Lover’s Walk

We’re on holiday, our first together. Corfu, Greece. We’re traditional in this way. A pricey villa, white sand, sugary cocktails. Nights out on the town, over-pronouncing foreign words. Our pool: breath-taking for the first 24 hours, then a spa for the neighbourhood insects for the rest of our trip. 

We’re halfway through. A drive into the city was planned but it’s too hot and the streets too crowded. We drive instead to the cliffs, where a dirt path snakes into the barley fields and olive groves. I forgot my hat, so he gives me his wife’s. 

‘You’re about the same size;’ he says. 

‘Do heads have sizes?’ He shrugs and says he bought the hat in Portugal and I say, I know, your wife posted a photo on Facebook saying how much she loved it, how much it suited her even though we both knew the white straw and yellow thread washed her out. He asks what it means to be washed out and I tell him it’s to be his wife wearing that hat. 

‘I think the guy ripped me off,’ is all he says. I adjust the hat. The brim falls across my forehead like loose skin, a stomach sagging. It’s too heavy. 

We walk along the fence. Surrounded by farmland, but it all looks so far away. I say it’s like we’re on a film set and he looks at me oddly. I tell him he’s getting a tan; it makes him look handsome. He smiles, kisses me. I feel like I’ve passed a test. He sets many tests without knowing and sometimes, I can’t tell if I’ve passed or failed but I’m always willing to resit. 

The fence is old and wooden, its legs stubbled with splinters. Its feet push deep into the earth but the soil around them is cracked and clay-like. 

‘We’ll try that new place tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It’s meant to be nice.’ 

‘All of this is nice,’ I say. I hold his hand; it’s clammy. He doesn’t do well in the heat. His clothes sink into the divots in his skin. He bloats easily but in the heat, he shrinks and looks like my grandfather. He is older than me but he doesn’t look that way at the office. 

Out here, everything’s different. 

We walk against the fence. The two of us side by side, staring as the wood shifts to wire. Barbed, like tiny thorns and brambles. I tell him it looks like Sleeping Beauty. 

‘You know, the part where Maleficent grows thorns around the castle. You know, to stop the Prince saving Aurora.’ 

‘Aurora?’

‘That’s her name,’ I clarify. ‘You never watched Sleeping Beauty?’ 

‘No, I’ve watched it.’ Probably with his daughters. Or his wife. Or all of them at once, curled together on the sofa of their townhouse, feet curled in the plush creases. Wait, no. No, his wife would rest her legs on his lap. She’d doze through most of the film, then wake to comfort her daughters when Aurora’s curse takes hold. He’d sit through it all, texting me. 

We keep walking. 

The trees hang, leaves like pear drops – the kind you’d buy from old sweet shops in striped paper bags. It’s beautiful here but brutally so. I only say this because that’s how he describes me. That first night, he said I was so pretty it scared him.

We reach a fork in the road. Dust clouds at our feet. My toes are dirty. I look down, glance at my sandals. Already, cracks have formed in the rubber. 

He tugs on my arm. 

‘Let’s go this way,’ he says. 

‘It’s not on the map. I think it’s someone’s house.’ Up ahead, something’s crying. I can see why he’s trying to pull me away, away from the lamb. It’s hunched in the dirt, tangled in barbed wire. An old man kneels beside it with a knife, trying to cut through. His hands are bleeding but he doesn’t seem to notice. The lamb screeches – an almost human sound. The man wears a wide-brimmed hat, pulled low over his eyes. His skin is worn, leathery. Rough, hardened calluses and yet he’s so gentle with the knife. The lamb struggles; it can’t see what I see. 

‘Let’s go this way,’ he says again. His hands clench; his nails dig into my skin. It feels warm, but there’s no blood; it must be the heat. He tries again. 

‘Let’s go. We’ll get some food.’ Carefully, I untangle myself. He reaches for me, pulling at the air. 

‘For Christ’s sake, leave it,’ he says. 

‘You go back,’ I tell him. I wonder if he understands what I mean. I wonder if I do. 

I approach the farmer and the lamb. The sun drains into the earth. The farmer slows. He puts the knife aside and instead focuses on calming the lamb. The barbed wire turns red, so tangled it forms metal veins across its body. It won’t survive. I know this, somehow. I’ve never lived around animals, but I know this. 

The farmer’s Greek is thick and warm, his English thicker and warmer. He pats the ground. We sit either side of the lamb, stroking its muzzle. The farmer rests a hand on its soft head. He picks up the knife. The lamb looks to me – not like a child, but like a young woman leaving home in the company of a man old enough to be her father. 

I see the empty road reflected in its eyes.