As if in response to the memory of the scene in the forest Lou’s breathing changed. She began to shiver. He moved his arm to caress her plump arm but she went on shivering.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Bad thing be coming,” she said.
“No. You were only dreaming.”
“Bad thing be coming.”
“Sh. Sh. Come here.”
She twisted and clung to him till the shivers died. The starchy diet of the village had fleshed her out until by European standards she was grossly overweight. (She had contrived, early on, to barter one of the monstrous lattice-works of corsetry which the Island women all seemed to think an essential element of respectability, but Foxe refused to let her wear it.) In bed she seemed almost boneless, her skin slightly oily and flesh very yielding. He kissed her eyelids and found she had been crying.
“Love me?” she asked, hopeful as a child.
“I do love you,” said Foxe, “but I won’t make love to you now. It’s not safe for another five days.”
She sighed, accepting his decision but nibbling gently at his collar-bone to compensate. Foxe could never decide whether her improvidence over some things—in this case pregnancy—was a facet of her goodness or part of the cultural stupidity she shared with most of the women in the Islands. She had never said so, but she might really believe that she had no right to deny the possibility of life to a child who would otherwise never be born, and that applied whatever kind of world it would be born into. She certainly talked about herself as though there were no negative dimensions on the axes of her life, so that everything that happened to her, even at the hands of the torturers, was somehow plus, compared with the zero of non-existence. Perhaps, Foxe thought, this was part of what it meant to be a saint—but then perhaps it was only possible to be Lou’s kind of saint at a fairly primitive level of society. In any more complex world you would have to use Lisa-Anna’s method, considering your every footstep as you made it, because each movement created perturbations in the crowded multi-dimension of lives around you. Not that Lisa-Anna was a saint, of course, but …
These musings were interrupted in nature’s unsophisticated way by the revolt of flesh against the will’s decision. Foxe chuckled and rolled on his back.
“Tell me about your dream,” he said.
“Bad thing be coming,” she answered, not shivering now but speaking in the vague tone she used when picking up a strand of thought from another mind. In theory Foxe had suspended judgment about her telepathy, but in practice he accepted it as genuine.
“I was thinking about the time we first made love,” he said. “You must have got a bit of that into your dream. You were scared stiff, remember?”
“I was stupid,” she said, giggling as she often did in the act of love and putting out a hand to caress his belly.
“Stop that,” he said, grabbing her plump fingers, “or I shall have to go and sleep on the floor. Tell me about your dream.”
“Didn’ dream,” she said. “Just bad thing be coming.”
“When?”
“Don’ know.”
“Tonight? Tomorrow?”
“No.”
This happened several times over the next couple of weeks—the same shivering, and waking, and vague prophecy of trouble. Foxe took it seriously enough to listen to the brief, fanciful news bulletins that interspersed the stream of reggae and calypsoes and Caribbeanised rock on Radio Trotter, while he worked on Mr Barton’s truck. Mr Barton was the rich man of the village, which meant that his hut had three rooms and a verandah, and he owned the still and also the large shack where the villagers met with those of two neighbouring settlements for dances—those noisy nights half-way between revivalist meeting and beer-hall stomp when the Islanders with drums and rattles and an old wind-up Gramophone summoned out of the forest the dangerous protecting spirits, who would select a human body to inhabit while they joined the carouse.
Foxe refused to join these gatherings from a kind of moral horror, clearly traceable to the night of the escape.
“You scared by your own self,” Lou said, unreproving.
“That’s right. You go if you want.”
“Not everybody go. Some people be thinking the Secret Ones got spite against them. Some people just not interested to go.”
So they would lie and listen to the racket and Lou would explain which of the inhuman guests had come—she could tell from the rhythm of the dances and the cries of greeting and general texture of the hubbub. An endless shivery tapping of beer-cans meant that Asimbulu, Lord of Thunder, had housed himself in the body of a man who was now dangling by his knees from a rafter and writhing his body like a gross snake; a sharper tinkling and a cooing undertone to the cries meant that Queen Bridget was twirling round the floor, choosing her lovers for the night; or a quick silence, followed by a rush of yelling and laughter, meant that the Sunday Dwarf had appeared (a man on his knees, like a charade of Toulouse Lautrec) and was shuffling about with a rum bottle in one hand, cracking a litany of obscene jokes about everyone in the hut and trying on people’s spectacles three pairs at a time. Lou would never make love on nights when the Sunday Dwarf had been in the village, in however benevolent a mood. On the other hand almost their only quarrel—and it wasn’t that, more a patch of shared distress—happened when only Queen Bridget came, on a night in the middle of Lou’s unsafe period, and Foxe refused to take advantage of what Lou considered a peculiarly blessed chance.
The village accepted Foxe without question, a piece of white trash—probably a criminal wanted in his own country—who didn’t mind mending things. There must have been other men around who could have re-wired Mr Barton’s truck, but they’d never felt like trying. Most huts in the village contained at least one broken radio, a few of which needed only a connection mended. And there was a metal wind-pump, jammed for the last three years, or possibly four—the expert chroniclers of apathy disagreed—which Foxe had his eye on. Lou wouldn’t let him work in the garden.
“You don’ wan’ draw notice to you,” she said.
Foxe had his own way over at least supervising the cooking, but despite his care had one mild bout of dysentery.
Quentin throve. He slept most of the day, roamed the hut in the evening and allowed himself to be caught and slipped into the safety of the trunk for the night. At first Foxe had chalked out the Q on his back, but soon the colour began to fade, and then there was a moult until only in odd lights did the sign show through. The villagers attributed no special powers to the rat but the children liked to come and bring him an oddment to eat, and fondle him, and let him explore their clothes while they shrilled with half-squeamish giggles.
Time passed. Lou said that Plantain was on the Mountain, and once the radio mentioned an army exercise in that direction. For more than a week Lou had no premonitions of horror.
Then, one pouring night, Foxe was woken by shudders so fierce that the whole bed creaked and whined. Lou wouldn’t respond to his touch, and seemed to be in a trance, or a fit like epilepsy. Foxe rolled her on to her back and craned over her, gently kissing her quivering cheeks and eyelids. At last she woke with a gasp.
“Bad thing be coming,” she muttered. “Soon, just soon.”
She dropped back at once into deep sleep, and next morning made no reference to the incident.
Next night there was a dance. It began as usual with rattlings and hootings and clinkings, formless until you were used to them and then turning out to be intricately patterned round three particular scratched old records. This would last till the Secret Ones arrived.
“Nobody coming tonight,” said Lou after a while.
It was rare but not unknown for the villagers to fail to work themselves to the pitch of self-hypnosis which let them believe that they were occupied by the spirits. When it happened, though, they accepted it, re
solving themselves into a cheerful song-and-gossip session for a few hours, and then going home with no apparent sense of let-down. Tonight, when Foxe was waiting for them to pack in the summoning ritual, silence fell sharp and sudden. A voice like the creaking of a cricket spoke, too far off for Foxe to hear any words.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Sh.”
Lou pulled him close to her and lay still, shivering. Whatever was happening at the dance-hut lasted less than a minute. The creaky voice stopped. In the silence, far off, one of the night-birds of the forest made its slow clacking rattle, and before that sound had ended the mutterings of talk began, ordinary human voices, speaking a little above a whisper.
“Gone,” sighed Lou, relaxing.
“Who?”
“Sunday Dwarf. Didn’ come for the dancing, come for the telling.”
“What’s happening now?”
“Everybody going home.”
Most dances ended with a special dwindling uproar, as the visitors from the other villages gathered themselves into drunken convoys and trekked for home, some singing, some trying to complete arguments with the other groups. Tonight they assembled as quietly as a patrol or a raiding party, and in no time were gone along the night-smelling paths. The home village continued its muted buzz, partly still discussion but partly the beginnings of some new activity.
“Is this normal?” said Foxe.
“Never hear it like this. Perhaps he tell a death.”
Lou lay still for a moment, then twisted herself out of bed and began to dress. Foxe lay listening to the rustle and slither of cotton—slip, petticoat, dress, headscarf—no question, even if King Kong had been stomping through the village, of going out in less than that. Her shape blocked the doorway—two or three lights were moving around outside—and was gone. A child had woken somewhere, or been woken, and was crying. The sense of crisis was like fever, a meaningless, pulsing, dry-mouthed tension. Even Quentin was still.
“Dwarf tell everybody must go,” whispered Lou from the doorway.
“What do you mean?”
“He tell two deaths. Two deaths, coming in the morning, just front of the dance-house. Better nobody stay in the village, he say.”
“Oh, nonsense!”
“No, honey—these two deaths—he say a man and a woman—a man and a woman got the power!”
She was gasping the words out rather than whispering, and suddenly Foxe grasped that she was in a stupor of fright. He swung himself off the bed, crossed to the door and put his arms round her. She was shuddering, as she had been in her fit the night before.
“That you, honey,” she sobbed. “Nobody else here got the power.”
“I haven’t either,” said Foxe angrily.
“Get dress. Get dress.”
Foxe let go of her, shrugged and groped for his clothes. If she hadn’t been in such a state he would have insisted on their going back to bed. Two people, he thought. Who does she imagine the other one is? Herself, of course. But it was for Foxe that she was shuddering. He tugged at the zip of his trousers, scuffled into his jacket and without thought opened the trunk to take Quentin—no question of leaving him behind. The sleek fur tingled in his hand as he stood in the dark, almost as if he were trying to guess the rat’s weight. He sighed, slipped Quentin into his jacket pocket and sat back on the edge of the bed.
“I’m not coming,” he said.
“Oh, honey!”
“I can’t. I genuinely believe that this is nonsense. It’s real for you but it’s nonsense for me. I can’t give in to nonsense, even for your sake, darling. These things only work for people who believe they work. I don’t.”
He heard her let out a slow breath, a sigh for good times gone and horror come again. Outside the sounds of the village had become the pad and rattle of departure. Cotton rustled as Lou untied her headscarf.
“No,” he said. “You must go. It isn’t nonsense for you, so it might work. But if there’s only me here there won’t be any women in the village so it can’t come true. See? I’ll be all right, darling.”
She said nothing. He rose and crossed the hard mud floor to her, turning her gently round so that he could re-knot the headscarf behind her neck. He left his hand on her shoulder while they watched the shadowy groups of villagers, some hunched into nightmare shapes by their bundles, crossing the moonlit strip beyond the door.
“Look, there’s Marie-Sainte,” he said. “She needs somebody to carry Paulie for her. You go with her. Listen, darling, I’ll leave a signal for you. Don’t let them come back unless there’s that blue blanket hanging on the dance-house railing. OK? Off you go.”
He had to give her a slight shove to start her moving.
“Bye, honey,” she whispered, drifting away with a slow inhuman motion, like a ship parting from a quay. He watched her join the group behind which Marie Sainte hobbled, trailing her swollen leg. The shadows altered shape as Lou lifted Paulie to her hip, and then they all vanished together into the blackness under the trees.
Foxe scuffed off his plimsolls and lay on the bed, thinking of the soldier who had run for his gun in the mess-hall of the castle. That man had known it was nonsense too, but he had died all the same.
He woke in daylight. The dawn clatter of parakeets was at its loudest, and the shaggy rectangle of the door was filled with the usual silvery light which looked like mist and wasn’t. He was wide awake at once, without a moment’s bafflement at his having slept in his clothes, or Lou’s absence, or Quentin nosing round the hollow where she had lain with his inquisitive but slightly cynical air, as if he thought Foxe had been a fool to hope to keep her.
Foxe was aware that something had woken him from deep sleep, but apart from the parakeets the village seemed silent. Moving carefully to minimise the clangour of the bed-springs he twisted to his feet and went to the doorway. All was still. He hesitated, full of the silly fear which a child feels who cannot cross a landing on his way to bed because of the shadow of the wardrobe—something meaningless to anyone but that child and real for him. Quentin scuttled on the bed and at the same time Foxe remembered he was barefooted, so he went back for his plimsolls, picked the rat up and slid him into his jacket pocket. This time he strode straight out of the door, as if taking a run at it. The village was empty except for a battered old cat, black as tar, walking along the path with the rigid stalk of a hunter, though Foxe could see no prey. He decided to do one patrol of the huts and if everything was OK eat breakfast and then go and make a start on the wind-pump. He had almost reached the dance-house when Mrs Trotter came out.
She seemed to materialise rather than emerge. At one moment the verandah was empty and the next she was standing, a gaudy slab in a turquoise trouser-suit, at the top of the three steps that led to it. Her glasses glittered, reflecting twice over roofs and treetops and a slice of dawn sky. This was the first time Foxe had seen her silent, but the miracle didn’t last.
“You, man, white man,” she called. “Where everybody gone, then?”
Foxe mimed ignorance, ducking his head away and cursing himself for not wearing his heavy-brimmed noon hat.
“Foxy!” she cried. “Hi, Foxy! I come all this way just for seeing you. Ain’t you happy?”
“Good morning, ma’am. I hope you’re well.”
“Never ill, Foxy. Never ill.”
Foxe stood and stared at her, wholly baffled that she should be here, apparently alone, having, she said, come to look for him.
“Ain’t you going to ask me how’s my son, the President?” she cooed. Now he could detect a tone of mocking, of toying with him. Perhaps it was she who had somehow sent the Sunday Dwarf to the dance-house, to clear the village of all but him. But how could she know he would stay?
“I hope his Excellency is well,” he said.
“Fine, just fine. Eating his food, bowels going like a factory, only his
foot begin to swell a little. What do I give him for that, uh?”
“A mustard plaster?” suggested Foxe.
She nodded and started to rummage through her reticule as if looking for the ingredients then and there. The silence stretched out.
“How did you know I was here?” said Foxe.
She stopped rummaging, and though her head was still bent above the bag he guessed that she was peering at him behind the screening lenses.
“Soldiers,” she said. “Up towards the Mountain, hunting those stupid Khandhars, they find this fellow hiding in the bushes, pockets full of weeds. They know he been with the Khandhars, like you, Foxy, and they ask him a few questions, don’ get to hurt him much before he tells them you here.”
“Was it Mr Trotter?”
“One of those stupid Trodders.”
“He’s a very good herbalist. You ought to consult him about your son.”
Her head jerked up, a slight gesture of surprise, as though he’d departed from the script of the dialogue she’d arranged; but she converted the movement to one of decision, of ending the small-talk and getting down to business. She moved to the bottom step of the verandah and pushed her glasses up onto her forehead.
“Come here, Foxy,” she said. “Come closer.”
He walked towards her until they were less than a yard apart. Although she was standing on the step her face was still lower than his. Her tiny, gleaming eyes stared at him, surrounded by wrinkles so elaborately infolded that the eyes themselves seemed to be set in a special musculature capable of withdrawing them deep inside her skull or projecting them inches beyond her cheeks.
Walking Dead Page 22
