Sacrament

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In his narrow bed in the narrow room beside Frannie’s, Sherwood lay wide awake. It wasn’t the storm that kept sleep from coming. It was pictures of Rosa McGee: bright flickering pictures that made everything he’d ever seen in his head before look like black and white. Several times tonight it felt as if she was right there in the room with him, the memory of her was so overpowering. He could see her clearly, her titties shiny-wet with his spit. And though she’d scared him at the end, raising her skirts that way, it was that moment he replayed more often than any other, hoping each time to extend her motion by a few seconds, so that this time the dress would rise up to her belly-button and he would get to see what she’d been wanting to show him. He had several impressions of what it was: a kind of lop-sided mouth; a patch of hair (perhaps greenish, like a little bush), a simple round hole. Whatever form it took, however, it was wet; of that he was certain, and sometimes he thought he saw drops of that wetness running down the insides of her thighs.

He could never tell anybody about these memories, of course. He wouldn’t be able to boast about what had happened with Rosa once he was back amongst his schoolmates; and he certainly wouldn’t talk about it in adult company. People already treated him as strange. When he went out shopping with his Mum, they’d peer at him, pretending they weren’t, and talk about him in lowered voices. But he heard. They said he was odd, they said he was a little wrong in the head; they said he was a cross to bear and it was good his Mum was a Christian woman. He heard it all. So these rememberings had to stay hidden away, where people couldn’t see them, or else there’d be more whispers, more shaken heads.

He didn’t mind. In fact he liked the idea of keeping Rosa locked up in his brain, where only he could go and look at her. Perhaps he would find a way to talk to her, as time went by, persuade her to lift her skirts a little higher, a little higher, until he could see her secret place.

In the meantime he worked his belly and hips against the weight of the sheet and blankets, pressing his hand hard against his mouth as though his palms were her breasts and he was back licking them; and though he had cried himself dry in the last little while, all his tears were forgotten in the thrill of the memory, and the strange hotness in his groin.

Rosa, he murmured against his hand; Rosa, Rosa, Rosa…

VII (#ulink_19416b93-4c6a-5e57-884b-a7ff7ce5f1f9)

By the time Will opened his eyes the fire, which had been in its heyday when he arrived, was now in its embery dotage. But Jacob had laid his guest close to it, and there was still sufficient heat in its dwindling flame to drive the last of the chill from Will’s bones. He sat up, and realized he was wrapped in Jacob’s military coat, and naked beneath.

‘That was brave,’ somebody on the other side of the fire said.

Will squinted to see the speaker better. It was Jacob, of course. He was lounging against the wall, staring through the flames at Will. He looked a little sick himself, Will thought, as though in sympathy with his own condition; but whereas Will’s illness had left him worn and weak, Steep glittered in his hurt: pale, gleaming skin, shiny curls pasted to the thick muscle of his neck. His coarse grey shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, his chest arrayed with a fan of dark hair which ran over the ridges of his belly to his belt. When he smiled, as he did now, his eyes and teeth glistened, as though made of the same implacable stuff.

‘You’re sick, and yet you found your way through this blizzard. That shows courage.’

‘I’m not sick,’ Will insisted. ‘I mean…I was a little, but I feel fine now…’

‘You look fine.’

‘I am. I’m ready to go any time you want to.’

‘Go where?’

‘Wherever you want,’ Will said. ‘I don’t care. I’m not afraid of the cold.’

‘Oh this isn’t cold,’ Jacob said. ‘Not like some winters we’ve endured, the bitch and me.’ He glanced back towards the Courtroom, and through the smoke Will thought he saw a contemptuous look cross Jacob’s face. A heartbeat later, his gaze came Will’s way once more, and there was a new intensity in it. ‘I think maybe you were sent to me, Will, by some kind god or other, to be my companion. You see, I won’t be travelling with Mrs McGee after tonight. We’ve decided to part company.’

‘Have you…travelled with her for long?’

Jacob leaned forward from his squatting position and, picking up a stick, poked at the fire. There was still fuel concealed in the embers, and it caught as he raked them over. ‘More than I care to remember,’ he said.

‘So why are you stopping now?’

By the light of the spluttering flames (whatever had been cremated here, it had been fatty) Will saw Jacob grimace. ‘Because I hate her,’ he replied. ‘And she hates me. I would have killed her tonight, if I’d been quicker. And then we’d have had us a fire, wouldn’t we? We could have warmed half of Yorkshire.’