by A. L. Barker
Piper said, ‘My dear, you know exactly.’
‘She said she had access and she’d fax you. That bad?’
‘Who was this person?’
‘A bird.’ Sam mourned, ‘I’m lonesome. Why don’t I come to you?’
‘Sam, no. I have to work and there’s no one here you’d take to.’
‘You don’t want me!’
He would be showing the whites of his eyes, between fear and anger, the fear of losing his regular handouts. Piper’s own feelings were mixed. He was fond of the boy: Sam’s poor look-out worried him. He felt compassion and a certain unease, as if he sighted an ambush. ‘Don’t be such a goose.’ Prudently he rang off.
His thoughts kept reverting to the unknown female seeking to know his whereabouts: the sense of ambush was strong.
He wandered down to the beach, a dog’s leg of grey shingle in a rocky cove. Spiky pink flowers clung to the cliff-face. A slick of weed marked high water. Beyond it was an area of mud: streams leaking over it kept it to the consistency of melted cocoa. Bladderwrack, advancing and retreating with the pull of the tide, rolled up a plastic bottle. Piper toed it before him until it was swept out of reach. He saw it brought out and in again, never quite making the land and having no function there anyway. A cabin cruiser, its hull bright with algae, rested comfortably on its side. Gulls, also comfortable, perched on the gunwales.
Piper trod on over the shingle, observing that it was constituted of grit, chips of marble, scoured glass, straw and winkle shells. His feet slithered on kelp. This was not, never would be, a development area: the inlet was so narrow that there was only tunnel vision to the sea. Boats of any size, when they came up at all, had to come single file and hug the rock to pass each other.
But there was a small concrete landing-stage and someone sitting, cross-legged. He looked up as Piper approached, waved two fingers, then bent to the board held across his knees.
Drawing near, Piper saw that he was sketching a tree on the cliff, a skinny sapling lodged in a crevice and clinging in virtual extremis to the rock face. He said, ‘See this tree? Its guts are being squeezed dry and it’s got nowhere else to grow.’ He sketched a penumbra round the tree, intensifying it. ‘There’s an altar-piece by a German Renaissance painter showing an arm and a leg sticking out from under a stone slab. The unquiet grave. It was done for the chapel of a hospital order and the sick saw it every time they went to pray for a cure.’
‘How has that to do with your picture?’
He looked up at Piper. There were smudges of charcoal under his nose. ‘This little tree has been buried alive and is trying to escape.’
*
There were new faces at dinner. Mildred Gascoigne had a friend at her table, which did not stop her greeting Piper. ‘How was London?’
‘As usual, grey and grubby.’
‘I always think it’s so colourful.’
‘The only colour I saw was in Royal Hospital Road.’
‘Hospital? You’re not ill – there’s nothing wrong?’
Aware that every face was turned his way, he said briefly, ‘Chelsea pensioners.’
Unrolling her napkin, Mildred dropped the ring which bowled across the floor directly to Piper’s feet. He handed the ring back to her.
She thanked him with effusion and the girl at her table quizzed him openly. A man at the window table put on horn-rims and looked at Piper over the top. The woman with him wore star-spangled spectacles and had a vulpine smartness which chilled. ‘Soulsby,’ said the man, nodding. ‘Felicia,’ said the woman, glittering.
Mrs Clapham came, bringing hors d’oeuvres, plates balanced on each arm. Her mouth was tight shut, her nostrils dilated. She dumped the plates on the tables and swept out. When she returned with two more hors d’oeuvres, Pam Wellington asked where Bettony was.
‘She tried to kill me.’
Pam cried, ‘What?’
Mrs Clapham put the plates on the Soulsbys’ table. A blast from her nostrils lifted Mrs Soulsby’s fringe. ‘She threw a stewpan at me, inch-thick earthenware it was. I saw it coming. I ducked and it went through the kitchen door.’
‘Some throw,’ said Soulsby.
‘The door wasn’t open.’
They were a moment taking in the meaning. ‘It went through the door?’ said Pam, incredulous. Mrs Clapham nodded, dignified, even haughty. ‘Through the thickness of the door? That’s not possible!’
‘That is what I mean.’ Mrs Clapham went, taking the Soulsbys’ wine with her.
Pam looked round at them all. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘There was still wine in our bottle,’ said Soulsby.
‘Poor Bettony!’ said Mildred Gascoigne.
Clapham, wearing a white jacket, brought the second course. ‘The wife’s resting. She’s had a bit of a turn.’
‘What has happened to Bettony?’
‘Wife locked her out.’
Pam said, ‘Did she really – what Mrs Clapham said?’
‘Throw the stewpot? She couldn’t, it was on a high shelf, she couldn’t reach it down, poor little cow.’
Mrs Soulsby said, ‘The girl’s pubescent, it sounds as if there’s a poltergeist at work.’
‘Have you seen anything?’ said Pam.
‘Poltergeists don’t show themselves.’
‘We saw a fox,’ said Soulsby.
‘I don’t mind the wildlife.’
Pam Wallington said, ‘I saw a man carrying a dead child.’
‘Cut it out, Pam,’ said her husband.
Mrs Soulsby held up a restraining hand. ‘You saw what?’
‘It was dripping wet. It had been drowned.’
‘When was this?’
‘Years ago,’ Antony said hastily, ‘at the seaside. Nobody has been drowned, for God’s sake!’
Pam, ready to burst into tears, insisted, ‘He was old, the man, his eyes fixed me – like looking into the headlights of a car—’
‘Many a rabbit I’ve caught in my headlights and popped in the pot still warm,’ said Clapham.
‘When I looked back there was nothing and no one!’
‘How very interesting,’ said Mrs Soulsby. ‘Cornwall is well known for paranormal perceptions. Quite possibly you witnessed a telesthetic event which was happening in another place at that same time or even quite a different moment.’
Antony Wallington said, ‘Please don’t alarm my wife.’
‘I hear trees in the night,’ said Mildred Gascoigne. ‘Big trees stirring in the wind. Such a sad, wild sound.’
‘A woman here once swore she heard wolves.’ Clapham grinned. ‘Funny though, she was stone deaf. What you hear, Miss Gee, is the tide on the turn.’
‘What about Mrs Clapham and the flying casserole,’ said Mrs Soulsby. ‘How do you account for that?’
‘Imagination. I blame the Change.’ Clapham gave it a confederate grin and capital letter.
‘It wasn’t years ago at the seaside,’ said Pam. ‘It was here, yesterday.’
There was a pause. Nobody moved, except Piper, who walked out.
*
‘Cooee!’ Felicia Soulsby called round the kitchen door. ‘I haven’t come to interrupt, just to see if you’re feeling better.’
Mrs Clapham was operating some sort of pulverizer which had to be worked by hand. She looked round with rancour, and the pulverizer gathered momentum. ‘It must have been awfully upsetting.’ said Felicia.
‘What must?’
‘That business with the casserole – enough to put anyone off their stride.’
‘Nothing wrong with me.’
There was a shelf high up, and empty. As Clapham had said, Bettony could not have reached it. Nor could Mrs Clapham, unless she stood on a chair.
Felicia was interested to see that Bettony was back, peeling potatoes. ‘Do you think it detracts from the flavour? Washing potatoes before you peel them?’
‘I’ve told her again and again, hold them under the tap first. She can’t take it in. She ca
n’t take anything in.’ Mrs Clapham looked into the pulverizer and stirred the contents with her finger. ‘He said she was all he could get. He had his reasons.’
‘He?’
‘Clapham.’ A change came over Mrs Clapham’s face. It skewed, as if the wrong string had been pulled. ‘He knew he could do what he liked and she’d be backward in coming forward.’ Felicia experienced a frisson of distaste but was unsure how deep it ought to go. Mrs Clapham clinched it. ‘Men are all the same.’
‘Of course it’s distracting when anything is misplaced. I get into an absolute tiz if I can’t put my hand on what I need when I’m cooking.’
‘It wasn’t misplaced, it was thrown. By her.’ Mrs Clapham aimed her thumb in Bettony’s direction.
‘It may have been done on her behalf, though not actually by her.’
‘Wasn’t nobody else in the room.’
‘I’m talking about a manifestation.’
‘There’s none of that in my kitchen.’
‘You wouldn’t see it but you’d feel the effects. You’d certainly feel those. A teenager undergoing a physical disturbance—’
‘Disturbance? Her?’ Mrs Clapham said bitterly. ‘She’s a pudding.’
Cradling a potato to her bosom, Bettony gouged out its eye.
*
Clapham was not a native of Cornwall. As a young boy he had spent an auspicious holiday there: according to his parents had been allowed to ‘run wild’.
Ernie was never one to run wild. He roved, there was nothing else to do. The countryside bored him. While roving, his habit was to slash grasses and flowers with a stick from the hedgerow, aim stones at anything that moved and at every empty bottle on the beach until he smashed it.
In this desultory frame of mind he had got as far as the old house down by the creek. The quality of its disrepair intrigued him. The guttering hung awry, the roof tiles bulged like a bedspread, the paintwork was a grim memory. The place looked as if clouting winds from the sea had knocked it off its perch. It was wacky. Ernie got into the garden and amused himself sparring with shoulder-high nettles, felling them with right hooks and left uppercuts. Not looking where he was going, he had a shock when he bumped into a woman in a hammock.
Her eyes were closed; she wasn’t breathing. He plucked a grass stalk and held it under her nose. It didn’t move. She was dead.
She said, not opening her eyes, ‘What are you doing here?’
Undismayed – he had heard of chickens running about with their heads cut off – he said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Ernie Clapham.’
‘As in the junction?’ He fiddled with the grass stalk, waiting. She said, ‘You’re trespassing.’ That was how he met Miss Pendennis, who was to settle his way of life for him. ‘I could prosecute you.’ She was already old, sitting up in the hammock with a stock of grey hair and yellow eyes like a tiger’s.
He turned and ran. She called after him, ‘Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.’
They never did talk about it, though Ernie went back next day and the next and many days after. There was nothing else to do. She had been a schoolteacher, he could just see her chalking on the blackboard. In the village they resented her living in a big house, setting herself up as a fine lady. People said she had plenty of money but she dispensed no charity, allowed her property to go to rack and ruin, made no friends and few contacts. Ernie came up against hard feelings if he mentioned her. It was easier to keep quiet. He didn’t himself know what to make of her.
When she started calling him Ernest, he said, ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s cissy.’
‘If it was good enough for Hemingway it’s good enough for you.’
Perhaps there was something toffee-nosed about her, but he liked talking to her, he was beginning to find his voice and was agreeably surprised by the strength and variety of his convictions. She came alive listening to him airing them. Her eyes weren’t yellow, they were sort of amber and glowed when she laughed. She didn’t laugh at him, he wouldn’t have stood for that; he was able to join in, even when the laugh was on himself.
She never asked him into the house, she watched from the window and came to him in the garden. One day she said, ‘How do you get into the garden?’
‘Over the wall.’
‘But it’s so high.’
‘I climb into the tree and drop down.’
‘Tree? What tree?’
‘The big oak that hangs over the wall.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Why?’
‘You must stop climbing that tree!’
‘I shan’t hurt it.’
‘Hurt it? Oh my God!’ She rocked, laughing; it was one time he couldn’t join in.
He said stoutly, ‘What’s up then? It’s only an old tree.’
‘There’s a gate in the wall. I’ll give you the key and you can come in that way.’
‘I like climbing in. No problem.’
‘I want you to promise never to get into that tree again.’
‘Oh sure.’
‘On your word of honour. If you have one.’
Ernie drew a finger across his neck. After that he made a point of looking closely at the tree. There was nothing to see – no more, anyway, than was to be expected: leaves and branches and a hole in the trunk where owls or something lived. She probably thought he would fall. He would show her what a climber he was. Meantime he accepted the key and used the door. There was a name painted on it – ‘Bellechasse’. He asked her what it meant. She said it was French for good hunting.
One day he came and found her lying in the hammock. It was the middle of a heatwave, the hottest day of the year. ‘The wireless says there’s a storm coming.’ She had her eyes shut, like the first time he saw her. But now the fine lines in her face had drawn together, making it a mask. She looked a million years old. Ernie felt a twinge of disquiet. He said, ‘Storm makes the wireless crackle. Atmospherics.’
One of her hands was draped out of the hammock and something she had been holding fell to the ground. Ernie picked up a small leather-covered book.
‘Give that to me!’ Suddenly she was wide awake.
‘What is it?’
He was actually handing it over when she pushed it back into his hand. ‘Let’s see what you can make of it.’ The way she spoke, taunting, put his back up.
The book had a bitter smell. He opened it on pages dog-eared and brown at the edges, covered with spidery writing. The words were foreign, nightmarish. Every few pages carried a heading, he guessed it was the date. On some were diagrams and rows of numbers.
‘Well? What do you suppose it is?’
‘Could be a diary.’
‘That’s clever of you.’ She took the book from him, clasped it prayerwise between her palms. ‘It’s the diary of a fighter pilot during the Second World War, a day-to-day record of his missions.’
Ernie said alertly, ‘You talking about Douglas Bader?’
‘This man was German, a Nazi. He doesn’t identify himself because that might have given away information to his enemies. I call him Koenig. He was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.’
‘Pull the other one.’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’
Ernie was seldom troubled by any sense of unreality. But he felt it now, knew he ought to be dreaming and wasn’t. He called her bluff. ‘Okay, so read me some of it.’ She stared at him, very much the schoolteacher, he the biggest bonehead in her class. ‘Where would you get a Nazi’s diary, anyway? It’s a spoof, someone’s having you on.’
‘Who?’
‘Whoever gave it to you.’
‘No one gave it to me.’
‘Okay, so what’s in it?’
She opened the book. ‘This is the entry for two consecutive days in September, 1940: “We carried out intensive raids on London as directed by Reichmarshal Goering—”’
&nb
sp; ‘It’s not even in German!’
‘I am translating for your benefit: This was saturation bombing. Our planes, “the choir of vengeance”, went over in relays, dropping their bombs at the rate of 25 a minute. The East End took the brunt, the docks were set alight and fires lit up the sky. I could feel – many of us pilots did – the repercussion of the heavy calibre bombs from three miles up.’
She put the book down and stared at Ernie. He said, ‘I’m thirsty.’ She rose without a word and went into the house. He picked up the book, thumbed over the pages and came on a crude drawing of a woman with a dog’s head cradling a machine gun in her arms. When Miss Pendennis returned, bringing a glass of water, he thrust the book at her. ‘What’s this?’
‘The wolf-headed goddess of the dead. The words underneath are “Goddess strikes England”.’
‘Daft!’ Ernie made off, not waiting to drink the water.
The storm came and went, the heat stayed. He went every day to hear her read. Years later, looking back on that time, it was the heat he remembered, the weight of it, clouds reaching into the sky, solids melting and merging. And the company of Koenig. He had got a picture of him without knowing how. The funny thing was – and a bit sickening – the picture of a man in grey uniform with an iron cross round his neck kept leaking into his picture of Miss Pendennis, grey-faced, in rusty black, wearing a torn hairnet. She watched him from under her shaggy brows as she read, twitching the pages as if impatient to get to the end.
Ernie liked best the descriptions of mid-air battles, the dogfights. Each day, when he was alone, he took up where the previous reading had left off. His wanderings ceased to be aimless, now he was scouring the skies for the enemy. He was flying a Messerschmitt-jet with the wolf-headed woman, the goddess of death, painted on his fuselage. He didn’t think much about her, except that it might be as well to have her along. Spreading his arms, he plunged into the long grass, uttering his own lifelike imitation of an engine on full throttle, dodged attacks from heads of cow-parsley, swerved to take avoiding action from bursts of flak from anti-aircraft batteries in haystacks, shot up pylons, circled church spires and skimmed telegraph wires in the best tradition of aerial combat.
A Hurricane dived at me out of the sun. I dodged and as soon as I had him in my gun-sight I closed in, gave him a burst dead on target. He whipped round, trying to come underneath me. I let him have another salvo. He did a half roll and got through a hole in the cloud. I went after him and attacked from close quarters, close enough to see my bullets rip into his wings and the slipstream to peel bits off. He started to spin down, recovered and zoomed vertically. I pressed the trigger again. He lost his rudder, one of his wings came off. The plane stalled and nosedived. The pilot dropped out, his parachute opened, the last I saw he was hanging in the harness like a broken doll.