by Sarah Perry
‘They did,’ said Elijah, and began to tap the table again, this time accompanying the beat with a deep, half-heard hum. John thought he knew the melody, and then, in a sudden moment of perfect clarity, remembered where he’d heard it before. His had not been a pious upbringing, but his mother had been a dutiful church-goer and she alone could coax the church’s piano into life. Her favourite hymn had a mournful lilting melody (found on a seashore by a Welsh vicar, she said, written on a scrap of paper and rolled into a bottle). The melancholy words would move the congregation to tears, and John remembered them now: how the love of God was vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling like a mighty ocean in its fullness over me… As a boy he’d imagined grey folds of salt water closing over his head, and not fighting upwards for air and life but sinking instead with his hands folded in prayer. Twenty-five years later – his mother and the music she’d played too distant and vague to remember – he felt the old unease return.
The older man was staring abstractedly at the paper-covered walls, preoccupied with the old song. ‘It’s all gone, you see – all gone. The rock under my feet turned out to be sand after all, and in the end the tide came in. Walker says I’m free, like a dog off its leash. Which is all very well, but what if I run into the road?’
‘We’ll show you where to cross,’ said Walker, smilingly. He looked at Elijah with more warmth and affection than John would have thought him capable of summoning, and began deftly shuffling the pack of cards. ‘Shall we try again, Preacher?’ he said. ‘Practice makes perfect, even with sin.’ He dealt them each a hand of three. Sitting with the other men around the table, the whisky bottle between them and the moon passing the open window, was curiously like being on board a half-empty ship, forced to find company in a stranger’s cabin. It reminded John of a pamphlet he’d once bought at auction, a coarse engraving of a ship under full sail printed on the cover. ‘I’ll tell you something interesting,’ he said rather eagerly, leaning forward. ‘Last year, or the year before, I bought a crateful of books that had been left to get damp in a garage somewhere. Most of them were ruined – one of the books even had a kind of fat blind maggot burrowed in its spine – but there were a few things worth having, and the best of them was a facsimile of a German poem – from the fifteenth century, I think, though I can’t remember who wrote it – called “The Ship of Fools”, about a boat put to sea full of madmen. No sane man or woman was allowed aboard, except the captain, I suppose, though surely he was mad to take such a crew? At sea of course they’d do as they please – there’s no law, and no-one watching; and if no-one’s watching, who’s to say what’s sane, and what isn’t? I didn’t read all of it, but I liked the idea, and ever since I’ve wondered if it ever really happened. Madmen turned out of towns and villages and sent to sea, and allowed to get on with being mad as hatters, without bothering anyone by it.’
He paused, aware the other men were avoiding his eyes. Walker put out his cigarette half-smoked and shuffled intently through his hand of cards, and Alex began to gnaw at the scab between his knuckles. John felt something in the room shift and fracture; he said, ‘I expect I’ve got it wrong. I often do.’
Beside him Alex set coins spinning on the table until a dozen of them reeled between the tobacco tin and the bottle of whisky, buzzing as they went. Walker laid down his cards in a tidy arc, then stood up and lightly touched Alex on the shoulder with a tentative gesture. ‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘It’s late – are you coming?’ The younger man stared miserably at the buzzing coins, which all at once ceased spinning and clattered to a halt. The painted eyes on his shirt blinked with undisguised malice, and he gave John a hostile and secretive look, as if he suspected him of having been spying for a weakness all along. It was so unlike the affectionate lad who’d threaded an arm through his and drawn him into their game that he flinched as if it had been a blow. Walker stood aside to let the boy pass into the dark hall, then with an ironic bow vaguely in John’s direction closed the door behind him.
Elijah sighed, reaching across to push the window open a little further, so that the scent of dry grass seeped over the windowsill.
He surveyed John for a while without speaking, then reached for the bottle. ‘I think perhaps we should talk,’ he said. John took the cup he was offered, recoiling as the whisky fumes stung his eyes: So I haven’t got away with it after all, he thought, with greater relief than regret. Elijah wiped a droplet from his moustache, and gazed without speaking at the other man over steepled fingers. His eyes, above the russet squarecut beard, were mild and frank, reacting readily to the glow and fade of light. As he turned them now on John the pupils spread and darkened his gaze; he said, with a suggestion of mischief, ‘But not, I think, tonight: there are some things best kept for morning, and a kinder light – can you remember the way to your room?’
THURSDAY
I
John was woken by ringing that came not from the piano he’d heard the night before, but from a newly hollow place inside his skull. Through the pink net of veins in his lowered lids he saw the sun filling the room to its corners, and began to raise himself on his elbows. Pain surged from the back of his neck to his forehead then receded in a sickening wave. He sat cross-legged on the sheets, carefully counting air in and out of his lungs and swallowing bile. His bladder was painfully full, and when he was sure he could stand without vomiting he crossed the room to the small bathroom. He sat to relieve himself, wondering how long it would be before he was sick, and whether afterwards he’d be himself again. The little room was surprisingly cool: he shivered, and saw gooseflesh break out on his knees, but in time the chill settled his stomach, and he sat there a long while fixing his eyes on the sink, willing the world to shrink to the proportions of the blue bar of soap in its cracked clay dish.
A little while later, with nausea stirring his stomach, he stood half-dressed at the window. It was another day without any sign of rain, another morning without birdsong; in the clear early light the garden below looked diminished and ordinary, the folly at the end a prop for an abandoned play and the glasshouse stained and shabby. The windows were thickly glazed in uneven panes that threw back a mottled reflection nothing like the neat-edged image in his own mirror every morning. The face he saw now was too pale and lean, the hair too long, and under heavy lids glossed with sweat the pale eyes glittered. He raised his right hand, uncertain whether the other man would raise his left in the proper greeting. ‘What came over you?’ he said. ‘What in God’s name have you done?’ The watching man had no reply, and John returned to the edge of the bed, cradling his aching head in his hands: what had he done, after all? Nothing brave or impassioned, not the brief lapse into madness to be expected of a man arriving suddenly in middle age, but an abuse of kindness and trust: he’d been welcomed and cared for – he touched the place where the woman had put a kind hand – and in return he’d deceived them all. Recalling the words of the preacher the night before (I think perhaps we should talk) he felt the unease of a child awaiting the headmaster’s summons.
In the sober light of morning, away from the gaze of a dozen eyes, there’d be no difficulty in slipping downstairs and making his way through the forest to his car (he imagined it sinking already into the dense verge, its windows curtained with an overnight fall of pine needles), back on the road to his brother, or to his ordinary ordered life. He thought it must be early still, though outside on the terrace the sundial was lying. He pressed an ear to the door, but the house was silent: his heart quickened – here was his best chance of quietly leaving with no questions asked or answered. In their jug beside the bed the daisies had shed their flowers; he collected them from the floor, and arranged them in a circle on the table, looping the jug that had held them (the amber-haired girl would like that, he thought – Clare, had that been her name? – and for a moment regretted he’d never thanked her for her misplaced kindness). Then he lifted the lid of the child’s desk and took the notebook from where he’d hidden it underneath a pile of yellowed
newspapers, from some of which pictures and columns had been cut. He flicked through the pages, running his finger with surprise over the lines of neat blue handwriting – had he written all that, by the yellow light above the tower? He supposed he must have done, and saw again the black-haired woman turning to face him, and felt the sensation of cold wine seeping through his shirt.
He turned to look once more behind him, then slipping the notebook into his pocket opened the door.
Barring his way as certainly as any gate, Clare stood in the dark hall, turning away from him towards the head of the staircase where sunlight flew its banners on the wall. She wore a man’s white shirt which reached almost to her knees, and stood tiptoe on dirty bare feet as if ready to run at a moment’s notice. She’d been playing with bindweed and twisted a few stems around her neck, and John suspected it had been done for an effect he refused to feel. When she heard the door open she turned and the weeds turned with her, regarding him with white eyes open. ‘John.’ She whispered, but as a child might, so that it carried along the hall and would have woken anyone still sleeping; and what occurred to him first was that Elijah had sent for him.
‘John – Eve says we need you and will you come now please.’ She shifted from foot to foot. ‘She says she needs you or needs someone and you’ll do.’ When there was no immediate sign of obedience the girl tugged crossly at the bindweed as if someone else had put it there. ‘There isn’t anyone else, is there? They’ve gone out for a while, and she said you’ll do, and that you’d know.’
The nausea which had begun to recede struck him again so forcibly that he leant against the doorframe for a moment, and pressed his forehead to the cool white-painted wood. What now, he thought, helpless against his sickness and the plea that creased her face with anxiety: what ought he to know – who was that other John, who ought to be standing where he stood now? And then, alongside the confusion, he felt a needling of resentment: oh, he would do, then, ever the last resort. He imagined her saying it, that black-haired laddish girl downstairs in whose eyes and voice he thought he’d detected mockery the night before, and in the end it was resentment and not the plea for help that roused him. Squaring his shoulders, and breathing hard to suppress the gorge rising sourly in his throat, he said: ‘Where shall I go then? What shall I do?’
She grinned in relief or surprise, and by way of answer dashed away from him and swung herself down the first step or two, calling over her shoulder, ‘Well, this way then, and hurry’, as if it had been the beginning of a game. He moved after her, then remembering that he still held the notebook hastily returned it to the drawer in the child’s desk, regretting that after all he could not take it with him.
When they reached the foot of the stairs the girl paused with her hand on the banister and said, ‘I’m going to go now. You’ll know what to do.’ Then she ran out into the garden through the narrow door at the furthest end of the hall. It hung open awhile on tired hinges, showing a stretch of parched lawn and a glimpse of the high mossy wall he’d first seen from the road. John could not think what it was he ought to be doing, or why she’d left him there, and might have followed her had he not heard, from deep in the shadow cast by the front door, a kind of low cry. It was not quite of fear but of something more like denial, and then there was another voice, and a name said softly several times over: Alex, Alex, Alex…
As his eyes accustomed themselves to the hall’s dim air, he saw the young latecomer from the night before crouching against the door and resting his head on his forearms. He looked diminished, as though overnight he’d lost half his height and strength, and when he raised his head his eyes were rimmed with shadow. Beside him stood Eve, stooping to rest a hand on his shoulder, her arm showing white against the dark fabric of his shirt. Neither acknowledged John, but talked instead in low urgent murmurs, the young man gesturing towards the door as though he’d seen something slip out or come in. Then Eve turned to John and without speaking communicated a plea that conferred on him a responsibility and knowledge he neither felt nor understood. With a slight dip of her head, she gestured towards Alex, who’d drawn himself up a little and was picking at a graze on his knuckles with all the concentration of a craftsman. The movement plainly conveyed that John should do something, and that he would instinctively know what it was – she raised a hand towards him in mute appeal then passed it wearily over her forehead. Then she came towards him, put her mouth close to his ear and whispered: ‘Look, I’m sorry, it’s your first day, I know – only I have tried, and Hester will be gone awhile now – won’t you have a word?’ She drew away from him, and said – with delicacy, as if a boundary had been overstepped: ‘You understand. Don’t you? That is, you know…’ She paused, and he felt a moment’s pleasure in seeing her disconcerted before the sensation of being entirely at a loss overwhelmed him. He began to protest, but the schoolboy stammer held his tongue, and before he could frame the words to keep them all at arm’s length Alex stood, with a quick fluid motion wholly at odds with his defeated posture a moment before.
‘Eve, look – it’s John. Why didn’t you say!’ He cuffed at his eyes, and it was as if the rough gesture dislodged the misery and weariness that had weighed him down. Patting at his clothes, which were dusty from his huddling against the door, he came towards them, and landed a friendly blow on John’s shoulder. Then he patted at the wall behind them, where a strip of paper unfurled from the damp plaster, and said vaguely, ‘I might go and have a snooze.’ He paused beside Eve, frowning as though he’d forgotten something, then briefly gripped her hand and said: ‘Yes, I think so,’ and slipped behind them into a room which John had not yet seen. As he did so a small brown envelope fell from his hand or pocket to the floor, and grateful for an excuse to conceal his confusion John stooped to pick it up. When he straightened, Eve had not followed the young man, but stood instead with folded arms, examining him as though he’d just arrived. She beckoned twice, imperious, and John passed her the envelope, noticing the stamp had not been franked. She folded it over and over as if she might eventually reduce it to nothing, and pushed it into her own pocket. ‘Shall we go? Clare has something to show you, I think.’ Then, with an authority that sat so curiously on her John could not have resisted it, she indicated that he should follow her down the hall and out into the garden.
It was early still and there ought to have been dew on the grass, but already the hard-baked earth had stored up the morning’s sun and John felt it through the thin soles of his shoes. The forest pines huddled against the garden wall were shedding their needles to lighten their load, and up ahead an elm had been struck with disease so that half its branches were damned to perpetual winter. In the shade of the elm Clare in her white shirt knelt over a series of irregular white objects which might have fallen from the blighted elm. Drawing near John saw they were a dozen small parcels wrapped in paper and tied with waxed string, several opened out and surrounded with scraps of paper in the long grass. Seeing Eve and John come towards her the girl snatched up a clay doll and shook its ugly little head to send them away. ‘You can’t have her, she’s mine!’
‘I tell you the child never sleeps, up in the attic and down in the cellar at all hours, bringing out her treasures.’ Eve touched Clare’s head with a fond gesture. ‘Last week it was a cannonball, of all things – it had been used as a doorstop in a room we never use, and she carried it out to the garden thinking it would make a bowling ball, and dropped it twice, and broke the floorboards on the way…’ Then she fell to her knees, and tearing at a bundle of tissue withdrew a bundle of bamboo pipes set around a lacquered black dome. ‘What’s this doing here, with these old things – isn’t this mine? Didn’t I have it last year?’ She examined it, frowning, then pushed the black dome beneath her lower lip, and blowing over the pipes produced, without a thought, a line or two of Bach. So it was her, he thought, at the piano last night, and in the morning. He was disappointed, and would much rather it had been Hester making something fine and beautiful with her ugl
y hands.
Clare set the clay doll down in the grass, and covered it with a sheet of tissue paper, carefully leaving its upturned face exposed. Beside it lay a corked jar of yellow liquid in which a mouse or vole curled its pink hands and waved a naked tail. She said, with a shy eager smile, ‘I found them, all by myself, and brought them down while everyone was still in bed. Look!’ She held up her wrist, which was looped three times with a string of irregular blue beads. ‘What do you think? Where do you think they came from?’
John stooped and tugged at the beads. He had seen something like it before, in a glass case or displayed on a cloth somewhere. ‘It might be tomb beads – from Egypt, you know. Nothing precious, just chips of glass – something to be buried with, so you don’t go in poverty to the afterlife. Then in time all the sand blows away, and there they are, waiting to be picked up.’ He thought she might recoil, but instead she stroked them thoughtfully, satisfied, and turned to a larger parcel, wrapped not in paper but in a length of chamois leather. John, by an instinct for the familiar he later regretted, saw in the parcel the dimensions of a small book, and felt the idea of leaving recede a little further. He crouched beside her, and with a proprietorial murmur – ‘Shall I, do you think?’ – took it from her. The strings came untied easily, as if it had been recently opened and they’d lost the habit of their knot. Inside the chamois was a second layer of frayed blue cloth, wrapped tightly around the book’s pale vellum binding. The gilding on the spine had worn away, and John, setting the book on his knees, turned to the title page. The thick paper showed an engraving of a bearded man, splendidly aloof, resting a long finger on a rolled parchment.
It was a volume which had come and gone from his own shelves over the years – a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems, inscrutable and lovely, the Old English and the new shown on facing pages. The book’s scent was so familiar it conveyed the sound of the clock ticking in the empty shop, and the bell above the door. The weight of the book spread evenly between his palms gave him the courage an icon might to a man of anxious faith.