The Fox's Walk
Page 30
A moment later I opened my eyes again and saw my mother crouched, wild-eyed and pale, above me.
“Are you all right, darling?” She gasped breathlessly, one hand on my shoulder, the other supporting herself on the grass.
I nodded and smiled a little to reassure her. I felt as though I were somewhere else, floating over the scene, and that the physical effort of speaking was for the moment beyond me.
“There were three men. They were wearing masks,” I heard Jarvis say. I allowed my head to fall a little to one side so that I could see him. He was sitting on the grass. The side of his face was grazed and bleeding. Someone had given him a large white handkerchief. The skin had been scraped off both his knees and the side of one leg. He was shivering as though he were very cold, and the way he held one arm I would later, on the hunting field, come to recognize as a broken collar bone, but his voice was clear and confident.
That Jarvis had chosen to lie about what had happened did not in my dreamlike state seem surprising. Nor was I surprised that he knew I would not betray him. I closed my eyes again, as much to avoid having to speak, even to continue reassuring my mother I wasn’t hurt, as to have to answer questions about what had happened. I wasn’t even playing for time; I knew what I would say: I would, a habit already invisibly in place, follow Jarvis’s lead but, as always, I would be one step behind. I would not contradict his lie; he already knew that. Instead I would say I had seen nothing. It would prevent a good deal of questioning; or, if it did not, it would at least simplify my answers. I closed my eyes because I wanted to prolong a little the time before it would all become noisy and urgent and confusing. And if I said and did nothing, I knew that, after the noise, urgency, and confusion, I would be put quietly into my bed where I could lie still and think about what had happened.
There had been two boys, not three men—it had all taken place in a moment, and then they were gone. Through the bushes, onto the Fox’s Walk and into the woods. And, although they had worn masks, it now seems to me—I have had a long time to consider every aspect of those moments—the masks had been worn more to dramatize the event, to give them courage, than as an effective disguise. They had surely not expected to leave a witness—or witnesses—alive. One of them was the red-haired Clancy boy. I wondered if he had seen Jarvis and me. I had seen him, but maybe he hadn’t seen us. But if he had, he must in that moment—having already shot at two khaki uniforms—have decided not to kill us. And who was his companion? And if he had seen us, why had he, too, spared us?
And during the time I have spent thinking about what happened, there is another question I have had to consider. If Jarvis had not lied, if he had not been there, what would I have done? I am fairly sure I would have said I had seen nothing. Three people, one of whom I had been oddly fond, were dead. I, through halfdosed eyes, had seen their blood-stained bodies being covered with jackets, a shawl, a rug from the motorcar. But I was a child and, although I understood what had happened, there were limits to my understanding. And my instincts and reactions were those of a child. And my loyalties and values were not as clear as they once had been. While I wouldn’t side with the assassins, I no longer trusted the forces that would hunt them down if I spoke up. And if he had seen me—surely he had—the red-haired boy had spared my life; did I not now owe him his? And Jarvis, why did he lie? Not often, but from time to time, until his death early in the second war, we would talk about that afternoon. But I never heard him say anything more concrete than that he wasn’t an informer.
I kept my eyes closed and breathed in the smell of mud and crushed grass. I listened to Jarvis tell his story once again. It felt as though everything was still and at a great distance, even my breathing had become so slow that it seemed a conscious effort. I thought I would lie still and feel the short grass on my cheek and my mother’s hand stroking my hair. I knew that as long as I did not open my eyes I would have a little time.