The Secrets of Pain

73

He’d done it all. Cut the wire, smashed the CCTV camera. He’d been here before. Well, of course he had.

There was a horrible smell from the lamps. Like rancid, molten butcher’s-shop fat. Cornel was leaning against the altar, the lump hammer still in his hand, the rucksack at his feet.

‘Thing is, girlie – and I’ve thought about this a lot – the night you humiliated me in the pub, I do believe that’s when it all started going wrong. Me standing there with my trousers soaked, as if I’d pissed myself. And all my mates laughing. You started it. You could’ve walked away anytime, and you didn’t. Well in the frame for a shag. Who put you up to it, girlie? Which of my mates?’

‘Nobody. Swear to God. I was just fishing for information – about what happens at The Court.’

‘Bull shit. Kids your age, it’s just clothes and clubbing and baby booze. And the teen-witch bit in your case, though I’d’ve thought-’

‘I have never been a bloody teen-’

‘And your boyfriend, the big-time journalist. You think I didn’t ask people if you had a boyfriend? Yeah, yeah, she knocks around with some fat Welsh student.’

‘He knows a lot of journalists, and he’s not-’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’ Jane moved back into the lamplight. Not having this. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. You’re-’

‘ Shuddup! ’

Jane flinched a little but didn’t move.

‘If it’s not cockfighting,’ she said, ‘what is it?’

‘Took my money, and they hung me out to dry.’

‘Who?’

‘One of the other guys was washing in the Gents’ and he had his sleeves rolled up. I thought it was a tattoo. He’d been branded. Branded like a bull, and it was still fresh and livid. The pain of that, and he didn’t… he didn’t care. Pain works. It’s a man thing.’

His teeth were gritted again. Jane recalled how, at the back of the Swan, the man with the ashy voice had told Cornel, It’s about manhood.

‘This is some kind of temple, right?’

‘I thought you knew all about it. But you don’t know shit, do you?’

‘Don’t know much about Roman stuff.’

‘Holy of holies. Just smashed the holy of holies, and it’s not over yet.’

‘ Why? ’

‘Made it to raven, and then it stopped.’

‘Huh?’

‘Took me out to the top of a hill. Had to spend the night on the top, naked. All night. Alone, but I knew they were watching, so I couldn’t creep off. No food all day. They gave me something to drink so I stopped feeling the cold, and then I’m seeing things, fucking terrifying, but when the sun comes up… God… Next night, we go out lamping hares. It was spectacular. I’m wearing like…’ Cornel cupped his hands around his face, like a funnel. ‘The raven? Then ate raw meat, fresh-killed.’

His body was vibrating again. He was grinding his teeth. Then his jaw fell to his chest.

‘And that was it. Covered truck still comes maybe twice a week, close to midnight. There might be fifteen guys on the course, but only two or three will go. And I’m, like, when’s it my turn? Why not me? Was that it? There’s higher degrees, another six. But it stops. It fucking stops.’

Oh God, it was about frustration.

It all came out. They wouldn’t let him move up to the next grade. They took his money, but they wouldn’t let him move on. He’d kept on at Kenny Mostyn who he’d thought was his mate – what did he have to do, what did they want? He’d gone around the countryside, demonstrating how hard he was, shooting at people’s pets, following Kenny one night, to a cockfight. Thinking back, Kenny must’ve been really pissed off when he turned up, but he congratulated him on his initiative, bought him drinks, helped him place his bets. Of course he lost, making a fool of himself, got into the car legless but made it back, trying to persuade Barry to cook the poor bird. He’d become half-mad with frustration, he really didn’t understand and, oh for God’s sake, Jane didn’t either.

‘Twenty-six.’ Cornel’s big jaw thrusting out, his face all sheeny. ‘Twenty fucking six, with a mortgage half the size of the national debt, a car that cost fifty K, not half paid for. I’m fucked!’

He laid the hammer on the altar. Bent down to the rucksack and pulled something out. Like a folded jacket or something, Jane couldn’t see.

‘Got the push, girlie, did I tell you? Necessary rationalization. Had a message to ring my boss. He wasn’t even apologetic. Difficult times, old boy, difficult times. Then off to his villa in Tuscany, the bloated fucking toad.’

Jane watched a fist rebunching out of the same hand that had held hers, knuckles shining with grease.

‘They shafted me. Mostyn. And Savitch and all the public-school cunts who were egging me on to give you one.’ Cornel reached down and tugged on something. ‘I followed the truck. Hired the van, so nobody would know it was me. Easy to follow people on these roads. And then I came back. Hey, but you know what was weird? Got in last night. Being really, really careful. And the police came. The actual police. I’m crouching there behind the altar, they flash their torches around very quickly and then bugger off. I creep up to the door, and they’ve nicked some other bloke. Couldn’t believe it. I felt-’ Cornel punched his left palm with his right fist. ‘Magic!’

When he started to laugh, it was like a yelping. He snapped on the torch and shone the beam at the ground, where he’d thrown down the bundle.

‘Strikes me you’re the first woman ever to come in here.’ His livery lips wet. ‘Or you will be.’

Kicking the bundle on the ground, and Jane watched the sleeping bag slowly unroll.

‘Sacrilege.’ Cornel’s shadow was a momentary black bloom on the curved roof. ‘Think of it like that. We’re gonna have ourselves some sacrilege, girlie.’

Jane’s recoil knocked one of the lamps off the altar, hot fat splashing up as it went out, and she bit her top lip so hard she felt the blood come.

Cornel’s face, in the mean light, was creamy with sweat. Cornel was a mess, Cornel was a tosser. Keep telling yourself that. Jesus, tell him.

‘Cornel,’ Jane said – even though she knew it was the wrong, wrong thing to say, she said it. ‘You’re an educated guy. You ever think this could be making you just a little bit insane?’

Don’t waste time looking for his reaction, look for a way out of here: those stepped concrete blocks, the seating, the back row seemed to be some distance from the wall. Would have to be, because this was a Nissen hut and more than half the wall was curved, part of the roof, so there had to be a space.

‘You’ll get another job.’ Stepping back, her raised voice gathering echoes. ‘Look at the totally bent, disgraced politicians who keep bouncing back. And they’re, like, old?’

So there was likely to be a concealed channel – walkway, crawlway – around the perimeter. Follow that and you’d get back to the doors.

Cornel said, ‘Don’t try to engage me in conversation, Jane – we’re way past that.’

A two-one from the LSE: he wasn’t a complete idiot, was he? Jane saw him place something on the end of the concrete bench and pick up the hammer. Each time he smashed it down, with a dull, metallic splintering, she winced and jerked and backed a bit further away. It had to be her mobile.

‘Please, Cornel…’ Suddenly near to tears, and they were seeping into her voice. ‘You can’t rape me.’

The word was out, pathetically, but carrying a long echo…ape me .

Jane zipped her jacket all the way up as his voice came back at her, petulant, along with a spurt of torchbeam.

‘Doesn’t have to be that.’

‘Just because you feel sorry for somebody,’ Jane said steadily, ‘doesn’t mean you… doesn’t mean you can fancy them.’

Well, she didn’t feel sorry for Cornel at all. He was a victim of his own greed, his own obsession. She hated him. She sank slowly down and fitted both hands under one of the shards of concrete which had flown off under the lump hammer. It was too heavy to throw at him, but she had nothing else; she held it against her stomach, letting her body take some of the weight as she backed away from the lamp.

‘And this place is horrible. It stinks and it’s not even a proper ancient site. It’s just cobbled together out of old… building supplies, and you know what? I… I think you’ve got this all wrong, Cornel. I think you’ve been conned. This is just a scam to make money out of guys like you.’

Jane flattened herself against the rough bottom wall and began to drag herself along it, thinking maybe Cornel wanted this place to bring out a side of him he still wasn’t sure was there. As if just being here, doing violent man things…

‘It’s just a scam, Cornel, to make money out of rich, gullible-’

‘Do you see what’s in my hand, girlie?’

Jane screamed.

‘I’m not looking!’ Aware that he was pointing the torch at himself – oh please – down there. ‘You come near me, Cornel, I swear I’ll have your eyes out.’