by Carmel Bird
It sounds quite simple, really, when you say that a journalist came and disrupted the family peace. It’s not so simple when you add in the obsession with the fox. And even the complication of the Laceys and the Maloneys, so recently brought together after all that fractured time. But what Luke did was really quite straightforward. He drove to town and shot dead the journalist Jason Mariner. As Jason was leaving his flat for a walk on the beach at about eleven o’clock at night, Luke walked up to him and he shot him in the chest. The way he would a wild animal, maybe. He left the body lying where it fell—among the pale stiff reeds in the dry sand of the verge. Then, his grey windcheater spattered with blood, he drove steadily home, dropping off the windcheater for his mother to put in the washing machine. ‘I shot a roo,’ he said, and he put on a clean white shirt. He had a nice long bath, took his Clementine back into his open arms and vowed that he would love her forever and forever and forever.
The police were baffled; the whole thing was a complete puzzle. Tragedy. Mystery. Journalist shot. No witnesses. No leads. Clementine somehow knew in her heart what had happened, but she never said a word, the truth sealed over by the knowledge of a terrible darkness at the heart of her life. Her large pale eyes were clouded with the sadness of raw understanding. She wrote a little song about a princess and a family of foxes, and she used to sing it sweetly and mournfully to Gracey. But life must go on. Maeve Maloney, as it turned out, married Bill Foster in the church of St Francis, in the hollow of the stony hillside—and they lived happily ever after, Maeve frequently commenting on the magical powers of lily-of-the-valley.
Cave Amantem
The girl is burying the body in the hollow. She has wrapped it in a scarlet cloak. In the hollow beneath the sweet pines, she is burying the body she has wrapped in the cloak. She scatters sweet herbs across the dead one who is folded and parcelled in scarlet. The girl scatters herbs and wild flowers, pine needles, pebbles. There is a patter of pebbles; there is a rustle of leaves.
Tears. There are tears in her eyes, on her fingers, lightly falling sometimes upon the brush of greenery veiling the body in its cloth. Her pale eyes are filled with tears. Tears glisten on the leaves. In the hollow, the girl is burying the body, as her tears slide down the leaves, beading the green. Tears, rolling across rocks, shiver and settle between pebbles. They make no stain on the scarlet cloth, for the cloth is grimy, tattered at the edges, toggled with mud. It shows through the leaves and flowers, now dull red, now brown and, sometimes, on the edge of a wrinkle, vivid blood. Somewhere, the girl has gathered twigs of rosemary. She sprinkles the leaves of rosemary across the body in the hollow.
In the hollow between the rocks, beneath the sweet pines, in the heart of the silence of the forest, the girl is burying the body. Her fingernails, like claws, damaged, stained, scratch at the earth, which she drops, crumbles, on top of the garlands of greenery. Stones, small rocks and crumbs of earth. Moist and rotting leaves.
It has taken her all day. In the castle, whole save for the roof, she wrapped the body in her cloak and carried it and dragged it to the hollow. She placed it on the rotting floor of the sweet pine forest and covered it with leaves and earth. Her arms were strong: she carried rocks; she marked the place with rocks. She wept when she buried the body of the wolf.
Isabella had a terrible reputation. She used to go up to the old castle—there is no roof—with just about anyone. Soldiers, musicians, cripples, foreigners, old men and boys. She was reasonably pretty, in a sly sort of way. Oh, but there was the devil in her eyes. Light eyes, too light for hereabouts. Black hair, light eyes—Isabella was always a strange one. Pretty enough, you know, but strange.
None of the decent young men of the village would have much to do with her. Nobody thought she would ever find a husband. But she didn’t care about that. She lived with her grandmother, and she knew she would inherit the house when the old lady died. Inherit the house and the pigs and the hens and the few poor olive trees and the little herb garden. The old lady sold herbs. And she was so good and respectable and proud. There she was at Mass every day of her life; on feast days she wore a mantilla given to her long ago by the old Count. That is, the father of the present Count. She kept her house as clean as a convent with white walls and bright blue doors—even on the cupboards. I used to go there often—the chairs were made from bent withies; the table was blue. I would collect the eggs and stop for a gossip. Lace, there was lace, pure white. The grandmother made lace. Oh, she was an industrious old woman. And pious. There she was at Mass, as I said, every morning, with her beads and her proud eyes and her prayers.
She prayed, that old woman, for a husband for Isabella. What a joke! But she did. She prayed as she swept the flagstones of her parlour, as she scrubbed the wooden staircase. She was making a wedding dress for Isabella. Linen and lace and the sheets and all the household linens. She made the dress for my daughter Caterina when she married the Count’s nephew. The old lady was known for miles around for her beautiful wedding gowns.
But she couldn’t do a thing with Isabella.
Nobody could do anything with Isabella. She always went her own way. The nuns did their best to tame her, and then they gave up and prayed for her. The candles that have been lit for that girl! The old grandmother was far too weak. What Isabella needed was a father and half-a-dozen brothers to straighten her out.
And that red cloak—she always wore that cloak. You could see her coming for miles. Of course, her grandmother made it for her. It would have been fine for a princess on a white horse. But there it was on Isabella as she ran from one end of the village to the other, often barefoot, meeting soldiers and travelling musicians and so on in the forest.
So the grandmother swept the floor and she prayed and she made lace pillow-covers and she prayed and she prayed for a husband for her beautiful Isabella. Everyone felt very sorry for her, the poor old woman. While Isabella roamed round like a gipsy in her red-velvet cloak. Her skin was white, just touched with apricot. The grandmother was like an old walnut, and she seemed to be made from roots of trees. Yes, she looked like the roots of trees, the grandmother, the walnut. The granddaughter was the ripe fruit. Oh, she was a juicy apricot.
My son was half in love with her—half the time. He knew it was madness. He knew not to go near her. But he liked the idea of inheriting the poor little farm, and he did like the idea of going with Isabella. I warned him that if he did I would beat him to within an inch of his life. He laughed and said he would put me down the well—ah, but he knew that I meant what I said. And he knew that I was right, in the end.
He has since married the niece of a distant relative of the bishop, and stands to inherit a flock of sheep and a wide pastureland. But I don’t mind telling you that he did plan to marry Isabella.
My son was the answer to the grandmother’s prayers. Heaven saw the candles she lit; the Mother of Sorrows heard the litanies she mumbled; and my son was to be, she thought, the answer to it all. He is very pleased now, naturally, that I stepped in. I knew what I was doing, as far as both families were concerned. They would have been no good for each other, Isabella and Luis. And our family has always been very respectable, with scarcely a breath of scandal, ever. My nephew is an idiot—but that is a different story. And for all that Isabella was a whore, she was really rather simple.
I went to her, that afternoon, and I said I had an errand for her. She trusted me. I think now that perhaps she trusted everybody, and that was the funny thing about her. She wanted to please me, because I was the mother of Luis. I asked her to take a basket of cakes to my sister. Little sugared cakes to my sister who lives on the other side of the forest. The great pine forest you see out there. She, that is my sister, was giving a party for the nuns. So I packed a basket with the cakes—I am well known around here for my little sugared cakes—and the tiny glasses, so delicately cut, the ones that my sister always likes to use—I sometimes wish that she would get some of her own—and I called Isabella over and I asked her to take the b
asket of things to my sister. I said she could be back by sundown—and indeed so she could, if she hurried. But Isabella was one to dawdle, you know. I knew that she had an arrangement to meet Luis at the old castle at sundown. He was there; she wasn’t. I know that he must have heard the wolves, but he has never spoken of it.
They found my basket and the tiny glasses, so delicately cut, all of them broken, and some of the little sugared cakes, strewn across the forest floor. I have replaced the glasses. It was not so difficult.
I told them I had asked her to do the errand. Of course I told them. I will never be able to forgive myself. Everyone knew that I was only trying to be friendly, and to include her in some useful way in a family celebration. With Luis so besotted with her. The big fool. Yes, I admitted it was my basket—my best—my glasses, my cakes. My errand. My errand sent her to her doom in the forest. How can I ever forgive myself? Luis has forgiven me now. He is married, as I said, to one of the relatives of the bishop. They will have a son in the spring.
No, they never found any trace of Isabella. Not even a piece of her grandmother’s lace. Her grandmother waited. She waited for a year for that little girl to come back. The old lady spoke to nobody but the priest. And then, one night, she died. Of grief. She died with quiet dignity, of grief. Oh, and old age, of course. She was a twisted tree root, and she died—of old age. And of grief.
She loved Isabella. She really loved Isabella. The wedding dress was on the bed, I believe. It was the finest lacework the nuns had ever seen. I have not seen it myself, but the nuns said it was the finest spiderweb of lace—and white, so white. Shiny. With teardrops of crystal. A dress for the Virgin. So they put it on the statue in the convent. It seemed the only thing to do.
They never found Isabella’s body. If they had found it, they would have buried her in the dress. Naturally. But Isabella was never found. The men went out searching through the forest, every night, every day, for months. It became an obsession with them. Whenever a stranger appeared in the village they would tell him the story of Isabella and get up a hunting party to go out after the wolves. But in the two years since it happened they never got one. Until two nights ago.
Two nights ago some soldiers from the north said they injured a wolf, the leader. The Devil with the fires of Hell in his eyes, they said. Maybe they got the animal. But Isabella they never found.
I had a long talk to the priest about my part in the tragedy. He said I was not to know, and that I must never dwell on the idea that I sent the girl into the forest to her doom. She went, after all, of her own free will. I was not to know. But what a fate, what a punishment! To be eaten by wolves. It’s the grandmother I feel most sorry for. Because, you know, she never really knew who that girl was. Her son brought a baby home from France. Said she was his daughter, and that the mother had died. He—a soldier—died of fever, and the grandmother brought the girl up. She did her best, but I knew it would never work out. And it didn’t. Not a trace they found of her. Not a trace. Nothing.
The girl in the tattered lace dress is burying the body. Toggled with mud, the cloak parcels the dead. In the sweet pine forest, the girl has wrapped the wolf in her scarlet cloak. With tears and ceremony, herbs and stones, she is burying him in the hollow. She is silent. There is a bitter smell; there is a sweet smell; he is dead.
A Taste of Earth
Holding close the inert, heavy body, I bend over her head and take a deep breath, drawing into my mouth some strands of golden hair: dead hair that has a taste of earth. This taste of earth and of death, and this weight on my heart, is all I have left of you Yvonne de Galais, so ardently sought, so deeply loved…
Le Grand Meaulnes, Alain-Fournier
…drawing into my mouth some strands of hair: dead hair that has a taste of earth.
Strands of dead hair caught on living lips. The image chilled me when I first read the words. It chills and fascinates me yet.
When I read fiction I want the words to take my spirit into the places beneath the surface of the everyday world. I want the freshness of dreams to be again revealed to me. I want to know the loveliness and terror of what lies beyond the last star, of what lies cradled sweetly in the blood and juices of the human heart. I long to feel the shock when the green sword of the tulip spikes the damp soil, feel the blissful impact of the truth, see the glint, the glimmer, the shimmer of another reality. I desire to be enchanted by the words, to be awakened to the visions and melodies of the writer. I want to feel the anguish and exhilaration of the fiction writer’s power to create and destroy. The ideas of creation and destruction haunt me, and I trace this haunting back, back into bright memory.
I remember when my mother used to take me to the cemetery.
When there were trams in Launceston, the line ended at the cemetery gates, at the top of a gentle slope. On each side of the tram-line there was a row of pine trees that formed a sombre tunnel through which the tram would glide. The cemetery was always called just ‘Carr Villa’ and the words stood for something terrible. My mother and I would go to Carr Villa to put fresh flowers on the family grave. I thought of it as my grandmother’s grave, although in it were buried my grandfather and my uncle, both of whom had died before I was born.
Behind the grave there was a row of pine trees, and low clipped hedges of rosemary rambled along the edges of the gravel paths. The smell of pine and rosemary, and the smell of corruption, are therefore linked.
At the end of the hedge near my grandmother’s grave there was a tap. My mother and I would empty the vase, pouring the stale-smelling water into the drain under the tap. Strands of brown, slimy, translucent leaves caught on the grating and slid off as the water drained away. The vase that we were emptying was made of pottery. It was tall, glazed with splashes of prussian blue and yellow ochre. There was always the chance that it would be stolen from the grave, or that one day it would be knocked over and broken. But it was a matter of pride that there must be a real vase on the grave, not a jam jar. My mother turned the tap on hard. The sound of the water rushing into the vase was, to me, like a picture, and like a statement going straight from the tap to my heart. In my mother there was always a strange loneliness. As the water gushed into the vase from the tarnished tap by the sinister smell of the drain and the leaves of the rosemary hedge I knew, and partly understood, that loneliness.
It was a big old beautiful grave, the surface covered with raked pebbles flecked grey and white and black. In front of the marble headstone there was a bouquet of china flowers, white as doves, beneath a glass dome, all-sacred to the memory of John Henry, Geoffrey, and Ellen Margaret. Ellen Margaret died when I was three. I used to see her standing in her kitchen in a dark dress, wearing a navy-blue apron and holding a loaf of bread against her bosom. With a big bone-handled knife she slapped the butter onto the cut end of the loaf, and then she sawed off a slice of buttered bread, cutting in towards her body. Behind her was a mantelpiece from which hung a fringe of burgundy velvet bobbles. Above the mantelpiece in a particular pool of gloom hung an oval picture of the luscious, threatening, beloved Sacred Heart. He faced the open back door through which could be seen a field of marigolds and, beyond the marigolds, in the cabbages with the white moths, me.
My mother would let me stand on the pebbles of the grave to arrange the flowers in the vase. The pebbles shifted and crunched and shuffled under my shoes.
I was bending over to put marigolds from Ellen’s garden into the vase. I began to dissolve until I became a wisp of pointed ectoplasm spearing the surface of the grave, which sucked me into itself. Then I stood again in my own cool surprised flesh beside the huge vase of marigolds.
There must be a name for the kind of floor that looks like chips of marble jumbled up together and polished. Smooth shiny floor like a certain kind of sausage. Sometimes it is pinkish, and other times it is grey-blue. The floor of the viewing-room at the back of the funeral parlour is that sort of floor, grey-blue.
In the room there is nothing except the coffin, lit
by fluorescent light. It is night. I have come by plane from another city. The lid of the coffin covers most of the body, but I can see my father’s head, like wax, with the skull almost visible. He rests in white satin. I kiss him goodbye, and he is not just cold, he is frozen. I suppose the satin stirs with the appearance of breathing because the body is packed in dry ice. I have a cheap camera in my handbag, and take a photograph. The click of the camera sounds very loud.
Then there is nothing to do but leave. The tired attendant, who is wearing a navy-blue cardigan, lets me out by the side door marked ‘Family’. I imagine him going back into the viewing-room. Is it his job now to screw down the lid? He turns out the light, shuts the door and goes to his office. He has a mug of coffee and a cigarette and reads the newspaper. Does he have to stay awake all night? Does he keep vigil, in his cardigan, in the quiet building? Perhaps he would have a video to while away the hours; a heater and some comfortable slippers.
In my hotel room I cannot sleep. I too read the newspaper. The attendant and I are both reading the National Times on Sunday, both reading about Graeme Blundell and women, and something by D.J. O’Hearn. There is heated carpet on the floor of the bedroom, and in the bathroom there are heated orange tiles. I drink tea, and listen to a waterwheel, which turns outside my window. When the man in the navy-blue cardigan and I have completed our vigils, we fold our newspapers and go. He opens the doors for the funeral director and his assistants. I buy bunches of daffodils to take to the cemetery.
The cars are large grey ones, and seem to slide along the road. I remember that my father’s family used to train the black horses for these same funeral people.