I must have passed out, exhausted.
For when I awoke, it was twilight. The wind had dropped. I stood up and felt the excruciating ache of cold through my body. Everything was still, the tide had turned and the surface of the water was silken black. There was no disturbance of the inky river. It was a clear, starlit evening. I knew that I must quickly get home and out of the wet clothes, into the bath. Throwing on my jacket, I trudged to the end of the jetty and painfully heaved myself over the gate. The path along the sea wall was deserted. There was nobody on the bridge as I crossed over. Hardly any cars were parked on the quayside, the castle was not lit. It seemed that the town was empty. It was a place of silence. My own footsteps, the squelching of water in my boots, were the only sound beneath the towering walls of the castle. I shuddered and walked on, spotting the van near the edge of the harbour, leaving my trail of wet footprints and sea water dripping from my clothes. The keys were in my pocket. The blue fingers felt for them, still numb from the touch of the sea-smooth wood and the iron bolts. I took out the keys. The jangling of metal broke the silence.
At the sound, Archie stepped from the other side of the van.
I halted. For a moment, the bird stood still, its wings folded. The cormorant and I waited in the twilight. Neither of us moved.
‘Archie?’
And the bird came forward.
It waddled at first, then it stretched the black wings and sprang along on slapping feet. Archie covered the yards in a series of flaps and leaps, stopped in front of me, beat a pair of damp wings, croaked once, and dropped some twitching thing by my green boots. It was a fish.
My voice was trembling.
‘Thank you, Archie, thank you. Where the hell did you get to, you daft bugger?’
The cormorant croaked again and folded its wings. When I reached out and touched its head, I felt it was wet. Archie nuzzled my hand, as affectionate as a dog. In a spasm, the fish arched at my feet. I bent down, picked it up and put it in my pocket.
‘Good lad . . .’
There was no rope around the bird’s ankle. The collar was there on its throat. We started towards the van.
And from somewhere in the dark sky, there came a little dry applause. Someone, some spectator, was clapping, slow, sarcastic applause, increasing in speed and intensity, slowing, stopping. The clapping stopped.
I craned my neck and looked up at the castle. My head swam. Among the battlements, leaning over and applauding the reunion of man and cormorant, celebrating the gift of the fish, the silhouette of a man was there against the bright stars. The figure was still. No more clapping. The figure was entirely dark, until there was a movement of an arm, a hand went up to the head, and a pinprick of golden light glowed for a brief moment. My neck was throbbing, my eyes stinging with water.
The man vanished into the blackness of the battlements.
And falling through the air, as bright as a comet against the castle wall, falling, falling, falling, to disappear in a shower of sparks on the rocks of the dry moat . . . the butt of a discarded cigar.
*
In a stupor of cold and shock, man and cormorant drove through the suburbs of Caernarfon, into the foothills, and climbed into the mountains of Snowdonia. Archie sat on the front seat, as still as iron, like a dark ruin of twisted metal. I drove quickly at first, gripping the wheel with whitened knuckles, then began to slow down when we had left the town. Perhaps I had seen something that my son had seen, something which had mesmerised the little boy as he looked through the window of the bus in the town square. What had Harry seen in the garden that night? Was the cormorant alone in the backyard? What else was included in the inheritance? I shuddered, as I had shuddered in the crumbling offices of the quarry, as the tremor of fear had run down my spine at the sound of clapping, at the spark which tumbled from the battlements of the castle. The presence of a grey man fell over me, cold as the snow which would soon envelop the mountains.
But there remained a few days before Ann would return from Derby, when Archie would go back to the security of its reinforced cage. There could still be expeditions to fish for dabs; I would be more careful to watch the weather and tides. I felt my bones aching, the water from my clothes had run onto the car seat and onto the floor. More and more, I was shaking uncontrollably, my teeth beginning to chatter. The heater whirred at full blast, the inside of the van was warm and the windows steamed up, but, until I could get out of my clothes and into the bath, I was desolate. Faster and faster I drove. Still Archie seemed paralysed, a statue of a cormorant. Parking right outside the front door of the cottage, I struggled briefly with the key and flung myself into the living-room. The bird came lamely through, silent, numb.
I built the fire, using three fire-lighters to make a quick blaze from the gritty coal before laying a well-dried log on the top. The bath was running. I left Archie in front of the rising flames while I threw off my clothes and scampered into the bathroom. It was wonderfully steamed up, I straightaway felt the soothing heat on my face and in my chest. In a moment, after that glorious agony of sinking into the scalding water, I lay back and allowed the heat to creep into every fibre of my body. I submerged my head: the chill in my skull was quenched, the ache at the base of my neck was extinguished. I must have slept for an hour in my drenched clothes, on the jetty. In that time, nobody had passed and noticed me there, it was not an evening for the casual stroller. Now I dozed in the warmth and steam of my bath.
And in my dream, I was at the graveside of another family funeral. Looking down through drizzle-dappled glasses, I could see my own feet in their funeral shoes, a long way away, as though I was towering above them, a giant’s-eye view of black shoes in the wet grass. I could hear the droning voice of the minister, familiar words which failed to drown the sound of soil falling from a spade onto the lid of a coffin. Raining . . . it was always raining at those family funerals. And who was it this time? One of the innumerable aunts or uncles, a foreign cousin flown back from Canada or New Zealand? I did not look into the grave. I continued to study the distant feet and listen to the patter of earth against the wood. Next to my own shoes, to my left, another pair, bigger, wider, an old-fashioned pair of black, laced-up boots, well polished, well used. On the heavy toe-caps, big drops of rain stood and trembled, supported by the thickness of the polish. They made my own feet seem slight, unimportant, the overwhelming presence of those boots. Still not looking up, I saw the legs of a dark suit close to my legs. It was raining harder. Pools were forming in the grass. The voice was blurred by the sound of rain. And to my right, another pair of feet: black, webbed feet, the cormorant standing respectfully at the graveside. I looked into the grave. There was a tiny coffin, the coffin of a little child, almost covered with brown mud. The rhythmic movement of the spade, the gathering puddles . . . the voices grew, together with the sounds of stone on stone as the spade threw in its layers of rubble and gravel. And the coffin disappeared. The images faded in the increasing rain, but the noises remained: the knocking, the voices, growing and growing until I was awake and shivering in my lukewarm bath . . .
In the living-room, Archie was moving about. I could hear the blundering passage of its wings, something was knocked over with a thud, some books or a lamp. There was the sound of a car outside the front door, voices, arousing the cormorant from its fireside slumber. I heard the bird shift from perch to perch, its clumsy progress from the table to the armchair, onto the back of the sofa. Quickly I stood up in the water and reached for a towel. Without beginning to dry myself, I wound it around my waist and went through into the living-room.
Archie was wide awake, bristling like a panther. Every feather was electric with the tension of listening for the new voices. It stood bolt upright on the sofa and creaked with nerves. Someone was at the front door, a figure dimly outlined through the frosted glass. The cormorant cried and lifted its tail. A stream of yellow shit spattered across the furniture. I whirle
d at the bird.
‘Bugger off, you bloody revolting creature, for Christ’s sake! What’s the matter with you?’
Wet and furious, I flung out an arm at the bird’s face and caught it on the side of the beak. Archie toppled from the back of the sofa, onto the lamp which it had knocked off the table. There was a welt of blood on my hand from the impact with the cormorant’s bill. The towel came loose. As I tucked it in at the waist, smearing the blood across my stomach and over the pink towel, the bird gathered itself. The head was snaking, it flailed the dagger beak. More books came tumbling down and a log collapsed from the fire onto the hearth as Archie moved over the carpet. I lashed out with my bare foot, but the bird seized a corner of the towel and sprang away with one powerful beat of its wings. Shaking with cold and uncontrollable rage, I stood there, stark naked, dripping wet, streaked with blood. The cormorant retreated to the far shadows of the room, to worry the towel as though it were dealing with a conger eel.
‘Filthy bird! Fuck off or I’ll kill you . . .’
The front door opened behind me.
Ann and Harry stepped into the room.
IV
‘Christ almighty . . .’
That was all Ann said as she stood at the front door. She threw down her suitcase and reached out for Harry. He was staring into the dark, a frown dissolving from his face, his mouth beginning to form a vacant smile. The flicker from the flames of the tumbling logs was all the light, it picked up the wet whiteness of my nudity and the blood across my belly. In a far corner, something was moving under the table, some black thing was struggling with a pink and red opponent. There was the smell of fish.
‘Upstairs, Harry, come on . . .’
She abandoned her case and disappeared up the stairs, the boy in her arms arching and convulsing in his efforts to see more of the cormorant. I recovered my wits. Moving the luggage so that it blocked the bottom step, I followed Ann into the deeper darkness. The bird was left in the living-room to finish its battle with the bath towel.
‘Ann, what are you . . . ?’
‘For God’s sake, put some clothes on!’ She spat at me like a cornered otter. ‘What the hell are you doing down there? What’s the bloody bird doing in the house? I come in, and there you are in a darkened room, stark naked, prancing around with a bloody cormorant . . .’
I found some clothes and dressed. I was still wet. Ann drew the curtains of the bedroom and turned on the light. Harry sat on the bed, wide-eyed, watching me dress. There was blood on my hand: it welled up from a blue graze and stained the clean shirt which I put on over my wet and blood-smeared stomach. Ann flung off her raincoat and began to unbutton the little boy’s anorak.
‘Look, Ann, I had no idea you were . . .’
‘So what?’ she hissed, without looking at me. ‘By the look of things, it’s a good job I came back a bit early. Someone ought to keep an eye on you. Leave you on your own for a week and God knows what obscene things you get up to!’
The boy’s coat was taken off. She rubbed his hair gently with her hands and a few drops of rain flew onto the carpet. I stood still. I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to touch my wife and kiss her. Something rose in my throat when I looked at her tending to Harry, when I saw the angry colours of her face. I moved to her.
‘Ann, look, I can explain everything. It was just unfortunate that you should . . .’
‘Get down there and sort it out then! Or are we going to sit up here and let the bird have the run of the sitting-room?’ She turned to the child. ‘Now, little Harry, we’ll go downstairs and get nice and warm and dry in a few minutes. When your naughty daddy has spanked that nasty bird . . .’
But the boy seemed oblivious to his mother’s tender words. His eyes were fixed on my bleeding hand, he was alert to the shadowy movements of the creature below.
I went down the narrow staircase. I was going to have no nonsense from Archie. Already that day, with my ordeal in the water and the sinister scrutiny of our reunion, I had had enough of the bird’s mischief. Prepared for a confrontation, I stepped over the suitcase at the foot of the stairs. I found the light switch. In the sudden brightness, it seemed that the room was not so chaotically upset as it had appeared in the dancing glow of the flames. The cormorant had returned to its place in front of the fire, leaving the towel in the corner.
‘Right, Archie, you bugger, you’re going out into the yard. Come on . . .’
I advanced, with a heavy cushion in my left hand, with the right ready to fly at the bird’s throat, the best and safest hold. But Archie waddled sedately past me towards the door and waited there for me to open it. I turned the handle, the door swung open. With a haughty nod, an adjustment of the wings in the manner of a bride about to begin her progress up the aisle, Archie swept out of the room. I quickly followed, eager to take advantage of the cormorant’s co-operation, and ushered it into the backyard, through the opening of the cage. The bird disappeared into the crate, buried itself among the straw. The cage was secured. I scampered in from the lightly falling rain and locked the back door behind me.
‘Jesus . . .’ A long sigh of relief.
Ann was already in the living-room, at work on the long squirt of shit. Harry watched the operation from near the Christmas tree. Without speaking, I picked up the books and the table lamp, whose bulb was not broken, repaired the fire and swept up the ash from the hearth.
‘Come to me, Harry,’ I said, and the little boy scrambled into my arms. I kissed him on the forehead and smelled the bright, clean hair.
‘What’ve you been up to then? Been a good boy for your mummy?’
‘More than we can say for you,’ said Ann. She came to the sofa and sat down next to me. ‘I love you, I love you,’ she whispered, looking away towards the fire as though these were words she could not safely say to my face. ‘You silly man . . .’ And she collapsed gently backwards, to lean against my shoulder. My arm went around her waist. Without moving my head, I could inhale the scent of the woman and the warmth of the child.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said into the cloud of her hair. ‘It’s all so stupid, isn’t it?’ I turned her round to face me. Harry wriggled on my knee and put up a chubby hand to his mother’s mouth. ‘But what are you doing here? Why are you early? How did you get up here from Caernarfon?’
There was no mystery attached to Ann’s unexpected return. A week with her parents in Derby was more than enough: she was missing her husband. She wanted to get back to the cottage and to the hills, away from the Midland suburbs. Of course, it was nice at first to be in the bosom of the family and to see some old friends, but, time and time again, she had had to reiterate the story of our unusual inheritance; and then, there were furtive looks exchanged between her listeners, who obviously doubted the truth of the tale. Why should she suddenly flee her husband and the remote Welsh village? What was the matter with the relationship? What kind of goings-on took place up in the mountains? These questions went unasked, but Ann had sensed a shiver of delicious scandal through the company of friends and neighbours, people who had raised their eyebrows months ago on first hearing of our plans to move to Wales. They thrilled to hear about the disappointments and disillusionments of rash youngsters: it made their suburban lifestyle seem more acceptable. So Ann determined to come back as soon as she could. That morning, quickly packing her single case, she thanked her parents for their hospitality, kissed them both lightly on the cheeks (mother was squeezing out a pearly tear), and took the coach from the centre of Derby to Caernarfon. And a taxi into the hills, thinking she would spring a surprise on her lonely husband.
‘And what about Harry? Was he alright?’
She hesitated, touched the boy’s cheek. He was tired. Soon he would go up to bed.
‘Well, yes, I suppose he was alright. Only, he wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party. So Mum, of course, thought there was maybe something wrong wit
h him, maybe we weren’t giving him a very good diet, all the right vitamins and so on. Implying that perhaps I wasn’t a particularly wonderful mother, like she was . . .’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t he show off his walking, reaching out for all your mother’s priceless ornaments? I imagined he’d create havoc in the midst of all that twee suburban style.’
Again she paused. On my knee, Harry was closing his eyes. He had fallen forward against my chest, his thumb in his mouth.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I could hardly stir him off my knee. He wouldn’t go to Mum or Dad, just turned away from them and stuck his face in my neck. It was weird. He’d sit for hours as we were chatting, almost like a little adult, as though he was listening politely to our conversation but was too shy to join in. I couldn’t interest him in anything in the house, he didn’t want to explore or to break anything. Couldn’t care less about their cat.’ She frowned, searching for the right words. ‘You know, if he’d been a grown-up, you would’ve said he was boring, just sitting there, glazed, vacant . . .’
‘All day? What’s the matter with him?’
‘Well, no,’ continued Ann. ‘The funny thing was that he perked up whenever I took him out, to the shops or into the park. He’d be sitting there like a doll, on the bus, or if I’d plonked him on the trolley in a supermarket, and then he’d suddenly come alive, as though he’d had an electric shock or something. Pointing wildly through the window, slapping his hands on the glass, forcing my face round to look at somebody or other. Or practically standing up on the trolley, so that I’d have to plonk him down again, waving his arms, shouting, jabbing his fingers . . . always pointing into the distance, into the crowd.’
Stephen Gregory Page 7