The Dragonfly

by Kate Dunn

  He hesitated, his hat motionless in his hand, the heat collecting round its brim. The clamour, dispersing through the air, changed tone, drawing out into a single cry of anguish. He strained to place it, tilting his head to hear more clearly. It wasn’t coming from the rec. He crammed his hat back on to his head and heaving the jerry can into both arms, he started to run.

  Sprinting with twenty litres of fuel sloshing against his chest was impossible to sustain for long. He reached the end of the bridge, panting, and set the container down to rest for a moment. When he picked it up again it seemed twice as heavy, but he staggered on for another fifty metres before he had to stop again. He rested with his hands against his knees, weighed down with the recognition of that cry. To hell with the fuel! He left the can there in the middle of the path and dragging more breath into his lungs, he started to run in real earnest, conscious of the epilepsy of the tall trees flashing past and the panic rising inside him.

  A crowd of boaters had gathered round the Dragonfly and he charged through them scattering them to right and left.

  “I’m her grandfather – let me through – excuse me please–”

  He didn’t know what he expected to find. He just knew that he couldn’t stand the swollen, shrilling sound of Delphine’s screams.

  There was a woman standing next to her, her arm encircling the space around the child, as if comforting her without actually having to make contact.

  “I’m her grandfather–” he cried, and the boaters took a few steps back. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Delphine was incapable of stopping herself from sobbing; the hawser sounds of her crying kept coming and coming. Her head was hanging and in her hand she held the mallet, glistening silver with gore.

  Colin dropped to his knees beside her. “Tell me what’s happened?” Her hair had fallen forward, hiding her face and when he tried looping it back so that he could see her better, he could feel that it was stiff with… matter. She had a trail of greasy blood down one cheek; it was all over both her hands and the mallet, the palest blood imaginable: a smear of platelets and scales.

  He took the hammer from her and laid it on the pontoon. He held her against him, lacking practice, and she pressed her face into his T-shirt and all her tears and sticky fishiness washed over him.

  “I killed it. I didn’t know what to do. It wouldn’t keep still and I couldn’t hold it. I couldn’t get the hook out of its mouth. It kept moving. It kept twisting. I tried to get the hook out and I couldn’t, and I couldn’t throw it back into the river with the hook still there, so I found the mallet in the locker and I hit it and it kept moving and I hit it. I hit it and hit it.” She looked at him with bleary eyes. “It wouldn’t stop moving…”

  Colin sat back on his heels. He had thought the chances of her catching something with a ratty old bit of bacon were about a million to one. He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out. “Here, spit on this.”

  Delphine spat halfheartedly and he wiped away the blood from her cheek. She burrowed back into his T-shirt when he had finished and she huddled close as if she had been washed ashore there, limp and spent.

  “Why don’t you show me what you caught?”

  He could feel the muffled shaking of her head between the crook of his neck and his collarbone, but he clambered upright, lurching a little under her weight and she clung to his top with a barnacle grip.

  One of the helpful boaters had retrieved the jerry can and placed it on the pontoon with a nod. He thanked the man silently and the small knot of people loosened and began to disband.

  He set her back on her feet, keeping a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you show me…?”

  She answered by curling herself closer into the harbour of his chest.

  “Well, let’s get cleaned up a bit, shall we?” With her still attached to him, he rinsed the mallet in the river and then knelt her down and made her wash her hands and arms, the scales of the fish silvering the surface of the water. “Come along now…”

  She hardly seemed to know what she was doing. He led her like a child – she was a child, something that it was somehow easy to forget – back along the pontoon to the Dragonfly.

  Lying on the deck amongst its own weeping viscera was a big fat catfish, a double figure warrior. “Delphine, you are an absolute marvel! I’d kill to land a catch like that. How on earth did you do it? You are extraordinary!”

  Still she pressed her face against him; he could feel her wet breath and her wet tears seeping through his clothing. “I’m not,” she gulped.

  He crouched so that he was level with her. The world looked different from this preteen angle. “You are to me,” he said.

  “I’m a not nice person.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you are.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  He scratched the back of his head. “I’m getting to know you…” His knees were seizing and he wanted to stand up, so he said in rather a rush, “You’re sunny and you’re brave and you make me laugh.”

  She shook her head, her eyes downcast, not meeting his gaze, and her tears coursed and then dripped onto his shorts. He made one or two attempts at mopping her cheeks, then he levered himself up, climbed onto the boat, wrapped up the catfish in a carrier bag and opened a Coke for the two of them to share. He sat himself next to her and to his delight she leant against him.

  “I tell you what we’ll do: we’ll sail the Dragonfly across the river to that famous restaurant, where we can probably only afford one crisp between us, and we will take your fish with us and ask the chef to cook it for your supper. How does that sound?”

  She managed a watery smile which had him wondering if his attempts at kindness made things worse. The smile faded and for a moment she had an orphaned look about her that he didn’t like to see.

  “You can wear your best dress and I will find a pair of shorts that doesn’t have oil on them and put on a clean T-shirt for the occasion. Maybe we should ring them up and ask them to come and fetch us in their launch. Why don’t we? That’s what we’ll do – we’ll call them.”

  She gave an almost imperceptible nod and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand; she straightened her spine. It was bad enough seeing her upset, but even harder to see her being brave. “That’s my girl,” he said gruffly. He ruffled her hair. “The only thing is – you’ll have to do the talking.”

  ~~~

  Delphine put on a bit of everything: an orange skirt, some grey leggings, a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and something green and floaty over the top of that. She twisted up her hair under the lavender tweed hat and painted her nails in different colours.

  All of this was done privately, and without joy. Colin watched from the corner of his eye as he shaved and washed his hair in the bucket. He towelled himself dry, shaking his head like a dog coming out of the sea, scattering drops everywhere.

  “Colin! Now I will have to do my nail all over again. It is not possible–”

  “Are you ready?”

  “I have to paint again – this nail, and that one. Mer–”

  “Let’s get going.”

  “–de.”

  They couldn’t find a phone number for the restaurant. No launch, no red carpet, but they set off through the rec, over the bridge and along the quay on the other side, as irritably as an old married couple.

  An immaculately dressed waiter met them at the entrance.

  “Poisson – jeune fille – rivière–” With no help from his granddaughter, Colin made catching motions, the carrier bag swirling with dangerous scents. “Ou est le–?”

  The maître d’ appeared, and Colin tried again.

  “Poisson–” He started to unwrap the fish, and the piscatorial scent immediately intensified. Delphine, with an existential sigh, made a minute examination of a vase of lilies every bit as tall as her, standing by the reception desk like angels clustered at the gates to heaven. “Jeune fille–” He clapped his hands together as
if catching something: flies, catfish, moonbeams?

  “May I help Monsieur?” asked the maître d’ in impeccable English.

  Arrested mid-mime, Colin replied with a courtesy that matched his. “My granddaughter,” he gestured in her direction; if Delphine could have climbed into the vase of flowers, she would have done, “Caught her first fish this afternoon. In your river. It is an extraordinarily fine specimen, and deserves the finest cooking.”

  Accepting the compliment while at the same time keeping to a safe distance, the maître d’ humbly inclined his head.

  “Which is why we have come here.”

  “It is not ordinary for Chef to prepare something he has not sourced himself,” came the murmured deprecation.

  “It is no ordinary fish,” said Colin. “Well, actually, it’s a little bit… damaged… in places, you can see it put up a very good fight.”

  The head of service took the carrier bag and finessed it onwards to the waiter at the speed of light. “We will ask the kitchen…” Anticipating Colin’s thanks, he humbly inclined his head once more and Colin, in turn, inclined his just a fraction further. “Would Monsieur et Mademoiselle care to enjoy a cocktail…?” His glance passed over the terminally embarrassed Delphine. “On the terrace, perhaps, where it is quieter?” he suggested, diplomatically.

  Colin wetted his lips with his beer and gazed at the river; through the limestone balustrade he glimpsed the duck egg blue prow of the Dragonfly and his chest welled at the sight. What would you think if you could see us now? he said silently to Sally. As he stared at the child sitting opposite him, he had the vaguest notion that all the hurt which had dogged him for so many, many years might somehow be cleansed by her. She was drinking noisily from a tall glass containing a symphony of juices that was a fruit salad – almost a meal in itself. She was swinging her legs, but he didn’t say anything. He rolled the beer around the inside of his glass and smiled inexpertly across at her; she made a slurping sound back at him and he knocked about one pound fifty’s worth of beer down in a single gulp.

  A man in chef ’s whites with chequerboard trousers approached their table. “Mademoiselle,” he began. “Is it true that you caught so magnificent a fish from the river this afternoon?”

  Delphine’s eyes rounded. With the straw still in her mouth, she nodded.

  “I propose a preparation très simple, I will grill your fish myself and serve him with a bitter almond emulsion, perhaps une salade verte on the side and some potato frites.”

  “With mayonnaise?”

  The chef smiled at her. “That was my thought precisely. It would be a pleasure.”

  He went gliding back to the kitchen and Delphine finished her cocktail and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She leaned over the table and held her hand out to him. He took it a little diffidently, and the two of them sat there companionably, while she picked the dirt out from underneath his fingernails, and the sun went tumbling through the clouds casting comet’s colours across the sky.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Michael dialled Delphine’s number, conscious of the breathing presence of the kanga a few paces behind him.

  “Hi Kiddo!”

  “Papa! It’s me!”

  He felt a kind of limpness, a physical sweetness at the sound of Delphine’s voice.

  “I cannot speak for the while because Colin is letting me drive but before I go–” she gasped.

  “You’re driving what?”

  “Le bateau. Colin showed me how to do fishing and I caught one that was enorme – I do not know the name – and we went to a restaurant and I saw Robert Pattinson, or it could have been Daniel Radcliffe I’m not sure, in a helicopter, but I couldn’t get his autograph. You can speak to Colin now because I must do some steering–”

  He was thinking of why it should cut him so, the idea of them fishing together. It brought back memories he thought he’d finished with and for a second or two he was so immersed in them that he was unaware of a disturbance on the line and then he heard a man clearing his throat at the other end. He felt a swift contraction of the heart.

  “Dad–?” In the background he could hear the thrum of a motor and the swish of water. “Is that you?”

  “Michael. This isn’t… it probably isn’t the right–”

  “Is she OK? Delphine? Is everything alright?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “We’re both fine. On the canals… heading south. It’s all alright.”

  “Time’s up,” said the kanga from somewhere unexpectedly close to him. Recalled to his prison life, Michael gave a little shiver.

  “Got to go,” he said, hanging up. He stood there stricken when the call was over, staring at the handset, the sound of his father’s voice a reminder of everything he’d loved and lost.

  ~~~

  “Sixteen… seventeen… Woss the snag, Rosbif? Eighteen… nineteen…” Laroche was doing press ups on the floor beside his bed, the macho kind with a clap midair between each one.

  “What?” said Michael, as if from a great distance, as if from a boat on a river that he couldn’t picture.

  “Twenty…!” Laroche snapped out of the press ups and onto his haunches, panting. “Woss your damage?”

  “Damage?”

  “Problem. Woss your problem?”

  “I haven’t got a problem,” Michael pulled out a chair at the table and lowered himself onto it. Then, as an afterthought, as Laroche showed signs of embarking on another set of exercises, he said, “Something weird just happened.”

  Half way through some flex or other involving some muscle or other, Laroche’s head swung round. “Yeah?”

  “I just spoke to my Dad.”

  “I haven’t got a dad. Must of done once. They’re an accessory you can do without – after the fact oink oink.”

  “Will you please stop doing your bloody exercises? I can’t–” Michael clapped his hands over his ears to block out the perpetual… evidence… of his own lack of privacy, of Laroche’s endless, endless presence, of the grinding sameness of it all. “I can’t hear myself think! Please!”

  There was a pause, an injured silence, during which Laroche picked himself up and smoothed down his trackie bottoms. “No need to go all section eight on me,” he said. “You could just ask.”

  “I’m asking.”

  “I’m sitting still now,” said Laroche. “Look at me. Completely still. Not moving a muscle. See?”

  “Yeah,” said Michael, staring at his shoes.

  “What’s with you and your ol’ man then? Must be some bad shit there.”

  “There is,” said Michael.

  “So?” said Laroche.

  “Stuff happened,” he said, wishing he’d never brought the subject up.

  “I get that.”

  “My mum told my father that Charlotte – she’s my partner–”

  “Was.”

  “She was my partner,” said Michael, barely missing a breath, “My mum told my father that Charlotte was pregnant and he wasn’t very happy about it and–”

  “And?” said Laroche encouragingly.

  Michael became aware of the weight of his gaze upon him, although his cellmate, true to his word, hadn’t moved an inch. It took him a long time to answer. “There was an argument,” he said in the end. “My father… well, he offered Charlotte money to get an abortion.”

  Laroche whistled. “Way to go, Daddy!”

  “She wouldn’t speak to him, she was so angry.”

  “And you?”

  “I saw him once after that, when Delphine was born, and we haven’t spoken to each other since.”

  “Is that it?” said Laroche dubiously, cracking his knuckles. He shook his head. “If that’s it, you gotta man up, Rosbif. Mind if I do me sit ups now?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They moored out in the wild the following night, a guilty economy on Colin’s part, which in no way compensated for the insane extravagance of their three star s
upper. Forests of silver birch flickered right down to the river bank and they had a job to tie up amongst all the reeds and nettles.

  Even tinned cassoulet for two, a couple of bruised pears and the end of a baguette managed to seem like a feast. They ate in a scattering of shade to the subtle song of unseen insects, with the salt smell of a distant bonfire in their nostrils and a pencil line of wood smoke tracing across the sky.

  Colin extracted his one cigarette of the day from its flattened packet. It had snapped just below the filter, but he lit it anyway. “Fancy a game of cards?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  Delphine pulled a maybe, but preferably not face, then she stared at him, waiting to see if he could do better.

  “Hangman?” he asked doubtfully.

  She shook her head.

  A thought occurred to him. He contemplated her through a grey exhalation – without the filter, the cigarette burnt his throat. “Why don’t you show me your album?”

  “What?”

  He started coughing. “The photos…” he prompted wheezily, “In your photograph album.” He chucked the dog end into the river. With a hiss it was extinguished. “Why don’t you show me?”

  “Oh, those…” she answered dismissively, leaning over the side of the boat, watching a hundred minnows swarm towards the cigarette and then, in disappointment, swarm away. The surface of the water looked like grazed silk and she cupped her chin in her hands and gazed at it.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “I’d really like to see them.” / “What is hangman?”

  “Is it on the shelf above your bed?” He persisted, stooping down and peering into the cabin.

  “Oh, Colin,” she said with exasperation, as if her patience was being tried by a small and very stupid child. She grabbed the photo album before he could reach it and clasped it to her chest. Plonking herself down on the bathroom locker, she opened the album a crack. “There–” she flashed a page at him and then snapped it shut and rested it on her knees.

  The album’s see-through plastic cover was spangled with light from the low-slung sun. When Colin blinked, he could still make out its golden shape. He perched himself beside her, waiting to see.