by A. L. Barker
In the fir wood the mist was shredding, blowing in tatters through the trees. Owen was relieved to see that the mangled corpse of the bird had gone; he didn’t fancy having to interpret messy death to this child.
‘Why aren’t you at school?’
It sounded peremptory. James released Owen’s hand and ran away.
‘Come here!’ James ran deeper into the trees, stooped to pick something up. ‘Come back! Please …’ James was carrying his hand to his mouth. Owen shouted, ‘No! Don’t!’ and went in pursuit. He might be a townsman but he had seen fleshy growths crimped like pie-crusts and looking tasty. His ankle turned on a tree-root. ‘It’s fungi – poisonous – you’ll die if you eat it.’
James came slowly towards him, opened his hand. There was nothing in it. Owen said sternly, ‘I don’t find that funny. You haven’t answered my question. Don’t you go to school?’
James’s lip trembled; he still held the best card – tears. He lowered his head and scuffed up the pine needles. Owen took his hand and scuffed with him.
When they reached the pool it was the colour of an old penny. A steady drizzle fretted the water, the fall burst unmusically from the culvert, the irises were bowed down, moorhens put up watery cries from the reeds.
‘Not the day for it,’ Owen said, ‘it needs the sun,’ and would have turned away, but James opened his paper bag, took out a handful of bread. ‘We’d better go back.’
James went to the water’s edge, threw the bread. A flotilla of birds arrowed out of the reeds. He threw more bread.
‘That’s enough,’ said Owen. ‘You’ll get wet.’
James stooped, uttering the same watery cries as the moorhens. The water lapped over his shoes. James lost his footing and his balance, plunged forward. There was little depth so near the verge, he ended on his stomach in the shallows.
Owen ran to him. James propelled himself into deeper water. Owen was obliged to wade in up to his knees. He gripped James’s shirt-collar as he started to go under, and hauling him up had the rare experience of rescuing someone about to drown and enjoying it. James’s eyes, wide with surprise and pleasure, darkened with anger as he was dragged to the bank. He fought off Owen’s grasp. ‘I was swimming!’
Owen held him at arms’ length. ‘You were drowning. You’re soaked to the skin and covered in mud. What am I to tell your mother?’
‘I drowned.’ James looked down with pride at his wet clothes.
‘Let’s get it right for the record; you weren’t swimming and you could have drowned. Now I have to get you home before you catch pneumonia.’ Owen put a hand between James’s shoulder blades to start him walking. James floundered in the mud. ‘Where are your shoes?’
‘In the water.’
Owen picked him up. There was nothing else for it. James, in playful mood, clung around Owen’s neck and huffed into his ear. When they emerged into the lane, in sight of his mother’s bungalow, he threw himself full length in Owen’s arms, let his head and legs hang lifelessly.
‘There’s no need for that.’ Owen was annoyed when a passing woman stood and gaped in alarm.
James’s mother’s hair was what Owen believed was called Venetian red. Since she hadn’t passed it on to her son and James had a hooked nose while hers was a small snub, possibly the father’s genes had prevailed. Owen couldn’t accept Elissa’s verdict that were it not for the colour of her hair no one would look twice at her. He, at any rate, was tempted to speculate and had been since witnessing her display of temper. A woman who could come to blows with her washing line was singular.
She looked him over, appraising, noting his mud-soaked trousers and waterlogged shoes. James hung on her arm crying, ‘I drowned!’
She said sharply, ‘Go and take off your wet things. I’ll run a hot bath,’ and turned to Owen. ‘You must be very uncomfortable.’
‘I’m so sorry. James was feeding the ducks when he slipped in the mud. I had to fish him out of the water.’
‘I can’t offer you dry clothes, my husband’s wouldn’t fit you.’
‘No problem. I get through the fence and I’m home.’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you’re our new neighbour.’
A commonplace exchange. But Owen wondered. Didn’t parents – mothers especially – fear for their offspring, suffer with them, forsaking all others? She had scarcely glanced at James to see what harm had come to him.
Owen changed out of his wet things and went in search of Elissa who was lying on her bed. She said, ‘I have a terrible headache.’
‘A migraine?’
‘Another. So tedious. How was your morning?’
‘Wet.’
‘You exposed that child to the elements?’
‘His mother didn’t seem bothered.’
‘Do you think these migraines could be something else? Something more? The symptoms aren’t right. I don’t feel nauseated and I don’t see flashing lights. It’s not a throbbing pain, it’s piercing – pressure.’ Elissa propped herself on her elbow, staring at him. ‘You know what I mean?’
He knew. They had been through it so often, as often as she had a headache, a cough, collywobbles, a twinge of rheumatism, was liverish, felt dizzy, caught a common cold. He had surprised her groping herself in the bathroom. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ ‘It’s the recommended procedure to be carried out daily.’ He was unwise enough to ask what she was looking for. She had told him, with a mortal fear which he had tried to laugh off. It brought on a blazing row.
‘My dear girl,’ he said, gently now, ‘I think you’re subject to nervous headaches. I shall make strong tea and bring you your pethidine pills.’
‘She’s asked me to go and have coffee with her.’
It was natural that couples who lived together in the same conditions and constantly faced the same situations should develop a degree of thought transference. Owen said ‘She?’ more from a wish to establish a name than a question of identity.
‘The woman next door.’
‘Shall you go?’
‘Why not? You keep saying we should make ourselves known.’
*
‘Nice enough, little Mrs Hartop,’ was Elissa’s verdict afterwards. ‘Rather pathetic. She seems to think we’re sophisticates from the Big City. The coffee was instant, in pottery mugs. The child hooted at me. She says he has a speech impediment when meeting strangers and hooting is his way of getting started. The kitchen, which was all I saw of the house, was user-friendly. Obviously it’s where she spends most of her time and smokes her cigarettes. Doesn’t she realise she’s putting the child at risk as well as herself? Someone should take her in hand.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Mrs Latimer warned me. She said the air was so polluted she was taking the fumes home on her clothes.’
‘He who denigrates his neighbour bears witness against himself,’ intoned Owen: something Horace might have said. He was pleased with it.
‘It’s common knowledge.’
‘Common gossip.’
‘There’s no smoke without fire.’ Elissa was pleased with that.
‘I shall go and enquire how James is.’
‘I told you, he hooted, he’s alive and well.’
‘I ought to show concern, he was my responsibility.’
Elissa said, ‘I don’t see you as a child-minder.’
*
When she opened the door to him she had a towel wound turban-wise round her head. Not a strand of hair showed, it was as if a shout had been silenced.
Owen said, ‘I’m sorry, this is a bad moment.’
‘It would have been ten minutes ago, but I’ve finished washing my hair.’ She beckoned him into the small hallway. From an open door wafted the warm breath of an Aga. ‘Come in.’
On the threshold of the kitchen he trod on something soft and yielding. ‘Oh lord …’ and stooped to pick it up – grey, woolly, legless, with glass beads for eyes.
‘It’s James’s.’ She took the thing, nursed
it in her arms.
‘I came to see how he is.’
‘Excuse me a moment.’
He heard her cross the hall, the sound of a door closing, a key turned in a lock. She came back. ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. James is fine.’
‘His shoes sank without trace. I’ll go and fish for them.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘My wife says children’s shoes cost a bomb.’
‘Can I offer you anything? Coffee? Tea?’ Owen shook his head. ‘Whisky?’
‘Too early for me.’
‘Stretch a point.’ She fetched a bottle and glasses, poured a generous finger in each glass and put hers down with a single swallow. There was a hint of showmanship in the way she unwound the towel and shook out her hair. ‘Why did you come here?’
‘I wanted to be sure James hadn’t suffered ill effects from his wetting.’
‘I meant why did you come here to live?’
‘Primarily to get away from London.’
She was turning her head this way and that, causing her hair to stream out like a flag. Unnerved, he took a sip of whisky.
‘The people here are gossips. They spread stories about us which you may choose to believe.’
‘I hope we’ll be good neighbours.’
She wasn’t listening, she was looking through the window. ‘A policeman is coming. Oh God …’ She sounded dismayed.
‘Would you like me to go?’
‘I’d rather you stayed.’
‘He’s probably making some routine check. Or selling tickets for the police ball.’
‘Would you mind seeing what he wants?’ She began vigorously towelling her hair.
Owen opened the door to an archetypal village bobby who pushed his helmet off the bridge of his nose, the better to stare at Owen.
Owen said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Can I speak with Mrs Greville Hartop?’
‘Angela Hartop.’ She had come to Owen’s side. ‘My husband’s name is Greville.’
The policeman had probably never seen hair of such colour and confusion. Tousled from the drubbing she had given it, it stood up in points of fire all over her head. If she wished to discountenance him she had succeeded. Flustered, he said to Owen, ‘And you, sir?’
‘Name of Grierson. I live next door. My wife and I moved in a week ago.’
‘We were aware. Allow me to introduce myself. Police Constable Winslow of the local force. Acting on information received, I have some questions to put to Mrs Hartop.’
She said, ‘What information?’
‘An unconfirmed report of a man seen carrying what appeared to be a dead child,’ He opened his notebook. ‘Can you throw any light on that?’
‘My child is not dead. Why come asking me questions?’
‘The man was seen approaching this house.’ PC Winslow leaned on the words.
‘You see?’ She turned to Owen. ‘You see how the people here have taken against us?’
‘The information came from a lady staying at the Bellechasse Hotel. She describes the man as elderly, tall, thickset, shabbily dressed, with glaring eyes.’ Owen smiled. ‘She was greatly distressed, she said the child looked as if it had been drowned.’
They heard a door-handle rattle violently and a long-drawn wail. The constable said, ‘Somewhere a child is crying.’
‘My son James in his room.’
‘If you have no objection I’d like to see him.’
‘My objection is that he’ll think he can always get his own way if he makes enough fuss.’
She crossed the hall and the wailing ceased at the sound of a key in the lock. Next moment James flung himself at Owen and hugged his knees.
PC Winslow asked, ‘Why was he locked in?’
‘I wished to talk to Mr Grierson.’
Couldn’t she see how that would be represented? thought Owen. The policeman certainly could. He sank to his heels and turned James to face him. ‘Now, young man, what’s up?’
‘Hoo,’ said James.
‘You, I’m talking to you, laddie.’
‘Hoo.’ James made a funnel of his hands and shouted through it. ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’
PC Winslow rose to his full height. ‘Is he mentally retarded?’
‘Look,’ Owen said, ‘we’d had a slight mishap, that’s all. He slipped in the mud and lost his shoes. I was carrying him home.’
James spluttered with laughter. ‘I drowned!’
*
Elissa was disposed to make light of Owen’s apprehension. ‘Darling, you’re old enough to be her father.’
‘That makes it the more titillating,’ Owen said grimly.
He avoided the garden, but was conscious of James’s presence. The boy must have been warned not to intrude: he put his head and shoulders through the gap in the fence and hung there, watching. It put Owen in mind of someone in the stocks.
When James had gone to bed he went out and closed the gap with a plank driven into the ground and lashed to the end posts. He felt mean doing it, and something else – a generalised discontent; throwback, he supposed, to his misgivings about the wisdom of coming here to live.
‘You do realise,’ he said to Elissa, ‘that any malicious tittle-tattle about Mrs Hartop and me would rub off on you?’
‘I’ve never been part of an eternal triangle: it would be quite an achievement at my age. But of course the achievement would be yours, wouldn’t it?’
He left it there. Smarting, drove to a pub called the Dolly Pentreath. A pint of real ale restored him to what Horace would call an equable mind.
People were discussing how and why the pub had got its name. Someone said Dolly Pentreath was the last person to speak the old Cornish, someone else said she had been a wrecker’s moll who helped lure sailors to their death. They rather thought she might have died of gin here in the bar. No one was really bothered.
*
Angela Hartop had just turned into their lane, walking from the bus stop, pulling a loaded shopping trolley and carrying a parcel under the other arm. There was no way he could have driven past and left her.
She was unsurprised when he pulled up beside her and waited while he put her luggage in the boot. She looked hot and tired, the faint down on her upper lip was moist, the tender skin under her eyes looked bruised.
Owen noted the details without any idea what he was going to make of them. ‘I’d have offered you a lift if I’d known you were going into town.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘I was going anyway.’
‘I think James has fallen in love with you.’ Owen laughed. She said, ‘It’s not to be wondered at. He needs a man in his life.’
When he stopped the car at her gate she said, ‘You don’t want him though, do you?’
‘On the contrary, I’ve become quite attached to him.’
‘Is it your wife?’
‘Elissa?’
‘Is she why you closed the gap in the fence?’
‘I did it because my garden’s no place for a child, there are too many thistles and stinging nettles.’
She opened the car door. ‘I’m obliged for the lift.’
*
‘I know you don’t like the smell of beer, it makes you sick and you’re always hoping there’s another reason: I know the reason,’ said Antony Wallington to his wife, Pam. ‘You didn’t have to come on this holiday.’
‘Neither of us has to do anything. It’s our creed.’
‘What will you have to drink?’
‘A very small, very dry sherry.’
‘A very small, very dry sherry,’ he said to the barmaid. ‘And a pint of bitter.’
She looked askance at him as she pulled his beer. ‘We don’t serve very small sherries. And just dry, not very dry.’
‘Just dry will do.’
Where does compulsion start, he was thinking. With Pam it had started as a gut reaction. He would have been happy
if he hadn’t come across some half-finished baby clothes. Too shaken to confront her with the discovery, he had watched like a hawk. But a hawk watches for its dinner; he was watching for his lifestyle.
When she didn’t change shape and didn’t finish the baby clothes, he realised he was in a situation which could persist as long as their generative powers lasted. He had always thought they shared the same fears and expectations. They had muddled along in ignorance and bliss. Now he saw what could be coming to them, and she wanting it to come, knitting for it. The very idea of birth was abhorrent. A clumsy, squalid, risky business. Pollenation had it beat every time. He wanted none of it for Pam – or himself.
As he set the sherry before her, she said, ‘Why is this pub called the “Dolly Pentreath”? Did she die of drink?’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘we’re here on holiday in a lovely place, the Cornish riviera, we’re supposed to enjoy ourselves.’
‘It’s me, isn’t it? It must be me not enjoying this lovely place.’
‘Is it because you’re pregnant?’ She looked up, startled. ‘Because if you are—’
‘I’m not, of course I’m not! It’s nothing to do with that—’
‘It’s got to be doing with something.’
‘I hoped it didn’t show.’
‘By God, Pam, you’d better tell me the truth.’
‘I’ve told you the truth. Why on earth should you think otherwise?’
‘Because you’re making baby clothes.’
She stared, the penny dropped, light dawned and she laughed. ‘Those! They’re dolls’ clothes!’
‘Where’s the doll?’
‘My landlady – she used to be my landlady – her little girl was always dragging her doll around stark naked. I couldn’t bear to see it. I promised to make it an outfit so it would look like a real baby and she’d get the idea and be gentle with it.’
He said, ‘You’re really sticky, you know that?’
She sighed. ‘This lovely place worries me. The loveliness doesn’t go deep.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Don’t be angry, please Nanty. Sometimes I don’t even think about it. Yesterday I was lying on the beach watching the gulls hovering and soaring and I thought this will put me right. It’s what I’ve been waiting for.’
Exasperated, he sank half his pint in one swallow. ‘Gulls are what it takes to put you right?’
