“I thought it would be a tower—but it’s only a big house and the light’s somewhere else. Good, old stone, comfortable, shiny, not very nautical— which I’d expected. It smelled of books and Sunday dinners.”
Nathan laughed out loud, or barked out loud—it was hard for her to tell which. “Yes. Well guessed. We eat, as it happens, compulsory Sunday lunches there every week. Keeping the group together—pseudo family stuff. All nonsense. But we will have to go tomorrow, that being the fourth and, therefore, Sunday. Don’t worry, there’s no need for formal dress. Go on. You were there, they were there . . . all assembled . . . just like the cast at the start of one of those tacky disaster movies.”
“We had batons of vegetables to eat—”
Nathan gave a small snuff of amusement. “Sorry. Long story. You’ll find that batons of vegetables appear a good deal. They’re Lynda’s favourite and turn my stomach, but that—as I’ve said—is a long story which you will hear at the proper time.”
“Well anyway, I was trying not to grab the things in handfuls, but I was very hungry and I half-thought that was all we’d get. I wasn’t sure. Everyone was fiddling with bits of carrot and looking as if they wanted to talk to each other but ought to talk to me, so no one was saying anything. Joe introduced them to me, or me to them. Both.”
“So. Ruth Alvey?”
“She’s plays and poetry.”
“If she says so. Bakes a good loaf, I would say. Sorry, do go on.” He offered her a vaguely vulpine smile.
“Very black hair—that iridescent, almost blue colour.”
“And.”
“Soft. She seemed soft.”
“Or saggy, baggy, puffy, loose, much more than normally afflicted by gravity. You don’t have to be polite. I want what you saw, your opinion. Your opinion will be right.”
“She is, in my opinion, not a happy shape. And she’s pale. She moves as if she has sore hips, or bad shoes, or bad underwear. She’s missing the tips of two fingers, but I didn’t ask why.”
“Shark bit her.”
Now Mary laughed. Reining it back, as soon as she’d heard herself.
“True. A tiger shark, I believe. She will tell you—at great length— about the curious hissing noise a tiger shark makes when it bites you. It was, obviously, aiming for rather more than her fingers. In fact, I think she lost them trying to prise its mouth off her other arm. You can’t say she hasn’t been plucky, from time to time.”
“My God.”
“It was probably her own fault—she’ll have read it some of her bloody tankas, or her performance poetry, until the poor beast could do nothing but go for her throat.” This time his smile was more human. “I’m interrupting too much, but some things you do need to know. And Ruth will talk about sharks. You may say to her, ‘What a lovely dress.’ (I wouldn’t, but you might.) And she will say, ‘Yes—it’s silk, very smooth. Unlike the fantastically abrasive surface of a Porbeagle shark.’ Or you may say, ‘Fancy a chicken sandwich?’ and she will answer, ‘Indeed I would. Cooked chicken, of course, can be almost indistinguishable from properly cooked shark.’ Or you might say—despairing—something extremely conservative like, ‘Hello,’ and get back, ‘Hello—that was the first word I said on that magical day when I swam with the lemon sharks. They’re very maternal, you know.’ You can’t win. It’s best not to speak to her, really.”
“Thanks a lot. If she ever, ever talks about sharks now, I’ll laugh and she’ll think I’m odd.”
“She’ll be too self-obsessed to notice, even if you’re frothing mad. And . . . if you did laugh and I was there, then . . . Well, that would be something in the way of a private joke between us. Wouldn’t it? If you like that kind of thing. Might I have a cup of tea, do you think? Thanks.” Nathan sprang up and moved for the matchbox and the gas ring before she could stop him. “It’s OK—I know where things are. This used to be Arthur Llangattock’s place.” He dropped the matches and began to scrabble for them, sucking air between his teeth.
“The same Llangattock who’s paying for me to be here?” Mary felt she shouldn’t help him pick them up, that assistance would embarrass him.
“Yes. Well, no. He isn’t paying—he paid. The money is from a bequest. He’s dead. Which is why you’re living in his house. Otherwise, he would be.”
Nathan salvaged the last of the matches, managing to strike one on the floorboards. Rather than let it flare across the others in his fist, he tried tamping it out on his free palm, hoping a cough could cover any audible signs of pain. In the end, he just had to release it and then stamp on it as tactfully as he could.
He lit the ring and turned, relieved to see that Mary wasn’t looking, only idling her time away, drawing arcs with her finger in her plate of crumbs. Perhaps she hadn’t seen him being utterly ridiculous. Or perhaps she was only sitting and thinking, “This isn’t Llangattock’s house any more, this is Mary Lamb’s.” He hoped so.
“Anyway, go on. Lynda Dowding—the Carrot Queen. Your impressions.”
“Oh. I don’t know.”
“Nonsense.” His voice sharpened again, darkened, mouth firming. “Come on. This is the easy stuff.”
“She’s very . . . Her husband is frightened of her. He is her husband?”
“He’s certainly married to her, yes. That would be the same thing, I’d imagine.”
“Well, she . . . If I’m being honest . . .”
“Painstakingly, please.”
“She worried me. Or not worried . . . she looked so good, but not in a good way.”
“Explain.”
“Her teeth and hair and nails—everything so perfect. You could tell she’d used one of those little make-up pencils to finish her lipstick off, just right. And she must have blended three or four mascaras, taken a good deal of time. I mean, it looked effective, but it still looked false and her foundation was settling into her wrinkles, making them worse. You know.”
“No, I don’t, you’re telling me. With all the splendid cruelty of youth.” The kettle began its whistle and was snatched from the heat, slopping slightly over one of Nathan’s shoes.
“Did that burn you?”
“Mm? Oh.” He looked down at his gently steaming foot. “No. No, it’s fine.”
“Well. Good.”
Mary pursed her lips, looking—both at once—remarkably studious and remarkably vulnerable. Nathan concentrated hotly on not boiling his own hand instead of the tea bag.
“I thought she was nice, though—”
“Nice?” The one word barged Nathan’s voice up through an octave.
“I thought so. She was very—”
“I don’t object to your opinion, I told you that. I object to the word. In a setting like that, it’s, it’s . . .”
“Meaningless?”
“Worse, but I can’t quite think of the proper literary term at the moment. Oh, yes. Crap. That’s the one I was searching for. Or shite. It’s a fine line, either way. Quick, redeem yourself with Richard Fisher.”
“The frightened husband. He’s the only one who looked like a writer. I mean, he’s got the lots of hair and the black pullover and the long fingers . . . that’s to say, with the left hand, he does.”
“And the right one is . . . ? Honesty, remember . . .”
“His right arm is shorter and smaller than the left—it looks like a boy’s arm, but he has everything—all of his clothes—cut so the sleeves fit. He looks very dashing.”
“And that would clinch it, obviously—dashing deformity—must be a writer. The fact that he can only cough up genre crime yarns and post-modernist ragbags of Alzheimered tat should not be taken into consideration. Next—Louis Elcho. Our historian.”
“Oh, that’s what he does.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.
“He knew a lot about history—he was extremely well informed, not boring. He was . . . he was sweet. A very, very endearing old man.”
“You liked him?”
“I did.”
>
“Yes, well, he is the grandfatherly type.” Nathan made this sound particularly waspish. “Joe?”
Mary took a serious breath. “Amiable, not unlikeable, initially alarming, but, I thought, fundamentally good. He cares a lot about the Fellowship. He seemed fond of you.”
“In a way that the others did not.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“No. You’re right. It’s not.” Nathan lifted one hand and studied his thumb. “Are you settling in, is there anything you need, do you have any worries?”
“I think Mr. Christopher took care of everything.”
“Yes, well, he’s not really in charge of you, though, is he? If you have any problems now, you bring them to me.”
Mary quietly considered whether this wouldn’t be a problem in itself.
“Come here.” Nathan flapped her towards him while backing off in the direction of her front doorway. “Now.” He opened the door, ushered her out into the billowing drizzle and pointed. Joe had shown her this already—a low, long building on a gentle rise, pale against a hunch or two of brush. “That’s where I live.”
“I was told.”
He dropped one arm around her heavily and she noticed a twitch, a shiver, not in his arm, but in his whole body. He was shaking. The damp and cold could make a person do that, it wasn’t unreasonable behaviour, she supposed.
“Well, if you have any problems,” he let go of her, smoothed one hand across the top of his head, “you go there. If I’m not in, wait. Wait inside. I’ll be back. Probably, I’ll be walking the dog.”
“You have a dog?”
“Well, don’t sound so astonished. I am capable of shouldering the occasional caring responsibility. He is a nice dog. You have a problem with dogs?”
“No.”
“Good.” He nodded to her, began walking off as abruptly as he’d arrived.
“You didn’t drink your tea.”
“You have it.” He spun on his heel in the mushy grass. “The rest of the time, we’ll work in my house, by the way. It’s bigger. Obviously. Ten o’clock tomorrow, we start properly. I love working on a Sunday. God may have rested on it, but we need all the time we can get.”
“Should I bring anything: paper—”
“No, you should not.” He shrugged round into the face of the rain and stamped away, calling as he went, “Make yourself at home. Oh, and welcome.”
“Thanks.”
If he answered her, she didn’t hear.
And she didn’t see him, minutes later, clattering open his door, hands still greasy with terror: memory and unwanted tenderness lodged between his fingers and under his tongue like acrid felt. Nathan dropped to his knees and then—Eckless observing, warily—lowered his head to the boards, started grinding his naked crown against the wood. He ground hard, determinedly, while rain spatter from his trench coat trickled up the bared arch of his neck.
Quiet in her new home, Mary cleared her table. She tried to plan out a letter to the Uncles, because she guessed—correctly—that writing it would distract her, make her feel less alone.
Mary emptied and rinsed their two mugs as Nathan breathed queasily round the shameful hollow of himself and imagined the small thrill, the ill thrill, of Mary actually drinking his mug of tea. Even if it was unlikely she’d have taken his suggestion, set her lips to his cup, kissed where his mouth had been, held where his hands had fretted and sweated and been numbed with terrifying hope. Why not?
I thought she would be . . . I thought. Things should all have been quite different.
Quite another way.
But they still can be.
She looks so . . .
They can still be different.
Please.
Mary walked that afternoon. The rain had thickened and sealed the day, started to cup the island in mist and shreds of an early dusk, but she still went out. Nathan saw her from his window, felt her presence prick in his lung before his mind’s eye had entirely recognised her—the shape of a new figure on the island, bending into the weather, cuffed and blustered at. She was heading roughly north towards the shoreline, which meant that she would probably pass his bay. The breeze would really hit her there. But there was no point stopping her, no point running out and shouting, waving his arms in the storm that would rip his voice to eddies and nonsense before it reached her. Without his intervention, she would gather her own experience, she would learn. A person should be permitted to learn from their own mistakes.
One of Mary’s introductory letters had given her a list of useful items she might bring with her to Foal Island, including
16 Stout waterproof clothing.
18 A warm hat.
21 Wellingtons.
22 Three-season walking boots.
31 Chocolate. (An optional fillip, but something which islanders always seem to find in short supply.)
Before leaving her hut, Mary had equipped herself with items 16, 22, 18 and 31. Her hat used to be Bryn’s, a sheep-oily knitted thing, itchy but also cosy and something of his, something that still smelled of his hair oil and his thinking. She trudged, trying to conjure up his company, but she could only hear Mr. Staples’s voice, slapping at her with questions.
“Tell me what it was like?” That doesn’t mean anything—that simply does not communicate. A writer’s supposed to communicate. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even look at you properly—except slyly sometimes, when he thinks that you won’t see.
A gull kited ahead of her, tilting and bouncing a little above the level of the shore. It eyed her, lazily, accustomed to reclining on chaos, confident in its support.
He doesn’t like me.
I know he doesn’t. It’s not just the way I’m feeling and being uncomfortable, away from home—he doesn’t like me.
She tried to get some muscle into her discontent.
But then, he doesn’t have to like me. And, as it happens, I don’t have to like him. As it happens, I’m not impressed by Nathan Staples. I don’t care if he is famous. Joe’s just as famous and he’s nice. Which is as good a word as any—a nice man is a nice man, so that’s what you call him—nice.
Mary wiped the rain from her eyes and stopped, completely stopped. Recollection flared and spun around her unannounced. It held her breath. The feel of Jonno kicked and sparked and yelled between her hips. Before she could damp her memory down, she was lit with the need to make him pant, to make his teeth close on her ear, to make him hoarse and spent and hot.
She’d guessed she might cry today, because she’d been hurt, or scared by Nathan, or because she was in a strange place and missed her Uncles, her old life. Instead she stood and wept while she thought of Jonno, while muscle tricked itself into mouthing at nothing, rocked through an aching twitch. She closed her eyes and, in the small pause of dark, watched her need kiss down against him, raw and lipping him to the root.
Then she was cold, she noticed, or at least shivering, which amounted to much the same thing.
“Mary. Good afternoon. If you don’t mind me asking, are you all right? This isn’t exactly the best day for a stroll.”
She’d walked almost to the island’s north-eastern tip when Louis Elcho found her. She’d seen him, weaving his approach between softening flags of rain. Because she had still felt soft, bleary, she had—at first— wanted to simply wave at him in what might seem a hearty way and then move on before he made her stop. But he could crack out a fair pace when he wanted, a remarkable speed for his size. Not a slim man, Louis. He’d caught up with her.
“Settling in well? Nathan seen you?”
Everyone here seemed determined to do nothing but question her.
“You look tired. Do come and have tea.” Before she could stop him, he’d insinuated a stubby arm under her elbow. “You can’t see from here, but I’m only at the bottom of the slope there—one day, I’m sure, I’ll slip all the way into the sea.” He led her forward. “Not that it isn’t high time. I’ve lived far too long as it is. And I’ve done enou
gh. I find this continued largesse,” he waggled his unrestricted arm happily at the matted grass, the writhing sky, the heaving grey vertigo of sea, “almost embarrassing. Seventy-four, imagine. No boy ever sits and thinks to himself—I shall grow up one day into a seventy-four-year-old man. No normal boy, anyway. I did ask you about Nathan, did I? An odd sort. Still, poeticam istud licentiam decet.”
For the first time since Joe landed her, Mary’s mind found itself on familiar ground. “That befits a poet’s licence. But he isn’t a poet. Is he?”
“Oh, excellent. Really. Really.” He squeezed her arm. “No, he’s not a poet, strictly speaking—but he does have more lyrical leanings than he’ll admit. All that sex and horror—it makes him money, but it’s also rather good—rather poetic. And for that, you need a licence. I think we could say his is fully paid up.” He squeezed her again. “A fellow classicist. Good news.”
“Not really. My Uncles taught me. I just learned things by heart.”
“So you have Latin in your heart. Delightful.” And he began to slip them gently, Mary restraining him, down to the point where his cottage door could halt their progress and catch them both safe inside.
Like Mary, Louis had a faintly threatening, cylinder-fed gas cooker. Unlike Mary he had straight walls, a distinct ceiling, more than one room and a wide range of possessions, mainly books and photographs.
“Death and letters, you see, death and letters. That’s all it’s about.” He presented her with a thick slice of what turned out to be date-and-walnut loaf—the taste of it made her feel immediately nostalgic. The Uncles loved their cakes. “Books, letters . . . immortality, isn’t it?”
Mary knew she was feeling less tense, eyeing the cake and discovering that her walk had made her hungry. Louis watched her settle, happily. He was one of Nature’s welcomers. He should have been a hangman, or a dentist—making use of his gift for rendering strangers unwary. Instead, he’d been a teacher and specialised, as Mary could have testified, in putting people younger than himself at some kind of ease. In her case, warmth, a comfortable chair, cake and some Latin tags were all it took. She was a pushover. But he still respected her.
Everything You Need Page 9