He giggled at the thought of it, surprising himself by the accidental girlishness of the giggle. As he rinsed the plates under a flow of rust-brown water in the bathroom sink, he studied his face in the pitted mirror, turning his head from side to side, tilting his chin; there was a spot coming next to his left nostril, blooming red and a bit sore. He wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue and tried a smile; he shook his hair, as he’d done in front of the fire, so that it fell loose and long and blond around his ears. Leaning to the mirror, he made to kiss his own reflection, but his nose got in the way. He giggled again at this and whispered to the face in the glass . . .
‘Hello, Christine,’ he said very softly. He said it three more times for practice.
The bathroom was the biggest he’d ever seen. As well as the rust-splashed washbasin with dribbling brass taps, there was a water tank, fat and round and coppery gleaming; a throne of a toilet, horribly stained inside the bowl and lapping with brown water; and the bath itself, a monstrous affair on four brass feet, piled with driftwood chopped into small enough pieces to go on the fire in the bedroom. Some small animal was moving in there, rustling the twigs and dried grasses to make a nest to hibernate in. The walls bloomed a black, fungal damp. The floor was sweating green linoleum.
Christy tiptoed out of the bathroom and onto the landing, where the shotgun leaned in a corner by the window. A rat ran over his feet and slithered down the stairs; seeing that the tide had gone out, it plopped onto the sand, crossed the hallway and disappeared through the front door. The boy shivered so hard that he nearly dropped the plates he was holding, but he went along the corridor away from the landing window to try the door handles of the other rooms. They were all locked. He knelt at the keyhole of one of the doors and squinted through it: nothing but darkness, a musty cold darkness and a stale cold smell.
Sure enough, Harry had reverted to his original grumpiness. When the boy took the plates back into the bedroom, he saw that the man had heaved himself into his armchair and was drying his toes with a corner of a blanket. He’d taken the pan off the griddle and given it to the dogs to lick, and he’d built up the fire with more sticks.
‘Before you go,’ he muttered, hearing Christy coming in and putting the plates down, ‘bring some wood from the bathroom and put it next to the grate. Then it’s time for you to bugger off. Get some wood, get the fire going properly, and get me another blanket to wrap round my legs. I’m aching with cold after all that ridiculous splashing around downstairs. Stupid idea, that was, all for a bloody fish! Come on, girl, don’t just stand there gaping! Get a move on!’
Christy was glad to be going. He was cold, too, although he’d had his boots on during the fish hunt, because he’d knelt and squatted in the freezing water. Since, by the look of things, he wasn’t going to be allowed the benefit of the fire after the feast, he was better off leaving and running back across the fields to the orphanage. He responded meekly to the gruff commands, fetching the wood, stacking it by the grate, and then arranging Harry in the armchair with a pillow and blankets so that he was comfortably wrapped up, like a geriatric in an old-people’s home. The dogs lay at the man’s feet, where he could wriggle his stiff, yellow toes in their warm fur.
‘And next time you come,’ Harry said – ‘not that there has to be a next time, since I’ve managed perfectly well on my own for the last God-knows-how-many years – bring some batteries for the radio. What the hell am I supposed to do all day, propped up like this in front of the fire like a bloody invalid? Well, what are you waiting for? You let yourself in, didn’t you? Now you can let yourself out.’
So the boy left, closing the bedroom door behind him, taking one of the batteries from the radio so that he’d know which sort to thieve from matron, as the man ungratefully put it.
Harry settled to the warmth of the blaze, to the comforting crackle of firewood. He was warm and well fed, snuggling himself into the blankets, pressing his feet on the belly of an obliging dog. He chuckled as he thought of the silly, childish way he’d thrown off his shoes and socks and splashed after the fish, hooting with laughter with the giggling girl. He remembered how she’d flicked her blonde hair to dry it in front of the fire. He’d seen the redness of a spot coming at the side of her left nostril. He remembered the silvery scales on her thigh. He remembered her warm hand in his hand.
‘Christine,’ he said softly to himself. He said it again. He wondered if the beachcomber might come back quite soon, the next day perhaps. He hoped so.
Chapter Nine
Indeed, Christy came back every afternoon the following week.
He’d decided it was too late to correct Mr Clewe’s misapprehension about his name and sex. It didn’t seem to matter. He’d asked about the dogs’ names and the man had told him the legend of Gog and Magog, the only survivors of a monstrous brood of giants whose mothers had all murdered their husbands; the rest of the giants had been killed by King Brute, but Gog and Magog were taken to London and made to do duty as porters in the royal palace.
He’d asked about the house too. ‘It’s not an island and there aren’t any swans,’ Harry had grunted when Christy queried the origin of the name, Ynys Elyrch. ‘Although it’s more like an island these days than it’s ever been before. There are swans on the estuary, roosting in the dunes on the far side, but I’ve never seen a single swan on the fields or the shore near the house, not in all the years I’ve lived here. They don’t like the look of the place. They’re afraid of the gun, maybe, or the dogs. Afraid of me, I suppose.’
It was a bit unfair, the boy thought, that the dogs’ names and the house’s name should be so thoroughly accounted for, while his own had been misconstrued. Never mind. What did it matter? He would continue to visit Ynys Elyrch, the island of swans, until his curiosity was satisfied. For the time being, the daily expeditions were a novelty. Harry Clewe was dangerously unpredictable; it added an extra shiver of excitement to the little adventure, to string him along a bit. One day, sooner or later, when the fun of the visits had worn off, the boy would drop his pants, watch the expression on the man’s stupid, grumpy, red face and then run off, crowing with laughter. And that would be the end of it.
In the meantime, Harry and Christy spent the winter afternoons together. Cold days, lit by watery sunshine, as the wind came off the sea and cut across the treeless fields, but good days, as the crusty widower and the orphaned boy kindled a little warmth from each other’s company. For Christy, it was a taste of all the rapscallion adventures that, fatherless, he’d never had. For Harry, it was an echo of the lightness of spirit he’d briefly enjoyed in years gone by: in pursuit of the little blonde Sarah, of whom the beachcomber sometimes reminded him; in love with his sister Lizzie; in thrall to the child Zoë; in the warm, capable hands of Helen . . . culminating in a moment of blinding rage, when he’d knocked Helen dead with the ammonite and dropped her into the cellar.
Dead. All of them dead. Sarah and Lizzie and Zoë and Helen . . . And now Christine, the beachcomber . . .
They caught more fish in the flooded hallway, blenny and scad and wrasse, all kinds of dabs and flatties, and they fried them over the fire. They found a conger eel, eight feet long and as strong as a boa constrictor, stranded in the living room: a coiling, thrashing, muscular monster which, after a titanic struggle, they caught in an improvised net and dragged out of the house, onto the beach, to release it triumphantly in the shallows of low tide.
Harry showed Christy the remains of a more monstrous beast, the porpoise whose bones had been scattered all over the fields, and the two of them spent a whole afternoon absorbed in trying to fit the skeleton together again.
They walked the foreshore with dogs and gun, and the boy watched, amazed at the deafening noise and the whiff of cordite, as the man bagged widgeon or snipe. The dogs splashed after the kill and retrieved it, a limply flapping thing which Christy wrung dead with impressive expertise. ‘That’s something not many girls could do,’ Harry admitted. ‘But don’
t get any ideas about having a go with the gun. I’ll bloody thrash you if I see you so much as touch it!’
They gathered driftwood together, and Harry instructed Christy in wielding the axe, the sledgehammer and the splitting wedge. When the boy fetched the tools from the car, he’d asked excitedly, ‘What sort is it, Mr Clewe? Is it a Jag?’ and he’d slithered onto the smooth red leather of the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel, stretching to the pedals, craning to see over the long silver bonnet, blowing the dust off the big, round dials.
Grand days for the boy, for whom the ordered routine of the institution was all the world he knew; good days for the man, for whom the past was a blur. Harry felt himself unfossilising. Some of the stiffness was gone. His body worked better, his blood was warmer, when the beachcomber came. Somehow, the house itself, which had been as cold and dead as the ammonite, was alive again.
There was a bright, blustery Sunday, when, for the first time, Christy was caught in the house by the rising tide.
It was the best of all his adventures so far, to see the waves spill into the hallway and flood the downstairs rooms. He crouched on the landing, glowing with joy and excitement, unable to tear himself from the spectacle of the sea surrounding and filling the house. It lapped to the third step on the staircase, then the fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh. While the man sat by the fire and listened to a play on the radio, Christy gazed from the landing into the deepening well of water in the hall, as the sea smacked and slapped at the walls and sent slow, rumbling rollers through the living-room windows. He thought he could feel the foundations rocking, shuddering with the beat of the swell . . . as though the house were no longer a house but a great ship, adrift on a steel-grey ocean. He stared from the landing window and trembled with the thrill of it.
The whoosh and flap of a purple sail made him jump with surprise as a windsurfer raced past the window. He instinctively lifted a hand to wave at the youth in the gleaming black suit, and then changed his mind, thinking it best to drop out of sight when the youth glanced up. He peered out, his eyes above the sill, and watched the top of the sail accelerating across the flooded fields, before he got up again and stood at the window. His feelings were curiously mixed when he saw the windsurfer turn and start to come back, as the board cut a foaming white slice through the waves, as the sail grew swollen and taut, as the youth bent at the helm.
A fine sight, and a crackling, ripping, white-water sound . . . but, at the same time, a bubble of anger rose in the boy’s chest, a bubble of jealousy, a jealous anger that someone else should have come to Ynys Elyrch, where only he was allowed to come.
‘Mr Clewe!’ he hissed, shuffling into the bedroom on his hands and knees to keep out of sight of the windsurfer. ‘Mr Clewe! There’s a – ’
Harry had already heard the snap of the sail outside his bedroom window. He’d been trying to stay calm, to stop himself from lunging out of his armchair and onto the landing. Now he snapped, ‘I know, I know! Get off the floor! What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
He kicked out viciously at Gog and Magog, which had hardly moved a muscle at the sound of the sail. They stumbled to the door to get out of range of the man’s boots.
‘Bloody dogs!’ he bellowed. ‘Worse than useless when a trespasser comes onto my property on his stupid sailboard! And you, all you can do is crawl around on your hands and knees, as though there’s a bloody air raid or something!’
He heaved himself out of the armchair and staggered to the window.
‘I’ll get the gun to him one of these days!’ he muttered. ‘Let’s try a few of these, next time he comes close.’
He reached into one of the sacks in the corner of the room and groped at the potatoes.
‘Get out of the way!’ he barked at the boy. ‘Get off the floor! Give me some space, for fuck’s sake!’
Christy slunk onto the landing, as cowed as the two dogs, but Harry followed him out there, shoving him aside with his boots as though he were just another jellyfish or bundle of weed that the sea had fetched up. With his hook, he flung open the window. He weighted a potato in the palm of his hand, winced as he loosened the muscles in his shoulder, and he waited for the purple sail to turn at the top of the field and start racing again towards the house.
‘Come on, you bastard!’ he muttered. ‘Come on! Come as close as you bloody well like!’
But the potato he threw fell hopelessly short of the target. The plop it made in the rough water was lost in the noise of waves and wind. The surfer neither saw nor heard it, although he brought his board within a few yards of the house and turned it right beneath the landing window. Very hurriedly, too angry to aim properly, grunting with frustration, Harry threw again. The potato splashed close to the board, so that the youth glanced up and guffawed at the sight of the quivering, red-faced, wild-haired man who’d thrown it. Harry threw a third time. The youth stretched out to catch the potato and hurl it back, where it burst on the side of the house with such an impact that Harry staggered away from the window, spattered with juice.
The surfer manoeuvred the board into the wind. For a moment the sail flapped, baggy and loose, and the youth wobbled precariously with nothing to lean on.
Christy stood up. He stepped to the window and grabbed a couple of the potatoes that the man had dropped. Aiming carefully, sighting on the head of hair which was bright against the tightening sail, he hurled them one after the other with all his strength.
The first potato hit the sail with a loud slap and dropped into the water. The second one hit the windsurfer very hard on the back of the head . . . so hard that the youth rocked forward, pushed the boom away from him, and fell headlong into the sea.
Harry had seen this from the bedroom, where, to relieve his powerlessness, he’d been kicking the dogs back to the fireside. He gave a squeal of pleasure when the first potato hit the sail. He bellowed like a bull when the second potato smacked on the windsurfer’s head. Lunging to the window again, shoving Christy to one side, he stood there, crowing, as the youth collapsed into the water.
So that, when the youth surfaced and turned to face the house, he only saw the man at the window. As far as he knew, there was no one else in the house. He clambered on board and sped away, scowling, tossing his head and flinging the water from his hair.
Christy found himself wrapped in a bear hug of an embrace. Harry enfolded his arms round the boy and heaved him off his feet to swirl him round and round the landing. And all the time he whooped with joy, a hoarse, hysterical whoop of triumph.
‘You darling! You treasure!’ he shouted, when at last he could say the words instead of simply hooting. ‘So the mermaid’s a tomboy, after all!’
Together, hand in hand, the man and the boy turned back to the window to see that the purple sail was disappearing on the dim horizon.
That was a very good day, when the windsurfer was routed. To celebrate, they shared a fireside feast of the provisions that the boy had brought from the orphanage kitchens: crumpets, toasted in the flames and spread with butter and jam; fruitcake and oranges; the first tea that Harry had tasted for more than a month. By dusk, the tide had gone down enough for Christy to go splashing across the waterlogged fields, turning and waving to the man at his fire-lit window, running inland to be back at the orphanage in time for Mrs Bottomley’s roll call.
More and more good days, afternoons of clear, cold sunshine and salty winds. The man and the boy walked the shores with Gog and Magog and the thundering gun. They stalked the silvery bass in the flooded hallway. They scoured the beaches for the treasures that the storms threw up.
Chapter Ten
‘It’s me, Mr Clewe! It’s me!’
Arriving at the house, Christy squeezed past the piano, paused in the hallway and called out in a clear, high voice. Then he combed out his hair and shook it loose before going up the stairs to hand over the gifts he’d brought.
Christy kept the secret of his sex from the man: he thought it was
exciting and naughty to do so. Harry Clewe had a secret too, naughtier and more exciting than the boy’s. When the boy came closer to discovering it, Harry was suddenly and terribly angry.
For the past couple of weeks, the man and the boy had warmed to one another. Harry was a little less bilious and cranky than he’d been over the previous ten years. He kicked the dogs less often, no more than a dozen times a day. Unconsciously at first, without thinking of what he was doing, he washed more thoroughly and shaved more carefully when he thought the beachcomber might visit . . . thanks to whom he had soap and razor blades and toothpaste, batteries for the torch and the radio, candles and sometimes a newspaper. He would look forward to a bit of company, and the gifts too. He would peer at his reddened face in the bathroom mirror and smile when he heard footsteps in the shingled yard, when he heard the clear, high voice calling, ‘It’s me, Mr Clewe! It’s me!’
But he lost his temper that day, when he found his visitor trying the door handles of the other upstairs rooms . . .
Thinking the man was asleep in his armchair, having propped him with pillows and wrapped him with a rug after building the fire to a crackling blaze, Christy had tiptoed from the bedroom and onto the landing. First of all, without daring to breathe at the same time, he picked up the gun from the corner. It was much heavier than he’d thought it would be; he could hardly point it anywhere for more than a few seconds, out of the landing window or even down the stairs, before the barrel drooped towards the floor. Silently, remembering the man’s warning, he leaned it back in its corner. Then he crept along the corridor to the door of another room and knelt to peer through the keyhole, as he’d done once before. There was nothing but dusty darkness and a cold draught, an odd, faintly tinkling noise, like splinters of ice falling onto a pavement. He stood up and twisted the handle, but the door was locked.
And suddenly, there was Mr Clewe on the landing.
The Blood of Angels Page 38