Undercurrent

by Frances Fyfield

  The wall rounded to his right. He had just made out the outline of the bird when he stumbled on a loose brick, put out a hand to steady himself and swore, shit. The starling came back to life, disappeared in a smudge of black and began again the ghastly battering of a window further round. If he could only somehow get beyond it, he thought, and frighten it into going back to where he knew there were windows which were broken or open or free of glass, perhaps it would find its way out of its own accord.

  Perhaps it was better to chase it forward in any event; they might come round full circle to the larger space where it could fly with ease or settle. And then be lost for ever and even harder to catch. Or maybe this rounded passageway led nowhere but to further obscurity, maybe it petered out into a pit, a cellar, a well. Henry swallowed.

  With pullover draped round his neck, he inched forward, testing the wet ground with his stockinged feet and keeping one hand on the wall. The starling became visible again; he felt as if it was looking at him and waiting. He removed the pullover, remembering to breathe quietly. Up ahead there was another sound, a drip, drip, drip, and from the window he passed a draught and a tantalizing sound of rain.

  The starling beat its wings and flew drunkenly to the next glass. It would die from fear and exhaustion. Henry's feet were icy cold; he flexed his fingers silently. The sound of rain outside would muffle the noise of his own progress, but only a fool would think that a starling had senses as unrefined as his own. Three times more, creeping forward and the bird detecting him, but each time, he told himself, he was that small bit closer. Then, beneath the merciful glow of a tiny light in the ceiling, which showed the gleam of moisture on the stone of the ledge where water dripped, he saw the starling bathing in an irresistible shallow bath of collected water in a dip hollowed by years of drips.

  Henry was close enough, threw his net and followed. Gently, gently, does it. A furious struggle inside the garment. Keep still. He cupped his hands round the heaving bundle he had made and cradled it, feeling, as he began to stumble back the way he had come, the frantic beating of a tiny heart, feared the bursting of it. Quick. He needed both hands to keep the captive; his feet would have to find their own direction. He stubbed his toes and cracked his elbows, stumbling from side to side and letting the wall, curving to his left, lead him. He tripped on his own shoes, felt the material of his jacket in the puddle underfoot and did not stop. Another window, another and another, and then the blessed draught.

  He stretched to push the pullover through the narrow aperture of the window slit, gently, then shook it. The opening was so narrow there was scarcely room for both his hands and the stone grazed his arms. He could feel the starling fight, thought maybe it was stuck with its claws in the wool and he would have to drag it back and crush it in the process of disentanglement, not be able to see in the dark, let it free inside this hole and have to start all over again, oh please God, no. He shook the ends of the pullover again, letting one hand go; then he felt it lift and fall as the bird flew free.

  He strained to look and see where it had gone, but all he could see was sky. Don't fall, FLY, he shouted, and told himself he could hear the sound of wings above the sound of rain and knew he was unable to hear anything of the kind. Simply his own breath uhuh, uhuh, uhuh. Keep moving. He retreated from the window and plodded on, touching the wall on his left, feeling rather than consciously noting two more windows which could have acted as escape routes, muttering to himself. They should not leave it like this, they should fix the windows and not trap birds.

  Someone should check, someone should hang, and then, all of a sudden, he was back at the foot of the slope, moving uphill to the big room where he found a patch of light against the fireplace wall and slid to a heap on the dry floor. He still had the pullover which he had trailed along behind him pleased with himself for not letting it go, otherwise the starling might have plummeted to earth in its own net. Absentmindedly, he drew it over his head. He was shivering.

  The pullover felt sticky to the touch smeared at the front with bird excrement. A lot of it.

  never mind. Henry wiped it down with his hands and rubbed his hands on his trousers. Now it was all over him. Never mind again if he smelt a bit, the damm bird, that silly, terrified little thing, was free and he himself was momentarily, quite bizarrely, happy.

  But he was cold. He felt his feet with his filthy hands and massaged his toes. They were sticky and sore and wet with blood; the cold was doing him a favour and preventing real pain. He should go back and get his jacket and also his shoes, force his feet inside and keep them warm. The jacket would keep him warm and hide the bird shit. But on cooler contemplation of the whole idea, Henry knew there was absolutely no question of going back down the slope and into that passage.

  Cold be damned and everything else, the thought was so repellent it increased his tremor.

  The room was no longer warm, but far above freezing and the woman was not going to come back. Nobody was going to come back. There was a bar of chocolate in his jacket pocket; there was moisture dripping into the Runs, enough to clean his hands and deal with a raging thirst, but none of that was enough to make him go back. No.

  There were cigarettes in his trouser pocket and a working lighter. Life was suddenly tenable; the bird was free and the freeing of a starling was the sole purpose of this evening in hell.

  That was why he had been put here. It was all as simple as that. He got to his feet, planned a route (a root. Henry, not a rowt) and began to walk round the rooms. Close to the door, another security light winked as he crossed the beam and tried the handle.

  He waved at it. Walked in wide circles and thought.

  Why did she lock me in?

  What had I done to deserve being locked in?

  Did she know what it might do to me? No. How could she? But she must have known I would be ...frightened.

  The child knew I would be frightened and cold. Or that someone would be frightened and cold.

  Another Henry.

  Will I get gangrene?

  I hope the starling can fly in the rain.

  Is the desire to protect stronger than any other?

  He tried to think of a silly verse, began to sing. He had never thought much of his ability to hold a tune; singing was a private occupation reserved for the bathroom, but he could always remember the words.

  Was it raining when Harry went out? Who called for him and made him follow into the cold?

  'Wake up, Maggie wake up. Wake, bloody up.'

  Peter was shining a light in her face. Or so it seemed. The mobile phone bleeped. .

  'What the hell is wrong with you, Maggie, woman,

  wake up.'

  'Wwake,' she said indistinctly. 'Stoppit. Fuck off.'

  'Your phone, Maggie and--'

  'Go 'way.'

  'Answer it.'

  'No. Wha'for ?'

  ''Answer it!'

  She did, the button-pressing, fiddling-about business automatic, even from the very centre of a bad dream. Peter and Timothy could not fathom how it worked and didn't need to know. It was the only phone in the house and only when she was there; they took the shrill noise of it far more seriously than she. It seemed to whisper to them from a great distance, although she also suspected that on evenings like these, they checked on her.

  She spoke to the phone.

  'Bugger off.'

  'Francesca, I'm dying. I think I'm going to die ...

  I took too much. Everything pink, head like hell and there's someone in the castle. Can't go.'

  'Neil, slow down.' She was upright now and the effect was painful. Not as bad as she had known, but not nice. She saw, with a slight and irrelevant satisfaction, that she had managed to put on a nightie before she got into her bed, also to hide the bottles.

  She could smell soap. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and all she could feel was relief in that small thought, followed by acute irritation. She was not Francesca. At least Neil might have remembered that. Recalled that sh
e was not that omnipotent person in whom everyone confided and whom everyone resented when she could not help; she was simply a poor substitute.

  'Taken too much Viagra. Can't see. Headache. Got to get that American out. He's a doctor.

  Know what to do. Bring him, Maggie, bring him here . . . Ah, please. Please, Maggie, please. He'll know. I know he'll know . . . Blue pills. Pink pills to make it better.

  Call him, Maggie, please.'

  'He's not a doctor. He's the wrong kind of doctor, he can't make people better. Call a real doctor,

  Neil.'

  'Can't. Gonna die. Help me.' The end of the call, the contents of it reverberated around the room like ricochets.

  'Someone wants Henry,' she said carelessly, as if she was his secretary, looking at Peter for inspiration.

  Timothy hovered in the doorway and she felt cornered into good manners. They were never less than courteous; they were, she thought briefly, the kindest people on earth.

  'They can't have him.'

  'Why can't they have him?'

  'Because he isn't there,' Timothy said flatly. 'He's never come back. Two in the morning and he isn't back. He's lost.'

  Heart pounding, she went upstairs and found Henry's room, pristine, the fire made for him leaving nothing but a faint trace of warmth. The laptop closed, the room all neatly stacked as if he lived in the cabin of a ship about to set sail, instead of the way she kept hers, like a schoolgirl, subject only to intermittent discipline. A variety of destinations crossed her mind - castle, Neil's house, Angela's flat - images of places meeting one another in imagination like vehicles crashing at crossroads and she groaned out loud.

  Bugger responsibility; SHE DID NOT WANT IT. From the door of his room, the two darling men hovered with expectancy, body language announcing, say what you want us to do and do it we shall. Maggie sighed. Her brain was full of fungus. Alcohol was a dead loss so far. So was freedom. It encouraged moss on the mind and fur in the throat and had never yet had the grace to create oblivion. Her nightie was clean; there was an awful pride in that, enough to give her authority. What a stupid, shallow, spoiled brat she had always been.

  She had to keep calm, let the dreadful anxiety turn itself into energy rather than curdle into paralysis.

  'I'll just get dressed,' she said. 'Is it cold, out? I'm so sorry, darlings, we should none of us be awake at this hour, should we?' No notion of the hour, of course, but best to get going regardless; think of England. 'Can you remember where I put my car, Peter? And you really don't have to come if you don't want to.'

  'Harry's in that castle, isn't he?'

  'Not the Harry you mean, but very probably, yes.

  And Neil is poorly and has the key, yes. Don't know why, but yes.'

  She was back downstairs and stripping off the nightie, finding a nasty sweatshirt and a jumper over the top and the trainers without laces which were nearest and the car keys which were hidden behind something, getting the order of things wrong, so she found herself puzzled by bare legs and feet with shoes and no trousers. Peeled the whole lot off and started again. Something had happened in the course of a drunken evening without her thinking about it on any conscious level at all. Somewhere among the scribbling and scrabbling, she had sorted out an outfit of trouser suit, boots and spurs, top coat et al. of the kind fit to meet a repentant ex-husband and intimidate him with a sense of style. Still a proper lawyer, see?

  She dragged them on, lit a cigarette and stubbed it out immediately. She just about made the ashtray and the whole business was worse than she thought. They were waiting outside the door in their motley dressing gowns, the sweetest and, ultimately, most unaggressive of men. Unless she had been a child, in which case they would have ignored the legends of ghosts and gone out with her, armed with homemade cudgels. The very thought made her even more tired. Peter and Timothy were greatly reassured by her uniform. She looked like she could deal with an army.

  Raining hard. Snow melted and pelting rain, desperate place, disgusting, why ever live here

  .. . along the front, left to Neil's, stop. Everything deathless with silence, making her want to shout.

  Rapping at his door until there was a response. The door opened by him, squinting at her, all eyes and shame. The pink 'at the corners of his vision had faded, the headache was terrible, there was no one else to call, sort it, Franny, will you? I am not Francesca. My cousin of that name lived in the castle and, as a cousin, I came here often and I know, as she did, how to get in. She never really relinquished her ties to it.

  She stood over Neil in his living room and reflected dispassionately that he looked worse than she felt, but he would live. 'I'm feeling better,' he muttered. 'Sorry, sorry, sorry.' The pager, connected to the castle's alarm system, blinked on the table. 'It went ages ago. I can't go in there, I can't, I can't. The ghosts . . .'

  'Call the police.'

  'They'll laugh. I'll lose my job ... I can't.'

  'Oh, for God's sake, give me the key. Angela dropped it back, I suppose?' He nodded. She noticed the shawl folded over the chair, took the key and went back to the car. She could never have any patience with anyone afraid of ghosts or the castle at night; it had been her occasional playground for hide-and seek, although she never quite knew the hiding places her cousin had known. She tried to question her own conviction that Henry was in there, blundering around like a moth. I guess I might leave out the stuff about being afraid of the dark, scared to death about being locked in. She hurried.

  She left the car by the castle gate, heard the rat, tat, tat of her smart heels on the wooden bridge and felt the rain on her face. The key was easy, the door heavy. There were chocolate wrappers on the floor of the shop; ghosts feasting in Neil's absence, of course, leaving litter to annoy him, of course. Or a hurried departure by Angela Hulme and Tanya. Maggie swore. She should never have sent Henry here.

  She took the keys to the keep from behind the counter where they always remained, flicked the master switch for lights, walked out into the rain round the slippery stones to the inner door. If there was no one to find, she would be furious, she might be equally furious if he were there. The lights were harshly bright. There was a man in the room below, walking a slow circle, hands clasped behind his back, his feet in dirty socks and his sweater stained. He was singing. Then he seemed to notice that he could see, stopped moving and turned slowly, blinking, singing still .

  'Hallo,' she said.

  ‘You may esteem him a child for his might. Or you may deem him a coward for his flight’; Henry sang, and then stopped and turned and saw a woman, smartly dressed as if for a powerful meeting, pristine in matching clothes, shimmering in the spotlight, mercilessly efficient. Oh, shit.

  It didn't help, him disliking the cold. Didn't help that he was old enough to experience vanity; I wonder when vanity begins? As soon, I suppose, as a baby can see itself in a mirror. Didn't help that his speech was affected, so that it was difficult for him to articulate clearly because it added to his frustration. Didn't help the poor darling that he loved so easily, even though he scowled like a dragon.

  He did that when he was concentrating to learn things, and I always found it endearing. I always had difficulty learning things without looking for the nearest distraction; I understood the effort. I had the concentration span of a sparrow until I was far older, which is why my father always held Maggie up as an example, because she learned so easily.

  I think I imagined that Tanya might be to Harry what I once was to Maggie: an older cousin who loved her and would always be there, in the absence of a sibling, just as he would be there for her.

  I forgot how much rivalry and impatience there was. I was trying to turn us into a family, herd us into a group. I sound like a sheepdog. Of course, it was not quite like that.

  FMC.

  CHAPTER TEN.

  She walked down the slope towards him, aware only of the crunch of her boots on dry stone. Her hair shone with rain droplets, flying away as she shook her head. Closer t
o him, she was aware how dirty he was, shockingly so for a meticulous man with a passion for clean clothes and personal ablutions.

  'How does the rest of this verse go?' Henry asked conversationally. 'Might be one you know.

  It's so irritating to forget.'

  "But if she whom love doth honour ‘Maggie recited tonelessly, 'be concealed from the day . . .'

  'Set a thousand guards upon her. Love will find out the way,' Henry finished, beaming with satisfaction like a child triumphing in getting the right answer.

  'What the hell are you doing here?' Her temper was ready to explode and her right hand itching to slap his face if only it were not so filthy.

  'Oh, this and that. I'm a very conscientious tourist, I have to see everything.'

  'Well, I think it's closed. Henry, and we'll go home now. Where'd you put your shoes and that jacket?'

  'In the Runs, ha ha . .. down there, somewhere ' vaguely pointing.

  'Would you like to go and fetch them?' The voice was now sweet and persuasive.

  'Nope.' He was shaking his head apologetically.

  'Nope. Can't do that. Absolutely not.'

  'There aren't any ghosts,' she said. He seemed vaguely surprised at the suggestion.

  'Of course not. But I'm not going.'

  She clattered away out of sight, footsteps receding angrily in the downhill direction of the Runs and Henry listened, rather than watched, feeling only slightly guilty. What did he need a jacket and shoes for? He was doing OK as he was. A minute passed; then the half of another, and the cold crept back beneath his skin. One more verse and then he would have to go and look for her in case she was lost, like the starling.

  'Some think to lose him by having him confined, and some do suppose him, (poor thing!) to be blind. But if ne'er so close you wall him. Do the best that you may; Blind Love, (if you so call him,) Will find out his way.' Seventeenth century, he seemed to remember. Footsteps coming back, slower than they went, and there was Maggie with his jacket in one hand and his shoes in the other, holding them both away from her soft, camel coat as if they were contaminated while he still hummed the song. He could just about squeeze his feet into his shoes with a degree of pain and without any possibility of tying the laces, and he found it surprisingly difficult to get his arms into the sleeves of the jacket.