In the dark the merman went to the wall where the ladder usually hung. His cunning fingers and toes found impossible crannies, he swarmed up the glistening wall to the level of the vestibule. The portcullis was raised, but a sentry slouched near it. With regret, with no great force, the merman gave a chop to the soldier’s neck, and the man toppled. The merman caught him and lowered him carefully to the floor, where he lay still.
Going back to the dungeon, the merman let down the ladder and went to rouse John. John had not been fully asleep, but was feverish and light-headed, and could only say, as he was helped up the ladder: ‘It int morning, is it?’
They wandered through a night of mist and rusty brambles, over a field, by a windmill, across a marsh. John’s thoughts were in confusion; he responded like a child to the merman drawing on his wrist, the merman supporting him.
They came to a halt, and the merman swept up his friend in his arms. The young soldier, with a laugh which sounded delirious with fatigue, muttered: ‘I int a gal, mate, I can climb over a stile.’
The merman stood with his friend in his arms, and looked down sharp-eyed through the gloom. John’s eyes had closed, and he burrowed into the merman’s shoulder, muttering, almost asleep. A slight white smile divided the merman’s beard. He leaped into the sea.
The merman entered into his own kingdom, with its vales and hills, its woods and fields, its orchards bearing acorn-shaped fruits. Among the trees rose his palace, its walls and turrets white as coral, its roofs agleam with copper and gilded vanes.
The great hall of the palace welcomed him silently as master. His grey gaze took in with a quiet joy the familiar things of his life: the Egyptian gold, the Grecian marbles, the complexities of Celtic bronze.
With a gentle movement of his shoulder he shifted the head of his human guest to lie in the crook of his arm. The merman smiled. John’s mouth was slightly open, his round blue eyes were wide.
The merman bent his head and lightly, almost timidly, kissed the parted lips, the staring eyes. But John was drowned. The merman threw back his head and howled, in a great bubble of soundless grief.
*pitman: ‘The last child of a family, or the smallest of a brood or litter.’ Moor’s Suffolk Words and Phrases (1823).
MAY
In the late May light of his study, Clare sat reading a letter from Maine.
So your kind of life seems pretty suburban to me, surrounded like this by four hundred acres of woods. The stream is my kitchen sink and my shower (it’s melted snow, kind of cool), and I’m writing by the light of a kerosene lamp, as close as I can huddle to a potbellied stove burning pine. Just before dark I went down to the stream to hook out a couple of cans of Narragansett (that’s beer, as you wouldn’t know) and found myself eyeball to eyeball with a bear on the other side. We just squatted and stared at each other, three feet apart. Right behind it was the apple tree, all in flower, that some bear planted years ago by eating an apple miles from here, and getting rid of the seeds in the usual way. They aren’t all so helpful. Anything I plant or bury, like potatoes or trash, they dig up, sniff at, and leave for me to bury again.
I don’t know that it’s for you to say that what you’re writing is too stupid to show to anyone else. But if it’s therapy, well, I understand that. Me, I write poems that look like Fenimore Cooper trying to write like—who? St John Perse, maybe. He has this phrase un grand poème délébile—delible as opposed to indelible, get it? I write the most delible poems you’ll never see.
I could stay here for ever, but soon I’m off to teach in Summer School. And in fall, it’s back to Academe, for the first time in plain clothes. That will leave my brothers with a few more bucks for themselves, but I’ll miss this wilderness.
Just outside the door there’s a phoebe nesting. I don’t guess you know what a phoebe is, but she’s a little shock-headed thing. At first, she’d fly off every time I came out, but now we understand each other, and she just sits and fixes me with a beady little eye. It reminds me of you and your wren, but my phoebe’s more placid and more the outdoor type.
Remember me to Alicia, Mrs K., Mark, Lucy, Mikey and that supernatural little Amabel. Also Peter at the Mutton, John, Roger and Robin. And to you,
Peace.
JIM-JACQUES
Clare put down the letter and picked up another, with an Iranian stamp. The stamp puzzled him, and the writing. He could not remember having seen it before.
The telephone rang, and with a start he lifted it. Mark Clare’s voice, much noise in the background, said: ‘Cris, I’m ringing from a box at Charing Cross, and I’m skint. Could you ring me back at this number?’
‘Sure,’ Clare said, noting the number on Jim-Jacques’ letter. He broke the connection, then dialled.
‘Thanks, Cris,’ Mark said. ‘Listen, would you do me another favour?’
‘If it’s as easy as that one.’
‘It’s a bit of a liberty. Well, a diabolical liberty. You see, there’s this girl, and she’s got a car, and on Saturday morning I’d like to bring her down to yours.’
‘Understand,’ Clare said. ‘I’ll make myself scarce.’
‘Oh, don’t put it like that. Just for a while. Suppose we stay the night? She could cook you a decent meal.’
‘It depends how you want to arrange it,’ Clare said. ‘By the time you arrive I’ll be out, anyway. I’m going to a football match in Ipswich with John and Roger. I’ll see you about suppertime, if you’re still here.’
‘Oh well, that’s great,’ Mark said. ‘That’s really great. You won’t mention it to anyone will you?’
‘No, of course not,’ Clare said. ‘Though anyone is more broad minded than you probably know. Listen, Mark, I’ve got to hang up on you, someone’s knocking on the door.’
He put down the receiver with a ping and went to open the door, feeling a new interest when he saw the big fair man who stood there. ‘Morning, Reg.’
‘Morning, master,’ said Reg. ‘What’s your pleasure today?’
‘Nothing much,’ Clare said. ‘The usual pair of kippers, I suppose. No, make it three. I’m expecting company, for a change.’
‘Lonely old place, this,’ Reg said. ‘But pretty.’ Moaning with pigeons, blooming with lilac, hawthorn and laburnum, the neglected garden seemed to belong to some idyllic time before nature needed to be rearranged by man.
Clare looked at the fisherman (Reynold the Fisher, he was called now in his mind) and thought that with his crisp hair, his clear eyes and single gold ear-ring, he had all the freshness of the sea upon him. ‘How’s business?’
‘Well, that int you,’ Reg said, ‘that make it worth my while to come all the way from Lowestoft. But passable, thanks.’
Clare went with him to his van, which was parked on the farm road beside the stream. They walked by the apple tree, a tethered cloud of blossom fading to white. Under their feet crushed camomile smelled pharmaceutically sweet.
From the field opposite the cottage an oak leaned its bright new leaves over the van. The steep sides of the stream were a mass of cow-parsley, reaching up to the overhang of a flowering hawthorn hedge. Though buttercups and red campion were everywhere, the insistent note of the countryside was white embowered in green.
Reg handed over the fish, and climbed into the van. ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ Clare said, ‘I haven’t paid you.’
‘My memory,’ said the rueful fisherman, accepting the few coins. ‘It get like that when you’re over twenty-one. But you wouldn’t know, would you? Enjoy your company.’
In the study once more, Clare slit open the letter from Iran. Inside was only a card. A Tarot card: The Hanged Man.
He felt a horror of it, of the malice which must have sealed it and addressed it. He stared at the envelope, and all at once thought that he knew the writing. From his memory of a single postcard, he believed it was Matthew Perry’s.
He turned the Hanged Man over. On the back was written: ‘Your card = Resurrection. M.J.P.’
Later in th
e morning, while Clare was slashing weeds in the garden, surrounded by the pungency of hedge-garlic and by the Orange Tip butterflies which lived on it, the young carpenter Robin came to replace a cracked warped door. He carried the new one on his back from the van, stooped under it like a certain arthritic old farm labourer who haunted the fireplace of the Shoulder of Mutton. Below the inevitable cap of black wool, his gypsy-like eyes had their usual look of faint amusement; which, it occurred to Clare, was not exactly friendly, not exactly unfriendly, not exactly anything but detached and interested. Like a grey squirrel, thought Clare.
‘Cup of tea before you start?’ he asked, and Robin said: ‘Wouldn’t say no.’
They sat in the whitewashed back kitchen with its quarried floor, its old copper and bread-oven. ‘Can’t see a modern woman living here,’ said Robin.
‘I’m not particular,’ Clare said. ‘Speaking of women, Mark’s found one.’
‘Oh-ah,’ Robin said. ‘Not a bad old boy, Mark. We int the same class, of course, but we always been friends, since we was babies. Well, you tell Mark he int the only one.’
Looking at Robin’s slight reminiscent smile, his secretive mouth, Clare guessed that he was not speaking of courtship, of anything that touched him.
‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, good luck, Robin.’
The gypsy-dark boy was overtaken by the urge to confide. ‘You ever sin a blonde girl walking about here?’
‘Yes,’ Clare said. ‘With green eyes?’
‘Thass the one,’ Robin said. ‘Well, I was out in the van Monday and I see her walking along miles from anywhere and I stop and offer her a lift. Well, one thing lead to another with surprising speed. I never been raped before, and I recommend it.’
Clare found himself oddly shocked, his image of the girl violently revised. ‘You don’t mean that?’
‘That’s how it seem the first time,’ Robin said. ‘The other two was quite voluntary.’
The boy was grinning widely, and Clare saw in his mouth something innocently feral.
‘I hope,’ he said, not knowing why he should be concerned, ‘you were kind to her, Robin.’
‘Well, I warnt unkind,’ said Robin. ‘But don’t you worry about her. My experience warnt a rare one, by all accounts. They say there’s only three things she’s interested in, and two of them are round.’
Clare wanted to change the subject, but still had a question. ‘Where does she come from, did she say?’
‘No,’ Robin said. ‘She don’t go in for talking. But she’s a stranger of some kind. I’d say Welsh.’
He set down his empty mug and scraped back his chair. ‘Well, to work,’ he said. Then, with a return of his enigmatic smile: ‘Given you something to think about, haven’t I?’
‘Yes, you have,’ Clare admitted. ‘Welsh, you think? I’d never have thought of that.’
On Saturday, after the football match, Clare was dropped by John and Roger at the top of Hole Lane. An early full moon was out, and at the end of the lane he stopped to look up at the chestnut tree. In that light the tree’s little pagodas of bloom were drained of their rose veining and gleamed an eggshell white.
Before going in, he skirted the cottage, but found no car. They had gone, he decided, and the light in the study had been left on to guide him home.
But in the study, before a fire stoked high against the house’s pervading chill, Mark was slumped in the rickety armchair. He turned his face towards the door, and Clare was shocked by it. ‘Marco! What is it?’
‘Nothing much,’ Mark said. ‘Here, have your chair and get warm.’
‘No, stay there,’ Clare said, and went to lean on the mantelpiece, trying not too evidently to observe the stricken young face.
‘She went,’ Mark said. ‘For me it wasn’t a minute too soon. I told her I’d stay the night with you. I’ll walk to the station in the morning.’
‘Oh, Mark,’ Clare said, compassionately. ‘Forget about it. She’s obviously a bitch.’
‘It wasn’t obvious,’ Mark said. ‘But then, I haven’t had much experience in judging. One thing that’s clear is that we weren’t made for one another.’
He turned his head away, and began thumping on the arm of the chair with growing violence. ‘But who am I to complain? I’m boring to look at and boring to talk to and boring in bed. I was lucky to get what I did get.’
Clare stared down into the fire, ignoring the boy’s tears. Eventually Mark sniffed, and said: ‘Cris.’
‘Yes, Marco.’
‘I brought a bottle of whisky. Couldn’t afford it, but I thought it looked sophisticated. Let’s get pissed, Cris.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Clare said. ‘I’m with you to the end of the bottle.’
Much later, almost asleep, Mark asked: ‘Cris?’
‘Hullo?’
‘Have you ever had a woman down here?’
‘Not yet,’ Clare said. ‘But there’s one I think about.’
‘What’s she like?’ Mark asked drowsily.
Clare thought about what she was like. ‘Green as elderflower,’ he said. ‘Eyes green as elderflower.’
He wandered over to the table, where the book lay open. His eyes skimmed the familiar opening words.
Aliud quoque mirum priori non dissimile in Suthfolke contigit apud Sanctam Mariam de Wulpetes…
CONCERNING A BOY AND A GIRL EMERGING FROM THE EARTH
(De quodam puero et puella de terra emergentibus)
Another wonder not unlike the appearance of the wild man occurred in Suffolk at St Mary Woolpit. On the manor at this place belonging to Richard Calne, a soldier, a great throng of reapers was proceeding along the harvest field. The day was bright and hot, which, as afterwards appeared, was not without bearing on what followed; poppies and may weed stared in the yellow grain as yet unapproached by the reapers and gleaners; and over the summer-darkened hedgerows tangled with woodbine and traveller’s joy, invisible larks sang.
Some way from the field, in a sandy place grown with gorse, there were certain hollows or pits, which ignorant people called the Wolf Pits, to explain to themselves the name of the village. Towards these pits, during a pause in the work, a young reaper strayed on some business of his own, and so became (with round eyes and gaping mouth) the first to observe the prodigy over which the Abbot of Coggeshall and many more have marvelled.
Crouched near the edge of one of the pits this John observed two children, whom at first he took to be the children of neighbours playing at some game; for the sun was in his eyes and they were a little shadowed by a clump of brambles. But at the sound of his feet in the gorse the children rose and looked towards him, their eyes narrowed against the light, and seeming to see him only dimly, if at all. They were a girl and boy of perhaps seven and six years old, comely in form and in every way like any children of our world. But their hair and their eyes and all their skins were of the green of leeks.
The young reaper for some minutes only stared at their fear, with fear of his own in which there was pity too. Then he turned about and ran back to the harvest field, shouting to the lord of the harvest: ‘Roger! Roger, see what’s here!’
In a narrow vale stood the manor house of Wikes, looking out over its fishponds to a little wood which closed the view. Built of stone, whitewashed within and without, with a steep thatched roof adapted to the line of its curved ends, the house rose with a modest ceremony out of a ceremonious garden on the same small scale. A plot of fine grass lay before the hall door, bordered by other plots of herbs and roses. At the south end a wall enclosed an orchard of pears, apples, quinces, cherries, plums and a single vine, and there the strawberries also lurked brightly. In that weather the garden and the house itself, with its open door and narrow glassless windows, moaned with the many doves from its cote throughout the day.
At the time when the children came, the knight sat in the airy hall with only his wife for company. The lady, who after many disappointments was expecting her second child, was at her spinning, though a ha
rp was within her reach should her husband wish for cheer. For the knight was melancholy, his blue eyes shadowed, his brown beard uncombed. A wound in battle had caused him a long illness, and though a man in the prime of his age he would never fight or tourney or hunt as he had done before. By his chair there rested a stick, curiously carved, where his hand gripped, with the leafed face of the Green Man.
When the reapers descended upon the house the knight was at first too rapt in thought to attend to their noise, brooding perhaps on his wound, or perhaps, as he now often did, on his only son, a boy being educated in the household of the bishop. So the lady too, for his peace, feigned to give all her attention to her spinning, though her ear was intent on the voice of Peter Butler disputing with Roger the lord of the harvest, and on the exclamations which came from Kit of Kersey, her faithful servant and friend.
At length, rising, she went some way towards the door, and called twice, not loudly: ‘Kit! Oh, Kit!’
The young woman heard, and had indeed been hovering outside the door for such a call, and she came quickly, but shyly (for it was understood that at that hour the hall was the knight’s alone) to her mistress. Her rosy face was a complexity of every feeling between wonder and tenderness.
‘Oh Madam,’ she cried. ‘Oh Madam.’
‘Why, Kit,’ said the lady, ‘how strange you look. And what is this crowd of folk in the garden? I hope it does not mean some poor soul is hurt in the harvest field.’
‘Thass no wonder if I look strange,’ said Kit, ‘for my eyes have sin the strangest thing under the sun. Madam, they all want to come in to the master, and Peter he won’t let none of them, but Madam, let Roger and John come and bring the children with them.’
The Girl Green as Elderflower Page 11
