Dennis reached under the table to touch Valerie’s knee, hoping she would take it as a signal to rescue him. Instead she got up and told him, “I want to hear all about it. Every detail.”
Outside the pub, the two dogs wagged tails and whined happily at the sight of Malcolm even though he had only been gone for minutes. They were tan, muscular creatures, about a hundred pounds each, Dennis estimated, stiff ridges of fur rising the lengths of their backbones. Their heads were huge, long tongues flopping over sharp teeth. He imagined a steel trap clamped onto his wrist. But now they jumped at Malcolm, paws on his chest, while he pounded them with a playful forearm. For the first time, the man was smiling.
Sylvie reached into her purse for a small light with a wide beam. She pointed it at the pathway back to the cottages. “I’ll have the kettle on.” She and Valerie walked off side by side, Valerie calling back “Bye,” clearly enjoying herself.
“This way,” Malcolm told Dennis when they were gone. He waited for two cars to pass and crossed the road. Although the dogs wore chain leashes attached to choke collars, he let them loose, yet they stayed just inches from his boots. Dennis kept a few yards behind, walking in Malcolm’s footsteps through the flattened weeds.
They came to a T-junction with a narrow single-track lane marked by a stone milepost with carved hands, one pointing in the direction of the closest town, the other toward the city a hundred miles away. Malcolm turned left, saying nothing. Dennis expected that the man could have taken this route blindfolded.
They made their way by moonlight. Dennis was surprised by how well he could see at this hour, trying to recall the last time he had walked in such an empty countryside. Years, it must have been, though he couldn’t remember when or where.
James thrived in the outdoors, Valerie had told him once, though she never went with him. That wasn’t her idea of pleasure. Dennis assumed James and their sons were already nestled in a tent pitched on the bank of a stream, eager to be up at dawn to fish for trout. What if that stream lay up ahead and Malcolm were taking him there? He pictured Malcolm pulling back a tent flap and announcing, This man is trying to steal your wife.
An angry screeching made him stop dead in his tracks. He turned toward the sound and saw two white geese behind a wire fence, feathers quivering, furious at the intrusion. He expected the dogs to go for them, Malcolm to shout, but both man and dogs paid no intention.
“Here,” Malcolm said a few yards ahead, pushing his way through a thick hedge off the lane onto a soft footpath. Dennis could feel his shoes sinking into mud, the only pair he had brought, expecting to spend the whole weekend in a room with Valerie, hours and hours of lovemaking. Now he’d be leaning over the toilet, scraping off mud.
They must have walked for fifteen minutes, Dennis hurrying to keep pace with Malcolm’s long strides, the dogs with their noses to the dirt, eager for the right scent. When Dennis looked behind, he could see the shape of the church steeple pointing up at the stars and made out the faint glow of lights from the cottages. He wondered if Valerie was in one of them, sitting in a chair by the fire, a teacup in her hand, Sylvie and Malcolm’s children stretched out on a rug beside them, perhaps one on Sylvie’s lap, the women at peace in each other’s company, Valerie telling about her own sons, how much she loved them, so deep into her visit that she had forgotten all about him.
Malcolm stopped him short with a hand in his chest and a signal to be quiet, to stay still. They had come to the edge of a tangled grove of trees, trunks tumbled and uprooted, jagged branches dangling loose and splayed across the dirt, the air thick with the scent of rotting vegetation, everything ghostly pale in the moonlight. He realized how chill the night had become, how cold he was. I’m lost, he thought. I’ve lost.
The dogs crouched, their haunches quivering. Malcolm breathed deep and fast. Dennis saw the shape of an animal in the midst of the trees. He felt an urge to shout, Run, Get away, but held himself as silent as Malcolm and the dogs. Then Malcolm made a sound like a growl, and the dogs bolted with loud yips. Dennis wouldn’t look, couldn’t, but he sensed Malcolm’s excitement pulsating in the air about them. He heard the dogs’ paws crushing leaves and twigs, the roars of their barking.
When a scream of terror ripped through the night, he felt as if he were being split apart and something torn from the heart of him.
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