A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘It goes without saying. I understand that.’

  ‘Just so long as everyone does.’ Edith nodded in the direction of the kitchen. ‘At any rate she’ll be right as rain with Hilda. I’ll come and pick her up in an hour or so.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  Vivien watched her march out of the drive. What she had seemed to be saying was unthinkable. Yet it appeared there were those in Eadenford who had been thinking it.

  She was sitting by the drawing-room window when Ashe returned in the car fifteen minutes later. He wore a dark jacket for driving and could easily have passed for the car’s owner. When he came out of the garage he looked up and gave her a brief nod.

  She spent the morning in the drawing room holding a book. From the back of the house she heard Hilda and Susan, and the dog, going in and out, talking desultorily, doing this and that. She never once heard Ashe’s voice. At half-past eleven a smart, crunching step on the gravel heralded the arrival of Edith Clay to collect her daughter, and she heard the two of them leave again. Another hour after that there was a tap on the door.

  ‘Mrs Mariner? I’ll be off then.’

  ‘That’s fine, Hilda. Thank you for looking after Susan.’

  ‘It was no trouble.’

  ‘Good—oh, Hilda, may I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Mariner.’

  ‘What do people in the village think—about Susan spending so much time with us?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘You must have some idea. I’m sure they’re interested.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hilda firmly. ‘I don’t listen to gossip.’

  Vivien let her go. Hilda might deny listening to the gossip, but in doing so she had confirmed its existence.

  But now all that went out of her head. He was here, somewhere, and she must find him. She ran down to the kitchen, but the dog was in the scullery, cracking on a knuckle-bone, his eyes half-closed in ecstasy. She shut him in, and went into the garden. The shed was padlocked, there was no sign of Ashe. She flew round to the front of the house but the garage door, too, was closed.

  Where was he? Had he gone?

  Inside the front door she stood for a moment, trying to gain control of her rising panic. Her heart was banging; there were spots before her eyes. To her right was Saxon’s study, to her left the drawing room, both of them empty. The dining-room table was visible, with her covered lunch tray on it. She crossed the hall and opened the door of her small sitting room: no one there. Almost sobbing, she returned to the foot of the stairs, gazing upwards. All was mocking tranquillity. In the silence she could just make out the gnawing of the dog’s teeth, down in the scullery.

  Then she heard it—the creak of a door, followed by a moment’s plaintive whining and scratching: she was not the only one who wanted to be with Ashe. Walking as softly as her shaking would allow—though why should it matter if she was heard?—she crossed the hall and went back down into the kitchen. The dog scratched again, more urgently this time. Next to the range with its gleaming armoury of pots and pans the narrow door leading to the back stairs stood open.

  She had forgotten how dark the stairwell was, and how cramped, like a chimney. The treads were shallow, the mean proportions designed for a small domestic servant, a village girl. There was a smell of dust and cooking and something else, a taint of rottenness as if a mouse had died behind the panelling. The stairs curved in a spiral, and ended in the blank dead end of the first landing door. To the right was a vertical thread of light: Ashe’s room.

  She didn’t knock. He was lying on his side on the small, plain bed, his hand pillowing his right cheek, the hideousness of his left side exposed, his eyes on the door. And on her, as she entered.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You found me again.’

  The time was early afternoon. The sun stood high in the sky and only a few clouds drifted between it and the Eaden valley. But something of autumn, of ending, hung in the air. The harvest was underway. Blackberries were appearing in the more sheltered hedges. The swallows and their newly airborne young were feeling the tug of the south as they assembled on the roof-edge and on telegraph wires, wings rustling and tails dipping, ready for the off.

  Down in the scullery the dog had abandoned his efforts to attract anyone’s attention and was lying half-asleep, the bone by his nose. Cut roses stood in the sink; the air smelled sweet. By the kitchen door a platoon of ants scuttled back and forth looking for crumbs on Hilda’s spotless floor. A spider dangled from the top of the window.

  The clocks ticked, measuring time in their different rhythms. The one on the kitchen mantelpiece moved forward in small, tremulous clicks, the second hand shaking slightly with each movement. Upstairs in the hall the stentorian ‘tock’ of the grandfather clock resembled a slow, sombre footfall in the hush. The carriage clock on Saxon’s desk was almost silent, perfectly accurate. His book of poems lay closed on the red leather blotter. In the drawing room Vivien’s prized chiming enamelled French ormolu clock lagged languidly, five minutes behind the rest; the pipe-playing shepherd boys and bonneted shepherdesses on its dome gazed at one another with pinprick eyes and O-shaped mouths. In here, the flowers in their brown water were dry, waiting to be replaced by the fresh roses from the scullery.

  On the dining-room table stood a tray, covered with a daisy-stitched cloth. A wasp hovered and crawled over the uneven shrouded shapes of Vivien’s lunch. In the small back sitting room the desk was open, her Parker pen lay next to the inkwell; untidy sheaves of correspondence and bills protruded from the pigeon-holes. A box dropped in the wastepaper basket had proved too heavy and tipped the basket over. A sloping pile of blankets and folded clothes lay in the corner.

  Upstairs, the door of the main bedroom was ajar, showing the bed smooth as a table beneath its brocade counterpane; the small, personal possessions which had once appeared so shockingly intimate to Vivien as she stood on the landing looked innocent and dull.

  The door to the attic was closed. The small colony of bats hung clustered together like black ivy under the eaves, above the now-tidy trunks and boxes.

  At the end of the landing was the plain, brown door, and the next, its twin, that led to the back stairs and the maid’s room. Behind these three doors was the only movement in the house.

  Though violent, it was wholly silent. Nothing was disturbed.

  After Saxon’s long day, it was a pleasant evening. He was particularly struck, on returning from the station, by how handsome and prosperous the vicarage looked, and commented accordingly to Ashe as he got out of the car.

  ‘It’s a fine house,’ conceded Ashe, closing the car door after him.

  ‘But not always an especially well-maintained one. It owes its smart appearance largely to you.’

  Ashe gave his little bow.

  It was the same inside. The house seemed light, fresh, sweet-scented: tranquil. ‘This is my home,’ thought Saxon, with a frisson of pleasure, and looked up to see Vivien coming down the stairs to meet him—and this was his wife, who at this moment had never, to his eyes, looked more beautiful. She was wearing a loose, pale blue blouse that he had always thought becoming, and a dark skirt. Her glorious hair was coiled loosely at the nape of her neck. Her skin—Lady Delamayne was right—looked unusually pale, but luminously so. Seeing him she removed her glasses and slipped them into her pocket.

  The small gesture snagged at Saxon’s heart. Now, though it was not his habit to greet her extravagantly, he put down his attaché case and held out his arms to receive her.

  She entered his embrace almost submissively. She was definitely thinner, her tall frame slight as a willow against him.

  ‘My darling . . .’ He pushed her back gently to look at her. ‘It’s so nice to be home.’

  The time between then and their going to bed, which they did quite early, at about nine thirty, was characterised for Saxon by the same mood of contentment and serenity. After supper, feeling rather stuffy following the long hours in the chapter
room and on the train, he suggested a game of badminton, but she didn’t feel like it. Instead they took the dog for a walk along the river bank. She slipped her arm through his and he had been pleased and proud as a young buck with his sweetheart. He had felt a real fondness for Boots, the animal’s still-puppyish exuberance, running round and ahead of them like the extension of his happiness. They saw a kingfisher plummeting, jewel-bright from willow to water on the far bank and stopped to watch it, admiring its fierce tropical colours against the silver-green.

  ‘I’m reminded of that old story,’ said Saxon, as they stood together arm in arm. ‘I haven’t thought about it for years. About where the swallows go in winter.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, they gather together in the autumn, as they’re beginning to do now . . . And when they feel the time is right they fly in a flock to the nearest river bank, to wherever the water is deepest.’ Enjoying his role of storyteller, he paused for effect.

  She didn’t look at him, but said: ‘Go on. Then what do they do?’

  ‘They form an enormous ball, a great black rustling sphere of living swallows—imagine!—and they disappear beneath the surface of the water! Far beneath, where it’s cold and dark. And there they hibernate, secretly, among the trailing weed and the slippery fish.’

  A moment passed while she seemed to think about this. ‘And in the spring?’

  ‘In the spring, one fine, sunny morning when the buds are bursting and the blackbirds are singing, someone walking along the bank, just as we are, might see an agitation on the surface of the river, a flurry of circular ripples growing and intensifying until they form a whirlpool, deeper and deeper, until . . .’

  ‘The swallows?’

  ‘The swallows! The great black ball, with water pouring from it, rising out of the river and then exploding, bursting like a seed-head into a hundred individual birds, back from their months of freezing, dark winter death, each one flying away to its remembered nesting place. Imagine,’ he said again, awed by the picture he himself had painted. ‘Imagine, Vivien.’

  ‘I can,’ she said, as, by tacit mutual consent, they turned for home. ‘You describe it very well.’

  Saxon knew that it was true: he was, after all, a poet.

  That night, though they did not make love, they fell asleep with their arms about each other. Saxon felt a rare impulse to protect and cherish his wife. The storytelling on the river bank had awakened something in him, something that had begun with his renewed appreciation of his house, his home. He felt inspired.

  It was this that woke him at about two in the morning. The legend of the swallows, it was the start of a poem! A single line ran through his head:

  Wings petrified by water as the fish fly by

  His eyes snapped open. He must write it down at once: he kept a notebook in the drawer next to his bed. As he rolled over to fumble for it he realised that Vivien was not next to him. The house was quiet, the bedroom door closed. Assuming she was in the bathroom, and anyway too excited by his own thoughts to be, concerned, he lit the lamp on his bedside table, and took the notebook and pencil out of the drawer. As soon as he began to write the pencil broke.

  ‘Damn!’

  He threw down the pencil and swung his legs out of bed. Not bothering to put on his slippers he went out on to the landing. He must go down to the study and scribble, before he forgot.

  ‘Who’s there?’

  For a moment he thought he’d seen a ghost. She was standing in the deepest shadow near the door to the back stairs, her hand—surely?—still on the handle.

  ‘Vivien?’

  Hesitantly, she took two steps towards him. Moonlight from the tall window on the stairs fell on her, but even now, when he could see her clearly he retained the impression of a ghost. There was a key in her hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  MESOPOTAMIA

  The word is there were getting on for three thousand casualties at the battle of Hanna, so no wonder it took a long time to clear up. As a result we moved our position slightly, to the side. Where we are now there’s an old fort off to our left, to the south-west. Like everything around here the ruins probably look bigger than they are, because there’s nothing else on the horizon to give a sense of scale. No relief. Distances can be deceptive too. My guess is it’s not less than one mile away, not more than two, but if there’s a mirage, that can play all kinds of tricks—make things move forwards or backwards, change their size and shape; heavy rain does the same . . . So you can’t be sure.

  What we can see from our position is a kind of broad, uneven H-shape. The north wall, the one facing the river, looks quite tall; on the south that falls away to a lower rampart, or maybe just a more broken-down wall, hard to say; further to the south it rises up again, but not so high. Outside Qurna there was a fort, still in good nick, that was like a drum, cylindrical with squat castellated towers, so this one probably looked the same once.

  At any rate, it’s the only cover for miles around, it’s a wonder they’re not using it as a field hospital or a holding station or something, but they’ll have done a recce. One of the little planes will have been over and taken a look—the fort must be further away or a lot smaller than it looks.

  Jarvis is still not right. Very pale, says his stomach is playing him up. I’m sure it is, fear plays havoc with the bowels. He’s not even up to doing what he does best: putting on a good show for the men. But he’s obsessed with the fort. More than once he says to me: ‘We should make use of that ruin.’

  ‘You reckon, sir.’

  ‘It would be useful cover—we could position snipers, use it as a field hospital.’

  I’ve thought it myself, but I’m not letting him know that.

  ‘They must have considered it, sir.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it Ashe,’ he says. ‘Just don’t bet on it.’

  I say nothing. He shouldn’t be talking to me like this, and we both know it. Back in Basra to begin with I quite liked him for it, but things were different then. Now I reckon it’s a sign that he might remember what happened, that there’s something between us we don’t talk about.

  Another thing he says about the fort: it reminds him of home, Home? Where was home, then, a beach hut on Camber Sands? Then I remember ‘Kersney Lee, near Sheringham’, that’s at the seaside, isn’t it.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘You can walk to the sea in your bathing trunks without leaving our land.’

  ‘That so, sir?’

  ‘When I get back, Ashe, I’m going to pull up the drawbridge.’

  ‘Sir.’

  He’s cracking up. I’ve got my eye on him.

  We stay here for weeks, while the wounded go back, the reinforcements come up, and the brass decide what to do. We’re bored, and some of us are scared. HQ in Basra has a brainwave—improve the fly-catching techniques, to relieve the men’s discomfort and give us something to do. Some brilliant scientific brain has come up with this gadget, a box with a revolving triangular panel at the base, coated with sticky stuff. The flies fly in, land, get stuck, you turn a handle and the panel moves round and scrapes them off into the box, the next section’s ready and waiting. Clever, eh? But it’s not a competition this time, it’s just to keep us amused. Most of us can’t be bothered. Even the officers think it’s a bloody insult. It almost makes us feel kindly towards the flies—we’re all in it together. The gadgets arrive by the crateload and we use them for kindling.

  Eventually we get marching orders. We’re advancing to somewhere called Dujaila, but none of us is fooled by that any more. In Mesopotamia there are names, but no places. Dujaila will look exactly the same as Hanna, and Sheikh Sa’ad and Ctesiphon and all the other godforsaken wastes that’ll go in the official history. Sand, stones, scrub and our friends the flies. Looking back, no wonder they thought Qurna was the Garden of Eden. It’s all relative.

  As a matter of fact Dujaila does turn out to be a little different. There’s a kind of valley, a dip i
n the landscape, called the Dujaila Depression, very apt. To the north west we’ve got the Dujaila Redoubt, a long ridge, not sure if it’s natural or the remains of some old fortified wall. We’re camped at the head of the depression, a few hundred yards from the redoubt.

  About four miles beyond this is Kut. We’re that close. We can’t see it, but we know it’s there, and that puts everyone on their mettle. Maybe we’ll do it this time. We’ll be in Kut, a proper town, and a real landmark on the way to Baghdad. For myself I’ll be glad if we can reach the top of the ridge, just to get out of this bog. Because the weather’s worse if anything. We’re half-frozen and soaked through, but at least with the reinforcements there’s more of us and a few more rations. Who knows? Perhaps the Turks are living in the open with only flies to eat. Although I don’t think so. They’ll be waiting for us snug as you like over the other side.

  And then they bomb the place. Not us—Kut. They’ve got wind there’s another relief attempt in the offing and they’re having a last go at flushing out Townshend’s poor sods. If we didn’t know precisely where Kut was before, we do now. The air raids take place over two or three days; we have to sit there, bogged down, and listen to the whine and crash of the bombs falling, and watch the smoke and rubble fly up in the air above the top of the redoubt. It’s like there are two lots of rain—one coming down, the other going up, the clouds getting mixed up with each other, the man-made thunder and lightning. In the second air raid I start counting, and get to ten. In my rough calculation, forty-odd bombs by the time they’re through.

  It’s during the fourth raid I find Jarvis in a really bad way. I take the rum issue into the tent and he’s sitting in the corner wrapped up in his cape, shivering like a jelly with his teeth chattering loud enough to hear. Cornish leaves as I come in, he’s got that over-to-you air. He’s shivering too, but then we all are. The difference is in the eyes. Jarvis looks wretched, hunted: as close to packing it in as any man I’ve ever seen.