The Girl Green as Elderflower

by Randolph Stow

  Not long afterwards he was wakened again. A hand was pressing his hand, and pressing it to warm hairy flesh.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Silvester,’ cried John, ‘you int one of them, are you?’

  But by the dim glow of the brazier he saw what it was. The wild man, who appeared to be clasping John’s hand tenderly to his cheek, was in fact listening to his wristwatch.

  In the daytime, for the sake of his health, the wild man would be taken by John to one or other of the three turrets. From here they would look down on the church and village and the river with its boats; or over the marshes to the vague blue water and the misty loom of Orford Ness; or across the fields to the darkness of Tunstall forest. The wild man looked, saw everything, but showed nothing in his face.

  He was taken to the chapel, a pretty room, only marred by the graffito of some bored or pious soldier, who had printed on the wall: SUDDEN PRAYERS MAKE GOD JUMP. In the chapel he showed no sign of reverence, ignoring the images, merely staring puzzled at head-bowings and genuflections. The chaplain, who had had thoughts of preparing him for baptism, abandoned them.

  One night, while John was on guard in a turret and the wild man lay, as he always did as soon as night fell, in his straw, two clumsy figures climbed down a ladder into the dungeon. They were Corporal Snart and Robin, and both were drunk. They also chinked with hidden bottles, and Robin was carrying a rope.

  The wild man sat up in the straw and watched them, grey-eyed. He did not look afraid, but to Corporal Snart he conveyed fear most intensely, and the corporal was gratified.

  ‘How do, Silvester,’ he said. ‘I believe the time has come for us to have a little conversation.’

  The wild man began to leap up, but Robin bore him down on the straw. With the cord and a knife the corporal bound his wrists. Then he tied his ankles, and rose holding the long remnant of rope.

  ‘Give us a bunk-up, boy,’ he said. And when he was on Robin’s shoulders, he contrived to sling the rope over a hook in the vault.

  The wild man was slowly hauled by his ankles from the straw. He hung upside-down, his trailing hair just brushing the stone floor.

  ‘So you don’t go in for talking,’ said the corporal, lighting a cigarette. ‘Well, thass very interesting, scientifically. For my peace of mind I should rather like to know what kind of noise a merman make.’

  He approached his cigarette-end to the wild man’s armpit. There was a stench of hair, and then of burning flesh.

  When Robin stooped to look at the wild man’s face, he saw that his teeth were set in a straight white grin.

  ‘Nothing to say?’ asked the corporal. ‘Well, we got plenty of time. One thing I don’t like, Silvester, and thass foreigners swamping the country. I mean, wild men and mermen and such—what are they doing here? Thass what Sir Oswald Mosley say, and he’s a proper educated gent, and married into a family that’s right ubiquitous. I went to Capetown once, and it was full of fucking niggers. It int right. And I don’t like you hanging there, Silvester, wearing our English britches, when you know you never sin a pair of britches before you leave that undersea slum where you was spawned. So I think, Silvester, I’m going to have them English britches off you. Yes,’ said the corporal, producing a knife, ‘I claim them for the King.’

  The merman hung naked, the slashed jeans on the floor by his dangling hair.

  ‘Well, Silvester,’ said the corporal, puffing at his cigarette, ‘it do seem that you burn like a human being. But a human being, it appear to me, ought to speak English. So I’m going to give you a little lesson in English, Silvester. I do hear there int nothing make a man speak English so fluent as a lighted fag-end on the goolies.’

  When the fire bit into his scrotum the wild man screamed. But the scream was quite silent.

  Robin, his face unreadable, swigged off the last of his barley wine. He stood studying the pretty label.

  ‘Give me that,’ said the corporal, reaching out. ‘Less see how he like a bottle up his bottle.’

  With the brown glass protruding from his anus, the wild man screamed continuously. His mouth was a great pink cave behind his white teeth. But out of that cave no sound emerged.

  The corporal came from behind him and squatted to see his face. With his rump turned towards the wild man, he put down his head to see him right way up.

  There was suddenly a tearing sound. Through a rent in the corporal’s trousers, the wild man’s teeth were sunk into his buttock.

  The corporal sprang up, bleeding. He rushed to the brazier, and rammed the poker into the coals.

  ‘Er—corp,’ Robin said. ‘No, boy.’

  But the furious, pig-eyed corporal swung about with the glowing poker.

  From the floor many feet above him John launched himself into air. He staggered, but recovered. His sword was in his hand.

  ‘Drop that, Snart,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, I shall have your fucking hand off.’

  The corporal raised the poker, but the nearness of the sword made him think again. He threw the poker with a clang on to the stone floor under the brazier.

  ‘Something tell me, Private Westoft,’ he said, ‘reading the tea-leaves, like, that there might be a court-martial in the offing.’

  John’s hot face and blazing blue eyes, his generous fury, made him almost handsome. ‘I should wholly enjoy that,’ he said. ‘Then me and the Constable might have a little chat. Like about why young Harry Bury have a nervous breakdown and get invalided out.’

  The corporal’s expression became fiercely still. ‘What do you mean, Westoft?’

  ‘What I mean,’ John said, ‘is I know what happen to Harry Bury. That you and that fucking sergeant hold his head down the fucking garderobe while you bugger him. Thass what I mean.’

  ‘Hey, John,’ Robin said. ‘Easy, John.’

  ‘And you int much fucking better,’ John said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with you. If you hang about with this turdburglar much longer you’ll end up as big a cunt as what he is.’

  ‘Hey, John,’ Robin said again.

  ‘Piss off,’ John said. ‘This is our place, Silvester’s and mine. If you int up that ladder in five seconds you shall find yourself with a hole in a surprising place.’

  The dark youth went, but the corporal hovered bristling at the foot of the ladder. ‘I int finished with you, Westoft.’

  ‘Thass kind of inconvenient,’ John said, ‘because I never been so finished with anybody as you. My advice to you, Snart, is stick your National Front up your national backside. If it come to reading tea-leaves, I can do a bit of that myself. What England’s going to do to you lot is what Silvester do to raw fish, and that won’t be pretty, but by Christ, I shall laugh like a drain. And don’t you forget, Snart, fatal accidents happen in the Army, even to NCOs.’

  The corporal looked again at the sword, and went in furious silence, at a dignified speed, up the ladder.

  With his sword John hacked through the rope binding the wild man’s wrists. When the wild man could stand on his hands, John freed his feet and helped him to the straw.

  The wild man’s face had no expression, but on each cheek was one tear, as still as if frozen.

  ‘That was bad,’ John muttered, flopping beside him. ‘That was bad, Silvester.’ He dug into the straw for his transistor and switched it on.

  The wild man sat up, and put a hand on John’s right ankle.

  ‘You don’t miss much,’ John said, ‘I’ll say that for you, Silvester. Yeh, I sprain it, I reckon.’ He watched the wild man’s clever fingers unlace his boot, and felt the strong hairy fingers massaging.

  Suddenly he rolled on his side and switched the wireless to full volume.

  ‘Sorry, lads,’ the disc-jockey was saying, ‘not Awful, I meant to say Orford Castle, where we have a request from Private John Westoft, hullo there, John, who wants us to play a number for his friend Silvester, hullo there, Silvester, and it’s not so young as it was, but oh so true, so here for you, Silvester, with cheers from John, sung by th
e original cast of South Pacific, here’s “There Is Nothing Like A Dame”.’

  The wild man had recognized the name of Orford, and his own name, and John’s. He listened with eyes wide and intent, his lips parted over his teeth, while automatically his fingers worked on John’s ankle. When the music ended, he sighed without a sound.

  ‘Well, Silvester and John,’ said the disc-jockey, ‘over there in Orford Castle, I hope that didn’t give you any ideas, and if it did, well, mind how you go. Now we have a card from André Dupont in Brussels...’

  John turned the volume down again, and looked at the wild man with huge satisfaction. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that wipe away the tears, dinnit?’

  The wild man’s face was anguished with silence. Never before had he so visibly ached to speak. He lifted John’s foot and bent his head and kissed it.

  ‘Oh shit,’ John said, jerking his leg away. He switched off the transistor. ‘Right, that’s it. Lights out.’

  The wild man rustled across the straw and lay down at a discreet distance. He turned his back on John and curled up like a miserable foetus.

  ‘Fucking Army,’ John muttered. ‘Oh, this fucking Army.’

  The nearness of that hurt presence, whose emotions he could so often divine, oppressed him. He said: ‘Thass all right, Silvester. I mean, different countries, they have different customs. I mean, if General De Gaulle kiss me, I wouldn’t dial 999. Ah, the hell with it,’ he concluded his argument, and reaching out an arm tousled the wild man’s hair. ‘I’d sooner have you than a golden Labrador, straight up I would. Goodnight.’

  Not long afterwards Corporal Snart died of tetanus. The cause, it was given out, was sitting down upon a wholly unforeseeable wool-comb.

  The chaplain, though he had established no closer relationship with the wild man than a genial silence, continued to seek him out, in the dungeon or on one of the turrets to which he was escorted daily to take the air. Standing beside him one day on the west turret, watching how the man’s eyes dwelt on the sea, he murmured: ‘Yes, Silvester, I know no reason why you should not sometimes enjoy that element which is yours, after all.’

  In the evening the chaplain went to the upper hall, where the Constable and his family had ordained a blaze against the autumn chill. ‘I should like,’ he said, taking the stool which they cordially offered to him, ‘to discuss the merman, for I am sure now that that is what he is.’

  ‘You have discovered something new?’ asked the Constable’s lady.

  The priest opened a book on his black knee, and ran an eye over the lines of his own meticulous writing. ‘I have discovered,’ he said, ‘the case of Nicholas Pipe.’

  ‘Pipe,’ repeated the Constable. ‘Odd sort of name for a merman.’

  ‘The name,’ said the priest, ‘is possibly a corruption of Piscis, or fish, though Papa is also heard. This very recent case is reported from the realm of King William II of Sicily. He was a man exactly like any other man in all his members, but for a month or a year he could live under the sea with the fish, without breathing, yet unharmed. He was a great friend to sailors, and when he sensed a storm he would warn them not to leave harbour, or if they were already at sea would urge them to put back. He asked nothing of them in return but gifts of oil, to enable him, when he was on the surface, to peer into the depths. An odd thing, which my informant does not understand, is that when he was going undersea to make a long stay he would take with him pieces of iron torn from carts, or horse-shoes, or worn-out pots from kitchens.

  ‘At the request of the King he once descended into the whirlpools of Scylla and Charybdis, and reported that under the sea in that place was a great deep, with mountains and valleys, woods and fields, and trees bearing acorns. Though I have no reason which I could defend, I believe that that place was his own kingdom, and a rich one, and poor only in iron, which he therefore begged from the men on land.

  ‘One peculiarity of Nicholas Pipe, or Cola Pesce, is that he could not live out of sight and smell of the sea. When he was taken any distance from it, his breath seemed to fail him. And this characteristic had, I grieve to say, tragic consequences. Not long ago King William, wanting to show him to an important guest, ordered him to be brought to court. The unfortunate Cola resisted, with the result that soldiers dragged him away by force, and in consequence of his separation from the sea he died in their hands.’

  ‘Oh, poor Cola Pesce,’ murmured Lucy.

  ‘Our own merman,’ continued the priest, ‘looks continually at the sea with the greatest yearning. I myself, bearing in mind the case of Cola, have no doubt that he could speak if he chose. What is required from us, I believe, is a mark of particular kindness, confidence and friendship. I therefore suggest that Silvester, as Dame Alicia has so imaginatively named him, be given the freedom of the haven.’

  The Constable gazed among the blazing logs, and thought. ‘There is, of course,’ he remarked, ‘the security angle. The man’s possible usefulness to the King is incalculable. But yes, padre, I shall give the matter my fullest consideration. And,’ he added, with a wry glance aside, ‘it goes without saying, Dame Alicia’s.’

  On a misty morning Reynold the Fisher’s preparations were complete. Below the village, attached to stout poles, a triple line of nets cut off the haven from the sea.

  Every inhabitant of the castle, except for two sentries, went in procession to the water. The Constable was there, with his lady and Lucy and Amabel. Before them, between John and big Reynold Fisher, walked the wide-eyed merman.

  At the water’s edge, the three got into Reynold’s little boat. When the big man had rowed to mid-channel, and rested on his oars, the merman stood up and looked at John with a puzzled, beseeching grin.

  ‘Thass okay, Silvester,’ John said, and gave his bosom-friend a light shove. With scarcely a splash, the merman vanished.

  He was gone a long time, and when he emerged once more he was between the first net and the second. A roar of disapproval, and of discomfiture, went up from the soldiers.

  ‘There seems,’ remarked the Constable to the second lieutenant, ‘to have been a cock-up.’

  ‘Come back, Silvester,’ John bawled from the boat. ‘You int supposed to be there.’

  Supporting himself with one hand on the first net, the merman smiled joyously at the spectators, and gave them a two-fingered sign.

  ‘Well, really,’ murmured the Constable’s lady, standing with the chaplain on the drab, misty shore.

  ‘Other lands, other manners,’ observed the priest apologetically.

  ‘I say, Silvester,’ John yelled, red-faced, ‘that int very nice, boy.’

  With his white, elated grin, the merman repeated the sign to his friend, and submerged.

  He next appeared between the second net and the third. Then he was beyond the third net, swimming freely among the flotilla of little boats which had turned out to watch him.

  To every shout, to every objurgation, he returned the same grin and the same two-fingered sign.

  The chill day wore on. The military returned to the castle. Then the fishermen gave up, and went to their moorings. Only Reynold and John were left.

  ‘Well, thass it,’ said John, with a heavy face. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ Reynold said. ‘I know what it is, I been in the Army myself. You make a friend, then you lose him. Thass Army life.’

  ‘I don’t seem to fancy it,’ John said. ‘No, thank you, boy, I’m orfft.’

  When he went to the dungeon to retrieve his radio from its hiding place in the straw John felt like crying, and did go so far as to sniff.

  It was after nine at night, when Roger, who had formerly been John’s best friend, was on guard inside the portcullis, that that taciturn man was shocked into words. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ he said, and began to shout.

  In the great hall, hearing the commotion below and the raising of the portcullis, the Constable got up irritably from before the fire and went to the head of the steps. ‘What’s goin
g on down there?’ he demanded. ‘Soldier—is that you, Westoft?—what’s all this racket?’

  But John said nothing, merely bounded up the steps into the hall. Close behind him, still glistening from the sea, was the merman.

  ‘Silvester!’ exclaimed the Constable’s lady. ‘So you’ve rejoined us.’ And she and the little girls came to welcome him. But though his nudity seemed to pass unnoticed with them, there was nevertheless a slight coolness in the air, and the merman, sensing it, let the white grin die in his wet beard. The two-fingered sign had not been forgotten by Dame Alicia.

  Nor was the Constable altogether forgiving. The brazier was taken from the dungeon that night, the ladder raised, and John no longer slept there. About that, John was in two minds. He knew his old bedfellow’s fear of being abroad after dark, and better than anyone else understood what it had cost him to return. But the insulting gesture made towards himself had caused him offence far deeper than the lady’s, and he thought that the merman needed a lesson in manners.

  So the merman from that time lay alone in the straw, which was never changed. Sometimes his fingers moved as if he were enjoying a tune from the radio. Sometimes he heaped up straw in the shape of his friend’s sleeping body, and before sleeping himself he patted its head.

  There came a day when John and Roger had leave in Woodbridge, and at the proper time Roger returned alone. To inquiries about Private Westoft, the silent older soldier merely said that he had ‘lorst ’im’.

  John returned two days late. Taken before the Constable, his only explanation was: ‘She was worth it.’

  ‘I hope you’ll continue to think so,’ said the Constable. ‘Mr Clare, make arrangements for that man to be flogged.’

  The flogging took place below the mound, before all the castle’s company. Among them was the merman. His face showed no expression, but on each cheek was one unmoving tear.

  That night John came back to the now freezing dungeon, to the wet and stinking straw. John could not stop shivering. The merman prepared him a bed in the driest corner, heaped straw over him, and on top laid his own warm body, which never suffered from cold. But through the straw he felt his friend still quivering, as if in the throes of malaria.