Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
– temples, railways, harvests, factories – they were all worked on by bodies under torture, minds reduced to screams… Just so a few men, in comfort, could speak about iambic pentameter and the speed of light.’
‘Where’d that come from?’ she laughed, swigging from the bottle.
The traffic lights ahead went red. Thoughtlessly, I pressed on the accelerator. The sound of a flag flapped around my ears, as the wind sped up – and my muscles turned to gold – and then a trumpet blast, a punch – and the car was shunted sideways.
I snapped into my seatbelt, as metal hands clapped once beside me. There was a wail. But I drove on – into the wind, uphill, as the city split open and a sea spilled out of me – and in the mirror, the car that had hit us continued behind us, a little blackened – and the trumpets changed.
The sky was the hull of a ship – a whaler with sails of living lions – and as the lions roared, gems fell from their mouths, mingling with flowers – carnations and carbuncles – in a wave of red that washed over the car.
Dawn, dazed, lifted the bottle to her lips, and drank – though most of the wine had spilled out over her. Then she turned to me, slowly, in wonder – with a mask of blood on the far half of her head. I wanted to scream out of the window, ‘Nobody’s strong enough to be loved by me!’ But I laughed instead.
For a second, London seemed an unknown city – and I braked with my eyes closed, offering myself to the sun.
Dawn drank again from the bottle, still stiff with shock. The blood dribbled like sweat from her hairline, where it had hit the edge of the door – and I looked at it like it was mine, more than my own blood was mine – or rather, I looked at her wound like it was mine in the same way that the wounds on my back were hers.
‘What’s happening?’ she whispered.
‘We’re going to our new house,’ I said.
‘Oi, how d’you guess that?’ she asked, disorientated, dabbing at her cut in disbelief.
‘You just told me,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah, ok yeah – he’s got us somewhere to live, Kimber’s got us… it’s not a council flat, but we knew that dream weren’t coming true, sweetheart, this is as good as it’s going to get, it’s…’ She was speaking too quickly to keep up with herself. ‘It’s fucking good – we just need a… a five hundred pound deposit – and that’s insanely small, you got to admit, he’s in love with me – and then the contract’s legit, then, then, then that shows the contract’s legit.’
‘So we’re putting our entire lives in the hands of some guy you met a week ago?’
‘You want to be in a fucking homeless hostel forever?’ she shouted, at last reacting to the crash with anger. ‘It’s been two years, Leander! I can’t live like that anymore – and you weren’t even living.’
‘I could have found a —’
‘We’ve been fucking trying! You found us fuck all. Being pretty made you lazy, I told you – you’re stuck, and I don’t want you fucking stuck. I love you, alright?’ She was anxiously smearing her own blood across her face. ‘I done us a good thing, sweetheart, admit it – I got us out that fucking misery nest. Don’t try and get outraged at me, it’s too late, I signed the contract. It’s done.’
‘Ok, ok,’ I smiled, and drove on. ‘Ok. I can pay the deposit. I’ll give you the five hundred.’
‘Baby!’ Nearly weeping, she kissed me on the cheek, forcing an arm behind my back to wrap me in a hug, pressing her bleeding head into mine – aroused by the intensity of our shared shock. ‘Fuck,’ she said, as she shrank back in her seat. ‘Fuck… That cunt drove into us.’
‘He wasn’t looking,’ I said, knowing she hadn’t seen the traffic lights change.
She peered out of the open window, dripping blood onto her door. ‘He dented us!’ she shrieked. ‘That fucking cunt. My new fucking car. Fuck! Your fucking squirrel – I told you that was an omen. I fucking told you. Cunt!’ She fell back. ‘But still it didn’t get us good enough, did it? We’re still alive. Didn’t fucking work.’ She cackled. ‘Actually can I have six hundred pound please? For dinner as well.’
She reached distractedly into my tracksuit pocket and took out the stack. ‘All fifties! I love it.’ She counted. ‘This is only five hundred though? You said eight hundred.’
‘Wait.’ I took my right hand off the wheel and dug into my pocket, careful to take out only six more notes. ‘You can’t have all of it.’
‘Ok babe,’ she said, counting it and returning me four fifties, ‘I’m going to cook us a banquet, alright? You made money, I got us a place to live. We’re back on track! But I knew you’d try and sulk so I had to arrange it while you was away, didn’t I? And I could only tell you while you was busy driving for me, otherwise you might of got too angry and run off. I can be cunning when I need to be.’ She spoke with a nervous rapidity, like she was trying to deny the severity of her own injury – or perhaps because she was too drunk to understand it. ‘I know how to cook, you know – and turn down that road – yeah that one,’ she pointed. ‘And head to the right.’
‘Wait, where are you driving me to?’ I asked, as if I’d only just realised what she was doing.
‘You’re the one driving,’ she said innocently. ‘And not very fucking well.’
‘Didn’t Francis move around here?’ I stopped the car.
We’d reached the tip of Wandsworth Common. Beside us, the outlines of a football pitch had been painted white onto the grass – and this paint had been churned up by schoolchildren in the mud – into a Morse code that had stiffened overnight.
‘You fucking know he did,’ she slurred. ‘And you know you’re being an evil little shit to him. He came badgering me banging down our door when I was packing us up – so I had to tell him where we was going, so he’s going to find you anyway. And he’s got my number now and he’s been ringing me every fifteen fucking minutes even though he hates me – and I know he’s ringing you and you’re ignoring him. So fucking sort it out. I know you think you can hide your feelings from me but you can’t. So you’re going round his house and that’s that.’
She was wrong, of course, but I wanted her to believe that she knew what desires I was repressing. I had assumed that by ignoring Francis’ calls, he would contact her, since he knew I lived with her – and that she, in her sympathy for us both, would force me to see him. What I hadn’t predicted was that she would make me drive to his home, while gloating about her powers of manipulation. I turned to the window to hide my smile, sighed in cartoon exasperation, and drove on. Across my chest, a new welt grew from where the seatbelt had cut into me in the crash – a counterpoint to the lashes along my back.
‘Good boy!’ she said. ‘I’ll text you our new address. And get there for dinner, ok, cos I’m going all out. I’m going to go Kimber’s first and I’ll get us some of his painkilling, which is better than —’
‘What, is Gibbon a heroin dealer?’
‘Fuck off, his name is Kimber – who are you, trying to mock someone’s name?’
‘How dare you? There’s a long history of heroes named Leander.’
‘Shut up, you’re not a hero. Kimber’s a hero. And no, he’s not a dealer, or he’s not just a dealer. Either way, whatever, he has a link. And it’s good. Actually, can I have another twenty?’
‘No, I’ve only got fifties.’
‘Leander, please! Please. We’re here now anyway. Come on, I’m your fairy fucking godmother.’
I parked, gave her another fifty, mock-begrudgingly, and got out. Squirrel blood scarred the bonnet in four lines like giant claw-marks. Dawn staggered round to my side, unbalanced