by Xan Brooks
From a distance, Artemis calls her name. She turns and sees that the Scarecrow has outstripped his companions. Here he comes, a lanky shape on the darkened field.
“Leave me alone.” But she’s not up to running and he overtakes her with ease.
“I told you I’m alright. Can’t I walk in peace?”
He matches her stride. “You’ve been taking too much of that stuff. And you’ve been drinking too much. You’re all over the place. A good amount of the time you don’t make much sense.”
“What do you care? It’s none of your business.”
“I do care. That’s why I’m telling you.”
She rounds on the Scarecrow, properly furious now. “You don’t care. You don’t like us. You just like to fuck us. And the oldies don’t like us, they just wanted us fucked. I know that very well – am I making sense to you now? And Edith was right, that’s the worst of it. Edith was right – you’re all horrible.” Can it be that she is suffering with a cold? It seems that each time she breathes out she blows balloons of wet snot.
He says, “Lucy, it was wrong. The whole thing was wrong. There is no excuse for it. That’s why I stopped.”
She laughs in his face. “Oh jolly well done. Well done to you. Will you be wanting another medal for that?”
She dearly hopes that he will leave her, but he elects to keep pace. In the black field the sheep loom like apparitions. This is their land and they are comfortable in it. But they step silently aside to allow the walkers to pass.
At length the Scarecrow says, “Look at us, Lucy. It might be hard to believe but we are all young men still. We had wives, we had families. We all had big plans. Now all that’s left is a kind of crippled half-life.”
“Fuck off back to your families then. You can be their problem for a change.”
“I don’t want to be a problem. I don’t want to have her help me in and out of my clothes. Tell me it’s alright. Force herself to look at my face. I don’t want that. I couldn’t do it.”
“Ha,” says Lucy. “You’re not heroes, you’re cowards. I don’t like you one bit.” She definitely has a cold. She blows out more mucus. “Edith was right,” she says raggedly. “Edith was right and if I ever see her I’ll tell her.”
By now Grantwood House is a good way behind them; they are striding towards the copse on the hill. The night air is a tonic, it has helped clear her head. All the same she wishes the Scarecrow would let her be.
Before the trees they arrive at a small mound of earth. A rudimentary wooden cross has been set at its head. The sight of the cross is enough to bring the girl up short and make her snuffle again. She says, “Oh you bastards, poor Lion. You didn’t love him at all.”
He hesitates. “I don’t know that we did, that’s the horror of it. Men died all around, every day of the week. It gets so that another one is just another one.” A moment later he adds, “By rights he was dead. So it was as if the official word became more real than he was. He shouldn’t have been here to begin with and maybe that’s how he saw it as well. He didn’t love us much either.”
“Very good,” she says. “It’s so easy for you. Pay schoolgirls to fuck you and then joke when a friend dies.” She bends to straighten the cross; rubs her face on her sleeve.
He says, “I’m sorry. There is no excuse for what I did. It’s too easy to say that we came back as beasts. We were beasts to begin with and then the war brought it out.”
She makes one final effort to shrug him off. Echoing Winifred, she says that there are no hard feelings, what’s done is done. It was dreadful and embarrassing and painful while it lasted, but it never really lasted very long, did it? From now on they will be spending much more time at the house. She does like the house. She may one day move in.
The Scarecrow considers this. He says, “Be careful of that place. Those people aren’t honest.”
“Ha,” says the girl. “How much worse can they be?”
Liberated at last, she loses herself in the trees and emerges on the far side. Walking still further afield she looks back and sees the distant hull of Grantwood House, becalmed like an ocean liner, the smatter of sheep arranged like whitecaps on water. And she is struck all afresh by how her fortunes have changed and how she has come to be here, the guest of such wealthy hosts. It used to be that she regarded the trips in the Maudslay as a journey into the past, with Epping Forest installed as the primitive final destination. But now she knows there is a land beyond even that – a place of sunken gardens and rolling lawns and graceful, handsome demigods – and she supposes this must count as a heaven of sorts. It is certainly closer to heaven than anything she has encountered in her life before now.
She stretches out on cold ground to study the cosmos overhead. Ideally she would like to pass the night here and not return to the cottage at all, and yet privately she accepts that the chill will drive her in before long. The stars fill her vision; they could be multiplying by the minute.
Lying on her back in the truck she had once wondered aloud if her father was living on one of those stars and Fred told her that was stupid while Edith wasn’t sure. And then again, in her first days at Grantwood she had briefly entertained the idea that this might be true after all, or some twisted version of it, and that her father had not so much died as simply dropped out of sight, because if this had happened to some men it had surely happened to others. And she had thought that maybe Grantwood House was not unique and that there must be other places of shelter hidden in green folds of the country, where masked men sat in wheelchairs or propped themselves up on crutches and played games of Bumble and Buck deep into the night and felt they could never return home because they were too proud and pigheaded, or because they feared that they weren’t loved quite enough. Then she would picture herself finding one such place of rest – perhaps a thatched, whitewashed cottage behind an ivy-clad wall. She would ease open the gate and scrunch her feet on the gravel and there in the garden she would discover her father. She would know it was him, however much he had changed. When she called to him he would start and turn, resetting his sticks on the lawn as he circled to meet her. “Dad,” she would cry. “It’s Lucy.” And her face by now is wet with tears.
But these thoughts are perilous and have too much momentum. She cannot control their trajectory and they shake her loose. At the very point when the scenario begins to accelerate, rushing her urgently towards its happy conclusion, the fabrication tatters and she sees it for what is – a painted mask, like the Tin Woodman’s – and understands that there is nothing behind it, or rather that the only thing behind it is death. Because in all likelihood there is no thatched sanctuary; there is only the service cottage at the back of Grantwood House. The strange, funny men are all alone in the world, which in a sense means that she is all alone, too. The past has been cleared and the dead swept away to one side and there is nothing more to be done except to keep walking forward and resist the urge to look back. Wherever he went, whatever he became, she hopes that her father remembers her kindly. She hopes he recalls the time they hid inside the pantry and ate flour from the jar. She hopes he does not judge her too harshly for all the things she’s done since.
The autumn ground has gone cold, she feels it crawling into her chest. But still she lies on her back and gazes at the sky and supposes that up there, perhaps, is a land beyond even heaven and that it has been lit top-to-tail by a million balls of burning gas. “Dad,” she says. “It’s Lucy. I’m here.”
25
Here he comes, the rag-and-bone man, perched atop his loaded cart. He calls “Rah-boh!” to the roofs and windows of the houses ahead. Repetition has twisted the call into lilting calypso. His cart is home to a broken wardrobe and a box-spring mattress. It carries pale woollen blankets, a tractor engine and a stack of rust-spotted placards advertising Pears soap, Ideal milk and holidays in Bridlington and Sutton-on-Sea. An unprepossessing armchair faces the road to th
e rear. The owner had sat down and died in that chair. Nobody could bring themselves to use it after that. But the rag-and-bone man doesn’t judge, he is content to take what he’s given. Bring it all to the cart. He wants the things that you don’t.
What becomes of these items, the boy wants to know, and the rag-and-bone man explains that he is transporting them all to the Land of the Lost. His plan, he says, is to carry them through the water meadow and over the Billy Goat Bridge to the Land of the Lost. Once there he gives the items to the goblins and the goblins either eat them or repair them, he is always too polite to ask which. Then he winks at the boy’s mother to include her in the joke.
She asks, “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
The boy shrugs, embarrassed.
“Come on,” she tells him. “You know there are no such thing as goblins.”
The pair have arrived with bundles in their arms. These, she explains, are her husband’s old clothes, not worn for years but in decent condition. He clears a space beside the blankets and she says that she has a number of books that can go too, if he can wait a few minutes.
“Madame,” he says proudly. “I will take anything that you can throw at me.”
He steps down from the cart and turns up his toes so as to stretch his hamstrings. As he does this, a butterfly – out late in the season – drifts in to sit briefly on his forehead. The rag-and-bone man is wearing mismatched socks and a pair of clogs he collected from a Warminster church. His regulation grey overalls once belonged to a plumber. The name “Matthews” has been stitched above the breast pocket.
The woman and her son return with the books. This requires several trips because there are so many of the things and only two of them. He has to lift the tractor engine onto the chair to clear space in the cart. He says, “Why didn’t you mention that you’d been running a library?”
“Again,” she says, a little out of breath, “these are my husband’s books.” When he reaches to take the first batch from her hand, he senses a momentary resistance before she hands them over. It’s the same all over; he encounters this all the time. One thing people never understand about the rag-and-bone trade is that it has more in common with undertaking than with refuse collection. Every item has a history and some are hard to part with.
He says lightly, “So is he going to raise a ruckus, your husband, when he finds all his books have been thrown out for scrap?”
The woman shakes her head shortly. She is red-haired and youngish; too thin for his taste but handsome in her way. If her face was less stern, if she looked less wrung out, she might pass herself off as a beauty “No,” she replies. “Not a bit.”
“Come home and shout, ‘Oi missus! What have you gone and done with my bleeding library?’.”
“Still no. Not even close.”
He says, “Well then, ma’am, I reckon we can probably let them go. More room for everyone when they’re out of the house.”
“More food for the goblins,” the boy says with a grin and the rag-and-bone man laughs and admits that the kid is dead right, they can have the books for their pudding.
In a back garden nearby, a dog is incessantly barking. He thinks it would send him spare, having to listen to that yapping all day, but he is not about to point this out to the red-headed woman. She may have reached the point where she does not hear the dog anymore. If so, having him remind her is hardly going to help. It’s like when somebody asks whether you are aware of your own tongue in your mouth, or how often you breathe in and out in a minute. All of a sudden you can’t think of anything else.
The cart is overloaded, which means that the journey will be slow. He reaches down to collect the last lot of books. Play-acting a bus conductor, he says, “Ding-ding. Room for a few more upstairs.”
The woman retreats to the kerb and takes her son by the hand. “Ah, what a shame. Now it’s too full for us.”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am. This here cart is for the cast-offs only. You and your boy don’t look like cast-offs to me.”
“What’s a cast-off?” says the child
“Things that aren’t wanted anymore,” she tells him. “Mostly if they’re broken or old.”
She comes forward, her hand extended, empty this time for the man to shake. And when he leans down she squints at the name on his chest. “Mr Matthews,” she says. “Thank you for your help. It’s appreciated.”
And the rag-and-bone man grins, shakes hands and thanks the woman right back – and never mind that the overalls are hand-me-downs and his name isn’t Matthews. He says, “Look after yourself, ma’am” and gives a thumbs-up to the boy and then he’s off and away, with that infuriating dog still barking at his back. The horse strains in its harness and the wheels throw up dust from the macadam. Up on his high perch, the man sings “Rah-boh! Rah-boh!” even when the village drops behind him and the green hedgerows press in and there is nobody to hear. Glancing down he sees that the butterfly has returned and appears to have taken up residence on his shoulder. He tries to hold himself steady so as not to disturb it.
His cart contains an engine and a mattress, dark clothes and pale blankets. Broken wardrobe, tin placards. Forty-two books and a haunted armchair. He calls out “Rah-boh!” as he comes over the bridge and dips out of sight. He carries his cargo to the Land of the Lost.
26
You would not think it to look at him, but he moves with a dancer’s silken grace. In the hours before dawn, unable to sleep, he wanders the house, barely parting the air. The house is colossal, it feels without end. It seems to expand in the night and contract in the day. One room opens onto another and onto another after that. He is constantly finding nooks and crannies that had passed him by before. He treads lightly, gliding in and out of handsome chambers where the guests lie sleeping. He prides himself on his ability to pass unnoticed. He is God’s last little imp, the Almighty’s bad monkey. He has always felt most at home in the dark.
It occurs on some semi-conscious level that he may be searching for an escape. If he steals along enough corridors and prises open enough doors the opportunity will present itself – and when it does he’ll respond. So much in life depends on recognising the right door. So much depends on knowing when to stick and when to twist and he suspects the time to twist and cut loose is now drawing near. His status is slipping; his position has turned tenuous. His heightened sensitivity has been born out of a lifetime of slights.
“I’ve grown bored,” Fortnum-Hyde says. “Entertain me. Impress me.” But the only response he can muster is a stricken grin and a stammered excuse. Sit him amid the gentlemen at Grantwood and he exhibits none of the grace he has when he is alone on the move. He is a gauche, stumbling, inadequate creature. Buckets of merriment are draining out of his system. He sweats too much and he is far too fat. Kohl runs into his eyes and it makes them smart.
Before long everybody comes to bore or frustrate Fortnum-Hyde. That is the nature of the man, or the nature of a world which turns at a slower pace than his tastes dictate. Yet no one has come to frustrate him so quickly and so comprehensively as bouncy, beaming Arthur Elms. He supposes this may go down as his one claim to fame.
Could it be he has already stayed put when he should have moved on? It might have been better to have absconded swiftly, silently, a whole week before, when Fortnum-Hyde was still dazzled and York Conway impressed and when the Long Boys edged anxiously aside whenever he stepped into the room. Heaven knows his first night at Grantwood had been a triumph. The voices screeched in his head and fire jumped from his fingers and Truman-Jones was so startled that he broke wind like a thunderclap. Whatever he requested at that moment would surely have been granted without complaint. He was put up in a south-facing bedroom with a four-poster Queen Anne and a deep copper tub in the adjacent bathroom. He was sat next to the young master at dinner and lavished with pink steak and red wine. The second night was almost as successful and by right
s he should have asked for money then (one hundred pounds! two hundred pounds!) because he has blundered and failed on all the nights after that. The last time he flicked flames was when he crept into the cottage and gave the girl such a fright. His gift is horribly unpredictable. It tore in out of nowhere. Now it has skipped out without so much as saying goodbye.
Elms wonders whether the cocaine is partly to blame. He ought to lay off for a spell; it makes him ruffled and distracted and that can only hinder his skill. And yet the platters keep being passed round and when everyone else is partaking it feels silly not to join in. So he bows his head and applies a nostril and the powder helps drown the swelling chorus in his head. And now when Fortnum-Hyde remarks that he’s bored and demands his pet conjurer put on a show, Elms attempts to brazen it out and splutters that the conditions aren’t right, there is disquiet in the room. He must be reassured that they are all of one mind and one breath and that their hearts beat in time.
Fortnum-Hyde lifts an eyebrow. “The conditions are right when I say that they are. Don’t be a mouse. Stand up straight, be a man.”
York Conway says, “Unless of course it was a trick all along. I have come to the opinion that this man is all smoke and mirrors.”
“Obviously it’s a trick,” adds Boswell the playwright. “Odourless spirit and a few concealed match heads. It’s a perfectly fine trick, but it is a trick all the same.”
The jazz singer, for his part, confesses that he remains of two minds. On the one hand the man is a trickster, in which case he is playing them for fools. Or on the other he’s real, in which case he’s worse. Because if the man is real then it follows, says Sweetpea, that he’s no man at all but something unnatural, unearthly. They ought to shoo him away before he curses them all. At this the other musicians offer a rumble of assent. Elms guesses that they have already debated this matter among themselves. The Long Boys hate the imp. He allows that he probably hates them in return. The Long Boys are his rivals for Fortnum-Hyde’s attention. And there is no doubt the Long Boys have gained the upper hand.