by Xan Brooks
“Will you listen to that,” the Scarecrow says in a whisper. “The sanctimonious little shits.”
Lucy is beside herself. “Is it really them?”
“It is,” he says. “The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.”
Hidden behind ferns, she can peek out and see them: a set of small hooded shapes gathered by the fire and, beyond that, an outer circle of tents that appear to be decorated with Red Indian markings. She wants to investigate further but this would be perilous; she should be grateful that she has seen them at all. The Kibbo Kift are skittish and elusive. They are reputed to ride out to the forest every summer weekend, a good ten or twenty in number, but they are careful to keep to remote corners, and they cover their tracks when they leave. They melt away into the undergrowth and ensure that the land where they camped is made virgin again.
The Scarecrow has explained that this is a pacifist group, an antidote to what they regard as the tub-thumping war-mongering of Baden Powell’s scouts. He says they are led by a man called John Hargrave, also known as White Fox, and that the organisation is divided into lodges and tribes. Inductees must hand-stitch their own robes of Saxon cloak and tunic, and they learn woodcraft and folklore and how to respect Mother Nature. The Scarecrow can’t abide them. He says there are few jokes more amusing than the moral superiority of children. But their singing is gorgeous and glacial, like vanilla ice-cream, and Lucy believes they might be beautiful. She would like to stay put. She would like to hear more. She rises with great reluctance when she feels the Scarecrow’s tap on her shoulder.
They retrace their steps and find somewhere to sit. The bonfire fades to a dull stain at their backs and the Kibbo Kift’s singing regains its ghostly old tint. She says, “Do you want to do something?”
“We are doing something.”
“You know what I mean.”
“We are doing something. Maybe later we’ll do something different. But right now I’m enjoying this particular something.”
She helps light his cigarette and they pass it between them. He asks how she has been and she finds herself telling him a little about her life at the Griffin and her parents who died and her brother who steals but whom she loves all the same. He asks if it was her granddad who made the arrangements for her trips to the woods and she nods and coughs and hands the cigarette back.
He shakes his head. “It’s none of my business, Lucy. But I reckon you might want to look into getting yourself a new set of grandparents.”
“He’s a nice man. He means well.”
“Lucy,” he says. “He doesn’t. He’s not.”
From far away, through the stands of pollarded trees, comes the crystalline sound of that extraordinary singing. The wind must have shifted: it has brought it to them.
“The Campswarden met the Tally keeper and the Gleeman had his say,” sing the unseen children of the Kibbo Kift. “Then all set sail in a coracle and cried, ‘We won’t return ’til May’.”
Turning the tables, she says, “I’ve always wanted to ask. Why does the Tin Man wear a copper mask when yours is made of leather?”
“I tried it with the copper mask. It aggravated my skin. It drove me half-mad. The leather is better.”
“Fred says the reason the Tin Man wears a mask is because he is too handsome to look at. She says he does it to protect us from how handsome he is.”
The Scarecrow snorts. “And what do you think?”
“I think she’s joking.”
“I think you may be right.”
The four funny men had each been hurt in the war. This knowledge steals up on her incrementally, imperceptibly, until it strikes her as strange that there was a time when she did not know it. Nobody ever goes so far as to state it aloud; certainly the funny men have never discussed their history except glancingly in rueful asides or in a private, playful language she does not fully understand. And yet through the very act of circling the heart of the matter they eventually put a frame around it, as wary ice-skaters navigate the rotten centre of a frozen pond, scoring marks around the edge that only make the middle gleam brighter.
She gathers that the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and Toto were variously shelled and cut and shot down while in France, although she has not yet managed to work out what happened to whom. And she realises now that the Lion’s wounds are internal and that he suffers from a disease called “neurasthenia” that affects some soldiers who have spent too long under fire. This accounts for his disposition, for his closed, boyish face, and it explains why he rarely speaks and won’t look you in the eye and why he is liable to start at the sound of a tumbling acorn or a squirrel in the tree. She reasons that he is only cowardly today because he was too brave in the past, and she wishes he could trust her as he so obviously trusts Fred. Once she asks the Tin Man why the Lion attacked Edith and he tells her that most times the Lion doesn’t even know what he’s doing. That he sleeps at odd hours and often screams in his bed and occasionally wets it as well. That he is constantly trying to do away with himself – can’t look at an oven without wanting to stick his head in it, the big eejit. He says the Lion means no harm but that he is all out of sorts. He’s more Humpty Dumpty than lion; he can’t be put back together again. The Tin Man adds that she should count herself lucky to have three chivalrous escorts to keep the Lion at bay. They might have been Humpty Dumpties as well and then where in hell would she be?
The wind turns again and drags the singing away with it. Or could it be that the songs are now finished and the Kibbo Kift boys are readying themselves for bed? She likes to picture them untying their cloaks and crawling into their tents and hopes that one day she herself will have the chance to sleep under canvas. What would the boys say if they spotted her in the woods? Would they be delighted or scared? Would they consider her pretty? She experiences a queer stab of loneliness, sitting out here in the dark.
The Scarecrow lifts the dropper from his pocket and applies saline to his eyes, which have a habit of crusting over and causing discomfort. Seeing him preoccupied, she decides she can risk one further question. “Don’t you have any family?”
“No family,” he murmurs, his head tilted back. “I’m as free as a bird. I flew off into battle and I never came back.”
Later she will use her hand on him and on balance she thinks that she prefers it this way. She would rather not stare into his moistened brown eyes and feel his tobacco breath on her face because this only makes her realise that they are not close when they’re close. Of course they are not close when she uses her hand on him either, but at least the anger is not there and they both go at it in silence, secure in the unspoken understanding that she is performing a task and providing a service.
How strange this all is. The only times he truly feels close is when she does not touch him at all, when they are walking and talking or sharing cigarettes, and at these times it is as though she has known him for years. She doesn’t even like it if his fingers brush hers when he passes the cigarette over because it reminds her of the times when he is pressed up against her, when he detests his own frailties and appears to view her as the cause. It makes little sense but there it is, and she can do nothing about it. Everyone has their limits and these limits conspire to keep the world at arm’s length.
“We all fall into darkness,” the Scarecrow says, as if picking up on her thoughts. “Even the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.”
In the bed of the truck on the long road home, Winifred amuses herself by making animal noises. At intervals, quite softly, she will say, “Mee-ew” and then giggle. She sounds like a peevish house cat that is being subjected to some minor indignity, like having its fur washed or being made to swallow bitter medicine.
“Mee-eew,” she says and then waits a few seconds. “Meee-ew.”
Previously half-asleep, Lucy props herself on her elbows. “What are you doing?”
“Eee-ew.”
“Yes,”
says John, “what are you doing, Freddie?”
“You all have to guess. Edith has to guess too.”
“Cat!” blurts John.
“I don’t want to,” says Edith.
They ride on through the night. It seems that the game might have finished. Sleepily, Lucy says, “I always look up to see if a plane is going by. They fly every day to Paris and then back again. One day I’d really love to go up in a plane.”
“It’s very expensive,” Edith says. “Flying up in a plane.”
The headlights pick out a sign. They are driving down Turpentine Lane. They come past the Wesleyan church, a huddle of houses, civilisation at last.
“Eee-eew!”
“Cat!” says John.
Now Fred’s mewling has gained a little volume, turned a degree more insistent. What began for the creature as a mild concern has apparently bloomed into an active nuisance. “Ee-eeew?” she says. “Eeugh!”
“Give up,” John says.
“Lucy?” she says. “Edith?” Lucy shakes her head. Edith says nothing.
They turn off Turpentine Lane and hit the main road, the arterial road, that unwinds like a ribbon right into London. A motorist blasts past them, heading the opposite way, and when the noise of the engine has faded, Fred says in a light, casual tone, “Me and Toto were walking back to the clearing. I mean to say. I was walking and he was, you know.” She plants one arm between her bare knees and wiggles her hips. “Anyway, there we were, walking along, when we went by a big bush that looked like it was alive, it was shaking that much and kept making these noises. I must admit I was rather scared. I was petrified.”
John has been laughing. “Do Toto walking again.”
“Anyway,” says Fred, “I said, ‘Oh my stars, what’s inside that bush?’ And Toto – ” she wiggles her hips as a concession to John. “Toto says, ‘Don’t worry about it, I think Tinny’s in there with one of your little pals’.”
Lucy flicks her eyes at John. But the boy is bemused; he grins in encouragement.
“Eee-ew!” says Fred. “Eeeew!”
A silence descends on the children in the truck. Lucy is aware of the back wheels that roll immediately beneath the place she is sitting, she can feel the road’s vibrations in the joints of her spine. Looking over the board, she sees they have arrived at the half-timbered houses, the spacious outer suburbs, which means they must be making good time and she will be home before midnight.
The tension has become unbearable. Seeking to break it, she says, “We saw the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift,” and at the exact same moment John says, “Do Toto walking again” and at the exact same moment Edith springs at Fred and the two start pummelling at each other and Fred goes off into peals of hysterical laughter. One instant the girls are employing their hands as fists, the next as claws, then as fists again, as though each is bent on murdering the other. Edith is on top and Fred underneath, which puts Fred at a disadvantage and yet she will not stop laughing. She shrieks, “Oh! Oh! Falconio!”
“Stop it,” cries Lucy. “Both of you. Stop it!”
Their legs are pistoning, their fists are flying. “Oh Falconio! No Falconio! You Falconio! Please Falconio!”
Without a word, John tosses himself overboard. Lucy’s attention is so fixed on the fight that she sees his departure too late to prevent it. He places both hands on the running board, braces his legs and is gone. She stands, tottering, but the skies are covered and the road is black and she is unable to see where the boy might have landed.
“Oh! Oh! Falconio!”
Now Coach slams on the brakes and she is catapulted forward onto Edith and Fred. The driver is out of his cab before she can disentangle herself. “What the fucking hell?” he says.
They find the boy about fifty yards back. He has rolled to the bottom of a short weedy embankment. He has twisted an ankle and can put no weight on his foot. When Coach and Lucy walk down, he is sitting sucking his thumb. He is entirely calm and appears already to have made peace with his injury, perhaps regarding it as a reasonable price to pay for a ticket out of an intolerable situation.
John is fine; he nods his big head. But he does not want to return to the truck. He says he doesn’t like to see fighting. Please don’t make him watch any fighting.
“Don’t worry,” Coach tells him. “You can sit up front with me.”
At the top of the slope they meet a youngish couple on a late-night stroll: the woman quite handsome, the gentleman gawky and with too many teeth. Lucy can tell from the scent that they have been drinking and the alcohol has turned them garrulous and solicitous, so that they lay on a great fuss for the poor, stoical youth who tumbled out of the truck. The man assists Coach in carrying him back up the road. John suffers these ministrations with a placid half-smile, his eyes wide and moist, his thumb permanently docked in the corner of his mouth. Lucy has the impression that he is rather enjoying himself.
The woman says, “Poor beggar. And out horribly late. Did he fall asleep and roll out the back?”
“Something like that,” says Coach.
“Poor little trooper. How old is he?”
“He’s twelve,” says Coach.
“I’m fourteen,” says John from around the side of his thumb.
“You know what you want to do?” says the man. “You want to make sure grandad has that back gate secured. You tell him, ‘Grandad I’m not getting in there again until you check that back gate is secured’.”
They come wheezing and shuffling up to the truck. Lucy notes that Edith and Fred have now positioned themselves at opposite ends of the bed. Edith has been crying. Fred stares at the sky with a merry defiance. Her forehead is scratched and her hair stands at angles.
“Lawks,” says the woman. “Even more broken children.”
“I want to go home,” Edith says to Coach. “This is the last time. I’m not coming again.”
Coach makes no reply; he is out of breath and deeply relieved to deposit John on the passenger seat. Meanwhile, the drunk man has drawn back and briefly massages a bicep. He glances from Edith to Lucy and then over to Coach. His good-humoured grin has slipped slightly on one side. “Heavens,” he says. “What sort of night have you had?”
Coach says, “They just want to get home.”
The man tries a laugh that is only part-way convincing. “If I was a detective I’d say there was something fishy afoot. If I was a detective I’d wonder if you were holding these children against their will.”
Coach shuts the passenger door and hastens around to the front of the truck. Lucy smiles a vague farewell at the woman and prepares to put her foot in the stirrup and climb into the bed.
“Yes,” says Edith, as clear as a bell. “We are being held against our will.”
The man’s smile slips further. He shoots a questioning look at his wife. “Oh Mick,” she says, and then nervously laughs.
“Don’t listen to her,” snaps Coach. “She’s a right spoilt bitch.”
“Yes,” Edith says. “He is holding us against our will.”
Fred says, “Shut up, Ede.” She rolls her eyes at the man on the road. “Everything’s all right. She’s having one of her sulks.”
By now Coach has cranked the engine and put himself behind the wheel. Lucy barely has time to get up over the gate before the truck finds first gear and begins jerking forward.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” the man calls to Fred. But his smile has gone; he offers a limp little wave. “You all look after yourselves.”
“We will! Thanks ever so much!”
The drunk steps to the side and takes his girl by the arm. The Maudslay pulls away from the verge, picks up speed and engages second gear. And still Edith is not ready to let her complaint rest. On hands and knees she scurries the length of the bed until she has reached the tail-gate. She stares behind at the diminishing figures. She outstretche
s both arms. She screams, “Yes! Yes! We are being held against our will! We are being held against our will! Oh, you fucking stupid bastard! We are being held against our will!”
14
The pub is shut mid-afternoon but the way the bar door is rattling you’d think it was seven. Somebody has urgent business with the Griffin. When the door does not budge, they slap open-palmed at the glass.
She is seated on a bench reading a library copy of The Secret Garden. She’s just reached the part where annoying Mary Lennox has discovered the crippled little boy crying alone in his room. She is disappointed to be plucked out of the tale at such a critical juncture, but dutifully turns the book face down and trots to the door.
Higgs has worked himself into a terrible lather. His collar is open. His bald head is puce. His eyes are over her left shoulder, scanning the empty bar. He barks, “It‘s happened again. I want to see Mr Marsh.”
Her father died first, in the war, then her mother followed not quite eighteen months later. When Lucy told this to others, they would perform a swift mental calculation and assume she had been carried off by the flu. After all, the Spanish flu killed more people than the Germans, although she’s heard it said that without the Germans there would have been no Spanish flu. The disease was hatched in the mud of the trenches, and the Armistice released it. It filled a person’s lungs with glue and turned their skin as purple as Higgs’s scalp, and the soldiers spread it like butter. They couldn’t wait to get home, and they took the thing with them. They threw open the door and walked into the house and killed off their loved ones with a kiss and a hug.
Just how many people did those sick soldiers kill? Nan said it was tens of millions, all around the world, except that couldn’t be right, surely there weren’t that many people in the world to begin with. There would be no one left; Nan has always exaggerated. But the flu killed a lot, that was certain. It accounted for three children in her class at school. It killed Winifred’s mother and Edith’s mother and her Uncle Peter and her cousin Jo. And she knew her mother was scared it would come for them too, because when the children in class began to fall ill, Lucy was taken out of school and the three of them spent a whole week indoors and did not leave the house once. She remembers standing at an upstairs window looking out at the empty street and wondering whether everyone else was hiding, or if they were dead, and if so, what that meant. They might step out the door and find the town empty. She remembers thinking she could walk into the confectioner’s and help herself to bon bons. They could move all of their belongings into that nice house with the wisteria over the door.
