The Dragonfly

by Kate Dunn

  “Keep your hand above your head,” Tyler ordered. “I didn’t know you were a fisherman,” she said, slinging the tackle onto the ground next to the growing pile of barbecue, stove and salad until she found the first aid kit.

  “I’m just an amateur, Delphine is the professional.”

  While she swabbed the cut he made Delphine tell her about the three-star catfish, the double figure warrior.

  “Wow – is that so?” Tyler applied sticking plaster to his thumb, smoothing the ends down. “There. I think you’ll live.”

  “The chicken!” yelped Delphine, clambering over her grandfather and reaching for the tongs. The leg she inspected was charred and blackened and sprinkled with ash.

  “Guess we’d better hurry along with those potatoes,” drawled Tyler. “Though we sure could do with more light…”

  They all stood up again, precariously close to one another, while Colin hunted for candles in the everything locker until he remembered that he kept them on the shelf above his bed.

  “There!” Lined up along the quay, the tiny flames glimmered, tremulous in the night air.

  “Why don’t you let me–” with her complicated smile, Tyler took over the cooking of the potatoes.

  “I was going to do mash,” he explained, wondering if she would notice that the spuds were getting a bit wrinkled and rooty, much like him, much like him.

  As she swung into action, organising Delphine to cook some sausages to eke out the burnt chicken, he leaned back into the shadowy limits of the light from the candles and watched her. Even at the maximum possible distance, they were so close that the cuff of her shorts skimmed his leg as she moved; she smelt of sunshine overlaid with soap and he found himself wanting to press his nose against her skin as if she were a flower, and inhale. He felt a pricking of emotion at the prospect, pensive at the thought of all the years now fled, when he could have had a new life instead of grieving for the old one he had lost. Not that he hadn’t tried to make a fresh start, or at least gone through the motions: there’d been a woman called Ruth he met through work who liked photography and country walks and doubtless had a good sense of humour, but the gap between who she actually was and who he wanted her to be yawned wide and he suspected that the same had been true for her as well. In a moment of absurd optimism, he’d even joined a dating agency. He groaned aloud at the thought. Looking back, he’d let circumstances get the better of him, and then blamed his failure upon Sally. Well, it was too late now.

  “Cheer up – it may never happen!” Tyler was pounding the potatoes into submission.

  Quite.

  He stole another glance at her. She wiped her forehead on her wrist, on the inside where the veins cast blue shadows on her skin. It was warm still, even in the darkness. Perhaps she was conscious of his eyes upon her, because for a moment her mouth looked as if it might waver into a smile – that ambiguous flare he’d noticed before – but she banged the fork on the side of the pan as if she’d thought better of it, and he wondered if this was intended as a rebuke, as if he’d gone too far, although he hadn’t moved at all, hadn’t done anything to suggest – Never mind my second childhood, I’m having my second adolescence here. In his confusion he turned to say something to Delphine, anything, when Tyler announced with a flourish, “Dinner is served.”

  They all stood up so that he could retrieve the crockery and cutlery from the kitchen locker and as he set forks and plates on the cabin door table, he felt obscurely irritated with himself.

  “Why France?” he asked. He could have sworn he heard his granddaughter say on a breath Why France? and was tempted to kick her under the table.

  He steeled himself, “Salad?” and handed her the enormous bowl.

  Salad? came the faintest whisper.

  “Distance, mainly. I wanted to put distance between myself and – just about everything, to tell you the truth. Distance and the Impressionists…”

  “I saw a fantastic exhibition of Van Gogh in London…”

  I saw a fantastic exhibition…

  He turned round and stared hard at his granddaughter for several seconds; there was a derisory edge to the innocent expression on her face.

  “And the wine, of course,” said Tyler a little tensely.

  “And the scenery,” added Colin.

  “These chicken legs are just great. You are the neatest cook,” she said to Delphine.

  At this, Delphine slowly unfurled herself; it was as if she came into bloom and Colin later remembered her sitting upright and smiling with gratification or maybe, in retrospect, with malice.

  “Would you pass me the potato?” she asked sweetly. She took the pan he handed to her and sniffed at it, and sniffed at it again. “Does it smell strange to you, grand-père?”

  She never called him grand-père; he should have been alerted. He took the pan back and sniffed it, shaking his head.

  “It smells fine to me.”

  Wide-eyed, Delphine turned to Tyler, “What do you think? It smells a little… Je ne sais quoi?”

  Tyler shrugged. “I didn’t put anything out of the ordinary in it,” but to oblige the child she leaned forward to sniff and as she did so, Delphine rammed the whole pan of mash right into her face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Living in a state of permanent anticipation was grinding Michael down, he felt as if he was trying to second guess his own second guesses. The hobbit shop was the worst: the whispering, the sudden noise to act as a diversion, the sleight of hand – what he had mended, broken; what he had lost, found; tires slashed, air released, rags stolen, washers missing. It was unrelenting. He couldn’t believe that Belfiore, his loose-lipped, heavy-limbed colleague on the bench, could be that adroit. He ended up suspecting everyone, even the kangas, who seemed to enjoy the sport. He didn’t think he’d get a single bicycle stripped down and rebuilt. He’d be repairing his own repairs until the end of time.

  “Fight back. Show ’em who’s boss.” Laroche was ruling pencil lines on a plain sheet of paper. “You don’t have to suck it up,” he looked at him darkly. “Unless of course you want to…”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “… maybe that’s your style.”

  “I don’t have a – style.”

  “’xactly. That’s your problem. Dunno how you’re going to manage when I’m gone.”

  “You’re no help. You’re not there.”

  “The Lord moves in a mysterious way.”

  “Are you going?” Michael asked with a pang of anxiety.

  “Trial coming up. All good things come to an end, Rosbif.”

  “I wish,” he said, “I wish.”

  After a moment, Laroche put his pencil and ruler down. He folded his arms and regarded Michael with a sardonic gaze that travelled the whole length of him. “I don’t think you did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed your missis wot you miss so much. Don’t think you did. Don’t think you’ve got the cojones. That’s c-o-j-o-n-e-s, but the j is silent – am I right?

  Tension jerked through Michael, the quick yank of it in every tendon. “You are right. The j is silent.”

  “You haven’t got the ’nads, the family jewels…”

  “It was a – a single moment. A loss of–”

  “The bean bags… the walnuts… the dangly bits… the spunk bunkers.”

  “Shut up, Laroche!”

  “Have you?”

  “Look, this is none of your fucking business.”

  “I said the moment I saw you, you wouldn’t – hurt – a – fly.”

  Michael took a breath but before he could protest, something was released inside him and he stopped anticipating, or trying to appease. Instead, he grabbed Laroche by the shoulders and hauled him upright. He didn’t hit him. He wanted to, but he didn’t. He shook him once, with all his might, and threw him back into the chair.

  “Enough,” he said.

  The room was full of compressed air. You could have heard a pin drop.

&nb
sp; Laroche was the first to exhale. “That’s how you do it,” he said wryly as he set himself straight, “Like that, but rougher, yeah?” He tugged his sweatshirt back into place, then picked up the ruler that had fallen on the floor. “Could try harder, but at least it’s a start.”

  ~~~

  There was a peculiar truce between them. The tiny space in their cell became prairie wide, the sparse furniture distant hides.

  “I don’t want to talk,” said Michael, when Laroche opened his mouth to speak, “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Laroche wouldn’t be deflected. “D’you think we’ll stay in touch?” he mused, “When I cross over to the other side? Postcards? That kind of thing. Letters home?”

  Straight away Michael thought of Étienne. Looking back, he could see that Étienne realised he couldn’t have his mother without him, but then he didn’t know what to do with him once he’d got him. They dropped each other pretty bloody quickly after his Mum died. He remembered saying goodbye to him after her funeral, and that weird embarrassment as both of them realised that they no longer had to give a toss about each other. They didn’t even send Christmas cards, after that.

  “Cross over?” he asked, to thaw the frost.

  “To the other side.”

  “You might get off.”

  “No chance.”

  “You might go back to the big wide world.”

  “No chance,” said Laroche.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “I will deal with you later,” Colin contained his anger as best he could, which was quite well in the circumstances. “Don’t even think of finishing your supper,” he said as his granddaughter reached for a chicken leg, moving with that tired languor which sulkiness can inspire. She froze at his words, holding the chicken leg in mid-air, before she let it drop from some height onto her plate.

  “It was a joke.”

  “I am going to apologise to Tyler and when I come back I expect to find you in your bed.”

  “It was just a joke, a trick,” her eyes, downcast, narrowed for a moment. “A trick that Papa taught me…”

  For once, he was unmoved. “She was our guest.”

  “I thought at least you could take a joke.”

  “After she bought those beads, as well. I can’t think what got into you.”

  With small, punishing gestures Delphine wiped her sticky fingers one at a time on her new dress, losing herself in the damage she was doing.

  Colin gritted his teeth. “I’m going to say sorry to Tyler. I’m going to do that first. And you are going to go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning, when both of us have had a chance to think about it.” He climbed off the boat, never a dignified operation even at the best of times. “I can’t imagine what got into you,” he repeated, too busy mastering his indignation to take in the riptide of unhappiness that flooded her face and then bleakly drained away.

  ~~~

  As Colin made his way along the quayside, his footsteps became slower and slower. The night air was alert to the instinctive arcs of starlings coming to roost in the branches of the chestnut trees which lined the river, and a sallow moon hung low above the city lending a nicotine stain to the sky. It made him think that he would give anything to have his one cigarette of the day to fortify himself against the scene which lay ahead. He felt for the packet squashed inside his pocket, then glanced back at the Dragonfly. The candles they had lit along the quay were guttering and going out; Delphine’s porthole was in darkness; the promise of the evening was quite extinguished. He sighed. Ahead of him the red prow of Sabrina Fair drowsed on the current. Stepping over the mooring line, he peered in at the nearest window.

  Tyler was wearing a different T-shirt. She was combing out her fringe, holding the hair close to the roots and tugging; uneven runnels of water coursed down her neck and over the private pallor of the skin behind her ear. When he tapped on the glass she jumped and then laughed to cover her sudden fright. It was an anxious laugh, as if she already knew she had revealed something of herself, more than she would have wished, without knowing exactly what. She chucked the comb onto the table and ran up the stairs, disappearing from one frame and appearing in another as she emerged onto the deck.

  “I’m sorry–”

  “I’m sorry–”

  As synchronised as the starlings still zinging overhead, they started and stopped at the same time.

  “No, no, I’m really–”

  “I didn’t mean to take–”

  “You go first–”

  She ran her fingers through her damp hair as if the thought of combing it had only just occurred to her. “I didn’t mean to take so long…”

  “I’m really sorry…”

  “… but the potato seemed to get everywhere…”

  “I was worried that it might have burnt your face…”

  “… and in the end I thought it was simpler to wash it out properly – it didn’t burn me – and then I couldn’t find a clean T-shirt.”

  “It must have been scalding hot.”

  “No, not really – I took so long mashing it!”

  “I can’t think what got into her – into Delphine.”

  “It was nothing. A childish prank – rather a good one, I must remember it.”

  “She’s just not like that–” Colin broke off, struck by the realisation that he didn’t know what she was like, not really. He knew her, and he didn’t know her at all: she was Michael’s child; her advent into his life a compensation for all that he had lost.

  “I was going to come back, but by the time I had found a T-shirt…”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have blamed you–”

  “… it seemed a little after the event. I thought you probably would have finished.”

  He craned his neck upwards. While they were talking the yellowing clouds wreathed themselves around the restless moon. The chestnut trees were hectic with skirmishing birds. “We never got started.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tyler was examining her hands, polishing the calluses on one of them with the tip of her finger as though this was an operation which required precision.

  “I sent her to bed,” he grimaced. “Without any supper.” With a twinge of guilt, he contemplated going back to his little boat and scooping the child up so that he could apologise for everything, for the whole damn lot, though he would hardly know where to begin. “I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  Tyler shrugged, “Well, you know best…”

  He pulled a groaning kind of face, straining all the muscles of sadness and uncertainty.

  “I think you’re great with her.” She was about to examine her hands again, but then she changed her mind. “So no one’s eaten that chicken?”

  He shook his head and then before he could stop himself, from some dark and ungovernable pit deep within, he blurted out, “Her mother died. A couple of months ago–”

  “Oh my God! I am so sorry to hear that.”

  He regretted it immediately, the need to explain.

  “I had no idea. I’m so sorry. So you’ve lost your – daughter?”

  “My son,” he answered shortly. “My son is Delphine’s father.”

  “I had no idea,” she apologised.

  “You weren’t to know – look, I could really do with a drink, I don’t know about you.”

  “To be honest, I could really do with some of that chicken and a bit of salad–”

  “Your salad!” he exclaimed, reminded of the wreckage of the evening.

  “But a drink would be cool too.”

  They looked at one another, weighing up the odds. “I could go and fetch some of the food. I’d ask you over to the Dragonfly, but…”

  “No, no, no. You fetch the food, that’s fine. I’ll open a bottle. Do you want red or white?” Tyler spoke in a rush, careful not to step on any conversational cracks which might appear.

  Minutes later, Colin edged his way up the gang plank balancing the huge bowl of salad and two plates of burnt chicken and unde
rcooked sausages, with a baguette tucked under his arm. “I thought you probably wouldn’t want any potato…”

  “Mash is definitely off the menu,” she struck a pose to hide her self-consciousness, then immediately felt embarrassed. “Shall we have it on deck? Or do you think…?

  “On deck is fine.”

  She looked at him keenly. “You don’t think that it might get… cold?”

  The bowls and plates weighed heavily in his arms. “You can always put on a jumper–”

  She nodded, as if that hadn’t occurred to her. She seemed fiercely preoccupied.

  He eased his arms into a more comfortable position, making the edges of the plates scrape together.

  “Lord of Lord City, let me help you. Look at you, standing there carrying everything still. What kind of a hostess am I?” She tried to take one of the plates, but they were balanced in such a way that she almost sent the whole supper crashing into the river. “I am such a klutz! I am so sorry!”

  He made it to the aft deck, just, and delivered the meal hugger mugger onto the table; some of the sausages falling to the floor and rolling beyond reach into the shadows.

  “I’ll have them for my lunch tomorrow.” She sat down warily and gestured for him to do the same. As soon as they had perched themselves at opposite ends of the bench, she jumped up and disappeared down the steps into the saloon.

  “The wine!” She reappeared with the bottle held like a trophy in both hands. “It’s an unpretentious little – I don’t know what!” Some of it found its way into his glass. She chased the drips across the label with her finger, which she wiped on her shorts. “It’s Burgundy, at any rate,” and before he could prepare himself she flopped back down, picked up her knife and fork and asked, “How did she die? Delphine’s mom? Is it OK for me to ask?”

  Some insects were going crazy around the candle on the table. He wondered if they were biters. Mosquitoes loved him; he always got bitten. He remembered shining a thousand watt torch up into the sky to reveal to Michael the night world of tiny winged things. He sat with his mouth half open ready to speak.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I don’t mean to…”