The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  He could stop Jed attacking, but persuading the terrier to leave him was beyond his powers.

  “Stomp him,” shouted the coal-man’s son enthusiastically. “Stomp the life out of the murdering bastard!”

  Hodge turned halfway round, and even managed a kind of weak smile through his split lips as he saw the hobnailed boot rising above his eye.

  The boot never landed. A whirlwind entered the room and grabbed the son by the collar, tossing him across the room into the wall. The coal merchant turned and met a fist like a hammer that dropped him on the spot, and in the next instant the clerk found his throat gripped so tight that he could not breathe as Hodge’s rescuer lifted him bodily off the ground and held him there, his boots kicking air as he took in the scene.

  Hodge looked up at The Smith.

  “Too late,” he said thickly, looking at the dead woman’s feet which were all he could see sticking over the edge of the mattress from where he lay, mashed into the angle where the floorboards met the wall.

  The Smith looked down at him like a thundercloud.

  “Just in time, I’d say,” he growled.

  He let the clerk go and looked at him. The clerk’s frenzied grief drained from his face as he met the banked-up fire in The Smith’s eyes.

  “This was your wife?” said The Smith.

  The clerk nodded.

  “Then my sorrow for your loss,” said The Smith. “You will remember how happy she was, and that you parted on loving terms. You will believe she died without pain, sleeping, and that she always told you to find another and make her as happy as you made her should she die before you. You will mourn the year out and, come next summer, will feel that she has let you go and now watches over you with joy. You will not be diminished by her death, but strengthened by the happy memory of her. You will forget I or my friend or his dog were ever here. And now you will sleep for ten minutes.”

  The Smith waited as the man sneezed, and then led him to the easy chair and lowered him into it.

  “What are you?” said a voice hoarse with dread.

  The Smith turned and saw the coal-man’s son cowering against the wall.

  “What do you see here?” said The Smith pointing at his eyes. The son looked into them and after a spasm of choking, relaxed.

  “Downstairs you go,” The Smith said. “And you too forget us.”

  The young man sneezed and stumbled out of the room like a man sleepwalking.

  The coal seller stirred and found his chin held by The Smith.

  “And you fell on the stairs running up them when you heard the poor gentleman here call for help. Which he will do in eight minutes or so. Go and sit on the landing. And again, forget us entirely.”

  The Smith watched him stumble away. Then he crossed to the dead woman and felt her chest.

  “Broken ribs,” he said. “You found your Alp.”

  “Not in time,” said Hodge, who had not moved.

  The Smith straightened the girl’s shift and made her look a little more decent. He sighed. Then he turned and looked at Hodge.

  “Can you stand?”

  Hodge shook his head.

  “I’ve half a mind to leave you here with your self-pity,” said The Smith. “Only we don’t have men to spare.”

  He picked up Hodge’s knife and stuck his cudgel in his belt. Then he bent, grabbed the Terrier Man around the middle and walked over to the window. He peered out and saw the flat roof beyond. He nodded at Jed.

  “We’ll come back and pick up the trail later.” And with a disgusted snort, he carried Hodge out of the room and past two sets of now unseeing eyes, back into the anonymity of the street below.

  CHAPTER 52

  A DRINK AFTER DARK

  Two days before the big fair at which the two Great Wizards were to have their much-advertised confrontation, Lucy found herself sitting with Georgiana and Charlie against the side-wall of a low-built public house overlooking a green which was now covered in all the paraphernalia of the coming gala. It was more crowded than usual because the showmen from the northern circuit were here also, and it was a festive atmosphere as old friends and rivals met and weighed up the past year’s effects on each other.

  The publican was an old friend of the showmen, happy to have them come annually and set up on the common land midway between the village and the nearby town since their presence there brought customers from all over the county streaming along the road, which ensured he sold a prodigious amount of beer and cider as they passed. They had travelled into cider country in the past week, and Lucy, courtesy of Charlie, had decided she preferred it to beer.

  Charlie had climbed the thatch on the roof of the tavern and garlanded it with flags and a big sign reading beer by the jug, and as a result had been given a flagon of the stronger cider called scrumpy. Lucy hadn’t drunk much of it, disliking the astringent taste and finding it lacked the sweetness of the cider she had enjoyed up to now. Georgiana had surprisingly matched Charlie drink for drink as they sat and watched the older showmen go in and out of the pub, carrying jugs and pitchers of their own.

  No one noticed them in the lee of the building. Lucy was quiet and thoughtful and Charlie was saying less than normal because Georgiana was doing enough talking for them all: Georgiana had a strong opinion about everything, and an only child’s sense of entitlement in believing everyone should be glad to hear her pass them on: she had opinions about whether drinking cider on an empty stomach would give them colic (she was sure it would, but drank on anyway). She had opinions about cuckoos, cow parsley, hurdy-gurdys, portable soup, canned meats and dresses suitable for dancing in. She knew what colours suited her by sunlight and by candlelight, and what colours would not suit Lucy in any light at all. She had good opinions about hairstyles, moustaches and her ability to hold an audience in the palm of her hand, and poor opinions about dogs, tight boots and gypsies.

  Had she not been so compellingly beautiful, Lucy might have found the deluge of her observations grating, but as it was she was happy to sit against a wall which still retained the day’s warmth, sharing the jug and listening to her new friend–as she was invited to consider her–babbling away as inconsequentially and charmingly as any sunlit brook.

  There was something about Georgiana, some alchemy of looks and voice and delicacy of movement that was irresistibly engaging, and it was easy to be in her company without thinking too much.

  Lucy had travelled the countryside bare-handed, unafraid as she was of touching natural things, saving the deteriorating gloves for the villages and towns where every innocent stone or brick could be a trap ready to spring open like a hellish Jack-in-a-box and spill the recorded horrors of the past straight into her brain. She wore the gloves again now as the pub looked old enough to have seen dark deeds and sadnesses in its long past. She picked at them, worrying the fraying threads and seeing that they really were on the point of falling completely to bits. She’d tried to sew them again, but the leather just gave way as soon as there was any tension put on the thread. Tonight she decided just to be careful and not worry about them until tomorrow.

  Charlie drained the jug and looked disappointed.

  “All gone,” he said sadly. “Must be someone drank it. Excuse me.”

  Lucy watched him stumble off round the edge of a tall nettle patch, fumbling with his trousers. When she turned back she caught Georgiana looking at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Exactly,” smiled Georgiana. “What?”

  And she reached over and brushed her hand on Lucy’s cheek.

  “In this low light, the flames catch the light in your hair. You’re really quite pretty. Why are you wearing gloves?”

  A shiver ran through Lucy, though whether it was from the fingertips just barely touching the fine hairs on her face or from the question she didn’t know.

  “What?” she repeated, feeling quite as sluggish as if she’d also had her share of the scrumpy. Which she hadn’t. She was playing for time. She was saved b
y Charlie stumbling back and slumping down the wall at her side.

  “Careful,” he said. “Georgie’s a mind-reader, remember!”

  The way he said it said he knew she wasn’t. Georgiana bridled and pulled away, looking outraged.

  “I am!” she said.

  “Of course you are,” said Charlie. “What was I thinking?”

  He grinned at Lucy.

  “You’re thinking of getting us some more scrumpy,” said Georgiana. “Be a gentleman.”

  “My head’s just fuzzy and warm enough as it is,” he said. “Any more apple juice and tomorrow will be hard pounding.”

  Georgiana fluttered her eyes at him.

  “I’d be ever so grateful if you’d see if they would give us even a half jug more,” she said. “Father would like it so.”

  “Come off it, Georgie,” he said, “I’m not a flat; Na-Barno can buy his own drink!”

  She looked down, half proud, half tragic.

  “He can’t,” she said quietly. “We’re on our uppers until things get better. And he’s working so hard on his new illusion…”

  “That’s an old song,” said Charlie.

  She looked up at him, a tear quivering on one of her lovely eyelashes.

  “Oh, spare the pump-handle and don’t turn on the waterworks,” he sighed, rolling to his feet. “I’ll see how charitable the proprietor’s feeling.”

  And he scooped the jug off the ground and walked into the tavern.

  “Sara,” said Georgiana, and Lucy looked round for a moment, forgetting she was pretending to be someone called Sara Falk.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You’re a strange one,” said Georgiana. “I can see why Charlie likes you. He likes odd things. Like that shaved old bear.”

  “He likes you,” said Lucy.

  Georgiana threw her head back and laughed, full-throated, the tear of a moment ago quite forgotten.

  “Charlie doesn’t like me! I mean he does, but not like that. He’s known me for ever. We’ve just rubbed along so long growing up that we tease each other to stop getting bored.” She looked round at the tented village which had sprouted on the green. “I could get bored of all this quite easily. I will, I expect, one day when Father’s illusions make us rich. Then I shall live in a brick house without wheels and never go anywhere again except to pay visits, and shop, and attend balls.”

  Her eyes were dreamy now.

  “I should look very good at a ball,” she continued. “I should have beaux lining up to dance with me. I shall like that. And I shall treat them all quite horribly and they shall line up all the more. Men like to be treated badly. It adds drama to their lives. I think being a man should be a very humdrum thing without a bit of drama to give it colour.”

  Her eyes rose to the stars and Lucy was able to look at the uncanny regularity of her profile without being observed. If Georgiana had an imperfection, she decided, it was perhaps that very lack of fault, the astonishing symmetry of her features in repose–but then she had to admit the way one corner of her mouth hoisted into a smile a fraction before the other did broke that balance and made the expression of her pleasure all the more beguiling.

  “Can you really read minds?” she said without meaning to.

  Georgiana’s gaze dropped from the heavens and met hers full on.

  “Do you want me to try?” she said, that smile skewing into life.

  They could hear the revelry inside the tavern, and see the busy camp around them, but here, in the shadow of the wall, they were in a pool of solitude.

  “Yes,” said Lucy, her voice catching. She cleared her throat. She was nervous because the idea had come to her slowly, but had been voiced before she meant to. The idea was this: if Georgiana could really read minds, she might be able to see things in Lucy’s head which she couldn’t conjure up for herself. She might be able to fill in the alarming holes in her memory. She might even be able to furnish clues as to how and why those holes got there. It was a strange plan, but the world was stranger than she had thought before she saw Sara’s Green Man and her golem, and had fallen out of a London library into a travelling circus. A beautiful girl who could read minds was a small thing in comparison with all that.

  “Yes,” she repeated. “I would like that.”

  “You must be very still and quiet then,” said Georgiana.

  And she put her hands on either side of Lucy’s head and closed her eyes.

  “Close yours too or I shall just see you looking at me,” she said.

  So Lucy closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing in particular. It was hard because she was very conscious of the warmth and pressure of Georgiana’s hands on her temples. Then it was harder still as Georgiana began to move the hands gently through her hair.

  “I—” said Lucy.

  “Shhh,” said Georgiana. “You’re hard enough without distraction.”

  She gripped her head tighter and then she leant her own head into Lucy’s and sat there, unmoving, forehead to forehead. Lucy could feel the heat of her breath on her cheek. It was disturbing. It was almost more intoxicating, in its way, than the scrumpy.

  “Apples,” she breathed.

  Georgiana’s hands dropped and she pulled away.

  “What?” she said.

  “Apples,” said Lucy. “You smell of apples.”

  “Oh, Sara!” cried Georgiana. “I just don’t think I can read you. You wriggle so in your head. Like a child with worms that can’t sit still.”

  “I can,” said Lucy. “Sorry. Try again–I won’t move.”

  Georgiana shook her head decisively.

  “No. It’s no good. It’s not your body. It’s your mind. It’s different to others. Hard to read. It’s like there are depths where I cannot see…”

  “Holes?” said Lucy, a sudden coldness making her voice crack. Georgiana caught the change and nodded enthusiastically.

  “Yes, holes! Holes. That’s it. That’s the very word…”

  Lucy felt kicked in the stomach. Georgiana could see she was damaged so it was somehow even more real. She didn’t have a memory like other people. She had pieces of a patchwork, but no clue to the overall pattern.

  “Oh, thank you, Charlie,” laughed Georgiana, somehow relieved at his return. “I must take this to Father directly. Goodnight, goodnight.”

  “She was in a sudden hurry to go,” said Charlie as they watched her flit towards the tents balancing the cider jug in both hands.

  “She was reading my mind,” said Lucy dully.

  He looked at her with his head cocked.

  “Was she now? And you believed her?”

  “She saw it right,” she said.

  She stared murderously at the ground, clenching her teeth.

  “She can’t read minds,” said Charlie after a bit. “It’s a trick. So don’t be blown so flat by whatever she said.”

  “It was true,” she insisted.

  “No,” he said. “Not if it made you sad. You’re a good ’un, Falk. Don’t let her play games. It’s what she does: keeps people off balance.”

  “It wasn’t a game,” she said. “She did.”

  “Sara,” he said. “You’ve been with us long enough to see how the show world works, but I’ll tell you this for nothing. It’s all about what people expect, and how you play with that. You know how you make a trick work best? By making the person you’re tricking want it not to be a trick at all.”

  She stayed staring at the ground.

  “You coming?” he said. “Early start tomorrow. We’ll get there long before lunchtime and start to set up.”

  She looked at her hands. Sara’s hand-me-down-gloves really were coming to bits: her skin showed pink through holes in each one.

  “You think there’ll be a glove shop?” she said. She needed gloves.

  “There’s any number of shops, but you won’t like the place. It’s a sad little town, really. You coming?”

  “I’ll come in a moment,” she said.

  �
�Fair enough,” he said, and walked off towards the wagon. “Sweet dreams, and don’t trip over Mum again when you get in the tent.”

  She closed her eyes and ground the back of her head against the rough plaster on the wall, trying to clear the cider fog from her brain. When that failed, she got to her feet and wove back to her bed at the Pyefinches’ wagon.

  Because she came back by herself she heard the talking before they heard her, and stopped to listen.

  She heard Charlie speaking quietly to his father.

  “She was asking about gloves,” he said.

  “She’s a strange one. Hobb told me there was someone in the shadows in the pub last night asking to see if anyone had seen a girl who sounded like it might have been her: a girl who kept her hands covered.”

  “Someone in the shadows with what looked like tattoos on his face,” said Rose, her voice heavy with a meaning Lucy couldn’t follow.

  “He was offering gold,” said Pyefinch. “But don’t worry. Hobb knows the ropes. Kept mum.”

  “Hmmm,” said Rose. “There’s gold and then there’s gold.”

  “She don’t seem like harm,” said Charlie.

  “Well, there’s harm and there’s harm, and all,” said Mr Pyefinch. “Best keep on keeping an eye on her, Charlie boy.”

  Then they stopped talking and she heard them getting to bed.

  She waited for a minute, and then made more noise than she would have done entering the wagon. Charlie grinned goodnight at her and turned down the lamp at his end.

  She got under her blanket and lay in the dark looking at the shapes of the pots on the hooks in the roof of the wagon, feeling weak and wondering what exactly Rose’s last observation had meant.

  She wondered if the stranger had been looking for her, maybe sent by the real Sara Falk. Or maybe just looking for someone who looked like her.

  And now she would always wonder if Charlie’s cheerfulness was a cloak for something else.

  He had gone from a friend to a watcher.

  She was tired and felt cider-sick. She closed her eyes.

  She wouldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t dream. She’d be too busy planning how to leave.