lcrw 27-final-interior-for-mobi-newfile

by 2011-08 (mobi)

  “Might I trouble you for a few moments, sir?” Andrew inquired.

  “By all means,” said the man, though he gazed with a certain dislike at the camera and microphone.

  “It’s about this sale of Midsummer Village—have you any views on the matter, sir?”

  “Naturally I have views,” the elderly man said disdainfully, “though I doubt if they are of interest to the community at large. If this person, Carrock, who has the impertinent intention of buying our home, should care to pay us the common courtesy of a visit before completing his purchase, I shall be delighted to give him my views.”

  “Of course you are familiar with the legend of Midsummer Village?”

  “Of course I am,” the man said more graciously. “I shall relate it to you. It concerns a beautiful girl, the daughter of a farmer here in the valley. Both her parents died when she was in her teens, and she ran the farm single-handed.”

  “When did all this take place, excuse me, sir?”

  “In the reign of Henry VIII. The girl, Edith, her name was, made a success of the farm. Her neighbours said the ghost of her father drifted beside her constantly, advising and instructing. No doubt he felt it was the least he could do, as he had made her promise not to marry.”

  “Why?”

  “He came of a very old family, descended from the Danes, and he couldn’t bear that the last of the line should change her name. He held her to her promise, though she was in love with a young man in the village. You can’t argue with a ghost. She stayed single. She was famous for her butter and eggs, and her fine pigs and her cowslip wine. In any case it is doubtful if the man would have married her—he was considerably above her in birth and had a twin sister to whom he was very devoted.”

  “What became of the farmer’s daughter?”

  “In the end, oddly enough, a man came to live in the village who bore the same name as her father—and so, though she didn’t love this man, she married him.”

  “Was he a poet?”

  “I am hardly qualified to pronounce on that,” the elderly man said fastidiously. “On her deathbed, after many years of married life—she was struck by lightning one summer day and died shortly after—it is said that Edith cried out: ‘I have been alive only on three days in my life: the day I met him, the day he kissed me, and the day I lost him.’ She was not referring to her husband. Since then, according to legend, the village exists for three days only in every year.”

  He looked round complacently at the lichened roofs and the towering elms. Grey cloud had begun to cover the sky, but on the village the sunlight still lay like concentrated gold.

  “That’s a most interesting tale, thank you, sir,” Andrew said. The elderly man inclined his head slightly as they moved off with their equipment, and then he took a notebook from his pocket and strolled away, writing in it.

  “Now who?” said Tod.

  A woman was coming towards them. She carried a large basket of cowslips, and their colour was reflected in her massive coil of yellow hair.

  She smiled at them in a friendly way and asked if she could help them, in a voice soothing and agreeable as the warmth from a baker’s oven.

  “We wondered if you’d care to give us your views on the sale of Midsummer Village?” Andrew said.

  “Well, yon Carrock’s on a fool’s errand, isn’t he?” she said, and laughed.

  “Are you familiar with the legend of the village?”

  “Of course,” she said. “We’re all brought up on it. My father used to tell it to me when I was a little thing. There was this young chap, Samuel Cutaway, oh, way back in the time of Henry the Seventh, he was to have been a monk but they dissolved the monasteries. Samuel fell in love with a farmer’s daughter, but she hadn’t any time for him. On account of this he went voyaging off with some of those early explorers and came back at the end of seven years with a pocket full of gold and a foreign bird. He became parish priest of the village here. He was a philosopher, he used to write essays. When he first heard the bird, in Africa it was, or maybe Australia, the song of it so bewitched him that he said while a man was listening to it he could explain the whole riddle of the universe. He brought the bird back with him. Some say it was a lyre bird, others a hoopoe.”

  “So did he explain the riddle of the universe?”

  “He never got the chance,” she said laughing. “The bird wouldn’t sing in this cold climate, or only for the three hottest days every summer. Samuel took to drink, a gallon of cowslip wine every day in memory of the farmer’s daughter who’d slighted him. And with every glass he drank he declared he would have been the greatest mind of his age if only the bird could be made to sing all the year round. So they say the village only exists now on the three days in summer when the bird would sing and he was listening to it and finding his answer to the riddle of the universe. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I must leave you now, I have to meet a friend.”

  “Thank you for your story,” Andrew called after her as she hurried away.

  “Here’s the vicar,” Tod muttered in his ear. “He’s sure to be full of opinions.” The vicar was a spare-looking man with a thin mouth, who gazed at them in faint disapproval while Andrew explained the reason for their presence.

  “Have you any views on the sale of Midsummer Village, sir?”

  “I? Views? Certainly. The Trust have no right to sell, Carrock has no right to buy. You should not sell times, or lives, or seasons.”

  “And the legend of the village—you know it, sir?”

  “Naturally. It concerns a brother and sister who lived here in the reign of Charles the First.”

  “Twins?”

  “Yes, twins. You know the tale?” the vicar said sharply.

  But Andrew merely looked attentive, and so the vicar told his story. “This pair, Laura and Esmond Fitzroy, were so devoted to one another that they swore never to marry. But Esmond had a scientific bent and became more and more engrossed in studies until at last he retired to live in a tower—you may see it over there—” The vicar gestured towards a crumbling grey ruin among the beech woods. “His was a mind far in advance of his age. He achieved early discoveries in the uses of electricity, could make copper wires glow by magic, according to contemporary reports, and had a metal mast affixed to the roof of his tower, down which he received mysterious messages from celestial regions. The sister became jealous because he neglected her for his research—she was not intelligent, poor thing, merely had a talent for taming animals—so she put it about that he was in league with the devil. The villagers besieged him in his tower. He kept them at bay for three days—during which time he said he was receiving messages from on high telling him how to preserve the village for ever—and before they managed to drag him out there was a violent storm, and the tower was hit by lightning. Esmond, was killed and everybody said it was a judgment.”

  “What became of the sister? You said her name was Laura?”

  “Oh, she married.” The vicar dismissed her with brief contempt. “The legend goes that, out of revenge for his sister’s betrayal, Esmond caused the village to disappear, and return for three days only each summer.”

  “That is extremely interesting, and thank you, sir,” Andrew said.

  “Glad to be of service.” The vicar gave Andrew his card which was inscribed The Rev. S. E. Cutaway.

  They left him and went along to drink cowslip wine at the Fan-Tailed Pheasant, where Bill was already enwreathed in more than a breathalyser’s bouquet.

  Coming out half an hour later they saw the fair-haired woman whom they had already met strolling towards them deep in conversation with a man in postman’s uniform. She waved to them and, when they were within speaking distance, called:

  “I forgot to tell you that he married.”

  “Who did? The philosopher with the singing bird?”

  “Yes. He married, late in life, a girl who became so annoyed with his excuse of not being able to write unless the bird was singing that she swore she’d tra
in it to sing all the time. She did, too. She had a way with animals.”

  “I suppose she also had a twin brother who died?”

  “That’s right, love. Well, I must be getting along to make my hubby’s dinner. Good-bye Esmond, dear,” said the fair-haired woman. She smiled at the postman and they kissed; she walked swiftly through a pair of large iron gates leading to a house among trees.

  “And do you believe that this village exists on three days only each summer?” Andrew asked.

  The postman, who was young and black-haired, grinned at him mockingly.

  “I’d have an easy job if that was so, wouldn’t I?” he said.

  “But what do you think?”

  “I’m not paid to think. I finished with thinking a long time ago.”

  With a casual flip of his hand, the postman walked off towards a small combined village store and sub-post-office.

  “Well? What did my brother have to say?”

  Andrew turned at the voice and saw the girl they had interviewed first.

  “Have they told you some good stories?” she asked teasingly. “Shall you have to come back, do you think?”

  “I—I’d like to,” Andrew began uncertainly.

  “Next time you come I’ll show you my house, and my pets. But you have to pick your day, remember! Now I must hurry—there’s going to be a storm.”

  “She’s right,” Tod said when she left them. “We’d best load up quick.”

  Andrew turned to look at the girl, who was entering a gate halfway along the village street. She waved her hand.

  “Careful with the driving Bill,” Tod said. “You’re on the wrong side.”

  “Someone’s greased the steering,” Bill grumbled. “Listen: Don’t they half have some songbirds in this village! What’s that—a nightingale?”

  “They sing louder when there’s a storm on the way.”

  The van wove precariously along the village.

  They were about half a mile beyond the last house, entering the beech woods, when lightning struck the bonnet.

  When Andrew next opened his eyes, he was in a hospital bed, with a drip-feed attached to his arm.

  “Are the others all right?” he asked, as soon as he was able to speak.

  “Shock and concussion, that’s all. You were all three lucky, considering the state of the van. Now, here’s your father to see you, Mr Carrock—but he mustn’t stay more than a few moments.”

  His father looked, as usual, prosperous, portly, and puzzled.

  “Can’t think why you have to gad about the country doing this ridiculous TV job,” he grumbled. “If only you’d settle down and help me with the business, this kind of thing wouldn’t happen. What’s the matter with you—can’t I give you everything you could possibly want?”

  “Not quite,” Andrew said, and smiled at his father weakly. “Listen, Father—about that village you want to buy—can’t I persuade you to change your mind?”

  “Why?”

  “It isn’t the sort of place that ought to be bought.”

  “Matter of fact,” said his father, “I don’t need any persuading. Went to take a look at it—nothing there but a dip in the downs, some fields, and a lot of sheep. No houses. Not even ruins! Godforsaken spot. Forgotten all about it till you brought it up. Now, make haste and get better, my boy.”

  He gave his son an awkward, affectionate pat and hurried out.

  Andrew lay thinking about a pair of luminous grey eyes.

  “I wonder which story was the true one?” he mused. “I must ask Tod what he thinks.”

  But Tod and Bill had no theories to offer. Shock and concussion had taken away their memory of all events before the crash, and both of them persisted in declaring that they had never discovered the village at all.

  The Malanesian

  Sarah Harris Wallman

  Tanga wakes early to start the halpa. It is a traditional sauce, fiery and aromatic. Tanga uses it on everything. The Rogers know New Jersey is not Tanga’s home and they want her to be at ease. The place she was from is doubtless warmer, so they have turned up the thermostat. Probably Tanga’s culture does not permit her to trouble them with her discomfort.

  The Rogers have never had a live-in maid. Sometimes when they are upstairs in the yellow room with the big bed they laugh at themselves, at the way they tiptoe around their big possessions and their maid, at the way they are surprised by everything. They have not been affluent very long.

  “I’m terrible,” Gwen Rogers laughs, “I half expected her to wear a black dress and white apron.”

  “And who’d have thought being successful would mean I couldn’t go downstairs in boxers?” says Joe.

  Certainly Tanga does not call Joe “Mr. R” or enter rooms with trays of martinis. She is silent on the subject of little Jessie’s manners. But she has enriched their lives in unexpected ways: quiet, humble lessons in halpa and patience and the American dream. She has some extraordinary indigenous method for the elimination of cat odors. And it is wonderful for Jessie to be exposed to cultures other than her own.

  When Tanga first came to live in the apartment above the garage, she was not intended to be a nanny, but Jessie is enthralled with the stranger her parents have brought into their lives. Jessie follows Tanga from room to room, watching her enact mysterious rites Mrs. Rogers has never performed: dusting the television screen, polishing brass objects from the highest shelves. Tanga applies the broom to the floor and the ceiling.

  Jessie crouches in a corner and does not take her thumb from her mouth. One afternoon over her daily carrot snack she works up the courage to ask Tanga a question.

  “What’s it like where you’re from?”

  “Oh,” Tanga’s rag does not stop, “It is…different…than here.”

  “What’s different?”

  “Many things. We eat no carrots in my country.”

  Jessie’s eyes bulge. There have always been carrots for Jessie.

  “But carrots have vitamins! They make you see!”

  “Your mother has told me this. In my country, we eat vitamins you do not know.”

  “Can you see in the dark?”

  “Jessie,” Mrs. Rogers enters the kitchen, “Leave Tanga alone. She has eyes just like you and me. We all see the same.”

  “But she doesn’t eat carrots.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Gwen Rogers tries to shoot Tanga a conspiratorial sigh, to dismiss Jessie’s ignorance as the ignorance of children. But she is never sure Tanga understands unspoken cues.

  “Please, I will have a carrot,” says Tanga.

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean…” Gwen nearly chokes with horror.

  “Is no problem,” Tanga takes a carrot, dips it dutifully in one tablespoon of fat-free ranch, and unhinges her jaw for a healthy chomp, “I am an American now.”

  There was nothing in the media about the disappearance of Alexis Leonard. Lexie watched the Channel Nine local news at five, six, and 11 every night for a week. She had hoped that they would broadcast the picture she’d left on the dresser. The one where she was smoking and wearing The Goth Dress her mother hated. She imagined that whenever they got around to the obligatory weeping parents interview her mother would say that she was 5’1”, that she had very dark brown hair, that she was going through a Goth Phase. Ironically, it was Channel Nine that had first introduced Mrs. Leonard to the term during a rash of suburban kitty-cides the previous Halloween.

  Lexie did not consider herself a Goth. The Goths at her school were too fat to be scary, and would’ve traded their eyebrow hardware for conventional popularity in a second, given the option. Only Lexie truly Didn’t Give A Fuck. Catcher in the Rye was the only worthwhile thing in high school, and you did that sophomore year. So she dated a guy from the shore until her parents said she couldn’t at which point she ran away to live in his duplex. A Real Life. Not that anyone had noticed, apparently.

  Lexie’s parents considered the neighborhoods on the shore seedy. They hadn’t ta
ken her to a boardwalk since they became upwardly mobile enough for a Florida time-share. No more carousels and churros and dizzy vomit rides for the Leonards. Just the fakey backdrop of the Gulf, like the sand-filled ashtray in the Ritz-Carlton that never held a butt. Lexie had longed for the Jersey shore even after she outgrew bulky prize bears.

  Rick was better than any purple bear. Sure, he was a little chunky. He had a cartilage piercing. He worked in the most dilapidated ice cream stand on the boardwalk. But he was no high school cupcake Goth. He was a Drug Dealer.

  Joe Rogers never knows exactly how to act around Tanga. When he brings his emptied ice cream bowl into the kitchen and she is washing dishes, he becomes slightly pink and stands scratching the back of his neck. Eventually Tanga takes the dish with downcast eyes. He scratches his neck and says thanks, unsure whether he can be heard over the roar of the sink. Back in the room with the television he sits down heavily. He spends most days thanking people for faxes, files, coffees, temporary use of pens, the passing of napkins, the transcription of messages. He is not sure he likes thanking people in his home.

  For his wife the adjustment has been less difficult. Breezing around the house distributing purchases or taking inventory, Gwen Rogers will speak to Tanga about anything: capital gains tax, glass ceilings, red lowlights in blond hair. She does not know how much Tanga understands, but hopes the talking will be helpful. English by osmosis.

  While assembling a salad, she tells Tanga of a woman in her office whose blouse had a soup stain all afternoon. Always, this woman was wearing untucked shirts and running hose.

  “You just cannot overestimate the importance of looking professional,” Gwen smiles at Tanga, to show her the story is not pointed. They are just two women in the kitchen chopping carrots.

  “You must miss your home, Tanga,” says Gwen. She lets Tanga slice the cucumber. Tanga is better at that.

  “Oh yes,” says Tanga, “But one cannot be always at home.”

  “It is good to see the world,” says Gwen. She had spent a semester in Paris at twenty. She is embarrassed by the diary she kept; all those rhapsodies on pastry and architecture. It seems flighty and vaguely unpatriotic.