‘It’s a man-lion,’ said Ida.
The man was intent on his line and float and had not noticed the canoe beneath the trees. What had most startled the children was his expression, unlike any they had seen before. It was the expression of a man alone in the universe, though they could not know that.
‘It’s a he-witch,’ said Ping softly.
The man pulled in his line and sang under his breath:
Tum túm tee úmptity úmpty eye
Tum túm titi úmptity éye.
‘That’s not witch-music,’ said Oskar. ‘He’s a displaced person that’s escaped.’
‘Shall we go and say good morning to him? It would be polite.’
They climbed out of the canoe and walked along the bank.
‘Good morning,’ said Ping, bowing. ‘May we visit you on your island?’
The man looked round slowly as if he didn’t believe he had heard anything, but all the same, perhaps? He cleared his throat and looked away again as if he had seen nothing, then looked back and cleared his throat a second time.
‘Who may you be?’ he asked a little croakily.
‘We are displaced persons too,’ said Oskar. ‘We thought you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Have a toffee,’ said Ida, politely holding out a paper bag.
‘Toffee?’ the man repeated dreamily. ‘I had forgotten there was such a word. Toffee!’ He put his hand to take one, but stopped to look furtively all round as if a multitude might be closing in on him. He put the toffee in his mouth and shut his eyes while he savoured it. Then opening them and jerking his teeth free from the stick-jaw he said:
‘It takes me back, that does.’ After a while he added: ‘Steak and Kidney pie! Bacon and eggs for breakfast! Was there really – bacon? That’s a thought.’
Oskar understood at once, but Ida was at a loss.
‘Have you run out of bacon?’ she asked.
‘Have I run out of bacon?’ The man began to laugh, but his laughter was out of running order. It began and stopped, it blew up and skidded into choking ha! ha!s. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
‘Where have you nippers come from – if you’re real? One’s a chinaman,’ he added doubtfully, talking to himself.
‘That’s me.’ Ping bowed and smiled.
The man frowned.
‘I’ve not seen a living soul for so long I don’t know what to think. But a chinaman’s not likely.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Oskar. ‘It’s us, and we won’t tell anybody at all. Do you live here?’
‘I’ve lived here alone for more years than I can count. I haven’t kept count. What’s the use? Who wants to know? I don’t. Maybe I’m an old man, maybe not yet. Would you say, now, that I’m an old man?’
‘Your face is rather skinny,’ said Ida, anxious to give him the truth, ‘but your hair is quite brown and there’s heaps of it. So you can’t be old old, can you? I think you’re not having enough to eat. Couldn’t you get some bacon in the shop?’
‘Shop!’ he repeated contemptuously. She might just as well have said from the herdsmen of ancient Troy. ‘Is that racket still going on? Shops want money.’
‘Haven’t you got any money?’
‘I haven’t, and I don’t want any. I came here because I was sick of hearing about it. Everybody working all their lives just to get it, and everybody all the time, day in and day out, saying they hadn’t enough of it. And the shopkeepers telling you what they had to pay for what you’ve got to pay them for. I got sick of it, I tell you. It seems funny to be talking to someone about it. I never have done all this time. Sometimes I don’t know whether something I remember wasn’t a dream. I used to be a London bus driver. I got so that I couldn’t bear all those people, all along every pavement waiting for me in pushing crowds, always running in front of my wheels and closing in behind me, skidding in ahead of me in cars and puffing out stink. And the whole way along every road posters of people larger than life killing each other or kissing each other. I got so that I couldn’t stand it. Then one day I found myself here, because it was a Bank Holiday and this was the only place I could find where there wasn’t somebody already. I had to wade through bog up to my knees to get here. And nobody’s been here from that day to this and I haven’t missed them.’
‘I hope you don’t mind us,’ said Ping. Ida was inquisitive, so she was less polite.
‘It wasn’t so very difficult to get to. What’s on the other side?’
‘The bog I told you of, running to the edge of a wood. There’s courting couples in the wood most nights, but a marsh is no use to them. Well, I got here. And I sat down and took off my coat and shirt and lay in the sun. And the sun up in all that blue sky was my own, just for me; and the sound of the water and the leaves, rustling and stopping and rustling again. I can hear it now as if it was yesterday. I just stayed. I didn’t know it was going to be for always, only when I thought of going back I never could stand the idea. I had a bit of money in my pocket and I went and bought an axe and some nails, to build a tree house, just to pretend.’
‘Do you live in a tree house?’ All the children spoke together, turning every way to look for it. The man looked sly.
‘You see, if I had built it on the ground, some nosey parker some day might have come asking for the rent. I wasn’t to know nobody would ever come but a parcel of fairy-tale kids. It’s better too for the floods. I can sit up there, above miles of flood water, watching the hayricks and planks sail by. That’s a wealth of solitude.’
‘What did you eat?’ asked Oskar, thinking of Miss Bun.
‘I fished from my front door instead of from the bank.’
‘How do you cook in a tree house? I’d be afraid of it catching fire.’
‘I don’t cook. I eat it raw. You needn’t shudder, young lady. Have you never seen a sea-lion in the zoo eating raw fish, and clapping his flippers because it’s so good? I just cut it into strips and let them slide down, same as he does. You see, right at the start I decided I couldn’t have a fire, because smoke can be seen from everywhere. I’d have had to keep it going always because of having no matches. Sooner or later somebody would have noticed there was always smoke in the same place, and have come looking for trouble.’
Ida and Oskar were aghast. No fire ever, no hot soup, no cocoa, no warmth in winter, no dry clothes! But Ping said: ‘Lots and lots of lovely things don’t want fires. Birds and donkeys and horses and cows, and badgers and hares and hedgehogs and mice and moles.’
‘Exactly. Just what I thought. I watched the others, and anything that they could eat so could I. In spring and summer we all live like lords. I never could fancy insects, though some find them delicious. And a man’s teeth aren’t really made for eating grass, not with any pleasure. Listening to sheep and horses cropping it, it sounds good, but it’s a poor mouthful. But almost any new twig with a bud on it makes good chewing. Most trees have buds all winter. Elm – when you crunch you feel you’re getting something. Wild rose is like apples. Every schoolboy knows young hawthorn leaves. There’s wild carrot and wild spinach, and oats and clover and watercress and eggs and mushrooms and beechnuts and hazel and elderberry and blackberry. But I don’t mind telling you the first winter was real hard. When everything’s frozen it’s no use looking. Unless you’ve made a store there isn’t anything at all. And I hadn’t made a store. So I did, because I had to, what bears and hedgehogs and bees do by sense. I decided to sleep it out. If they can, I thought, why can’t I?’
Oskar’s eyes were brilliant and big with interest. ‘And did you?’
‘Well, young long-legs, it’s difficult to say. I haven’t no calendars here, nor anybody to wake me up and say: ‘Hi, you, it’s tomorrow week.’ I curled up in my house and went to sleep. And when I woke up the frost had gone. I can’t tell you more than that. But when I woke up and crawled to my door I saw what you might call visions. They say starving people see visions. I saw things that shouldn’t by right have been there. Stags and wild boar.
Often see queer things when I hibernate.’
‘May we please, if it isn’t intruding, see your house?’
‘With pleasure. With pleasure, ha! ha! that’s what they used to say, isn’t it?’ He led the way, and Ping saw it first. It was in a yew tree close against the bole, thatched with yew sprigs that drooped round the walls. The door was also the window, opening half-way up the woven walls like the entrance to a tit’s nest. There was no ladder. It was reached by climbing the tree.
‘Ladies first,’ said the owner scratching his head and laughing as he triumphantly remembered this phrase out of his far-off incredible childhood. Ida was only too keen, and might even have pushed if manners had not been established. She hopped in like a tit.
‘Isn’t it lovely! How clean you keep it.’
‘No need to live like a pig.’
The house was not meant for four people. Before the others could even get in, Ida had to sit on the bed. This was a neat platform of rushes tied in flat bundles, on which lay two big sacks loosely stuffed like eiderdowns. The pillow was a smaller one. The three children got into the bed together to try it.
‘You see I’ve made myself quite comfortable. It took quite a time to collect enough wool off the hedges to fill those. There was a field of sheep on the other side of the wood. I used to cross the bog by a way of my own to get there. Bulrush fluff helped, mixed in with it. And then I had a piece of luck. Two swans took to living on this bit. In the moulting season they sit preening their feathers and leave bags-full on the ground. I’ve been very lucky. I only brought with me my knife and my fishing line, and look what I’ve got now.’ He looked round with pride. On the floor stood a tin mug, a gaily painted tin jug, a turnip chopper, a dipper full of moorhen’s eggs, a bucketful of grass seeds (as if for a horse, thought Ida), a sackful of beechnuts. In one corner hung dangling a very old pair of trousers, a just recognizable busman’s leather jacket, and what looked like Robinson Crusoe’s coat. Oskar fingered it admiringly.
‘Have you got a gun?’
‘No, of course I haven’t got a gun. And I wouldn’t have shot the owner of that coat. That was a real nice little dog, that was. Must have got lost in the bog while his owner was courting. Got proper stuck in it and nearly drowned. So I brought him home with me, and he had a nice supper of fish, and while I was scratching him behind his ears because he was company, I noticed his coat was just ready for stripping. Just ripe and pulling out nicely. So I filled myself a bagful and turned him out lovely – long moustachios, gaiters and riding breeches, all ready for a show. Next morning I took him across the bog and off he went home to surprise them. Because you see, I had had an idea. I made myself a hook out of a spindle tree, the sort of thing my sister used for making rugs for her posh little never-never house. And I took my aertex vest and I pulled tufts of fox-terrier hair through the holes in knots. And there you are! Keep warm in any weather and wash as easy as the dog itself. The chopper I found in a dry ditch. That was luck too – couldn’t have cut reeds without it. Everything that you see came out of the river. It’s wonderful what a little flood will bring down – wood with nails in it, sacks with bits of string – always useful, those two. You may have been wondering, little miss, how I sew. So did I till I thought of persuading a horse to let me have some of his tail hairs. I don’t take anything without asking. I’m beholden to nobody. The great thing is, not to be noticed. What isn’t noticed isn’t there.’
‘You mean,’ said Oskar, ‘nobody’s thinking of you. Except us. And we won’t tell, ever. We are displaced persons too.’
‘Tell us about your visions that you saw when you were starving,’ said Ping.
‘It all looked much bigger. I could hardly see across the river, and the rushes were twice as high. It was alive with duck. Their quacking was like a headache, so that it all seemed unreal. There were big animals wallowing somewhere in the mud and the forest seemed to rustle and almost to talk. Then I saw a canoe nosed into the bank, empty. And I thought “they’ve got me”. But they weren’t after me. They were wild long-haired men …’ He paused, forgetting his audience.
‘Like you are now,’ prompted Ida.
‘Eh? What?’ The lion-man stared unbelievingly at her. Then he put up a hand and felt his hair and looked at his thin brown legs as if for the first time, and began to laugh.
‘So that’s how it is! Do you know, I still thought I was a busman! There’s my coat hanging up … But they had the advantage over me. They hadn’t escaped. Nobody was coming after them with cards and papers to fill up. They were free. And they lit a fire under my tree, and a smell of roast pork came up so that I cried like a baby. The place was teeming with animals, they could take as many as they liked. Even if I could, I wouldn’t kill the few poor wild things that are left, peeping out here and there when it’s quiet, the hedgehog and moorhens and herons that treat me as one of themselves. We’re all that’s left. Precious few fish left either. Some days I only catch one. Better go and look at my line.’
They all scrambled down, the man in a couple of agile swings. Sure enough the line was taut and pulsating. There was a biggish fish on it.
‘There’s my dinner for today. I’ll come along with you and give you a hand over the wire upstream. You’ll have left your paddle-marks in those weeds where you came up. I bet you have.’ His voice was suddenly furious. Feeling themselves dismissed in disgrace, the children got into their canoe and paddled upstream while the man moved like a shadow in and out of the trees along the bank. They came at last to a fence of wire mesh across the mouth of the stream where it joined the larger waterway.
‘Don’t know what that was put there for, but it’s useful to me,’ the man commented in a less hostile voice. ‘No end of things coming downstream catch on there. Push that bit of wood along to me with your paddles, will you? See, it’s got nails in it. Good ones. Got to keep my eyes open. We must carry the canoe over the bank. Careful – don’t want no marks. There you are. Make off now. And don’t come back.’
The children looked so crestfallen that the lion-man considered them for a moment with the ghost of his busman’s humanity.
‘I’ve never met three nicer behaved kids,’ he said. ‘But where one boat’s been others will follow. Let be. I’ve dreamt you and you’ve dreamt me, see?’
In the canoe Ida waved, Ping bowed and Oskar stood up long-legged as any savage. The man stared after them for a while, then bent down over his plank, which was enriched with a good piece of wire twisted round one of its nails.
‘I was thinking,’ said Ida after they had paddled unhappily in silence for some time, ‘we would go back and take him some lovely food. But I filled one of his tins with toffee when he wasn’t looking.’
‘I put a Mars under his pillow,’ said Ping.
‘I put an envelope of fishing gut in the pocket of his busman’s coat,’ said Oskar. After that they all felt better.
For breakfast that day Miss Bun had cooked the most wonderful, the most mouth-watering bacon and scrambled eggs and mushrooms and fried bread. Ida opened her mouth to say something, but Oskar, thought-reading, kicked her under the table, and Ping drew a finger across his throat.
‘What were you going to say, Ida love?’
‘Only that I’m hungry,’ Ida said sadly.
*
IT WAS TURNING INTO a hot day. In the little village street there was still no one about and smells of bacon came from the cottages. But Ida, Oskar and Ping had had a day full already and could hardly keep awake. They had only enough energy left to find the quietest sunny bank and go to sleep there curled up like mice. Sometimes Ida spoke into her arm, to say something like: ‘Are you asleep?’ And Ping or Oskar would answer: ‘Yes.’
They spent the hot afternoon bathing in a deep pool above the water-gates. They plopped in like frogs, they bobbed like corks. Ping’s face swimming looked as smooth as a sea-lion pup, his velvety eyes blinking in the glitter off the ripples. Oskar’s hair was always in his eyes. He reminded Ida of a wet
sheep. She laughed till she forgot to treadle and the water came into the corners of her mouth and her grinning teeth. They came out to rest, to let their bodies steam and toast in the sun and ripen for the luxury of the cool swill of river water receiving their limbs again.
Other holiday-makers thronged the river in sun and shadow. Punts passed slowly and travelled far upstream with the tall figure poling at the stern dwindling to a matchstick. Girls lolled and dozed trailing their fingers in the water ribboned with weeds while young men feathered them along. Cabined cruisers chuffed majestically from distance to distance and casual eyes looked down on three sprightly children, never guessing that for them this busy summit of the day was the hour that didn’t count. Ida was saying to Ping and Oskar: ‘I’ve slept so much today I don’t feel like going to bed tonight. Let’s be out all night. Quite different sorts of things must happen in the dark. If we want to come out when all these people aren’t there, so must other things. River things.’
‘Giant water snakes,’ said Ping. ‘Far more majestic than cabin cruisers. They would ride like swans pulling a whole train of their own curves behind them with all the fishes dancing ahead of them in terror. And perhaps two king water snakes will meet and have a battle. Or we could ride on their necks like elephant-tamers.’
‘Let us spend the night on the big island opposite the house,’ Ida suggested. ‘It has notice-boards everywhere saying “Landing Forbidden”, I can’t think why. And for some reason nobody ever does land. Aren’t people obedient! But I’m sure whatever comes out at night takes no notice of boards. We won’t. I think it ought to be a good place because it, whatever it is, will be used to having it to itself.’
The Children of Green Knowe Collection Page 15
