Natural History Read Online Free PDF Page B

tilted her head, brushed aside her limp fringe and stooped to the flame. And as she did, Charlie took a secret, heartbroken scent of her.
    Charlie closed his eyes. His delicate eyelids. His girlish lashes.
    Then the girl straightened, puffing, and they walked on together, without exchanging a word.
    And now Charlie packed his stuff—some clothes, some records, not much else—and left, to live in a squat.
    It would be a genteel kind of squat, Patrick supposed; it was in Bath.
    Early autumn 1995, they moved to Monkeyland.
    Biddie Powys’s old house was big, ramshackle, higgledy as gingerbread—it would’ve been too big, even filled with the noisy motion of the four of them. Now it drummed out its emptiness like a slow-beating heart. Patrick and Jane had never lived together without children.
    On a cool September night, they waded out into the wild acre behind the house. Jane was barefoot, barelegged in his parka.
    He unzipped the parka and she lay down and they fucked in a flattened patch of grass, the ice-twinkling universe upended above them.
    Richard’s two-man camera crew was there to record the first, faltering days at Monkeyland—the strained meetings, the worried staff, the flexing stress commas at the corners of Jane’s mouth.
    They took many shots of Patrick, in his frayed sweater, stirring mugs of milky tea.
    Patrick liked the camera crew—Sound Mick and Camra Dave. They were disinterested and professional and jovial; and they told sniggering jokes about Richard, about his perfect hair, his clothes, his background as a quiz-show presenter. They made Patrick snicker, like a schoolboy at a resented teacher.
    Sometimes, Patrick joined them as they ranged Monkeyland, collecting shots to portray it in the bleakest possible light. They called it Going Ukrainian. They told Patrick that Going Ukrainian had never been such a doddle, and clapped him fraternally on the back.
    They shot lonely chimps wandering through cold compounds, wall-eyed gibbons and sad-eyed orangs, munching away. The empty cafeteria, the windblown gift shop. And just the sheeting, grey rain, blowing across the deserted public spaces. The picnic area, the adventure playground.
    Patrick stood with them on a grassy mound that overlooked the Bachelor Group, watching as they filmed weather billowing in from the west, soaking the skinny, miserable donkeys.
    He laced his hands behind his head and said, ‘Fucking hell.’
    Camra Dave shifted the unit on his shoulder.
    He said, ‘I don’t envy you, mate.’
    Patrick slept six hours a night and woke energized and refreshed. Sometimes in the morning, he did an hour’s writing. More often, he went out; he fished, did some running, pounding along muddy tracks in shorts and hooded top. His suburban headaches cleared up.
    Then he drove over to Monkeyland and the despondency returned like toothache.
    He began every morning with a staff meeting. The staff were unhappy; they feared for their jobs. Patrick feared for their jobs too. He, Jane and the senior keepers spent many hours in planning meetings—detailing the cost and logistics of refitting the enclosures; discussing how to enrich the chimps’ environment without bankrupting the operation.
    The Head Keeper was Harriet. She was from London. She called moving to Monkeyland a lifestyle choice, and she squinted one eye balefully at Patrick when she said it, as if anticipating a challenge.
    Harriet was short, five foot one in her DMs, thirty-five, blonde, florid, and good at being Head Keeper. She knew what she was doing, and Patrick didn’t. And yet he was her boss. The first time he met her, he made a joke about her job title. ‘You’re the Head Keeper? Great! Where do you keep the heads?’
    She did not respond, and now Patrick was slightly scared of her.
    Sam had been Charlie’s girlfriend for three months.
    She was American, from Washington DC, and she’d been living in England for