She give a start.
‘Yair, I been to see her in her French convent.’
Her face take on a eager look. ‘How were my darling? Were she well? Do God forgive her?’
This disconcert me. How do anyone know if God forgive them, unless God do what He orta and forgive everyone?
‘She have enough food in her stomick,’ say I. ‘What were in her soul it aint for me to say.’
‘I think if she spend enough time there she surely change.’
‘Yer can be certain of that.’
Silence fall.
‘So, what do she hide from me?’ I ask again. ‘She keeped on asking what yer showed to me.’
The old woman sigh heavy. She clutch her fat thighs with her knobbly hands. She rock and babble.
‘Wud yer like me to fetch some water for yer?’ ask I in alarm.
She shake her head wild. Then with a harsh little cry, like a bird that get et alive by a cat, she get to her feet. She light a candlestick and labour over to a door that go off the main room. She open it and beckon me over.
I look in but can’t see nothing much. It’s windowless and dark and small, it look like a storeroom, or a room for the coals and firewood. The old woman hold her candlestick up high and cast in a eerie light. I see a small lump in a huddle of blankets.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘The cambion.’
‘The what?’
‘Don’t yer ever hear of such a curse?’
The old woman slam the door shut, and a thin wailing arise within. She lead me back to the fireplace and we both sit down. She take up a handcraft as if everything’s been confessed and it relieve her.
‘But where do it come from?’ I ask uncertain.
‘From the devil of course. Where else do a cambion come from?’
‘But how do it get here?’ I persist.
‘How do it get here? How do it get here?’ she mimic with scorn. ‘It come out of her. What do yer think? A incubus come and visit her in her virgin sleep.’
My head spin wild.
The old woman lean in and hiss, ‘It mated with her while she sleep and leave behind the cambion seed.’
‘Yer sure it weren’t a man?’
‘Fie! When do my virgin angel sleep with a man?’
Now the only sound were the crackling fire. I have heared talk of a incubus and laughed. Now a old witch sit convinced she have a spawn of it in her coal store. Before my very eyes she grow a beaked nose and hooded lids and hairy warts all over her skin.
‘Is it a girl or a boy?’
‘A girl.’
‘Do yer give it a name?’
She shudder and shake her head.
‘But what yer call it when it grow?’
‘I hope it don’t grow. It were a still birth that have no pulse or breath when it were born, but still it don’t die. I hope for it to die before it turn seven. Seven is when yer can no more tell the difference between a cambion and a human child.’
‘Well, can I see her in the firelight?’
‘No! She aint like a normal child, she’s heavy as black plumbum and I can’t bring her out. Besides, she don’t like to be touched, she scream if I touch her.’
‘What, yer leave her in there all day?’
‘She come out on her own. On her little pink legs. She’s beautiful as a angel like all evil cambions and she come out to charm and enchant me to do her bidding. All day long I cook fancy delicacies and sew up floaty clothings while she play her fairy games in the yard.’
Then and there I promise to see this creature for myself. I stay many more days than I first intend and walk many times past the crone’s cottage. From the first time I see her, the fairy child delight me. She come out of the door and play in the garden, if yer cud call it a garden that blasted square of mud and brown herb. The mud don’t touch her. She’s so light on her feet it don’t even stain her little slippers. But soon I come to doubt the truth of delicacies and elaborate stitchings, indeed the dress she wear look like a frayed sack and her little body is very thin.
Now a fat head poke down the hole. ‘Hey, Worthless, do yer want a piss before turning in?’
‘There aint no turning space here.’
‘Well, do yer or don’t yer? I aint got no interest in discussing the size of a hole.’
I do, and he help me out. I do a piss in the bushes and sit down in the dark beside him.
‘I try effacing myself,’ I say.
‘Good.’
‘It dint work very well. I start remembering instead.’
‘Bad.’
‘I start remembering a cambion I once know.’
Now Flonker start to huff and puff and finally pronounce there aint no such thing as a cambion, it’s a tale of them old wives that don’t know nothing about the world, that can’t read proper, can only run their long bony finger under the lines of a recipe and jes make out the ingredients for a cake or a potion, potions is what they’re better at, potions and cackling and growing warty noses and …
Back down the hole I reflect that this is another one of them Royal Society problems. Are the men in their frockcoats and monocles and top hats and waistcoats gonna visit a remote village to stand about in the cottage of a poor widow and pronounce the spawn in her coal shed a cambion? No, they are not. So when I snatch the child out of the front yard and then out of the village, it’s only a alleged cambion I take, nothing more, nothing less. Probably the widow think Satan’s come and took back his own, for when I turn my head the Law aint running behind me, but neither is he of the horns and clubbed hoof, no one at all gallop behind us, and when we rest in the forest the little fairy child with the wild straw hair grasp my hand with trustingness.
The truth is I weren’t expecting to come away with a child that I have to provide with life’s necessaries. At the time it were a problem to provide for myself. Not that a wisp like her et very much, but she have to eat more frequent than a growed man that can hold half a beef in his stomick like a camel hold water and plough on for days through wood and waste. No, that little wishbone need a egg or a lump of bread jes to walk quarter of a mile, even then she need to be carried. She stop and cry out and raise her arms at me, and only when she sit snug inside my travel coat do she show again her little smile.
I run across the winter freezed clod, going faster and faster to shorten the time between her fairy meals, but her little stomick work more faster than my hairy legs. Soon as I put a stole egg inside her, she want a yeast bun. Seem like only minutes after I swipe a bun from a tray cooling in a open cottage window she want a chicken wing or a fry fish or a oyster. Seem like the only way to keep that little mouth happy is to steal a coin purse.
In a small village I set her down by the well. She sit there alone and trusting on the stone seat that old women rest upon when they done their filling. I look back and see the wild straw hair ablaze in the winter sunlight, then I run on to the market where I plan to pick the pocket of a gentleman distracted by wriggling quinny. Woe is me! Were I to stick with my plan of stealing a coin purse, I wud not feel the long arm of the law upon my shoulder, I wud not leave the fairy child ablaze by the well, I wud not go unwilling upon the green ocean and into the unloving care of Fovo and Mincemeat.
I dint stick to my plan. It come to me in a flash to jes snatch a piece of fancy lace and sell it at the next village. Do I need to tell the rest? Don’t it tell itself? The lace I swipe were guarded by a shrew eye and shrill scream, by the strong and fast hands of a husband, by the wonderful lenience of English Law – it transport a lace thief rather than hang him. I dint protest my innocence as they drag me away, but I did shout out that my infant wait for me by the village well, be sure she go back to her Grandmama.
Do the fairy child still sit by the well? Do she grow up a well sprite fed by sunlight and tended by wood elfs? Or do such magick and magickal creatures only get borned from our guilt, our guilt at how we fail and fail and fail and fail and fail?
I wait for the three crooks to go
to sleep. They don’t sit outside around the fire because a lightning storm spring up. They scuttle in the hut, and I don’t wait long to climb out, I don’t wanna get soaked to the skin or have my sack dripping. Jes the memory of one safe night in the wood embolden me some. The trees grasp at me but I push on in. Actually, now I’m more afraid Toper wake up with a stricken conscience and say to the others we can’t let a man stay down a hole in a lightning storm, we have to fetch him in. Then they go into frothing outrage when they find I’m gone.
So I push on, more far than necessary, jes the stupid outrage of their stupid faces push me. Jes the stupid outrage of them that can’t think, can only copy and call it free. The wood might harbour death but it’s more of a comfort than stupidness is. Then, under my sack on my mound of moss, I stare down the shiny eyeballs of Asmodeus and Titanoboa. I stare them down and they turn away, vanish back to their lairs to feed their childs the death milk. The crashing and slithering of their departing is a night music that send me into a calm dream of penguins.
I wake up and a strong cold sunlight come slashing through the trees. I take my sack and walk out of the wood. Soon as I come out, I find them three crooks standing around looking like they been robbed in the night. All their mouths drop open when I stand forth. Not a one can find his tongue. I walk past them and go over to squat by the fire to warm my cold parts. My three thwarted jailers come to stand about the fire. They shuffle their feet and clear their throats.
‘So, do yer want me to jump back in the hole?’ I ask.
This send them into a confusion.
‘What’s the point?’ Slangam ask angry. ‘Yer jes climb out again.’
‘Not if one of yer is there to push me back in.’
‘I aint standing round a fucken hole playing jack-in-a-box all day.’
‘I don’t mind it,’ Gargantua say.
‘Go and get some firewood,’ Slangam order.
I go off quick before Fatty find some way to work on Slangam and change his mind.
So that were the end of my hole. Slangam fill it in after we et. Even Fatty don’t say, what if we need it again? The way Slangam shovel in the dirt, it seem a hole aint gonna be the punishment for anything no more. But I aint gonna let it go easy as that.
‘We gotta talk about what the punishments is going to be,’ say I when Slangam’s done the job.
‘And what the crimes is,’ Toper add.
‘Yair.’
Slangam rub his head. His oily hair stick up all over his head. His face tell me he don’t have no idea.
‘Stealing food,’ Gargantua say. ‘That’s gotta be a crime.’
‘What if yer jes take some leftovers?’ Toper ask. ‘Is that stealing?’
‘That’s splitting hairs.’
‘Then weren’t it splitting hairs to work yer stupid selves up over a few bits of green potata?’ shout I.
That set off a big argument that go on for what seem like hours. Probably it weren’t that long, the sun dint go down, and I have plenty of time to collect firewood before dinner. But the ins and outs tax our brains so hard it’s like we been sitting in a Parleyment all afternoon. But we do finish with a list of crimes matched to a list of punishments, nearly all about food and work and most of it a fucken nonsense. The nonsense is that free on our island we fashion ourselves a little replica of what we come from, a sad little copy of the big world that send us all to Norfolk.
3
Next morning at breakfast Toper ask me if I succeed to efface myself down the hole. Flonker don’t wait for me to answer, he interrupt and say I were remembering cambions. What don’t exist, he add. At once Toper beg to differ and say he personally know of many cambions, the trouble is yer jes can’t tell them from ordinary childs. I stifle a snort, then because it’s a Incognita morning with a freezing wind that blast at us without mercy, we go in the hut and somehow the talk of cambions lead to the story of me and Mary. But I jes tell the bare facts, not the heartbreak.
‘It must of been a cambion,’ Toper pronounce when I conclude.
The three of us stare at him.
‘It weren’t a cambion,’ say I. ‘It were as normal as you or me.’
‘That aint very normal,’ Flonker say.
Toper take on a look that say he know more’n all the rest of us about such things, aint he the one that used to go to church and read the Good Book? ‘It must of been a cambion,’ he repeat with stubborn patience, ‘because yer don’t marry with the mother. Do anyone else marry with her?’
I shake my head and Flonker fall about laughing.
‘What yer wetting yerself about?’ Toper ask pinking up. ‘If no one marry with her, the brat were a cambion, it’s plain as the nose on yer face.’
‘Don’t be a fucken idiot,’ Slangam flame. ‘Bloodworth do stick it in her, don’t yer understand?’
Toper turn pale in horror. ‘What, without yer marry her?’
‘They’re doing it all over London,’ Flonker say. ‘They aint got the morals of a Irish oik. They used to hang them fornicators, then they see the light. Waste of good fucken rope.’
The argument go on and on as always, and it cause a confusion in me. Toper make fun with the rest of us of all the perversions of Norfolk and Sydney town, now he come across all high and mighty. But soon I realise he think my girl were a decent virgin and I ortn’t to of touched her till the wedding night. He don’t care that the Parleyment do a count and estimate the number of pregnant brides in London at forty in the hundred and the number of first-born bastards at twenty-five in the same, he don’t care that village morals lose their reach in the chaos of London’s million, fuck he don’t even care that he’s a convicted felon and a defrauder of the paying public. He only care that every decent girl that get a fuck in her had a church wedding.
‘Well, she must of been a whore,’ he conclude.
‘She weren’t a whore. She thought I were going to marry her, see?’
‘She were weak then.’
‘She weren’t weak.’
‘She need God’s help. She dint pray enough.’
That really rile me up. That and the memory of my time down the hole. I start to shout at him, ‘Yer get brung up half starved and more’n half unclothed, yer get sent into the fields before yer can piss straight, and stolen off a wharf before yer can pull yourself, yer get shipwrecked in the Chinee sea and banged up in Norfolk Island, now yer gonna rot to death on a godforsaken isle surrounded by Incognita icebergs and yer still going on about praying?’
Toper’s lips move nervous and he cross himself many times.
‘I tell yer what, someone should be thanking you for enduring it. Someone should be excusing their selves for making yer so put upon. Yer worried about going to Hell? Aint yer already there? Do yer think it aint Hell jes because it aint ugly, because it aint burning fire? Do yer think burning’s the only thing what give agony? Aint it agony to see such beauty and live so ugly? Aint it agony to think yer can reach out and take hold of the beauty for yerself only to find it drain through yer grasp like sand? Aint we all in Hell, with the beauty jes a tease and a mockery? We wanna grasp hold of virtue or even innocence, but aint it all jes failing and punishing and pegging out?’
A long silence come down like a smother blanket. Then Slangam clear his throat and ask if anyone else got a story.
First fine morning I go to see the penguin ground. When I come over the lip of the hill, there aint no wind at all and the sun shine like a gold tooth. I sit and look at the beach. There’s a few gentlemen, but the noise and stench aint really got started yet. How I do wish for a smoke! To sit and smoke and watch – aint that the best entertainment for a lazybones?
I sit a long time and no one come looking. Probably they think I make a special effort to get in favour and go a long way for dry wood. But why wud I make a special effort for them bastards? Yair, maybe the rest of the world revolve around licking the arses of men that only want to stomp on yer, but I aint ever gonna do it.
Eventually a hun
ger start to gnaw at me and I have to collect some firewood lest Toper say no lunch. I go back with a small pile and throw it down by the fire.
‘That aint much,’ say Toper.
‘I go again after the food.’
‘Yer always wanting to go off. Where yer go that’s so fascinating?’
‘To the sunny side of the island.’
‘The sun shine down the same everywhere.’
‘No. It don’t.’
He stir his pot of fat and smirk.
‘The other side is where the penguins come ashore.’
‘And why do yer care about fish like that? A seal’s a lot bigger. More return for yer work.’
‘Work? I aint working over there. Do I ever come back with a penguin fish for lunch? It aint work on that side, it’s rest.’
I don’t say pleasure in case he start foaming at the mouth.
‘You cud come over there with me,’ say I.
‘What for?’
‘Jes to look.’
‘What at? Penguins or whale sharks that I seen before? I got a lot of work to do.’
‘That fire wud look after itself for a hour or so. Even if it burn right down, it wud smoulder for a long time.’
‘Yair, I know that. A cook know about fires, don’t he?’
‘Well, then.’
‘I have to see.’
‘Yer have to apply for time off, is that it? Yer can’t stand forth and say, I’m a free man, nearly all my day cud be my own if only I weren’t such a pilgarlic that can’t imagine a nother way to live?’
Toper stab hard at some flesh in his pot. I rile him. Maybe he think I take over Flonker’s ways, yair maybe I do, it’s jes that Flonker rile other men for points whereas I poke them to free their selves. I don’t believe Toper’s gonna come to the cliff edge, but I asked him and offered my hand, that’s all a man can do, he can’t force a other man to grasp it.
‘So this is what yer do all day,’ come a voice behind me one fine afternoon. I turn and Toper stand there wearing a grin like he find me out. ‘Sit on yer arse and stare at the ocean.’
I hold up my sewing.
‘Fuck, don’t be showing me that,’ he say, holding up his hands in front of his eyes like the sun blind him.
Bright Side of my Condition ePub Page 14
