Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  After a few moments of silence Alan went on, ‘And God said, Let there be darkness: and there was darkness. And people dwelt in darkness like a race of troglodytes, except for fires which they lit to huddle by. And God strode about in the darkness where his terrible face could not be seen, but they heard the thunder of his footsteps and believed in him strongly, more so than if he had created light. How does that sound, Ruthie?’

  ‘Horrible. Scary.’

  ‘The words of the Bible of Darkness, the Black Bible.’

  ‘Which you invented just now?’

  He chuckled. ‘May as well eyeball these frescoes properly while the lights are on, eh?’

  While they’re on… Ruth glanced up at the roof, a vault of long planks, white paint flaking from them. She remembered the red tiles and for a moment this seemed to be a different building inside than it was outside. Of course the tiles were mounted upon the top side of those planks.

  Large parts of the frescoes were blank, as if amputated. Patches of plaster, painted and unpainted, were lifting like a skin disease.

  ‘According to the bumph,’ he said, ‘some Victorians tried to restore the walls but they covered them with wax as a protection to keep the dirt off; so the damp couldn’t escape.’

  ‘The damp,’ she murmured.

  ‘Rising from the soil below. So an appeal fund was launched ten years ago. That would be when Dana was living here. A proper restorer removed the wax and dirt with chemicals, fixed back flakes of paint with lime and skimmed milk, filled holes with lime and paint to match.’

  The job looked to have been abandoned mid-way.

  Ruth said, ‘That’s when the witch was supposed to be up to her hanky-panky in here.’ Once again she suspected that she was in a different building, as if the church possessed two possible states of being – as indeed it did: the light and the dark. That draught-shroud, a robe of coarse weave with a rent in it as though a spear had been stabbed through, could have been an old, poor woman’s cloak.

  Together they toured the shabby, ancient picture gallery.

  ‘Once, all these surfaces were crowded with pictures,’ he said, ‘even pictures painted over pictures.’

  Few survived. A patchy Last Judgement showed souls being weighed. In the Lady Chapel St Eloi, the patron of blacksmiths, was shoeing a restless horse by the miraculous expedient of removing its leg to work upon separately. Largest, almost the height of the nave wall, was a Saint Christopher wading through a stream with a toddler Christ on his shoulder. The saint’s staff was a crudely lopped tree, thus he seemed to be a fairytale ogre. Big fish butted at his feet.

  ‘Now, here we are!’

  Resting askew in the water upon her forked, scaly tail, a small mermaid admired herself, mirror in one hand, comb in the other, tugging at her long tresses.

  ‘Isn’t it weirdo, Ruthie? Wherever could the rural peasants have got the idea for a mermaid? From the local stream? The Pritelwell, “babbling brook” in Old English.’

  ‘I suppose she’s vanity,’ said Ruth. ‘A sin. The saint wades by – and she misses seeing Jesus because she’s intent on her face.’

  ‘Is she indeed? The reflected face is watching her, sure enough. Her own eyes are downcast. That isn’t her face in the looking glass. Someone else is looking out at her, pleading.’

  Ruth tried to make out the true bearing of the mermaid’s black pupils, however the paint was a mess.

  ‘I think it’s a man’s face, don’t you. The prisoner in the mirror!’

  No, she didn’t think so. Yet obviously he wished to believe this. His fingers strayed towards the crudely fashioned mermaid, altered course towards the painted mirror she held out.

  ‘The state this plaster’s in, I could probably peel the mirror-face off and take it away. Break his enchantment…’

  ‘That’s vandalism, Alan.’

  ‘Nobody has scrawled any graffiti on these walls – for hundreds of years. It’s as if they’re waiting to be written on, filled up again. I feel we should do something here, Ruthie. If we do something, something might happen.’ He strode towards the maroon shroud and doused the lights. Thick gloom swallowed the church. Dark shadows dropped about her like a host of bats. His figure, returning, was faceless.

  No, she could see his features, his expression. Oh God, thought Ruth.

  ‘We could fuck,’ he suggested. ‘Up against this wall, as if we’re in God’s bus shelter. God of Darkness, of course.’

  ‘You’re just imagining, aren’t you? Improvising?’

  His knuckles rubbed the front of her skirt. ‘Don’t you remember how we first did it?’ he whispered. He was avoiding the word love. Something was rising in him -something obvious, but also something deeper, and softer, soft as rot.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. A tipsy, crowded party at a friend’s flat almost twenty years ago, standing room only; likewise in the bolted toilet where she and Alan had crushed together, unzipping jeans feverishly, he crouching to thrust upwards, she arching her legs to admit him. Awkward and uncomfortable; though they hadn’t complained at the time. But nor had they repeated the position since. Perhaps, she thought, she should cooperate in this fantasy – this reenactment – or else he might retreat entirely inside his own head.

  ‘The tunnel of love,’ he muttered, pressing her. ‘Let’s open the tunnel, the dark tight hot earthy tunnel.’

  ‘It’s freezing in here, Alan.’

  ‘We won’t notice that. Haul up your skirt. Take your knickers right off; I’ll pocket them. Wrap your skirt around us both; it’s huge.’

  She gazed past him at the dark red lips of the gash in the door-shroud. The iron teeth behind would rattle if anyone came, giving them a brief warning. Blasphemous? she wondered. Then: don’t be so inhibited. Excitement quickened her.

  ‘I’ll get a story out of it,’ he promised. ‘Maybe the start of a novel. If we don’t I’ll have to tear that plaster mirror off the wall.’ As if to blackmail her into obedience, like some little boy insisting on a game of doctor and nurse. He was unzipping, staring over her shoulder at the mermaid. His fingertips combed Ruth’s hair. He was ready.

  She did as directed. As she was pressed against the wall by his weight she wondered whether the age-old plaster would crack and collapse in chunks; but it didn’t. To her surprise, she enjoyed herself, and him, wetly, excitedly.

  He was jubilant.

  ‘Now we’ve really done something, Ruthie! Didn’t hurt anyone, did we? Imagine all their peasant faces if they could have looked through a time-tunnel five hundred years into the future! Whiskers and gap-teeth, cysts and carbuncles on their weatherbeaten cheeks. Smocks, and forelocks to tug to the Lord of the Manor and the vicar. Imagine Gaffer Giles painting a mirror on the wall with his very own face in it, thinking to himself, “Happen oy be able to zee owt of it one day”. And what does he see but the mermaid coming to life, hoisting up her tail, and showing her loins at last? Hah, what the gaffer saw! He’d go goggle-eyed. Or maybe he wouldn’t. That was life back then: copulating, and birthing, and all the earthiness of it. Come on, let’s go. Let’s find a pub.’

  At the curtain Ruth hesitated briefly before sticking her fingers through the hole. Her fingers closed on a latch; the latch rose, and the door obligingly swung open. When they left the little porch, with its other mesh door to keep the birds out of church, the morning was as grey-grim as dusk, the air dense with turbulent moisture. Drizzle was so tossed around by the wind that you couldn’t be sure it was actually raining, just that the air was very wet. Over the way there seemed to Ruth to be many more little heaps of fresh earth than earlier; and the Friesians had moved in a bunch to the far end of the pasture. Somehow the two facts scared her, though the cows were nowhere near and she was soon inside the car.

  She pointed out her double observation to Alan as he started the engine and flipped on the wipers.

  ‘Those aren’t mole hills,’ he said airily. ‘A hill is the nest, the buried fortress. Those are called “heaves”: the so
il excavated from new runs. Little buggers must be having a field day, with all this winter wetness softening the ground for them.’

  ‘Don’t they hibernate?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Moles are hyperactive. Keep one without food for a few hours and it starves to death. Got to keep on gobbling worms.’

  ‘Worms from the rotted coffins,’ she muttered.

  ‘Hey, I like it! Bet we two had more fun digging than they do, eh? Loved it, didn’t you? Admit it! I know you did. I’m going to write a bloody good chapter. I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘It’s so long,’ she said.

  He giggled and nudged her. ‘Do you mean my…? Ah no, you mean since we last –’ His face clouded angrily.

  ‘I mean since your peasants went into the ground. All those years ago. How long does it take a coffin to rot. Or would they just wrap poor people’s bodies in sackcloth?’

  He reversed a short distance then went into first gear, hauling the wheel to full lock. He would have to mount the grass by a full car’s length before backing, thus to point them down the tarmac towards Chapel Lane. The wipers swished.

  ‘Don’t drive on to there!’ Not amongst the mole heaves.

  ‘How else can we get turned round?’

  ‘Drive to the farm; it’ll have a concrete yard.’

  ‘Some farmers are pretty sticky about disease precautions. Could take exception, with a shotgun. Don’t worry! We won’t get stuck.’ Alan steered the Metro forward all the way on to the pasture.

  For the few seconds during which he was changing into reverse Ruth believed that they were all right. But before he could lift his foot from the clutch pedal, the car slumped. Instantly Alan was revving furiously. Mud sprayed out ahead. The car wasn’t moving anywhere.

  Yes, it was. Slowly but surely the Metro was sinking under its own weight like a punctured cabin cruiser into a lake.

  ‘Christ!’ Alan quit revving, tried to open his door. Already the tide of soil was high enough to hold the door shut. He panicked momentarily. ‘It’s a bog! Quicksand, quicksoil.’

  ‘It wasn’t before,’ Ruth said tightly. ‘Or they wouldn’t keep cows here. All the moles have undermined it, moles that eat the worms, ever-starving moles –’

  ‘Shut up! We’ll stop sinking in a moment. The car floor’ll hold us up. A tractor can tug us out.’

  Instead, the car sank much faster. Soon soil engulfed the bonnet and bubbled up along the windows; the finest soil, sifted and sieved and friable. Gasping, Ruth clutched at her window handle.

  ‘No!’ cried Alan. ‘You’ll let the stuff in!’

  Struggling to clear the dirt, the wiper blades stalled.

  The wiper motor whined, screeched; something snapped. Recollecting, Alan cut the engine. The soil level rose higher. Before long he had to switch on the interior light.

  Presently the last grey line of daylight was swallowed. Millions of crumbs of soil were packed against the windows, rolling upwards. Beetles squirmed, disoriented. A fat worm wriggled across the glass beside Ruth. By now the roof must be submerged.

  Had they come to rest at last? Hard to tell, but perhaps. Now that they were buried and hidden away, why should they sink any deeper?

  ‘I think we’ve stopped,’ said Alan. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll both climb into the back seat, open a window, and burrow our way out.’

  ‘Open a window, now?’

  ‘If we stay in here we’ll asphixiate.’

  ‘We will?’ She started to pant.

  ‘Not yet – sooner or later. Oh sure, some air must filter down. But we can’t stay here. Climb over first, Ruthie. Please! The wheel’s in my way.’

  Ruth screamed. For something else was burrowing. Miniature hands scraped against the glass, next to her head: hands with claws, pink palms shaped like shovels. Soil flew away. She recoiled, hardly seeing, as a whiskery snout butted the glass then withdrew several inches. Beyond the dark velvety body a tunnel led away, faintly lit by the light from the car.

  Another mole butted the window near Alan; another tunnel stretched back into obscurity. The mole was a cylinder of fur with no neck.

  However, it had a face. Moles shouldn’t have faces. Not to speak of. Moles’ eyes are so small you can hardly notice them sunk in the fur. Moles’ ears are only a hole in the skin.

  These moles – there were others now – had the miniature faces of men and women. Old men and women. With grizzled whiskers, with warts and cysts, gap-toothed, bleary-eyes.

  The eyes were peering into the car as the strong little spade hands beat on the glass.

  The Emir’s Clock

  ‘I must show you something, Linda!’ Bunny was excited. (Flashing eyes and coaly hair, for he on honey-dew hath fed, et cetera.) He’d come round to my digs at nine in the morning and he’d never done that before. True, his excitement was still gift-wrapped in mystery and bridled by irony.

  ‘Come on!’ he urged. ‘We’ll need to take a little spin in the country.’

  ‘Hey–’

  ‘I’ll buy you lunch afterwards.’

  ‘I’ve a lecture at eleven.’

  ‘Never mind that. Ten minutes alone with a book equals one hour with a lecturer. You know it’s true. A lecturer only reads you a draft of his next book, which is a digest of a dozen books that already exist.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Oh, Linda! No one seduces a woman in the morning. Not successfully! The impatience of morning subverts the charm.’

  ‘Most of your friends don’t even know what morning is, never mind feeling impatient about it.’

  ‘But I know. To ride out on a desert morning when the world is fresh and cool!’

  How can I possibly describe Bunny without tumbling into clichés? His almost impertinent good looks. And that ivory smile of his… No, that’s wrong. Ivory turns yellow. His smile was snow. There’s no snow in the desert, is there? There was nothing frigid about his smile, though at least it did melt… hearts.

  And his eyes? To call them black oil-wells, liquid, warm and dark? What a trite comparison, considering the source of his family’s wealth, and the emirate’s wealth!

  And his neat curly black beard… the beard of the prophet? Bunny, was certainly determined like some young Moses to lead all his people into the promised land of technology and the future. He was also a descendant of Mohammed – who had many descendants, to be sure! What’s more, Bunny was to experience what any proper prophet needs to experience: a revelation, a message from the beyond.

  Of course, I succumbed.

  ‘Okay, lead me to your camel. Just give me five minutes, will you?’ I was still frantically tidying my hair.

  ‘Strictly horse power, Linda… with Ibrahim at the wheel as chaperone.’

  I’d known Bunny for a full year. Prince Jafar ibn Khalid (plus three or four other names) seemed to relish the twee nickname foisted on him by Oxford’s smart set. Heir to the rich emirate of Al-Haziya, Bunny was deeply anglophile. His favourite light reading: Agatha Christie.

  No, wait.

  What was he, deeply? He was an Arab. And a Moslem, though he made no great show of the latter. Plainly he was pro-British, with a taste for British ways. What was he in Al-Haziya? I’d no idea – since I never accepted his many invitations. He was a surface with many depths like some arabesque of faience on a mosque. Only one of those depths was the British Bunny. Other depths existed. He was like some Arabian carpet which gives the impression of a trapdoor leading down into other, complex patterns.

  No wonder he enjoyed Agatha Christie! Bunny could seem clear as the desert air at times. At other times he preferred to wear a cloak of mystery as if believing that a future ruler needs to be enigmatic, capable of surprising not only his enemies but his friends. For who knows when friends may become enemies? No wonder he liked his innocuous nickname, gift of the assorted Hooray Henrys, upperclass sons and daughters, and European blue-bloods who made up the smart set.

  The hallmarks of this smart set were heroin, cocaine, dini
ng clubs, and drunken hooliganism. As an initiation ritual they had smashed up Bunny’s room in Christ Church without him uttering a word of demurral, so I heard. Bunny could easily afford the repair bill. Within days he had his rooms refurnished splendidly, totally. I heard that his college scout went home grinning at the fifty-pound note given him by way of a tip.

  Shouldn’t this episode have filled Bunny with contempt for the smart set? Not to mention their rampant abuse of hard drugs, their deliberately cultivated lack of concern for social problems, the cynicism they sported as a badge. Especially since the ‘real’ Bunny was grooming himself to upgrade his peasant countryfolk into the future?

  I believe there’s often something deeply ascetic as well as voluptuous about an Arab man. There are all those pleasure maidens of paradise… On the other hand there’s Ramadan, fasting, the prohibition on alcohol.

  Well, when he was in the company of the smart set Bunny tossed back his whisky, but he would never touch their drugs, although he made no show of disapproval. Liquor is a naughtiness which some Arabs abroad are not unknown to indulge in, and Bunny obviously had to join in some forbidden practice. I gather he told his cronies that to him drugs were nothing remarkable. Hashish is the honey of the Islamic heaven, isn’t it? (Though cocaine and heroin might steal his soul, enslave him.) Why should he feel naughty about taking drugs? Why therefore should he bother? Whereas whisky was rather wicked.

  It did puzzle me as to why he cultivated these rich parasites in the first place, or let them cultivate him. Were his sights set on their respectable, power-broking parents – against whom the children rebelled whilst at the same time enjoying all the perks? Was his eye upon some future date when these rich rubbishy juveniles might have kicked their assorted habits and become worthwhile, maybe? Or was he bent on experiencing a spectrum of corruption so that he would know how to handle privileged corruption in his own country; so that he wouldn’t be naive as a ruler?