Minta thought she was going to cry; an overwhelming grief seemed to rise up inside her in the middle of her ecstasy: the child seemed so small and so vulnerable and so beautiful. It didn’t matter he was older than the infant she had longed for. When she went over to him and crouched down to look into his face, she felt the heat of life glow from his body, and saw in his shining eyes a flicker of curiosity with no fear in it.
‘Thank you,’ was all she could say, as a flustered Gerald pushed the envelope with the money into the woman’s hands; he managed the exchange as awkwardly as a monk instructing a schoolboy in the use of a condom. In return she handed him a blue plastic bag.
‘For later,’ she said, at his unspoken question.
Minta did not kiss the child; she could only look at him. She could feel the warmth of his presence, she could smell his living breath, like sap.
‘You put both arms round my neck, as if to say to . . . to the woman who’d brought you to us in that funny old room in the Hotel Metropole where I’d waited so long for you, “It’s all right, I’m happy, so you can go now”.’ She paused and looked at her quiet son, at the way he had grown. ‘There were a few things for you in the bag, including a change of clothes, with KIM scratched on a button.’
Between the station and Cantelowes Primary School lay a wide tract of wasteland through which ran the great sheaf of railway lines from the north of the country. Since the gasometers had fallen into disuse, the huge area around them was being cleared in preparation for a new development. But as the school year wore on, work slowed. The planning stage failed to meet the first deadline, then the second, then the third. Architects came and went. Sponsors flirted, but did not commit themselves. Now buddleia and rosebay willow herb seeded in the ruined brick foundations of the factory sheds, canteens and shops that had once clustered in the space on both sides of the tracks. Environment activists fenced off a part and declared it a natural wilderness: Kim took his class there in the early summer, with pads and colouring crayons. Afterwards they made drawings of tadpoles in the puddles and of the heron that, their guide had told them, unerringly descended on the puddles and ate the froglets.
A Gothic rave took place under the derelict arches close in to the station every Wednesday night; sometimes Kim saw the clubbers in their whiteface and mascara drifting along the road towards the tube as he arrived. When the council’s new car pound opened behind barbed wire on the wasteland, it brought yet another population to the area.
At first Kim didn’t know where to direct the women in narrow-cut deep pile coats and expensive shoes who would ask him, hesitantly, for the way to the pound. The first winter it was in operation, he fell in with a woman, and accompanied her there. She was flapping at the unfamiliarity of the location, scared because she’d taken the tube on account of the size of the fine, after she’d found her car towed from its parking place in the smart centre of Enoch where she’d been shopping. She was carrying glacé carrier bags, bulking awkwardly in the cold wind against her legs.
It was after school, and already dark; they followed signs in ruined capitals to the pound, past the iron shutters on the rave venue; a huge skull and crossbones was daubed in white overhead.
‘You’re being so kind,’ she kept saying.
The way to the pound was so grim he was himself astonished. The woman chattered on: she’d been having lunch with a friend, hadn’t noticed the time, her husband would kill her, it was just what they needed, to throw away a hundred pounds on a fine. She was nervous of him, he could see that; it amused him. She was talking herself out of being scared. He was aware that his slim, slightly dancing gait could appear menacing, almost elvish; he knew that he was hard to place and that this unsettled people on first acquaintance. Dark. Educated-sounding. Not a yob, then. A young professional? Who could tell what his business might be? He was careful not to run up behind a woman in the street, to catch a bus, because Minta had explained when he was young how frightened she was. But this woman who had lost her car could see him, hear him, he was on her side, and she was still afraid.
When they reached the steamed-up Portakabin, with its fug of tea and tobacco, he let her deal with the heavies inside who took her credit card and threw her the keys of her car in insolent triumph. But he watched them, and they knew he was watching them. Cropped, bull-necked, beer guts, skin and liver and eyes of rotted cod, the stuff of vigilantes. Ex-cons, most like. Or ex-cops, done for malfeasance. Corruption. Or worse. Outlaws as role models – what shit. Whoever thought crime was glamorous? He thought of bringing the class here, too. A lesson in civic tensions. Second car owners, lapped in luxury, meet the new, profitmaking arm of the law.
He exaggerated the courtesy with which he ushered the woman out and down the clumsy steps. She picked her way across the tip, hobbling in her high-heeled boots through the ruts and puddles towards the pound; there were arc lights, which cast such thick shadows it was hard to see. She was crying when she finally found her car. But she did not offer him a lift.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she whimpered. ‘You’ve been so kind, so helpful. You look a very nice young man, even though you’re . . .’ She faltered. He understood she meant his not being, well, native. ‘But I can’t let a stranger into my car. I just can’t.’
‘Go on, try it’, he said. He flashed a small, slow smile at her; her fear stood between them. She was thinking of him trying to kiss her, he could see that; he was aware of the zips on her boots on the inside of her calves; of the folds of her thick soft coat.
‘No,’ she replied, with a hint of a whimper. ‘No.’
7
The Rushcutters’ Assault
[G: Skipwith 673.1841: Misc. Mss. G. Fr. 20, papyrus, c. 325–350 CE, translation in the hand of Hereward Meeks, keeper of Near Eastern Antiquities, 1858–76.]
. . . the crickets were chafing loudly among the dust and stones when Leto became strong enough to leave the cliffside cave and set out down the rocks on the other side from the necropolis towards the freshwater lagoon that lay behind a sand bar near the shore. With the children, Lycia and her cubs, she began walking south; their accompanying shadows moved beside them over the terrain in long thin ribbons, scribbling their presence.
The she-wolf was uneasy; her nose pointed and detected movement, the salt sweat of working bodies. ‘We should have started after dark,’ she muttered.
Leto was headstrong; she insisted she must find water, people, somewhere else to go. She could not stay in the she-wolfs den forever, with no clothes for herself or the babies and no water that was sweet, not fouled.
She was stumbling in haste on the uneven, precipitous path; in her still depleted state, with the babies tied to her front and back, she was clumsy.
‘Here,’ said Lycia, ‘give me one of them.’ She butted Leto’s son with her narrow muzzle. ‘I’ll carry him.’ Her own cubs were trotting behind her, as light on their feet as if they were tumbleweed on the breeze.
At first, Leto resisted, and kept on, stumbling, towards the shore; she still had her silk slippers on, for, thin and frayed as they were, they gave her soft feet a little protection against the sharpness of the stony ground. But they also made her slither when the slabs were broad and smooth.
The sea’s surface was shining in her eyes, a stretched skin, gilded and tooled that threw back from its surface the horizontal shafts of the late sun like a struck gong.
The wolf stopped, now and then, and sniffed, while her giglamp eyes opened, lambent, as she scanned the view. ‘There are men about. More than usual. We have to turn back.’
‘No!’ Leto wailed. She so longed for fresh water, she could have faced a crowd, naked.
‘Give Phoebus to me,’ said Lycia. ‘We’ll move more nimbly.’ Gently, her muzzle closed on the dirty rags that swaddled the infant boy. Her own cubs frisked, making three times the distance as they scampered ahead, tacked back, tumbled in a flurry of limbs together, picked themselves up and gambolled on.
They saw the lagoon below t
hem, a wide smile of silver with the smith’s small hammer blows setting it to glitter. Fringed with burr reeds and the spiky blades of irises, the sight of it lightened Leto’s step and she almost began to run, turning her head now and then to make sure the wolf, with the baby in its jaws, was not taking a different path.
‘Wait till dusk,’ whispered the wolf. ‘Don’t go so fast. They’ll have gone by then.’
But Leto ran, with her daughter on her back, as soon as they reached the marshy ground around the lagoon; she pushed through the reeds, feeling the suction of the wet earth tug at her slippers.
She undid the scrap of material that bound Phoebe to her back, and, taking her tightly in her arms, walked into the water as she was, closing her eyes as the cool thick silk of the flow clasped her and soothed the hot soreness of her feet and legs and between her legs. She must not lose her footing, not with the baby on her hip, who was looking up at her slightly cross-eyed, with furrowed brow, as if perplexed by her mother’s immersion.
The lagoon was mud-bottomed, and swallowed one of her shoes; she felt the silt move smoothly between her toes. With her free arm she splashed her face; the little girl looked even more puzzled, poised to howl in protest. Leto turned back, to find a point of access, a kind of beach, where she could set the baby down while she bathed.
Lycia was calling to her, softly, through the darkness from a screen of reeds.
‘Leto, we’re here. This way. Wait. You’re too exposed there.’
But she ignored the animal, and sank deep into the dark water, into its coolness, drinking it into every pore and cranny of her sore dry body, inside and outside, through her mouth and eyes and floated.
When she surfaced, she heard calls from the shore, and shook the water out of her ears.
‘What in hell’s name are you doing?’ the words bounced on the surface of the lagoon towards her, clear as the opening phrase of a tune. ‘Get out of there, now!’
She saw men emerging from the reeds, with cut sheaves on their shoulders. Her baby was there; she struggled to reach the shore. But she was feeble from the privations of the last few days, and the water stuck round her legs and the mud shackled her ankles as words pelted her too:
‘Get out of there—’
‘You and your brat—’
‘Go back where you belong—’
‘You and your kind—’
‘You don’t belong—’
‘Here—’
‘None of your kind—’
‘Breeding your brats—’
‘This is our home—’
‘Our water—’
‘Our land—’
Their curses reached her in rags and tatters, flying lashes, a sting of pain on one side of her head. She put her hand up and felt a warm pulpiness above her ear, in her hair, where the stone had hit her. She looked across the dancing water to the shore; shapes were moving in the reeds; she caught shouts, gathering huddles, figures bending. She saw the streak of the wolf’s form move higher, beyond the reeds. She fancied she heard the animal howl, but no, the papoose still hung from her narrow mouth. The animal was leaving her, with her son, running for cover in the caves riddling the cliff; she could not do otherwise, or could she?
Her dress was stuck to her; she kept her arms crossed over her body as she clambered out through the silt towards them.
More stones drove into the water near her; another caught her on the head again, she foundered, the refreshing element in which she was swimming suddenly heavy as sheet metal, preventing her from moving, from climbing out of its grip. She grasped at the rushes to find her balance and push her way to the shore.
Her daughter. A group of shadows on the inlet crisscrossed where she had laid the baby down.
Her dress was stuck to her; she kept her arms crossed over her body as she clambered out through the silt towards them.
She reached the bank. They had the baby; one of them was cradling her, making goo-goo noises.
‘Oooh, ooh, what a pretty little creature! Who’d ever think your mother was a whore?’ He threw the child in the air, made as if to let her crash, caught her and danced her up again. ‘Dance a baby diddy, what shall daddy do widdy?’
He tossed the infant across to another figure, passing her like a ball.
Leto was among them now, whirling to catch her daughter as they chucked her from one to another. Phoebe was roaring, a red and purple scrap, her tiny limbs spread-eagled like a flying bat as they played. One of the men grabbed Leto as she struggled to catch her child; he clutched at her breasts under her wet clothes, twisted her round by them and pushed his face into her mouth. She jerked back and pushed, using her nails, her teeth, until at last, with a supreme effort she leapt to catch her daughter and holding her close, fell to the ground, crouched over her.
A kick made her fall sideways but she kept curled tight around the peach-soft flesh of the baby, who was slimy with tears and other oozings of her terror.
‘This is our water,’ shouted one man in her ear.
Another kicked her, ‘Next time, we’ll kill you and your runt.’
A blow caught her full in the small of the back; they were beating her with something whippy and wet and flat – the rushes they had been gathering in the lagoon. Their panting rose as they lashed her; she curled up more tightly over her baby.
‘Teaching our women your dirty ways—’
‘Filth—’
‘Whore—’
‘We know what you’re like—’
‘We know what you like—’
‘We’ll show you what you like—’
They had cutlasses; they had been harvesting reeds. One man tussled now to pin her legs, another at her shoulders to turn her over. Another breathed hard in her face; hands paddled between her thighs. Their knives shone.
Through her swollen lids she saw them, jagged flashes and flickers, like scraps of leaves tormented by a storm wind that tossed shadows against a moon.
She prayed, to all the powers and thrones and dominions she had ever known or half known or guessed or dreamed. She did not see her life pass before her, but through the broken roaring and grunts and curses and maulings and beatings she saw her divine lover again. She saw his eyes above hers, the pupils widening into a corridor to the velvet where the far stars swim as he bent to kiss her. She saw his wife, tall, pale, with a straight furrow between her eyebrows that continued the parting in her hair, her expression tight as the grip of ice on water. And she felt for them all a piercing longing, for their love, for their mercy.
Then she heard Lycia the she-wolf howling from the ridge.
Leto picked up the high keening noise through all the tumult as the men scrabbled over her, and then she felt them freeze. Her attackers were rising, in disarray; screaming at one another. They rushed, themselves now animal in their panic, a quarry raised and scattered by beaters in the chase. Some ran in terror, dropping everything, others, thriftier, hesitated, casting about to salvage the harvest of reeds they had been cutting.
The she-wolf was loping down through the dunes towards them; they could track the sound of her battle cry as she came.
A flying missile of fur and spit, the animal hurled herself on to the shore of the inlet, scattering the remaining men; one of them turned and stood and slashed at the animal with his cutlass, but she was snarling, crouched back on her haunches, and he dared not close with the bared canines that glinted in the darkness, and he, too, turned to flee with the others.
But there were no others; not any longer. How had they disappeared so swiftly? so silently? First he had picked up their cries of panic, their footsteps stumbling through the reeds and on the dry ground, but now he could see nothing, hear nothing, except the shrill song of the crickets beyond the wolf’s snarling.
[G. Fr. 21]
. . . men who outrage the gods in heaven are condemned to shed their human shape . . . transfixed by the slavering dripping from the wolf’s jaws, a rushcutter stood, unable to flee. Semen smears on his s
tomach, bloodstains on his mouth, his arms, his legs . . . he could not run as he felt a bolt of something damp and wet snake over him and cover him and begin to shrink and condense him. His flesh as it diminished turned clammy. But he was not alone in his punishment. Beside him, others who had also played their part in the attack were rooted to the spot. Their fingers lengthened and their knuckles swelled, skin grew between the digits of their toes and knobs and gnarls swelled over their bones. One tried to cry out against his fate, but his voice came out in a feeble gulp. Another tried to run, and found he was jumping on unaccustomed, thin, green legs. They fled, some diving headlong into the water with a wild croaking, others sinking into the mud, their bulging eyes big with alarm, the pulse in their crops racing to the terror in their changed hearts.
Thus are the wicked punished for their transgressions against the beloved of the gods . . .
[G. Fr. 22]
. . . the she-wolf approached Leto where she lay. The animal placed a paw on her shoulder and turned her over.
Phoebe nuzzled her mother; there was blood in her milk.
Lycia cleaned her wounds, gently. Her tongue was lithe and thorough. She murmured, ‘I’ve stowed the baby boy with my cubs deep in the rocks up there – they’ll not be found.’
The Leto Bundle Page 7
