox winds bounced off the downs and clipped at the edge of the woods. The Romans hadn't touched this fort apparently, it was old and out of use when they invaded. But a strange tale was told of a small group of warriors from the Cantii tribe hiding within the hollow hill, making lightning strikes against Roman Legions before disappearing back into the chalk mound with spoils of food and women. We had come here one night in the early days, torches and sleeping bags in hand. Telling each other the story as we climbed then continuing and embellishing around a fire. We had laid down, suddenly nervous as our ecstatic tales of food and fires and sex concluded. The stars appeared, and a silence descended as we pondered our stories of supernatural violence and romance.
As we ascended on this day, I suddenly wondered why we were going there. Emma seemed intent on something, we had never talked about what happened that night, what we experienced. It was too surreal, too unearthly for us to discuss. We had to put it down to the bottles of red wine, but we remembered, we remembered privately and in every detail.
At the top the solemnness had taken over, the Kent country side was verdant around us and the beech tree wood rocked with the wind. It was strange that this place wasn't on the tourist map, you would see the odd walker with a dog, but not hoards of visitors. We sat down where we had made the fire all those years ago.
"Are you going to say it or am I?" She was looking at a mound in the centre of the flattened out top and not at me as she spoke those words.
"Are we splitting up?" She turned to look at me as if I were from another planet.
"No you gonk, about that night." Oh, I said. I feared I sounded disappointed. I paused then related events.
"It was a hell of a feast. They brought out that steaming cauldron, then made a long table from lengths of wood. They set the table, they piled it with slow cooked meats from many beasts. The broth smelt of juniper berries and hazel nuts, wild garlic and nettles. We drank from ewers of a type of beer. There was black bread smothered in fat, hot and delicious smelling. Behind in that little mound we could see a light flickering orange. There were seven of them, painted in whirling blues with their hair spiked up with chalk. They didn't speak, but ate, they ate like you eat, muttering and grunting and slurping away." Emma smiled at me.
"Food Sex and Shelter. What else can someone want?" She was very faraway with her words.
"We imagined it didn't we? Or engaged in a ghostly scene." I remembered my full belly, and when I got home there was grease on my clothes.
"No we didn't. The world is different to how we are taught it, and when we come up against the difference, we reject it." She nodded, more to herself than to me.
The day was ending and dusk settled around us. I wanted to go home, but Emma kept looking at the mound, a slight smile on her face. I was so sure we were heading to the top of the hill to say goodbye, and I felt cowardly disappointment. I thought we would carry on living in the house until one of us moved out, her hopefully, we could probably still be friends. Maybe I should say it. I searched for some words, nearly found them, then a crack of orange light appeared from the mound. Emma caught her breath and I froze.
The seven Celtic warriors filed out then made a line in front of us. This time there was no feast. They were dressed for battle, that is, they held weaponry and were naked and engorged . They did not look at me, they looked at Emma and with tremendous understanding I realized. They wanted her, all those years ago she knew they did but had chosen me. My indifference towards her had made her make this decision. All at once the frivolous dislikes I had about her fled. Emma, my fiancé stood and did not even look at me.
"Emma?" I stood too. "You can't, what are you doing?" The words Food Sex and Shelter rung in my ears and I screamed "Conversation! You need to be able to have a fucking conversation!" She looked back then, only to cock an eye brow. Slowly, dreamlike, she walked towards the painted men of the Cantii tribe. They closed around her and led her into the hollow hill.
By Andy Parker
No comments:
Post a Comment