The Little Country

by Charles de Lint

  3.

  Felix wished he were back at sea.

  Mousehole, the closeness of its cottages and houses, its narrow streets and its sense of close-knit community, had none of its usual charm for him tonight. The lit windows behind which families went about their business were only reminders of what he didn’t have. The buildings appeared to lean towards him, making him feel claustrophobic. The noisy revelry inside The Ship’s Inn when he went by, the cheerful faces of its patrons, laughing and chatting as they kept one another company, was something he felt he’d never share.

  And in his loneliness, the sea called to him. As it always did. It was what had kept him sane the last time he and Janey had broken up.

  He walked past the harbour, listening to the tide murmuring, but even over its calming sound, all he could hear were Janey’s accusations, the grim set to the Gaffer’s voice, and Clare. Trying to explain it all away again.

  Clare.

  I just wish I’d known earlier you fancied girls with canes. . . .

  Oh, Clare, he thought. I never knew.

  He’d never seen past the friendship, past her warmth and gentle teasing, that he might have meant more to her than just a friend. But lost in his own anguish as he’d been, heart open and hurting, he’d been privy to her innermost longings in that one moment before she realized what she’d said and quickly covered it up.

  Why couldn’t he be like everyone else? Felix wondered, and not for the first time.

  It wasn’t just his stage fright that stood between Janey’s and his happiness. He knew that, subconsciously, a part of him sabotaged their relationship for fear that it would be no different from that of his own parents. That was why he never opened himself up completely‌—it wasn’t just the fear of ridicule.

  He’d never even told Clare that.

  And how kind had he been to her? How much of a friend? Writing, oh, yes, lots of long letters, but‌—never mind what he’d discovered tonight‌—all he seemed to do was lean on her, borrowing her strength because his love life wasn’t going well, and all the time she’d loved him. From afar, as it were. Talking him through his problems with no hope of her own needs being fulfilled. . . .

  He was outside of the village now, on the road to Newlyn and nearing the quarry. The sea still spoke to him and he made his way down the stairs by the old silos to the concrete wharf below by the sea where the ships used to dock to collect their loads of blue alvin stone. He put down his cases and Clare’s cane. Sitting on the edge of the wharf, he looked out across the water.

  What was he going to do with himself?

  Run away again? Because that was what he had done the last time. Never mind that he and Janey had called it quits. He’d been as much a part of their quarreling as Janey had, but the old adage was true. It took two to argue. And for all that he’d tried to see things through, to stay calm and keep the dialogue going, had he really tried hard enough? Or had he simply given up, leaned on Clare until even her support could no longer sustain him, then simply run away?

  He just didn’t know anymore.

  Why couldn’t he just fit into a normal nine-to-five slot, instead of traipsing all over the world, looking for a heart’s peace he was never going to find anyway? Marry, raise some kids, have friends in one place instead of scattered halfway across the planet. Not worry about whether he was going to turn out to be the same kind of a shit as his parents had been, just carry on with life. Not worry about playing on stage, just keep the music as a hobby. . . .

  But, of course, it wasn’t that simple. Nothing was. And no one’s life was free of complications.

  How many times hadn’t he listened to friends, tied down to some office job by their mortgages and families, thinking he was such a lucky stiff for being footloose and free? How many times hadn’t he heard about lost loves, and might-have-beens and if-onlys from them? What was so different between them and him? It was only details.

  The woman he loved hated him, as did her grandfather.

  He had some secretary-cum-struggling-actress interested in him because her boyfriend had dumped her and she was bored.

  A woman he’d thought of as his best friend had been hiding romantic feelings for all these years.

  The one thing he did well‌—playing music‌—was denied him as a career because he was too much of a chickenshit to fight a little stage fright.

  He worked in a thankless job with no future, because the freedom of movement it gave him kept him from making too many lasting ties and the sea was the only thing that kept him sane. . . .

  He was no more screwed up than anybody. He just hadn’t learned how to deal with it properly. Other people’s problems? He was always willing to listen and was all too good at handing out advice that could solve them if they only gave what he offered a try. His own? Don’t think about them seemed to be his motto, and maybe they’ll just go away.

  But they never did.

  They just got worse.

  They got so bad that no matter where you turned, something was screwing up.

  Felix watched the lights of a boat go by across the bay.

  That was him, alone in the darkness. But didn’t it only take his coming out into the light to make all his troubles go away? Wouldn’t that at least be a start?

  He just couldn’t think about it anymore. Not right now.

  He couldn’t go back to Mousehole, to either the Gaffer’s where he wasn’t welcome anyway, or to Clare’s where he was perhaps too welcome. Neither did he want to go into Penzance where Lena was sitting bored and alone in her hotel room.

  Instead, he tried to give the sea an opportunity to calm the turmoil in him. That’s what worked best. When he had the late watch on ship, or when he was in a place like this‌—that secret territory between sea and shore‌—he could almost step outside of himself and become part of some hidden otherworld where time moved differently and the familiar became strange. Then he understood how the sailors of old could have seen mermaids and sea serpents and ghost ships, how they could hear a music in the waves that could only be the beckoning of sirens.

  For there was a music in the sea that Felix could hear at times like this. Not the obvious music of wave on shore, rattling stones on shingle beaches, waves lapping quietly against wharf and pilings, breakers thundering in desolate coves. But another, more exotic music that went deeper. That had its source in the hidden lands undersea and came to the ears of men from how it echoed with the movement of their heart’s blood, rather than by physically vibrating against their eardrums. A music that called up tunes from his own fingers, to join its singular measures.

  He reached behind him and took his button accordion from its case, setting it on his knee while he undid the bellows straps. It was a vintage three-row Hohner that he’d bought in a little shop in the old part of Quebec City. Its grillwork was battered, the instrument’s casing scratched and worn, the bellows repaired so often they probably didn’t have a bit of original material left to them. But the action on the buttons was still perfect, the reeds were true, and he’d yet to run across an instrument he fancied more, though the opportunity had come up often enough.

  Felix loved rummaging about in old music shops, loved tracing the history of a particular box, or even just the instrument in general. Its origin was fascinatingly peculiar, coming about by happenstance rather than design.

  A cousin to the mouth organ, the accordion was a free-reed instrument that was invented by a German named Christian Buschmann in the course of his development of the mouth-blown instrument. He produced a device that had twenty reeds on a brass table, powered by a leather bellows, which he called a “hand-aeoline.” Further improvements were made by Demian of Vienna in 1892, who coined the name “accordion,” but the first serious commercial production of diatonic accordions, or melodeons, was the work of the M. Hohner harmonica factory, situated in the Black Forest’s Trossingen some fifty years later.

  Felix had often suffered the ignorance of those unfamiliar with the instru
ment to whom the word “accordion” conjured up painful versions of “Lady of Spain”‌—a far cry from the music that Felix and his peers played. Those same souls, once they heard what could be done with both the piano and button accordion in traditional music, were, more often than not, won over with only a few tunes. And they were surprised at the instrument’s heritage.

  For before zydeco and rock ‘n’ roll, before Lawrence Welk and Astor Piazzolla, the “squeeze box” was being used in traditional music‌—to accompany Morris dancers in England and clog dancers in Quebec and on the Continent, and to give an unmistakable lift to the jigs and reels of Ireland and Scotland. Without the pedigree of the harp, the flute, the fiddle, or the various kinds of bagpipes, it had still developed a surprisingly large number of virtuoso players who were only just beginning to be acknowledged as some of the finest proponents of the folk tradition.

  Their music could make the heart lift, the foot tap, and, as Felix had found so often, bring consolation to him when he was feeling depressed. The only thing better than listening was playing.

  He slipped one shoulder strap over his right shoulder; the other went over the biceps of his left arm. Thumbing down the air-release button, he opened the bellows and ran through an arpeggio of notes, fingers dancing from one row to another as he went up and down the three-row fingerboard. He didn’t touch the accompaniment buttons, just played a freeform music with his right hand to loosen up his fingers.

  Then, still looking out across the choppy waters of the bay, he let the secret music hidden in its dark water mingle with the jumble and confusion inside him and he began to play.

  It was a plaintive, disconsolate music that he called up that night. It neither cheered him nor eased his problems. All it did was allow him the expression of his sorrow and cluttered thoughts so that he could at least face them with a clearer mind.

  The wounds of his heart ran too deep for an easy cure; healing would take more than music.

  Two hours later, he finally set his instrument aside. A surreal calm touched him as he stored the accordion back into its case and then slowly rose to his feet.

  He knew what he had to do now.

  He would drop the cane off with Lena, but that was as far as he’d let her complicate his life. Then he’d go. He needed money, needed a job. But this time when he worked the ships, he’d save his money. He wouldn’t moon over what was lost, or what couldn’t be. He’d look ahead to what could be. He’d finally do something with himself; face life, rather than avoiding it.

  Thinking of Janey still hurt‌—would always hurt, because it was impossible to simply put her aside as if she’d never had any importance‌—but he couldn’t let his need for her continue to steer the course of his life.

  And he would come back.

  To Penwith. To Mousehole. Because he wouldn’t let what couldn’t be with her affect his friendship with Clare and Dinny and the others he knew in the area.

  Not anymore.

  Easy to say, he thought as he gathered up his duffel bag and slung it to his shoulder.

  He picked up his accordion case and Clare’s cane and started back up the stairs to the road that would take him into Penzance. He paused at the top to look back towards Mousehole. The village was mostly dark now. Above him the clouds let fall the first misty sheet of a drizzle that would probably continue throughout the night. His chest was tight again as he turned from the village and started to walk away.

  His hard-won resolutions clotted like cold porridge inside him, sticking to one another in a tangle that no longer made the sense he’d thought he’d resolved them into only a few moments ago. It was all he could do to not turn around and go back.

  Goddamn it, Janey, he thought. Why couldn’t you have just listened for a change?

  There was a wet sheen on his cheeks as he steeled himself to continue down to Penzance. Most of it was due to the light drizzle that accompanied him on his way.

  But not all.

  4.

  All Janey wanted to do after the Gaffer had sent Felix off was crawl away and die. A numb, sick feeling settled over her. She sat slumped in an easy chair by the hearth, her arms wrapped around the Dunthorn book as though it were a life ring that would keep her from drowning. She stared at Jabez washing himself on the throw rug by her feet, not really seeing the cat, not really aware of anything except for the emptiness that had lodged inside her.

  It was really true, she thought. You never knew what you wanted until you lost it.

  She started when the Gaffer laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t blame yourself, my gold,” he said. “It was none of your fault.”

  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  The Gaffer sighed. Giving her shoulder a squeeze, he went over to his own chair and sat down, the same unhappy look in his features.

  “But who would have thought,” the Gaffer began. He shook his head. “He seemed the best of men. . . .”

  “He‌—he wasn’t always . . . like this. . . .” She couldn’t go on.

  “No, my love,” the Gaffer agreed. “I do suppose what hurts the most is being three scats behind to find out just what sort of a man he’d become since last we saw him.”

  Janey nodded again. There should have been some hint, shouldn’t there? she thought. Surely a bloke couldn’t change that much without it showing somehow? But he’d been just the same old Felix‌—the little she’d seen of him.

  Bloody hell. Why did he have to go and do it?

  To be fair, she had no claim on his heart. What he did with his love life was his own business, for all that it hurt. But to betray their trust by siding with those who were basically trying to rob Billy’s grave. . . .

  “We’ll have to hide that book again,” the Gaffer said, as though he were reading her mind.

  “I‌—I just want. . .”

  The Gaffer nodded. “You go ahead and finish it, my queen. But then it has to go away.”

  Trust things to go all awful like this, Janey thought. It had just been too perfect to last. Finding the book, Felix coming back, the reporter from Rolling Stone wanting to do a piece on her. . . . Trust it to turn all horrible. It was the story of her life. Surely she should have learned by now: Don’t get too happy, or someone would come along and pull the carpet out from under her. Like bloody Alan making a mess of their upcoming tour. Like Felix arriving to wake a promise in her heart, only to stab her in the back.

  She just wished she could feel angry instead of so lost.

  “I have to go to bed,” she said.

  “Sleep in my room,” the Gaffer said. “I don’t want you next door on your own.”

  “I. . . I’ll be all right. . . .”

  “It’s not your heart I’m thinking of, my gold; it’s these bloody vultures out to pick Billy’s bones. Best we stick together, you and I.”

  “All right,” Janey said.

  Still clutching the book, she went up to his room. She didn’t bother to undress, just crawled under the comforter where she curled up in a fetal position and tried not to think. When Mike called a little later, she asked the Gaffer to tell him that she was sick and couldn’t speak to him.

  “Maybe you should see him,” the Gaffer said. “It might take your mind off things.”

  “I‌—I can’t see anyone, Gramps.”

  “Perhaps it’s too soon,” he agreed.

  Any time, period, was going to be too soon, Janey thought as he went back downstairs. Oh, Felix, why did you have [to] come back? I was doing just fine not remembering you until I saw you again yesterday.

  She tried sleeping, to no avail. All she could do, when she wasn’t crying, was lie there in the dark and stare up at [the] ceiling. When she heard the doorbell ring downstairs, she [sat] up in bed, half hoping it was Felix, half dreading it. But when the visitor spoke, asking for her, she recognized Clare’s voice and let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. A pang of disappointment cut across her relief.

  “Sh
e’s not feeling well, my heart,” she heard her grandfather say.

  “She’s still going to see me,” Clare replied, “and you’re both going to listen to me. Pardon my rudeness, Mr. Little, but you and Janey have been acting like a pair of twits tonight and I’m not leaving until I talk some sense into the both of you.”

  Janey burrowed back under the comforter. She couldn’t face Clare’s well-meaning, but this time misguided, attempts at getting her and Felix to reconcile. Not tonight.

  “Now see here, you,” the Gaffer began.

  “No,” Clare interrupted him. “You will listen to me.” Louder, she called up the stairs: “Janey! I know you’re here. Will you come down on your own or do I have to go up and drag you down here?”

  Couldn’t she be left alone with her grief?

  “Janey!”

  “I don’t know rightly what’s got into you, Clare Mabley,” the Gaffer said, “but if you don’t leave off your shouting, I’ll‌—”

  “You’ll what? Call the police to come take me away? Go on and do it then, but I’ll still have my say before they arrive.”

  “You don’t understand,” the Gaffer tried to explain. “What happened with Felix was‌—”

  “No, you don’t understand.” Again a loud cry up the stairs: “Janey!”

  Was the whole world going mad? Janey wondered. First Felix betraying them, now Clare carrying on, sounding angrier than Janey had ever heard her before.

  “Janey!”

  “You’ll stop that shouting!” the Gaffer cried back.

  Janey dragged herself out of bed. Still hugging the Dunthorn book to her chest, she shuffled out into the hall and stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at the pair of them. The Gaffer had gone all red in the face. Clare stood by the door, an equally angry look in her own features.

  “Please don’t fight,” Janey said.

  They turned like guilty children, then they both tried to speak at once.