Decay Inevitable

Will nodded. He turned to Sadie, trying to smile. But she was gone.

“THIS IS EXACTLY what we don’t need,” Will said again. It was all he had said for the past hour as they hunted though the trees and bushes that sidled up the gulley. Elisabeth had given up shouting out Sadie’s name.

“We should just go,” Will said. “She’s pissing us around. She’s probably watching us now.”

Elisabeth was pale with worry. “We can’t just go, Will. We can’t leave her.”

“Why not?” Will snapped. “She left us. She’ll be fine. She’s not a child.”

He couldn’t explain to Elisabeth, but the need to get to Sloe Heath had changed him. Instilled in him was a fresh impetus, unbidden yet as critical as the life force. He could no more ignore it than the instinct to get out of the way of an oncoming train.

“If we hang around here much longer,” he complained, “this track will be re-opened.”

“She can’t have gone far,” Elisabeth countered.

“I hope she has.”

“Will.”

“Okay,” he said. “Another quarter of an hour. Then it will be dark and we’ll have to go on. But I promise you, she’s sitting in some tree, wetting herself watching us.”

The search proved fruitless. The smells of the bonfire were thickening. Elisabeth said, “Maybe we should...” and though Will didn’t relish the thought of mixing with strangers, he saw how they must at least investigate. As much as he cursed Sadie’s selfishness, it would be better if he knew where she had run to.

FOUR OR FIVE fires had been ignited across a patch of concretised wasteland comprised of a couple of acres that must once have been some kind of service depot for the long-departed trains. Ancient barrels of diesel lay around like fat drunks. Jagged holes in the metal showed how they had been siphoned of fuel. The foundations of a large building – some kind of maintenance shed – had left their outline in the ground. Lengths of scaffolding had turned the concrete it touched orange with rust. Into the grey surface, which was slowly being invaded by dandelions, pictures had been scratched in an infantile hand: cats and alien spaceships and steam engines. A skinny black dog trotted across the wasteland, giving Elisabeth and Will only cursory attention. Up ahead, where the fires were clustered together, came the occasional sound of laughter and swells of music. The tubercular grind of a car’s failing engine would at times drown out any other noise.

“I’m not too happy about this,” Elisabeth said, reaching for his hand.

There was a party in full flight. The fires contained it and illuminated it and encouraged it. Beyond the ring of flames, four or five caravans stood in the gloom like ruminating beasts. Will counted about half a dozen men sitting on blankets on the ground, passing a huge glass jug around that contained what looked like scrumpy from where they stood. The music worked on the three women in the ring like the moon on the tides, pulling and pushing them into fresh configurations. Barefoot, they wore wraps of fabric across their hips, slit to reveal legs tanned by the fire. They wore nothing on top. Four children played with toy cars in the dust at the far edge of the circle. From Will’s viewpoint, they looked misshapen, though that must have been down to the unreliable light. Sadie was not among them.

They moved forwards into the clearing. “Hello?” Will called out, trying to project his voice above the music, but not so powerfully that he startled his intended audience. One of the children looked up, then turned to the men and, waving to get their attention, pointed to Will before going back to his miniature traffic jam.

The music was turned off.

A man in a fleece zipped up to his throat sauntered over to Will and Elisabeth. The women reduced the energy of their dancing by degrees until they were gently swaying from side to side, all eyes turned on the visitors. Their skin seemed incandescent. Perspiration had failed to bead; it coated the flesh of their arms, their breasts, which were silvered by the moon or gilded by the flames, depending on the tilt of their bodies.

“Why are you here?” the man asked. His voice was touched by an accent Will couldn’t place. Something European.

“We’ve lost a little girl,” Will said.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” the man replied. “There are places you can go to for counselling, as I understand it.”

Low laughter from his male companions. One of the children stood up and threw a stone at Will and Elisabeth. It skipped along the floor and pinged off Will’s boot.

Elisabeth said, “What he meant was–”

The man blinked slowly. “She isn’t here.”

“Do you mind if we look around?” Will asked. “She could be hiding. We only lost her a little while ago.”

Now the other males sitting on the blankets rose and moved slowly to be with their friend. One of them hitched up a shirt that was worn loose over his jeans, exposing the curved, polished handle of a knife.

Will said, “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Well then,” said the man in the fleece, “you came to the wrong place.”