Harnessing Peacocks

by Mary Wesley

  Coming up from the jetty he met Michael Reeves with his father and two boys of about his and Michael’s age. They were talking in loud voices, carrying bits of impedimenta from the boat and their day’s sailing. Michael hailed Silas loudly.

  Michael’s father said, ‘Hullo, how are you? Nice to see you. Got here all right, I see. Hope my wife looked after you, fed you and that sort of thing. Been exploring, have you? Sorry to leave you, we couldn’t miss a good day’s sailing, knew you wouldn’t mind,’ in a louder, deeper voice than Michael’s.

  Nobody introduced him to the two other boys, whom he later knew as Ian and Alistair.

  Michael and his father wore crushed and dirty linen hats which had once been white. Ian and Alistair wore blue denim hats which were too small for them, having borne several seasons. Michael’s father wore red Breton fisherman’s trousers with patched knees and all the boys wore very tight denim shorts like Silas, but old and dirty so that he felt awkward. The whole party wore Guernsey jerseys like Mrs Reeves and smelt of boats and sweat. Silas wished Hebe had not said, ‘Your jerseys will do but take my old white thing if you want to.’ The old white thing was a Guernsey. Silas felt vaguely resentful towards Hebe. His own jerseys were serviceable but not Guernseys.

  Michael and his friends jostled in the porch, talking loudly, shouting about the day’s sailing to Jennifer in the kitchen, who shouted back, and above the cacophony Julian Reeves boomed that what he needed before anything else was a stiff whisky.

  ‘Help yourself, then, I’m getting the nosh.’ Jennifer clattered pans, ran water into the sink. ‘Boys, boys, put your filthy boots in the porch, the floor was washed this morning.’

  Michael and his friends kicked off yellow rubber boots and threw them down in the porch. A reek of hot feet drifted into the cottage.

  ‘Take your boots off, darling.’ Jennifer addressed her husband; ‘Mrs Thing did the floor.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Julian Reeves stepped out of his boots and stood pouring whisky into his glass. Silas silently took the boots and put them with the others.

  ‘Brought boots, did you?’ Michael addressed him.

  ‘No, I didn’t know I’d need them.’

  ‘We can lend you some, I expect.’

  ‘Go and change your filthy shorts before supper and for God’s sake wash,’ Jennifer shouted at Michael who was standing close beside her. Michael muttered. Silas followed him and the other boys upstairs. They started rummaging in the chest of drawers.

  ‘Quite glad to change,’ the boy Silas would subsequently know as Ian said, stepping out of his shorts. ‘These things squeeze my parts.’

  Alistair and Michael laughed.

  ‘Large parts run in the family,’ said Ian encouraged. ‘Father says his are much admired.’

  ‘Who by?’ enquired Silas, feeling left out.

  ‘Our father has a mistress, thinks we don’t know. Haven’t heard mother’s opinion, suppose she takes them as they come.’

  ‘As they come.’ Alistair, younger than Ian, laughed lewdly.

  ‘My mother continually expects Pa to have a mistress. It’s her constant dread,’ said Michael, intent on keeping his end up. ‘Actually he wouldn’t dare. He gets slapped down if he so much as looks at a girl.’

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ Julian Reeves shouted up the stairs in a foghorn voice. The boys pattered downstairs in bare feet. Silas slipped off his shoes and followed them.

  Jennifer doled out large helpings of a stew similar to the one they had eaten at lunch on to Habitat plates and everybody started eating.

  Julian Reeves opened a bottle of wine and helped his wife and himself, then offered the bottle to Silas.

  ‘Thank you.’ Silas held out his glass. Julian filled it three quarters full. The other boys helped themselves to Coke. Silas felt he had made a faux pas and shyly gulped his wine.

  Julian and the boys regaled Jennifer with their day’s sailing, constantly interrupting and contradicting one another.

  ‘We thought we’d sail round the Bishop’s Rock tomorrow if the weather holds. Like that, Silas, eh?’

  ‘Oh yes, lovely.’

  ‘Silas tells me he lives in a very interesting street. ‘Jennifer was refilling her glass. ‘Apparently he lives in the town. I hadn’t realised.’ She fitted an aitch into the word, ‘reahlised’.

  ‘What’s the street called?’ Julian asked in an expansive voice.

  ‘Wilson Street. It was Lord Kitchener Street but they changed it to Harold Wilson Street a few years ago.’

  ‘Golly! Under the Labour government?’

  ‘He’s got a bungalow at St Mary’s, you know.’ Jennifer was deprecating.

  ‘What a funny thing to do.’ Ian’s mouth was full of stew.

  ‘I wonder why.’ Passing cheese and Bath Oliver biscuits, Jennifer eyed Silas speculatively, as though he were responsible for the renaming.

  ‘He did something for the town. It was a way the Council had of saying thank you.’ In the ensuing silence Silas refused a Bath Oliver and helped himself to bread.

  ‘Takes all sorts, I suppose.’ Jennifer buttered a biscuit, munched, caught her husband’s eye. ‘Early to bed tonight if you are Bishop’s Rocking tomorrow. Clear the table, will you, boys.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Michael, Ian and Alistair. ‘Okay.’

  Silas opened his mouth and shut it again.

  Jennifer stood up. ‘Pub?’ she signalled her husband.

  ‘Of course.’

  Silas watched his host and hostess stroll out into the dusk.

  ‘Let’s get this done.’ Michael started clearing the table. Silas helped. Ian and Alistair made vague movements without contributing.

  ‘Your family Labour, then?’ Ian enquired.

  ‘Labour?’ Silas was puzzled.

  ‘Ya, Labour not Tory. You know, Wilson Street, I ask you. Goes to show.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Reds under the bed and so on.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Ian.’ Michael hedged his bets, remembering he was host.

  ‘I have a pot under mine.’ Alistair was gleeful. ‘Used to wet my bed.’ He sounded almost proud.

  ‘Kiddo.’ Ian was dismissive.

  ‘What’s on the box?’

  They moved into the next room to sprawl and watch a Western on ITV. Ian turned up the sound but carried on a desultory conversation with Michael. To the accompaniment of saloon doors swinging, guns firing, the rattle of the stagecoach and galloping hooves, Silas learned that Michael’s family often joined forces with Alistair and Ian’s in the holidays, that they regularly skied at Megeve, that they had spent last summer holidays in the Canadian Rockies and that there were plans afoot for a trek in Ladakh the following year, although it was possible that Alistair would be considered too young to go.

  ‘You can always go to Uncle H in the Highlands,’ Ian consoled his younger brother.

  ‘Piss the Highlands,’ shouted Alistair above the background music of the film, voicing the anger and frustration of younger brothers. It all sounded very glamorous beside holidays spent in the dark brick Harold Wilson Street and expeditions to see Mr Quigley with Giles.

  ‘Why the hell are you not all in bed?’ Jennifer Reeves shouted when she came back from the pub.

  ‘It’s their holidays,’ Julian was alcoholically amiable.

  ‘Up, up you all go,’ cried Jennifer, as though addressing recalcitrant dogs.

  Silas took a long time going to sleep. He would have liked another blanket. He would have liked his quilt and Trip nestling furry and purring against his stomach in his own bed in his mother’s house in the absolutely hideous street called Wilson Street. He wondered whether the rumour that the street had not been renamed out of gratitude but out of spite might not be true. He woke twice from his uneasy sleep to listen to the wind buffeting the cottage and to the sea growling.

  Thirteen

  AVAILING HIMSELF OF LOUISA’S open invitation to fish, Rory Grant, having eaten a solitary supper, took his rod and drove
the ten miles to the point where Louisa’s stretch of water began. He parked his car, tucking it into the side of the road, pulled on his gumboots and, standing in the quiet of the August evening, put up his rod. Choosing a fly from his flybox, he listened to the gurgle of water flowing under the bridge and the evening sounds, the imagined rustle of bats hunting over the water, the rhythmic chewing from a group of recumbent cows who watched him benignly as he climbed a stile and began his slow progress along the river, casting his line over the water with the flick of wrist and movement of arm of inborn talent. As he cast his line he cast his cares. The mesmeric flow of the water brought solace and comfort to his insecure soul. When a trout rose to the fly and he struck, excitement took over until he had landed it, killed it with a sharp knock on the head and put it in his bag. He almost resented the interruption to his peace. By the time he had fished up the river it was nearly dark. He had caught four good fish. He stood looking up at Louisa’s house, debating whether to go home without calling on her or whether to visit. He decided on the latter.

  He cleaned the fish by what light was left, wrapped them in leaves and, walking through the garden, went round to the back entrance. He found the key Louisa kept hidden near the back door and let himself into the kitchen. Feeling for the light switch in the dark, he was aware of a delectable smell of cooking lingering in the warmth of the range and of tails thumping a greeting from the heap of mongrels lolling against the stove. He switched on the light.

  ‘You’re a fat lot of good as watchdogs.’ He crouched down to stroke friendly heads and pat silky flanks. ‘Suppose I’d come to mug Aunt Louisa? What about that, then?’ The dogs seemed mildly amused. The largest got up and went to sniff the fish Rory had put on the table.

  Rory stepped out of his boots and padded to the dresser for a dish. He laid the fish neatly head to tail and took them to the refrigerator.

  ‘She in the drawing-room watching TV?’ The dogs looked at him brightly. ‘Or has she gone to bed?’ They wagged their tails, mouths slightly open. ‘I’ll go and see, you stay here.’ But as he opened the door into the hall one of the dogs, Rufus, pushed past him and ran ahead. Perforce he had to follow.

  The hall was in darkness, a grandfather clock tic-tocked in the silence. Rory went to the drawing-room and found that dark also.

  ‘Hell, she must have gone to bed. Where’s that dog?’ He stood listening, not wishing to disturb the sleeping house. He could leave a note or ring up in the morning, but the dog had gone upstairs, presently it would scratch at Louisa’s door. The animal would wake her if she were asleep. Rory snapped his fingers, whistled softly. The dog did not wish to hear. Rory switched on a light at the foot of the stairs and made his way to his aunt’s bedroom. To his surprise the dog was not standing outside Louisa’s room or anywhere to be seen.

  ‘Curse it.’ Rory tiptoed past Louisa’s door and set off in search. No dog on the first floor. He climbed the next flight.

  Outside a bedroom he considered his own, since he had spent many happy holidays in it, the dog sat, head raised in expectation. Rory snapped his fingers. Rufus wagged more briskly. Rory, seeing light under the door, knocked, opened, walked in behind Rufus.

  In front of the cheval glass he had known all his life, a glass before which he had pranced, draped in his bathtowel pretending to be a Roman Emperor when he was eight, stood the girl he had given his Great-aunt Calypso’s hat. The girl was trying on the hat, posing in front of the mirror. She hadn’t a stitch on.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ said Hebe, surprised.

  ‘I was trying to—’ Rory gasped. Gosh, what a girl!—‘to catch the—he ran ahead up—’ Wasn’t she going to cover herself? ‘I was afraid Aunt Louisa might have—’

  ‘What?’ Hebe removed the hat, reached for a slip which she slung round her waist.

  ‘A headache.’ Rory gazed, fascinated.

  ‘No, she hasn’t. She went to bed early. She’s been gardening all day.’ Hebe was putting the hat back into its striped bag. ‘She was tired. Do you want the hat back?’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘What are you doing here then?’

  ‘I’m only—I was fishing—I put some trout—’ Rory still stared in stupefaction.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the refrigerator.’ She was stroking that bloody Rufus. He watched her hands fondling the animal’s head.

  ‘Good.’ She watched him. Was he aware he was getting an erection?

  ‘Could you put that hat on again?’

  ‘Of course.’ She took the hat out of its bag and put it on. Rory watched her back, her raised arms putting on the hat, her reflection in the mirror. She turned round.

  ‘Why don’t we?’ With a gentle gesture she indicated the bed. Rory had no recollection later of taking off his trousers or Hebe taking off the hat. Rufus sniffed round the room then, finding an armchair, settled in it to sleep.

  Waking with the sun shining through partly drawn curtains, Rory was aware of eyes watching an inch from his face.

  ‘I’m very short-sighted,’ said Hebe.

  ‘Oh, ahh, I’ve never ever been able to do—’ He tried to speak. ‘Not properly so that I—er—not like—’

  ‘Well, it’s lovely, isn’t it? And you can, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes, it was simply—’

  ‘Once more then before I get up? How would that be?’ She was not laughing at him, not mocking him as others had.

  ‘Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful,’ he sang.

  She gentled him. ‘Take it slow.’

  ‘I’ve never been able—then suddenly seeing you in the hat I—’

  ‘Did your great-aunt wear it in bed?’

  Rory laughed, holding Hebe in his arms. ‘My great-aunt didn’t need hats to get her going.’

  ‘Nor will you now.’

  Presently Rory asked, ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m a temporary cook, one of your aunt’s indulgences. Has she never told you?’

  ‘No, well, yes. I’ve heard she sometimes—’

  ‘I’m also—’ Hebe paused.

  ‘What? Tell me. Also what?’ Sudden gloom seized him.

  ‘I’m also a prostitute. I do this for money.’ He would now leap out of bed, causing a draught, and flee. Hebe sighed, turning away, but Rory said, ‘I like the word courtesan better.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was surprised by his tone.

  ‘I can pay you. I’m quite well off.’

  ‘Let’s discuss that later if you want to. I have to get up and get breakfast. We could have trout. Does your aunt like trout?’

  ‘She says so, when I bring them.’

  ‘Come and talk to me while I bath.’ Hebe slid out of bed and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom, an old-fashioned room, once a dressing-room converted at some pre Great War period. The bath had a mahogany surround; the lavatory also. The walls were papered with an exuberant pattern of roses. There was a small fireplace in a corner, an ottoman and an armchair covered in cretonne to match the walls; a marvellous background for Hebe, filling the bath, feeling the temperature, stepping in, lying back.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ She indicated the armchair. Rory, a bathtowel round his loins, sat.

  The dog Rufus came and leaned on the mahogany surround and stared at Hebe’s face through the steam, his intention to lick, if possible, taste soap. Hebe stroked his nose with soapy fingers.

  ‘You spoil him.’ Rory felt a pang of envy for the dog’s proximity, his casual acceptance of Hebe’s kindness.

  ‘He’s a dear good dog, I like him.’

  Rory sat, watching her soap her neck, sponge her face, lift feet from the water, soap her toes.

  ‘How did you get in?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m Louisa’s nephew, I know where she hides the key.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She lets me fish her water whenever I feel low. My name is Rory Grant.’

  ‘I know, it’s on the bag the hat was in.’

  ‘Of cou
rse, how silly of—’

  ‘Why do you never finish your sentences?’

  ‘I suppose they are not worth finishing.’

  ‘It could become a very irritating habit.’

  ‘I hadn’t—’

  ‘Thought. Say “thought”. Say it.’

  ‘You are mocking me. Thought.’

  ‘Good. My name is Hebe.’

  ‘Hebe, a pretty bush, I mean—’ Rory floundered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shrub, I meant shrub.’

  ‘You didn’t.’ Hebe stood up in the bath. ‘Could you pass me my towel. You’ve got it wrapped round you.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ He divested himself. ‘I’d better dress.’ He backed towards the door.

  ‘Okay. See you downstairs. I’ll give you breakfast.’

  In the doorway Rory looked back at Hebe vigorously towelling. ‘So beautiful.’

  ‘Take Rufus down, he must be pining to pee.’

  Rory pulled on his clothes, snapped his fingers at the dog and hurried downstairs. The dogs in the kitchen greeted him and Rufus with much wagging, yawns, chortling whines and growls. Rory let them out into the garden where they disappeared in the mist rising from the river, a bank of cotton wool with the sun’s shafts angling through. He stood staring, unseeing, exhilarated.

  In the house Louisa switched on the seven o’clock news, quickly dousing the volume.

  The dogs came back full of jollity, jostling each other, prepared for another happy day. Rory groaned in disbelief. Was this event true? Behind him in the kitchen Hebe switched on the coffee grinder, a discordant screech.

  ‘Ghastly noise.’ She wore a pink cotton dress and a white apron, her hair demurely brushed in its shoulder-length bob. She wore no make-up.

  ‘Sit down, Rory, don’t get in my way.’

  ‘Can’t I help?’

  ‘No. Just sit while I get us breakfast.’ She was terrifyingly efficient, setting the coffee to percolate, choosing a fish to cook, spreading a tablecloth, laying three places, forks, knives, spoons, cups, saucers, salt, pepper, butter, marmalade, all placed swiftly on the table, loading the toaster.