Some Kind of Fairy Tale

by Graham Joyce

  “I do. I’m shoeing his daughter’s pony on Friday.”

  “Are you a blacksmith?”

  “Farrier.”

  “Of course. The other thing about a dental check is that it would prove conclusively that she is who she says she is.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt of that.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “I’m almost one hundred percent certain.”

  “Almost. So there is a tiny margin of doubt?”

  “Well.”

  “Okay. Thank you for coming in.” Underwood got to his feet and Peter did, too. The psychiatrist escorted him to the door. “Mrs. Hargreaves will see you out. By the way. Who was that laughing lunatic with the bandaged head?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

  CHARLES LAMB TO SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

  Jack thought maybe he would just deposit the pile of freshly printed leaflets on the old lady’s step and make a quick getaway. A breeze chased dead leaves across the yard as he approached her door, and he realized that the leaflets would just get blown off the step. He looked around for a stone or a brick with which to weight the leaflets but he couldn’t see anything at hand. Instead he rang the bell.

  Mrs. Larwood came to the door and after the usual and interminable drawing of bolts and chains, there she was. Jack offered her the leaflets without a word. She looked at them with her cataracted eyes. She didn’t seem to want to take them from him.

  “You’re so kind it makes me want to cry,” she said.

  “They came out well,” Jack said. “I mean, it’s a clear picture. I mean, you can see the … you can see it’s your cat.”

  “I’m losing hope for him, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t give up. You should never give up. Someone might … look, these need to be put on lampposts. I asked people to check their sheds and outhouses. I didn’t know your telephone number so I put your address. Here it is. They need attaching to lampposts. All of these.”

  “How will we do that?”

  “Just some tape. Tape them on.”

  “I’m not sure I have any tape.”

  “I have some at the house. Some tape. Okay, I’ll do them. I’ll tape them on.”

  “Come in and have some lemon soda.”

  Jack took a deep breath. “No, I’ll go and do these. They need doing. The quicker I put these up, the more chance there is. Of someone finding the cat. In a shed. Maybe.”

  She wagged a finger at him. “All right. But after you’ve done it come straight back here. I insist. I’ll have some cake and some lemon soda for you.”

  I’m thirteen, Jack thought. I don’t fucking well want cake and lemon soda. “Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”

  Jack hurried away, clutching his sheaf of printed leaflets, feeling the clouded gaze of the old lady’s eyes watching him go. This was going to screw up his whole day. His dad had told him it was just this one job, but one job leads to another. Now he was going to have to tape up the leaflets, all of them, all round the neighborhood, and then after that go back over there and drink flat lemon soda and eat shit cake. When there were a thousand things he’d rather do. These were the last days of the school holiday, and this was how he was spending them.

  He crossed the road and returned to his own house, where his mother asked how it had gone taking the leaflets to Mrs. Larwood. He ignored her and stomped rapidly upstairs. In his bedroom he found some electrician’s tape and then he stomped downstairs again. He marched past his mother without a wave and went outside again.

  He stopped at the lamppost directly outside Mrs. Larwood’s house. She was watching him from the window. He avoided eye contact with her as he taped up the first of the leaflets. The electrician’s tape didn’t stick too well to the concrete post and he made a pig’s ear of the first leaflet. But he found it would work well enough if he bound it tight, top and bottom, and overlapped the tape.

  Jack had printed fifteen leaflets. At first he’d knocked out just half a dozen. Then he’d thought that if he was doing the job, it ought to be done properly, so he’d printed another six. What with his preview copy, that made thirteen, which he thought was an unlucky number, so he’d rolled off an extra couple more. After that it occurred to him that it was senseless putting up a leaflet on every single lamppost in the neighborhood. They should be displayed only at serious intervals. With fifteen leaflets to hang, that would take him well outside of the immediate neighborhood.

  He didn’t know exactly how far a cat might stray in ordinary circumstances. He tried to be scientific about it. He calculated that a cat might easily stray up to a mile away but that the chances of it wandering that far would diminish proportionately the farther you got away from Mrs. Larwood’s house. For the leaflets to be effective (or at least for the campaign to look effective), he thought that maybe they should be concentrated in the streets within a quarter-mile radius, with one or two extra leaflets at a greater distance.

  He went back to get his bike. The idea that this was going to take him all morning enraged him. It was when he was taping a poster to his seventh lamppost that he was struck by an idea. He looked hard at the picture of the ginger cat that he’d killed and buried. The only thing to truly distinguish it from other ginger cats, he thought, was its bright red collar.

  He didn’t know too much about cats. He was more tuned in to dogs. If anyone tried to substitute a dog it was unlikely you could get away with it. Unless, that is, it was a very close match indeed, and it had an identifiable collar, with a familiar tag clearly stating its name and revealing the address of its owner. Of course, it would have to be a really good match.

  And cats were even less distinctive than dogs. Heck, if someone put seven ginger cats in a room and asked you to pick out yours, you’d be hard pressed. Especially if you were very shortsighted, as Mrs. Larwood was. It was wild but it might work. Dig up the dead cat. Get the collar off it. Go to the Ginger Cat Rescue Center or whatever it was they had. Put the old collar on the new cat.

  One happy old lady.

  Jack knew it was a long shot; but then, heck, a cat is just a cat.

  He spent the rest of the morning posting the leaflets, mulling the idea.

  “DO YOU KNOW WHAT?” Peter said to Richie after they drove away from Vivian Underwood’s consulting rooms. “That’s the first time in twenty years that I’ve laughed so hard that the snot shot down my nose.”

  “Me, too, Pete. Me, too.”

  “We used to laugh like that all the time.”

  “All the time,” Richie said.

  “I’ve missed you, mate. I have.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Tell you what. I’ve got no more appointments for the rest of the day. You remember this one?”

  Peter indicated to pull off into a roadside alehouse called The Three Horseshoes.

  “Oh, Christ!” said Richie. “Didn’t we get banned from here?”

  “That was twenty years ago, mate. But they can’t turn me away. Three horseshoes is the sign of the Worshipful Company of Farriers.”

  “Is it, now?” said Richie.

  They were indeed banned from The Three Horseshoes twenty years ago. Back then it was a rough-house watering hole oozing nicotine and run by a bald-headed bruiser called Amos McNamara, who kept a cricket bat signed by the England team behind the bar, and it was for breaking heads rather than for admiring. The place had had more than a lick of paint since then. Now it was a gastro-pub, welcoming families and bus parties.

  They sauntered into the bar and inquired about the health of Mr. McNamara and the resting place of his cricket bat, but the new owner, though interested, couldn’t help with any information about either. He thought the old boy was dead but couldn’t say for sure. They found a corner and touched glasses of foaming ale. There was a good-nature
d dispute about why they’d been banned. Richie said it was because Peter had ended up on all fours one evening with Richie riding him round the bar, like a farmer riding a pig to market, slopping ale everywhere. Peter said he was getting that confused with the time they were banned from The Gate Hangs Well. Richie bought another round of drinks, with chasers, and said no, they were banned from The Gate Hangs Well for complaining about the quality of the beer after they’d spent four hours drinking it.

  Richie asked about the life of a farrier, and Peter said it was a living, and he in turn asked about the life of a musician, and Richie said it wasn’t a living; and Peter bought another round, with chasers. The drink was going down well so he said he’d leave the truck where it was and they could get a taxi. Richie pointed out that it was only a couple of miles driving distance.

  “I don’t care if it’s a couple of yards. I don’t agree with drunk driving.”

  “You wouldn’t have said that twenty years ago,” Richie said.

  “No, and maybe that’s the good thing about growing up,” Peter said, a little sharply.

  “All right. I was only saying.”

  “Only saying? Maybe if you had small kids you’d have a different attitude. The way people drive around here. Fuck.”

  “All right! Don’t get bent out of shape!”

  “If I had my way I’d lock up anyone who got behind a wheel after drinking.”

  For a moment it could have gone wrong right there. Their diverging attitudes on a point of law might have represented a huge gulf between them. But after the third pint they relaxed again and got on to the subject of Tara. Richie asked Peter what he made of it all.

  “Well, the shrink says—”

  “Vivian,” said Richie.

  “Yes, Vivian. Vivian says—”

  And they started laughing again, for no reason that they could think of.

  When this unreasonable laughter subsided, Peter tried again. “Vivian says that she’s probably had a knock on the head and that it’s made her on the one hand forget everything that’s happened in the last twenty years, and on the other hand made her go back to her teens, which is why she’s come home.”

  “So you don’t think she’s … making it all up?”

  “No, Richie. I did at first. But no. What about you?”

  “No, she ain’t making it up. She really believes it. I can tell.”

  The two men supped from their glasses in silence.

  At last Richie said, “You don’t suppose—”

  “Don’t even go there,” Peter growled.

  “You don’t know what I was going to say!”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Oh, you fucking do? You’ve got no idea what I was going to say!”

  “You were going to say: do I suppose that at some weird level there might be some truth in it?”

  “Like hell I was.”

  “No? You’ve spent one evening with her, walking her home, and she’s already started to pull you into it. One evening. That’s what she’s like. Always was. She’d have you believing anything.”

  “Give it up! What do you think I am?”

  “You know what she’s like. Better than I do. She could always do that.”

  “Pfff!” Richie waved his hand dismissively.

  “All right. Be honest. Go on, now: tell me exactly what you were going to say. Be honest for once in your big, hairy life.”

  Richie looked him in the eye. “I was going to say: do you suppose that at some weird level there might be something in it? I’ll get another round of drinks.”

  And to make it square Peter got another round. Then Richie said that since they were going to the trouble of calling a taxi after drinking so much, they might as well have another chaser; and in that case, Peter said they might as well chase the chaser. Pretty soon they were shouting and laughing and banging the table, and the new landlord, just like the old landlord, said they were upsetting other customers and if they didn’t keep it down then he would ask them to leave.

  “You can’t ban us,” Richie said. “We’re already banned. It’s a contradiction in terms.”

  “In fact, we’ve got a life-membership ban from this place. Oi, Richie, I’ve just remembered why we were banned! You were showing everyone your ass.”

  “You were, you mean. Your ass, you mean.”

  “That’s enough,” said the landlord.

  “You can’t throw him out!” Richie protested genially. “He’s a worshipful shipmaster of the high-farrier order. What is it? High company. What is it?”

  “Right, let’s have you out,” said the landlord. He put his hand on the back of Peter’s chair.

  “We’re going, we’re gone,” Peter said, standing up, eyeing the landlord beadily, offering a handshake that the landlord pretended not to notice. “No shakey? No shakester? That’s one thing about Amos McNamara, he would always shake your hand. This place has gone badly uphill, my friend. Badly uphill.”

  Then they were outside in the car park, feeling the cold.

  “Gimme a cig,” Peter said.

  They stood in the car park, smoking exuberantly. After a histrionic performance of stamping on the stub of his cigarette, Richie took out his phone and called a cab company. The first was busy so he called another. A cab was available but it would be twenty minutes. They looked back at the pub and thought about going back inside to wait, but then remembered they’d just been barred from the premises. Then Peter said fuck it, he wasn’t going to spend half an hour freezing his nuts off waiting for a cab and that they should get in the truck. Richie protested but feebly. Peter pointed out that it was only a few miles away.

  Ten minutes later Peter looked in his rearview mirror and saw a police car. “Oh.”

  “Drive steady,” said Richie.

  “If he gives me a breath test I’m fucked.”

  “Don’t panic. Drive steady.”

  The police car tailed them, but after another mile the blue lights flashed on. “That’s it. I’m going to have to pull over.”

  Richie was already unwinding the bandage from his head.

  “What you doing?” Peter asked.

  “Shut up. Pull over. Then tie this round your head. We’ll switch seats and I’ll say I was driving.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “You’ve got mouths to feed. I don’t need my license.”

  “No, Richie.”

  “Just do what I say, right? It’ll be fine.”

  Peter carefully pulled over and switched off the ignition. The patrol car also pulled in, at a short distance. Richie was already ducking low and scrambling across into the driver’s seat. Peter tried to squirm from under Richie but got the gear stick up his ass and he trapped his foot around the handbrake. There were a few seconds of unpleasant closeness and porcine grunting before they managed to extricate themselves from each other. Peter looked in the wing mirror. The police officer was just getting out of his car. Peter grabbed the bandage and swathed it round his head, though he didn’t manage to tie it. It hung rather loose.

  Richie composed himself in the driver’s seat. He wound down the window.

  “I admit it, Officer,” Richie said. “I’ve had a cigarette in a public place. Line up the firing squad.”

  “Don’t I know you?” said the officer.

  It was the same officer who had both detained him after Tara had disappeared and who had interviewed him at the hospital that very morning. “Oh, Christ, yes,” Richie said. “We’re dear old pals.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “O see ye not yon narrow road,

  So thick beset with thorns and briers?

  That is the path of righteousness,

  Tho after it but few enquires.

  ‘And see not ye that braid braid road,

  That lies across that lily leven?

  That is the path of wickedness,

  Tho some call it the road to heaven.

  ‘And see not ye that bonny road,

  That winds
about the fernie brae?

  That is the road to fair Elfland,

  Where thou and I this night maun gae.”

  THOMAS RHYMER, TRAD.

  Hiero put me on the horse and fetched me back to the house all over again. This time he led me most of the way, and we went in silence. He walked in front of the mare, and I could see the vicious weal I had laid on him with the riding crop.

  It wasn’t the last time I tried to ride out of there. Over the next few weeks I tried to find my way out many times, either on the back of that white mare or just by walking away. In the early days Hiero would simply follow me. Or he would catch up with me and let me know he was following me, and he would tell me to let him know when I was tired so that he could lead me back. Then he wearied of the game and he stopped following me, and off I would go, sometimes sleeping out in the fields and waking with the cold dew on my face. Then if I got tired I would mount the mare and because she knew the way I would just let her take me back.

  Hiero promised me he wasn’t lying. I would find my way back after six months, he said, but not before. He told me that these things had to be done according to strict rules of physics, rules I didn’t understand, rules pertaining to the time of the year and the time of the day and the position of what he called the celestial machinery, which I took to mean the moon and the stars, but which he said was something else altogether.

  After that first time I tried to leave he took me back to the lake and to his house. The sex-crazed woman and her lover were eating at the table when we returned. She got up from the table and, seeing his wound, went straight to him.

  “She did this to you?” When Hiero didn’t reply she said, “I can’t believe you allowed her to do this. It shouldn’t go unpunished.”

  “My business,” was all Hiero said. “My business, my portion.”

  I said I wanted to go out, that I wanted to talk, so we left the woman and her lover and we went to the edge of the lake, where we sat down on the glittering, quartz-rich gray sand.

  “I don’t like that woman. Can’t you get rid of her?”

  “Look, I told you, it’s not my house.”