‘Jacob?’
‘Yes…?’
He looked down at her, and the phantom evaporated.
‘Are we done so soon?’
Her hand went between her legs, and took hold of his prick. Half its length was still inside her, but it was rapidly softening. He tried to push it back in, but it simply concertinaed against the tightness of her arse, and after a couple of dispiriting attempts he withdrew. She stared at him rancorously.
‘Is that it?’ she said.
He put his prick away, and got to his feet. ‘For now,’ he said.
‘Oh am I to be fucked in instalments then?’ she said, pulling her skirts down over her pudenda and sitting up. ‘I give you my arse against my better judgment and you don’t even have the decency to finish.’
‘I was distracted,’ he said, picking up his coat and putting it on.
‘By what?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Jacob snapped. ‘Lord, woman, it was just a fuck. There’ll be others.’
‘I don’t think so,’ she replied sniffily.
‘Oh?’
I think it’s high time we let one another alone. If we’re not out to make children, then what’s the use of it? Huh?’
He stared hard at her. ‘You mean this?’
‘Yes, I do. Most certainly. I mean it.’
‘You realize what you’re saying?’
‘Indeed I do.’
‘You’ll regret it.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’ll be weeping for want of a fuck.’
‘You think I’m that desperate for your ministrations?’ she said. ‘Lord, how you deceive yourself. I play along with you, Jacob. I pretend to be aroused, but I have no desire for you.’
That’s not so,’ he said.
She heard the hurt in his voice, and was astonished. It was rare, and like all rarities, valuable. Pretending not to notice, she went to her battered leather satchel and pulled out her mirror, and squatting beside the candles for better light, studied her reflection. ‘It is so,’ she said, after a little time. ‘Whatever was between us is dying, Jacob. If I loved you once, I forgot how. And frankly I don’t much care to be reminded.’
‘Very well,’ he said. She caught his image in the glass; saw the look of distress that crossed his face. Rarer than rare, that look.
‘As you say,’ she murmured.
‘I think…’
‘Yes?’
‘I…I would like to be alone for a while…’
‘Here?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
He flicked his fingers together, and a feather of flame leapt from them, extinguishing itself above his head. She did not care to watch him exercise this peculiar gift of his. She had her own skills, picked up, as Steep’s had been picked up, like jokes or rashes, somewhere along the way. Let him have the room to brood, she thought.
‘Will you be hungry later?’ she asked him, sounding (much to her perverse delight) like a parody of a wife.
‘I doubt it.’
‘I have a meat-pie, if you want something.’
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘We can still be civil, can’t we?’ she said.
He let another flame go from his fingertips. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’
With that, she left him to his musings.
Halfway along the track that led from the crossroads to the Courthouse, Will heard the squeaking of ill-oiled wheels behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see not one but two bicycle headlamps a little distance behind him. Breathing an inventive little curse, he stood and waited until Frannie and Sherwood caught up with him.
‘Go home,’ were his first words to them.
‘No,’ said Frannie breathlessly. ‘We decided to come with you.’
‘I don’t want you to come,’ Will said.
‘It’s a free country,’ Sherwood replied. ‘We can go wherever we want. Can’t we, Frannie?’
‘Shut up,’ Frannie said. Then to Will: ‘I only wanted to make sure you were okay.’
‘So why’d you bring him?’ Will said.
‘Because…he asked me…’ Frannie said. ‘He won’t be a bother.’
Will shook his head. ‘I don’t want you coming inside,’ he said.
‘It’s a free—’ Sherwood began again, but Frannie shushed him.
‘All right, we won’t,’ she said. ‘We’ll just wait.’
Knowing this was the best deal he was going to be able to make. Will headed for the Courthouse, with Frannie and Sherwood trailing behind. He made no further recognition of their presence, until he got to the hedgerow adjacent to the Courthouse. Only then did he turn and tell them in a whisper that if they made a sound they’d spoil everything and he would never ever speak to them again. With the warning given, he dug through the hawthorn and started up the gently sloping meadow towards the building. It loomed larger by night than it had by day, like a vast mausoleum, but he could see a light flickering within; there was nothing but exhilaration in his heart as he made his way down the passage towards it.
Jacob was sitting in the judge’s chair, with a small fire burning on the table in front of him. He looked up when he heard the door creak, and by the flames’ light Will had sight of the face he had conjured so many ways. In every detail, he had fallen short of its power. He had not made a brow wide or clear enough, nor eyes deep enough, nor imagined that Steep’s hair, which he had seen in silhouette falling in curly abundance, would be cropped back to a shadow on the top of his skull. He had not imagined the gloss of his beard and moustache, or the delicacy of his lips, which he licked, and licked again, before saying:
‘Welcome, Will. You come at a strange time.’
‘Does that mean you want me to go?’
‘No. Far from it.’ He added a few pieces of tinder to the fire before him. It crackled and spat. ‘It is, I know, the custom to paint a smile over sorrow; to pretend there is joy in you when there is not. But I hate wiles and pretences. The truth is I’m melancholy tonight.’
‘What’s…melancholy?’ Will said.
There’s honest,’ Jacob replied appreciatively. ‘Melancholy is sad, but more than sad. It’s what we feel when we think about the world and how little we understand; when we think of what we must come to.’
‘You mean dying and stuff?’
‘Dying will do,’ Jacob said. Though that’s not what concerns me tonight.’ He beckoned to Will. ‘Come closer,’ he said, ‘it’s warmer by the fire.’
The few flames on the table offered, Will thought, little prospect of heat, but he gladly approached. ‘So why are you sad?’ Will said.
Jacob sat back in the ancient chair, and contemplated the fire. ‘It’s business