Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker (best story books to read .TXT) 📗

to a scientist, to a potter, or to Art. No one told him he should be writing film scripts or Christmas jingles. Surely it’s a bad thing to skip from position to position, never becoming an expert in anything?

And why, despite the sad, soft looks, did their offer of help feel like a threat?

I tossed the folders onto the back of the car and slid into the front passenger seat. Art leapt in the driver’s spot and turned on the ignition. “Obligations over. Let’s go, shall we?”

It had been my idea to make the most of getting out of town. Since Art had been away, I felt like we hadn’t quite clicked back together as comfortably as we had before. Admittedly I’d built this afternoon up in my head as a chance to really get back on track with intimacy, but I’d sold it to him as simply an opportunity to enjoy the country. Less intimidating that way.

Luckily it was a blazing hot August day, and I’d prepared a picnic, all wrapped up in a red fleecy bundle, and mapped out a route to an ornamental garden around an hour’s drive from Easton Grove.

The air conditioning filter in Art’s car was on the blink so I wheeled down the passenger window to feel the wind on my face. Every so often I’d take a deep draught and the air would catch on my throat. Even though we were out in the middle of nowhere, and the only sign of life was the slow tread of distant scatterers on the horizon, you could still taste the tang of pollution – like licking the handle of a knife.

At one point, we drove past a wide body of water trapped in a grassy valley. On the bank nearest us were two men and a boy of about eight or so, dressed in identical waxy-looking clothes and yellow rubber boots that went up to the knee. Each was sitting in his own deckchair with a fishing rod balanced beside him and his eyes on the point where his line met the lake. They were very still.

“That’s cruel,” said Art. “I bet they’ve told the kid he’ll catch something.”

I wasn’t sure. The three of them were perfectly focussed on something. But part of what Art said was right – the boy wouldn’t have known a day when just anyone with a rod could catch a fish. Perhaps there was another prize to be won from fishing in the toxic soup.

We reached the gardens early. Thinking it wouldn’t be all that busy, I’d expected a quiet afternoon where we could both recline with only the whisper of wind through leaves to keep us company. But it was a Saturday, and I really don’t know why I thought my great picnic idea wouldn’t occur to everyone else in the local area too.

The ornamental garden was in fact a long, stretching lawn behind an old stately home called Crawcrook Hall. The grass, violently green with too many stimulants, was bordered by a fence of ancient trees, gnarled and half-fossilised, the type that have seen and weathered everything. Their arms twisted up towards the sky and down again, all elbows and wrists, like they’d been dancing and then entombed.

That day, the rolling lawn was a patchwork of blankets and people, spreadeagled and shining. Couples sprawled together in knots, their limbs tangled together, while parents chased excited toddlers and children from straying too far into the woods. Babies lay on their backs under lacy parasols, weighted to the earth like washed-clean pebbles.

So many people. All those lives just… happening. And everyone so happy and free, their laughter falling like water down a mountainside. I wondered if they could tell we weren’t like them. I felt as though we moved like automatons.

It had been a long time since I’d last crushed into a picnic ground like this. The last time would have been with Luke a year and a half before, and while it wasn’t at Crawcrook it was at a similar stately home called Hibiscus Hall. I remember it like it was yesterday. Luke had surprised me with a basket bursting with tasty bits for afternoon tea – cupcakes, pastries, cheese, berries, beer – and we ate it all sitting on the lawn. At no point did I need to smile to show him how I felt, he just knew. I was wearing shorts and the grass tickled the back of my legs, as if I sat on the fur of a shifting creature. We hardly spoke but lay there for hours, all people and places outside the park as distant as a bad dream.

Later, I’d remember both picnics but only one would feel like a fiction. Though what was the difference, really? Luke and I had definitely been there, just as Art and I had. I could remember both afternoons. Both versions of me. How I remember it all, well, that’s more to do with me making sense of it all. And I don’t mind that. It’s somewhere I can go, not say anything, just watch the clouds roll above me like I’m watching time from an untouchable place.

Anyway, Art and I weaved through the sea of bodies and finally found a grassy spot just past the recycling bins. Complying with the rule of all picnics I’d packed far too much, and after laying it all out on the grass it was official that I’d brought an obscene amount of food for two people. It was mostly stuff Easton Grove would have approved of: leaves, fruits, berries and veg, but then I’d also brought some naughtier crisps and cookies, and I’d baked some little cocoa ball-things which immediately melted into one solid lump under the midday sun.

Whether it was the warm light on my skin or being free from the appointment with Fia and Nathan, I felt lighter than I had done in a long time. Art looked brighter too, and I was struck by how much I wanted