Quarter Square

by David Bridger

  Min and I stared at each other across the stage, until, eventually, one of us had to say something.

  “Care to lend a hand with this? I need someone to help clamp these pieces together so I can glue them.” I didn’t need any help. Not right then anyhow.

  “Sure.”

  And that was how Min became my carpenter’s assistant.

  I subcontracted the electrical and plumbing work to two local tradesmen Jimmy recommended, and put them to work immediately on installing a shower in my room. They got the unit fitted and working by the end of the first day, impressing me with their cheerful efficiency and making this tired, dusty carpenter very happy.

  Ten minutes into my inaugural shower after work I found myself singing Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You.” I paused, thinking of Carole, and realised I wasn’t at all sad without her. But I didn’t think of her for long. My mental image of Carole was replaced by one of Min, who’d invited me to hear her sing at a jazz club that evening.

  I grinned and burst into the Parlor Mob’s “Can’t Keep No Good Boy Down,” stamping a driving drumbeat in the shower well and playing a wicked wet-air guitar.

  The gig was brilliant, and Min’s voice was incredible. She brought the house down.

  We left the club arm in arm and walked towards the city centre, where she said we would probably find some of the insiders performing for evening strollers.

  It felt so natural for us to walk this way, in perfect rhythm. So right. I loved the intimacy of our bare inner forearms rubbing together and our gentle shoulder-to-shoulder bumps on every second step. Her scent filled my head, and I resisted the strong temptation to fold her into my embrace and kiss her.

  I wondered how she would respond. The fantasy aroused me.

  It was a lovely evening, and there were plenty of people around. Sure enough we found a small crowd gathered in the middle of the pedestrian shopping area, applauding Will and Danny’s magic act.

  Min slowed as we approached them, clearly intending to stop and enjoy the act, but I kept moving. She caught my eye and smiled.

  I smiled back, all innocence. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  We strolled through a wide paved area between department-store buildings, where two more insiders were busking for an enthusiastic audience. When we got close, they lowered their violins and called Min over to join them.

  “I’ll help them out,” she said. “You go on. We’ll be here for ages if the crowd grows.”

  I crossed Royal Parade and left the city streets behind as I headed down towards the harbour. Within a few hundred yards the streets changed from concrete paving to cobblestones, from orange street lighting to strong moonlight and sharp shadows, and I imagined I was travelling back in time four or five hundred years. I’d only been here a few days, but already I loved the Barbican.

  I turned the last corner by the theatre with a relaxed smile and walked straight into a gang fight, a vicious brawl happening in plain view, with forty or fifty men beating one another savagely inside one of the tight crossroad spaces between terraces of crooked old houses.

  The battle took place in near silence, apart from grunts and scrapes and heavy blows, and seemed almost unreal. This was a scene from a movie, surely? A remake of Highlander or something? That was the impression I got from the whole thing: a battle of the clans. But even as the thought suggested itself to me, I knew what I was seeing was horribly real.

  And these weren’t teenaged lads scrapping after a night on the beer. These were grown men: big, heavy men like bikers and battle-hardened warriors from the looks of things, battering and stabbing one another to death right there in front of me. They were killing one another.

  I stood frozen to the spot, appalled and too scared to twitch in case I drew attention to myself.

  One of the fighters staggered from the melee with the ornate handle of a knife sticking out of his abdomen between his clenched, bloody hands. He crashed into me, and I clutched at him automatically as we fell to the ground. He sprawled on the cobblestones and stared up at me in mute agony while I smelled his sweat and watched the life leave his eyes.

  Police sirens sounded in the distance, and the combatants disengaged. They melted into the shadows, still stealthy but for the clink of weapons and the scuff of heavy boots, taking their dead and wounded with them, except for the one lying across my legs.

  They’d left me holding a dead man. While sirens wailed closer and closer, I sat there in shock, waiting for someone to come and take charge of this nightmare I’d walked into.

  Suddenly Will and Danny slid their hands under my armpits and lifted me. I stared at them mutely, not knowing what to say, but they weren’t interested in conversation. They dragged me away, and we made it inside the theatre before the police arrived. As I closed the front door, four fighters hoisted the dead man between them and disappeared into the darkness as if they’d never been there.

  We stood and listened to the noise. Police cars screeched to a halt, doors slammed and men shouted.

  Danny laid his hand on my arm. “You might want to change your shirt. There’s blood all over it.”

  I touched the sticky wetness.

  “Don’t hang around,” Will told Danny. “Exeter early in the morning, remember?”

  He walked away without a word to me, up the sloping corridor towards the foyer. My eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom, and I glared at his back as he left.

  Danny gripped my shoulders and shook me. “Come on, Joe. Pull yourself together. You need to burn the shirt. We don’t want to be linked with shit like that.”

  He stayed with me while I changed, and we walked into the square, where I threw the bloodied shirt onto the fire and sat next to Flo. She and the others watched calmly as the shirt burned. No one passed any comment.

  I stayed late in the square that night, long after people had gone to bed. Flo, Elvis and I sat in companionable silence for hours, chatting occasionally but mostly just enjoying the fire and listening to the night.

  During a long silence, Flo breathed slowly and rhythmically with her eyes shut, as if she was meditating. Her presence was healing. Maybe she felt me watching her. I don’t know. But she laid one of her gnarled hands on mine and smiled softly. That was all she did, but instantly I was filled with peace. My anxiety evaporated. She left her hand there, and I was comforted by the contact.

  “I’ve never felt so free in all my life,” I told her.

  Her dark eyes shone in the firelight. “Me neither.”

  Chapter Four

  Min crouched beside my bed and woke me soon after dawn.

  “Flo has died.”

  I struggled to take in what she was saying, still smelling wood smoke in my hair and feeling the warm contact with Flo.

  “Come on.” She took my hands and pulled me to my feet. “She liked you. Come and see her.”

  I splashed cold water onto my face and walked with Min back to the garden. And there was Flo, sitting peacefully next to last night’s smoking ashes, just where I’d left her. Elvis sat on her shoulder and regarded her assembled friends calmly. He didn’t complain or even flutter when Big Luke lifted Flo’s body and carried her from the garden like a sleeping child.

  “Would you like to come to her funeral?” Min asked me.

  “Yes. Where?”

  “In the Wild.

  I’d never heard of the Wild before, but this wasn’t the time to start asking curious questions.

  We all followed Luke down an alley between two houses, across a wooden footbridge over a stream and into the woods. The mood was quiet, but nobody seemed particularly upset, despite having lost one of their friends. Even Flo’s apprentice, Tara, strolled along as if she were off for a walk.

  I couldn’t understand their lack of emotion. I was deeply affected by Flo’s death, close to tears, and I’d only known her for a few days. How could the insiders not care? What were they going to do? Just dump her in the woods?

  Min squeezed my hand, and
I was heartened to see her eyes glistening too. Thank goodness for that.

  My body gave a vigorous jump just then, as if I’d fallen asleep and woken with one of those nighttime muscle jumps. It was very odd.

  We walked a good way before we stopped in a clearing, where Luke laid Flo on the ground. Elvis flew to a branch and watched. People found places to settle down, while three of the women attended to their friend. Fliss and Cindy straightened Flo’s body into a comfortable position, tidied her clothing and placed her head on a pillow of grass and flowers. Tara took a jar of red powder from her bag and rubbed the dull colour gently into Flo’s brow and cheeks, hands and feet.

  The clearing filled with strangers. All around, people stepped from the trees, shook hands with various members of the square and talked quietly in groups.

  “Friends and relatives from other havens,” Min explained. “From all over the West Country, by the looks of them. That group are Flo’s cousins and their families, from Bodmin Moor.” She nodded towards the latest newcomers, a group of twenty or so people who entered the clearing and moved among the mourners, handing out stone flagons.

  “Cider,” she said. “Be careful. It’s rocket fuel.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled up at an old man as I accepted a flagon. “Hang on.” I turned to Min. “How did they know about Flo? And how did they all get here so fast on foot? She only died a few hours ago.”

  “We’re in the Wild,” Min replied. “Time and distance don’t always work the same way they do outside. Not for everyone, anyway.”

  She shook her head to fend off any further questions. “I don’t know. If you want theories, you should talk to Andrew.” She tapped a fingernail on the flagon I was cradling. “Are you going to open that?”

  Once everyone had settled down, Tara stood next to Flo’s body and clapped for attention. The murmur of voices died down, and she spoke clearly.

  “I am Tara Hand. Flo Crow is my friend. She grounded me and taught me as a midwife and healer. We’ve birthed five new babies together. We always thought my first birthing of an old baby would be hers, and here we are.”

  Tara squatted at Flo’s head, placed her hands on the old woman’s temples and said quietly, “Go with love, my friend.” She looked around the clearing and announced, “This is Flo Crow.”

  People stood to speak their memories of Flo, while Tara maintained her serene presence, and everyone else sat in respectful silence, passing around flagons of cider. There were many people, and the speeches went on for a long time.

  I leaned against a tree and got pleasantly mellow while I listened to these words of love and friendship for Flo and felt a sense of belonging I’d never known before.

  Min sang for Flo. Her song started low, in some lyrical language, and built towards a stunning soprano celebration, as if she were climbing the mountain of Flo’s life with her. Sunlight flashed in the treetops, and I thought a golden angel had landed there to listen. Min stayed in the heights for some time before returning to the lower slopes with refrains and finishing in a whisper of childlike joy that carried clearly through the silence.

  Andrew played a beautiful song on his flute, while various groups took turns dancing around Flo’s body. When Min pulled me to my feet to join a dance, I swayed in surprise at how drunk I was. After our dance of respect I slumped against the tree while my head filled with a sleepy buzz.

  A movement in the undergrowth across the clearing drew my attention, as a lion’s huge head pushed through a clump of foliage, studied me calmly for long moments and withdrew back into the greenery. I recognised him from a time in my boyhood when he’d appeared in my dreams frequently and comforted me. His presence here filled me with an enormous sense of well-being.

  Lamps were lit at some point, and I drifted off, lulled by the murmur of a hundred quiet conversations. When I opened my eyes, Flo was standing up.

  My heart lurched, and shock awoke my brain sharply as I peered through the gloom. Her body remained prone on the ground. She was still dead, as far as I could tell, but she was also standing on tiptoe above her body, smiling broadly, stretching her hands into the air and showing none of her aged stiffness. She was a young version of Flo.

  I gasped with delight at seeing her spirit.

  Elvis launched himself from his branch and flew directly to Child Flo’s shoulder. She kissed his beak and giggled.

  Everyone in the clearing studied her keenly. It felt like the world held its breath.

  Child Flo closed her eyes, nodded, looked round at all her friends and family with a blissful smile, then skipped away into the woods with Elvis fluttering on her shoulder.

  Silence hung in the air; then everyone was clapping and cheering. Music started simultaneously from three different places and blended together. There was singing and dancing and laughter everywhere. I hugged Min, and in my bones I felt her sweet humming.

  Halfway through the next morning Min and I took a break from mortice and tenon joints and walked down to the harbour for breakfast at Cap’n Jaspers. The place was quiet, too early for tourists and definitely too early for the usual bikers, for which I was grateful, so we got a table all to ourselves. I gazed past my boots into the dark, oily rainbows lapping against the harbour wall, while Min bought bacon rolls and mugs of coffee.

  “Look at me.” She brushed wood shavings from her shirt. “Sawdust everywhere. No wonder I keep dreaming about joinery. You have a lot to answer for, mister.”

  I inhaled the coffee steam. “You’re a natural. Should have been a carpenter.” I bit off a chunk of bacon roll.

  “Well, maybe, and I do like the smell of fresh wood shavings. You always smell like that. You should bottle it.” Her eyes twinkled. “But usually I prefer my dreams to be more fun than woodwork.” She opened her roll, folded a bacon rasher and popped it into her mouth.

  “Dreams can tell us stuff sometimes, can’t they? Guide us, I mean.” I stared across the harbour to the marina, where hundreds of yachts bobbed against jetties. “I had a significant dream last year. It led me down here, indirectly.”

  Min’s mouth was full. She raised her eyebrows and made a rolling go on gesture with both forefingers.

  “When I was a kid, I used to dream about a lion.” I’d had three different recurring dreams in my life actually, but the mysterious-soul-mate ones and the monster nightmares were no one else’s business. “He was a male lion in his prime, and he’d watch me walking to school. I’d glance over my shoulder, and there he was, always in the same place, watching me. I wasn’t scared of him. I knew he wouldn’t attack. I thought of him as my lion, even after the dreams stopped when I moved up to secondary school.”

  I chewed the last bit of my bacon roll, and Min waited for me to continue.

  “Early last year it happened again. I didn’t see him. I had a lucid dream in which I remembered the childhood ones and realised I am my lion. He’s a symbol of my spirit.”

  I searched Min’s eyes for any sign of amusement but found only interest.

  “That’s when I knew I couldn’t carry on just fantasising about leaving the old job and setting up on my own. I had to do it. I had to do it right then, and sod all the risks. So I did, and here I am.”

  “Here you are,” she repeated with a wide smile.

  We sipped scalding coffee and watched the lock gates open to allow a yacht into the harbour.

  “I saw him yesterday in the Wild. My lion.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  Again, I looked to see if she was teasing.

  “Sounds like he’s your spirit companion. If you’re going to see him anywhere, the Wild is the most likely place.”

  There was no doubting her sincerity. “Do you have a spirit companion?”

  She studied me with that cool look I already recognised so well. She was deciding whether to tell me. Despite our obvious mutual attraction, she was guarded about many things.

  “Yes. His name is Cayal.”

  “Kai yal.” The name sounded vaguel
y familiar and conjured up a mental image of a deep green forest. Was it was the name of a character from something I’d seen on television—something Celtic and haunting?

  “He’s a noble spirit. Peaceful, powerful and gentle. He’s my best friend. My Cayal.”

  “Have you met him in real life?”

  “You can’t half tell you’re a newbie. People don’t ask people things like that, you know.”

  I winced. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll tell you, because you need to know some of this stuff. And I trust you to keep my story to yourself. Okay?”

  “Okay.” This was a breakthrough. To be honest, I was more excited about her trusting me than I was about hearing her strange story.

  “My dreams didn’t stop at puberty like yours did. If anything they became more vivid. Cayal comes to me in dreams and, sometimes, in my waking life. When he’s with me, I truly come alive. When we’re together, if I think back to the times I’ve been alone, it’s like remembering a dream, as if I’ve been functioning okay but without firing on all cylinders. Sometimes I go a long time without seeing him, but I know he’ll always find me again.”

  She sipped her coffee and stared across the harbour. “He always finds me.”

  Fascinating. Her dream man was so real to her. And there was this kind of purity coming from her as she talked about him, so that my instinctive jealousy made me feel childish. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s magnificent. Huge. Not in body, not a giant, but in spirit. Bigger than anyone else I’ve ever met. He’s majestic.”

  A noisy family clattered around as they occupied the next table. Min stopped talking, and we shared the Look. It still thrilled me.

  “Shall we get back?” I asked.

  We returned our cups and plates to the counter and ambled back towards the theatre. As soon as we were out of earshot of the people on the streets, I encouraged her to continue her story.