by Joan Aiken
“Splendid,” said the Devil. “We will drink to your future career.” He fetched down a dusty bottle and three pink ornamental glasses from cupboard. On each of the glasses was inscribed “A Present from Hell.” Francis eyed the bottle with caution. He did not much like the look of the Devil’s tipple, which was black, and wondered if he would have a bottle of anything more palatable remaining in one of his pockets. He felt in one and then another. Aha! There was something long and round. But when he pulled it out he found that it was a large garlic sausage.
It then occurred to him that he might deaden the flavour of the Devil’s black wine by taking a bite of sausage beforehand, and while the Devil was pouring wine into the glasses he cut off three slices with his silver clasp-knife.
“Can I offer you a slice of garlic sausage?” he asked, offering one politely on the point of the knife.
He did not know that garlic is a very ancient and unfailing specific against wicked spirits. The Devil frowned until his eyebrows came down and met over his nose. Little Ola hissed angrily and came creeping towards him. It was evident that he had offended them. Her black pigtail curled round his throat, but with the end of his strength he threw bits of sausage at them both.
Next morning Lieutenant Nastrowski was found floating in shallow water against the rocks in the lower end of the harbour, with a black cat grasped between his two hands and a strand of seaweed round his neck.
It took him several days to recover from his experience, but the cat never recovered.
Model Wife
It was her pearls that caused the first fight between Dan Thomas and Shani Hughes. They were bound to quarrel anyway, for love and hate boiled between them like treacle and brimstone, but the pearls were at the bottom of it all.
As soon as Dan set eyes on Shani he swore he’d marry her. Dan was a house-painter by trade, and he lived in a cottage up the mountain, the small white one all by itself, with his ladder and his cherry trees and four mountainy cows. Far afield he often travelled, painting men’s houses and their barns and or doing a bit of sign-writing, as far afield as Grass Street or Hickson’s Hill, for he had a motor scooter that carried him and his gear up the hill roads and through the black belts of forest.
He could do the bold sweep or the detail, paint you roses and curlicues, or finish the west wall of a barn in a day and a half. He bought his groceries wherever he chanced to put on his brakes, so his home village saw him rarely, and Shani, who worked in her Da’s dairy, never at all, until the day when the dairy shutters fell down once too often and old Idris Hughes, meeting Dan in the street, ordered a new pair, tongued and grooved and painted with all the beauties that Dan could devise.
A beautiful job he made of them, too, and a galaxy of winsome Jerseys, the goodness shining in their eyes like glycerine, a wreath of roses round each pedigree neck, and silver buckets beside them foaming like an espresso-man’s dream. But Dan felt something was lacking and he stamped off down to the village for a conference with old Hughes.
“We need a milkmaid,” he shouted before he was halfway inside the door, and then he stopped, for Shani was there, pretty as a bunch of grapes in her green and white stripes, innocent and wild.
She and Dan stared at one another like a couple of cats, and straightway Dan said, “You’re the one I want.”
“Want for what, pray?” And she went on patting the butter into swans with her butterpats. But the look she gave him was about as simple as the battlefield of Waterloo.
“Want you to sit for me as a model,” Dan said, passing a hand over his forehead.
“I’ll have to ask my da about that.”
In came old Idris just then, and she said to him, “Da, Mr Thomas wants to paint me.”
“Modelling fees,” grunted Idris Hughes, and Dan nodded. He knew a bargain when he saw one.
Shani preened herself a bit and said, “When shall I come?”
“This evening.”
So every evening after work Dan came down and painted her in the dairy, and the milkmaid portrait was the first of many. Shani was small, and she was handsome, but fierce as a wasp, for her mother had died when she was a baby and her da was too busy making money in his dairy to attend to her. She didn’t know what it was to be crossed, and he had never put her over his knee and spanked her in his life. Most of the young men in the village thought Dan had bitten off a worse mouthful than Puss when she swallowed the grasshopper.
“What’s that?” said Dan, the first evening, painting away. She was fidgeting with something at her neck.
“My pearls,” said Shani.
“Tuck them out of sight.”
“But they’re real pearls,” she said, shocked. “My Da’s given me one every year of my life, and they’re as large as nasturtium seeds.”
“I don’t care if they’re as big as butter-beans. Dairymaids don’t wear pearls.”
Shani saw the force of this, and she tucked them out of sight under her dress, but the minute painting was done for the evening, out they came again, and she told him, “It’s good for pearls to wear them, I read so in the paper. It keeps them lustrous and shining. I’ve never taken them off since I was born.”
“Do you wear them in the bath?” asked Dan, with curiosity.
“In the bath, yes.”
“And in bed?” he asked, screwing up his tubes.
“In bed, of course.”
“Well! I can tell you one night you won’t wear them.”
“And what night’s that?”
“The night we’re wedded,” snapped Dan. “I don’t fancy going to bed with a string of pearls. Damn it, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, worrying in case the thing got broken. Pearls in bed would be worse than cake crumbs.”
“You’ll have to get used to them just the same,” flashed back Shani. “I’ve never taken them off yet, and I’m not going to for you.”
Then they took breath and eyed one another, and Dan put his brushes carefully into the turpentine and came over to the counter and gave Shani a kiss that lasted for seven and a half minutes, nonstop, and so concentrated that if they’d been inside a pressure-cooker the gauge would have been hopping up and down in the thousands.
Then he stopped and shook her and said, “You’ll take them off.”
“I will not!” retorted Shani, but she added, “When shall we get married?”
“In April, when my cherry trees are in flower.” For he was a tidy-minded man, and he reasoned that three months would be time enough to get the notion out of her head.
He was wrong, though. From February to April, while the lambs tittupped round their mothers on the slopes and the crocuses began to prink and peer in Dan’s garden, dispute flowed between them like a stream in spate. Shani clamoured that she’d wear her virginity the whole of her life sooner than take off those pearls, while Dan shouted that he’d jump off the side of the mountain before he’d wed a girl who thought more of a string of beads than she did of her lover.
The wedding date drew near, and neither had given way an inch. Both secretly hoped that some middle way could be found, for the plain truth was that, rage how they might, could not keep apart; but Dan became black and thunderous, Shani as frosty and brilliant with pride as a raised sword. When they were not kissing, fierce words flew between them like showers of darts.
April came, windy and sunny, and the wedding was celebrated with splendour, for old ldris Hughes was the richest man in the village, and Dan had put by a tidy pile, too, with his painting. The wedding breakfast was to be held in Dan’s cottage for the guests to view the glory of his cherry trees, first out on the mountain. As they climbed the steep track the house hung above them, white in a cloud of white, like an egg in a nest of feathers.
“You’ll take the pearls off for me tonight, won’t you, Shani fach?” said Dan as they strolled up over the grass and he put his arm round her white silk shoulders.
“Indeed and I will not,” she snorted. “You can have me in my pearls or you won’t have me a
t all. If you don’t like it you can bed yourself in the linhay.”
Dan unwound his arm and went on ahead, with jutting brows and a mouth like a ruler, to see to the kettle. The guests crowded after him, gay and curious, into his cottage where many of them had never been before.
All was sanded, spruce, and clean, pots shining like silver, and curtains snowy and smooth. A grand breakfast was laid out on the table, but the guests had eyes for one thing only, and that was a portrait of a fine redheaded wench with eyes like plums and not a stitch of clothes on. The paint was wet, the picture only half finished, and it was plain that Dan must have been painting away at it not half an hour before the wedding. Murmurs and shocked whispers rose up from the party.
“What a hussy! Who is she? Never seen her in the village. Posing in the altogether for him she must have been, not two hours ago. Some stranger from the town she must be. Shameless it is, on his wedding morning.”
“Kettle’s boiled,” said Dan, coming in, brisk and friendly, from the kitchen. “I’ll just clear these things into the attic.” And he stuck the brushes in a jam-jar, picked up easel and palette, and disappeared for a moment. When he came back he carried a tray with tea, whisky, and brandy.
“Set to, neighbours,” he said, and they, remembering the noble meal spread, thought no more of the picture but ate, drank, and joked, while Dan moved among them seeing that each had his need and paying no attention to his bride, who stood bristling in her finery, nearly choked with indignation.
At length the last guest was fed and sped. Dan waved them all off down the steep track.
“Come now,” he said. “Walk a bit under the cherry trees, is it, before dark falls?” They were gleaming in the dusk like paper mountains.
“Not a step do I stir,” said Shani between her teeth, “till you tell me where you have hidden that good-for-nothing redheaded slut so that I can tear the eyes out of her. Posing on your wedding morning, indeed, with not an inch of cloth to cover her shame! Is it a fool you take me for, Dan Thomas?”
“Indeed, it was only an old page of an illustrated paper I copied her from,” Dan said, careless, but there was a guilty note in his voice.
“Tell that to the crows! As if the neighbours would believe such a story. And if you copied it, where have you put the paper?”
“Oh,” said Dan, “I tore it up to light the fire for the kettle.” And he hummed a bit of tune.
Shani hunted high and low through the length and breadth of the cottage and the orchard and meadow, but not a trace of the intruder could she find. Presently she began to tire. It was a strange way, after all, to spend her wedding evening.
“Tell me it was all a joke now, Danny bach?” she coaxed, coming back to him where he sat in the kitchen, toes to the blaze.
“If I tell you, will you do something for me?” he said, pulling her onto his knee.
“What would that be?” She let her head drop on his shoulder.
“Take those oysters’ gallstones off.”
She shot up like an electric eel. “And have you give them to the redheaded piece, I suppose,” she threw at him. “I’ll keep these pearls on till my dying day.”
“As long as you do, you can have a bed to yourself,” growled Dan, and he gathered up an armful of blankets and made himself a snug bed in the linhay, while Shani fumed herself to sleep in the best room with its patchwork quilt that Dan’s granny had made him.
In the morning when she came down, Dan had the breakfast ready and served her as if she had been the Queen herself, but she noticed that the picture of the redheaded girl had been brought down and hung up on the wall.
And moreover, another of the legs had been painted in, and three fingers of the right hand.
Shani said not a word, but she resolved to find the model if it took her a year of searching. Polite as pie she was to Dan, and he to her.
Days went by, and the cherry blossom began to tarnish and scatter. Shani soon found that there was not enough to occupy her in the cottage, for it was a small one, and Dan was out all of most days. So she took to helping her da in the dairy again. Sometimes, when she came home, she would notice that Dan had been back early, and had painted a bit more of the redhead, perhaps a piece of her thigh, or half an arm, or he had touched up the highlight on her knee.
But though fury boiled in Shani, pride kept her lips sealed. Only her eyes snapped and sparkled as they darted over the cottage to see if she could find any trace of her rival, a handkerchief or a hairpin, or even a breath of scent. Never a clue did she find, though, and she began to wonder if the red-haired girl walked naked over the mountain to Dan, making the very sheep blush as they nibbled. Wild dreams haunted her, of shameless, mocking Venuses, and she tossed and turned under the patchwork quilt, while Dan, still sleeping in the linhay, fed load after load of hay to his cows and watched the level get lower and lower. Hard sleeping it would be, soon.
Matters were in this state when the circus from Grass Street came toiling up the slopes of the mountain, to camp in the meadow beyond Shani’s da’s dairy.
Splendid it was, with a great tent like a piece of white cloud, scarlet-capped elephants, horses with plumes, and all the caravans of the circus folk scattered up and down the meadow painted and decorated as gay as butterflies.
The first that Shani knew of it was the strong man coming into the dairy to ask for his day’s ration of three gallons of milk. He gazed at Shani admiringly as she dipped out the milk with her brass dipper. Thin she had grown from searching and pondering, but her cheeks were as pink and her eyes as bright as they had ever been.
“Grand you’d do to be fired from the cannon in the circus tonight,” said the strong man. “Our Miss Lightning has the lumbago. Why, you’re so light and pretty you’d fly through the air like a thistleblow.”
“My husband would never let me,” said Shani, but then she thought: Why shouldn’t I, just the same? What do I care for him? So she told the strong man she’d come round to the ringmaster’s caravan to talk about it.
Mr Blossom was in his shirtsleeves smoking, and he too looked at Shani with admiration. He asked her in for a cup of tea and showed her how to sit with her arms linked round her knees while she was fired from the cannon.
But while he spoke Shani hardly listened, for on his wall was a picture of a woman, decently dressed, but still and for all that the identical redheaded baggage that Dan had painted.
“Who’s that?” Shani asked when she could get a word in.
“That?” said Blossom sadly. “That’s my poor dear wife, Mrs Blossom.”
“Where is she?” demanded Shani, with her fingers tearing feathers out of the cushion.
“She ran away with the tiger-tamer,” Mr Blossom sighed.
“And now she’s running after my husband. With no clothes on!”
“She couldn’t be doing that,” Mr Blossom said. “She’s been dead these twenty years. One of the tigers got her, poor Blodwen.”
“Then how could my husband have painted her picture? With no clothes on?”
“Copied it from somewhere, he must have indeed. Many a picture and likeness used to be taken of my Blodwen. Very beautiful, an artists’ model, she was, see? Here’s one of her on a toffee tin, and one on a calendar in a crinoline, and here she is before she had her hair cut short.”
“And you let her pose like that?” Shani said, shocked to the mortal soul.
“Before we were married, that one was. Afterwards she always wore the crinoline.”
Shani began to feel bad. She had wronged Dan, suspecting him of carrying on with a woman twenty years in the tiger’s stomach. But then she thought: He did it to torment me. And she hardened against him and went with Mr Blossom to learn how to be fired from the cannon, for she was sure that would enrage Dan.
Home at dinnertime she saw that Dan had painted a wreath of daisies round the redhead’s neck.
“Take me to the circus tonight, Danny, is it?” she said at dinner, friendly as butter.
; “All right,” Dan said. “Eat up, girl. Thin as a rake you’re growing.”
Shani couldn’t wait to tell him her news. “Fired from a cannon I’m going to be,” she said. “With the mayor and all the neighbours watching. A great honour it is.”
“I forbid it!” Dan shouted, banging on the table.
“If I promise not to, will you tell me the gospel truth about that picture?” Shani asked, looking at him with bright eyes.
“If I tell you the truth about the picture, will you take off your pearls for me?”
“Never before I’m in my coffin,” stormed Shani.
They parted on evil terms, and Shani went to the circus by herself, but nevertheless Dan was there, too, sitting on a front bench, and Shani saw him and smiled with malice. Dressed all in black she was, in a boiler-suit with a zip from top to toe like a city girl, and round her neck she wore the pearls, shining away like a row of false teeth.
Be damned to her, thought Dan, and he thrust his hands in his pockets and stared moodily at the sawdust.
Outside, night had fallen over the mountain, and the June darkness was as fragrant and spicy as a kitchenful of cloves; red-hot coals of stars blazed overhead.
Drums thundered and trumpets brayed as Shani sat with her hands clasped round her knees and they dropped her into the black mouth of the cannon.
“Stop!” shouted Dan at the last moment. “I can’t stand it!” and he rushed forward, but it was too late.
Mr Blossom had pulled the trigger as Dan arrived, and between them they tipped the barrel upwards and Shani was fired straight at the tent roof.
Up, up she soared, and the ancient thin canvas parted with a rending crack as she passed through. She vanished, and the stars received her.
“Quick outside to catch her,” cried Blossom, and they poured out into the meadow, but though they searched every inch of ground and found a scattering of pearls, there was never a sign of Shani. “Gone up to heaven she has, direct,” they told Dan. “Ah, lucky you were, Thomas, to have a wife that saintly. Honour’s been done you, indeed to goodness.”
