Hunger

Hunger

So, this is how I die. Hacked to pieces with a rusty chainsaw by a deranged loner with broken teeth in a broken house in the middle of Christ knows where, at night, a storm bellowing above the tin roof, cannibalised cars out front, my julienned body out back. Terrific. Death by cliché.

Elizabeth turned the key again, pleaded with the hire car, “Come on!” – leaning on the syllable with all her might as if trying to shoulder the Toyota out of the ditch. And the hire car with the cheerful decal across the back that read ‘We Get You Moving!’ told her no, absolutely not. You were stupid enough to drive us into this godforsaken trench, to ram my wheels into mud like candles into a chocolate cake. So nope. We’re screwed.

Darkness wrapped itself around them, found its way into Elizabeth’s thinking. Why in god’s name did I leave my phone behind? Oh that’s right. working, need to focus. Can’t be glancing at the screen all night, praying it lights up like an apology. And why the hell did he have to choose tonight of all nights to be such a dick?

She stared through the windscreen at the ‘view’, out of habit rather than logic. Nothing. It wasn’t even black on black, with subtle but discernible contrasts. This was just uniform nothingness, like looking up from the bottom of a deep, deep well. Out there were probably rectangular cows with flaccid udders and slow trusting faces, and silhouettes of hills and the odd lonely, anorexic tree. There might well have been a deserted shopping mall for all she knew, looming up vacant and watchful. The dense night was giving her no clues. Unyielding as writer’s block. The rain wasn’t helping. All she did know for sure was what lay back there. That house. If you could call it a house.

She’d left the hotel a good 25 minutes before, when the storm was still only on a low simmer. Now she felt such a deep nostalgia for 25 minutes ago.

“You sure you know where you are going? The restaurant's a bit hard to find in the dark,” the young woman at the hotel front desk had said. She wore a name badge that read Aimyee with an inexplicable ‘y’ and equally inexplicable green mascara. Aimyee said to hit the main highway and keep going for maybe 5km, then ‘keep those eyes peeled’ for it on the right, set back a little. She even drew it on a square of blue notepad. Just two parallel lines of black biro with an x to one side. It was the least useful map Elizabeth had ever laid eyes on, but she thanked Aimyee as if she’d driven Elizabeth there herself.

“You’re in for a treat,” the receptionist added brightly. “Meant to be amazing”.

After four days on her travel writing mission, four days of being breakfasted, gourmet-dinnered, organic wined, aperitif-ed, amuse-bouched and cheese trolleyed into a stupor Elizabeth wasn’t sure that a 12-course degustation meal could in fact be classified as a treat. It was hardly coal-mining or a 10-hour shift in a freezing works, but still.

There’s this idea, she mused, that a great experience involves fine linen and chocolates on your pillow and toilet rolls that have been folded into a V and soft lighting that says ‘ssh, I’ve got you’. But what if you’d kill for a simple bowl of cornflakes and you’re missing your children and there’s a burning inside of you that no amount of antacid will placate and you’re sitting in a Michelin-star restaurant with an empty place opposite that somehow reflects back a certain unpalatable truth about your life… What then? Does the sommelier have anything for that?

She’d driven past the house and wondered how anyone could possibly live within such a bleak collection of walls in such a bleak location. It looked like the storm had picked it up and carried it as thoughtlessly as you carry empty cereal boxes and naked soup cans to the recycling, then had got bored and dropped it right where it was to fend for itself. The mailbox was half hanging off, like it wanted to kill itself rather than spend one more day hosting slugs and sodden junk mail. Though she doubted that even junk-mailers ventured this far. Surveying the building as she cruised past, from the safety of her warm, cosy capsule she’d thought, with a dark ripple of schadenfreude, God help anyone turning up on that doorstep.

And now, it looked like that poor unfortunate was going to be her. No one in their right mind would be coming down this road to save her. Nobody. Not tonight, or possibly ever.

Elizabeth cursed her stupidity. After traveling some 5km along the main highway as instructed and seeing nothing, she’d figured that green-lashed lady had forgotten to mention the restaurant was not just set back from the highway, but in fact on a side road. So she’d hung a right down this narrow lane, which lured her in with its semblance of pastoral normality – all wooden fences and bog-standard, rain-shimmering foliage. A lane that hummed innocently and pretended to be a lane when all along it was a Corridor of Doom.

Even when Elizabeth’s inner compass had shown itself to be a cheap fraud, still she’d continued on like you do with an anecdote even though people are looking away or glancing at their phones or hiding a yawn behind their hands, just hurtling straight on because back-tracking seemed like defeat. Then when it did come to raising the white flag, to turning around, Elizabeth did so with reckless abandon, driving the Toyota forwards like she was in the parking lot at Costco, with respect for neither terrain nor weather nor the dire consequences of miscalculation.

Now she sat for what seemed to her like a long time, though it was probably five minutes. She didn’t feel earthbound, mired in mud. Instead she had a sense of floating through time and space, just her and the metallic container, the night bandaged tightly around them. Perhaps, she thought, she was already dead. Perhaps she’d already stopped at the house back there, and they’d tossed her body in the car, and this was how dead-ness felt.

Elizabeth thought of her children, how they’d react to the news. They had seemed indifferent to her departure, had bestowed farewell hugs restlessly, already straining to be somewhere else. But they were still only children after all. She thought of the headlines ‘Food writer goes missing’, then a few weeks later ‘Food writer’s disappearance remains a mystery’, and then after some months ‘Missing food writer thought to be among remains found at property’. She wondered which photographs they’d use and hoped it would be one of her on holiday with the kids, burned nose and wet hair, full of salty, beach swept joy – so people would feel properly sad. Not her byline pic, all coiffed and freshly made up and relatable as an android. People would think ‘Ah, yes food writer – well she had a pretty cushy time of it while it lasted.” She would be just a woman-shaped person, one among many. One that would not be missed. And when they read the story, they might even conclude “What was she thinking?” as if one wrong turn merited the death penalty.

She thought of M, and sadness breezed through her. He might not simply be indifferent were she to vanish, but relieved. Her inner compass on men was just about as competent as it was navigating backroads on perilous nights. M was the latest in a string of derelict relationships post-divorce. His children were grown, and to him Elizabeth’s were an inconvenience. It was never said. He was never unkind. It was just felt, in the same way you don’t need to be told that you are hungry. She thought of him now, all 6ft of him, with his hunched walk and cartoonish long-legged stride in trousers too tight for his age.

Back in the hotel suite, before leaving, she’d sat on the four-poster, ran a finger along the comforting luxury of the embroidered duvet, and rung him.

“You should see the hotel,” she told him. “It’s like a bonsai Versailles! Next-level. There was a wedding here today, out on the lawn. Older couple too. I mean, it’s the dream.”

This was a conversational corridor of doom, but she didn’t stop. She knew he was pulling away from her, had been for some time, and she despised him for it, for his lack of staying power. For his pitifully low moral thread count, for being so easily distracted by the possibility of another, freer life. One without step kids, where he and his tight pants could be carefree and in denial about ageing. And yet this pulling away made her want more than anything for him to turn around and say, “Hey, sorry I’ve been a grumpy bastard, but I love you and we should really make a go of this thing.” So she tried to shoehorn her brittle dream into a tight, unyielding space and of course it could not withstand the pressure. He abruptly changed the subject and began complaining about the plumber who had screwed up the sink repair, again for Chrissakes, and then about his boss who couldn’t see how many truly game-changing ideas he brought to the table, and then about the new vinyl he’d bought that afternoon, and into this whirlpool of self-absorption all of Elizabeth’s fragile hopes and needs were sucked down, away and out of sight. She was hurt, but her pain when spoken became a small petty thing, and they argued, and that’s how she left the phone behind.

Yes it was stupid.

She waited for headlights, for twin shining saviours to loom into view, so that all of this would become simply an anecdote to be pulled out time and again along with the best wine glasses and linen napkins. But no headlights came. There was no light at all. Even the stars had recoiled.

She suddenly realised she was hungry. Not hungry for a 12-course meal, but there was definitely a small hollow inside her, right behind her navel.

Now Elizabeth took a breath, met her own eyes in the mirror, pushed open the driver’s door and stepped out of her capsule. The wind greeted her like the worst possibly timed surprise party, and she immediately missed the warm safety of the car. Ha, safety.

Her heel sank into the bank, and she swore. These were her good shoes, not that it mattered now. She tottered to the road, hoodless coat draped over her head. She advanced, the coat flapping – a terrible great bird with white legs and spiky feet. Elizabeth didn’t feel afraid now, just immensely sad and alone. More than anything she wanted an arm around her shoulder. Just that.

She quickened her pace towards the house, which seemed strange, but the cold and rain drove her on. The home’s one lit-up window was a beacon, not of hope but of inevitability. Elizabeth walked briskly, almost business-like now. She was great at meeting deadlines, after all.

As she drew nearer, as she approached the weed-grown front path, the house seemed to soften slightly. It looked less threatening, more desolate. It too looked hungry.

A sickly yellowy light filtered through thin curtains at the front window. The door had a frosted glass panel. Ordinary. But then horror often is, she though. She stood and listened. From what Elizabeth presumed to be a living room came a faint flicker. Then a soft, low voice. In other circumstances it might have been comforting in its familiarity. That gentle lilt of a children’s TV presenter, every sound wearing carpet slippers. It was TV, but this was not a kids’ show. It sounded like a wildlife programme. Elizabeth’s guess was confirmed by a deep roar. “And now the gazelle is on high alert ….”

Should she be placated by this? Surely half-crazed hillbillies with carnage on their minds didn’t watch such things? Surely this suggested a certain education, a gentleness and empathy for warm-blooded creatures in all their forms? Maybe not. Maybe, she thought, this was also where the horror lay. In the very perverseness of it.

And yet there was no turning back. No other option. So Elizabeth knocked. Loudly.

Then something extraordinary… a switch of genres. The horror gone in an instant. The door opened and before her stood a woman – late-fifties, short grey-haired, cardigan, loose pants. Slippers. Glasses. It wasn’t this ensemble that reassured Elizabeth so much as the smell of soup that accompanied the door opening. The tendrils of scent reached out, welcoming. Root vegetables, stock, tomato. A sweet, trustworthy aroma.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” Elizabeth began, “but my car, I got stuck and I am meant to be going to this dinner thing…” She stopped. The ivory-towerness of it was shameful.

The woman nodded, beckoned her in. Elizabeth followed her along a short corridor that led to an L-shaped open-plan space, the kitchen to the left.

The most shocking thing was the emptiness. Light came from two naked bulbs – no lampshades, no family photos. No rugs, no carpet. A couple of small tables, a chair. Elizabeth turned towards the sound of the TV. In front of the screen, a solitary armchair with its back to her, the only sign of occupancy a bald dome with a few grey hairs.

“My husband,” said the woman sadly, apologetically. And then “Excuse the mess.” Baffling. There was no mess. This place was an absence, not an abundance.

They talked about the immediate predicament, and the woman said “We have a phone. Would you like to call the hotel to get the directions again? Then we’ll figure out how to get your car unstuck.”

There it was. 'We’. An arm around the shoulder.

The woman bent to pull a thick book out of a cupboard. A Yellow Pages, a remnant from another era.

Elizabeth rang the hotel, received fresh instructions, then placed the receiver tenderly and respectfully back in the cradle. The phone seemed, after all, to be one of the couple’s few possessions.

“Would you like some soup?” the woman asked. “It will warm you up.”

Elizabeth declined, explaining she had to review a restaurant meal. She hated saying the words. They tasted like junk food. But the woman smiled, wearing the look of a proud aunt. “Oh how nice,” she said, not a trace of bitterness or mockery.

All this time the man in the chair did not move, or speak, or get up to investigate the visitor. Perhaps he was sleeping, or deaf.

The woman handed Elizabeth an oilskin, with a hood. Now she knew her guest had an important mission, she became protective, invested. “Don’t want you turning up looking like a drowned rat.”

They left the house, and trudged back along the road, heads bent against the wind.

“My husband,” the woman said, shouting to be heard. “He’s not really been the same since the fires.”

“The fires?”

“The bush fires. We lost everything. Our farm, our animals, our machines. Those few out front we managed to save.”

Elizabeth had read about the fires. The devastation, the loss of wildlife, of livelihoods. Of lives.

“Oh god. Were you insured?”

No answer. Perhaps Elizabeth’s words had been carried off on the wind.

They arrived at the ditch. Selfishly, the car had made no effort in Elizabeth’s absence to remedy the situation.

“I have no idea how we’re going to shift this,” Elizabeth said. “Seems properly stuck.”

“Things have a way of working out, you’ll see.” The woman said this with a calm and conviction glaringly at odds with both the storm and the immediate problem.

But the full stop on the woman’s sentence was still inky damp when two fuzzy yellow orbs moved towards them. Headlights.

A gangly, shaved-headed young man pulled over, jumped out.

He surveyed the tableau, shook his head, but in a way that was performative. Something about his demeanour suggested he’d got this. Like a plumber, a competent one, tutting and saying “God, who made this mess,” knowing full well they were about to fix it.

And he did. A shuddering, plaintive vibrato from the engine, then the car lurched to freedom.

Elizabeth thanked the young man effusively, and he preened slightly as his girlfriend looked on from their car's passenger seat.

“Thank you,” she said to the woman – trying but failing, she felt, to convey that this wasn’t just gratitude for the help, for not being a murderer. It was for something she couldn’t put a name to.

Arriving at the restaurant some five minutes later Elizabeth had expected to feel derision. To regard the lavishness and the pomp and the self-congratulatory diners and feel disdain. Like she had walked through fire and none of them could possibly understand. Instead, she was lulled by warmth and kindness.

Between the seared scallops and the wagyu beef, the chef brought over his notebook of sketched dishes to show her. He was young and his face glowed with the delight of someone who had found their calling. After dessert, a dark-haired young woman in a glorious silk dress said she and her partner were going to sit outside by the brazier and would Elizabeth like to join them?

So they sat, the orange glow rendering their faces at once beautiful and spectral, and Elizabeth thought of the house with the solitary pot of soup and the unmoving man in the armchair and the hunger of the lions and the long-limbed grace of the doomed gazelles. And she knew, without consciously knowing – just as you know your hunger has been sated – that in the months ahead the woman’s voice would return to sustain her.

Things have a way of working out.