Deepest sympathies and understanding.
'I don't understand,' he burst out. 'She could phone, she's allowed to phone. If she was worried, she could always phone. She doesn't.'
'She'd say too much. She can't talk now. She never could, don't you see? Henry sees. Henry sees it all.'
'I don't. Why are there so many kids about? Oh, sod it. Half-term. They tread on the daffodils.'
They were approaching the castle from the back of it, where the bridge over the dry moat met the road and where there was the sign saying when it was open and when it was shut. Such a squat beast, this castle. Sitting there like a great, solid mushroom. Almost beautiful in this light, he said, if you liked every permutation of grey. Look at it, Edward said; a grim place, like a prison. A Victorian prison might have been made on similar lines, with the slight difference that it would be designed to keep them in rather than keep them out. A small amendment. The interior could be as spartan as one pleased to ensure the rigours of the soul.
Doubtless Francesca's prison had a few more creature comforts, he thought sourly, such as TV and reliable hot water and heat, as if that would make all the difference. Probably, in her own way, with her own upbringing, she was used to confinement. He told this to himself to make himself feel better.
'Miserable place,' he said. 'Look at it. I don't know why anyone bothers.'
'There's no choice about it. You can't destroy it and it's quite incapable of falling down.'
They had moved from the road on to the seaward side where the swathe of grass separated the environs of the castle sunk into its own vast well, so that they walked the perimeter railings erected to protect the unwary. Dark inside at sea level and darker still beneath sea level in the Runs.
Edward was looking out for the daffodils traditionally planted on this stretch of green. They tended to bud during storms and he never knew why. Any sensible thing would stay beneath earth until it was over and the spring as certain a thing as it ever was. Not very certain. He could see the green shoots, with only a single yellow bud in sight.
'How can you dislike it, Edward? It's your heritage. Look.' Maggie dragged him across the green to lean against the rails and look down into the moat. There were pools of water and crops of winter crocus, brilliant blue and yellow even in the shadow. Cotoneaster and hebe, privet and rhododendrons, nothing that minded shade. 'You can grow anything here,' she informed him, 'it's a nursery garden.' She was leading him from the precipice back to the bench against the beach where the sound of the sea soothed and no one would pause for long because of the wind, which worried the backs of legs and made the pennant flutter.
'Please don't be a cynic, Edward, don't. It was wonderful to be here, I promise you it was.
We stood at that window. You had to stand to see out, you got used to it. That one.' She was pointing towards the middle keep, where a silly wooden turret protruded above the rest. It was like the tuft of a nest sticking out of a tree.
'What a cold place to live. Who stood?'
'Oh, me, Francesca, my aunt and uncle. After my parents died.'
She wanted to tell him something else, but he sprang to his feet. Pointing, still with his gloves on, quivering with worry and rage. 'Will you look at that? Will you just look at that? Jesus fucking Christ, they should be shot, look at that. Who let her, ohmyfuckingGod, oh jesusbloodychrist, GET DOWN!' He bellowed with his hands cupped round his mouth and his cheeks distended like a trumpet player. 'GET DOWN!'.
There was a figure dancing round the walls. The balancing act looked like the dance of a butterfly in a patch of sun which caught the vivid auburn of the hair swept back by the breeze into a huge halo. She stepped to her own tune, nimbly moving from brick to brick around the curved and inward-sloping walls of the nearest inner keep, arms outstretched with the elegance of a ballerina, oblivious to the height and the slope and the remnants of frost. She tested herself and went a little faster, tried a skip. Slipped and landed with her long skinny legs each side of her body, supported on her hands.
Raised the body by the hands in one effortless movement, extended her arms again and ventured on. She turned her progress into an elegant goosestep, each leg swung forward in a high kick, extending the opposite arm to touch the opposite toe. Then sat on the last sunny part of the wall, examining the abyss below without any sign of fear, delved into the pocket of her windcheater for something to chew. Lay down on the sloping wall and looked at the sky, crossed her legs like a miniature sunbather, sprang up in a single moment, continued the act, snapping her fingers to some indiscernible beat, body vibrating with it.
'That's Tanya.'
'Ah. I see what she meant, oh Christ. Take me away. I can't stand it. She'll fall, she'll bloody fall.'
'No, she won't,' Maggie said, pulling him away.
'Not if you leave her alone. She'll thrive if she's left alone.'
Edward's room had reached a stuffy temperature which was almost intolerable. The building was emptied for lunch. Prominent on the mess of the desk was the fax.
Dear Edward and Maggie,
So that's why you haven't been to see me, Maggie. You've been breaking promises all over the place and much as I love you for it, why can't you just ACCEPT? Accept that of all the people involved on the morning 'in question' I was, without doubt, the only one who knew what I was doing. I'm over the worst, I can stand it, if only because the alternative would really break my heart. What's left of it.
Don't do ANYTHING. I DO NOT WANT TO APPEAL. Not until she's far older, anyway. Can't you ever see the virtue of doing NOTHING?
Henry Evans? Of course I don't want to see him. What are you up to? Bring some daffodils, just so I can look at them. Get a garden and tell me about it. Get a bloody LIFE and tell me about that.
These ARE my formal instructions.
Tell Henry Evans to go home.
I love you very much, Maggie Chisholm.
You're better than a sister. I've given you a lot of duff advice in my time, but this is for real.
Edward, go fishing.
FMC
Maggie looked at the fax and wondered what it had cost to write. All Chisholms had a talent for the stiff upper lip. If this is what you've got, get on with it. She found that she was crying, copious, effortless tears.
Henry combed his hair and tried to select from his jumbled suitcase an item of clothing which was not ruined either by adventure or the enthusiastic cleaning attempts of Tim, who was willing but less able than Peter. He had never really replaced the original hat, might not be in this weakened state if he had done so. You lose half your body heat from your head, someone had told him once and now was the time he believed it. There had been a kind of pleasure, latterly, in lying up here, listening to the storms, forgetting for a while where he was, other than at the wheel of a big, safe ship, ploughing through the sea towards a headland and not, as he had been in the other kinds of dreams, sinking beneath the waves, weighted with sadness and wishing he had learned how to fish.
He went downstairs in a motley array of clothing, ready to compete with his hosts for the prize for inept dressing, not caring. He had told Fergusons to put the job on hold and he could not bring himself to care about that either. In this land of the relatively poor, he was still relatively rich.
He could feel the touch of Maggie's hand on his fevered brow and hear himself talking more than he had ever talked. And no amount of talking would tell him what to do. Knowledge did not point him in any direction.
'You see,' he said to Peter in the kitchen, watching him pour the tea from the teapot which looked as if it was too heavy to lift, 'it's in the nature of us Americans to believe that things can be fixed. Nothing broke that can't be fixed. No illness can't be cured. No tragedy can't be turned round into a happy ending. No mess can't be negotiated into success. I'm stuck with it. Positivism. The secret of our success. Compromise is a no-no.'
'How completely unnatural. It's all compromise, isn't it? And what's the point of striving all the time?
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What you can't accept is the fact that life's full of mystery and you aren't supposed to know all the answers. Acceptance is the key. There's no hardship at all in going along with a whole lot of broken things.
You have to accept fate, just like you have to accept a hefty measure of ignorance. Go with the flow. Henry.
You can't actually change anything.'
Henry followed him into the garden, where Timothy was tidying up. There was the reassuring sound of a broom swishing on the paving stones with an even rhythm, gathering together broken twigs and scattered leaves. The door to the Wendy house was open and the inside was empty when Henry looked, except for two folders of assorted papers and an old leather writing case.
'I wanted to make a fire,' Tim said. 'Get rid of it all.'
'All what?'
'Harry's things. He's gone, you see. I think he's gone somewhere with his mother. I told him we didn't mind, but I don't think he'll be back. We'll leave the Wendy house, just in case. Might keep an ostrich in it.'
'Why do you think he's gone?' Henry asked with a massive lump in his throat. Timothy shook his head, warningly.' You might know, but we don't. Don't want to. That isn't for us to know.
But something's been settled. He's stopped flitting around. I think he's finally understood that it wasn't all a waste. He was looking for a purpose, you see. I don't know what it is, I don't want to know, but he's found it. I think he finally understood that he was .. . loved.'
'Don't burn the letters and things, will you?'
'Should we not?'
'No. Keep them. And the videos. She'll want them, some day.'
'She?'
'She. Someone.'
The Wendy house was sparkling clean from the hosing down of rain followed by ministrations with detergent. The plastic colours were weatherworn and faded out of their original garishness; Henry could see it as the cake icing house, shrouded with shrubs as it was and perfectly comfortable in these surroundings.
Perhaps it was true that things grow into their own places. Senta prowled around it disdainfully, sniffing and oddly subdued. She sniffed Henry's ankles with a greater show of animation.
'She misses him,' Peter said. 'They kept each other company when we were busy, you see.
It's always been like that. We're a bit too old for her, really, that's the problem, aren't we, Senta?
Can't keep up with you, can we?'
Henry wondered about the other person he had been a mere two weeks ago, who might have bridled at this archness and gagged at the sentimentality of talking to animals and ghosts, hating it all the more for never doubting its appalling sincerity. He put his arm round Peter's meaty shoulders.
'What's old, old man? Middle age is man's greatest dignity, his piece de resistance, the age of wisdom and just about enough vigour to go round. I got an idea.
Don't turn me down. Can't waste the damn Wendy house if Harry doesn't come back. What say you to another dog? There's a beauty...'
'A black beauty,' Timothy said, dreamily. 'Wanders round by itself all day and finds somewhere to go at night. I long for it, can you get her? I never know where she goes. Oh yes. Now how did I know you were going to suggest that?'
'You must be psychic,' Henry said glibly, but his heart was beating to a strange tune, kerthump, kerthump, kerthump and he felt slightly giddy so that the words came out rather careless. 'I think I can get her,' he said. 'Or get Maggie to get her. Got something to trade.'
'Fetch,' Tim yelled and flung the broom in the air.
Henry drew a deep breath. 'You know the first night I got here? How did you know I was coming along? Psychic again?' Peter had the grace to look shifty and looked down at his shoes; brogues as violent a brown as brogues were ever made, polished to a piano varnish finish the better to offset the canary yellow socks. Some people did better out of thrift shops than others. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the shoes so hard that Henry thought he would overbalance and tensed himself to catch him.
'Maggie has to check the hotel register every day. Make sure they do it right. Must have seen your name, I suppose. Told them to send you along. Told us.' Somehow, it did not Surprise him. He was rather relieved to find an instance of cooperative cunning rather than anything weirdly telepathic, although if the explanation had been obscure enough to feature some message from either God or the Devil, he would not have been surprised either. Henry was beyond surprise and into anticlimax.
He knew where the dog was, he had seen it from his window. He saw everything from his window as if he were filming each scene. He could always get as far as the window and watch the people without the people watching him. Watch the dog and know where it sheltered; he knew that it came as far as this door every day, imagined he knew where it was now, grabbing a halfway sunny spot on the shingle for as long as it lasted.
'Excuse me,' he said,
The sunlight made him giddy, he didn't know why, it was a pretty pallid sort of sunlight only made brilliant by the sea with the dark clouds backing up on the horizon again, ready to spit and blow and Snarl and bite and fight. The thunder God went for a ride, he recited and couldn't remember the next line. He crossed the road and whistled. My only talent, he thought to himself. I can whistle for the dog I never owned. I can whistle for the wind and be heard on any other planet and by any other species than my own.
The dog gambolled off the beach and sniffed his ankles. I would die to be able to run like you. Henry told it. And once we're inside, behave, right? It's me who'll square everything after, like the price of a decade of food. And something for Granny and tablets for Neil.
The dog wanted to come upstairs. He said no and heard it greeted in the kitchen with wails of delight. The stairs seemed longer and longer, halfway up, he heard a door slam and did not look back. He did not want to talk to her just now. The only way that Maggie had ever seen him was when he was pathetic and she was in control. Whenever he looked like shit, she looked like a birthday party; whenever he felt like shit, she was there at the rescue and whenever he thought shit, she had thought it first. And such a user, such a manipulator. How could a woman like that have a cousin like that, but all the same . ..
All the same...
All the same ... He felt weak at the top floor, checked the view from the window again, just to make sure he could not see the dog on the beach. A copy of a fax was on the bed, pristine black and white and almost warm. Henry read it, once, twice, three times, absorbed the message, leave me alone, leave me alone, LEAVE ME ALONE, until he thought he had understood. Well, what had he expected?
Gratitude? For what? From whom? It wasn't as good as it was before he'd got here and learned to swear, and it wasn't good now, but at least someone knew a lot more truth than they knew before, and godamnit, they didn't want to know it and they wouldn't have been bothered if they didn't know it and there was nothing he could do. Could do, fucking should do, FUCK
NOTHING, he yelled at the wall.
Cool Ms Chisholm. You can go now. Henry, and let us resume our lives. She does not want to see you. What you do next is entirely up to you. Thanks a lot.
He sorted money into piles. The early days of archaic Warbling taught him that cash mattered more than anything. He counted madly: food for the dog, benefit for Granny, Viagra he would send, no cash needed, biggest stash ever for P and T, Edward had refused payment. He touched the shawl which was grubbier now, because Maggie had wrapped it around his throat when his temperature was way high and he shrieked at her not to close the window. He put it in an envelope and scrawled her name on it.
She would know what he meant; she would never ask for anything more. He checked his watch. These were the hours for cooking.
His suitcase was extraordinarily light. No potions, no minerals, no whatsits, a few antibiotics in his washbag and the seagulls outside friskier than ever from what they had picked up. Seagulls freaked out by vitamins and ginseng: he tried to cheer himself with that idea, checked his watch again. Trains wen
t on the hour. The sky was slate and the wind ominous.
If he went now, quietly, he would have to wait, but if he did not move, another kind of madness would descend. The horror of doing, being nothing.
No hat. It was mild for the time of year, gathering energy for another storm, going to be horrible soon. Horrible: he toyed with the word on the way to the station, going the back way. It was an unfamiliar description and he tried to think what he might say instead. Awesome, terrific, incredible, nasty. Not nice. The station was deserted apart from three kids with one bicycle between them. The smallest one-sat, kicking the wheels as if it was an enemy instead of transport. He waited for a sense of relief. Checked on his fingers for the things done and left undone.
Waited.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
There were starlings under the eaves of the station canopy, putting out clarion calls, shrieking for mother. He walked to the edge of the platform and trod along a yellow line explained by a notice which said, do not cross. He looked at the plants which withered in the aisle between eastbound and west.
The train failed to arrive. He was way too early and the next city train was going to be late because of the weather. The sky turned from slate to black and even the birds fell silent as the wind began to rattle. Henry checked the breast pocket on his jacket, one last time, as if it would be the last time and he would not do it again and again. Back in the twenty-first century which Warbling had managed to suspend, he could feel himself slipping into the benign neurosis of everyday concerns, and the need for everyday documents.
A woman appeared in charge of the kid who was kicking the bike, and cuffed him. Henry leapt to his feet, about to intervene and then sat down again as she followed it up with no more than a scolding and a crushed packet of crisps taken from her bag. He moved to the far end of the platform and sat on a metal bench out of the wind, adjusting his scarf and his gloves and feeling his feet warm in his boots. He might look like a tramp, but he was well insulated.
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