Five Miles From Outer Hope Read Online Free PDF

steamroller.
    I have cunningly been employing monosyllabic Jack’s passion for this vehicle in my four-pronged attack on his affections. Last week I cleaned it. This week I’m expressing an interest in its rudimentary mechanics. I’ve invited him out fishing (I’m a dab-hand, me). And all the while I bore him with tales of our time on Soames Island in Wellington harbour, New Zealand. He loves it.
    (Jack has this fantasy about turning our current crummy bolt-hole into some kind of nature reserve. He’s a nutter. He likes to mutter about the surf and stuff. He’s into Polynesian culture. He even has a Maori tattoo.
    The man is plainly out of his tree. I mean, how does he plan to keep nature reserved on a place part-connected to the mainland? In truth he’s nothing more than a tragic booze casualty, but somehow, in some way, he brings out the nasty, sexy, six-foot Nurse Nightingale in me.)
    This particular morning I find him standing on an overturned bucket, poking his nose into the ancient inn’s low-slung but very clogged-up gutters. It’s still high tide. We’re cut off. The coast is clear. And luckily my extra inches mean I don’t have to yell up at him.
    ‘Need a hand?’ I whisper.
    He jumps and scowls. ‘Why did God make you so obliging?’
    Side-on he looks like Gene Wilder. But no perm. I say nothing. (What do I know of God’s intentions?) Instead I peer through a window then saunter down the hill a way.
    ‘So who’s the freak in the balaclava?’ he asks. He can’t help himself. He wants me. I stop sauntering.
    ‘Balaclava?’
    ‘Five this morning, I brought him over on the tractor. Your dad was spitting fucking tacks .’
    I shrug. I am mesmerized by the sheer sum of words spilling out of him.
    ‘Sorry,’ I finally manage again, ‘you said balaclava ?’
    ‘Then not ten minutes since,’ he continues, ‘I saw him carrying a shitload of chicken wire…’
    He points to the hazy summit – past the old croquet lawn, towards the Herring Cove – a sumptuous grass-strewn rise glimmering with an obscene verdancy in the early summer shine (the cliffs crash beyond it, all chalk and shag).
    ‘That way.’
    Jesus, the man is almost trippy .
    He peers again, ‘And there he goes…’
    I walk back towards him, up the hill. Once I reach his level I stretch my neck. Sure enough, I see a black-headed creature processing regally along the horizon, arms full of silver.
    ‘Chicken wire? Where’d he get that from?’
    ‘And he’s got some old lavender,’ Jack observes almost squinting, ‘and a fucking tonne of blue grass… Still in his balaclava, note. The twat .’
    You know what? He’s been here all of three hours or something and already the bastard’s appropriating . He’s re-inventing . He’s running bloody riot. Collecting chicken wire for no known reason, and gathering lavender. Wearing a balaclava .
    Oh, so he’s softened you already with the chin thing, has he? You think I didn’t notice? You have a handsome chin. You think that didn’t impact ? This man is clever, certainly. But I am single-minded, oestrogen-fuelled and cunning .
    Right. So he sees me coming from way off and is courteous enough to stand waiting. As I draw closer – I am panting a little and wet-legged from the dew (I’m resolutely bare-footed – my soles are like emery boards. You can strike matches off them. We do it all the time in winter), I see that the balaclava has no nose or mouth holes, although the wool’s much darker where the mouth and nose should be. Wet. Sweaty.
    ‘And the chicken wire?’
    He stares at me, hazel-eyed. My words hang in the air a while. Soon they’re flapping like old underwear on a windy washing line.
    And the chicken wire?
    He blinks.
    ‘Oh. Was that a question you just asked me?’
    (Imagine his words, all tight and clipped and southern hemispherical, but completely ensnared by woollen weave – Uh. Gnah, gnah, gnah, gnah, gnah, gnah, gnah, gnah hi ?)
    ‘Sorry,’ I lie. ‘I