Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  'I learned that for the fucking school play. Come on, then. I can jump over the guns.'

  'Don't swear. And don't let her--' But they were out and into the courtyard beyond. The girl ran ahead of him, scampering up steps to the heights while he followed with greater care, breathing slowly in his relief. The steps were green and moist;

  she was as sure-footed as he was not. 'C'mon,' she shrieked 'Come on!' Then they were out on the apron of the south-east bastion with a view of the sea. The area was encircled by a shoulder-high wall. Henry put his toe in a gap and hauled himself up, leaning over the top to see what he could see.

  The top of the wall was so wide his arm could not extend to the other side across the paving which covered the surface, sloping away from him at a slight downward angle, slippery damp to the touch. The sky and the sea filled his vision, but when he looked down, the bottom of the moat was a very long way down indeed. Henry stepped back, hastily.

  The child, her name already mislaid, even though he was fascinated by her face, was clearly not going to act as a guide and seemed to have forgotten his existence except as a spectator and that suited him, too.

  There was a cannon, mounted high on a block, standing in the next bastion. She ran towards it scrambled up and crawled over the mechanism to the neck. She slithered round until her arms and her legs clutched the barrel, and moved, hand over hand, towards the muzzle. She dropped her legs and hung by her arms, the slender body stretched and her toes a couple of feet from the ground.

  Then she dropped, ran back round the cannon and began again. It was like watching an agile monkey on a horizontal climb, but this time, when she reached the muzzle she kept her legs locked round it, let go with her arms and swung head down, with her hair streaming and her hands stretched towards the floor.

  She looked deceptively helpless until she curled her torso upwards, re-embraced the metal, released her legs and dropped, elegantly, as before. Henry was moving towards her, a shade anxious, but clapping his applause. 'That's great, young lady, but that's enough, OK?'

  He was about to touch her shoulder, maybe calm her down a little, but she sprang away and ran.

  He watched as she climbed the wall. She stood on the sloping surface, held out both hands for balance and then began to skip along. Christ. Henry wanted to run towards her, grab her ankles and hold on tight, but he could only watch. She skipped daintily, oblivious to height and danger, the movements growing faster.

  He thought of the small, lithe body crashing to earth on the other side, remembered the obscenities he had just heard about the boy called Harry, imagined her scream on the way down, closed his eyes for a whole second. When he opened them, she had disappeared.

  He staggered forward blindly, the bile back at the root of his throat, hand over his lips to stop himself gagging. Felt himself shouting. Where are you? With no idea of whether the words were coming out. He wanted to shout. Daddy, help me!, in some half remembered scream of his own boyhood. He broke into a run, past the two other black cannons which stood like silent sentinels, pointed towards nothing.

  His shoe scrabbled for purchase on the wall as he tried to heave himself up to look; the surface of the slabs grazed his fingers and he fell back, twice. He could feel the beginning of sobbing, thought he could hear a whimpering, but knew it was his own, turned back from the wall, despairing. What use was this? Help. HELP. The cannon caught the corner of his eye, a flash of movement behind it.

  He turned back to the wall. Then there was a flurry of soft footsteps from behind him and the child was clutching at his waist, laughing. 'Fooled you!' she cried. 'I fucking did, didn't I?'

  Henry detached her hands, twisted towards her and hugged her tight. She struggled for a few seconds, resisting the closeness, unaware that he held her thus out of a mixture of relief and fear that if his hands were free, he might slap her out of sheer fury, so he hung on while she twisted like an eel. Until she stopped. Her arms crept round his neck; her clean smelling hair tickled his face and she sighed softly into his shoulder. Half kneeling to accommodate her height, Henry locked his arms behind her back.

  He was not going to let go of her jacket either until he got her back to her mother and as the thudding of his heart lessened, he loved the hug and the fact that this little imp pressed her cold cheek against his own and crooned into his ear as if he was everything that ever mattered. As if he could render her world safe while she did everything to make it perilous. They stayed like that for a little while. She hummed a tuneless song he could not recognize.

  'We'll get cold up here,' he murmured, finally. 'And you know, baby, you shouldn't get up on that wall. Long way down.'

  She pushed him back, her hands on his shoulders, the better to see him. Her smile was outrageous. He felt it like a blessing; it made him want to cry.

  'Why not? Neil lets me do it.'

  'Who's Neil?' Ah. that Neil.

  'He's my sort of daddy. He lets me play.'

  He must want you dead, Henry thought. They were walking hand in hand by now, nice and quiet.

  He felt absurdly protective and in an odd kind of way, privileged.

  '... And Francesca used to let me, when I was much smaller, you know' - a wise tone had crept into her voice, like that of an old woman talking about another age entirely - 'but only if I had a piece of rope round my middle and she held the other end and watched all the time. 'Cesca was my sort of mummy, but she's gone away for a long time. Neil says she'll leave me all her money, one day. I couldn't give a shit, could you?'

  He could feel the blood pressure begin to rise again. He squeezed her hand, stopped the perambulation and looked at her seriously. She began to dust down her clothes with exaggerated care, checking for marks, wiping them away with her sleeve. 'So why did she bother with the rope round the middle?' he enquired, nonchalantly. 'Way you are with that cannon, sweetie, you could run round these walls without falling off. Couldn't you?'

  Tanya wrinkled her nose and shrugged without letting go of his hand. Her own felt small, trusting and cool. He was trying to think when it was that youngsters started to sweat. Not yet. He was listening.

  'She said that only an idiot would fall off a wall and into a moat. She said I could break my arms and legs any way I liked, 'cept through stupidity. Being brave is fine, she said, but being stupid isn't.'

  He could hear the phrases and that authoritative voice. Tanya's vowel sounds lengthened to copy the intonation. The battlements were colder; they were walking slower. He tucked her hand into his pocket.

  'So why do you skip round the walls?' She was ferreting in his pocket, striking gold. Chocolate. He had no idea how it got there, could not remember the existence of it at all. She held it up, assumed it hers, transferred it to her own pocket and then, to his relief, put her hand back against his.

  'So pleased you found that,' he said, conversationally. 'Clearly yours, because you're so clever, aren't you? But I was asking you why you like to run around these walls, scaring me like that. I mean, why?'

  'Because I can. That's why. She could, too, when she was little.'

  ' Cesca said "OK" was a lazy way with words,' she added. 'I don't say it any more.'

  'OK,' he repeated. 'That's her opinion. You don't have to follow it. OK with me.'

  'You're OK,' she said and Henry felt nicely flattered.

  They had walked the full circle of the battlements and he had not really noticed a thing, except that after passing a few more of the cannons on the seaward side, there was not a lot going on by way of different furniture or scenery, and they were almost back to where they started, only higher. His companion had had enough of this and that, chatted beyond her normal length, led him back towards the glazed door marked shop/exit.

  From beyond it, he could hear the intense sound of voices, talking fast and furious without shouting. It was a sound which could penetrate walls. With extreme reluctance, he let go of Tanya's hand, forgave her the fright. She was a beautiful child. He would have jumped in the moat and l
et her land on him if that would have helped.

  They entered the shop area with the sudden change of temperature to which he was beginning to become accustomed. By some odd, common accord, they had both begun coughing as they descended the steps. Silence had fallen. Maggie and Angela were smiling at them both, solicitously. Henry was reminded of the people he had seen on the beach, awaiting the return of their animals so they could put them back on a leash.

  'Hallo,' Maggie said. 'Had fun? We had tea.

  Finished now. Sadly.'

  Angela bent under the counter, looking for something.

  Tanya, who had relinquished her hold on Henry's hand, seemed confused. Henry turned towards Maggie.

  'Guess I just got a taste of parenthood,' he said. 'Not sure I like it. Must be like one long heart attack.'

  Maggie smiled, weakly. His eyes turned to the shelves of the shop, pretending interest. Spotted bars of chocolate, cylindrically shaped and wrapped in white, like a tube of coins. He remembered the feel of it in his pocket, transferred into that of the child, but he could not remember buying it.

  Poor kid; she pinched it and he felt huge admiration for her sleight of hand.

  He felt in his pocket for change. 'Guess I owe you ..'

  'Mummy!' Tanya shrilled. 'Mummy! He hugged me and called me baby, an' called me sweetie an'

  gave me chocolate, an' he's coming back soon, isn't he,

  Mummy?'

  There was complete silence.

  Angela emerged from behind the counter. Her face was white. 'He did what?'

  Maggie tugged at Henry's sleeve. Her other hand plucked at the batch of tourist leaflets for other attractions which she was stuffing inside her top pocket even as she spoke.

  'Think we'll go now. Henry, don't you?'

  'Mr Evans can come back another time,' Angela said tightly. 'There's lots of other things for him to see. Like the old town jail. Maybe he'll go and live in it.'

  The sun had won over the haze. The traffic had increased. Henry could hear the sound of church bells. He and Maggie walked back to the beach in silence. He wanted to feel the shingle beneath his feet.

  They sat on a bench and looked at it.

  'You have any children. Henry?'

  'Nope. Never quite got round to staying long enough with the right woman. Or asking the right questions. You?'

  'No. And I'm never quite sure what to do with them. Especially that one.'

  'She's quite a kid. I can see why her mom's protective.'

  Maggie unfurled the shawl from round her neck and folded it neatly. The morning was warmer, the hint of spring less deceptive. She pointed towards the horizon. 'Look,' she said, 'you can see France. That means it's going to rain.' Her voice was sad, with a touch of resignation.

  He waited. Henry was good at waiting for information.

  He had waited in lecture halls, waited on academics, businessmen and confused pupils; he was a patient disseminator of information and a listener.

  'Tanya was Francesca's protégé,' Maggie was explaining, smoothing the shawl between her hands. 'She was adopted by Neil and Angela.

  Francesca knew them, encouraged them, and finally they got the child that no one else would take. Not a baby, a five-year-old with freakish colouring and a history of terrible abuse. Very vulnerable. Angela and Neil parted soon after.

  Francesca took a lot of responsibility, even though Harry was just a baby when Tanya arrived. I suppose she and Angela bonded even more after Francesca's husband buggered off.'

  'Why did he go?'

  'Who knows? It was a tricky pregnancy and there was no time for him, I suppose. Francesca always had all the time in the world for everyone. He wasn't the only one to resent the intrusion.'

  'Bastard,' Henry said feelingly.

  'Aren't they all?'

  Maggie found a packet of cigarettes, proffered them: Henry took one absentmindedly and accepted a light. Another bit of poison, taken to ease conversation, did not seem to matter. He had forgotten his vitamins this morning; the nicotine made him dizzy, but even with his social skills muddled by this new environment, he knew that the accepting of the cigarette was important.

  'So. Francesca's in her late thirties. She's got a job and a sickly child and she shares a vulnerable one like Tanya, too? She must have been a sucker for punishment.'

  'Francesca had great energy and greater spirit. Her father had been warden of the keep. She did once live in a castle; she was designed to take charge and hide feelings. She seemed amazingly competent, tough. But she wasn't, you see. She simply wasn't. She was coming apart at the seams.'

  'Then she should have come clean and admitted she couldn't hack it,' Henry stated angrily, stamping the cigarette with the heel of his shoe, grinding it to shreds. Thinking of something else.

  She should have ASKED me to stay with her and not to leave. Relied on the fact I was older. She should have said she was afraid. She should not have said, you must do what you need to do. Henry. She should have said, I need you.

  'Yes, she should,' Maggie said.

  A dog paused to sniff at the bench; The owner stopped, too. The chain of command was obvious; one led, one followed.

  'I could ask Francesca if she'd like to see you.'

  'No.'

  She rose and hoisted her bag, fished out tourist information leaflets from the inside of her jacket and thrust them at him. 'Then you'd better go on with the sightseeing, hadn't you? Try the jail, like Angela said. Then you'll know what barbarous people we are.

  Harry's hemiplegia was severe. In another age, he might have been thrown off the walls. Maybe she had some excuses.'

  Henry walked. He walked first on the shingle, away from the town, until, assisted by the returning haze, the outline of the castle was faded when he turned to look. He walked and watched his feet slurring through the pebbles with a satisfying sound, until his thighs felt as if they were on fire and his shoes no longer insulated his feet. The pebbles became larger, the beach steeper, so that at times he was hidden in a stone valley, with no view either of the sea or the land.

  It suited his mood. He had passed an untidy collection of fishing boats which looked unfit to sail with their heavy hulls and ungainly lines; he had paused to watch a team of men winch one out of the water and heard it groan like a half-dead whale. Then he passed a children's playground, listened from the beach to the sound of high shrieking on the swings and hurried on.

  He supposed a mother could tell the difference between a howl of excitement and one of pain.

  And then he was beyond the reach of the road on beach so steep that the prospect of clambering back was awesome and he could imagine he was finally, completely alone.

  The coastal path above the shore took him through flat scrubland, littered with small shrubs, flattened by the wind. Outside of the conurbation it was a bleak enough place; mere was nothing verdant or comforting about it. A mile further on, the flat land rose into a cliff, skirting a cove, looming above it. The path ran out.

  The bay reverberated with the ghostly sound of a hovercraft crossing from England to France, a strange, diffused, booming sound he had heard in the distance the morning before. The sound filled the sky. He wished he were on the damn boat, hovering or not. He wished he had never seen this stretch of coast or invested it with the romance she had conjured in her descriptions.

  You can see for miles and miles; you can see another country. Yeah. Only if you live in a castle designed to kill any poor bastard who tries to get in.

  Henry turned for home. That damn black mongrel had been following him again. He shouted at it and when it went, he was sorry.

  Home. Had to stop saying that. He rang the bell, grunted a greeting and went up to the room in search of privacy. Flung the suitcase on the bed and did an inventory: passport, travel cheques, tickets, the name of the Fergusons contact, diary. Don't any of these people know how important I am?

  The light began to leak out of his room; all the documents strewn on the gorgeous silk coverl
et looked like an unconvincing statement of identity and purpose. They were so small. He was drawn to look at the sea, so hazy, so absolutely endless, it repelled him. Besides, the sun had moved round, away from it. It shone through the window on the other side of his open door. The sash window opened easily. He put his elbows on the sill and looked down.

  There were twisted red roofs of a dozen different contours, chimneypots, large and small trailed with smoke; nothing he could see contained any uniformity.

  He could see the worn red tiles, warped with age, glinting windows, a medley of warm colours and a thousand entry points for Mary Poppins. He could see the white painted walls, the rounded gable of the opposite house and the little alley in between.

  Then he looked down into the garden of the House of Enchantment, drawn by the sound of tinkling water. Tropical down there. A mass of foliage in green, some damn thing with flowers, a great bursting bush with tiny white blooms. A small pond against the side, catching the sun, water gushing out of a terracotta mouth into a clear pool. A floor of old brick curving away in a circular design, greenery between the stones, mature, evergreen shrubs hiding the beds from which they sprung, brilliant gentian blue in a rockery of alpine plants in the corner away from the pool.

  A curving path, leading to a pergola covered with greenery, sheltering a small, wooden love seat which looked as if it, too, had grown where it stood. From this height, it was a piece of perfection with a single flaw.

  Tim in a boiler suit, bent double with his bottom sticking out of a Wendy house settled square in the middle of it all. The house was plastic, built in lemon yellow with pink shutters, lime roof and royal blue door. It sat, as offensive and disparate as a wart on a beautifully manicured finger, defying all standards of taste. Tim was on hands and knees, dusting it.

  Henry forgot everything else, ran down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. He passed Peter, marshalling coal into buckets for the fires.

  From below, the garden was even more impressive. The comparative ugliness of a large utilitarian shed and a compost container were hidden beyond the pergola. The place was larger than it had seemed from on high, extending further than he could see, and even in the doldrums of winter there was colour.