‘We should go on a proper retreat. I’ve been reading about this one in north Wales. You go up into the mountains, stay in tents pitched around an old chapel, spend the days praying and walking and swimming in ice-cold lakes. I think that’s maybe the best way to get close to God.’
‘It sounds amazing,’ Marcus said.
‘I don’t know if David would get jealous, us going on someone else’s retreat.’
Mouse strutted over to them, carrying an armful of lilies, the pollen running orange streaks through the white fur of his stole.
‘Abby and I would be delighted if you’d join us for a trip to pay homage to our great lords of the high road, the titans of the tarmac. I want to drop flowers down on the lorries, let the blessing of nature purify their sooty hearts.’
Abby was already gently easing a fur out from beneath one of the sleeping twins. Lee wrapped herself in a rabbit-skin coat that hung down to the ground. She left the front open, revealing her low-cut black top. Marcus pulled a bearskin around his shoulders like a cloak. He thought it was probably supposed to be a rug: it trailed behind him as he walked out into the misty night. Mouse and Abby had already started down the path ahead of them. The mist deadened sound as they made their way down into the valley; Marcus could no longer hear the motorway. Lee stopped to light cigarettes for both of them, struggling to get the flame to catch in the damp air. Marcus helped her and took a long drag, blowing the smoke out to meet the misty air. When he looked up, Mouse and Abby had disappeared. Lee took his hand and scurried along the path, making her way fleet-footed over the red earth, skipping above half-hidden roots and tree stumps. Marcus thrust his cigarette into his mouth and struggled to keep up with her.
There was no definite point at which Marcus realised that they were lost. The mist had an extraordinary disorienting effect, and Lee’s scampering flight had been so swift that he hadn’t noticed that the path, which had seemed well-worn and familiar in the daylight, had merged into the surrounding earth. He let go of Lee’s hand and looked around. She turned back towards him, laughing, gesturing him onwards.
‘We’re not on the path any more,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, ‘we just need to carry on down until we reach the motorway embankment. We can make our way along to the bridge from there. Come on, this is fun.’
Marcus stopped. He peered further into the trees around them. It had grown lighter, and when he looked closely he could see that all of the trees around them were dead. The spindly skeletons of pines stretched skywards, the wizened fingers of branches white in the moonlight, the trunks reaching up from the mist that swirled around their roots. There was no foliage on the branches, nothing but mist to impede the searing white light of the moon. Bark peeled back like diseased skin. Marcus pressed his hand against one of the trees and felt the crêpelike wood dissolve under his touch. The world was only whiteness and shadow and the skeleton fingers of the trees all seemed to point at Marcus. He made out a darker shadow in the distance.
‘What’s that through there?’
He took her hand, which was damp and hot, and led her across the uneven ground, around the rotting trunk of a fallen tree and over a small ridge into a clearing. They were beside the lake, whose surface was trapped under a thick cushion of mist. The shape that Marcus had seen was the boathouse. One of the grain drums stood next to them, its rook corpse turning slowly in the mist above.
‘How did we end up here?’ He looked up and could just make out the dark mass of the house above them. ‘I thought we were much further down. At least we know that this path leads to the motorway.’
Lee didn’t answer. She was standing on the bank of the lake, looking out into the thickly packed mist, which glowed where it was illuminated by moonlight away from the shadows of trees. Marcus came up behind her and put his arms around her, pulling the bearskin rug about them both. She was breathing very quickly, and he saw her breath on the air in front of them. She half-turned her head and leaned back against him. He could feel his own heart beating as it pressed against her back.
‘It’s like the Morte d’Arthur,’ she said.
‘It’s beautiful.’
She pulled away from him, walked over towards the boathouse, hesitated for a moment, and then stepped out into the mist that sat above the lake. Marcus jumped towards her, ready to pull her from the cold water. Only when he was beside the boathouse did he realise that she had stepped out into a rowing boat that was moored to the deck in front of the small wooden building.
‘Come in. Let’s row out into the lake. I want to look up at the moon through the mist.’ She moved up to the prow of the small boat and lay back, her legs folded beneath her.
Marcus stepped unsteadily onto the boat. The misty air was a cold blanket around his shoulders. He sat down upon the central bench and felt on the floor for the oars. He rowed them slowly out into the centre of the lake. The water slapped gently against the sides of the boat. After a while he let them drift and made his way towards Lee. The mist was very thick around them; it was as if it were something solid that re-formed each instant to accommodate the gentle passage of the boat through the water. The moon was a faint silver smudge above them, the surrounding trees were shadows. Marcus lay down on the floor of the boat, his head in Lee’s lap. He pulled the bearskin over them. He felt the shifting of the water beneath him, imagined the fish moving among the weeds below. Lee ran her long fingers through his hair.
‘We could be anywhere. Anywhere, at any time. Floating through an endless night.’
The boat rocked as Lee shifted and leaned over him. He looked up at the halo of her short, damp hair, then shuffled further into the warm darkness of her lap.
‘Do you ever think about that time at university?’ Her voice was a whisper. He heard her light a cigarette. After taking a drag she held it in his mouth. With one hand she continued to stroke his hair. He spoke into the coarse hair of the rug.
‘Yes. I mean, I try not to think about it. It makes me guilty. But it was only a kiss.’
‘Yes, it was only a kiss.’
They lay and felt the air thicken around them. Marcus tried to work out whether she could also feel whatever it was that was building in the mist, grabbing hold of his heart and his groin, making his breaths come in shallow gasps. One of her hands continued to caress his hair, finding new paths to trace across his scalp, exposing new trails of nerve-ends that thrilled as her nails travelled across them. His face was pressed against the softness of her belly. A night bird called somewhere in the trees over the boathouse. She stopped stroking Marcus and pushed him gently away from her, lifting the bearskin and wrapping it about herself. He moved back to sit on the central bench. Lee’s voice came at him as if from a great distance, as cold as the mist that surrounded them.
‘You fake it, don’t you, the speaking in tongues? I can tell. I can tell when I watch you because I fake it, too.’
Marcus drew in a cool, damp breath.
‘I don’t know, Lee. It’s tough. Have you ever done it, you know, properly?’
‘Maybe once, at the very beginning. I felt like I was drifting away. It was like I get sometimes when I listen to a really beautiful piece of music, or read a poem that really speaks to me. But recently, I haven’t felt anything at all. I so wanted it to be this big revelation. I’ve been waiting and waiting for it, my Damascus moment, but it has never arrived. I think tonight I might have given up.’
A gust of wind skimmed across the lake, billowing the mist. Marcus shivered.