arranged in tight brown rags and draped across a chair, her bowed legs dangling, one shoe swinging from her toe.
She smiled at me, revealing an uneven line of stained and broken teeth.
“Ah, the famous Lumpy.”
“My name is Paul.”
She swung her shoe a little too much. It fell to the floor, revealing her mutant toes in all their glory.
“Forgive me. Lumpy is a pet name?” She wiggled her toes. “Something private?”
I ignored her and went to the kitchen to make bait in readiness for my exile on the pier. The damn mince was frozen solid. Carla had tidied it up and put it in the freezer. I dropped it in hot water to thaw it.
“Your mince is frozen.”
“Obviously.”
She patted the chair next to her with a bony hand.
“Come and sit. We can talk.”
“About what?” I disconnected the little Mitchell reel from the rod and started oiling it, first taking off the spool and rinsing the sand from it.
“About life,” she waved her hand airily, taking in the room as if it were the entire solar system. “About… love. What… ever.” Her speech had that curious unsure quality common in those who had taken too many Chances, the words spluttered and trickled from her mouth like water from a kinked and tangled garden hose. “You can’t go until your mince… mince has thawed.” She giggled. “You’re stuck with me.”
I smiled in spite of myself.
“I could always use weed and go after the luderick.”
“But the tide is high and the weed will be… impossible to get. Sit down.” She patted the chair again.
I brought the reel with me and sat next to her slowly dismantling it and laying the parts on the low table. The mushrooms were beginning to work, coating a smooth creamy layer over the gritty irritations in my mind.
“You’re upset,” she said. I was surprised to hear concern in her voice. I suppressed a desire to look up and see if her features had changed. Her form upset me as much as the soft rotting faces of the beggars who had been stupid enough to make love with the Fastas. So I screwed the little ratchet back in and wiped it twice with oil.
“You shouldn’t be upset.”
I said nothing, feeling warm and absent-minded, experiencing that slight ringing in the ears you get from eating mushrooms on an empty stomach. I put the spool back on and tightened the tension knob. I was running out of things to do that might give me an excuse not to look at her.
She was close to me. Had she been that close to me when I sat down? In the corner of my eye I could see her gaunt bowed leg, an inch or two from mine. My thick muscled forearm seemed to belong to a different planet, to have been bred for different purposes, to serve sane and sensible ends, to hold children on my knee, to build houses, to fetch and carry the ordinary things of life.
“You shouldn’t be upset. You don’t have to lose Carla. She loves you. You may find that it is not so bad… making love… with a Hup.” She paused. “You’ve been eating mushrooms, haven’t you?”
The hand patted my knee. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
What did she mean? I meant to ask, but forgot I was feeling the hand. I thought of rainbow trout in the clear waters at Dobson’s Creek, their brains humming with creamy music while my magnified white hands rubbed their underbellies, tickling them gently before grabbing them, like stolen jewels, and lifting them triumphant in the sunlight. I smelt the heady smell of wild blackberries and the damp fecund odours of rotting wood and bracken.
“We don’t forget how to make love when we change.”
The late afternoon sun streamed through a high window. The room was golden. On Dobson’s Creek there is a shallow run from a deep pool, difficult to work because of overhanging willows, caddis flies hover above the water in the evening light.
The hand on my knee was soft and caressing. Once, many Chances ago, I had my hair cut by a strange old man. He combed so slowly, cut so delicately, my head and my neck were suffused with pleasure. It was in a classroom. Outside someone hit a tennis ball against a brick wall. There were cicadas, I remember, and a water sprinkler threw beads of light on to glistening grass, freshly mown. He cut my hair shorter and shorter till my fingers tingled.
It has been said that the penis has no sense of right or wrong, that it acts with the brainless instinct of a venus fly-trap, but that is not true. It’s too easy a reason for the stiffening cock that rose, stretching blindly towards the bony fingers.
“I could show,” said the voice, “that it is something quite extraordinary… not worse… better… better… better by far, you have nothing to fear.”
I knew, I knew exactly in the depth of my clouded mind, what was happening. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t want to resist it. My purpose was as hers. My reasons probably identical.
Softly, sonorously she recited:
“Which trees are beautiful?
All trees that grow.
Which bird is fairest?”
A zipper undone, my balls held gently, a finger stroked the length of my cock. My eyes shut, questions and queries banished to dusty places.
“The bird that flies.
Which face is fairest?
The faces of the friends of the people of the earth.”
A hand, flat-palmed on my rough face, the muscles in my shoulders gently massaged, a finger circling the lips of my anal sphincter.
“Which forms are foul?
The forms of the owners.
The forms of the exploiters.
The forms of the friends of the Fastas.”
Legs across my lap, she straddled me. “I will give you a taste… just a taste… you won’t stop Carla… you can’t stop her.”
She moved too fast, her legs gripped mine too hard, the hand on my cock was tugging towards her cunt too hard.
My open eyes stared into her face. The face so foul, so misshapen, broken, the skin marked with ruptured capillaries, the green eyes wide, askance, alight with premature triumph.
Drunk on wine I have fucked monstrously ugly whores. Deranged on drugs, blind, insensible, I have grunted like a dog above those whom I would as soon have slaughtered.
But this, no. No, no, no. For whatever reason, no. Even as I stood, shaking and trembling, she clung to me, smiling, not understanding. “Carla will be beautiful. You will do things you never did.”
Her grip was strong. I fought through mosquito nets of mushroom haze, layer upon layer that ripped like dusty lace curtains, my arms flailing, my panic mounting. I had woken underwater, drowning.
I wrenched her hand from my shoulder and she shrieked with pain. I pulled her leg from my waist and she fell back on to the floor, grunting as the wind was knocked from her.
I stood above her, shaking, my heart beating wildly, the head of my cock protruding foolishly from my unzipped trousers, looking as pale and silly as a toadstool.
She struggled to her feet, rearranging her elegant rags and cursing. “You are an ignorant fool. You are a stupid, ignorant, reactionary fool. You have breathed the Fastas’ lies for so long that your rotten body is soaked with them. You stink of lies… do you… know who I am?”
I stared at her, panting.
“I am Jane Larange.”
For a second I couldn’t remember who Jane Larange was, then it came to me: “The actress?” The once beautiful and famous.
I shook my head. “You silly bugger: What in God’s name have you done to yourself?”
She went to her handbag, looking for a cigarette. “We will kill the Fastas,” she said, smiling at me, “and we will
