Courting Shadows

by Jem Poster

  ‘How long have we been working together, Mr Stannard?’

  ‘Working together? You’ve been in my employment for nearly two months.’

  If he appreciated the point of my precise and deliberate phrasing, he gave no sign of it.

  ‘Long enough for us to take a drink together, would you suppose?’

  The suggestion was thoroughly inappropriate, and I was about to make my view of the matter as clear as politeness allowed when I felt his grip tighten. He leaned closer, speaking into my ear with a more overtly menacing intimacy.

  ‘You’ll come for a drink with me, Mr Stannard, and meet my friends.’

  It was less an invitation than a command. I looked down the deserted lane.

  ‘As you like,’ I said cautiously. ‘Perhaps I could spare half an hour.’

  Thinking about it afterwards, I wondered what would have happened if, on reaching the door of the Black Dog, I had simply continued walking. Isolated and backward as it was, the village was not, after all, a lawless corner of the world, and Harris, even in his cups, would doubtless have recognized, had I chosen to assert it, the authority conferred on me by birth and breeding. But his hand was still at my elbow, and it seemed easiest, all things considered, to submit to its pressure.

  The snug was full of smoke: smoke from the pipes of men seated around the battered tables, and from the sulky fire which, as we entered, released an acrid cloud into the room. Harris closed the door behind us and made his way purposefully, if a little unsteadily, to one of the tables. I followed, uncomfortably aware of being watched.

  ‘There’s room for you there, Mr Stannard.’ He motioned me through to a small space at the end of the wall-bench before easing himself on to a high-backed chair opposite me.

  ‘Two of the usual.’

  He had hardly raised his voice and seemed to be talking to no one in particular, but two large mugs of ale duly appeared and were set before us. I reached for my purse but he put out a rough hand and laid it on my wrist.

  ‘There’s no need. I’ll pay for these.’

  ‘It’s very good of you.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do after all you’ve done for the village.’

  His face was almost expressionless, his voice neutral, so that I looked in vain for evidence of the sarcasm I suspected. Nor was there any response from those around us: all eyes were turned now towards the end of the table, where an old man had just begun to sing in a cracked, tuneless voice. Harris leaned forward confidentially.

  ‘You’ll appreciate this, Mr Stannard.’

  It seemed hardly likely. The old man was apparently in the advanced stages of inebriation or mental decay and his song made little sense to me, though I quickly realized that it was of an indecent nature. His neck, thrust forward by some degenerative disease, swayed from side to side like that of a tortoise; his eyes were half closed in what might have been either ecstasy or stupor, and the words dropped slurred from his toothless mouth. Every so often the man on my left would take up the refrain, and then I heard more clearly.

  Oh, she try to get up, get up, get up

  But he keep on pegging her down.

  I was drinking quickly, hoping to be able to leave as soon as I had finished; but as I drained the last of the ale, Harris raised his arm high in the air, glanced over his shoulder and called for more.

  ‘Thank you, Harris, but I don’t think I’ve time for another.’

  The young man sitting next to him wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stared hard at me. There was something vaguely familiar, I thought, about the set of his mouth, his prominent cheekbones, the nervous challenge of his gaze.

  ‘Arthur might take it amiss,’ he said, ‘if you were to leave while he was singing.’

  The idea that I might have to spend the entire evening there out of respect for the old man’s sensibilities was at once repellent and absurd, but this was clearly no time to voice my opinion. My mug was refilled; I lifted it and drank.

  Whatever she do, whatever she say

  He just keep on pegging her down.

  The song came to an end at last in a burst of laughter and applause. Harris sat back ruminatively for a moment and then draped his arm clumsily across the young man’s shoulders.

  ‘This is Daniel,’ he said. ‘You’ll like Daniel.’

  His voice was thick now, the words indistinct. Daniel wriggled uncomfortably, his thin body huddled over the table as though the weight of Harris’s arm were insupportable.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by his looks. He seems no more than a boy but he’s got the heart of a man twice his size. Or even’ – he paused, breathing heavily – ‘the heart of two men twice his size.’

  He laughed loudly, but I noticed that there was no answering laughter from those around us. The man on my left shifted his bulk uneasily on the bench.

  ‘He knows what’s right,’ Harris continued inconsequentially, ‘and he knows what’s wrong. And when something’s wrong …’ He appeared to lose his thread; his arm dropped and he sat back, staring at the ceiling. ‘When something’s wrong,’ he repeated hazily, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong,’ said the man beside me. ‘You just drink up and let the lad alone.’

  His words seemed to reanimate Harris.

  ‘There’s a difference between right and wrong,’ he said. ‘He knows it’ – he gestured slackly towards Daniel – ‘and I know it. Do you know the difference, Mr Stannard?’

  I could see that he was beyond the point of rational or even coherent discourse, but it was obviously important to keep matters on a more or less civilized footing. I bit back my anger and attempted a smile.

  ‘I think we all know the difference between right and wrong, Harris. Whether our actions are invariably informed by that knowledge is another matter, but speaking for myself, I’m well aware of my moral responsibilities and I’ve always sought to discharge them to the best of my ability.’

  Harris glanced sideways.

  ‘What do you think of that, Daniel?’

  ‘I think they’re fine words, but …’ Daniel faltered, flushing deeply so that I noticed for the first time the wrinkled indeterminate patch of scar tissue above his left eyebrow, pale against the surrounding skin. His mouth worked soundlessly as though something were jamming his throat. The man at my side leaned towards him.

  ‘You be careful now, Daniel,’ he said. ‘Don’t go getting yourself into trouble again.’

  ‘Let him speak,’ growled Harris.

  ‘No harm in that,’ I said. ‘I’m willing to hear what the lad has to say.’

  Daniel glared at me. ‘I’ll tell you what I have to say,’ he muttered, ‘with or without your leave.’ He was trembling now, hunched into himself, gripping the edge of the table with his right hand. ‘What I say is, fine words come easy, but you gentlemen are all the same. You talk so high and mighty, but one sniff of what you’re really after and you’re down here in the sty with the rest of us.’

  Harris gave a snort of laughter. ‘Is that right, Mr Stannard? Has he got the measure of you?’

  ‘I’m not even sure that I know what he’s talking about. You must excuse me, Harris. I have to go.’

  I made to rise, but he lurched forward in his seat and placed a blunt finger on the rim of my mug.

  ‘You’ve not finished your ale yet,’ he said.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t the time.’

  ‘A man should always be able to make time for a drink with his friends.’ He looked round, as though for corroboration, before turning back to me. ‘Or perhaps we’re keeping you from other business, Mr Stannard. From one of your meetings. From one of your – how would you call them? – assignations.’

  I should have held my tongue; but in the taut silence that followed, it seemed to me that the whole company was waiting to hear me speak. I heard my own voice echoing through the room, small, hard and a little distant, as though it came from someone else’s mouth.

  ‘I
know what you’re insinuating, Harris. I know what you think you’ve seen. But I can tell you, quite categorically, that there’s nothing in it. Do you understand? Nothing at all.’

  Harris might have been talking to himself. ‘You hear that,’ he breathed, almost inaudibly. ‘Nothing, he says. He thinks it’s nothing.’

  The blow, delivered from a crouching position, could hardly have caused much damage even if it had connected. As it was, I saw it coming and jerked back out of range so that Daniel staggered against the table and had to put out his left hand to steady himself. His face, thrust towards mine, was a twisted mask of fury. His neighbour reached out to restrain him.

  ‘Easy, Daniel, easy.’

  ‘Easy be damned.’ He drew back and lunged at me again but the man had him by the lapel and pulled him sharply down so that he fell forward on to the table among the pots. The fellow on my left leaned over and bore down on his neck with both hands, preventing him from rising. Harris was staring at me, his face lit with an extraordinary expression of exultant malice.

  ‘You see what you’ve done now?’ he shouted. ‘See what you’ve done?’

  I pulled myself to my feet with what I hoped was a degree of dignity, but the ale, drunk too quickly and on an empty stomach, had gone to my head and I stumbled clumsily in my attempt to negotiate the space between the table and the wall. Somebody sniggered. Face down in the slops, Daniel stopped struggling and began to sob like a child. As I reached the door I looked back, surveying the scene with a sudden dizzying sense of detachment; then I stepped quickly out into the night.

  24

  I had not expected to see Harris again, but the man’s impudence evidently knew no bounds. I entered the church next morning to find him already there and hard at work, shovelling the scattered debris into a heap against the west wall. He looked up as I approached, acknowledging my presence with a perfunctory nod before returning to his task. It was, given the circumstances, an extraordinary display of nonchalance and I was tempted to imagine that over-indulgence had completely obliterated the events of the previous evening from his mind; but as I stood there debating how best to proceed, Harris himself brought those events into sharp focus.

  ‘I suppose I should apologize for the lad,’ he said. ‘He’d taken a drop or two more than was good for him.’

  That was, I realize in retrospect, the moment at which I should have taken decisive action. To have dismissed the man on the spot would have been the only appropriate response to a remark which, as I see it now, constituted an oblique and utterly inadequate apology for his own outrageous behaviour. But he led me off down some byway – Daniel’s unhappy childhood, unspecified but damaging influences on his subsequent development, the restlessness and mental instability that had prevented him from leading a normal adult life – and I lost the initiative. I was in any case weary of the business – not simply of my dealings with Harris, I mean, but of the whole miserable project – and I had no stomach for any action which might prolong it.

  ‘Get on with your work,’ I said. ‘I’ve no wish to discuss this matter, either now or at any time in the future. Is that understood?’

  I chose to interpret his shrug as a gesture of acquiescence.

  ‘Once you’ve cleared this,’ I said, ‘there’s another patch of rendering to be hacked away at the base of the wall there, just to the right of the door. I’ve marked out the affected area. I’ll be in the tower if you need me.’

  The timbers in the tower are fundamentally sound but I had noted in my original report that there was evidence of minor infestation on both floors and I felt it incumbent on me to carry out a more detailed survey, if only to reassure myself that the damage was as slight as it had initially appeared to be. I clambered up the ladder to the first floor and squatted down to examine the boards, running my fingers over the dusty surface, testing with my penknife for areas of weakness. No cause for concern there, I concluded, and I was about to climb to the second floor when I heard the south door grate open, the sound oddly distorted as it echoed up to me from the nave below.

  Her voice was distorted too, its edges softened and blurred so that it was a moment or two before I recognized it.

  ‘… thought I’d just look by and see how the work was going,’ I heard her say. And then Harris’s rumbling bass cutting in.

  ‘You’ve no business in here, Annie.’

  ‘Why not? I’ve as much business in here as anybody else. Anyway you can’t keep me out. Nobody’s allowed to close a church.’

  ‘Just while the work’s going on. The building’s not safe.’

  ‘I want to see Mr Stannard.’

  ‘Better you don’t, Annie.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  There was a long pause. I heard her footsteps move across the flags and stop beneath the tower. When she spoke again her voice was clearer and harder.

  ‘I said, is he here? I’ve a right to know.’

  Harris again, paternal, cajoling: ‘Listen, Annie, it’s for your own good …’ And then the girl crying out in sudden fury, sending the pigeons rocketing from the top of the tower: a sharp ‘oh’ – the flat of her hand striking the ladder below – followed by an angry tirade. It was hard to make sense of it all, wild and confused as it was, but the gist of it seemed to be that she was no longer a child, that she refused to be treated like one, that everyone had a right to a better life, that her own life had been lived in the shadows but that she was now, as she put it, going to walk in the light; and there was some vague threat, too, against those who conspired to cheat her of what she called her birthright. When she had finished ranting she began to sob.

  It would be unnatural in a man to remain unmoved in the face of such a display, but it was clear that it would have been in no one’s interests for me to have revealed myself at that point or, indeed, to have been discovered by her. It seemed best to distance myself as fully as I could from any such possibility, and with that end in view I began to climb the second ladder, testing each rung carefully before committing my full weight to it, listening for tell-tale creaks while the sound of sobbing dropped away behind me.

  It was a different world up there. The first stage had been kept more or less clean, presumably by the bellringers; but up at the top of the tower, standing on a litter of scattered twigs and straw, white bird-bones and crumbled mortar, I had an overwhelming sense of isolation from the reassuring routines of everyday life. There were the bells, of course; but if they spoke of anything at that moment, it was not of human ritual but of their own monumental stasis. And there was the wind.

  I have never experienced anything quite like it. I don’t mean its strength – I have been out in worse – but the sound of it. Or sounds; because what struck me as I stood there was the range of contending voices – the shrill intermittent whine from the partially obstructed light in the west wall, a whirring or rattling from somewhere in the rafters above, the softer bufferings from outside. And behind all that and, as it were, on some other level, a more mysterious note: a sweet, sustained singing, like a child’s treble but finer; not quite consistent in pitch but in some sense holding true against the comings and goings of those other, less ethereal voices, so that as I listened it seemed to foreground itself or, rather, to redefine itself as the delicate, inviolable centre of all that stir and noise.

  It was brighter there than below, too, the light entering freely through three of the four apertures and only partially hindered on the fourth side by an arrangement of crude slats jammed into the aperture, presumably as a baffle against the damp westerlies. The device had not been entirely successful and the boards lying closest to the wall would need, I decided on closer inspection, to be replaced; but in general the timbers seemed to be in a surprisingly good state of preservation.

  I took a few rough measurements and was just reaching into my pocket for my notebook when I heard the door crash shut below. I could see her in my mind’s eye, stepping from the porch into the blustering wind, lifting her tear-stained face t
o the sky and tossing back her curls before setting off down the path. I pictured her fastening the gate behind her and hurrying away down the lane; and if I felt, as I confess I did, a pang of regret at what I took to be an emblematic resolution of the affair, I was able to console myself with the reflection that no other outcome could have been seriously contemplated.

  And then I heard her call my name. Quite softly but unmistakably, the sound rising unimpeded from the churchyard below; a long note, almost as high and pure as that mysterious resonance at the heart of the wind. I dropped my notebook and pencil, scrambled to the aperture on the south side and looked down.

  She was standing among the gravestones, one hand cupped to her mouth, small and neat as a porcelain doll; I might, I felt, have reached out and taken her in my hand. As I watched she called again, this time more loudly; and her voice, purged by air and distance of its grosser undertones, seemed to prolong itself unnaturally, ringing round my narrow chamber like the chime of a struck wineglass. I leaned forward, and at that moment my body was convulsed by a wave of pain, a dark visceral pressure which, as I gasped for breath, surged up through my chest and throat. I almost cried out, but brought the unspeakable thing under control before it could betray me; before, I suppose I should say, I could betray myself.

  There is a history of heart disease in my family and I remember having been deeply impressed as a child by my uncle’s account of a near-fatal attack suffered in what most men would regard as the prime of life. It was, in the circumstances, natural that I should have experienced, as the pain receded, a momentary flutter of anxiety about my own condition. But as my pulse and breathing returned to something approaching normality, I turned back to Ann, now making her way diagonally towards the church across the wet grass, evidently still on the lookout for me but with a gaze so fiercely concentrated at her own level that I felt able, without fear of discovery, to lean forward over the sill and track her progress to the corner of the tower.