Grievous

by H. S. Cross

Hidden in a cleft, covered by a hand.

  —Not truly, not for good.

  And from the rock they burned.

  —Use your eyes, dear. Look.

  * * *

  Not one of her real prayers had ever been answered, but when he didn’t come and the clocks passed midnight and there was nobody to telephone, she was back beneath that heel that crushed.

  Mercy, mercy. Name the price, name it.

  His headlamp came like a will-o’-the-wisp through the marshes. She waited in the door, letting the gnats inside, as he scraped to a stop and dropped the bicycle on the grass.

  —Don’t start, he said, storming past as if it were all her fault.

  —Don’t you dare! she cried. Do you have any idea how worried—

  —I said I’m sorry.

  He hadn’t.

  —How do you think it feels to sit in this cottage, all night long, waiting for the only person you’ve got left—

  —Leave off!

  She shut the door hard, and he startled, fumbling the books he was carrying.

  —I’ve never laid a hand on you.

  Relief, nearly joy, of saying what she felt.

  —But now I think I’ve made a mistake.

  —Go on, he retorted. I dare you!

  She turned and mounted the stairs, but he followed.

  —I know you despise me!

  At the top, he cut her off:

  —You wouldn’t care a toss if something happened to me. You wish I’d died instead of him.

  She clung to the wall.

  —You, she said, are to pack your trunk.

  —Out on my ear, is it?

  She stared at her bedroom door, that wall of despair:

  —This house is falling to bits. Peter has a place we can stay.

  The boy stood rigid.

  —We leave tomorrow.

  —You married the wrong chap, he said.

  Calm but as ruthless as a full-grown man:

  —If you’d taken Uncle Alec, you’d have a petit château in Normandy. Instead, you picked a selfish bugger who left you high and dry with a falling-down cottage and a bastard for a son—

  His spectacles clattered across the landing. Her breath came short, hand needles and fire.

  * * *

  He waited on the platform with their luggage while his mother stopped in the post office to give their forwarding address. On the train she offered him a guinea pocket money and a tin of licorice from the shop.

  —Thank you, Mother.

  —You’re welcome, dear.

  She leafed through the post and passed him a tattered envelope. The address in Norway had been crossed out, as had the next, his grandparents’ in Norfolk. The original handwriting seemed familiar, but it wasn’t the girl’s, and in any case, he’d never told her about Norway. He put it away until they’d checked in to the hotel round the back of King’s Cross, until they’d retired to the twin beds, until she’d fallen asleep and he’d crept along the passage to the toilet and its unshaded bulb:

  Markham Square, Chelsea, 31 July—Riding, Sorry to have missed you on Patron’s Day. Still malingering? It’s time to bury the hatchet, don’t you think? I’ve never been one to mince words, so here it is: You got the wrong end of the stick. Things aren’t always as they seem, through keyholes, and you’re too clever by half to be hanging on to such a bloomer after all this time. I daresay you’ve grown frightfully since last we crossed paths, and perhaps you’ll find these lines irrelevant. Still, your tactics last month led me to believe otherwise and have since plagued my conscience, rather. So listen, boyo, for what it’s worth, you’ll always have a friend in me. I know perfectly well you’ll do as you like, but at least have the nerve to consider, in that brain of yours, that you may have been wrong about me.

  Went down this summer (managed a third in History somehow—won’t Grievous crow?) and have been keeping busy otherwise, as you’re perhaps aware. If there’s a change in that stubborn heart of yours, you can reach me at home (above). Perhaps when you return from abroad you’d come down and see a match for old time’s sake? Suit yourself, as always. Wilberforce, M.

  31

  Marion had the front to arrive for breakfast. Jamie treated her with scrupulous care, as if she were a Dresden doll and not a brawler who disturbed their peace. Given the chance, John felt he’d go a round with her, and he gave odds on her blackening his eye before he could scratch. Still, she and Jamie behaved like bashful newlyweds, and before the cooked breakfast had even come out, John announced his plan to continue walking solo. Jamie gratified him by looking surprised, and John improvised enthusiasm: Fresh air had done him a world of good, what he needed now was a stretch of days, alone on the moors, to sort through his book. If he could walk for hours without being disturbed, he was sure he could overcome the treacherous bogs that lay, metaphorically, ahead in his manuscript. Marion approved the plan, and Jamie let his discomfort show—that John and Marion had somehow taken up sides together. Swept along in the role he’d set for himself, John bid them farewell there in the parlor and departed with his rucksack before they’d buttered their toast.

  A hay cart gave him a lift to Clay Bank Top, but instead of continuing westwards from there, he headed east, penetrating Urra Moor and Bloworth Crossing into the very heart of the plateau. He was led, as if by ley lines, to the Rosedale Ironside Railway, which he found closed and dismantled. He followed the cinderpath of the old line, coming in the end to High Blakey, as he supposed he would. It was too late to go farther, so he inquired at the Lion Inn, the only structure, beside some sheds, on the ridge. The man looked like any man in those parts, but as he began to speak, John was flooded with memories. The man still spoke like a whale through its blowhole, oh aye, they like as had summat for him, or would once Our Ann come down. When John asked what had happened to the railway, the man said it had recently closed.

  —Shameful! Near had to close last winter, and us not shut doors since—

  —The Civil War?

  The man paused, momentum interrupted, but he allowed that John was generally correct, saving the months they’d had to close in the recent war.

  The taproom was full of farming types who took no notice of John. He ordered food, and while he was nursing his tea, three walkers blew in the door, lugged off their boots, and spilled into the lounge, stopping to greet everyone as a vital acquaintance. John took out his notebook and attempted to sketch the fireplace, his pencil taking him back to when the railway had run, when the landlord’s hair had been black, when the carved lion on the hearth had frightened him.

  —What’s that you’re drawing?

  He looked up to one of the walking trio, a boy of some fifteen years, though he could have been as young as thirteen, or possibly a smooth-cheeked eighteen.

  —Don’t read over shoulders, a deeper voice replied. It’s intrusive.

  John craned his neck to see what was sweating behind him.

  —Excuse my son, said the man.

  —There’s nothing to excuse.

  John turned back to his notebook.

  —Are you staying the night? the boy asked.

  John admitted he was.

  —Marvelous! the man exclaimed. More the happier.

  The notebook was not doing its job.

  —I’m Joe.

  The man extended his hand, and John had to take it, fleshy and damp. The boy was his son, name of Gill, and just there, his wife, Catherine.

  —Here, Cathy!

  A full-figured woman looked up from her conversation, gave a careless wave, and then weaved through crowded tables towards them. John stood to greet her.

  —Pleased to meet you, Mrs.…?

  —Call me Cathy.

  John cleared his throat. He couldn’t place their accent.

  —We were speculating about you, the man said. I said you were only passing, but Gill here spied out your rucksack under the table.

  —Shrewd concealment, my good sir.

  John had never been c
alled my good sir by any boy, or indeed by any person who wasn’t trying to argue him out of his ideas. They were well spoken, accent more or less proper London, though it slipped, when they addressed the barman, into shades of the local. Before he’d quite realized what was happening, the three had installed themselves at his table, elicited his Christian name, partaken of his tea, and ordered supper.

  —We were told this place was peculiar, the man said. People haven’t been building crosses up on the moor for nothing.

  —Have you seen the crosses, John? the woman asked.

  He stammered as he absorbed the intimate address and her touch on his arm.

  —You’ll come with us, the man announced. We’ll have our summer, I mean supper—

  He parried his son’s response:

  —That’s three, three, my boy. Still miles ahead of you!

  —We’ve been plagued by malapropisms, the woman explained.

  —Those two have scarcely said a proper word all day.

  —He exaggerates, the boy protested. I’ve only had nine, and Mother seven.

  —Do come to the crosses, the woman said. It’s a red-banner evening, and you look as though you could use it.

  They were not his kind of people, not his tea, as the Eagle would have said, but it was easier to go along than to refuse. Their chatter, at least, distracted. They asked nothing about him and volunteered little about their circumstances save that they were visiting Whitby and had come to the Lion Inn to take in the moors. Clearly not country folk, they had nevertheless costumed themselves for the occasion with knee breeches, boots, oilskins, and rucksacks.

  The boy carried a map though the crosses were plain enough to see. The cross called Old Ralph was person-size, and when John put his arms around it, he wondered whom he was embracing. All the moors spread out before him, heather rippling like the sea.

  —There you are!

  The boy came over the top and consulted his map:

  —You’ve found Old Ralph. You went off as though you knew where he was.

  He hoped the boy hadn’t seen him handling the cross.

  —Are you sure you haven’t been here before?

  —As a matter of fact, I was once.

  —When?

  —Before you were born.

  Gill plopped down at the foot of Old Ralph and looked up at John as if eager for a history lesson. Rather than peppering John with questions, he offered the flask from his belt. The water tasted of steel, as it had tasted from his father’s flask in that time that seemed attached to another person.

  —Cathy! Cathy!

  The man appeared over the rise, distraught. He thundered across the heath, threw his arms around Old Ralph, and keened:

  —Oh, my heart’s darling! Hear me this time, Catherine, at last!

  A disembodied voice:

  —It’s twenty years! I’ve been a waif for twenty years!

  The man howled anew. John raised an eyebrow at Gill, who sniggered. Then the woman appeared, hand on hip, a scolding wife:

  —Who’s this you’ve taken up?

  The man unhanded the cross:

  —Only my cousin Ralph, but now you’re here …

  He swept her up, and she pretended to fight off his advances. John wanted to laugh—it seemed the thing—but embarrassment rinsed over him. He was suddenly exhausted. The day had begun before dawn with ghastliness that had no place amongst these people; he’d walked all day, wolfed down a shepherd’s pie, and then come out walking again. He needed a bed.

  * * *

  The wind howled, and he washed between sleep and life, between now and then, not knowing which shore was nearer.

  Oysters were slimy, like swallowing what you sniffed. Sand stung your face so you had to squint. Scarborough rock was not stone but a sweet, and inside were letters that spelled out the place. Overcoats, even in July.

  Why would a man like his father come to the moors? And why should he bring his son, not even out of milk teeth?

  Shoes had a tongue, like your mouth, but no teeth except when they pinched your heel and made blisters.

  Perhaps at the start, his father had planned on Scarborough, holiday to escape a house full of lilies. Had it been the seaside, mournful and freezing, or some cryptic whim that had driven him here, farther up and farther in, to a place so remote that the truth could be unwrapped?

  The grate roared and crackled, like the growl the lion would make. If you left your bed in the night, things in the stone would come down and get you.

  The pillow was flat, and the muscles in his legs crawled. He needed to run a hare and hounds, even in this sheep-baying limbo. Oh, why was he awake, and why here revisiting? How would it look to a neutral observer, one capable of insight—the Eagle, say? A man revisits a spot, the Eagle would say, to come to grips with the thing his father had confessed upon that spot.

  Come to grips, why, though? His mother was dead a quarter of a century; he barely even remembered her.

  In that case, the Eagle might posit, what about a pilgrimage? Not to holy ground per se, but to a place where the dead truth was told.

  To what end, exactly?

  Ah, the Eagle construed, why not a quasi-religious effort to ward off death in the present?

  Magical wishing, in other words, re. Meg?

  The Eagle wouldn’t have put it so bluntly.

  But this hypothesis, however neat, could not stand scrutiny. First, unlike his mother, Meg had lost no children. She had one child, his goddaughter, and had never even been pregnant again.

  That he knew?

  There were no graves.

  Had she and her husband never wanted more children? Hot and cold, after all, did not make lukewarm in matters of the flesh. Merely following the laws of nature, the Eagle argued, she ought to have fallen pregnant since then.

  John made it a rule not to dwell on her intimate life, and in any case, his father claimed to have caused his mother’s death. Was he himself causing Meg’s?

  Certainly not.

  Not medically, at any rate.

  Oh?

  Oh, where could all of his errors be charged? Had he fought for her as hard as he could, before she married? Had he refused to marry her friend when she suggested it? Had he even been faithful to his wife, who sickened for her death and deserved only love? He’d made love to her with his body, but with his mind … Biologically speaking, he hadn’t caused Meg’s ailment, but not everything had a material cause.

  The back of his hand prickled, and the sun came out. He swallowed a fly, and his tooth fell out.

  Was he tramping these hills to demonstrate he was his father’s son, or to prove, with logic, that he wasn’t? He hadn’t believed his father’s claims of guilt, had taken them as grief too fearful to ponder, had forgotten them, in fact. But his father had been truthful, at least in that window, which was more than he would have managed in the same position. But he wasn’t in the same position, and if anyone should be compared to his father—roving, unchaste—it was Owain! Though, where did that leave him in the picture?

  Irrelevant? Even more so than as a child, when at least he could claim to be the product of the two.

  Enough, Eagle, back to your aerie. Whom did it profit to reason round and round? There was no sidestepping the bitter conclusion: If those one loved could not be saved, why bother with them in the first place?

  Ah, John—said a voice not the Eagle’s. You bother because you were made for it. Made as in created. It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmeet.

  Men of his father’s generation saw women as one saw one’s matron, essential but subsidiary. But helpmeet wasn’t the same as trusted servant. Meet meaning fitting; it meant making the man a help like him. Helpmeet was what he longed for, one to meet in the garden in the heat of the day, standing in parity, equal but distinct. Man had been whole, but then God took his rib, and from then he wasn’t whole except with the woman.

  * * *

  He arose when the sun shone o
nto his pillow, feeling feeble but alive. The walking family had also risen early and joined his table. A mild air breathed in the windows, bright with the scent of heather. John wondered if human breath had once been so sweet, and whether it ever would be again.

  The boy Gill chattered easily, as if he had taken John as a pupil and was tutoring him in what the region had to offer. He had large, wide-set eyes, which made him look constantly surprised. He often laughed, and his hair fell across his eyes in waves more indulgent than the crop-and-slick style of John’s pupils. He stood several inches shorter than John yet towered over his father. The man Joe was a compact person, and dark like a man from the west. The woman was fair, like her son, but John could not match any features.

  —I can’t work it out, he confided. Whom you most resemble, your mother or your father.

  Gill spoke with his mouth full:

  —Neither, I should think.

  —We adopted him, the woman said.

  —I’m a foundling.

  John couldn’t think what to say, and he wasn’t completely sure they meant it.

  —They found me in an enormous hat on the steps of the—

  —John doesn’t want to hear all that, the father said.

  The tone fell just this side of severe. John stiffened to hear it, but then the man clapped his son on the back:

  —Remember, my boy, a story is only as good as its mystery.

  Gill had clearly heard this before.

  —He’s awfully proud of it, the woman said.

  —I am, Gill agreed. But not proud as in I take credit for it, proud as in I’m glad of it. And anyway—

  He offered John the last piece of toast.

  —Foundlings are good luck.

  —Good luck to have or good luck to meet?

  —Both.

  Gill spoke as if they four were a unit. The day was fine; where would they ramble? John suggested Glaisdale. On the way they’d find ruins from the mining days. Mention of mining excited Gill, who proceeded to pump their landlord for stories. They set off midmorning, John leading the way.

  The air was calm and warm, but with the stillness came flies, which no swatting could disperse. Even on the tops, they found no relief. They rushed on, waving handkerchiefs, but the flies tickled and buzzed, spoiling any enjoyment. John apologized repeatedly, and eventually the woman Cathy began to tease him: who’d imagined he was lord of the flies? Joe made comparisons with Africa while Gill called him Flymaster. During the long descent to lunch, his cheeks began to sting as the sun burned his face and the sweat bit.