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cannon. There was only the inhale-glow from the guy’s ciggy that lit up his deep eye-sockets.
    He whispered, ‘Know why we’re chopping down the forest? Eldest son from the Big House at the bottom of the glen shot himself up here last year, blew his brains all over a rowan tree. The old lady up at the house looks out onto this forest from her bedroom. She shifted rooms in the big house but whenever she saw the wood it reminded, so . . . we’re to chop the whole thing down and burn every trace of it. I’m up here with Charlie. Some of the slopes are so steep you can never dream of getting a tractor up, so we haul all the lot out with Charlie and his spinnel. I’m normally planting the trees so it feels bad, but a lux penny is a lux penny.’
    â€˜Look, I’m meaning nothing by it, but can I lean my head against your shoulder?’ I says.
    He goes, ‘Course. Aye, have a wee snooze.’
    In the dark I went, ‘Did Brotherhood really kill girls?’
    Speaking, so’s his shoulder trembled nicely against my cheek he says, whisperly, ‘It’s so warming that you trust me here: a girl in woods at darkness looking as divine as you . . .’
    I bumped my ear on his shoulder in the laugh . . . ‘Divine!!!’
    â€˜. . . Come striding out of the dark East with some water stars over your shoulder. I mean I’m not after you or anything.’ He breathed in all excited and says, ‘Do you believe in poetic moments? I believe that’s what happiness is: trying to live a succession of poetic moments, not stuck in the Portakabins with that lot but out, under the last trees, meeting a tall crazy girl . . . watching the sunrise in a stranger’s arms.’
    â€˜Hey. I’m not crazy.’
    â€˜. . . ‘Magine a life that is one long poem . . .’
    â€˜. . . I’m moving off before light but can I put my arm round here. I just need to cuddle . . .’ The shoulder shook.
    â€˜I’m married and I love her. Is this being bad?’
    I goes, ‘This is not being bad; I bet she’s dead lovely.’
    â€˜When she smiles she frowns at the same time. She used to work up at the old tracking station where the Observatory was. It was summer, she undressed so slowly outside it was dark before she drew her tights down and with a match she showed me the faint mole on her thigh that corresponded exactly with the shape of the star cluster she’d been studying. Her mobile phone went off but she left it in the grass somewhere and I knew as we kissed she was really trying to remember my name from back at the party, saying she didn’t care where her life went. When she lay back she lost who I was forever, mumbling the names of the blue stars above us.’
    After a good bit I says, ‘It must be so lovely to be like that.’
    â€˜Ho, here’s me and a girl I’ve knowd a half-hour with her arm round me . . .’
    â€˜It doesnt count,’ I says, ‘Believe me, mister, I want you to love her
more
. I want you to say hello. I’ve kicked myself free the earth long ago . . . I don’t count.’
    â€˜Aye? A blow-jobbing’s out the question then?’
    We both laughed and a bird crashed free of the drooping umbrellas of pine branches, shaking so much waterdrops out, the canopy of twigs swung back up all the higher.
    Out of the nightness he says, ‘It’ll happen to you too.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜The Love.’
    â€˜Nah. There was someone once but, never the right person since . . .’
    â€˜It’ll come, it’ll come like a disease.’
    â€˜No.’
    There was long long quietness.
    â€˜Look at the stars; this world so big and just us here,’ he went.
    I goes, ‘Brotherhood?’
    â€˜The Erin sisters it was, from over at The Summer Colony