‘Oh,’ she cried, tearfully, ‘how stupid I am.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, my arm around her. ‘We’ll find a hotel somewhere. Everything turns out all right, as long as you never think you’ve made a mistake.’ She laughed at this piece of suicidal wisdom, and I tried to lift up the front windows.
‘I don’t think it’ll be much use. Dad always locks up when we leave, and he really knows how to do it.’
‘Even he can slip up. Let’s go to the back.’ It was raining again, and through the windows it looked very comfortable. A cat sat on a soaking mat by the back door, flanked by half a dozen empty milk bottles. It got up and rubbed itself against Polly’s ankle, as if happy that somebody had come back at last to feed it. The door was locked and bolted from the inside, so I tried the windows. Unless I broke a pane, nothing would come of that. ‘There’s a skylight window,’ she called out.
‘Unfortunately,’ I said, ‘I didn’t bring my wings with me. However, I’ll get up that drainpipe that leads to the apex of the roof, and slide down to it from the top. Do you dare me to try?’
The cat was cradled in her bosom, and I wanted to belt its earhole out of it. ‘No,’ she said, ‘because I know you’ll try.’
I went back to the car for a jack-knife, and opened it. ‘If I fall,’ I said, putting it between my teeth, ‘I’ll have no roof to my mouth.’
‘Nor your head. But please don’t do it.’
‘I’m obsessed by it, I’ve got to do it now, but if I fall it’ll be your fault. You’ll have to push me in a wheelchair for the rest of our lives.’
‘Oh goody!’ she said, as I went up a few notches. I needed to be drunk to do this well, but there was no booze in the car. It seemed as if I was a born steeplejack, because my arms had been so strengthened by William’s briefcase training. The one spoiling item was rain spitting all over me that made the drainpipe and its supports more slippery than it need have been. I straddled the roof and shuffled myself along.
Polly shouted from below: ‘That window may be locked as well!’ I suppose she wanted me to have a fit and fall, but I’d assumed it would be locked, anyway, which was why I had the jack-knife. The big danger was in sliding halfway down the slope of the wet roof to get to the window. I might lose control and plummet to my doom. It would have been better thatched, but Moggerhanger was always practical, preferred to see rain sliding plainly down his slates, rather than getting mushed up in thatch, where he couldn’t keep an eye on it. That stretch of slate glistened, and I couldn’t see much to grip on after I’d started the slide. Polly stood out in the back garden for a full view of me against the sky, and I could see her down in the weeds and rotten cabbages.
‘Can you get it open?’ she called, seeing that I hadn’t yet reached it. I lay flat on the roof, my shoes splayed outwards and arms full length. I could feel the rain on my neck, and I seemed stuck like this for ages, lacking the cool courage and trust to let go. My shoes began sliding, and I pressed them with all force so as to slow down. This helped, for I hit the sill of the skylight, went over it, and stopped.
I was safe, but only by my nails slotted between wood and wood. Cows were moaning from fields round about, a long low gut-stirring complaint saying that I shouldn’t be where I was and that if I fell it would serve me right. I was in such a plight that I actually had time to wonder why I was there, and secondly how I’d ever get back to earth if I didn’t succeed in breaking in through the window. The only way down was as a human bomb of flesh and blood, to bounce at the earth like a sack of apples and oranges. Be brave, I said, and imagine how cool you’d be if there was only a twelve-inch drop beyond that drainpipe. So I calmed myself, and, hanging with one hand took the clasp knife from my teeth and dug it in the crack of the skylight. To my relief, it was loose, and after some probing I yanked it up and let it fall on my fingers — which cracked them, but I gripped by both hands and drew myself to the ample opening. The skylight frame rested on my head, then my shoulders, till I was out of the rain and able to look into the attic room below. How, though, was I actually to get into it? My scalp itched, and sweat blended with the raindrops, but it was advisable to get in feet first. Luckily there was a bed underneath, with a mattress laid across the frame. I slithered on to it like a crocodile, rolling into a ball as I landed, but spraining my ankle as it hit the end of the bed. I spun about and cursed at the fiery ache, feeling alone in the world, forgetting everything but that torment. Yet I was inside, and stood to celebrate the fact. I held on to the bed and rolled my foot around, then walked to the door, noticing on my way that half a dozen expensive shotguns were laid along a rack by the far wall.
When I opened the back door Polly said: ‘I thought you’d gone to sleep up there.’
‘It was quite a drop,’ I told her, as we went through the kitchen, which smelled of dampness and old cornflakes. ‘Is there any brandy in the place?’ I found some in the living-room cupboard, and we drank a good slug of it. I put my arm around her, feeling lecherous at the noise of rain dinning against the window. ‘Did you shut the skylight?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Please go and make sure, love.’
I hobbled up to the attic, found an aluminium ladder, and clamped the window into place. The bed was already patched with wet. I picked up a double-barrelled high-powered fowling piece and playfully aimed it through the skylight at the piss-filled clouds. The victory at getting in, and the fact that I would soon be entangled in the warm limbs of sweet Polly, must have turned my head, for in a moment of panache I pulled both triggers. A double explosion thumped my shoulder and threw me on the floor, and the shots brought down a shower of glass and splinters, so that slits of blood joined up with marks of rain and sweat.
Polly stood in the doorway: ‘For God’s sake, what have you done?’
‘I’m wounded. Don’t just stand there, help me up. Whoever could have left a gun loaded without murder in his heart?’
‘You’re not wounded,’ she said accusingly.
‘We’d better move the bed, and put a bucket under the hole, otherwise your house will get senile decay.’ I hobbled around and looked busy clearing up, while Polly said she’d never known anyone to sprain their ankle simply by firing a shotgun. I couldn’t convince her that I’d done it getting in, and that she just hadn’t noticed it before.
We had a shower, warm water soaking our skins back to life and sensitivity. She held me by the roots while I latched on to her breasts and soaped her between the legs, until she suddenly jerked and fetched forward as she came. Without waiting to get into the bedroom we lay on the towels and bathmats and shocked off together, wet and raw and flushed after the difficulties of getting in. We pulled each other into the bedroom. She put on a nightdress, then opened a drawer and took out one of her father’s linen shirts. ‘Put this on.’
‘I’m not cold.’
Her dark eyes were on fire, and I don’t think she could see me at alclass="underline" ‘Still, put it on.’ It meant nothing to me, so I did, and it was so big it was like a nightshirt, pin-striped and without a collar. She lay down, her head on the pillow and hair spread like feathers. My handle grew up, and pushed out the shirt, which she lifted till she got to it, and then I slapped her around and fucked her as hard as I could, while she moaned and whimpered about never having had it like this before, which I didn’t believe, though I couldn’t think of anything as my prick cut into the shrine of her and shot my life at her womb.