Consolation

by James Wilson

  This idyll lasted almost unbroken from the day we left Dorset to the moment of our arrival in Derbyshire. Only once, in all that time, did the world beyond the garden-wall break in, and rudely drag me back into the sad complexity of my real life. It happened, as these things so often do, at the very instant I should least have expected it, when – so glorious was the weather, and so arcadian the landscape of woods and valleys and tree-dotted pastures in which we found ourselves – I could almost have deceived myself into thinking we had moved beyond the power of the present to recall us. In order to take advantage of an especially lovely camping place overlooking a burbling, willow-fringed river, we decided to stop rather earlier than usual, and I had volunteered to lead Tankard to his quarters, while Jessop got the van ready for the night. On my way, I saw three children playing on the river-bank below me. One of them, a slender boy in a norfolk jacket, looked up and waved at me. I waved back, and called:

  ‘Good hunting!’

  The farmer’s wife was a friendly enough soul, but rather overparticular, and would not let me leave until she had given me a choice of stables for Tankard, and written down every last detail of his dietary requirements. As a result, it was three-quarters of an hour before I was finally able to get away and hurry back to the caravan. I’d expected to find it all shut up, and Jessop sitting waiting for me, his pipe in his mouth and a book open on his knee; so it was something of a surprise to discover the door still open, and a young girl wrapped in a blanket huddled on the steps in his place. As I drew closer, I could see she was shivering, and wincing with cold or pain.

  ‘Hullo!’ I cried out, while I was still fifty yards off. ‘What happened to you?’

  She was too caught up in her own anguish to respond, but the next second Jessop appeared on the platform above her, with a roll of bandage in one hand, a water-jug in the other, and a towel draped over his arm.

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ he said, as inconsequentially as if he were muttering a platitude about the weather. ‘Nothing too serious. But a bit of first aid’s called for, I think.’ He edged past her, then knelt down and carefully folded back the blanket from her left leg. A graze ran from the knee to the shin. It looked uncomfortable but fairly superficial – except at the bottom, where fresh blood was pulsing from an inch-long gash. He took a sponge from the jug and dabbed at the wound. The child – who could not have been more than six or seven – whimpered, and involuntarily jerked her leg away. He grabbed the ankle, pinioned it, and went on working, gently but with quiet persistence. The girl cried out, and began to struggle.

  ‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘Hurts like anything, doesn’t it? But this is the worst bit. Start counting now, and by the time you’ve got to a hundred, it won’t be so bad. That’s a promise.’

  The girl tried, but couldn’t keep it up, and dissolved in a welter of moans and shrieks.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  Jessop shook his head. ‘The victim has so far been unable to tell us,’ he said, drying the leg with the towel. ‘And I’ve despatched the only witnesses to fetch wood for a fire.’

  I looked around. For a second or two I could not see anyone else. Then, at the far end of the field, at the edge of a small copse, I noticed the boy who had waved to me earlier. Next to him was a smaller companion, also wearing a norfolk jacket. They were both darting about like actors in a comic moving picture, frantically snatching up twigs and broken branches from the ground and piling them into their crooked arms. After a few moments, they evidently decided they could carry no more, and started running back towards us. Jessop cocked an eye at them, then squinted up at me and said:

  ‘Get us a good blaze going, would you? Our poor wounded heroine’s chilled to the marrow.’

  I fetched newspaper from the van, then went and intercepted the two young fellows, and showed them where to drop the wood. As I squatted down to build it into a fire, they stood watching me, pale-faced and breathless, like a couple of errant schoolboys waiting in the headmaster’s study to hear what their punishment will be. Finally, unable to bear the silence any longer, the taller one said:

  ‘You must think awfully badly of us, sir.’ He was about twelve, with delicate features and large apprehensive grey eyes. His upper lip trembled visibly, though he was doing his best to control it.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not in a position to think anything of you at the moment. Just slip into the van, will you, and bring out the tarpaulin and a few cushions, so we can make the patient as comfortable as possible?’

  He hesitated, until the younger one tugged his sleeve and said:

  ‘Come on, Ced! Sharp about it!’

  In less than a minute they were back, staggering under what looked like half the contents of the caravan, and between us we managed to fashion a kind of rough chaise longue next to the fire. Then Jessop, having finished bandaging the girl’s wound, gently carried her over and laid her down. Her face was was still white and contorted, but she had stopped crying, and when I wedged a pillow under her head she unclenched her stiff little body and settled back with a grateful sigh.

  ‘How is she, sir?’ asked the older boy.

  Jessop shrugged. ‘I’ve cleaned her up. And the bleeding’s stopped. But she’ll need to see the doctor. You live here, I take it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m Cedric Adair.’ He paused for a second, caught between childhood and manhood, and then held his hand out, first to Jessop and then to me. ‘This is my sister Daisy. And my brother Charles. And our father is the doctor.’

  ‘Well, that’s handy, at any rate,’ said Jessop.

  ‘He’s going to be frightfully cross, I’m afraid. And, of course, I know we should have been more careful. But honestly … It was an accident. Daisy was the princess, you see, captured by pirates. And we were rescuing her from the island they’d taken her to. Only she slipped –’

  The girl interrupted him with a dreadful wail. It was the sound not of pain, this time, nor of protest, but of dismay at the sudden realization – for the first time, probably, in her young life – of her own shocking vulnerability.

  ‘That’s because she didn’t want to be the princess,’ said the younger boy, casting her a nervous glance. His voice was oddly slack and neutral, as if he couldn’t make up his mind where his loyalties lay. ‘And she didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted to be left alone to talk to Mr. Largo Frog.’

  The skin on the back of my neck tightened. The older boy caught my eye and pulled a humorous face, making common cause with me against his sister’s silliness. I looked away, blushing.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jessop, smiling. ‘There’s a coincidence.’

  I twitched my head, but it was too late: he had already turned back to the girl.

  ‘Well,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘If you really want to meet Mr. Largo Frog, then you’re in the most tremendous luck. Because it just so happens that my friend here is the one person who can introduce you to him. Can you guess my friend’s name?’

  The girl shifted her head and stared at me for a couple of seconds. Then she looked up at Jessop again, and I saw her lips move.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Mr. Corley Roper.’

  A glow spread up her throat and over her whey-coloured cheeks.

  ‘Is it true?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She shivered and clenched her fists. Pin-pricks of light appeared in her eyes. ‘Will you tell me a story?’

  ‘About Mr. Largo Frog?’

  She nodded. ‘And Alcuin Hare. And the Little Mouse.’

  My mouth was dry. I had a momentary vision of being able to vanish in a puff of smoke, like a pantomime genie.

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Well, to tell the truth, I’m a bit out of practice …’

  I could feel Jessop searching my face, trying to fathom my reluctance. He must have misinterpreted the reason for it, because after a moment he turned to the two boys and said:

  ‘I expect you two chaps think you’re a bit old f
or this sort of thing, don’t you? So why don’t you cut along home, and bring someone back with you who can help get your sister up to the house?’

  ‘We’d as soon stay, if you don’t mind,’ said the younger boy hastily. ‘And then we can help her ourselves, can’t we?’

  Jessop cleared his throat, then threw the question to me to decide. ‘Well …?’

  Eight eyes looked at me expectantly. I knew, of course, that it would be unpardonable to disappoint the little girl. But I also knew that the springs of my invention were quite dried up, and that nothing I could do would make them flow again. The only choice open to me was to tell her the half-written tale I had been working on at the time of Elspeth’s death – and the thought of that made me feel faint with disgust.

  The girl started to sob. I took a deep breath, then settled myself cross-legged on the ground beside her.

  ‘Well, Daisy,’ I began. ‘The story I’m about to tell you is one I had from Mr. Largo Frog’s own rather big lips, when I chanced upon him the other day. And it’s all about – who do you think?’

  ‘The Little Mouse?’

  ‘Our friend the Little Mouse, that’s right. And of course Alcuin Hare, and the Coney family, and Mr. Largo Frog himself.’

  The girl nodded happily, and shut her eyes.

  ‘It all started one morning not so long ago, when the Little Mouse got up, and stretched, and yawned as usual, and then pulled open her curtains –’

  ‘The red-check ones?’murmured the girl.

  ‘That’s right. The ones her mother made from the table napkin.’

  ‘And did they still tickle her paws?’

  ‘They did. But you must stop asking questions and let me get on with the story, or else we’ll never be finished.’

  All right. I promise.’

  She was as good as her word. And – astonished at my own fluency, and the treacherous ease with which felicitous details and embellishments suggested themselves to me – I related the story of the spring-clean at Badger’s Bakery, and Mr. Largo Frog’s accident with the hot-cross buns.

  When I had finished, there was a long silence, as if the children – and even Jessop – found it difficult to come back from the Little Mouse’s world into our own. Then the older boy said:

  ‘That was absolutely first-rate, sir. Thank you.’

  And the younger one jumped up, wheeling his cap through the air, and shouted:

  ‘Three cheers for Mr. Roper!’

  The little girl joined in the cheering, and then rolled over and impetuously kissed me.

  ‘I’m better now,’ she said, getting up like Lazarus from her makeshift sick-bed. ‘I think I’ll go home.’

  We shook hands all round, and then they set off towards the gate – the girl in the lead, limping so slightly that a casual observer wouldn’t have noticed she was doing it at all, and her brothers hovering a few paces behind, shaking their heads incredulously, and marvelling at their luck.

  ‘Well done,’ said Jessop softly. ‘That was splendid. Quite took me back.’

  ‘And me,’ I said. I did not add: And I would rather it hadn’t – but he must have seen the thought in my face, because after a couple of seconds, instead of pursuing the subject, he got up and went into the van to make tea.

  I built up the fire, watching the light drain from the sky, and bats flickering in the thickening dusk.

  And, then, for the first time in more than a month, I sat down and wept for my dead child.

  V

  My encounter with Daisy Adair left me feeling oddly depleted, as if telling the story had used up some vital element that the normal processes of eating and sleeping could not replace. I spent much of the next two days inside the caravan, stretched out on my bunk; and when we came to a hill, and I had to lighten the load by getting out and walking, I found myself creeping along like an old man, broken-winded and hollow-legged. At the same time, the strange sensation in my head became noticeably more troublesome – erupting without warning just as I was falling asleep or waking up, and continuing, on at least one occasion, for almost half an hour. I told myself that I had merely suffered a minor relapse – caused, no doubt, by sitting so long outside, and catching a slight chill. But this explanation didn’t altogether satisfy me, since I didn’t seem to have a fever; and I began to wonder whether perhaps something more serious might be amiss.

  Jessop, of course, couldn’t fail to notice the change in me, and I often caught him glancing curiously at me out of the corner of his eye. Only once, though, did he come out directly and ask me if I was feeling all right – and, when I assured him I was, he let the matter drop.

  In the long hours of solitude, when I could muster the energy for it, and was not being distracted by the agitation in my temple, I considered the increasingly urgent question of what I should say to Mary Wilson, if and when we actually found her. And here, at least, my brush with the three children seemed to suggest an answer. We would establish ourselves in Langley Mill – which I still conceived of as a little island of rusticity, somehow miraculously preserved in the middle of a black sea of pits and mining towns, with cosy stables for Tankard, and a tranquil meadow for us – and let it be known that we had come in search of folk songs, and would be staying for an indefinite period to record them. And then, when (as was bound to happen, sooner or later, in so small a place) I happened to see Mary Wilson in the street one day, going to the post office, or taking her dog for a walk, I could merely attribute our meeting – just as Jessop had attributed the marvel of my being Corley Roper, and able to effect an introduction to Mr. Largo Frog – to the power of coincidence.

  Why, how extraordinary! I heard myself exclaiming. It’s Mrs. Wilson, isn’t it?

  She would certainly be startled, but she could not very well be angry.

  But, when my strength recovered, and I began to spend more time outside, sitting next to Jessop on the driver’s seat, my faith in this idea started to wane. As we rattled our way north through Warwickshire, the brilliant green of the countryside started to dim to a slate grey, as if someone were gradually turning down the lamp illuminating it; and by the time we finally crossed into Derbyshire, there seemed nothing left that could properly be called countryside at all, but only a smoking desert sketched in charcoal, with black chimneys lording it over the horizon, and miserable little farms and clusters of soot-blackened houses huddling in the hollows. Jessop and I tried to keep each other’s spirits up by saying this cannot go on for ever, and there are very pretty parts of Derbyshire, I believe; but every mile that carried us closer to Langley Mill seemed to make it less likely that it could possibly match my idealized conception of it.

  Even our worst fears, however, fell short of the reality. Cresting a ridge one drizzle-soaked Friday afternoon, we passed a skewed name-board welcoming us to A GLEY MILL, and the next moment found ourselves looking down on one of the ugliest sights I have ever seen. If Langley Mill had once been a village of even the most wretched sort, there was certainly no evidence of it now. At its heart was a sprawl of roads and canals and railway tracks, which converged like the tentacles of an injured octopus, and tangled themselves together in the centre in an untidy knot. Crowded next to them, along pretty well their entire length, were wharves and warehouses, engine houses and engine sheds, offices and factories – the most prominent of which was proudly crowned with an illuminated sign: Langley Mill Gaslight and Coke Company. In the remaining space, as if they had been squeezed in as an afterthought, were mean little terraces, their gloom relieved only by a scattering of public houses and – here and there – a brightly lit corner-shop.

  Jessop stopped the caravan and stared, tight-jawed and frowning with dismay.

  ‘Heavens,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know such places existed.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s the logic of the modern world. How else are our industrialists to get their wealth, but by setting other poor souls to disembowel the earth, and then selling the lights and liver to the rest of us?’

 
; I pressed a handkerchief to my nose, to keep the raw coal-fumes from stinging it. ‘But what on earth would a lady be doing there? Or someone who seemed like a lady, at any rate?’

  He laughed. ‘Probably a missionary, wouldn’t you say? They look as if they’re in need of one. Or perhaps one of the cannibal chiefs has decided to lay out some of his ill-gotten gains on acquiring a well-bred wife.’

  Tiredness and disappointment had made me irritable; and for a moment I felt so affronted by his tone that it was all I could do to keep myself from snapping: How dare you talk about her like that? But then I reflected that I actually knew nothing about Mary Wilson’s personal circumstances at all, and that – though I might object to his language – his hypothesis was at least as plausible as any other. Certainly she had given me the impression that she was not happy in her marriage – and wouldn’t that be precisely what you would expect, if it had been made for the calculating reason he suggested? So after biting my lip for a couple of seconds, I freed it again, and contented myself with merely asking:

  ‘Do you want to leave me here, and go on on your own?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not quite what we expected, I know. But I still think you’ll have a better chance of finding her if we stick together.’

  ‘That’s awfully decent of you,’ I said, touched. ‘But are you sure you can bear it?’

  He nodded. ‘The pressing question, though, is: where can we stay?’