Call off the hounds: the Not the Booker prize vote stands
From Jim Thompson to Daphne du Maurier, the author and comedian singles out stories that live up to their genre and genuinely do give readers sleepless nights
As well as making becoming a household name for his work as a writer and actor in comedy shows such as The Fast Show, Charlie Higson has had a parallel and these days just as stellar career as a writer. After winning acclaim for early, blackly comic crime novels including his debut King of the Ants (1992) and Getting Rid of Mister Kitchen (1996), he moved on to writing for children in 2005 with the Young Bond series. These books have now sold more than 1m copies in the UK alone, and have been translated into 24 different languages.
The Enemy, published last year, marked a new departure for Higson into horror writing for teenagers, with a tale of teenagers defending themselves against a zombified adult world. The first in a series, it was this week shortlisted for the Booktrust teenage prize, with volume two, The Dead, due out next week.
Buy The Dead by Charlie Higson at the Guardian bookshop
"What constitutes a horror book? A black and red cover? A primary objective to scare the shit out of the reader? A plug from Stephen King on the back? Most of the books on my list would probably be categorised in other genres first, but then – is Alien a sci-fi film or a horror film, or both? Is Wuthering Heights a ghost story? Is Jane Eyre the mother of all psycho-in-the-attic stories? And Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is in many ways a haunted house story. I might well have put it in here if I'd ever actually read it.
"You can have a lot of fun mixing genres up. Personally I'm not the world's biggest fan of pure horror novels – ghosts and demons and man-eating slugs leave me slightly unmoved. With no belief in the supernatural, supernatural stories usually have little effect on me. Of the big horror names only Stephen King, with his concentration on character, really works for me. I've enjoyed other horror writers but wouldn't put them in any top 10 lists. HP Lovecraft, for instance, is fun but his books aren't exactly scary. I'm not going to lose any sleep over the possibility of Cthulhu and the ancient gods crossing over into our domain.
"And there are other glaring omissions from my list. Why no Dracula or Frankenstein or Edgar Allan Poe I hear you cry. It's sacrilege to leave them out of a horror list, I know. But Poe only really wrote a couple of scary horror stories (The Tell Tale Heart is brilliant) and I find Dracula and Frankenstein rather heavy going and 19th century. Of course they're where it all began as far as the undead are concerned and must be read, I'm just not sure that they still have the power to frighten us. And, let's face it, that's what a horror book should do.
"I've always been interested in the mechanics of frightening people. I like the idea of disturbing my readers, giving them sleepless nights and stamping images in their imaginations that will stay there for a very long time. That way they will always remember your book, and after all, us novelists are like Dracula, all we want is immortality. The first two of my adult novels (King Of The Ants and Happy Now) could easily be categorised as horror books and my new series for younger readers, The Enemy, is most definitely horror as it concerns kids vs adult zombies, but it is also an action adventure series, which seems to be my default mode. I'm always open to suggestions, though, so if anyone wants to champion some pure horror books that I absolutely must read, then fire away. I'm all severed ears."
1. The Watcher by Charles Maclean (out of print but Amazon and Abebooks have copies)
An extraordinary book, unlike anything else I've ever read, which had a big effect on me when I first read it. The narrator, Martin Gregory, starts out by telling us that he was perfectly normal and happy and that there was no reason for the terrible thing he has done … The sense of impending horror is enormous, and the book, like the narrator, soon spirals into madness. We have to try and work out what is really going on as we see everything through Gregory's distorted perspective. One thing we can be sure of, though, is that everyone around him is in very great danger.
2. The Shining by Stephen King
You can't have a horror list without having Stephen King in there somewhere. It's the law. But the thing is, when he was at his peak his books were brilliant (he hasn't quite been able to sustain it – you can't help but start repeating yourself if you write as many books as he has). Engrossing, tragic and, yes, frightening, which you can't always say about horror books. He's a great writer and for me the greatest horror writer. If you've only seen the film of The Shining then read the book – it's better (first half of the film amazing, second a bit silly).
3. The Drive-In by Joe R Lansdale
The Drive In, by Texan titan Joe R Lansdale is a great, knowingly trashy nod to the 50s and 60s craze for teen drive-in schlock sci-fi/horror flicks. A bunch of kids at an all-night horror showing at their local drive-in get mysteriously trapped there by some malign force and begin to behave like ants under a glass. Surviving on junk food and fizzy drinks they go crazy and set up a savage and weird alterative society full of great characters like the Popcorn King. Book Two spins off into yet wilder shores.
A hugely influential horror book, written in 1957. The last human survivor in a Californian suburb ventures forth every day with a supply of stakes to try and wipe out the vampires that have taken over. Matheson was great at mixing horror and science fiction, and rooting the fantastical in everyday reality. This book is a brilliant study in loneliness and obsession, and when the story twists towards the end Matheson very cleverly makes us question all that has gone before.
There has been a lot of fuss recently about the film of this book. But the book – which is every bit as extreme and upsetting as the film – has been around since as long ago as 1952. Amazing how you can get away with so much more in books without people really noticing. "Oh, it's a book, it must be good for you." Well, this book is certainly not good for you. I remember reading it and thinking – should I be reading this, should anyone read this? It is a horrific trip inside the mind of a cold-blooded psychopathic sadist, who is nevertheless good company and at times unnervingly funny. Not in a flip, post-Tarantino way; this is very disturbing and upsetting stuff. There is never any question as to where Thompson stands – the narrator is a monster. We watch his destructive relations unfold and discover the reasons for his condition from the reading equivalent of "behind the sofa". Unlike a lot of modern writers who go into this area in a sort of gleefully voyeuristic adolescent way that is entirely fake (stand up Brett Easton Ellis). Jim Thompson lived the life. He understood these people and fought many demons of his own. He is my favourite author by a long chalk, and this is an extraordinary book, but it's also certainly one of the most extreme (and extremely upsetting) things I've ever read.
6. Pan Books Of Horror
If any horror collections can be described as seminal it is these. When I was a teenager they were everywhere. Passed around from hand to hand, they had a forbidden, naughty allure, like video nasties. With their classy but trashy covers the stories they contained were gory, nasty, sometimes sexy, often badly written, sometimes brilliant. The collections were a mix of old classics and more modern material, increasingly the latter as the supply of classics ran dry. You'd find Stephen King alongside Algernon Blackwood and some blood-soaked fillers from writers you'd never heard of before and never hear would again. A superfan is currently working with Pan to get the series relaunched, starting with a facsimile reprint of volume one later in the year. Look out for it. And check out his website.
7. Uncle Montague's Tales Of Terror by Chris Priestley
This one's for the kids. Written in an accessible, cod Victorian style it has a neat framing device. Edgar goes to stay with his uncle in the woods who proceeds to tell him a series of terrifying stories – all the while hinting at some dark secrets of his own. Rest assured, the stories, which all feature a child in some way, are genuinely scary and unsettling and really do get under your skin. They certainly frightened my 10-year-old when I read them to him.
8. The Silence Of The Lambs by Thomas Harris
Is this crime or horror? It certainly has a classic horror set up – basically it's Beauty And The Beast. A naïve and innocent, yet ultimately resilient, young girl enters the monster's lair and he falls in love with her. Then together they sort put each other's problems. The secondary villain – Buffalo Bill - is certainly a monster from a horror story, making clothes out if his victims' skin and keeping his latest victim in a pit. The film played like a horror film, and Anthony Hopkins certainly seemed to think he was in one. The book, as usual, is even better than the film. It's weird and engrossing and seductive and scary with some nice gothic touches. A great, great read.
9. Ghost stories by MR James
Apologies to Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allen Poe, but of the old classics I've gone for James. And not really for the original stories but just so I can bang on about Jonathan Miller's extraordinary BBC film of "Whistle And I'll Come To You". MR James was the king of the unsettling ghost story where not very much happens and it's all about atmosphere and dread. Miller's film still has the power to be very, very disturbing. Give yourself a treat and buy it. There are other James BBC adaptations you should look out for as well (A Warning to the Curious is another favourite), they used to show them at Christmas in the good old days, and all still work.
10. Don't Look Now/The Birds by Daphne du Maurier
All right, I'll admit it, I'm cheating a bit here. I don't think these 2 stories actually appear together in a Du Maurier collection except on audiobook. And like MR James, my interest in du Maurier is primarily in the films made of her stories (nearly all of her output was filmed – she was the Stephen King of her day). I couldn't leave her out because to have come up with the story for not one but two all-time classic horror films is a feat to be applauded. And as Don't Look Now is my favourite horror film I had to get a mention of it in here somewhere. The original stories are still good reads and its fascinating to see how two great directors teased complete films out of them.
Extract: The Whales by Evie Wyld
"I am an enemy of Waterstone's being destroyed. I am not in any way an enemy of Waterstone's being properly led by people who know what they're doing"
Tim Waterstone is explaining to me why he has a problem with the word entrepreneur, a distaste that I've seen ascribed to him on several occasions but find difficult to understand. How else might you describe a man who conjured, out of a redundancy package of a few thousand pounds, a retail operation that changed the face of British bookselling, and with it the nation's high streets? A man who went on to sell the company to the firm that had made him redundant, and then bought it back; and who, after apparently parting ways with his bookshops for good, made four separate attempts to gain control of them once again? This strikes me as almost a dictionary definition of an entrepreneur. So what's the beef?
His quibble, it turns out, has its basis in good manners. "I can't bear the self-congratulatory thing of applying it to oneself, really," he says: softly spoken and courteous, he appears, in tone and bearing, far more like a gentleman publisher than a cut-throat boardroom monster. Indeed, our semantic discussion has been prompted by his description of the bankers whom he met during a deal he was working on a few years ago and who make up a major strand in his new novel, In for a Penny, In for a Pound, an everyday tale of high finance, newspaper dynasties and the world of books. They were, he says, "so awful" that he started jotting down their conversations during meetings, and soon began to form an idea for a fictional parody of them. He was particularly struck by what seemed to him "like this endless drive towards the accumulation of personal wealth", a motivation at odds, he is at pains to point out, with his own impulses.
"You know, as an entrepreneur, and I hate calling myself an entrepreneur" – here our digression begins – "you don't do it for the money at all, really you don't; you're doing it because you get caught up in an idea and you want that idea to work." The ultimate achievement, according to Waterstone, is to see your vision realised, often against the odds: almost all entrepreneurs, he thinks, are fighting against received wisdom.
He was certainly bucking the trend when he started Waterstone's in 1982; he describes a grim landscape, in which the demise of the book was regularly predicted and which presented book-lovers with a choice between WH Smith, the smaller Blackwells and an array of independents, "some of whom were good, some of whom were terrible; one can romanticise the independents". By far the biggest market share lay with Smiths, the company that Waterstone had spent the previous eight years working for; when he first left university, he had gone to India to work in his father's tea business ("I was 22 going on 18, I was incredibly immature"), before "thoroughly enjoying" a long stint as a marketing man for Allied Breweries. Then, having married young and with a growing family to support, he joined Smiths, who were offering to triple his salary. It was a time he now says he loathed: "I don't want to spend my time knocking Smiths, but in those days family preference ran through, and it was a sort of caricature of corporate life, and I realised I can't stand corporate life, I really can't stand it. The fault was mine . . . I don't like other people's opinions much, I like having my own things, and then they fired me which was a huge relief, and I knew I wanted to start Waterstone's."
His first inspiration was the kind of bookselling he had witnessed in New York, exemplified by the "really terrific" Doubleday stores that stayed open until 11 o'clock at night and dispatched books around the city on delivery bicycles. By contrast, Putney-resident Waterstone had to trudge to the Smiths on his local high street or trek into central London to Hatchards, which, he says, "closed at 12 o'clock on Saturdays; Dillons didn't seem to open at all". And yet he was convinced that there was a market: he knew that all he wanted to do was read, and felt sure that there must be a couple of million like-minded souls in the country. "I was filled with this thought: why couldn't the best of the independents, Hatchards or whoever, be done nationally? Why can't they be like New York stores, better than New York stores, why can't they stay open late at night, why can't they have people working there who really love and know books? And why can't the stock be fabulous?"
So, with his £6,000 redundancy package and additional venture capital, Waterstone advertised in the London Evening Standard for staff – "salary moderate" – and opened up his first store in London's Old Brompton Road. And he was right, there was an appetite for books: soon, branches of Waterstone's, with their sleek black bookshelves, knowledgeable booksellers and unashamedly upmarket range of books, were opening everywhere, aided by their creator's "gift of the gab" with the money men, not to mention the occasional celebrity customer. Waterstone recalls Laurence Olivier visiting his Kensington High Street branch: "He said, are you looking for money? I said yes, so he put in 20,000 quid or something."
Waterstone's arrived at just the right time. It was, he reminds me, a rich time for literary fiction, with writers such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, John Banville and Martin Amis rising to prominence; Waterstone capitalised on the excitement surrounding this explosion of new writing by making sure that his shops were a natural place for launch parties and readings. "We were," he says, "plainly unfussed about being as culturally aware as we wanted to be." They also made it their business to maximise exposure for writers they believed in, in one instance creating the chain's "Book of the Month" when Waterstone and others in the company fell in love with Nicholas Mosley's Hopeful Monsters in 1990. And there was confidence in the publishing industry, which meant that enough of the big players – Waterstone cites Peter Mayer as an example, then head of the all-powerful Penguin – were prepared to support the enterprise with favourable credit and discount terms. All of which added up, after a while and despite "some fantastically dangerous moments", to a profitable business. "But," maintains Waterstone now, "the real thrill was winning, it wasn't the money; we did make money and it's very nice to have done so, but the real thrill was the dream."
But even the best dreams must come to an end. Waterstone's had expanded rapidly ("We got so arrogant"), often going against the advice of local demographics and sticking to their policy of having an unprecedentedly wide stock offering. It all took a lot of capital and, in 1993, having already sold a share of the business to them, Waterstone sold out to WH Smith for £47m. It can be no coincidence that, in the following years, he wrote three novels – Lilley and Chase, An Imperfect Marriage and A Passage of Lives. Clearly, however, writing books was no simple replacement for selling them, because in 1998 Waterstone joined forces with HMV to buy back the chain for £300m, in the process creating the HMV Media Group, of which he became chairman. Three years later, he was on his way again, and set out to embark on one of the publishing world's most intriguing soap operas – his attempts to buy out HMV altogether. Why?
"I became increasingly frustrated – frankly pissed off – with the way it was being run. I was chairman of HMV and was watching my own baby being absolutely murdered. And it was so stupid because the book market was just growing and growing, and people coming in from Tesco or Asda or Boots seemed to think their job was to get Waterstone's away from books, and move it towards multimedia or something. It was very hard for the people who worked in the stores, who I'd known for years – great, terrific people, wonderful people."
You realise, chatting to Waterstone, that at least part of his success lies in his genial manner: good situations become superlative – "great, terrific, wonderful", while the challenging moments are "tricky". The exception comes when he touches on his declining relationship with HMV: during the period when he tried to buy back the company – especially his fourth, final and "very serious" attempt in 2006, which took place at around the same time as HMV's purchase of the Ottakars chain – he describes himself as "apoplectic" at how the chain was being managed. But when that deal collapsed, with both sides proclaiming themselves hamstrung by the other's impossible demands, he knew it was time to call it quits.
The twists and turns of the battle between Waterstone and Waterstone's must surely, though, have come in handy when he was writing In for a Penny, In for a Pound, the first draft of which ran to an eye-watering 240,000 words. It doesn't shy away from bloodlust in the boardroom – the in-fighting in a family-run newspaper business is cynically manipulated by a private bank hell-bent on extracting maximum commission. In a subsidiary story, a thoroughly decent chap struggles to keep his small publishing firm afloat; the two worlds collide when agony aunt Anna Lavey, the company's star author and a columnist for one of the Macaulay newspapers, finds herself at the centre of a tabloid scandal. Elsewhere, there are high-flying barristers sleeping with senior leftwing politicians, Australian media tycoons running amok and ardent fans who metamorphose into havoc-wreaking stalkers. In short, with its fast-paced plot and to-the-point dialogue (sample: "You're a shit, Nicky. A total shit"), it is designed to grab the attention quickly.
I say to Waterstone "When I first picked it up . . . " and he completes my sentence with the question "you thought it was Jeffrey Archer?" I did, a little: it is bright red, with black-and-gold lettering, and its title is not a million miles away from that of Archer's debut novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Rather than being published by one of the vast commercial houses, Waterstone's novel was picked up by the independent publisher Atlantic, perhaps best known for its Man Booker victory with Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger. It was Atlantic's chief executive and chairman, Toby Mundy, who spotted the book's potential for Corvus, the Atlantic list that publishes crime and thrillers. Waterstone was attracted by Mundy's enthusiasm, though he confesses when he first saw the cover "I nearly passed out. I decorously tried to keep enthusiasm on my face. But I've rather come round to it now."
Mundy was no doubt aware that media and publishing industry observers would lock on to the book's roman à clef aspect: the Barclay brothers, Rupert Murdoch and Anna Raeburn have all been mentioned thus far. All that Waterstone will say is that Anna Lavey is most certainly not based on the late Beryl Bainbridge. But there was a detail that really bothered me. Surely, I ask, when he sends Anna to a bookshop event and has 500 eager readers queue up to meet her, isn't this stretching credulity a little far? After all, if that were most writers' and publishers' experience, they'd be riding around in golden sedan chairs. But he assures me that, no, when Dirk Bogarde signed books in his Kensington store, they sold more than 1,000 copies. If this is a little Pollyannaish – a global film star is not, of course, literary novelist X or poet Y – it is rather charmingly so.
In the latest throw of the dice, Waterstone has found himself largely reconciled with the chain he gave his name to. He is far too polite to inject a hint of "I told you so" into his conversation, saying only how delighted he is that some of Waterstone's most senior staff ring him up these days to talk over the whys and wherefores of the book trade. And, following the departure of managing director Gerry Johnson in January after a poor Christmas, it does seem that the chain is attempting to return to its roots, restoring buying power to staff in individual shops, lessening its reliance on aggressive marketing campaigns and emphasising its focus on quality. So, is the hatchet well and truly buried? "I am an enemy of Waterstone's being destroyed," he says. "I am not in any way an enemy of Waterstone's being properly led by people who know what they're doing." And will he ever try to buy it again? He says not, but stops short of ruling it out entirely with the words: "I'm certainly not going aggressively at them again, under any circumstances."
But even if the chain of shops can realign itself with its core market, it will still have to face the challenges of what Waterstone might call a "tricky" business environment: most obviously, the past few years have seen exceptionally stiff competition from both non-traditional retailers such as supermarkets, with their limited range but rock-bottom prices, and from online bookshops such as Amazon, which in a sense played Waterstone at his own game by having a stock offering of undreamt-of depth. And now there is the ebook – Waterstone has played about on an ereader, he says, but can't see it dominating leisure-time reading.
Perhaps most importantly for the man whose childhood experience of reading was to go into the independent bookshop in Crowborough in East Sussex – his family was not bookish and there wasn't "a bean" to spend on books – and sit on the floor, day after day, poring over their titles, does he still think that people want to buy books? This, it turns out, is not a tricky question to answer at all. "I just couldn't be more optimistic about it."
Waterstone will celebrate the publication of his novel with a party at one of the branch's shops, along with what he calls "the Waterstone diaspora", including former staff, many of whom have gone on to open their own shops or work in publishing. This, presumably, would have been unthinkable a few years ago, and must feel a bit odd. "It's quite strange to be connected to Waterstone's in that way," he concedes, "but they are being so generous over this." And then he will return to his other activities – looking after the youngest two of his eight children, serving as chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University, dodging invitations to sit on other companies' boards – and pondering his next novel. In the unlikely event that he hits a patch of writer's block, he can look for advice to his wife, TV producer Rosie Alison, whose first novel The Very Thought of You was shortlisted for this year's Orange prize. "I'm rather cross with Rosie, stealing my thunder," he jokes. But I'm not sure Waterstone really does cross – I suspect he goes straight from affable to apoplectic, and that, it seems clear, is reserved for rather exceptional circumstances.
Booker prize sees Peter Carey and Emma Donoghue head shortlist
Evie Wyld, whose debut novel After the Fire, a Still Small Voice won the 2009 John Llewellyn Rhys prize, has written a short story, The Whales, exclusively for Booktrust, where she is currently writer-in-residence. Here we join Jimmy, Elaine, Terry and Yvonne, deep in the bush after five days of walking. The conclusion will appear on the Booktrust website tomorrow
There are four of them footslogging single file along the trail. They sweat and wave their sticks at the flies, spitting the salt off their lips and feeling the rub of their backpacks, hot on their shoulders. A storm bird knows about them from miles off and lets out a wop-wop-wop, getting higher and louder as it goes. Jimmy watches Elaine look up at the gum-treed sky. He follows her gaze. No, he thinks. The bird is wrong; overhead is blue without a wash of cloud.
The crack of dry bark, the whistle of whip birds and sometimes a thundering in the undergrowth – a wombat, a pademelon – it all makes Jimmy feel younger. He can feel the muscles in his thighs working, can feel them thank him for not being stood at the assembly line six hours a day.
Five days of walking and now they are deep in the bush. In another day, they'll turn east, head for the sea, where if they make good time, they'll see the humpbacks heading south towards the Antarctic, their new calves in tow. There'll be a party that night, between the four of them. Terry the young bow-legged one from further down the line with a touch of the idiot about him, Yvonne his frizz-plaited, heavy cousin who runs accounts and her friend Elaine who is nothing to do with the factory and who returns his glances, smiling. Not a bad lot really, especially the girls.
Three days down the coast and they'll arrive home about ready for that soft bed and the meal without char-grit from the campfire, or the dog food pong of tinned meat. It's been good so far. He thinks of what was waiting for him if he hadn't gone bush this week – all those monkey-wrenches wanting to be set. It's been time to move on for a while, he sees that now. Only he'll wait and see what comes of Elaine and the damp hair that ringlets at the back of her neck.
Later in the day he spots a bower bird's chapel. Even this far in, the bird has found a blue toothbrush and bits of turquoise plastic to frame its humpy. He takes a photo, so that the side of Elaine's brown leg slides up the view finder.
'They only collect blue stuff', he says, mainly to Elaine. He feels the roots of his fingers strain as he reigns himself in, his stiff hands reminding him not to overdo it. Steady on.
Chances are, Elaine already knows more than him about bower birds – she told him she's walked the bush for six years, since she left varsity, this last two with Yvonne for company and he only knows from camping out when money gets bad. But he wants to show something to her. Elaine squats next to him and traces an arc with one finger in the dirt, looking at the toothbrush. She is smiling with her eyebrows pulled in.
'It's to impress the female – then she'll come down and he'll do a sexy dance.' As he explains, he wiggles his tail a little in a sexy dance and Elaine smiles wider.
Terry who has been leaning over them to get a look, gyrates around his walking stick. What his mating dance lacks in accuracy it makes up for in energy and the other three look on in silence while he makes the noise of a boombox with his lips pressed together. Jimmy's fingers stretch out towards the ground in embarrassment as he keeps his bad eye – the eye that he thinks of as his secret eye – on Elaine.
'You're a disgustin' specimen, Terry', says the stone-buttocked Yvonne. Terry quickens his hips and points, wiggling himself towards her.
Yvonne stands stiff and still like a wary buffalo. 'Never been the brightest crayon in the box', she says and they all push past him, smiles held down. Jimmy looks back to see him finish in a bunny squat and a flick of his head.
'Yeah!' says Terry loudly, arms raised and both thumbs up to the tops of the trees like they are his audience.
'Yeah' and he finds a cigarette in his back pocket, lights it and considers its glowing end before following on.
There'd been a night of heavy breathing when Elaine and Jimmy faced each other in their swags. They hadn't touched but they'd looked hard in the dark, seeing the glints of each other's tongues, teeth and eyes. There is a luxury in not touching, Jimmy thinks, in not just going with your gut; they don't have all the time in the world but they have this time, which won't end for another few days.
He looks forward to it, imagines the beach in an old film kind of a way. The last night when they will open the wine they've lugged all this way – they'll cool the bottles in a rock pool for a couple of hours, while they see what the beach has for them. He's a beach person at heart, it's where his childhood is at and he can't wait to show off about it. Terry's brought along his spearfishing gear and says he reckons on a good spot up at the point. Jimmy imagines striding into camp, a jewfish slung over one shoulder, a clutch of softly ticking crays hung from their whiskers in his other fist. When the moon's up and the salty wine is drunk, their fingers warm and sticky with sand and cray brains, he'll rub his foot over hers. He'll put his wrists either side of her jaw, so as not to touch her with his prawny fingers and he'll plant a long warm kiss on her mouth, one that shows them both that this is the start of things. He could think about staying on at the factory, him who hasn't stayed in one spot for more than six months at a time since he was 16. Or else, Elaine could come with him, go feral together up the coast. He gets the feeling there's not much holding her to the city anymore. He looks down at himself and he speaks softly to his hands You're orright you bung-eyed bastard. You're an okay sort after all.
Elaine breaks off from the group to take a pee in the scrub. She squats behind a paperbark and laughs. She's been hip deep in croc water, has woken up feeling a huntsman, as big as both of her hands put together, tangling with her feet in her swag. But the idea that the group might hear the sound of her pissing makes it so that she can't go. Eventually, she manages and makes a wet stain on the gum leaves. She pulls her shorts back up and a twig cracks not far up ahead. Shadows rise and fall as something heavy moves away. She catches up with the others at a jog.
Jimmy, that trunk of a man with his duff eye and his bear hands and her pal Yvonne are arguing about a fish. The argument is snapper versus flathead, but in what capacity Elaine is not sure. Terry is unusually quiet for a conversation involving food and he walks a little way from Jimmy and Yvonne.
'Stone lighter?' he asks quietly.
'It was a pee', she says, but her face flushes anyway.
'Right', says Terry and he smiles a weird smile. Elaine accidentally catches his eye.
By five o'clock they reach a small billabong. They strip down to their underwear and jump in like kids, laughing, drowning each other with splashing. Terry tries to duck the girls under, Jimmy dives for yabbies and opens his eyes in the bourbon-coloured water. The white legs of the other three bicycle in the open water. When he comes up for air, he can see that Yvonne is pleased with her breasts and bobs them gently up and down making small waves to the bank.
Jimmy looks a long time at Elaine and she looks back. There is a water level smile between them. He is aware of the ripples that come from his heartbeat and he sees how Elaine's canines creep over her bottom lip. Her hair is dark now, but in the light you can see into it. Where the sun hasn't caught her, her skin is like the damp underside of a leaf.
Elaine thinks she's some wonderful creature. The water holds her in on all sides, she feels good in her skin. The billabong is black from the tea trees that line the bank and when she flicks her legs to the surface she's a pale fish. She pauses before she puts her head under – a brief worry about spluttering and snotting in front of Jimmy, but then she thinks of the beach and the sea to come and she duck dives.
The dark water lifts her hair up and spreads it out, it pushes around her cheeks and taps on her eyelids as she reaches out for the leafy mud of the billabong floor, but even though she goes deep, her hands touch nothing. She kicks up for air and sends a flume of mist from her mouth. She smiles widely at Jimmy who floats on his back like an otter, hands clasped over his chest, dreaming of something.
Frogs and magpies are loud and someone finds a leech and then another and another and there's shrill laughing.
Terry shouts, 'It's eatin' the fuckin' kidneys out of me!' then, 'You girls want me to check under your bras?'
Even though everyone has had a leech before and every person has treated that leech with salt or the tip of a cigarette, quietly, without fear, they all pretend this is the first time they've been bitten and they wallow in the hysteria, enjoying it like gobble-mouthed kids.
Out of the water, damp shirts wrapped around them like towels, Jimmy burns a fat one off Elaine's shoulder. She looks at him sideways and curls a bit of paper bark around her finger.
'Ta', she says, as Jimmy passes her the cigarette which they share puffs from. He looks at her with his good eye. It creases in the corner.
The four of them set up camp a little way from the water hole, away from the leeches. Terry makes a small tepee out of kindling and rings stones around it to stop the fire spreading. Once it's lit they hang over a billy and drink tea while they watch the bats turning circles in the creeping darkness. Yvonne stirs up a thick damper and they bake it in a pan over the fire, to be eaten with a warmed tin of bean stew and rice pudding for afters. The birds are mostly quiet and the cicadas and frogs rev themselves up, as everyone slaps on Rid against the mosquitoes.
'Reckon we'll beat those whales, the way we're moving', Terry says cleaning his bowl with a licked finger.
'Fuckin' A.' Yvonne brings out a flask of bourbon to swill down the pudding with. She takes a long unflinching pull of it before passing it round and beginning a murder story.
'There's this girl went missing not far from Tully – all the kids hitchhike out there…' The dark gets deeper and everyone settles in, enjoying the creep of it. Elaine thinks that there's nothing you can't fix by putting your cheek to the land and feeling it settle. She studies the landscape of Jimmy's face. He is unashamedly enthralled by Yvonne's story. His funny eye looks directly at Elaine but doesn't see her. The lines on his forehead have dirt ground in. He's older than Elaine and she wonders what it is he's been doing all the time he's been alive.
In the silence, after Yvonne's concluding remark 'They only ever found her thumb', Terry farts, a loud one and everyone groans.
'Well, that's put that to bed', he says and they all unroll their swags around the fire and climb in for the night. Jimmy feels the hot weight of Elaine's foot on his and his fingers twitch on their own. Elaine sees Terry's wet eyes, tangerine from the fire and spreads her toes out. She stays awake for as long as possible, making up script after script of how it will go with Jimmy once they reach the sea. She replays the swim at waterhole until she's unsure if she's made parts of it up. She finally falls asleep with her heartbeat high in her chest.
Jimmy wakes long before dawn with a pressure like a stone on his bladder. He swears quietly and rolls out of his swag to ease the ache against a tree. In the undergrowth to his right, something scrabbles. He catches a strong scent and sees a wet snout or eye in the dark. A rumble in the brush and it's gone. Probably a pig or a dingo, but he's glad to get back to the group, where the coals in the fire are still orange. He checks each sleeper. Terry is spread at a diagonal, mouth open, not snoring but making noise. Yvonne sleeps on her front clutching the loose material of her swag, not letting it get away. Elaine is on her side and a brown arm has slithered free. Her hair makes a perfect ring around her ear. As he watches she produces a little noise, a tiny pop from her lips as they're opened with breath. Sleep speaking, thinks Jimmy as he burrows back into his swag, careful not to jog her feet with his, but careful also that they are touching.
The morning is hot and blue from the outset. After tea and a tidy up, they set off, aiming to reach the sea before sunset. Jimmy looks forward to a swim in the bubbling salt, a proper clean down with no bloodsuckers. Terry starts to talk about food almost immediately,
'Lamb chops.' He says confidently to Yvonne. 'That's gotta be the best type of food; lamb chops with the whole grill piece; onions, mushrooms, boiled spuds – no tomatoes though, I'm so over tomatoes.' Yvonne rolls her eyes at him.
'Couldn't give a rat's ring, Terry,' but she hands him a date and a piece of chocolate. Elaine enjoys her feeling of emptiness. Her spit tastes of eucalyptus, she feels new, like the air and blood in her has been filtered out and changed for something better.
After midday, there's a yell from Terry up ahead.
'Get a look at this!' The other three catch up to find him crouching in a small clearing surrounded by stay-a-while and they peer over his shoulder. There's a dead butcher bird on the ground and following the line of Terry's finger into one of the thorny bushes, they see its larder. A small mouse impaled through the neck, stiff and dry, missing parts of its hind quarters, a large Christmas beetle, upside down with the thorn square through the middle and last, still twitching, its legs up and angry, barely impaled through its leaking abdomen, a mouse spider.
'Christssake' whispers Jimmy stepping back.
'How the poor bastard got it up here, I can't figure,' Terry says, pushing the bird with his foot to reveal the green ants starting on its wing. The mouse spider's fangs, black and thick and shiny are up and ready to strike. It waves its legs in the air. Terry picks up a twig to poke it with, but Yvonne knocks it out of his hand.
'Don't be a bum, Terry. I'm not carrying yer fat dead lump out of here if you get bitten. You can count on that.' Jimmy takes a photograph, in which Terry insists on including his own hand, so as get the scale of the thing.
They start to walk on, but Elaine stays behind a beat or two looking at the spider; its fangs reaching for her, legs pointing.
'The sky is falling, the sky is falling!' Yvonne shrieks in a chicken voice as thunder mumbles in the distance. Elaine looks again at the sky, but it's still clear. The thunder is a long way off, but you can smell it in the air, which is heavy and hot. The tips of the trees sway in the sky, but there's no breeze down on the bush floor.
A goanna clings to a Moreton Bay fig above them but nobody sees it.
Jimmy touches the side of Elaine's hand with his little finger and as he does, the leaves to the side of her snaffle and a striped snake comes streaking out of the ground, hitting her on the boot. She barks loudly and kicks trying to get her foot away. The snake's fangs are deeply embedded in the leather of her boot and she shakes her leg hard while around her the others dip and weave and try to help and point their sticks. Jimmy thinks he has control of the situation when he holds Elaine's arm and beats at the snake with his walking stick, accidentally cracking her on the shin. The snake is dislodged, but instead of bolting back into the undergrowth, it turns again and bites Elaine, once, twice, three times and a fourth; calf, back of the knee, thigh, deeply, deeply again on her inner thigh. It's snap-quick and Jimmy doesn't have time to understand and still has Elaine by the arm so she doesn't get away. Finally, Terry gets it – a blow to the eye – and it's stunned. He stomps on the head, but it still twitches, so he beats it with his stick, smashing, till it changes colour, loses its stripes. It is still, but the bush crackles and carries on.
Elaine is tight-lipped and white. Yvonne cries softly into her cupped hands, the small beeps of a bird. Terry shoes leaves over the corpse of the snake and Jimmy still holds Elaine's arm, his grip hard from not knowing what to do, from doing the wrong thing. There is blood, Elaine thinks how it looks like she's got her period and then thinks she'd love a piece of liquorice from her backpack. She starts to turn around, to take her pack off, but her legs have lost their hardness and she is sliding back into Jimmy who is stiff and still.
'Jesus H Christ,' whispers Terry. He looks at the snake and away, prodding it rhythmically with his stick. 'Jimmy,' he says. 'Jesus, Jimmy.'
'S'just a nip,' says Elaine.
As she slides to the ground with the help of Jimmy who has become flesh again, Elaine thinks about the liquorice and then about how it was a tiger. A big dose of tiger and she's starting to feel it now, it feels like it bit her in the artery of her groin. The big one. The one where all the blood lives.
Yvonne straightens herself. She helps Elaine's pack off her back and slides it behind her back to prop her up. She pulls out her poncho and arranges it over Elaine's wounded leg, to keep it out of sight and then snaps the men into action.
'Hot water - get a fire on. Get the first aid.' She looks at the two men who are twisting their fingers. 'C'mon s'only a fuckin' snake bite, let's get it sorted and get on with it.' She's right and Jimmy says so. He says, 'Only a snake bite.' Smiling at Elaine, but what they all think, Jimmy, Terry, Yvonne and Elaine is but it's tiger. And we are deep in. Deep.
• To read the conclusion of the story, visit the Booktrust website from Tuesday 7 September.
• Evie Wyld works in the independent Review Bookshop in Peckham. She is taking part in a live-streamed book club Q&A from the shop at 7.30pm on Thursday 9 September. To find out how to submit questions for the event, visit the Booktrust website